{"id":29051,"date":"2012-08-06T15:54:29","date_gmt":"2012-08-06T21:54:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/06\/the-myth-of-the-democratic-majority.html"},"modified":"2012-08-14T09:30:05","modified_gmt":"2012-08-14T15:30:05","slug":"the-myth-of-the-democratic-majority","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/06\/the-myth-of-the-democratic-majority.html","title":{"rendered":"The Myth of the Democratic Majority"},"content":{"rendered":"

I've heard criticism of Obama from a number of directions, but usually the Left, over how he squandered his Democratic majority in the Senate during the first two years of his term, or else showed himself to be no friend to the Progressives because he didn't pass a Single Payer Health Care, and New New Deal, a Repeal of DOMA, and every other Liberal dream for the last 50 years.<\/p>\n

But whether or not Obama could have actively tried to do more (I tend to agree, to some degree), the idea that he had a solid Democratic majority in the Senate for two years is a myth, as the chart in the article below, plus the GOP's declaration that they'd block anything that couldn't get a cloture vote, meant that the Dems needed 59-60 votes for pretty much everything … and, with the Blue Dogs and others, those votes simply were not there except for highly compromised legislation (e.g., the ACA) — and, sometimes, not even then.<\/p>\n

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Embedded Link<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t**UPDATED: Barack Obama and the myth of the progressive \u2018majorities\u2019 : The Reid Report<\/a>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTo progressives who complain about Barack Obama \u201csquandering\u201d the progressive majorities he supposedly had going for him when he was elected president, I refer you to the following chart (from Wikiped…\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Google+:<\/strong> View post on Google+<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I've heard criticism of Obama from a number of directions, but usually the Left, over how he squandered his Democratic majority in the Senate during the first two years of his term, or else showed himself to be no friend to the Progressives because he didn't pass a Single Payer Health Care, and New New … Continue reading “The Myth of the Democratic Majority”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-plusposts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":133932,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/21\/the-senate-parliamentarian-says-the-senate-gop-health-bill-needs-60-votes-not-50.html","url_meta":{"origin":29051,"position":0},"title":"The Senate Parliamentarian says the Senate GOP health bill needs 60 votes, not 50","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 21-Jul-17 6:12pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The Senate has an elaborate interlocking set of rules that dictate how and in what ways it conducts business and passes bills. For most legislation, for example, the Senate must vote to close debate on the bill. These cloture votes require a super-majority of the Senate -- 60 votes [1].\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":25841,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/31\/filibustering-what-filibustering.html","url_meta":{"origin":29051,"position":1},"title":"Filibustering? What filibustering?","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 31-Jan-12 8:29am","format":false,"excerpt":"McConnell's assertion that Obama \"got everything he wanted from a completely compliant Congress for two of those three years\" would be hysterically laughable were it not such a vicious bald-faced lie. The GOP Senate minority obstruction of any number of Democratic initiatives, through threatened filibusters over cloture votes -- not\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":30108,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/09\/06\/the-not-so-supermajority-of-09-10.html","url_meta":{"origin":29051,"position":2},"title":"The not-so-supermajority of '09-'10","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 6-Sep-12 6:18pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I've linked to similar analyses before, but apparently it's still a standard GOP Pundit \/ Politician talking point, that Obama had a wildly Democratic Congress for the first two years of his term, so anything that went wrong or didn't get passed, etc., was all Obama and the Dems' fault.As\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":28814,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/07\/politics-from-2012-08-06.html","url_meta":{"origin":29051,"position":3},"title":"Politics from 2012-08-06","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 7-Aug-12 6:09am","format":false,"excerpt":"Only just over 90 days to go until the election. Can't happen soon enough. Get out the vote? Or get rid of the vote?\u00a0- The remarkably bald-faced Romney campaign lie about servicepeople, the vote, and Ohio. Mitt, taxes, and hypocrisy\u00a0- For a guy adamant that he's not releasing any earlier\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Church & State"","block_context":{"text":"Church & State","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/church-state"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/politics-elephant-donkey-boxing-281x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3559,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/10\/28\/friction.html","url_meta":{"origin":29051,"position":4},"title":"Friction","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 28-Oct-02 6:21am","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm not a big Tom Strickland fan. He gets a bit gushily liberal and hot-button-issues for me. I don't think he's the Antichrist, as some of the Wayne Allard ads...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12749,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/10\/06\/the_l_word.html","url_meta":{"origin":29051,"position":5},"title":"The L-word","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 6-Oct-08 1:59pm","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0So part and parcel of the McCain\/Palin last-30-days offensive (cough) is trotting out the old canard about the Democratic candidate being \"liberal\" or \"too liberal.\" The current ammo being...","rel":"","context":"In "Elections 2008"","block_context":{"text":"Elections 2008","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/elections-2008"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/images\/elementary-school-sign-generator.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29051\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}