Gun Control Didn't Ruin Obama's Second Term

Alex Seitz-Wald test-drives what could easily become a new liberal fantasy:

The Connecticut massacre set in motion a cascade of events that led the White House to burn through its only real window to accomplish its goals. The month before the shooting, Obama had won a convincing reelection and a modest popular mandate. One major liberal wish-list entry, immigration reform, seemed not only within reach but almost inevitable.

Instead, not only in this story did Obama's gun control initiative sink immigration reform, but it derailed, at least so far, his entire second term.

C'mon. Let's see...this argument depends on a bunch of stuff: To begin with: that there's such a thing as a mandate (and that Obama had one on immigration), and that "The first few months of any president's term, closest to their electoral win and furthest from the next congressional midterm, are usually the most fruitful." The latter holds for first terms, but as far as I know there's no similar evidence on second terms, and certainly not second terms which also yield continued divided government.

For that matter, the list of reelections with continued divided government is a short one -- in the last hundred years, only 1956, 1972, 1984, and 1996 fit that category before 2012, and of those 1972 wasn't much of a test. I don't think it supports Seitz-Wald's point, either. Just looking at wikipedia...the 99th Congress didn't pass any major bills until December 1985, but passed several, including tax reform, in 1986. Tax reform is as good a comp as any. Reagan sent up his proposal in May 1985; Ways and Means marked up a bill in September through December, 1985 and it passed the House in the same month; Senate Finance finished their markup in May, 1986; the Senate passed it at the end of June; and then after a formal conference in July and August, both chambers passed the bill in September, 1986.

Ike's 85th Congress did pass three major laws in 1955, but several more in 1956. As for Clinton, not too much happened in the 105th (although unlike in Ike's case, the second Congress of Clinton's second term was more productive.

What I think all this says is: the "almost inevitable" was an illusion. Presidents re-elected with continued divided government don't have a Hundred Days, and they basically don't pass partisan initiatives.

Or, to put it another way: whether immigration reform passed was always going to be about what mainstream House conservatives wanted, and they really don't care very much whether Barack Obama's approval rating is at its honeymoon peak of around 51%, or if it's fallen to around 48% (post-gun bill), 46% (after the Senate passed immigration), or 41% (now). Now, if Obama was at 70% that might scare a few moderates, but that wasn't going to happen in winter and spring 2013.

Obama's second term legislative agenda was derailed on election night 2012 when Republicans retained the House. After that, it's just been a question of where to find a few productive compromises that work for both parties.

More broadly, it's just not true that Congress, or even one chamber of Congress, can only do one thing at a time. Even when the bills are going to go through the same committees, it's actually perfectly possible for two or more bills to advance through the process together. Sure, small delays are possible if two bills reach the exact same stage at the exact same time, but usually that's not the case. The more likely explanation for the delay in the immigration bill -- just as with the ACA in 2009 -- is that it takes time for Congress to work its way through complex, contentious bills.

Pass it along: gun safety probably had no effect at all on the rest of Barack Obama's second term.

Read Stuff, You Should

Happy Birthday to Alessandra Torresani, 26. Caprica was pretty much a mess, and the acting wasn't a strength, but I mostly liked her. Also, I haven't watched "Husbands," and I'm pretty sure that I'm supposed to have watched it.

Some good stuff:

1. Irin Carmon on those shoes, those shoes.

2. Why California's exchanges may be more effective at cost control than most, from Sarah Kliff --- very useful context for everyone linking to CA stories last week.

3. Jared Bernstein on Jason Furman, reported to be the next Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers.

4. Alec MacGillis on the NRA.

Monday Cranky Blogging 2

Yes, yes, Maureen Dowd, but everyone already got there before me, pointing out that presidents cannot, in fact, wave a magic wand or say magic words or whatever and get Members of Congress to do anything they want.

I'm not sure if have all of them, but: Seth Masket is excellent. Kevin Drum made some good points (I'd quibble with him about party leaders vs. backbenchers, but he's right about the presidency). Jamelle Bouie is always very good on this issue. From a reporting point of view, Robert Costa makes the useful observation that Obama was already doing the best thing he could have in order to get Republican votes. All very good, and makes anything I'd add at this point pretty superfluous.

What I think needs some additional analysis, though, is this bit: "After the Newtown massacre, he and his aides hashed it out and decided he would look cold and unsympathetic if he didn’t push for some new regulations."

