The “them” of my title is the “Democratic Leadership” who have taken impeachment off the table, bowed down to George Bush and kissed his royal hiney before approving all his funding requests for the Iraq war, and expanded the President’s power to spy on Americans based on a White House campaign of manufactured, and bogus, fearmongering regarding a terrorist threat aimed at Washington, among other failures (Resolution to condemn Moveon.org, anyone?). But it isn’t just their timidity, their refusal to display any guts at all, in failing to actively and consistently oppose the most unpopular President since Nixon that has rightly earned them our opprobrium. It’s also their frank and open disdain for liberals and progressives of all stripes, the same people who support them with money, campaign volunteers and votes, which is making many Democratic supporters question why we voted for these people last Fall.
On October 10th, we had Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi complaining that liberal activists peaceably protesting outside her office and residence couldn’t be arrested for loitering. Well, today, it’s Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s turn to say STFU, not only to the little people (i.e., you and I) but also to one of his own, Senator Chris Dodd:
Tim Starks of Congressional Quarterly reports that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) plans to bring the Senate’s surveillance bill up for floor debate in mid-November. That’s despite the hold that Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) plans to place on the measure — something first reported by Election Central’s Greg Sargent.
So when is a hold placed on legislation by a United States Senator not a hold? When Harry Reid decides to cave in to the Bush administration and the Telecom lobby, that’s when. Normally, as one of Jane Hamsher’s contacts on Capitol Hill states, you don’t see a Senate Majority Leader screwing over one of his own party’s Senators, but then I suppose these aren’t “normal” times:
“I can’t think of one time when Harry Reid went around his own. It’s just not normal for a leader to do that to his own side. Sometimes you’ll go around Republicans, sometimes they’ll use holds to be “spoilers,” but that happens to the other guy. You just don’t do it to one of your own.”
You just don’t do it to one of your own. Well, until now that is. I guess Chris Dodd finally knows how I feel this morning regarding those “stalwart defenders of our freedoms,” Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and their various henchmen (Steny Hoyer, anyone?) among the Democratic Leadership. “Stabbed in the back” seems an apt metaphor for that particular emotion, does it not?
I guess 9/11 changed more than we knew. Or maybe it is just highlights the fact that, despite the presence of a few principled liberals/progressives in Congress, the Democrats really are the Party of Republican Lite: All the same disdain for ordinary Americans and the groveling after corporate bribes campaign contributions, without all the nasty eliminationist rhetoric directed toward Blacks, Latinos, Gays, Muslims, abortion providers, small children receiving government health care benefits and the husband of Terry Schiavo. No bitter aftertaste, in other words, but the same damn hangover.
Maybe it’s time to check out the local Green party in your district. Because, if Hillary Clinton is elected President, which most of our elites already assume to be a “done deal,” I won’t have any viable reason to support Democrats. Ms. Clinton won’t push a progressive agenda when in office, she’ll triangulate her way around her term in that office with the advice of her family’s loyal retainers. And Congressional Democrats will just follow her lead. Maybe not as faithfully as the GOP herd followed Bush, but well enough so that we still won’t have universal health care by 2012, nor will we likely have withdrawn from Iraq.
I may not support Republicans but I sure can withhold my money, my spare time and dedicated volunteer efforts, and my votes, from Democrats. And frankly, why should we give them the time of day at this point? Not when they continue to spit in the face of their base, of which I am a proud member. At least Bush and the Republicans had the decency to smear and demean their most committed supporters in private, not in the media.
I saw that story first thing this morning too. WTF? Reid only has a spine when it involves thwarting his own party members?
reid has a spine when it comers to defending AT&T, because they give him so much money.
He get’s $5K more from AT&T than rockefeller does, and rockefeller wrote the bill!
I think Reid is a Bush Dog quite frankly. or the Senatorial equivalent.
I don’t know how these things work, but is there some way we can start a campaign to pressure our legislators to dump Reid and Pelosi?
Can more than one Senator put a hold on the same legislation? Should we be pressuring our own Senators? It might be harder for Reid to step over more than one of his fellows.
