durbin didn’t need to end the filibuster, he just needed to let last night’s run it’s course. instead, the dems didn’t make bunning hold the floor and when he was close to breaking they gave him a break.

that doesn’t look like republican obstructionism. that looks like dem stupidity or laziness.

fedupwiththefilibuster dot com, eh?

I question why Durbin is just asking supporters to sign petitions instead of going to the floor right now with the help of Vice President Joe Biden to raise a Constitutional point of order against a potential filibuster of a Senate rules change, forcing an up or down vote on the matter.

Frankly, Jon, I think the reason is simple. The new approach to dealing with a controversial issue is to stir people up about it, start a website to get email addresses, ASK FOR CONTRIBUTIONS, and then do nothing to really deal with the controversial issue.

Anthony Weiner, Alan Grayson, Mike Bennet, and now Dick Durbin.

Progressives are being tricked into giving away important resources to self-proclaimed leaders who are ineffective or just plain charlatans.

knox, see my comment @1 – it’s even worse than that. it sure looks like a manufactured controversial issue.

Ah, but if he had, FOX/CNN/etc. would have been all over him for picking on a poor old man who was a legendary baseball pitcher, you see.

This isn’t the first time Durbin’s wimped out when it counted. Ironically enough, I was thinking earlier today about how Durbin probably doomed his chance of becoming Senate Majority Leader by his crying during an apology he should never have made for a statement he was eminently justified in making.

So, in this case: manufacture a phony controversy, launch a website, collect email addresses, send out messages daily ASKING FOR CONTRIBUTIONS, and then laugh all the way to the meeting with the lobbyists?

I’m not amused.

this is why I don’t think durbin is a good choice for senate leader…

oops, what you said.

We now have kabuki government to go along with our kabuki economy.

The only real thing is massive political fundraising that determines what policies can and can’t be considered by “Serious Villagers.”

We have the ‘party of NO’ and the ‘party of NO SPINE’. Neither one is, or should be, acceptable.

The perpetually flaccid Dick Durbin.

Durbin and Burris are my senators and if I had to pick a favorite I might lean toward Roland.

Vaguely reminds me of when Frank told some LBGT groups that protests and letters are useless – lobbyist cash is what gets things done. Of course Frank was being a bit less subtle.

Hey, I think you should all be happy that Durbin didn’t go to the floor of the Senate and tearfully apologize to Bunning for making him miss his basketball game and for keeping him up past his bedtime. Durbin has been known to do that.

But more seriously, the reason Durbin and the Dems don’t seriously try to change the rules is because they are actually quite happy the way things are.

They get to not pass legislation that might piss off their corporate partners plus they get to not only blame the ReThugs, but also get to fund raise off the blame and whining.

Good work if you can get it…

Having Bunning be so stubborn that he collapsed on the Senate floor would not be good PR for the Democrats. “Dems kill senile Senator” is hardly the headline one would want to see. I hope they have footage of Bunning frothing at the mouth; using that to talk about how Republicans act could be very helpful.

But in terms of the immediate narrative, you and Waldman are right. It sends a mixed message.

There are lot of reasons most Dems prefer stalemate to ending the filibuster, not the least of which is the knowledge that in all likelihood they will soon be the minority party.

Let’s do nothing.

Yeah, that’s the ticket.

This guys is my Senator and is the biggest wet noodle — well, next to Harry Reid. There is no way he will go to bat to get rid of the filibuster. He railed endlessly while the Dems were out of power about defunding the Iraq War — and when the Dems were in power . . . he voted to continue to fund the war.

He talks a good game but he has pulled that football out from under me so many times my butt is black and blue. Don’t trust this guy — he will sell you out once the slightest pressure gets applied from the powers that be. I hope there is a Dem challenger come 2014 — I am just sorry I have to wait that long to boot him out of there.

The American people, and the progressive base, are sick and tired of the meaningless posturing with zero intention to play hardball in order to deliver on those promises (cough. . . public option. . . cough).

I give Durbin props for at least saying the right things, (i.e., “the banks own [the Senate]“).

But I agree that progressive base is sick and tired.

I don’t have a problem with Obama not ‘ramming through’ health care; I actually think it’s been far more valuable to see the charade peel off the GOP to show their intransigence and rigid, outdated, inability to provide reasonable solutions.

But with that said… what’s sauce for the GOP goose is also sauce for the Dem gander.

