The U.S. Senate is a strong competitor in the race to the bottom of democratic deliberation, and so I don't mean to insult its magnificent skills at bottlenecking even the most consensual, widely embraced legislation. Indeed it possesses many a blue ribbon in the bicameral contest for the honored abyss.
But the U.S. House is exceptional in that only this chamber is known as "The People's House." The phrase is imbued by a distinct emphasis on the democratic. Here is the pulsating heart of the body politic, the chosen voices of the average Jane and Joe come to Washington to hash things out and by God get things done.
Such as today's procedural vote on aid for immeasurably desperate Ukraine. This preliminary step to final passage tomorrow passed overwhelmingly, 316 yeas to a rather pathetic and scattered 94 nays.
It passed by such a huge margin precisely because the people themselves overwhelmingly support Ukrainian aid: three-fourths of Democrats, more than half of independents (54%) and essentially half of Republicans (47%). Yes this is representative democracy as it should be.
BULLSHIT.
Despite widespread national support for helping a liberal democracy repel a brutal aggressor and notwithstanding a president's exhortations of absolute vital urgency, aid for Ukraine has languished in the House for months. Note December of 2023 — that was when The People's House last approved an absolutely vital military aid package for a fascistically beaten and battered European friend.
Even the commonly ass-dragging filibustering minority-squawking U.S. Senate managed to pass an aid bill two bloody months ago. And there it has sat. It sat and went nowhere because America's Platonic Ideal of representative democracy — the U.S. House, all 435 of its elected members — had been shanghaied by a mere handful of ill-schooled, ill-mannered and grossly ill-advised Putinesque fascists.
All along, more than 300 House members have sat in support of more aid for Ukraine. But the harpy Marge Greene and sleazy Matt Gaetz and small band of villainous Paul Gosars ruled over the democratic body, rendering it the world's most undemocratic institution.
Deep, cutting, substantive changes to how the Hill works, or, usually, does not, are as vitally needed in the American political system as aid for Ukraine was. This is emphatically recommended only as a last-resort substitute for the far simpler, less painful path to restoring genuine democracy in the U.S. Congress — the one from which we so consistently keep careening.
That would be the path on which majorities race to vote only for mature, responsible politicians. Why is that so hard for so many?
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