Making the Rs vote against Medicaid for all, and having Trump ultimately veto it would look very bad for them.

Chuck Summer and Hakeem Jefferies don't want Medicare For All.

Son was on Medicaid for a while, due to being a preeme. An absolute dream of a health care program. You just get seen. Someone else deals with the paperwork.

“Once it’s too late, our only recourse is the thing we could have done all along to stop it from getting to this point.”

And everyone already knew all the sordid details. And the "party of faith and values" still voted for him.

Lol.

Yeah, it's wild how unwilling people are to go die for a cause, huh?

The key part to impeachment is the vote to convict. That's where his prior impeachments failed. In my fantasy where they had 2/3 of both houses they could do it, sure, but my comment was kinda joking - I'm not sure there are enough seats up for election in this cycle for them to get to that point even if they won everything.

Can't veto an impeachment Donny boy.

Yeah, I guess the tech CEOs are used to everybody hating them. They didn't think they had anything to lose.

What did McConnell say? His goal was to make Obama a lame duck president. Here we go.

i think its more to put a break on ww3 or being an imprisoned state at this point. i mean you can call it stuck from 'making progress'. some of us are calling it pulling the emergency break before you hit the event horizon after going careening into a black hole.

maybe wait a term before you can expect it to start going in reverse after it has slowed momentum going into self destruction.

i mean whilst were using physics terms and all that. context and trajectory are also factors you cannot ignore if you're gonna use such metaphors here.

Doesn't stop the majority of people speaking bloody murder when the dog does bite back. "OMG what could cause the dog to act like this?!"

Don't be so sure. I wouldn't be surprised if the supreme court said he could.

So, they will override his veto

Flipping both won't override a veto. They need 2/3.

So, that's not going to work out.

Recall that Democrats couldn't muster a majority to pass higher minimum wage with house and senate.

(I mean, they could have, of course, they just don't)

Then they should be on the record for it as well.

I’ll settle for nothing happening the next couple years. I had thought it was bad before with how dysfunctional Congress has been, then it got on its knees for this wannabe king to walk all over it and things are so much worse than I ever thought possible.

Nothing happening would be a huge step forward

They’re talking about Chuck Schumer. You can read plenty of articles about his anti-American politics. There’s literally a quote from him saying “My job is to make the American public love Israel” or something similar. He is constantly putting down Democrats that are winning elections with popular policies because he hates progress. He’s also the one that caved on the government shutdown and forced through funding for ICE thugs to indescriminately murder people.

Is Chuck Schumer the parliamentarian?

Edit: Just to be clear. I know Chuck Schumer is a ghoul and is very close to the same as a GOP member, but I'm not sure what relationship you're drawing between the parliamentarian and him?

He’s the minority leader currently because the Dems don’t control the senate. After the election if the Dems take control, he would be.

He "might" be the Majority leader. Are you saying he'll prevent any real progress by being the Majority leader?

The man rules by EOs though.

Anything done by EO can be just as easily undone by EO. That's preferrable to Congress passing horrible legislation on the slimmest of 50 vote majorities

True. But there are a lot of EOs to be undone.

For Trump I'd say "lame dick" president.

Don't threaten me with a good time. That'll just make Republicans look even worse.

Yes. He has explicitly stated that in interviews.

470+ by trump, 72 from his first term were revoked.

They are not. The majority leader is not the parliamentarian.

This has brought me no closer to understanding the parliamentarian, but I appreciate your replies.

In the Senate there are a bunch of rules around what can be passed without being subject to a filibuster (effectively what can be passed with >50 votes rather than >60). The parliamentarian is basically a referee who decides which bills (and parts of bills) these rules apply to, and is appointed (not a senator).

A common case is that the budget cannot be filibustered, so senators try to put stuff into the budget bill to get it through, and then the parliamentarian says "no, that's not a budget item".

None of these rules are legally binding, so some get upset when Democrats abide by them.

For additional context the current parliamentarian is Elizabeth MacDonough , appointed by Harry Reid (D) in 2012.

But that's specifically referencing the Byrd rule right? Does it ever apply to more than the budget?

Do you mean the bill they introduced this year? How do you suppose they could get a majority on that?

The parliamentarian does handle a lot more than just budget reconciliation (e.g. who gets to speak when), but I'm not aware of any recent controversy besides that.

I think "the parliamentarian" is sometimes used as a synecdoche (or in ignorance) for Democrats' unwillingness to break senate procedure -- or the law -- in general.

Yeah, it's actually an amazing incentive to pass progressive bills that tackle affordability and inequality. Since the laws will go no where, Moderates can vote yes because they don't have to be concerned about their leash holders. MAGA will be clearly all about culture war and oligarch power rather than their facade of caring for "real Americans".

This is assuming the Dems can get their shit together and focus on economic and corruption issues.

Congress is broken in its current state, so nothing gets passed anymore except budget and appropriations. So what a Party will do is include things that they want in the budget bill that has to be passed every year or the government shuts down. They'll hem and haw and fight anything they don't like being added to the budget but that's just the only way to do anything without either having a 2/3 majority or going with the "Nuclear option" of eliminating the filibuster.

So budgets are kind of like the loophole that both parties use to get anything they want passed. What the Parliamentarian can do (and has in the past but just the Dems really, because the Republican parliamentarian will rubber stamp anything the party wants) is decide that something is out of scope of the budget and therefore cannot be included. The only things they are supposed to include are things relating to the budget itself. If the party does not like the parliamentarians decision they can just replace them and get someone who does, but the Dems don't really play hardball like that.

Obama was a community organizer, a Constitutional scholar, and holds a law degree from Harvard. It was his belief in the American system that gained him worldwide admiration and respect. We can't be protesting corruption while also criticizing the incorruptible.

Got it, it's the surrogate for Corpo Dem inaction. Thanks for all the information, genuinely appreciate it.

Something Something its against the law but since he did it in his official capacity as president its allowed.

Yeah I was going to get worked up at this until I read your comment.

As much as it sucks to have a Pause on anything happening in the federal government for two years, it's better than Everything Happening And It's All Bad.

If sanity returns and Trump doesn't get to have a third term, all the Republicans will just line up to say they were secretly working against Trump this whole time, which will make (most of) them look good to their base.

Me too especially given that he can launch nukes and kill every mammal on the planet

One would assume they're talking about the bill the Democrats introduced and then failed to pass when they controlled both houses of congress under democratic president Joe Biden.

If you want to read the article but are blocked by Cloudflare, there is an copy on Wayback machine.

Other words for those who are searching: bypass paywall, archive copy.

All three of these monikers can be used to describe Alan Dershowitz.

Then it's up to us to show up with receipts

Exactly. This is expected and just makes them look worse for 2 years while he rots and has his power checked

Then we can hopefully win a super majority in 2028 and actually have progressives and claw back dignity

Its going to take decades to fix what he has broken and respect around the world. Hopefully we can bust up the mega corps and restore some independence to news and laws around news as well so we never end up in this propaganda hellscape again.

Well, since they didn't control the Senate and only had marginal control over the House, that would be a weird assumption to be honest.

It's just theatre.

Not everyone listens to the parliamentarian all the time. It's basically just a person who says, "this is/not allowed."

Not just Democrat.