Biden / Harris Focused Discussion

[DarkTZeratul]

It helped give them “power” but they were still forced to settle for 3/5 instead of slave owners getting voting rights for every slave. If you check the history they did actually push for full representation of slaves instead of 3/5. The biggest pushback from some slave states was they’d ALSO have to pay taxes for the full load. So they settled at 3/5.

Getting the 3/5 compromise instead of full representation for slaves still wasn't the cause of the Senate, though. That was itself a separate compromise between those who wanted Congress to be direct representatives of the people, and those who wanted Congress to be representatives of the states. And while it is impossible to entirely disentangle the issue of slavery from the various decisions made during the Constitutional Convention, this was one that primarily was not about slavery and did not break along free/slave state lines; Connecticut (which had already abolished slavery) and New Jersey (where slavery was on its way out) voted in favor of the Senate, while heavy slave states Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia voted against it. The main issues here were about state sovereignty (because remember, back then people saw themselves as citizens of their states first and of their nation second), and out of a concern that states with fewer people and thus fewer representatives would be at the mercy of bigger states with more representatives, thus the Senate was intended to give all states equal representation in their new government.

[DarkTZeratul]

If you think slavery had nothing to do with the Senate structure you need to revisit your history.

Seriously? That's what you took from my post? Try actually reading what I wrote, instead of what you apparently imagine I wrote, and then kindly explain how the Senate was created "because the slaveowners got gimped by the 3/5 compromise" when the biggest slave states voted against having a Senate at all.

[tehdang]

Are you high? by that logic progressives hate Bernie Sanders you know the other guy from that tiny state.

Sorry, I thought progs had something fundamentally inviolate about small states not being able to wield more power than their population. Are you telling me Vermont's excluded? Mighty fine thing, that.

[DarkTZeratul]

No, I said it’s part of the reason it exists. They would have preferred no House, but they compromised there to get the Senate where they could wield more power than they should.

You have a hilariously warped understanding of how the Constitutional Convention went down. You've got some bits and pieces right, but jumbled up in the wrong order with an utterly fallacious idea of how they relate to each other, seemingly driven by the notion that every decision about how the government functions was entirely, or primarily, due to slavery. Slavery was certainly one element of the months-long debate, but it was hardly the only, or even the most important, factor. Hell, most of the biggest concessions to the slave states passed relatively easily; there was never any serious chance, for instance, of prohibiting either slavery itself or the importation of new slaves.

First of all, the 3/5 compromise was not the end point of "slave states want full representation, free states want no representation." It originated in the Articles of Confederation in 1783 and related purely to taxes, with the free states wanting full representation and the slave states wanting no representation, for obvious reasons. When the Constitutional Convention convened in 1789, it was then proposed almost from the beginning to simply carry this compromise over to congressional representation (the slave states did briefly push for full representation, but only when "no representation" was gaining ground, and with the expectation that doing so would likely push them back to settling on 3/5). Oh, sure, there was further debate about this, and further give and take on the particulars over the coming months, but it was hardly some grand scheme where slavers demanded the moon and then engineered the rest in their favor when they didn't get everything.

Now, your conception of slave states and free states probably, broadly, maps to the North/South divisions in the Civil War, yes? If so, you're wrong on that point as well; in 1789, only five states (Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania) had abolished slavery. Rhode Island boycotted the Constitutional Convention altogether, so a full 3/4 of the Constitutional Convention was, in fact, still slave states.

