Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Oh its just so tewwible, tewwible, or so sez a major drumhead liberal bigfoot:

"There's a real asymmetry between liberal and conservative goals. Liberals want active change. This means they can't just obstruct. They have to figure out a way to build a supermajority coalition for complicated legislation, and that means compromise. And everyone knows this. So compromise is baked into the cake. But conservatives, to a much larger extent, are often OK with simply preventing things from changing, either as their first best or second best position. For that, all you have to do is maintain a very simple position among a minority caucus. No real coalition building or compromise is necessary."

Note this "supermajority coalition". This point is about a system of legislation hamstrung by a senate hamstringing itself by its own rules.

"Political coalitions are simply too public to sustain an artificial bargaining posture. The problem with the Democratic caucus isn't that they negotiate badly, it's that the Democratic caucus is genuinely fractured. And again, everyone knows it. You can't pretend you're willing to go to the mat against high-end tax cuts when there are half a dozen Democratic senators who support high-end tax cuts and Republicans know there are half a dozen Democratic senators who support high-end tax cuts. To fix this, you need more liberal Democrats, not tougher leadership."

Again, it's just a matter of getting more goddam liberals, till we have, say, 66 liberals to insure a steady 60 vote supermajority.

But then he gets into "a genuine and growing fracture point within the liberal coalition", with quotes from some fellow lib-lipper of an analytic blowhole:

"Civic republicans vs. non-republican liberals. Civic republicanism (small “r,” of course) is an awkward label for a common position: that the fundamental issue of our time is the ability of the rich, and corporations, to game the political system and prevent the rest of us from exerting true self-governance...In contrast, a non-republican liberal position is that giving material sustenance to the poor is more important than whether the rich get paid off, however regrettable and undeserved that is."

My my, this civic clique looks nasty, eh? Go to the wall. The worse the better. That's the only way to take out the corporates -- beat 'em at their own hard-nosed game.

Translation: the new Dembo stoics will allow the safety net to shrivel rather than give ground to gaming corporates. And the upshot? I guess it gets so bad we... elect 66 liberals to the senate!

Degree of difficulty here? For sure, in normal waters, it's beyond yokel capacity to perform.

I love it. Set standards for the rubber-stamp electorate that they can't reach. How merit-class, eh?