“Today, Senators who voted for cloture are going to vote against the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. And when Lincoln Chafee, Maria Cantwell, Herbert Kohl, Blanche Lincoln, and Jay Rockefeller, as well as all the others run for re-election, they can say, “Look, I said ‘No.'” But that “no” matters so little as the very issues they say caused them to vote that way – the power of the presidency, abortion rights, the right to privacy, the favoring of corporations – are turned against them time and again. Yeah, they voted against Alito, but there’s a starving, beaten prisoner in Gitmo, a pregnant teenage girl in Nebraska, a coal mining family in West Virginia who are all gonna be the ones fucked because of such cowardly courage. And when they say they voted against Alito, someone’s gonna be smart enough to say, “Hey, Maria, if it’s such a big fuckin’ deal, why didn’t you join the filibuster?””-from The Rude Pundit.
Howie Opinion: Going to Drinking Liberally last night, it became clear to me that Maria is more like a friend who has let you down from time to time, not a person to bitterly oppose and struggle against. That would be her Republican opponent. That does not mean we hide our differences, particularly as we communicate with her. But I don’t want to give “the enemy” any more ammunition to use against her this fall. I know this is not an opinion that all of us share, but I wanted to clarify my point of view, particularly in the wake of the Alito filibuster vote and QUOTE OF THE DAY (above).
Cross-posted at www.seattlefordean.com and www.howieinsettle.com.
When the shit hits the fan, you know who your real friends are. Well, the shit hit the fan. Where was Maria? Where were the others who voted yes to cloture? I question the utility of such “friends.”
what is cantwell afraid of that murray is not afraid of?
Maria won in 2000 by exactly 2000 votes (my absentee ballot being part of the winning margin). She has a lot to be afraid of, given Ms Gregoire’s extremely close victory last year. Patty Murray by contrast won by a relative landslide. Washington’s Red/Blue divide at the Cascade passes is close enough that Maria has to tread a lot of water to keep from drowning. I was disappointed by her timidity on the Alito business, but its explicable. And don’t forget, had the vote really been close, she would have stood by us. Since it wasn’t, her defection was a freeby.
Forgive and forget. She’s our candidate, and we have to win this one.
I do not understand this:
The vote on Alito was 58 -42.
That is what the vote on cloture should have been.
Her “No” on confirming Alito makes no sense in regards to this:
Then her letter to Susanhu – her “regret” at having to vote “No” but Alito’s opinions concerned her…blah, blah,blah. She comes off as a concerned Democrat who, unfortunately is in the minority. What’s a Dem to do, sigh?
For me, there is a real question about Cantwell’s integrity.
With friends such as Maria, et-al, we have no need for enemies.
Peace
There’s an Ani DiFranco lyric that says, “It’s nice that you listen, it’d be nicer if you joined in, as long as you play that game girl, you’re never gonna win!”
Sorry, I don’t buy into this. She knows the stakes. Her failure to vote no on cloture was cowardly.
As I keep saying, what kind of politician is afraid of an opposition in which the pwezident has a 36%-40% approval rating and the pwezident’s party is rated lower than your own?
Either fight or go home. I’m giving money to Mark Wilson next week when I get paid.
As some of you know, I wrote her a cuople very blunt letters after she voted YES on cloture. This was her response to me:
I have my own comments, but will save them for replies to your other comments here…. plus i’m eating lunch 🙂
This is why I hate investing too much of myself in letters to senators or congresspeople — because they just log them and shoot you out a form letter. And I end up getting pissed at them, even though I knew that’s how the system worked before I wrote the letter.
Dear (Name of Politician)
I am appalled by your (comments/vote/attitude/ignorance on the subject of/apparent indifference to) (insert issue here)!
It is beyond outrage that you, as an elected reprsentative of the people of (insert state or district here) would exhibit such callous disregard for an issue that affects the lives of so many of your constituents, many of whom would be responsible for your being in office in the first place, if it were not for the Diebold company, who, by the way, I am ccing this letter to.
Do not expect any further financial contributions from me (until a day or two has passed and I cool off/for at least a month, I hold a grudge/until I get a form letter from you in response to this communication/in this lifetime)
Sincerely
(Your Name Here)
LOL
Yes I could — and I might just do it!
Unfortunately, when they got it, they would just log it and shoot me out the appropriate response letter. I worked on capital hill responding to constituent mail long ago. I’m under no illusions.
Letters like this used to circulate around the Internet, and offices long before that, where you just set up a form with check boxes and blanks for people who were too lazy to come up with their own, or as satire.
and so on and so forth. You know the drill. In fact I built one of these last year for people to use as a handy-dandy Fill-In-The-Blank Daily Kos Goodbye Cruel World Diary Generator, but regrettably I don’t have the link to it anymore.