I think that's where any real analysis of this episode has to start, really. It's what Josh Kraushaar in his piece on how "Obama misread the politics of gun control," which centers, contra Dowd, on just how difficult it was going to be to pass anything, in large part because of the specific Senators who would be needed and their electoral incentives.

The question remains, however: what should Obama have done? He could have, as he did after Gabby Giffords was shot, just said nice things in a speech, instead of asking a bunch of politicians for a very tough vote. But that would have had costs, too. See, not only does Obama not have the power to demand votes from Members of Congress, but he also doesn't have the power to shut up those who wanted a big push for a bill. And it would have been an extremely awkward position for Obama, to say the least, to appear indifferent to a bill moving through the Senate -- and I think it's certain that Dowd and others would have lit up Obama even worse if he had taken a fully hands-off position.

The truth of this story is found somewhere in the middle, I should think. Those arguing that Obama had little influence are stretching, in my view: had Obama not taken the lead, I doubt a bill would have reached the floor of the Senate. The president was able to push for a legislative response, and my sense from the reporting is that he was able to strongly influence the nature of the response (expanded background checks, rather than an assault weapon ban or some other idea). He was part of the reason the bill got as far as it did. That partial success, in turn, may mean that there's a much better chance of passing something similar at some point in the future. That's not a bad several weeks worth of work, to tell the truth.

Does that mean Obama made the right choice? It's very hard to judge these things, especially with limited information. But, as all of those linked at the top point out, assessing any of it depends, to begin with, on a realistic idea of what the president's options are, and what his influence is.

What Mattered This Week?

Ugh. What didn't matter this week?

I suppose a lot of this is in the we-don't-know-yet category. Of course, the events in Boston and in Texas certainly mattered to the people involved. Whether they matter beyond that...well, we'll be getting tighter security at sports events for a long while, at least. But we're yet to know any larger importance for the marathon bombings.

As for the Texas explosion, was it a sign of lax regulation and more to come unless there are changes? Or was it a freak event?

And then there was everything else that happened this week. To tell the truth, I'm still catching up, so I don't even know much about anything that wasn't in the headlines or in my particular radar.

So I'll leave it all to you. What do you think mattered this week?

Elsewhere

It's basically a rerun, but over at PP today I argued that, yes, political responses to things such as the Boston bombings are not only justified, but actually quite patriotic.

Yesterday, I poked at Boehner a bit, saying that his current position on budget procedures is the correct one.

And earlier, I reacted to the demise of the gun bill and talked about what comes next, and had a companion piece on how the gun fight might (or might not) lead to Senate reform.

That's it for now. With any luck, I'll have a baseball post later, and there's plenty more Watergate to come. I don't know about you all, but I'll be happy to get my focus onto baseball over the weekend.

Read Stuff, You Should

Happy Birthday to Tim Curry, 67. Hey, I did not realize that he was involved in "Clone Wars." Anyway, mainly because he was in the sadly underappreciated "Oscar."

Not sure that anyone is interested right now with the Boston manhunt going on, but there's always good stuff:

1. More from Sarah Binder on the gun bill and the 60 vote threshold. Excellent, of course.

2. Matt Yglesias on low-skill immigrants and the principles involved in immigration policy.

3. And John Patty on the gun vote.

Without the Filibuster?

I mostly want to call everyone's attention to two excellent posts, by Brian Beutler and by Ryan Grim, which take seriously a key fact about the gun bill consideration: simple majority votes on amendments would have not only allowed Democratic amendments to pass, but would also have allowed Republican amendments to pass. In particular, the Grassley substitute, backed by the NRA, received 52 votes. But I'll do a little speculation and thinking about reform options from where they leave off.

As they both point out, in a simple-majority environment, things might have been different. It's absolutely possible that Democratic defectors might have been willing to hang with mainstream Democrats if their votes were needed -- any whipping on amendments surely went into the close Democratic amendments, not the GOP items.

This is not, in and of itself, a reason to oppose Senate reform in general, or even a majoritarian Senate in particular. But as I said before the bill came up: reformers should be clear what they want.

For example: in a Senate with very loose controls on what bills and amendments come to the floor; with one tightly disciplined (or ideologically rigid) party; and with simple majority voting on everything, then the tightly disciplined party might do very, very, well over time. Even when it's in the minority, even when it's in a fairly significant minority, that party shouldn't find it hard at all to get its way on many, and maybe most, bills.

