Do me a favor and look at the roll call of the House vote on the Iraq supplemental. You should see the name Harman on this list of ‘Nays’. She’s right there between Hare and Hastings (FL) and it’s pretty clear that the House clerk recorded her vote as a ‘no’. Maybe that is some kind of clerical error, or maybe Jane has forgotten how to vote, but it seems to make a mockery of Smokin’ Joe Klein’s point here:
I was wrong, sadly, last week to say that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama would vote for the Iraq supplemental bill. They voted against. As readers here know, I would have voted for the bill. Voting against it means you’re in favor of a precipitous departure from Iraq…
…Yesterday I spoke with Congresswoman Jane Harman (D-Ca.) just back from Iraq, who voted for the bill–as did a majority of Democrats who are not running for President. “Look, I would love to have cast a vote against Bush on this. We need a new strategy and I hope we can force one in September,” she told me. “But I flew into Baghdad on a troop transport with 150 kids, heading into the field. To vote against this bill was to vote against giving them the equipment, the armor they need. I couldn’t do that.”
Like I said, maybe there is a clerical error, but right now the official tally shows that Harman could indeed ‘do that’. As for Klein’s other point, Obama and Hillary voted ‘nay’ for the same reason that many of their colleagues voted ‘yes’. They have no balls. But, unlike their colleagues, they got the vote right.
Contrary to Klein’s childish assessment, a nay vote on this bill wasn’t a vote for a ‘precipitous departure from Iraq’. It was plainly and simply a vote against funding the war with ineffectual strings attached. It was a vote to hold out for a better bill. Hillary, for example, has made it abundantly clear that she has no intention of making a ‘precipitous departure from Iraq’…far from it. Voting against a no-strings-attached funding bill doesn’t change that and it will only fool the credulous. And, unfortunately for Hillary, she has now opened herself up for charges that she isn’t a serious candidate from the likes of Joke Line.
I wonder if he will correct his column if it turns out that the House clerk recorded Harman’s vote correctly?
Update [2007-5-25 11:30:24 by BooMan]: Joke Line looks like such a dick. Jane Harman did vote against.
“Today’s vote must be seen as a referendum on this President’s refusal to listen to a majority of Americans and a majority of Congress, who want him to end the combat mission and implement the Iraq Study Group’s recommendations on training, counter-insurgency, and enhanced diplomatic and economic efforts in the region.
“I support our troops and I refuse to be manipulated. My ‘no’ vote on the Iraq Supplemental is a vote to move past the fractured politics on Iraq and restore some sanity and bipartisanship as Congress confronts the serious threats of the 21st century.”
Joe Klein is such a tool.
