(05-01-2021, 05:01 PM)jagibelieve Wrote:

(05-01-2021, 10:58 AM)mikesez Wrote: When the Senate is controlled by Democrats, everything is decided by the 50th or 51st most liberal member.
When the Senate is controlled by republicans, everything is decided by the 50th or 51st most conservative member.
Nothing is ever decided by the ideological bomb throwers on the left or the right.
For a little while in 2017, John McCain was the most powerful senator.
Now Joe Manchin is.
Everything goes to the center.
The Senate is one of the few things that we have that still works as the founders designed it. If we could get rid of the filibuster it would work even better.

Actually, senators should not be selected by a popular vote.  Senators should be selected by State Legislature.  Senators are supposed to represent the state, not the people.

Yes, that's true, the founders originally empowered the state legislatures to select senators.
They also empowered the state legislatures to change the Constitution, and the state legislatures decided to give away that power of selecting senators, because everyone agreed that that aspect was not working well.

You think you're a conservative but you're not. You're a reactionary. A conservative lives with the decisions of the past. A conservative trusts the folks that made those decisions, and trusts that they would have made the same choices had they been in power at the time. A reactionary is always trying to revisit and relitigate the past.

---

(05-01-2021, 05:01 PM)jagibelieve Wrote:

(05-01-2021, 10:58 AM)mikesez Wrote: When the Senate is controlled by Democrats, everything is decided by the 50th or 51st most liberal member.
When the Senate is controlled by republicans, everything is decided by the 50th or 51st most conservative member.
Nothing is ever decided by the ideological bomb throwers on the left or the right.
For a little while in 2017, John McCain was the most powerful senator.
Now Joe Manchin is.
Everything goes to the center.
The Senate is one of the few things that we have that still works as the founders designed it. If we could get rid of the filibuster it would work even better.

The filibuster is a great tool to stop a misguided party such as yours (democrat) from pushing through legislation that is clearly not wanted by the majority of ... states.

A majority of 100 is 51.
The filibuster requires 60.
If there is something that the citizens of 29 out of 50 states want, that is a majority of states, but it may not be enough to get 60 senators and break a filibuster.
Pro tip, binary boy, check your math next time you make a numerical claim. Spock frowns on your shenanigans.

And before you assume I'm saying this just because I'm supposedly a liberal, I've thought the filibuster should end since Bush was president

---