Moreover, that minority party would have strong incentives to act as tightly disciplined as it could. After all, in a 55/45 Senate, if the minority can figure out something that can pick off six majority party Senators, they get to win as long as they all hold together. And as long as there are loose controls over the floor, they can design whatever they want with that goal in mind.

The obvious recourse for the majority, in that situation, is to eliminate opportunities for the minority to offer amendments. Otherwise, they risk simply get repeatedly rolled by any smart minority willing to hang together.

In other words, it's very easy for reform, once it starts, to wind up where the House has wound up -- with a majority party quasi-dictatorship.

Again: that doesn't mean one should oppose reform. But anyone who thinks that majority party rule in which the minority cannot participate meaningfully in governing, including offering alternatives which can receive votes, is some sort of obvious democratic system is overlooking some very real problems with that kind of system.

At the same time, anyone who is happy with a status quo which requires an arbitrary 3/5 supermajority for everything, and thinks that such a system is obviously the democratic one, is at least just as wrong if not more.

What remains unclear is whether it's really possible to get a third alternative -- one that gives the minority party meaningful participation, and which allows intense minorities (whether they are partisan minorities or just minorities on some issue) to have real chances to succeed against indifferent majorities.

To be sure, there are reasonable arguments in favor of majoritarianism and against that third alternative, but in my view they are losing arguments (as are those favoring the 60 vote status quo). But if it isn't possible to design the third alternative, then it doesn't really matter whether the theoretical arguments hold or not.

Still, I think the arguments about democracy are important and worth keeping at center stage during these debates. It's simply not true that democratic theory would consider a pure majority-party-run Senate to be necessarily the most democratic. You can argue it, but you need to do so, from where I'm sitting.

Manchin-Toomey and the Filibuster

The background checks portion of the bill will be defeated today. It was being added as an amendment to the bill, and under a consent agreement all amendments needed 60 votes; it's not going to get there.

Some notes:

1. The correct thing to say about this is that the amendment was defeated by filibuster. It's a little tricky, but that's the essence of it. The UC agreement under which the amendment (and all amendments to this bill) is considered requires 60 votes; that's agreed to in order to avoid a cloture vote, which is necessary because of the standing GOP plan to filibuster everything. It is wrong to say that "Senate procedure requires 60 votes." Senate procedure only requires 60 votes in case of filibuster. Which, under current conditions, means in virtually all cases. Manchin-Toomey is defeated by filibuster.

2. All that said: anything that gets only four Republicans wasn't going to win in the House. Right now the House is split 232-201. Four Republican Senators is 9% of GOP Senators; the same percentage in the House would be 20 Republican votes, which means a tiny majority in the totally unrealistic case that every Democrat voted for the bill. So there's a very good chance there isn't even a simple majority in the House. Which wouldn't be close to enough: for Republicans to be willing to take up the bill at all, most mainstream conservatives would want the bill to come up (although not necessarily be willing to vote for it). That's simply not going to happen on a bill that gets 4 of 45 Republican Senators.

3. It's also important to remember that Manchin-Toomey is one of a series of possible provisions in an overall bill, and that filibuster rules also protect the majority to some extent. The 60 vote threshold that's blocking Manchin-Toomey may be necessary to prevent poison pill amendments from being adopted. Indeed, knowing that it takes 60 to get anything into the bill should change the opponents' strategy: instead of trying to design an amendment that would get a majority and then lead to the majority party abandoning the bill, the opponents may simply design amendments that will lose but supply votes which can be exploited later on.

4. Note that in the House, governed as it is by strict majority party rule, the majority party doesn't have to worry about popular amendments (or bills) that they don't want; they simply refuse to allow votes on them.

5. It is not entirely clear that a majority party rule system in which popular amendments and bills do not receive any vote at all, even if they would get a majority of the full chamber, is more democratic than a system in which everyone can force votes on any bill or amendment, but it takes 60 votes for passage. It's not even totally clear that a chamber in which every amendment and bill could always get a simple-majority vote is more democratic (because of the poison pill problem, and more generally because of unstable "majorities" on issues), but that may be irrelevant because in practice it's hard to get that middle ground.

Catch of the Day

Dave Weigel notes the underreported fact that Frank Lautenberg hasn't been healthy enough to vote for some time now, and that his missing vote could scuttle the gun bill. And that this matters, in part, because the Senate did not adopt the flipped responsibility on cloture -- one of the relatively minor reforms that was proposed but rejected in January was changing the cloture rules from 60 votes needed for cloture to 41 votes needed to prevent cloture.