My, what a clever response, could have been written by Winston…That pesky cloture vote just went down the memory hole.
Peace
Read my note just below. What if she had been told by her staff that, while some people were hot about the cloture vote, people would be so pleased that she voted NO on Alito?
And what if she sincerely thought the cloture vote was just a doomed effort, and that people would most note her NO on Alito vote?
This response really surprises me Susan. After you comments and clear disappointment and disgust yesterday it’s quite unexpected.
Everything above “We need a more direct way of getting through to her.” is a rationalization, imo, and merely seeks to justify and excuse her actions.
She may well have hundreds of issues on her mind, but I find it difficult, if not impossible, to believe that any of them were as important as a life-time Appointment of a Supreme Court Justice. Further, I do not believe she, nor any of the others who voted for cloture, misunderstood the nature of the vote or it’s consequences.
If you wish to characterize this as a mere misunderstanding based on miscommunication, that is your prerogative. I strongly disagree. This was a calculated attempt by all those who choose to vote YES, before they voted NO.
I have the very same issue with Mr. Salazar, and have not even had the pleasure of a form letter response.
This is poor governance…cya…whatever you care to call it.
Peace
Dada, I’m just trying really hard to think it all through — and hopefully to TRY to look at it from her perspective!
And I chastized myself a bit when I recalled how she REALLY went to bat for me to help save that young woman in Yemen from being executed! Patty Murray’s office gave me the stiff shoulder. Maria’s office not only responded to me, but Maria HERSELF called the State Dept. and insisted they follow through — I even got a personal USPO letter from the State Dept. telling me that they’d been urged by Sen. Cantwell to follow up on this case.
And I have to remember her stirring floor speech AGAINST Gonzales.
And that she replaced one of the most rightwing senators in D.C., just barely winning after weeks of careful, hair-raising absentee ballot counts.
She is not I. I had to try to imagine how she might havee been thinking. I had to give her some benefit of the doubt.
I am STILL thinking this through … but I don’t wish to condemn her forever. I am jost not made that way, no matter what I said yesterday.
.. just, not jost … i have a touch of food poisoning . back to bed for me.
I appreciate your desire not to condemn her forever.
My Republican rep helped me with resolving a confusion and complication with INS/DHS, a potential nightmare – I will be forever grateful. Should I vote for him now?
To rephrase Howie, how important was stopping Alito? How important was senate party unity?
I have often (almost always) voted for someone who is less than the kind of candidate I want. I have opted for party unity and support, struggling with wanting to vote for someone who represents me more closely or voting for someone who might beat the Republican.
Where was Cantwell’s support for her party? She voted aye on cloture from principles? If she can’t support other Dems, why should you or I?
(Hope you fell better.)
program, that scans and sorts the letters, and if they are about Alito, that’s the letter they get.
My #1 thought:
I get the sense that she sincerely thought her vote of NO on confirmation was more important to her constituents than her vote on cloture.
To analyze that, let’s take a basic fact into account first:
Maria Cantwell — in fact, none of the senators — have time in their crazy, non-stop schedules to go on the ‘net and check out even most of the main stories on the blogs, let alone all the thousands and thousands of comments.
So, she didn’t know how revved up we were about cloture.
It was her STAFF’s RESPONSIBILITY to check that out — they saw the phone calls and e-mails and faxes coming in — and to apprise her of how utterly critical people felt the cloture vote was.
What if I were she, and I had hundreds of issues and problems on my mind, and somebody in my office told me that they’d gotten a lot of calls on the cloture vote, but really didn’t get into how DAMN IMPORTANT people felt this was….
She may have been mistakenly advised that while cloture matters to us, her NO vote on Alito would please us even more!
She really thought her NO on Alito would please all of us…. and the cloture was just Senate business delaying the inevitable final vote.
Further, her staff – and certainly the media — could have conveyed to her that only a few hardcore, angry bloggers were HOT about the cloture vote. Surely, if she read Jim VanDeHei’s piece in the WaPo, she would have gotten that distinct impression … and, as I said above, she doesn’t have the time, or didn’t realize the importance, of checking out all the blogs for herself.
We need a more direct way to getting through to her.
We need that all-important meeting with senators like her so we can convey, face-to-face, that we weren’t a rabid blogger minority who pressed this … and how important we found the vote’s symbolic value to be.
And I’d like to work on a meeting like that with her — and with other Senators — and NOT just with the top bloggers like Kos or Armando. They really don’t represent us…. I want the “regular” bloggers like BooMan and others who blogged so intelligently on this, like CabinGirl, to meet with her and other senators.
