James Fallows calls out the Times and others for their buying into the idea that a bill has “failed” after getting a majority of Senate votes with headlines like, “Obama’s Jobs BIll Fails in Senate in First Legislative Test” (Times) and “Obama Loses Big on Jobs Bill” (Daily Beast).
We have gone so far in recent years toward routinizing the once-rare requirement for a 60-vote Senate “supermajority” into an obstacle for every nomination and every bill that our leading newspaper can say that a measure “fails” when it gets more Yes than No votes.
Fallows suggests the headline could have more accurately read, “Obama’s Jobs Bill Blocked by GOP in Procedural Move.”