Hardball partisan lawmaking: Is it a threat to democracy?
Deb Butler yelled it over and over again, her jaw set as though in stone: “Mr. Speaker, we will not yield!”
Standing in a near-empty legislative chamber at 16 Jones Street in Raleigh, North Carolina, Ms. Butler, a Democratic legislator, rose in rage after watching Republicans taking advantage of a large number of absent Democrats to override the Democratic governor’s budget veto.
Her angry stand – captured on a colleague’s cellphone – went viral. But even though she may have added 20,000 Twitter followers last week, the experience left her cold.
“I have become increasingly aware of the fragility of this young experiment called American Democracy,” says Ms. Butler in a phone interview. “It’s terribly unsettling and scary.”
In some ways, Ms. Butler
