DADT Repeal (I wish my Exasperation Would Come Through Better)

    I just found out that the US Senate failed to past DADT repeal as part of the Defense funding bill with a vote of 57-40.  That's right, 57% of our elected officials in the Senate were in favor of allowing Gays to openly serve in the military, something that many advanced armies  have done throughout the world without any kind of disruptions to unit cohesion or efficacy.  Were 57% vs 40% of the population to vote for one presidential candidate it would be a landslide of historic proportions.  What kind of world is this when something like this doesn't pass?  It's immoral, and frankly does not bode well for any kind of legislative efficacy in the future. 

    A couple of other blogs have touched upon the subject.  Joshua Bernstein has wondered why Reid would try to bring this to a vote without absolute surety that it would have sufficient votes.  Something that I can understand to an extent but still doesn't address the key issue that something like this is obscenely inefficient and counter-intuitive.  Bradford Plumer over at The New Republic takes the view that this is an example of extreme senatorial malfunction. 

   Hopefully there will be some kind of change to the workings of the Senate that will make it less of a place where legislation goes to die despite receiving a majority of the vote along with holding rather wide public support.  The Senate's rules can be reformed at the beginning of a new session and conceivably at any time Reid could reform the rules regarding filibusters or placing holds with a simple majority vote.  I'm torn between my desire to remove the filibuster (or at least amend it) and my concern that doing so would turn the Senate into a more conservative House.  I say more conservative because the Senate is structurally set up to favor rural states and will often have Senators who were elected under a different political climate than the one that the public currently has.  In a few years I might favor the filibuster of a Republican bill that I oppose just as I'm sure there are a number of Republicans who are really excited about the ability to block Democratic policies.  Still, at the end of the day, I'm tired of having legislation that is clearly popular being blocked because of even the threat of a filibuster.  I'm tired of Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana having the ability to place a hold on a nomination just so she can extort something from the Obama administration.