I plan to discuss this further with mlk19569 — whose largely overlooked diary on a face-to-face meeting between senators and bloggers — got largely overlooked.
Again: Not a bunch of blogger stars only. A group that’s representative of the blogging world.
I’m going to e-mail mlk19569 privately about expanding this idea.
(And I was pleased to see that Nancy Pelosi is calling for the first-ever blogger get-together … but I hope she’s not just inviting the stars … she needs to see a cross-section of the community and to realize just how astute, sane and regular most blog participants are — that they have real jobs and families and homes and common concerns with other U.S. citizens.
Susan, if she couldn’t figure out on her own how important the cloture vote is, does she really have our values?
She’s not my senator and I’m not advocating taking any action against her. I’d rather have a dem than a republican, even if the dem is flawed.
But I don’t see any point in making excuses for them.
I can’t agree. This was one of those times to hang tough.
The vote that mattered – the one that would have made a difference – was the vote on cloture.
I watched a charade of a two party system – meaningless theater.
The letter Susanhu received is beyond offensive and demeaning – it is obfuscation which depends on the recipient being politically ignorant and/or unaware of what really happened.
Imo, that is worse than a wing nut’s rant.
I am so very, very frightened of this out-of-control president. Monday’s vote did something to me. I don’t know if it opened my eyes to the void we call our government or broke another piece of my hope.
Maria is not my friend.
– the one that would have made a difference – was the vote on cloture.
I watched a charade of a two party system – meaningless theater.” —tampopo
That’s it in a nutshell, and shall be my opening statement when I fax my two senators to follow up on my call to their DC offices asking them to remove my name from their data base, and this after some 35 years of D political activity. I’m just plain and simply, fed up!
Re: Howie Opinon. Sorry sounds like enabling to me. You don’t have to hate or be bitter toward Maria. You do have to acknowledge the enormity of her decsion. This is one that the Senate can’t undo. Maria needs to be held accountable for her actions. Perhaps her performance during the rest of the session will go a way to off set the damage she helped to cause. It had better be stellar from a progressive point of view.
.
Especially read the long thread of added comments and views expressed! ≈
Senate Clears the Way for Alito Confirmation
Senate voted, 72 to 25, to shut off debate and hold a vote on confirmation Tuesday morning.
Samuel Alito walks into the office of Senator MariaCantwell (D-WA) on Capitol Hill early Monday morning.
Jason Reed/Reuters
● Cantwell’s campaign gets boost from a high-profile colleague
Sounds like Maria Cantwell hired the wrong staffers, or made a very politically calculated vote on cloture, her aye. Based on my own values and political instinct, I wouldn’t rely on staffers what my vote would be. I see no rational difference in voting aye for cloture and have a nay registered in opposition to the Alito appointment. I just don’t get it, especially as a Kennedy and Kerry apparently went for the filibuster.
Maria Cantwell did not just let her grassroots supporters and the active blogcommunity down, she left her party members emptyhanded in the cloture vote. A party split on such a major issue cannot be expected to offer leadership in running a nation.
“But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
“Instinct” ?
She got beat by Rich White Guy in the ’94 congress debacle – a debacle that was outta the blue for the blues in charge … ummmmmm … what kind of leadership is that?
She barely beat Slade the rich boys friend with a tepid timid crappolla campaign in 2000.
All of these misteps, IMHO, cuz she has swallowed too much of this conventional wisdom DLC crap that if we do anything, the thugs will lie, the “middle” will get scared, and we will lose.
Uh – reality check – the thugs will lie no matter what we do, the “middle” is scared for their dismal future and is feed up with and is sick of everything in politics, AND,
effective message needs NO bearing on reality
have bush and raygun have proven over and over and over.
Maria is part of hte DC Dem establishment that is either too politically incompetent to create winning message (uhh… we have the fucking truth on our side, how come we ain’t got soundbites better than thug soundbites? ) or too incompetently corrupt to do what it takes to win …
BUT, they are in charge of the tens of millions of dollars burned up every 2 years for more of this crap,
AND
I have been listening to this “well, a loser Dem is better than a thug” for 25 years of LOSING.
to hell with her.
rmm.
I hope the Dems win back the Senate in ’06, and I don’t see how we do that without Maria. I also certainly disagree strongly with her “no regrets” position on the Iraq war vote and would have preferred she voted for cloture. You may recall Maria voted against Roberts unlike Murray, who voted for him. A Senator’s voting record on a particular issue important, but I think one needs to weigh these things against the importance of keeping the seat in the Democratic hands and decide if it’s really worth an attempt to “take her down.”
