As has been pointed out in previously political threads, the Dem had maybe 60 days of 60 votes in the Senate, and they were very shaky votes.
I imagine (hope, at least) things would go very differently with 2 years of 60 automatic yes votes in the Senate and a Dem controlled house.
Under the current alignment, any Senate with 60 Democrats in it is going to have some votes tied up in states that aren't solidly Democratic. Think Nebraska, Dakotas, Montana, Louisiana, etc.
It kinda depends on how strong the Senate leadership is, or at least bringing back earmarks to bribe marginal votes into your camp.
Its kinda sad that a lot of the current dysfunction comes from the banning of earmarks. Before you could get some votes by earmarking them a new library or road now there is no carrot and only sticks so its really hard to peel off any votes from the opposing side.
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HachfaceNot the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered Userregular
As has been pointed out in previously political threads, the Dem had maybe 60 days of 60 votes in the Senate, and they were very shaky votes.
I imagine (hope, at least) things would go very differently with 2 years of 60 automatic yes votes in the Senate and a Dem controlled house.
Under the current alignment, any Senate with 60 Democrats in it is going to have some votes tied up in states that aren't solidly Democratic. Think Nebraska, Dakotas, Montana, Louisiana, etc.
It kinda depends on how strong the Senate leadership is, or at least bringing back earmarks to bribe marginal votes into your camp.
Its kinda sad that a lot of the current dysfunction comes from the banning of earmarks. Before you could get some votes by earmarking them a new library or road now there is no carrot and only sticks so its really hard to peel off any votes from the opposing side.
Apparently clearing out petty corruption can end up enabling corruption on a grand scale. Who knew?
Although really earmarks were always demonized out of proportion. One man's pork is another man's vital infrastructure.
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
As has been pointed out in previously political threads, the Dem had maybe 60 days of 60 votes in the Senate, and they were very shaky votes.
I imagine (hope, at least) things would go very differently with 2 years of 60 automatic yes votes in the Senate and a Dem controlled house.
does the GOP have a supermajority? Did they ever in the Bush admin? No but they got what they wanted over and over again.
They're willing to let the world burn if they don't get their way, or at least have everyone convinced they'll go through with it. So Dems can't filibuster anything, because Dems value a functioning government.
If you have one party who believes governement does not work it is pretty easy for them to satisfy their voters by making things not work. Breaking stuff is simple actually trying to do anything constructive is much harder. Democrats typically don't want the world to burn so its a lot easier for a republican president to at least get some stuff done than it will be for any democratic president going forward baring some big sea change in behavior.
I don't even know what the Dems would do with both houses. In not sure that they do. They don't really have a platform anymore.
obama had a pretty popular vision that got hobbled by democratic in-fighting and republican intransigence. since the ACA rolled back, the political dynamic has been entirely defined by stubbornness on the parts of moderate democrats, perpetual backbiting from progressives and, of course, republicans constantly digging in their heels just out of principle with a complete willingness to scorch the earth.
i'm still an obama supporter but i'm about done with the democratic party in general. even the progressive caucus is rubbing me wrong these days.
no one on the left likes this bill, but it's puerile for congress to send it to the president and then respond with outrage when he fails to veto it and shut down the government.
I don't understand why everyone is claiming that this bill is passing with White House and Dem support because they fear another shutdown. The GOP leadership was crystal clear that there would not be another one.
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Irond WillWARNING: NO HURTFUL COMMENTS, PLEASE!!!!!Cambridge. MAModeratormod
As has been pointed out in previously political threads, the Dem had maybe 60 days of 60 votes in the Senate, and they were very shaky votes.
I imagine (hope, at least) things would go very differently with 2 years of 60 automatic yes votes in the Senate and a Dem controlled house.
Under the current alignment, any Senate with 60 Democrats in it is going to have some votes tied up in states that aren't solidly Democratic. Think Nebraska, Dakotas, Montana, Louisiana, etc.
It kinda depends on how strong the Senate leadership is, or at least bringing back earmarks to bribe marginal votes into your camp.
Its kinda sad that a lot of the current dysfunction comes from the banning of earmarks. Before you could get some votes by earmarking them a new library or road now there is no carrot and only sticks so its really hard to peel off any votes from the opposing side.
earmarks were only a minor part of it
most of it was ideological unification of the parties. the democrats used to have a large rural conservative southern bloc and the republicans used to have a large urban progressive northeastern bloc. those have realigned over the past 30 or 40 years, and now there's a lot more discipline and control over members, especially in the GOP.
