This is a good taxonomy and a good status report. What strikes me, as someone who is not following it closely, is how the "most avid supporters" are such weak advocates - suffering from bad negotiating, bad messaging, and inept leadership. A pathetic super-minority is running circles around them.
Transportation is a third rail (lol) b/c 80% of Americans, Reps & Dems, want the fantasy of “roads everywhere, no taxes” to persist, even though it’s mathematically impossible.
Definitely, but Oregon also over constrains things with Constitutional restrictions, local funding formulas, trucks vs cars, patchworks of fees and taxes, federal matching games etc. If this isn't a signal that it's time to burn it all down, I don't know what is. *Leadership* should understand this.
I'm very much an outsider on transportation issues, but just looking at this misbegotten process, it appears to be an astonishing failure of D legislative (and executive?) leadership.
I'd agree, for sure. But the special session dysfunction is rooted in disastrous regular session leadership that already gave the game away. Seems like they should have learned a lesson or two, but here we are.
Agree about lack of leadership but I wonder how much is chicken and egg. If we managed a transportation package, would we be saying Dem leadership was bad this session. Maybe, I don't know enough. But ODOT is so messed up, there wasn't a bill anyone could be excited about
This is an extreme case of actions and values in total dissonance, because we've been lied to about our transportation system for decades. We're expanding freeways and trying to reduce emissions. We know now we finally are waking up to the lie.
Don't disagree with the larger point that reality sucks. It's also important to note that, based on what I've heard from some legislative wonks, this legislation was cooking for 2 YEARS, with significant drop deadlines attached and it seems the supermajority D leadership utterly bungled it.
Working for 2 years and still not coming up with "a bill anyone could be excited about" is kinda foreshadows the result. A HUGE leadership problem.
This is what I'm getting at though- what leadership could have made people excited about what bill? Dem transportation is split between suburban voters who want freeway expansions and urban voters who do not. It's no surprise 2 years of effort resulted in a MASSIVE tax increase that /
tried to be everything to everyone. It's no surprise we can't find a "compromise", because the two sides are fundamentally at odds. I guess there is leadership that could whip votes like an LBJ, or lead with a charisma and vision (like a who?), but that is a tall order, not a failure. /
If there's no global compromise to be had, then either break things into smaller pieces or blow the whole thing up. I dunno - this is far outside of my area of interest, but I could see a rural package, a suburban package, an urban package, and a full-blown tax and fee and accountability overhaul
Or else at the very least: fix the quorum, cut some deals, jam the Rs, primary some Ds.
IMO the failure is less internal Dem caucus issues and more the same malaise, lack of ambition, and helplessness that has infected the party at a national level. I don't even know what saving it would look like- even someone like Obama, a singular talent, was an utter flop.
IMO the legislators working on this bill (including Pham, who is my Senator and I think is the best in the chamber) for two years bungled it- a massive tax increase was DOA for Republican votes and would have led to major suburban losses next year.
I think you’re right. Very hard for leadership to work with some who see better transit as an essential part of the future and another that proposes cutting funding completely - and all it takes is one to blow things up.
On transportation (and probably housing as well) there is a much wider variety of viewpoints than one might think within a single party. The result is having a supermajority actually becomes an impediment if the minority party is content to sit back and let majority party struggle.
it’s a big problem that the “most avid supporters” have to focus on winning over marginal legislative votes who are pretty ambivalent about if this should pass at all and very scared about new taxes (not really a good or well supported view imo but that’s where we are)