I certainly don’t want to dampen anyone’s enthusiasm for pursuing the defeat of the Alito nomination, but people who haven’t been watching congress for an extended period of time may not realize how much political theater takes place.
One of the best tricks is to vote on both sides of an issue. The Republican’s even have a name for this tactic “catch and release”. A person votes one way on a bill where their vote doesn’t matter and another way where it does. Then when campaigning they can highlight whichever version matches the audience.
The “filibuster” action taking place is a current example. There is no point in Kerry saying he will filibuster when he already knows there aren’t enough votes to sustain it. Let’s assume that I’m wrong and it does work. Then Frist calls a vote on a change of rules to eliminate the filibuster for nominations and Alito gets in anyway.
The real fact is that the Dems have no effective power at present. Devote your energies to changing that.