I don't understand why everyone is claiming that this bill is passing with White House and Dem support because they fear another shutdown. The GOP leadership was crystal clear that there would not be another one.
Because if there is one thing John Boehner and Mitch McConnell won't do, its go back on a promise.
Probably slightly more likely: the President had already agreed via back channels to whip his party for the vote in exchange for GOP leadership not doomsaying leading into the holiday shopping season. Because if there is one thing that puts a damper on Christmas spending, its a whole lot of people thinking they're about to miss a few pay checks.
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I don't understand why everyone is claiming that this bill is passing with White House and Dem support because they fear another shutdown. The GOP leadership was crystal clear that there would not be another one.
Its an easy excuse to pass some stuff the conservative Dems wanted anyway. Guess that puts the nail in the coffin that somehow the Democrats are liberal socialists huh
I don't even know what the Dems would do with both houses. In not sure that they do. They don't really have a platform anymore.
obama had a pretty popular vision that got hobbled by democratic in-fighting and republican intransigence. since the ACA rolled back, the political dynamic has been entirely defined by stubbornness on the parts of moderate democrats, perpetual backbiting from progressives and, of course, republicans constantly digging in their heels just out of principle with a complete willingness to scorch the earth.
i'm still an obama supporter but i'm about done with the democratic party in general. even the progressive caucus is rubbing me wrong these days.
no one on the left likes this bill, but it's puerile for congress to send it to the president and then respond with outrage when he fails to veto it and shut down the government.
It would help if more than, I dunno, 15% of the US population (I'm being generous) didn't consider anything left of center-right to be pure, distilled socialism, which is Satan and Vlad the Impaler's bastard figurative child made flesh thanks to the constant mainstream media worship of the middle. Democrats have to straddle the fencepost between centrism and conservatism until their nuts turn blue and fall off, because as soon as they do anything liberal the talking heads begin shrieking like a child who just had their favorite toy incinerated.
There's a lot of awful stuff in this bill, but the bill itself is not the problem with the Democratic side of things. We all like to point at the Republicans for the shitty things happening in our government (and to some extent it's absolutely the case), but the Democrats are refusing to just yank this band-aid off and own being liberal. Until they do, and until they quit letting the narrative be "liberal = bad", expect more of this kind of thing!
Seems like it's up to the President to shut it down. Curious to see how this plays out
Why so people keep saying this? He coached it through the house. It's his baby. He is guaranteed to sign it.
When people say "I hope Obama vetoes it" they are not literally expressing hope that Obama will veto it (or maybe some people are) so much as they are saying this because it's a kind of political and moral event horizon that Dems can't walk back from. The last the a shutdown was threatened the Dems actually fucking fought for a more-or-less decent package, this time they just rolled over and gave the GOP everything on their Christmas list.
Congress was going to have this fight every fucking year, and as soon as the Dems caved, it was over. They caved - its over.
You do negotiations, SKFM. The negotiating position for next year is that much worse for the Dems. If they couldn't fucking make a defense of it with what they had this year, then the spiral begins.
This isn't a "moral event horizon". It's just the results of the election. The GOP runs Congress now. Prepare for GOP legislation.
2 years from now, stuff will roll back.
Wait. What?
Are you serious?
Stuff isn't getting rolled back. Oh my god.
That is a delusion someone who still thinks this government functions properly has.
Edit: Actually let me rephrase that. Stuff will be getting rolled back, but it will be Democratic policies. I give it a decade before the ACA is rendered completely toothless. Even without a sitting Republican president.
I don't mean the policy will roll back. That will take years/decades, as it always does.
I mean the politics will roll back. The Dems will retake the Senate and the whole system will revert to a pre-2014 state. This isn't an event horizon. The idea that the Dems have hit a "point of no return" is ludicrous. They have simply lost and the Democrats always roll over when they lose.
Will it? As we've seen even with a Dem House(which won't happen again for at least a decade), a Dem near Supermajority and a Dem president we AT BEST get some weak watered down bills and stagnation.
but even with the idea of a GOP Congress we start to get rollbacks on almost all of it.
Yes, it will rollback to the pre-2014 state you just described. I don't see anywhere I claim it would get BETTER then that. I didn't say anything of the sort so I've no idea what you are responding to there.
I don't understand why everyone is claiming that this bill is passing with White House and Dem support because they fear another shutdown. The GOP leadership was crystal clear that there would not be another one.
