What good is the filibuster if the minority party must have permission of the majority party to use it? The Democrats should fight now and fight fiercely. The other side only respects strength.

JFP

As long as the electoral machinery of several

key states is digital, and is conducted on machines owned by corrupt fascistic Republican-allied corporations and bussinesses, Democrats are

not going to "win" any more elections.

That becomes even more true going forward as

the so-called Help America Vote Act continues to

force the pace of purchase and installation of

digifraudulent voting machines and ballotabulation

machines and systems.

The only available stopgap for now is to insist

on Legal Paper Ballots, such as the thin cardboard

Opti-Scan ballot-sheets which are Marked By Hand

beFORE being fed into the digital vote-counting

machine. That way, if the returns seem to be

digifraudulent, we at least have the Legal Paper

Ballots to go back to and count by hand. Those

elections conducted on TouchScreen strike me as

so pre-fraudulized that if I find myself living in

a TouchScreen state, I won't even vote. I am not

such an utter tool as to lend undeserved legitimacy to a Diebold Election.

In the long run, the only real cure for this

problem would be to repeal the so-called HAVA,

and craft a new law for federal elections only,

mandating that votes for Senators, Representatives, and Presidents be on Legal Paper

Ballots, marked by hand, and counted by hand, one

at a time, by Civil Servants, as is done in advanced civilized countries like Germany or

Canada. And such a Help America Vote Cleanly

law would recognise any state's States Right

to conduct their elections in a manner as corrupted as the mind of Digital Man can concieve.

Until that happens, the only elections Democrats will win will be those elections that

the Republicans want to let Democrats win for long-range strategic reasons. If y'all don't

want to believe me, go ahead and vote in those

Diebold elections, on those Diebold machines.

The worst of both worlds for democrats is to not use the filibuster because doing so might take it away - and in so doing, to leave it intact for the republicans to use if the democrats take power. Let's put aside for a moment any partisan issue in looking at the merits of the filibuster, and just look at the larger issue.

Should a minority of 41-49 Senators be able to block some votes indefinitely?

I'd say resolve the issue on that issue, so the rules are the same for both parties. If the republicans vote to abolish it, so be it, the democrats don't really have the filibuster anyway in that case, but the republicans will. If the republicans preserve the filibuster, fine - both parties get it. Vote on it, and either have it or not, depending what the majority wants the rights of those 40-some Senators to be.

If the Democrats won't use the filibuster because of their fear of the nuclear option, then they've essentially lost the ability to filibuster anyway. Make the Republicans go nuclear and suffer the fallout (pun intended). If you can't filibuster a Supreme Court nomination, then when can you?

Sorry about being such a geek about this but the whole filibuster question reminds me of a scene in one of the Star Trek movies. The Borg are on the rampage again, inexorably assimilating worlds and species, and Capt. Picard gets angry with all the strategic withdrawals. "They assimilate whole worlds and we fall back. Well no more. We draw the line here!"

I mean, damn it, if filibustering a judge who joined an avowedly sexist, probably racist, and certainly reactionary group is not justified, then what the hell would be? Come on, already. Does a judge have to come out and say f*gs, ni**ers, and christ killers should not have the same rights and legal protections under the constitution as rich white guys?

Will that be enough?

I say filibuster the bigot. And if the Republicans use the nuclear option, they, not the Democrats, will be seen as the power hungry radicals.

The Democrats will eventually control Congress again. What is the point of all this timidity? I know this is not mere speculation. These things have real consequences for real people. But will those people be served by having another bigot on the court?

Unfortunately the liberal wing of the party again demonstrates it's ineptitude when compared with the strategical genius of the GOP.

First, let's face facts. Even if every last Democratic Senator in centrist and Bush voting states were willing to fall on their sword and sacrifice their next election to please the liberal wing (and they are correct not to do this) without the support of the Senate's Republican centrists Alito is obviously going to be ultimately confirmed.

Therefore the only thing the left can accomplish by insisting upon a filibuster is exactly what the Republicans strategists WANT. That is to change the worrisome media headlines from Abramhoff, Delay and Ney back to the norm of "Democratic obstructionism" and nuclear options.

In otherwords by insisting on a filibuster all the liberal wing will accomplish is making that slim chance the Democratics can retake the Senate or House all the slimmer and ensuring that we're all still whining from the backbench for another decade instead of taking the Senate back. Changing the national headlines to filibusters and nuclear options will only serve to terminate the headlines regarding the Republican "culture of corruption" to the millions upon millions of Americans who don't follow political scandals in the details that Salon readers do.

Not one of us want to see Justice Alito. However a far more viable prevention technique would be to win some elections for a change and this can only be accomplished by the left growing up and divorcing it's long history of political incompetence and instead playing political football in a strategically intelligent manner.

Does Farhad Manjoo have any principles at all beyond partisan warfare? The question of whether or not the filibuster should be preserved should not be merely a short-term calculation as to whether or not it will benefit the Democrats in the near future. If we believe that the filibuster, with its tendency to dampen majority rule, is a valuable feature of our government, then we shouldn't seek to do away with it just because we might regain control of the Senate in the next elections. If we oppose its undemocratic aspects, fine, then we should fight against it. But the Democratic party needs to decide what it believes and stand on those principles, not sway with the political winds as Manjoo's article seems to suggest.