Reblog: Norm Ornstein

 Incredible perspective from this article about how shifting the whip pressure to the minority on a cloture votes could let minor legislation pass.

Rather than completely eliminate the procedure, Democrats should reform it so that it continues to exist for truly extraordinary circumstances.

Senatorial Rules Ideas

 

Senatorial rules are the worst. They're decided by the majority, so it's always a weird game to try to give the best political situation to the majority. 

My crazy idea is to have rule changes only take effect after 4 years. That way the majority wouldn't senselessly give themselves more power because they might be the minority when the rules come to effect. Emergency rule changes could come into effect immediately with 2/3 of the Senate.

Biden's Cabinet, and how it compares with American demographics

 With Joe Biden's announcement of the most diverse cabinet in American history, I wondered how the demographic breakdown of his cabinet, compared with how much a demographic group should get in the cabinet.

Note this comparison will always be a bit off, because the least members a minority can get while still being represented is 1/16.

OK so here's the demographic data. From the census 

Race	Population (2017 est.)	Share of total population
Total	321,004,407	100%
One race	310,923,363	96.9%
White	234,370,202	73.0%
Black or African American	40,610,815	12.7%
American Indian and Alaska Native	2,632,102	0.8%
Asian	17,186,320	5.4%
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander	570,116	0.2%
Other races	15,553,808	4.8%
Two or more races	10,081,044	3.1%
White and Black or African American	2,657,560	0.8%
White and American Indian and Alaska Native	1,905,946	0.6%
White and Asian	2,057,321	0.6%
Black or African American and American Indian and Alaska Native	319,097	0.1%
Hispanic or Latino (of any race)	56,510,571	17.6%
Mexican	35,709,528	11.1%
Puerto Rican	5,418,521	1.7%
Cuban	2,158,962	0.7%
Other Hispanic or Latino	13,223,560	4.1%
Not Hispanic or Latino	264,493,836	82.4%
White (non-Hispanic)	197,277,789	61.5%
Black or African American (non-Hispanic)	39,445,495	12.3%
American Indian and Alaska Native (non-Hispanic)	2,098,763	0.7%
Asian (non-Hispanic)	16,989,540	5.3%
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander (non-Hispanic)	515,522	0.2%
Some other race (non-Hispanic)	715,432	0.2%
Two or more races	7,451,295	2.3%

Doing some back of the envelope calculation you should have:

    9.84 White Cabinet Member

    2.86 Hispanic Cabinet Members

    2.03 Black Cabinet Members

    0.86 Asian Cabinet Members

    0.16 American Indian Members

    0.32 "Two or more races"

Let's see how that stacks up against Biden's cabinet

Looking at it,  Biden did a pretty good job matching his cabinet to his country