I don't even know what the Dems would do with both houses. In not sure that they do. They don't really have a platform anymore.
obama had a pretty popular vision that got hobbled by democratic in-fighting and republican intransigence. since the ACA rolled back, the political dynamic has been entirely defined by stubbornness on the parts of moderate democrats, perpetual backbiting from progressives and, of course, republicans constantly digging in their heels just out of principle with a complete willingness to scorch the earth.
i'm still an obama supporter but i'm about done with the democratic party in general. even the progressive caucus is rubbing me wrong these days.
no one on the left likes this bill, but it's puerile for congress to send it to the president and then respond with outrage when he fails to veto it and shut down the government.
It would help if more than, I dunno, 15% of the US population (I'm being generous) didn't consider anything left of center-right to be pure, distilled socialism, which is Satan and Vlad the Impaler's bastard figurative child made flesh thanks to the constant mainstream media worship of the middle. Democrats have to straddle the fencepost between centrism and conservatism until their nuts turn blue and fall off, because as soon as they do anything liberal the talking heads begin shrieking like a child who just had their favorite toy incinerated.
The Dems don't have to act liberal for them to do that, being centrist or conservative ends with the same result. All that matters is that Dems support it and it'll be contorted into the liberalist thing that ever liberaled.
edit: Look how they acted to the ACA, they'd react identically if it was a Single Payer Bill.
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Irond WillWARNING: NO HURTFUL COMMENTS, PLEASE!!!!!Cambridge. MAModeratormod
I don't even know what the Dems would do with both houses. In not sure that they do. They don't really have a platform anymore.
All the things the President would have liked to have done since 2010.
Like fixing some of our broke ass roads, bridges, and buildings for one.
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
The Democrats have a consistent immigration policy, a consistent energy policy, a consistent infrastructure policy, a fair amount of interest in campaign finance reform, and a fervent wish that they could do something about global warming before it's too late. There are plenty of things the Democrats would be doing if they had the votes; they're just not as committed as Republicans are to the idea that a dead horse will get up and walk if you just keep beating it long enough.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
The Democrats have a consistent immigration policy, a consistent energy policy, a consistent infrastructure policy, a fair amount of interest in campaign finance reform, and a fervent wish that they could do something about global warming before it's too late. There are plenty of things the Democrats would be doing if they had the votes; they're just not as committed as Republicans are to the idea that a dead horse will get up and walk if you just keep beating it long enough.
I don't agree. There are parts of the party that care about all of these things but there are parts that do not. The Republican Party is much better at having a message and staying on it.
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
The Democratic messaging might be shit; but those are some of the things that would get done if they had the Presidency, the House, and 60 in the Senate.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
It's easy to have a consistent message when it's as simple as Fuck The President
The Democratic messaging might be shit; but those are some of the things that would get done if they had the Presidency, the House, and 60 in the Senate.
Might not even need 60 in the Senate if they killed the shitty filibuster or at least made it much harder to abuse. I'd much rather have the filibuster destroyed because it's mostly used to obstruct things to keep a shitty status quo. We have other avenues to curtail the excesses of the legislative branch.
The Democratic messaging might be shit; but those are some of the things that would get done if they had the Presidency, the House, and 60 in the Senate.
It's not just messaging, the (seeming) lack of willingness to fight for any of their positions causes their platform to look so weak that it may as well not exist. When Republicans vote for the 106th time to appeal ACA, it doesn't matter it has no chance to pass, it makes them look like they're actually fighting for a platform; Where when Democrats give up trying to pass green energy initiatives because of Republican bullshit, it makes them look weak and not give a shit about their stated platforms.
People like to know when they vote for a party, that a party is going to fight for their positions. Republicans can run on "Vote for me so I can vote to appeal Obamacare for the 107th time and make it happen" and a Republicans can actually believe that, because Republican party never stop trying. Meanwhile, a Democrat has no reason to believe that voting for a Democrat will actually cause them to push and fight for Green Energy, because they almost always give in. There's no reason to believe that the Democratic party is going to fight until they actually fight for something and KEEP fighting(ACA is as close as the Democrats have came to fighting for something, and a ton of democrats have ran away from it and tried throwing it under a bus).
These's a reason that around these parts the pitch is essentially "Vote for Democrats, the lesser evil". Because it may as well be the party platform, given how weak all their other commitments look. And it's a terrible platform, no matter how much the democratic apologetics want for Homo Economius to be real, like mythical Unicorns.
