A vignette in America's racist history

Sadly, I don't know enough of the history of my own country. That's part of the reason I'm only now realizing the extent of racist beliefs among my own generation.

One historical issue I'll delve into are the anti-lynching laws. I've heard about them before, but I never thought very deeply about them. Of course, lynching is horrible. But it's a terrible reflection on the US that lynching was acceptable to many people. Therefore lynching opponents tried to stop lynching through force of law.

Here are three historical artifacts connected to anti-lynching law:

• The text of a 1919 anti-lynching bill supported by the NAACP. The law would have created a $10,000 penalty against any county where a lynching took place. The bill passed the House of Representative but died in the Senate due to a filibuster.
• Warren Harding (in 1921) was a supporter of this anti-lynching bill. Harding was a progressive Republican elected in part due to his support for voting rights for women. Americans were less enthusiastic about his support for black civil rights. 
• Even in 1938, the anti-lynching bill was blocked in the Senate by a filibuster.

So when did Congress finally pass anti-lynching legislation? 

It never did.

Image: cb14.raimistdesign.com

Extra. Go here to read about the lynching depicting in this image. It's the Jones lynching in Kentucky.

Who was obstructing whom in the Senate?

The Democrats have been saying since 2010 that the Republicans have been obstructing legislation with endless filibusters. The GOP has been charging the Dems won't talk with the GOP, won't let them offer amendments, and won't allow votes that the GOP would like to take.

Not a surprise, but both charges are true. However, a commenter (somewhere on the internet--it's not important where) suggested that it started with Harry Reid stopping amendments and other votes. If this is true, then Reid is responsible for a lot of dysfunction, in fact a cascade of dysfunction. So I decided to check this out.

It was quite hard to do. The accusation hasn't been generally raised and examined, so I didn't find a convenient summary of the issue. Instead, I found lots of tit-for-tat fighting. So here it is.

Yes, Harry Reid filled up the amendment lists on most or all bills. This pissed off the Republicans, who wanted to offer amendments that put Democratic senators on the spot. The GOP didn't get to do this, but they still managed to defeat lots of these senators in the midterm elections just last week. So, if we identify the goals, they are something like this:

• GOP goal: Make Dem senators take embarrassing votes.
• Dem goal: Protect Dem senators from embarrassing votes.

So, did the Republicans get angry at being stymied, and then start filibustering all nominations? I found one brief mention of the possibility in a Norm Ornstein piece. Mostly, the GOP wanted to make it hard for the Obama administration to appoint officials to carry out their policies. They particularly targeted the Consumer Finance Something Something and the National Labor Relations Board. And also the EPA. The GOP also wanted to restrict the number of judges appointed by Obama to appeals and circuit courts. [Disclosure: I'm not sure what the difference is between appeals and circuit courts, but that information isn't really relevant here.] Almost everything I read talked about the GOP's motivation not being revenge for blockage of amendments, but being attempts to slow or block.

The Dem senators threatened many time to end the filibuster on appointments (except Supreme Court nominees). The GOP backed down several times, then returned to the practice, and finally the Dems went nuclear and ended the rule that allowed the GOP to filibuster. In most of this, there wasn't public discussion/negotiation of what Harry Reid was doing with amendments. The usual GOP stance was that they had every right to exercise oversight of appointments, and they were making sure that inappropriate people weren't being appointed. This excuse was generally bullshit, and was understood this way at the time. To summarize:

• GOP goals: Block the administration personnel and appointed judges. Revenge on Reid for when he blocked Bush nominees.
• Dem goal: End the blockage, end the filibuster if necessary.

So I didn't find that Harry Reid's tactics were the ultimate cause of the appointment blockade. I did find lots of bad behavior spanning decades as each side tried to maximize its advantage, and also tried to avenge the history of insults. It's an ugly feud that only gotten uglier.

ENOUGH ALREADY!

Image: selfdeprecate.com

Tons of Extras. I checked a lot of conservative sources to read their rationale for the blockade of appointments. That explains the imbalance below.

Right:

• The Dems have brought the law of the jungle to the Senate. When the GOP gets control, they should use it to the max.
• Mark Levin against the blockade of judicial nominees, circa 2003: "Nowhere in the Constitution, in the Federalist Papers or in any contemporary writings during the Constitutional Convention or the ratifying conventions can the Senate Democrats find support for their use of the filibuster to block judicial appointments."
• Weekly Standard against it too.
• Yeah, it's revenge for Dems blocking Bush's judicial nominees.
• The next set of obstruction tactics after the nuclear option was exercised.
• Recent: Keep the nuclear option on judicial appointments. It's more in keeping with tradition anyway.

Left:

• The GOP gives blatantly bogus reasons for their actions.
• One of the failed deals.
• The same old argument that nominees aren't qualified.

Neutral?

• Reactions to the Dems going nuclear. Republican apoplexy: You're going to regret this.
• Well-paced history of senators behaving badly for decades, tracing escalation through Frist and Reid. Discussion of the amazing number of maneuvers that can be abused. Blocking amendments--they both did it. Breaking agreements, ditto. I especially enjoyed pages 12-19.
• How that amendment-blocking maneuver works.
• Post-nuclear, but still blocked.

Is this the worst Congressional leadership ever?

Criticizing the leadership of the other party is so common that it's almost a reflex. I don't want to bash Congressional leaders just because I hate their party, which is what so many do. However, I'm seriously wondering whether we have some of the worst leadership ever.