Bush was ‘big hat, no cattle’, and I’d never want to say the same of Sen. Durbin 8^p

Damn. You beat me to it. Might as well re-name “The Village” to “The Potemkin Village”, cause that’s what it is, all a façade to make it look like they’re doing something, they’re not, two faces of the same coin, and that coin is in the MIC’s pocket.

I wrote in my comment @ 2 that Durbin’s bs ‘action’ appears to be the new paradigm from our sellout Dems – take an issue that gets people angry, get people to sign a petition, collect emails, and then send out daily messages asking for contributions while doing nothing of substance to actually deal with the issue that got people so upset in the first place – and I included Sen Mike Bennet in my list of suspects.

Well, last week Bennet got tens of thousands of people to sign a petition calling for the use of reconciliation to get a public option, and this afternoon those same tens of thousands of people got an email entitled “Extremist attack on Michael Bennet — and Women” that asks for $25 contributions.

What happened to passing a public option in the Senate using reconciliation? Nothing. It’s not going to happen. The pack of sellouts who call themselves Senate Democrats used an issue that progressives care about as a fundraising gimmick.

Durbin’s doing the same thing.

In the interests of full disclosure, I wrote a diary last week entitled “Public Option via Reconciliation: Sign the Bennet Letter” because I thought that the Democrats would take notice if tens of thousands of citizens signed it. The truth – despite what Anthony Weiner would have you believe – is that the vast majority of Democrats in office are just as “wholly owned” as are the Republicans. The result in the Senate would not have been any different had hundreds of thousands of voters had signed Bennet’s letter. If Weiner and others in the House won’t stand up against the White House and Senate Democrats, the last crumbs of real health care reform are dead.

yep, I guarantee those lists will just be used to solicite calls for insurance industry shills like Coakley! I have quit every dem related political list I was on. I think this new coffee party movement is nothing but a do nothin sham list too.

If they don’t accomplish anything, why should I give a damn?

Getting angry at leaders who are failing the American people is not “doing nothing.” Trying to hold them accountable is not “doing nothing.” Calling out their bullshit is not “doing nothing.”

the dems didn’t make bunning hold the floor and when he was close to breaking they gave him a break.

… ** big, deep sigh ** ….

This looks like one of those ‘can’t win’ situations.
If they’d held Bunning’s feet to the fire, they’d have looked like thugs asking an elderly gentleman to exhaust himself.

At the same time, they can’t let an elderly gentleman be a ‘tail’ wagging the Senate dog at his every whim.

But they need to find a way out of the conundrum, because it’ll be the end of any chances the Dems have to fix policy if they cave in to the Bunnings and then lose the Senate.

Don’t worry Dick, in eight months you won’t have that filibuster problem anymore.
The GOP will show you guys how to handle such “problems.”

I imagine that Bunning was chosen by the Rs to do this just because he is old and they knew the Ds would not push him. The Rs are very clever and that should not be forgotten.

It is time to make the Senate like one of the hundred parliamentary bodies in this country and around the world that work on majority rule and don’t allow one cranky member to shut the place down for 10 hours.

If they’d held Bunning’s feet to the fire, they’d have looked like thugs asking an elderly gentleman to exhaust himself.

You must be joking. This fucker is causing thousands of people to be thrown out of their homes in the middle of winter, and you’re worried about somebody feeling sorry for him?

I did call Bunnings office and told the nice lady that I would support ANYONE against him- she said he supported the unemployment, just not how it was funded. I said- oh, funding the war etc that’s OK but we can’t take care of our own?

I was livid but polite.

still am livid.Think I’ll contact my Senators as well.

That is the democrats for you, they talk a great game but back down like little beeches in the end. No wonder Obama is so good at it, that is all he has seen them do since he got to DC. They shldve broken the old man down and when he collasped wheeled his ass out in a cart and left him in the hallway by the garbage.

Dick Durbin?

Should I bother to express my opinion of him? He does recant very easily. I saw him crumble under pressure a few years back even after he took a principled and honorable stand against torture….

John Yoo is a free man now and writing more books and articles not to mention his professorship at UC-Berkeley.

Jay Bybee is also a free man as well to write more legal opinions in favor of torture…..

The Dems take loads and loads of principled stands….Barack Obama has been very forgiving of war criminals like John Yoo and Jay Bybee and Eric Holder chose not to go after these blood lust criminals…..

