this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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Congress can't do anything because of the filibuster, two party system, and republicans though. The whole thing honestly needs an overhaul.
The Senate not being population-based is part of the problem too. As are gerrymandering and not having universal adult suffrage or federal holidays for voting days. But a Constitutional Convention would be state-based, too, so we’d end up with something even worse than we have now.
Agreed. It's just a disaster all around honestly. It can change, but it's not easy.
Don’t forget to include gerrymandering
A filibuster raises the vote threshold, so it's not something you can just wait out. And thank to how the filibusterer works nowadays, congressmen don't actually need to get up there and talk, they can merely threaten to filibuster to raise the vote threshold.
https://www.npr.org/2022/01/17/1072714887/filibuster-explained
That's how it used to work, not anymore:
https://www.npr.org/2022/01/17/1072714887/filibuster-explained
And that essentially isn't an option at times due to how difficult it is to reach the 60 vote threshold, which means nothing gets done, which means congress is basically useless.
You can't wait out an indefinite filibuster. And it gets to become indefinite because they don't actually need to talk at all.
They actually get the opposite, support from their party. Because if you're the minority party and you're able to kill legislation that the majority party wants, it's seen as a victory.