And, again, the Senate was not some scheme by the slave states (i.e. 75% of them at the time, anyway) to grab power. You are hilariously misinformed about this; pretty much every argument you've made has been historically inaccurate to varying degrees. Understand, the debate about popular representation versus state representation, and to what degree power would be centralized rather than left to the individual states, was probably the biggest issue they had to solve. You posit a scenario in which Congress was going to be just a single chamber based on popular representation until the slave states, not getting their way with the 3/5 compromise, advocated for the Senate. This couldn't be farther from reality. To try and simplify things, the first proposal was by James Madison (from Virginia, a large state that had absolutely no intention of ever giving up its slaves) for a legislative body comprised of two branches: one elected directly by the people, and one elected by the first branch, but both tied to proportional representation of the population. The smaller states hated this idea and pushed the New Jersey Plan (New Jersey being, of course, also a slave state in 1789; though they had banned the import of new slaves a year earlier, they also banned free blacks from living there and wouldn't abolish slavery altogether until 1804). The New Jersey Plan was for a single chamber of Congress with one member elected by each state. The larger states hated this idea. Again, where this broke was largely (though not entirely) along population lines, and not among states that were or weren't friendly to slavery. The Virginia Plan gave larger states more power, and the New Jersey Plan gave small states more power. The debate between the two factions was fierce and heated, to the point that several delegates (including two of the three delegates from New York, a large state that favored the Virginia Plan and had a high proportion of free blacks but also a legislature resistant to abolition) left the convention altogether. Ultimately this debate resulted in the Connecticut Compromise, which proposed something akin to our current system: a chamber based on population to satisfy the large states, and a chamber based on states to satisfy the smaller ones. It was updated a bit from there, though not as much as you'd think; one of the key alterations that swayed some of the holdouts was giving each Senator their own vote, rather than forcing each state to vote as a single bloc. It was still voted against by Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, Delaware, and Connecticut - four of which remained slaves states until the end (or almost the end, in Maryland's case) of the Civil War.

And, because apparently I have to repeatedly point this out or you will insist I'm ignoring it, I AM NOT SAYING SLAVERY WAS NOT A FACTOR. But it really was not the big concern with respect to how and why we have the Senate; they had already secured a promise not to forbid the importation of slaves for at least twenty years*, and a requirement that states return escaped slaves from other states rather than freeing them; the institution of slavery was comfortably safe. Yes, the compromise that led to the Senate very much increased the power of smaller states, and yes that was very much by design, but that was not borne out of the concerns of slave owners. Which, I will once again remind you, were at the time a sizeable majority of the states. While they may have angled to end up with as much power as they could in the new government, that was a motivating factor for every state at the Constitutional Convention. The slave states were not special in that regard, and aside from securing slavery for the foreseeable future, their gains were nothing particularly special either. The big winners were the small states, and there were small free (or soon-to-be-free) states and small slave states, just as there were big free states and big slave states.

And that's why this:

Slave states were gimped by the 3/5 compromise in the house so they got equal representation as land owners in the senate.

...Is not true. Slave states were not gimped by the 3/5 compromise (it was effectively the status quo already, they proposed it early on in the first place, and it was largely a happy medium between political power and tax liability), and the Senate's creation was influenced very little, if at all, by said compromise, or even by slavery as a motivation. The primary drivers and beneficiaries of the final system were not slave states but small states, slave and free alike.



*As a sidenote, when this 20 year moratorium was up, the importation of new slaves was immediately prohibited... By President Thomas Jefferson, a Virginian slaveowner (who, in fact, kept slaves at the presidential mansion that would one day be known as the White House). Only tangentially relevant, I'll admit, but I felt it worth mentioning nonetheless.

[Paranoid Android]

Audit finds Iowa governor spent COVID-19 funds on salaries

It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Republicans bitch about where tax dollars go and then waste tax dollars, so they can bitch about the waste of tax dollars

[Yuujin]

Snip

Wow, so you're saying slavery wasn't a factor?

- - - Updated - - -

Audit finds Iowa governor spent COVID-19 funds on salaries

It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Republicans bitch about where tax dollars go and then waste tax dollars. The result is them campaigning and bitching about waste of tax dollars.

Well, the GOP has turned Covid into their latest hoax, so I'm sure they'll have no problem writing this off as perfectly acceptable. Hearts and minds, baby, even if those hearts as black and those minds are empty. ESPECIALLY IF.

[Draco-Onis]

Sorry, I thought progs had something fundamentally inviolate about small states not being able to wield more power than their population. Are you telling me Vermont's excluded? Mighty fine thing, that.

Progressives want reform to filibuster something that is not in the constitution and exclusively created by racists to stop legislation. Any dislike of individual senators has to do with their politics perhaps you should stop making an ass out of yourself.

[Machismo]

I wonder if Joe Biden will step down during his 4/8 years and let Kamala succeed him?

Is that what you Trump supporters want?

[Draco-Onis]

Is that what you Trump supporters want?

Nothing like brown to get their racist boners going.

[bladeXcrasher]

Is that what you Trump supporters want?