Dick Durbin like Obama take “principled stands” when it does not matter. When in power, the Democrats cave like the spineless cowards they are.

I call these Dems, the “Weimar Democrats.”

I forgot to add Kabuki Constitution to Kabuki Government & Kabuki Economy.

Recent SCOTUS decision for corporate personhood’s first amendment rights spells the end of the Bill of Former Rights.

But like Bogie & Bergman, we’ll always have the second amendment.

War funding doubles as foreign aid… just our way of lending a helping hand.

Procedural filibusters are allowed only if Harry Reid allows them.

h/t Subdivisions @ Dem underground:

Brad Friedman
for HUSTLER MAGAZINE – March 2010

SIBEL EDMONDS, a former FBI translator, claims that the following government officials have committed what amount to acts of treason. They are lawmakers Dennis Hastert, Bob Livingston, Dan Burton, Roy Blunt, Stephen Solarz and Tom Lantos, as well as at least three members of George W. Bush’s inner circle: Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz and Marc Grossman. But is Sibel Edmonds credible?

“Absolutely, she’s credible,” Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) told CBS’s 60 Minutes when he was asked about her in 2002. “The reason I feel she’s very credible is because people within the FBI have corroborated a lot of her story.” Edmonds’s remarkable allegations of bribery, blackmail, infiltration of the U.S. government and the theft of nuclear secrets by foreign allies and enemies alike rocked the Bush Administration. In fact, Bush and company actually prevented Edmonds from telling the American people what she knew—up until now.

John M. Cole, an 18-year veteran of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Counterespionage departments, revealed the panic of upper-echelon officials when Edmonds originally started talking back in 2002. “Well, the Bureau is gonna have to try to work something out with Sibel,” Cole said an FBI executive assistant told him at the time, “because they don’t want this to go out and become public.”

But they couldn’t “work something out with Sibel” because, it seems, she wasn’t looking to make a deal. Edmonds says she was looking to expose what she believed to be the ugly truth about the infiltration of the U.S. government by foreign spies. They were enabled, Edmonds claimed, by high-ranking U.S. officials and insider moles planted at nuclear weapons facilities around the nation.

…snip…

http://larryflynt.com/?p=693

From FREAKING Larry fucking Flint of all people…. Maybe we should elect him El presidentie

Well, at least we’d be getting a better quality of pornography than the current garbage emanating from D.C.

Well the 1st amendment’s become Kabuki now as well, so yeah, the 2nd amendment becomes the 1st. Let your gun/s do the “free speech” talking, that’s just what the nuts on the right want, Tombstone all over again.

I sympathize with the sense of aggravation (as I read your comment).
I share it.

I also agree that the Dems **must** deliver, and soon.

But among the many things that I have found intriguing the past year was to see **how** intransigent, rigid, and sound-bite-fixated the GOP has become.

So I’d say, yes the Dems have to deliver.

Arguably, Bush ‘delivered’: to his oil buddy funders, to his fundy funders, to the Abramoff Syndicate of lobbyists, shell corporations, and tax haven interests.
And those interests remain entrenched, and even bigger than they were pre-2000. And they still control a lot of resources and too much political and economic capital.

The Dems have to deliver.
But not the way that Bush did. Not by being thugs.

I have mixed reactions to Durbin’s effort; if he’s not going to take money from banks, how is he going to raise money? If he doesn’t have the option of raising money online, what’s he going to do?

I’m reserving judgment at the moment.
If he’s not going to take money from the banks, he has to find a way to raise money.

But I agree that the action needs to come first.

As for Bennet, I also reserve judgment.
I think that — particularly for education policy (which is important to me) — he may have more potential to make good policy than any other new senator for at least a generation. If he wants my $25, he’ll get it. And more.

Astute observation; I hadn’t paid as much attention.
But I fear that your point is probably very much on-target.

So the Dems need to strategize so that this does not occur again.

There are lot of reasons most Dems prefer stalemate to ending the filibuster, not the least of which is the knowledge that in all likelihood they will soon be the minority party.

And of course we all know how effectively they used the filibuster the last time they were in the minority.

Hell, even when the Dems were in the fucking majority they still couldn’t come up with 40 votes to stop the worst of Bush.

Again, one of the best decisions movement conservatives ever made was to infiltrate the Democratic party through the DLC.

Actually, it is Casablanca where everything is available for a price if you know the right people.

Watch the movie tonight. Particularly the dining room scene where La Marseillaise drowns out Deutschland Uber Alles.