Now...on the other hand, I'm really not convinced that it's going to matter in this case. A bill (or key amendment) that can't get 6 Republicans (assuming all 54 other Democrats vote and vote for the bill, which is hardly certain) is probably doomed in the House, anyway. If I had to speculate, I'd guess that the gun bill needs at least 10 of the 45 Republican Senators to stand a decent chance in the House. Although I suppose there's a possibility, for example, that a Senator could vote against Manchin-Toomey but still vote for cloture on the final bill...the final bill probably needs strong support to have a chance in the House, but perhaps there may be important votes that really need "only" 60.

Still, the logic of 41 to sustain cloture vs. 60 to defeat it is awfully strong...although there's no particular reason that the rules on this should be, well, logical. After all, the 3/5 standard is arbitrary to begin with -- there's a logic of sort to supermajority, but not really for this particular supermajority. Also: remember that switching to 41-to-sustain would not lead to any other particular burden for the minority; in particular, it wasn't going to lead to surprise cloture votes to try to catch the minority with Senators too far from the Senate floor to vote.

At any rate: nice catch!

Sunday Question for Liberals

On the gun bill: should Democrats attempt to pass whatever they can, no matter how little, as long as it's marginally better than the status quo -- or should they give up on it if it's not substantive enough? If the latter, what would constitute enough?

What Mattered This Week?

It appears that Sri Srinivasan is probably going to be confirmed to the DC Circuit, or at least he made it through a hearing without any real sign of trouble. That matters. If it turns out that Barack Obama is about to appoint people for the other three DC Circuit spots, that would matter too, but it hasn't happened yet, so I guess a rumor of it isn't quite all that. Also, the Senate did confirm one appeal court judge. All of that matters.

I'm not yet convinced that beating the filibuster on the motion to proceed to the gun bill matters.

That's what I have. What do you think mattered this week?

Gun Tea Leaves

The big news late this morning is that the Senate had no real trouble getting to the gun bill, voting 68-31 for cloture on the motion to proceed to the bill -- two Democrats defected and voted against cloture, but a whopping 16 Republicans defected and supported cloture.

So they're on the bill.

Which hardly means the bill will pass, or beat back future filibusters. The Manchin-Toomey compromise needs to be adopted as an amendment; that's going to need 60 votes, and is apparently the first thing they're going to work on. Then Republicans may attempt poison pill amendments that would, if they pass, lead mainstream Democrats to abandon the bill. It's also possible that liberals could attempt to attach amendments that, if they pass, might make the overall bill too strong for moderates from both parties to support it.

And don't think that just because Senators were reluctant to filibuster the motion to proceed -- to keep the Senate from working on the bill at all -- that they'll be equally reluctant to block a vote on final passage.

And yet...as I said earlier, this bill doesn't die by Senate filibuster. Oh, that might be the immediate cause of death. But it really doesn't matter. Any bill that can't win the support of 60 Senators is absolutely, positively, dead in the House of Representatives.

The thing to remember is that the House is almost certainly incapable of legislating. The talk out there about the House producing its own bill...I suppose anything is possible, but it's almost certainly not going to happen on guns (and almost certainly won't happen on immigration, either). Realistically, if we're to get a bill, it almost certain is the Boehner Rule way (as Jonathan Chait noted in an excellent item this morning): it passes the Senate with a large supermajority, and then passes the House with mostly Democratic votes because Republicans believe the damage to them is larger if they refuse a vote.

To the extent we learned anything from the defeated filibuster on the motion to proceed, then, we learned that there may be at least some hesitation among Republicans about blocking a vote -- which is what Barack Obama has been hitting on from the State of the Union on.

But again: we still don't know that an intact bill can make it to the final vote stage in the Senate; we still don't know if an intact bill can defeat a filibuster to get to that final vote; we don't know whether the House would take up a bill if it did pass the Senate; and we don't even know whether a bill could get a majority in the House even if they did take it up. So there's a long, long, ways to go. What happened today was the easiest part.

The Filibuster Can't Defeat Gun Control

Today seems to be Beat Up on Harry Reid Day. Dan Savage:

Republicans regard first and second graders as expendable. Wish Dems felt the same about the filibuster.