Maybe 20% of the Democratic politicians are actually liberal though
let's stop pretending there's a liberal party in the US please
i don't know what to tell you, dude. less that 20% of the US population would be considered "liberal" according to your rubric.
why would you think they'd be politically overrepresented to the point that they constituted a majority or supermajority?
the majority of Americans want to raise the minimum wage, increase food stamps, increase pell grant, and tax the rich more (even a majority of republicans aren't opposed to increasing taxes on the rich to fix budget shortfalls)
In my opinion most Americans are liberal if you can break policy ideas down without attaching a label to them. The problem is Americans aren't politically engaged
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Maybe 20% of the Democratic politicians are actually liberal though
let's stop pretending there's a liberal party in the US please
i don't know what to tell you, dude. less that 20% of the US population would be considered "liberal" according to your rubric.
why would you think they'd be politically overrepresented to the point that they constituted a majority or supermajority?
the majority of Americans want to raise the minimum wage, increase food stamps, increase pell grant, and tax the rich more (even a majority of republicans aren't opposed to increasing taxes on the rich to fix budget shortfalls)
In my opinion most Americans are liberal if you can break policy ideas down without attaching a label to them. The problem is Americans aren't politically engaged
Maybe it would help if there was a party that actively marketed itself as being about these issues. . .
The reason I assume the Republican party will attempt to shut down the government when given the opportunity is that "shut down most or all of the government" is the stated goal of a large number of the current members of congress who belong to the Republican party. They did not seem to have any particular issue with shutting it down for no discernible reason last year, and they were in a position of slightly less power then.
AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
Democrats have been fairly consistent about minimum wage. They are less consistent on obamacare because they're idiots.
They're also fairly consistent on immigration and public schools and welfare. Also rights for minorities and protecting them. Democrats are on the whole pretty good on that and the ones who aren't left years ago for the most part.
They're not very consistent in foreign policy or gitmo or income inequality and Wall Street since many democrats, including the president, are quite corporatist.
And there are some things they're consistent on but we might not like, like Israel and balancing the budget at any cost.
But even on this stuff, they have no national vision outside of presidential campaigns, so the message is shit down ticket and at the midterm.
Like how all those losers who lost ran as fast as possible from the White House and obamacare this year.
And then they lost, because there was already a Fuck This President candidate on the ballot.
The fact that well informed people can come I here and not realize that there's a democratic message just shows how terrible the DNC is at communicating.
And and, the democrats haven't adapted to the post 2010 Washington yet. They keep thinking that the republicans are statesmen instead of reactionaries so they waste time on bipartisanship and consensus building.
I don't see this getting better now that they're out of power. Obama can't veto everything, and he pretty consistently won't.
Most democrats are centrists that are just as addicted to corporate money as the republicans are. It's not like the democrats are all just Bernie Sanders in hiding, waiting for their chance to shine as actual progressives. I'll keep voting blue over red because they're less shitty than the other side, but I hold out no hope that we're going to see real change to the left for a long time. The young people who don't fear socialist policies don't vote. They just post on reddit about how they hope Bernie Sanders will run.
I have the tiniest glimmer of hope in my body that we could see a grassroots movement for Sanders across the country that explodes, but I don't actually believe it will happen.
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HachfaceNot the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered Userregular
Race to the Top was President Obama's most important education initiative, a carrot to complement the stick of No Child Left Behind. It was essentially a grant program that rewarded local school districts for adopting the president's preferred policies. Those policies include more frequent standardized testing, tying teacher evaluation to student performance on standardized tests, and realigning curricula to the Common Core.
The Common Core is the keystone. It is a set of national standards in mathematics and English language arts (other subjects forthcoming -- allegedly) that aim to establish countrywide benchmarks against which student achievement can be judged. If you were the cynical sort, you would also point out that it creates a national market for test-makers and other vendors of curricular material, most of whom are for-profit corporations.
Race to the Top fit hand-in-glove with the efforts of large philanthropic organizations, like the Walton Foundation and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to remake public education according to the desires of the wealthy private interests who fund these foundations. Gates Foundation personnel were invited to help draft the Common Core standards. No classroom teachers were involved at any stage of the process, no were state- or municipal-level officials to any significant degree.
Without the carrot of Race to the Top grant money, continuing to invest resources into the Common Core will seem a much less attractive enterprise for local school officials. Executives in the various state-level departments of education may still favor the Common Core, but without federal backing they will have a weaker position relative to the teachers' unions and grassroots activists who oppose the Common Core with increasing fervor.
How. How in the fuck do Republicans keep getting away with defunding education and blowing holes in any effort to reform our system so that we can be competitive with other first-world countries.