I fear for the future of vertebrate life in America, except of course, Glenn Beck who is Thomas Paine reincarnated.

dats for sure….

Too bad for Glenn Beck that Paine was by todays standards a socialist. Of course no one ever seemed to tell Beck.

It is time to make the Senate like one of the hundred parliamentary bodies in this country and around the world that work on majority rule and don’t allow one cranky member to shut the place down for 10 hours.

Most of my Seminal diaries have been about this very fact. It is a travesty.

And if you look at Wikipedia’s “US States by Population” page, you really see how chilling it is that only 13 states have 60% of the population.

That leaves 37 states’ worth — or 74 Senators! — who are tiny minorities with votes that are hugely disproportionate to the actual share of the US population they represent.

It’s why Ben Nelson, who represents fewer than 1,000,000 Americans, can screw the other 307,000,000 of us.

So that time after time, these small-state Senators have a ‘political payoff’ of ratios like 1:307.

All it takes for oil companies to stop global warming legislation is ONE Senate vote, and the entire world gets screwed.
All it takes for healthCos to continue profiting is ONE Senate filibuster, and they continue their obscene profits.

This system is broken, busted, and a nightmare.

And the GOP isn’t doing jack to fix it, because they represent outdated, obstructionist interests.

And if the Dems want to get reelected, they need to fix it pronto.

These democrats will deliver, alright. But not on anything we progressives would grade high on the public good gradient.

However, I support your right to reserve judgment.

so sad and so fucking true…. sigh. fucking sigh….

That’s my point.

We know that Glenn Beck could never stand up to Jon Stewart in a one on one smackdown. But living in today’s P.T. Barnum America, the suckers support the current masters of the universe.

And I don’t see how this is likely to change.

Observe how Obama negotiated away every meaningful piece of REAL health care access and insurance reform that might put human well being ahead of corporate profits without a single obstructionist republican vote.

What was Rahm’s characterization of progressives who don’t gratefully mill around in the veal pen before being sent to the Chicago packing houses?

Oh yeah, f-cking retards.

Cold comfort for Howard Dean who rebuilt the party’s infrastructure over eight years of Cromwellian nightmare under Cheney’s boot and Bush’s dyslexia.

Durbin is a 9 to 5 liberal. He is perfectly willing to take a principled stand as long as he doesn’t have to really stand behind anything, it is convenient, and it doesn’t upset anyone. The man is a tiger, I tell you.

If it’s on TV, it is fiction. If it is coming from a politician, it’s never going to be factual.
Look at the senators that said health care for all, look at them back down and not sign the public health care option. Born into corruption, die out as lobbyists. Do congress people negotiate the same way as do convicts in prison? Sure it’s about the drugs and the cigarettes, but the power of being the guy with the extra pack is overwhelming. He’s got it to burn.

Not so loud about that Durbin as tiger stuff … it’s supposed to be a secret weapon.

Reference the war room scene in Dr. Strangelove when they discover too late Russia’s doomsday machine that the enemy forgot to mention because their Premier was too drunk and busy with the ladies.

Sounds like we really did win the cold war, doesn’t it?

Yes let’s end the filibuster, now that we have the power and will never lose it. Have you folks really thought this “end the filibuster” stuff through?

What’s the difference? The Republicans can do whatever they want once they have a simple majority.

Sorry, you make a good point. I’m just making another good point from another perspective.

yes what is wrong with the people who win the election getting to make the laws.

If you don’t think the majority should pass laws than you should push to add a 3/5 threshold to the House.

I hear you. What you describe is a lack of spine on the part of the Dems. We can always hope for change in that area. If, however, we eliminate the filibuster, even if the Dems grow a pair, it wont help.

The last crumbs of healthcare reform are dead.

Maybe for this push. But the situation is bad enough that with some careful politics progressives could get a Congress more amenable to fixing the issues that the Senate bill leaves behind or pushing through single-payer if nothing happens. And the vulnerabilities are now on the side of the Republicans — if progressives determine to mobilize to dump Republicans as fast or faster than Blue Dogs go down the tubes.

Politicians aren’t as impressed with folks who deliver letters as they are with folks who deliver votes or the money to finance the getting of votes. Bennet, for example, is looking for folks in Colorado who will get out the vote in a primary against Andrew Romanoff. Or the folks outside Colorado who will finance his primary campaign.

