We’re suffering from an incoherent institutional set-up in the senate. You can have a system in which a defeated minority still gets a share of governing authority and participates constructively in the victorious majority’s governing agenda, shaping policy around the margins in ways more to their liking. Or you can have a system in which a defeated minority rejects the majority’s governing agenda out of hand, seeks opening for attack, and hopes that failure on the part of the majority will bring them to power. But right now we have both simultaneously. It’s a system in which the minority benefits if the government fails, and the minority has the power to ensure failure. It’s insane, and it needs to be changed.
As many are pointing out, Democrats didn't feel this way when they were the minority and making as many waves as they could and still, George Bush was able to govern.
Hot Air addresses that point:
Funny, but I don’t recall Yglesias demanding those changes while Democrats were in the minority in the Senate. Tom Daschle was no less obstructionist, and Democrats managed to kneecap George Bush on judicial appointments without writing cris des coeurs over ungovernable America. In fact, Democrats openly bragged about using the Senate’s ancient methods of corralling the majority, even on the novel issue of judicial appointments where such procedures had rarely been used. And yet George Bush and the Republicans still managed to govern, and that was just a couple of years ago.
A little farther down, Hot Air makes another valid point:
What I find so laughable about this complaint is that Democrats have something Republicans never had — 60 votes in the Senate (and for that matter, a 75-seat majority in the House). Mitch McConnell, the primary target of Yglesias’ ire and his Exhibit A of ungovernability, simply can’t stop anything the Democrats want to pass, if they unite as a caucus. The problem for Yglesias, Obama, and Harry Reid is that their agenda is so far Left that even some Democrats object to it.
The fact is, Democrats took over the House, Senate and the White House with the help of Independents, who now regret giving all three to the Democrats once they started seeing how far left the agenda has been, the massive spending, the bailouts, the move toward socialism.
They believed at the time of the election, that Obama would tread toward the middle in many areas and discovered they were wrong.
They stood up and made their voices heard in the Obamacare aka healthcare debate and Democrats, conservative Democrats and moderate Democrats alike, have been the number one stumbling block for far left liberal Democrats.
If the Democratic politicians were united, the Republicans, which Yglesias blames for the far left agenda not being jammed through, wouldn't be able to stop Pelosi, Reid and Obama.
They cannot unite though because the brilliant plan to elect conservative Democrats in conservative states, is now backfiring and they are finding that moderates and conservative Democrats will not go against their constituents and commit political suicide, just to pass a far left agenda against the will of their voters.
As for Yglesias' whining fest, Glenn Reynolds predicted months ago, this very rant to come from the left.
A PATTERN OF INCOMPETENCE? “Who could have warned us that a man who served seven years in the state legislature and three years in the Senate would not have been prepared for the toughest executive position in the Free World? We did. Repeatedly. So did John McCain, and for that matter, so did Hillary Clinton.” Expect this to play out in thumbsucker columns on whether America is “ungovernable.”
In a piece from today, Instapundit points to a comment from readers which states "There have been no major institutional changes in the United States government in recent history that have caused it to ‘become ungovernable.’ There just isn’t enough political support to enact various news laws and policies that you favor. Tough. If you hadn’t become seduced by the delusion that Obama is a ‘progressive’ and that last year’s election represented some kind of historic realignment in favor of ‘progressive’ policies you might have seen this coming."
The believed that putting someone in the Senate or the House that had a (D) by their name would automatically make that politician vote with the party, whether they agreed with the party or not and whether that politician's constituents wanted those changes or not.
They were wrong and now they are whining like little children over it.
Deal.
Once the 2010 elections are over the Democrats are going hold much smaller majorities in both the House and the Senate and all those promises of working together in a bipartisan fashion are going to have to be kept or nothing will get accomplished at all..... and that will be Obama's legacy.
Big Tent Democrat over at Talk left has this to say about Yglesias' whine fest:
You see? The Village (or the Obamabot part of it anyway) has decided it is NOT Obama's fault! He is impotent! I suppose this is all a set up for a Truman-like "Do Nothing Republican Congress" campaign in 2012 by Obama. Of course that will require the Democrats lose the Congress in 2010. Hey, wait a minute . . .
This has been your ridiculous item for the day.
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