No Victory Except Total Victory

Hi there! 

Sorry, gonna yack so more about politics again. Bear with me. I assure you posts about comic books and Doctor Who are forthcoming. 

No, I’m actually going to not talk about Trump, that no good moronic, petulant, man-child idiot fuckmeister. Really, I am trying to contain my anger about Li’l Donnie.  

No, I wanted to drop a few words about how government is working or more to the point, how it isn’t working.  

The political structure of the United states is spilt between two major parties, Republicans and Democrats. After the election of Doug Jones to the senate on Tuesday, the Republicans and Democrats split the Senate  51 to 49.  There are processes in the Senate where a simple majority will get things through. So if all the Republicans band together, they can do whatever they want. 

However….

Not everything can get through on a simple majority. Certain procedures require a minimum vote threshold; for example 60 votes.  Such procedures were designed to protect the interest of Americans represented by those Senators whose party may not be in power. 

Also, all Republicans are not necessarily on board with what the Republican Party might want. 

Take for example the most recent effort to repeal and replace Obamacare when the Republicans and Democrats split the Senate  52 to 48. There was no effort to even try to convince any democrats why they should vote for a repeal of Obamacare. So the Republican leadership pushed through the repeal effort as something called a “budget reconciliation measure” which does not require a higher vote threshold, just a simple majority. But three Republicans had issues with the repeal effort and voted against it. The measure failed with a vote of 49 to 51. 

The Republicans got nothing done. 

Now you might look at the Senate in total and see 100 people. You might think, of those 51 out of 100, how can flip at least two over to the other side.  

But that’s not how Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell or most of the Republicans look at it. The number that’s important to them was not 100 but 52. How can one flip 2 of those 3 Republican no votes to yes. 

This because the  Republicans Party and it’s base of supporters has taken a scorched Earth vie of the political process. There is not getting some of what I want or even most of what I want.  The goal is to get ALL of what I want. Anything less than total and complete capitulation to the Republican platform is defeat.  

So if you live in state with a Democratic Senator, your interests are fucked. 

Which this is not the way it’s supposed to work. Our founding fathers, extremely wary of totalitarianism after overthrowing the rule of England’s king, devised a system of government with checks and balances, to make sure that whoever was in power still needed to work with those who were not.  

Our government has moved away from that concept. Why settle for some or even ,most when you can have it all? 

There is no victory except total victory.

Which means, more often than not, nobody wins.