Because the Majority is not always right. Also, changing course every 2 to 4 years is just another way of going no where, as well.

so UK, France, Sweden, Germany, Canada, etc… are trapped in a terrible world of Democracy where a party runs on a platform than enacts it.

Really, are you honestly trying to compare those countries to America? Their “loony right” makes some of our progressives look like Fascists. Have you seen our crazies? Do you really want them running the show for any period of time?

And this is different from the last 223 years in what way?

The fact a super majority can be needed to enact legislation can be frustrating if quick change is desired or needed. It does tend to be stable though, if it takes a lot to choose a particular course, it must also take a lot to change from that course, hence the fact that Social Security and Medicare still exist.

Hey. Okay let’s be suspicious, but also lets sign the goddamned petition and encourage our friends and contacts to do the same thing. It can’t hurt and it may well do some good.

The supermajority is not carved in stone; it’s a recent innovation and should be tossed like almost everything else brought to us by the party of NO.
It isn’t part of the Constitution, except for certain specified uses.

Fist Filibuster, in the Senate, 1837. So filibusters have been around for awhile. As for not in the constitution, the Senate and the House are permitted by the Constitution to set down the rules that govern them. Let’s not forget that we could have always gone to reconciliation for this particular bit legislation, we were never bound by having to move through a cloture vote, this was a always voluntary on the Dems part.

Precisely.

And this. was. no. filibuster by Bunning. Anymore than all the other objections to Unanimous Consent requests in the Senate are “filibusters” (a word, I think, that should be reserved for the real thing, and especially never conflated with the cloture process with which it is now hopelessly entangled). Otherwise, we’d have to say that Dick Durbin himself conducted a filibuster last night, when Senator Corker (who had been getting ready for bed, but came back to the Senate to join the debate) asked for unanimous consent to pass a paid-for COBRA, et al, extension just before the Senate adjourned for the night:

Mr. CORKER. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 4691 which I understand to be the measure that is before us, that the amendment at the desk, which I understand offers a full offset to pay for this, be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read for a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?

Mr. DURBIN. I object.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.

What last night was, for a change, though it seems to have caught both sides by surprise, the Senate having lost the habit of passionately engaging on issues, was a very public exposure of an objecting Senator, and an at least semi-principled attempt to bring light to the substance of an issue by a member of the majority (Durbin). [In lieu of the normal Democratic practice of letting objections be made in private, without public explanation.] Plus, for once, apparently due to time constraints and/or a backroom deal on voting on the matter next week, a cloture motion filed by the majority wasn’t in play. The debate was apparently primarily driven by Dick Durbin, in a spur-of-the-moment decision to stop taking routine objections as the end of the story – a good baby step, but a long, long way from forcing a real filibuster:

Mr. DURBIN. I say to the Senator from Oregon that is exactly why I am standing. I didn’t plan on doing this. I had a pretty full day down at the Blair House and other places. I believed, by the end of the day, the Senator from Kentucky would agree to a vote. He would have had his chance on the floor–which is all we can ask for in the Senate, to argue his point of view–and that we would be able to go home for the weekend knowing unemployed people across the United States would not have their benefits cut off–cutting off unemployment checks in the midst of this recession.

I had not planned on being here tonight, but I thought to myself, I say to the Senator from Tennessee, how can I walk out that door and go home and go to bed and say: Well, just another day, another objection. Those 12 million people who sent me here expect me to stand for them once in a while.

That is what I am trying to do. I cannot believe we have reached the point in the Senate where these battles over cosmic issues are being visited on people who are struggling to survive day to day, to put food on the table. That is what it has come down to. That is exactly what it has come down to. I think that is unfortunate. I think we are better than that. I think we should be better than that as a Nation and as a Senate.

It’s apparently conceded that the extensions at issue will pass early next week, but Durbin was meantime making legitimate points, and Bunning was objecting to what he characterized as being sandbagged (because the routine Senate ‘comity’ that all have become accustomed to had a rare interruption), and Durbin wasn’t prepared to agree with Bunning’s idea(s) for off-setting the funding, although the Senate just finished passing the pay-go legislation within the last few weeks to bring a halt to such unfunded legislation. A good ground-laying, perhaps, for some needed changes in backroom Senate practices, but a disagreement in which both sides will need to give some ground to get the best of both worlds on this particular issue.

