From Politico:

"Even if senators break a filibuster on Sunday, progressives could drag out passage of the deal for days. Speeding it up would require consent from all 100 senators. The House would then need to come back to Washington to pass the agreement before the government would reopen."

Suppose you start the clock in 1855, as this Wikipedia chart does, and use a decade or more of party control as the benchmark...

It happens half the time in the Senate and two thirds of the time in the House.

The shorter intervals over the last few decades have been the exception, not the rule.

If Senate Democrats haven't taken a whip count yet, that is political malpractice on the highest order.

It means NONE of them -- neither the leadership, nor appropriators, nor individual members -- have even the faintest clue what they are doing.
thehill.com/homenews/sen...

Here's the print edition of my op-ed, which ran in today's Dallas Morning News.

They did a really nice job with the layout!

Obama discarding his 2008 grassroots army was a generational failure that put the Democratic Party on the path to its current abysmal state.

In terms of generational theory, this was the moment we lost the Fourth Turning, and I said so at the time.
newrepublic.com/article/1402...

The "tweak" King proposes is to let every senator exhaust their debate time... TWICE.

That would mean weeks, maybe months, of continual floor debate.

That is not even remotely realistic or feasible as a way to get it done even under a Democratic trifecta.
www.king.senate.gov/newsroom/pre...

Whether or not this belief is correct, the problem is that its loudest proponents insist on treating the GOP and the broader right like they're still centrist and pro-democracy.

Never mind that both have been visibly and unambiguously heading over the fascist cliff for decades.

"Gerontocracy!!!?"

Never heard of it.

TPM has a whip count of Senate Democrats on the blank check CR for Musk and Trump.

This is what a failed political party looks like.
talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/tally-3

This is a vote of no confidence in the Democratic Party from about 2 out of 3 registered voters.
blueprint-research.com/polling/trum...

Republicans are treating the FRA's automatic cuts as optional, and hoping nobody calls them on it.

Today Politico was happy to play along with their ruse.

This is not how the FRA (or any law) works. Top Democratic appropriators do not agree. And Politico's reporters definitely know that.

Many low-information swing voters cannot be reached or convinced by rational persuasion, because they aren't making decisions rationally or even close to it.

They're using an intuitive satisficing decision strategy.

I studied this in grad school and wrote about it here:
medium.com/@firstperson...

If accurate, this is encouraging news, and not just because DeLauro knows the stakes better than anyone.

Jeffries is a graduate of the Pelosi-Obama School of Negotiating, where the first step in any dealmaking with Republicans is to throw away all your leverage.
www.nbcnews.com/politics/con...

Correct as usual.

Superman: The Movie (1978) has a powerful and easy-to-miss warning about the potentially cataclysmic danger of gerontocracy.

There sure are an awful lot of aging leaders in Krypton's ruling class denying that their planet is about to explode and insisting no one leave.

Not enough Democrats know this history. Please share it.

Pelosi did more anyone to shut down oversight and investigations of Trump.

In the AOC vs. Connolly fight, she's running the same failed playbook that paved the way for Trump's return to power.
www.politico.com/news/magazin...

Gerontocrats: Here's why they're bad.

This is from a piece I wrote shortly before Biden stepped aside on the perils of aging leaders.

This post was pinned to my profile on the old site for three years.

Democrats have significant leverage over members of their caucus.

It's unknowable if using the carrots and sticks on Manchin and Sinema would have made a difference.

The problem is THEY NEVER EVEN TRIED. 2/2