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Divided We Stand

Divided We Stand
New book about the 2020 election.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Gridlock?

Critics of the filibuster are calling for its abolition or drastic modification. Cynthia Tucker calls it "a perversion of democratic principles and a recipe for gridlock when critical matters need to be addressed." Such concerns seem overwrought in light of new data from CQ:

President Obama set a new record last year for getting Congress to vote his way, clinching 96.7 percent of the votes on which he had clearly staked a position

That was a bit less than 4 percentage points higher than the previous record, set by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, according to an annual study by Congressional Quarterly