On a related, filibuster note, selise helpfully posted a link the other day, that I’ve only now gotten around to reading, and having read it, I see that I apparently did Senator Byrd an injustice in a recent comment (in a closed thread) about real filibusters, that I want to remedy. This typical, Party leadership pointed-finger-following post seems as good as any for the purpose, although I don’t expect even the long experience and considered advice of Senator Byrd to register in the least with those who have utter contempt for the democratic process in the self-governing legislative bodies of our Senate and House (real filibusters included, as practiced in UK and New Zealand parliamentary systems, among others), which were designed to operate independently of top-down Party control in our non-Parliament Congress.

In short, for all those who’ve long confidently claimed or implied, and/or still confidently claim or imply, that Mr. Smith Goes to Washington-style filibusters are no longer possible, or wise, or worth it in the United States Senate, they can now tell that to Senate President Pro Tem Robert Byrd, and explain to him what he fails to understand or appreciate about Senate rules and precedents and practice, now that he’s gone on record to advocate that the Senate revert to forcing real filibusters:

In a “Dear Colleague” letter dated Tuesday, Byrd, the longest-serving member of the Senate, said that the Senate’s rules on ending debate shouldn’t be changed, but he encouraged forcing senators to actually sustain debate in a real, live filibuster.

[...]

“However, I believe that efforts to change or reinterpret the rules in order to facilitate expeditious action by a simple majority, while popular, are grossly misguided.”

[...]

“Senators are obliged to exercise their best judgment when invoking their right to extended debate,” Byrd said. “They should also be obliged to actually filibuster — that is, go to the floor and talk, instead of finding less strenuous ways to accomplish the same end.” – Senate President pro Tempore Robert Byrd, 2/23/2010

Yes but cloture vote was only drop to 60 in the 70′s

I suspect you, as are already familiar with this plan to guarantee election of the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The plan is backed by FairVote. Personally I have little faith in FairVote, but I like their website, and I like the original thinking that whent into the National Popular Vote concept. The economic interests of the larger states are harnessed to increase the voting power of the voters in the larger states!

National Popular Vote for President

Jon I think motives, and not facts are what is causing disagreement between you and Radix

Radix would probably find pleasure in the following views of James Madison. While I, and I suspect you, as well as the majority of readers of FireLakeDog, would find them repugnant. Not that they would have been considered very repugnant at the time they were stated.

James Madison on Political Representation, and the Principle Legislative Task of Government

actually If James Madison wanted a filibuster or a super majority requirement for Senate bills he could have written it into the constitution.

Nope, my position is, careful what you wish for. If the filibuster rule is eliminated, it’s eliminated for both conservatives and progressives alike.

don’t know about the laughing part. but i agree about the rest.

i take it all back, knoxville. read powwow @63. my bad — i should have known better and checked for myself. thanks to powwow who has done the checking for us.

thank you very much powwow for the durbin quotes and for the straight story re who actually objected to the UC. i can’t believe this was characterized as a filibuster by bunning — but worse, i can’t believe i took the info at face value instead of doing as you did and checking the record. i hope that is a lesson i won’t soon forget.

as an aside, i hope the pay-go legislation isn’t as bad as it sounds.

…….

btw, i just got back from the library and scanner. i’ve got all the congressional record cites from riddick’s you had suggested and have scanned the main one. will attempt the ocr tonight.

Thank you for this info.

.. If the filibuster rule is eliminated, it’s eliminated for both conservatives and progressives alike.

That is fine with me. I am a democrat before being a Democrat. The Democrat politicians seem to like the label without the substance. Not to mention the label political party! My point was that James Madison was not a democrat, He was quite willing to keep the vast majority politically powerless. That included the vast majority of white males, but they gained the franchise around 1830.

My rule of thumb: Those without power tend to suffer. And I would not be surprised if some of that suffering extends into the U.S. upper middle class, relative to other more democratic nations. In my opinion, although the pile of democratic nations has been growing, when the ability of U.S. voters to influence their government is considered, the U.S. voter is close to the bottom of that pile!

If James Madison wanted a filibuster or a super majority requirement for Senate bills he could have written it into the constitution.

My point was that I am a democrat and Madison was not. Since his view of the future was that a great majority of the people would lack political power I guess he did not feel the need to restrict the political influence of the people any further. In reality, (IMO) he was just accepting the status quo, both in regards political power and the structure of a colonial Senate.

My point was that I favor representative democracy and some people do not. Without resolving that issue the argument appeared meaningless to me.