So now some people around here want to toss the filibuster, and others of us are outraged that Sen. Lieberman doesn't give a rusty rat fuck about what the voters think, and other such stuff. Get a grip, people: This is the way the Framers meant it to work.
Just think about it for a minute. Senators serve six-year terms. Six years--that's a longer term than the fucking President. They serve without term limits--how long has Byrd been around? Since the Eisenhower administration? So Senators don't HAVE to give a rutsy rat fuck about the voters. They won't face the voters, a lot of them, until 2014. Lieberman is one such Senator. If you think he plotted that all on his own, think again.
That's not even the worst. Only a third of the entire United States Senate is up for a vote in any one election. Just think about that for a minute: If every public public opinion poll in the country asked the question "Do you think your Senator is an impossible, predatory jerk who should be voted out of office immediately" and 98% of Americans answered "Agree strongly" and the election were held the day after the poll was taken, the Senate would automatically retain two thirds of its membership.
Still think the U.S. Senate gives a rat's ass what you think? Just consider: They all have equal votes. Those two asshole Senators from Montana (Pop. 23) and those two asshole Senators from California (Pop. 289 trillion) have equal say. The Montana guy doesn't give a shit about the 23 trillion people in CA. He doesn't have to. Also he doesn't have to give a shit about the people at home, because his next campaign isn't until 2014, either.
If you think this gives the United States Senate the upper hand and final say in just about everything, Presidents, House of Representatives, and the People be damned, you're right. The U.S. Senate kept Civil Rights laws off the books for a hundred years. They kept tobacco legislation off the books for fifty years. They kept us out of the League of Nations. They stopped the New Deal dead in its tracks, at least after FDR pulled his crap with packing the Supreme Court--after that he never got a single piece of legislation through Congress.
That's just the biggest, broadest picture. Many of the rules of the Senate were designed during Reconstruction to favor the South--Southerners realizing, quite shrewdly, that it would be a century or more before any of them could be President. They didn't invent the filibuster, but they perfected it. There are many other rules, all designed to drag things out and slow things down, and not of these rules is out of harmony with the vision of the Framers: The House is the boiling cauldron of the people's immediate desires; the Senate is the place where things go into the fridge to cool off, sometimes for generations.
I hope--I really hope and pray--that we can have things our way in the United States Senate. I really do. I passionately support the public option.
But if it fails, if it's compromised out, if one of a hundred things happens to it in the U.S. Senate, it's just silly to say "Well, we need to amend the Constitution, toss the filibuster," etc.
Because one day, an enormously intelligent, charismatic right-wing cowboy--say, a Ronald Reagan with a high IQ--is going to take over the White House, and one day the Senate and House may no longer be ours, and public opinion may be (as anyone who was alive in the mid-1980's might recall) rather decidedly against us.
In those days to come, we will listen as the public cries out at the Senate--the two thirds of the Senate they didn't toss out--and yells, "Don't you care about public opinion? Look at the polls. A new age is at hand! Pass the Prayer and Life Total Tax Cut and Homeland Security Jesus and Universal Gun Act NOW."
And we will be intensely gratified to hear the sleepy sounds of Senators not giving a rusty rat fuck.