And, sure, might as well quote Wil Wheaton:

@fakedansavage I wonder if people sending thousands of post cards that say "I told you so" to Harry Reid would get movement on reform?

Justin Green notes that Reid has threatened majority-imposed Senate reform over judges, but:

But if you're a liberal, don't get your hopes up about Reid doing the same thing to get a vote on gun control.

The why is easy: many of the Senators who are softly in favor of a vote on gun control really don't want to have to actually take that vote. In other words, a red-state Democrat is fine saying she supports the idea of talking about passing stricter gun laws, provided she doesn't have to cast the vote. The filibuster allows her to say one thing while not having to act on that position. 

This is all...well, it's all beside the point.

If you care about substance, then what matters here is getting something that can pass the Senate, pass the House, and get signed into law.

And the filibuster basically has nothing to do with that. You need something that (1) Barack Obama is willing to sign; that (2) John Boehner is willing to support -- or at least willing to put on the House floor with the knowledge that it has the votes; and that (3) can get 60 votes in the Senate.

For bill after bill after bill, and almost certainly including gun legislation, there is nothing that fulfills conditions (1) and (2) without also being able to fulfill condition (3). That is, anything that can get through the House and that the president is willing to sign will get at least 60 votes in the Senate. The filibuster doesn't matter.

Now, as far as reluctance to change filibuster rules...it is true, as Green says, that there are plenty of times when Democrats don't want to vote on something. But I really don't think that's what's going on here. Indeed, while it's true that politicians may not always see it that way, the truth is there's probably not very much difference in electoral terms between voting on a bill and voting on cloture; any decent media consultant can surely make an attack ad on the latter as easily as on the former. The main reason that Senators want to preserve the traditional Senate is because it gives individual Senators considerable influence; the secondary reason is because partisan incentives include the fear of what the other party will do when they are in control. I think efforts to duck votes are really far behind those reasons. After all, a more party-run Senate would be better, not worse, at limiting floor votes to only what the majority party wants to vote on -- as a quick look at the House can confirm.

The reason that Harry Reid is more interested in nomination reform than legislative reform right now is very simple: there's no divided government on nominations (since the House isn't involved), and so reform would actually make a substantial difference. On legislation, switching to a majority party dictatorship in the Senate would make little if any difference, so the incentives for doing it are tiny.

I realize that those who want gun legislation don't trust Harry Reid (who is rarely with them on these issues). But this has nothing to do with Reid. It has everything to do with the context of divided government.

Sunday Question for Liberals

Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the legislative progress on guns and immigration?

Read Stuff, You Should

Happy Birthday to Jason Segal, 33. It was really nice to have the Muppets come back, I thought.

And a bit of good stuff:

1. Andrew Rudalevige takes a closer look at exactly what Barack Obama did on guns this week.

2. Ezra Klein is looking for discharge petitions to make the House work. I don't think that's going to happen.

3. And Carah Ong at the Miller Center has been looking through the oral histories for Inaugural stuff. This one is brilliant:

Well, first thing that happened, they got in deep do-do with Speaker O’Neill and they never recovered the whole four years. Hamilton Jordan also got cross-wise with the Speaker. After a while, [Frank] Moore hired Bill Cable and Dan Tate, who were Hill people. Great guys, perfect, but they should’ve been brought in at the start. He didn’t hire anybody. He was just going to do it himself. He didn’t return a phone call from Tip O’Neill and he didn’t get him all the tickets he wanted for the inaugural and Tip never ever let him off the hook. He couldn’t get in Tip O’Neill’s office; he was barred. Congressional relations barred! So when we got up there we never had any contact with him whatsoever, none. In the two years, I never saw Frank Moore. And I don’t think any of the Republican Senators or staff—I think they’d tell you the same thing. I don’t know where they were. But I think that was part of Carter’s problem, obviously.

Sunday Question for Conservatives

What, if any, compromise do you think Republicans in Congress should make on gun control issues?

Elsewhere: Kerry, NRA, More

I have one up at PP arguing that the best strategy for those who want to fight gun violence is to ignore the NRA.

At Greg's place today, my post says that it's probably a reasonable risk for Barack Obama to open up John Kerry's Senate seat. It's not clear yet whether that seat has a chance of taking a large bite out of the old, old, Senate, however.