It's been a conspiracy theory with them since they announced they were running mates. First it was she would take over on July 4th of the first term. Now, after that proved false, it's changed to the beginning of his third year so she can be president for 9 years.

[Milchshake]

Pretty interesting. Considering that Pelosi counts her votes...

Pelosi told her colleagues that House isn’t leaving for Thanksgiving until Build Back Better is passed, according to two sources familiar with the matter. There’s talk of a potential Saturday vote, but it could happen sooner than that depending on timing of information from CBO

[Draco-Onis]

Pretty interesting. Considering that Pelosi counts her votes...

Pelosi told her colleagues that House isn’t leaving for Thanksgiving until Build Back Better is passed, according to two sources familiar with the matter. There’s talk of a potential Saturday vote, but it could happen sooner than that depending on timing of information from CBO

The house is irrelevant in this case it will be surprising if it passes the senate, aside from a few minor items I would say the Biden presidency is in lame duck mode.

[Fugus]

The house is irrelevant in this case it will be surprising if it passes the senate, aside from a few minor items I would say the Biden presidency is in lame duck mode.

Question, would it be possible for them to just keep the Senate in session till they pass their stuff and basically have Senima and Manchin stuck there till they do or till enough Republicans leave so they can't block it? Actually force the issues that way.

[Draco-Onis]

Question, would it be possible for them to just keep the Senate in session till they pass their stuff and basically have Senima and Manchin stuck there till they do or till enough Republicans leave so they can't block it? Actually force the issues that way.

They could but last I checked Chuck Schummer had no spine.

[Fugus]

They could but last I checked Chuck Schummer had no spine.

Agreed on that, been saying they are spineless. I gave my rundown on that 2 pages ago on post #12095. The only time they ever grow a spine is to fight within their own ranks to prevent those who want to fix stuff from actually getting power or even elected.

[Draco-Onis]

Agreed on that, been saying they are spineless. I gave my rundown on that 2 pages ago on post #12095. The only time they ever grow a spine is to fight within their own ranks to prevent those who want to fix stuff from actually getting power or even elected.

The only thing we could hope for and that's depressing to say is that republicans push their luck and don't budge next time on the debt ceiling. It was the only time the establishment seems serious enough to invoke getting rid of the filibuster. The US defaulting would be a colossal enough event for us to at least get rid of that but republicans aren't eager to default either just use it to bluff.

[Fugus]

The only thing we could hope for and that's depressing to say is that republicans push their luck and don't budge next time on the debt ceiling. It was the only time the establishment seems serious enough to invoke getting rid of the filibuster. The US defaulting would be a colossal enough event for us to at least get rid of that but republicans aren't eager to default either just use it to bluff.

What's even more depressing is, I fear that if they did get rid of the filibuster, just enough Democrats in safe seats would flip and be against the legislation to prevent it passing anyways. The Democrats could get a super majority where neither Manchin or Senima (Can't remember how to spell her name) wouldn't matter and they would magically have just enough to prevent anything that wasn't largely status quo. Healthcare and wages would still remain issues that would remain ignored till enough of them started to lose their primaries to people who would actually push for them that the Democrats would relent to keep power, but would refuse to move outside of that threat.

[Edge-]

https://abovethelaw.com/2021/11/cong...chool-student/

Another reason why it's important Democrats get more judges on the Federal bench: Crystal Clanton.

Who is she? Just the woman that got kicked out of Turning Point USA for texting people about how much she hated Black people and getting outted for it.

Apparently this didn't stop her legal career as she got her law degree, a job from Ginni Thomas (wife of SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas), and just got clerkships with an Alabama judge and an Eleventh Circuit judge.

Apparently they don't bother doing casual google searches for potential clerks before hiring them. Maze is a Trump appointee from 2018, Pryor by Bush Jr. in 2004.

[Blur4stuff]

As much as I'd love to see the kind of changes discussed here, it's simply not possible even if a few more senate seats flip dem. It's not going to become possible until the majority of congress is gen x and millenial with a few ancient boomers hanging on. Right now we still have a fair number of silent generation people in there. Yeah that includes Sanders, but he's a major outlier.

[Breccia]

Apparently they don't bother doing casual google searches for potential clerks before hiring them.

What proof do you have that they didn't? For all we know, they had no problem with what they found.