I don't understand why everyone is claiming that this bill is passing with White House and Dem support because they fear another shutdown. The GOP leadership was crystal clear that there would not be another one.
It is also been clear with the last govt shutdown the GOP leadership is riding the tiger and has little or no real control over it and if the tiger choses to do another shut down the leadership is unlikely to be able to stop them.
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does the GOP have a supermajority? Did they ever in the Bush admin? No but they got what they wanted over and over again.
Yeah fear and jingoism are powerful compliance assurers.
Its kinda sad that a lot of the current dysfunction comes from the banning of earmarks. Before you could get some votes by earmarking them a new library or road now there is no carrot and only sticks so its really hard to peel off any votes from the opposing side.
Apparently clearing out petty corruption can end up enabling corruption on a grand scale. Who knew?
Although really earmarks were always demonized out of proportion. One man's pork is another man's vital infrastructure.
They're willing to let the world burn if they don't get their way, or at least have everyone convinced they'll go through with it. So Dems can't filibuster anything, because Dems value a functioning government.
obama had a pretty popular vision that got hobbled by democratic in-fighting and republican intransigence. since the ACA rolled back, the political dynamic has been entirely defined by stubbornness on the parts of moderate democrats, perpetual backbiting from progressives and, of course, republicans constantly digging in their heels just out of principle with a complete willingness to scorch the earth.
i'm still an obama supporter but i'm about done with the democratic party in general. even the progressive caucus is rubbing me wrong these days.
no one on the left likes this bill, but it's puerile for congress to send it to the president and then respond with outrage when he fails to veto it and shut down the government.
earmarks were only a minor part of it
most of it was ideological unification of the parties. the democrats used to have a large rural conservative southern bloc and the republicans used to have a large urban progressive northeastern bloc. those have realigned over the past 30 or 40 years, and now there's a lot more discipline and control over members, especially in the GOP.
Because if there is one thing John Boehner and Mitch McConnell won't do, its go back on a promise.
Probably slightly more likely: the President had already agreed via back channels to whip his party for the vote in exchange for GOP leadership not doomsaying leading into the holiday shopping season. Because if there is one thing that puts a damper on Christmas spending, its a whole lot of people thinking they're about to miss a few pay checks.
Come Overwatch with meeeee
Its an easy excuse to pass some stuff the conservative Dems wanted anyway. Guess that puts the nail in the coffin that somehow the Democrats are liberal socialists huh
Like how fucking shitty of a human being do you have to be to ask for that?
Come Overwatch with meeeee
It would help if more than, I dunno, 15% of the US population (I'm being generous) didn't consider anything left of center-right to be pure, distilled socialism, which is Satan and Vlad the Impaler's bastard figurative child made flesh thanks to the constant mainstream media worship of the middle. Democrats have to straddle the fencepost between centrism and conservatism until their nuts turn blue and fall off, because as soon as they do anything liberal the talking heads begin shrieking like a child who just had their favorite toy incinerated.
There's a lot of awful stuff in this bill, but the bill itself is not the problem with the Democratic side of things. We all like to point at the Republicans for the shitty things happening in our government (and to some extent it's absolutely the case), but the Democrats are refusing to just yank this band-aid off and own being liberal. Until they do, and until they quit letting the narrative be "liberal = bad", expect more of this kind of thing!
let's stop pretending there's a liberal party in the US please
Yes, it will rollback to the pre-2014 state you just described. I don't see anywhere I claim it would get BETTER then that. I didn't say anything of the sort so I've no idea what you are responding to there.
The Dems don't have to act liberal for them to do that, being centrist or conservative ends with the same result. All that matters is that Dems support it and it'll be contorted into the liberalist thing that ever liberaled.
edit: Look how they acted to the ACA, they'd react identically if it was a Single Payer Bill.
i don't know what to tell you, dude. less that 20% of the US population would be considered "liberal" according to your rubric.
why would you think they'd be politically overrepresented to the point that they constituted a majority or supermajority?
Well, conservative-thinking is politically overrepresented in the US, so I guess it's possible it could go the other way too.
All the things the President would have liked to have done since 2010.
Like fixing some of our broke ass roads, bridges, and buildings for one.
I don't agree. There are parts of the party that care about all of these things but there are parts that do not. The Republican Party is much better at having a message and staying on it.
Sometimes the President is a Republican, so "Fuck The President" isn't consistent.