Last night after the demise of Plan B I talked about where that leaves John Boehner -- and the fiscal cliff. Seriously: one thing that about half the commenters are missing is that it's always been the case that a final deal will get the votes of about half of House Republicans, not almost all of them. And it was always going to need, and get, half or more of the Democrats. It's always been the case, and it is now the case, that both John Boehner and Barack Obama have to support the final deal (and almost certainly the case that Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Mitch McConnell would support it). It's sort of irrelevant whether there are also plans that can get through the House only to die.

And, fine, it's a fairly boring issue, but yesterday I noted the success of a new program to get presidential candidates to plan early for the transition.

Read Stuff, You Should

Happy Birthday to Martha Johnson, 62. Allmusic rates Danseparc higher than Metro Music...I think that's right. An excellent band at their best.

Meanwhile, lots of good stuff:

1. Gun control: the Australian experience. Will Oremus reports.

2. Conor Friedersdorf argues that Barack Obama should be more intent on rewarding original opponents of the Iraq War -- in order to establish a better incentive structure the next time around.

3. Dan Drezner: against bubbles.

4. People get stuff wrong. Especially when there's a lot going on. It's a thing. People should know about it. From Colbert King.

5. Speaking of which...a really smart post about the fiscal cliff  negotiations, or at least the reported negotiations, from Matt Yglesias.

6. And here comes the ACA. Sarah Kliff has details.

Guns and Strategy

I strongly recommend Jonathan Chait's largely pessimistic view (from the point of view of those who want legislation) of the chances of getting anything restricting guns in any way whatsoever through the House. And if that's correct -- if conservative Republicans remain dead set against anything at all -- then there's almost nothing Barack Obama can do about it (see, too, David Frum's view, which points out the possibility that presidential public leadership could easily polarize the debate and therefore backfire).

That said: I wouldn't completely rule out the possibility that legislation of some sort could be passed, and the president does in fact have a role to play in that. Obama should certainly be actively sounding out Republican leaders to see if there's a deal that could be done, either at the beginning of the next Congress or even during the lame duck session. Is it likely that Republicans would be willing to pass something? No. Is it impossible? No, it isn't, and if they're willing, Democratic leaders in Congress and the president should aggressively seek out any areas of agreement that might exist and try to get it done.

If there really is a deal out there, I'd guess that it would have to be done as far from the cameras as possible -- or, at least, it would be done as far from the cameras as Republicans think would help them. Yup, that's right: if something is going to pass, Republicans get an enormous amount of leverage over what it is, how it's written, and how it's presented publicly. Because without them, you have nothing. Obviously, the president and Democrats won't sign on to anything they believe is counterproductive, but among the wide range of items that gun control advocates think might do some good, it's pretty much up to Republicans -- House Republicans, really -- to pick which ones they can accept. Not only that, but if Republicans demand some (believed by gun control advocates to be) counterproductive items as part of an overall bill, they'll almost certainly get them as long as the bill, overall, is better than the status quo.

The president could give every eloquent speech in the book, but it won't make any difference in the short term. There will be a bill if and only if Republicans want one, and if that's the case they'll pretty much have all the leverage as to what's in it. The only things Obama and the Democrats can do is to make it as easy as possible for Republicans to sign on, and to use their legislative and substantive expertise to make sure the bill does everything Republicans would allow it to do. Those are important things!

Of course, the answer might well be that there is no give here; there may be no possible legislation that can pass the House that Barack Obama would sign. If that's the case, then federal legislation for at least the next two years, and most likely at least the next four years, is impossible, and those who want action need to think about what a long-term campaign should look like. Indeed: even if something can pass, the next step would have to require a long-term plan. Would the best strategy focus on the states? The courts? The Democratic Party -- and if so, the presidential campaign, or downballot primaries? General elections? Popular opinion, saving any active legislative campaign the future? Other options? That's a tough question. And even if something can pass now, it's not going to be much, and that means that the "what next?" question will still need to be asked.

As always, two contradictory things about the American political system dictate all this: on the one hand, veto points are real and often simply cannot be overcome, but on the other hand, the political system really is open to democratic political action, as difficult as that may be. The trick is to accept the reality of the limitations of the system without just giving up, since the opportunities for relatively small groups to influence things is real, too.

Sunday Question for Liberals

In your view, what's the biggest obstacle to gun control? Is it the power of the NRA; the Republican Party; Democratic Party politicians who are overly scared of the NRA; the preferences of the American people; the political system in general; or some other obstacle?