Clearly from my previous posts I'm not a fan of Nancy Pelosi. She ran the House very strictly, and the moderate Democratic strain withered, though it's possible it would have withered anyway. Pelosi's biggest mistake was to pass measures that were too liberal while pretending that they were compromises. Pelosi may make noises like she knows how to compromise, but the actions don't follow. By not moderating her chamber more, lots of her party lost their seats in 2010, but she took no responsibility for it.

I thought Reid was somewhat cannier, and he is. However, I think perhaps he's chosen a path that is also ultimately bad for his compatriots in the Senate. He's always been tricksy with the Senate rules. He seemed the major force behind the Senate blockade of Bush appointments in 2007-8, though he backed off from it. However, the atmosphere never changed, and p. Petty partisan advantage has been the operational environment for the entire Reid tenure. A few times it's abated somewhat, but it always roars back, either with Reid ramping it up himself or in response to GOP provocation. It's been destructive to nearly everyone in the Senate, but Reid hasn't rethought the tactics. He still keeps an iron hand on the bills being debated and the amendments being offered. His purpose is probably to protect his senators from embarrassing votes. He may have won that battle, but he and the vulnerable senators have lost nonetheless.

To me this is a lesson that leaders have to rise above the partisanship at least a little. If they always reach for the partisan advantage, they end up looking grubby and petty and that infects their conference.

The GOP in the Senate don't look any better. Under Mitch McConnell, they ramped up their tactics as the minority. They also appear to relish the chance to inflict even more pain if they gain the majority. They will almost definitely hold those embarrassing votes that have been blocked. Many partisans are hoping to end the filibuster so that the Senate can pass a conservative agenda and force Obama to veto it. I'm far from certain this will happen, but I'd put the likelihood at 60%. That will change the Senate from the deliberative chamber where good deals can arise to a highly partisan operation like the House. It would be a huge loss of the country, but too many partisans are pushing for it without a thought about the long-term damage.

I wonder whether Boehner is the least bad of the lot. Occasionally he makes his conference take those hard votes. He resisted the Tea Party strategy in 2013, eventually giving in and allowing them to shut down the government, just to show them that their strategy was doomed. He seems to be the only top Congressional leader who isn't making his conference more intolerant. Oy, if he's the best of the lot!

Collect the whole set (1 of 4)

Image: conservativedailynews.com

Extra. I started this post two months ago, but was inspired to finish by this news story of a Democratic senator wishing Harry Reid was gone.

Update 10/14/14. Here's a post about how awful Mitch McConnell is, and not because he's a RINO.

Update 10/29/14. Here's another way that Reid has hurt his caucus. By allowing so few votes, senators from more conservative areas haven't been able to separate themselves from Obama and the Democratic norm. They're likely to lose their seats because of it.

Smallest nuclear blast ever

Finally the Democratic Senate got fed up with the GOP blocking just about every damn nominee. They voted to end the Senate rule that allows filibustering of judicial nominees, with an exception that still allows the filibuster of Supreme Court nominees.

Earlier this year, the GOP backed down in the face of the Dems going nuclear. Why not this time? Here's the best answer I've seen:

"It could make the difference for a Republican, in that they no longer have to tag team to break cloture on nominees they want to let through, so there won't be as many ads to run about how 'so and so says they're a conservative, but they voted with Obama 327 times!'" -- Plain blog commenter

This identifies the real reason for the change in the GOP position. It was getting harder for the GOP to stop their own filibusters even when they reached unthinking, foot-stomping stubbornness. So now they've allowed the Dems to render that problem moot. (Update. Bernstein make the same argument here, but it comes from a professional and highly educated political observer.)

No other writer came up with this analysis. The MSM was treating it as no big deal. At the Daily Kos, it was mostly cheers for the defeat of those obstructionist Republicans. HotAir was loud, negative, and scattered. Some pointed out the hypocrisy of the Dems, a few looked forward to using the same power when the GOP reclaims the Senate, a few quoted Limbaugh's laughable analysis that the rules would last only for the Dems' advantage, and then revert. George Will laments the end of a "deliberative" Senate and the beginning of a coarse, 'majority dictates' Senate that is not bound by rules, but by expediency. 

RedState had a different take--it wants the end of all cooperation in the Senate in retaliation. The Senate won't pass anything inconvenient like an immigration bill, a farm bill, a continuing resolution--zip. Except that no true conservative trusts the squishy Senate RINOs, certainly not at RedState or HotAir

Thank God for that clear-eyed commenter who understood why the change happened now. In the long run, perhaps George Will will be proven right--we might deeply regret this change. But I don't know a way around it because the Senate has already slid so far down the slope. 

Image: tripadvisor.com.au

Short: The Chuck Hagel Theater Company

So the Senate didn't get to vote on the Chuck Hagel nomination for Defense secretary because of a filibuster by Republicans. But there's going to be a second vote later in February, and some additional GOP senators have indicated that they would no longer support a filibuster then. More boring Washington political theater--yawn.

If only I could filibuster the senators to prevent them from turning these nomination votes into stupid partisan exercises. To be clear, I think nominations hearings are a good idea and should be a time for searching questions. But the votes should be "yes" unless the nominee is unfit in some way.

Many conservatives seem to know how this will play out, and realize it's not worth the fight. Some, like Erick Erickson of RedState, are still hoping to defeat the nomination. Others foolishly believe that they have won some sort of victory in the recent vote--they are in for a nasty surprise called reality. But I bet these fools have been tumbled by reality before.

 Still waiting for the evidence...

Image: theatlantic.com