Might not even need 60 in the Senate if they killed the shitty filibuster or at least made it much harder to abuse. I'd much rather have the filibuster destroyed because it's mostly used to obstruct things to keep a shitty status quo. We have other avenues to curtail the excesses of the legislative branch.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
It's not just messaging, the (seeming) lack of willingness to fight for any of their positions causes their platform to look so weak that it may as well not exist. When Republicans vote for the 106th time to appeal ACA, it doesn't matter it has no chance to pass, it makes them look like they're actually fighting for a platform; Where when Democrats give up trying to pass green energy initiatives because of Republican bullshit, it makes them look weak and not give a shit about their stated platforms.
People like to know when they vote for a party, that a party is going to fight for their positions. Republicans can run on "Vote for me so I can vote to appeal Obamacare for the 107th time and make it happen" and a Republicans can actually believe that, because Republican party never stop trying. Meanwhile, a Democrat has no reason to believe that voting for a Democrat will actually cause them to push and fight for Green Energy, because they almost always give in. There's no reason to believe that the Democratic party is going to fight until they actually fight for something and KEEP fighting(ACA is as close as the Democrats have came to fighting for something, and a ton of democrats have ran away from it and tried throwing it under a bus).
These's a reason that around these parts the pitch is essentially "Vote for Democrats, the lesser evil". Because it may as well be the party platform, given how weak all their other commitments look. And it's a terrible platform, no matter how much the democratic apologetics want for Homo Economius to be real, like mythical Unicorns.
the majority of Americans want to raise the minimum wage, increase food stamps, increase pell grant, and tax the rich more (even a majority of republicans aren't opposed to increasing taxes on the rich to fix budget shortfalls)
In my opinion most Americans are liberal if you can break policy ideas down without attaching a label to them. The problem is Americans aren't politically engaged
Maybe it would help if there was a party that actively marketed itself as being about these issues. . .
They're also fairly consistent on immigration and public schools and welfare. Also rights for minorities and protecting them. Democrats are on the whole pretty good on that and the ones who aren't left years ago for the most part.
They're not very consistent in foreign policy or gitmo or income inequality and Wall Street since many democrats, including the president, are quite corporatist.
And there are some things they're consistent on but we might not like, like Israel and balancing the budget at any cost.
But even on this stuff, they have no national vision outside of presidential campaigns, so the message is shit down ticket and at the midterm.
Like how all those losers who lost ran as fast as possible from the White House and obamacare this year.
And then they lost, because there was already a Fuck This President candidate on the ballot.
The fact that well informed people can come I here and not realize that there's a democratic message just shows how terrible the DNC is at communicating.
And and, the democrats haven't adapted to the post 2010 Washington yet. They keep thinking that the republicans are statesmen instead of reactionaries so they waste time on bipartisanship and consensus building.
I don't see this getting better now that they're out of power. Obama can't veto everything, and he pretty consistently won't.
I have the tiniest glimmer of hope in my body that we could see a grassroots movement for Sanders across the country that explodes, but I don't actually believe it will happen.
Race to the Top was President Obama's most important education initiative, a carrot to complement the stick of No Child Left Behind. It was essentially a grant program that rewarded local school districts for adopting the president's preferred policies. Those policies include more frequent standardized testing, tying teacher evaluation to student performance on standardized tests, and realigning curricula to the Common Core.
The Common Core is the keystone. It is a set of national standards in mathematics and English language arts (other subjects forthcoming -- allegedly) that aim to establish countrywide benchmarks against which student achievement can be judged. If you were the cynical sort, you would also point out that it creates a national market for test-makers and other vendors of curricular material, most of whom are for-profit corporations.
Race to the Top fit hand-in-glove with the efforts of large philanthropic organizations, like the Walton Foundation and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to remake public education according to the desires of the wealthy private interests who fund these foundations. Gates Foundation personnel were invited to help draft the Common Core standards. No classroom teachers were involved at any stage of the process, no were state- or municipal-level officials to any significant degree.
Without the carrot of Race to the Top grant money, continuing to invest resources into the Common Core will seem a much less attractive enterprise for local school officials. Executives in the various state-level departments of education may still favor the Common Core, but without federal backing they will have a weaker position relative to the teachers' unions and grassroots activists who oppose the Common Core with increasing fervor.
Oh wait, it's because the Democrats let them.
This is ridiculous.
It doesn't reform shit.
It is also been clear with the last govt shutdown the GOP leadership is riding the tiger and has little or no real control over it and if the tiger choses to do another shut down the leadership is unlikely to be able to stop them.
So regardless of how I feel about Common Core, I can't get behind defunding schools.