I have been following ongoing discussions for over a year on whether voting for Dems because they are not Republicans is a good enough reason. This is really a dilemma.
You write: I hope the Dems win back the Senate in ’06, and I don’t see how we do that without Maria.
And:A Senator’s voting record on a particular issue important, but I think one needs to weigh these things against the importance of keeping the seat in the Democratic hands and decide if it’s really worth an attempt to “take her down.”
Oui made this observation: …she left her party members emptyhanded in the cloture vote. A party split on such a major issue cannot be expected to offer leadership in running a nation.
Cantwell is an unreliable Democrat. You don’t know how she will vote.
It was her letter to Susanhu I found sooo repugnant – it was not honest.
Howie – when I read, at the end of Nov., Norman Orstein’s (of the American Enterprise Institute) concern about Alito’s opinion on the role of Congress and his belief that Alito was not a good choice, it got me very scared.
How could Cantwell vote “No” for confirming Alito and not support efforts to filibuster? It makes no sense to me.
Empty gestures and posturing – meaningless theater – with a lifetime appointment.
Well the “no” vote on cloture, put against the “no” vote on Alito does raise the question: Why? This is a question I would like Maria to address. However, I don’t think you can call Maria any more unreliable than a lot of others, including Patty Murray (who I really like most of the time), who voted FOR Roberts as I said. It boils down to how important is the filibuster issue compared to many other votes and issues past, present and future. If you are going to go after all Dems who don’t vote with the other Dems on a particular issue, we are going to have a helluva time beating back the rovians and picking up seats in Congress. At least Maria didn’t kiss The Shrub, though I doubt that’s any consolation to you.
But there is a key difference between Roberts and Alito. Roberts was replacing Rehnquist so we were swapping a conservative for a conservative. Hence there was a lower standard for the Democrats to apply. It would have made little sense to filibuster Roberts and it even made little sense to worry about voting yes or no. With a republican president the best we could ever hope for was maintaining the status quo. While it would have been nice if Bush would have nominated a liberal to replace Rehnquist it wasn’t going to happen. Roberts maintained the status quo so a yes vote is not a disaster. Alito on the other hand was replacing O’Connor, the swing vote on the court and the justice who “saved” many a decision on issues that we progressives believe in. A filibuster, if successful, could possibly have forced Bush to nominate more of a moderate. Now I personally don’t believe the filibuster would have succeeded because the dems don’t have the numbers to support a long filibuster. But that’s not the point. The point is why did Maria not get the importance of this.
Howie – I find I am using this thread to thrash out my thoughts – thanks for bringing this up.
It boils down to how important is the filibuster issue compared to many other votes and issues past, present and future.
I am finding the issue that really matters to me in regard to the cloture vote is party unity.
I wrote the following to Susan, but I need to say it again:
I have often (almost always) voted for someone who is less than the kind of candidate I want. I have opted for party unity and support, struggling with wanting to vote for someone who represents me more closely or voting for someone who might beat the Republican.
Where was Cantwell’s support for her party? She voted aye on cloture from principles? That is nonsensical. If Cantwell can’t support fellow Dems, why should you or I?
I live in the backwater city of Spokane. Maria is my senator. I’m 60 years old and have never voted for a Republican in my life and I have never NEVER missed one election.
I will not vote for Maria Cantwell this coming election. I would honest to God rather vote for a Republican. Fuck Maria Cantwell. She has not brains .. she has no compassion she has no soul.
oh .. and just once more .. Fuck Maria Cantwell!
jeez .. that really feels good. /fuck maria cantwell.
fuck maria cantwell fuck maria cantwell fuck maria cantwell fuck maria can’t well maria can’t well can’t well well well well can’t well
..ok .. I made myself a cup of hot cocoa and now I feel lots better. I promise never to vote for a Republican ever as long as I live.
whew! mahalo.
I’m in California. I won’t go out of my way to support Maria Cantwell. But I don’t think that I would actively campaign for her defeat either.
I’m all for Democratic housecleaning, but I think we need to focus our efforts.
First things first – let’s get rid of that whining turncoat Joe Lieberman. Let’s make him our blogosphere project – he’s just done too much bad shit, and not nearly enough good.
I mean, here in California, we have Dianne Feinstein. I’m not crazy about her. But though she’s done some things I really disagree with, she’s also come through on other issues that I care deeply about. She voted against Gonzales, and she voted against cloture. So there’s no way I’m gonna support Cindy Sheehan or something whacky like that in her case.
Lieberman, on the other hand? I think defeating Lieberman is a project all of us can get behind.