Don’t get me started Boo. In Michigan, we are faced with a primary that offers two Dem candidates. Guess I’ll have to vote for Dodd as an anti-Hillary vote, cause Edwards and the others are not on the ballot due to some more self inflicted wounds. I am one PO’d Dem right now looking for a group that represents ME. The greens appear to be virtually non-existent in my state. BTW, I still get pleas for $$$ from more Dem organizations and campaigns than ever.
To top it off, My Representative Mike Rogers voted against the Child Health Care bill, saying among other things that he didn’t want the money going to…wait for it..illegal immigrants. If somebody has any thoughts about a direction I might be able to look in, feel free to pass along your thoughts. For now, I’m feeling left out in S.E. Michigan.
Oops, Sorry Steven, forgot to read the by-line!
Maybe children ARE illegal immigrants. Where were their authorization papers when they popped out of the womb?
I have got to start visiting this site less often. It seems like every day, I start the morning by reading Steven or Booman reporting the latest betrayal by the Democratic Party. It’s like fucking clockwork. I could set my watch by the not-so-gentle daily insertion of the knife in my back.
I stood in the rain for hours to vote last time around exactly why? For this bunch of corporatist security state assholes?
For that matter, why the hell did we bother fighting the Cold War if all we were going to do in the end was turn into the Soviet Union?
Fuck them. I wish I had something more constructive to say than that, but it will have to do: fuck them.
It was bad enough just being outraged at the actions of the Repubs and Bush, but in many respects the actions of the Democratic Congressional Leaders have been worse, if only because we expected better of them. Not perfection, but better than this.
Corporatist security state assholes. That’s pretty much right on target.
Aww, why punish us for the sins of the party?
But, seriously, the disillusionment with the party is driving apathy across the board…and that is more bad news for the blogosphere.
Don’t worry, I’m not into shooting the messenger. I’d certainly rather have you give me honest bad news than all the sunshine the MSM keeps blowing up my ass.
Wouldn’t retroactive immunity be the same thing as granting pardons. An except of Ford’s pardon of Nixon:
Now, therefore, I, Gerald R. Ford, President of the United States, pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from July (January) 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“….or may have committed…”
Does Congress now, or did it always, have an equivilant power of pardon to that wielded by a President?
Congress, through its power to pass laws has always had the ability to grant amnesty from legal liability. It isn’t covered by the ex post facto clause of the Constitution since that has been interpreted to apply only to laws that make what was in the past legal illegal, or to increase the penalty for a violation of law. Therefore there is no legal restriction on Congress’ ability to give the telecoms immunity for past bad acts. It is, as you say, the equivalent of a pardon.
thanks for the ex post facto limitation, steven…that one’s been bothering me.
so be it…it’s still wrong.
lTMF’sA
I knew what you meant. And it is wrong, but then we have so many examples of what is wrong in our system. This is just your garden variety crap that has been going on for as long as we’ve had a Congress. Far worse is the failure to impeach in the face of the many clear constitutional and criminal violations by the Bush administration.
At this point that is the only power Congress really has to fight a lawless Executive branch, since we know Bush won’t obey any law he doesn’t personally approve of.
indeed…and impeachment is off the table.
the only conclusion l can come to is that the lawless attitude is shared, nae, embraced, wholeheartedly, by the democRATs as much as BushCo™.
l’ve been an advocate of the concept of question authority for a very long time, and saw a potential for disaster quite clearly back in 1999 when chimpy began his rise to power, but l never anticipated the prospect that it was, or would become, the prevailing modus operandi of the government.
even during the civil rights struggles and the turmoil and unrest of the anti-war movements in the 60’s and 70’s, l always had an inherent belief in the checks and balances built into the system. perhaps l was naive, though l think not.
today, l no longer recognize this country. my cynicism of, and disdain for, the dysfunctional morass that we find ourselves in today is leading me to reevaluate why l stay. l’m weary of trying to answer the queries from people l know in other countries when they ask: why?…why is your government doing this this? why is bush still in office?
l wish to hell l knew.
l am not optimistic for the future given the actions of all involved, and have very deep concerns about the candidates, from both parties, ability, or even desire, to begin to restore and rebuild the foundations of this country.
frankly, 2008’s going to be a make it or get out year for me. there are a lot of options available, until the borders are sealed. it’s not unlikely at this point that 2009 will find me living abroad as an ex-pat. l’m getting too old for this shit.
lTMF’sA
Both parties are in thrall to corporate money. That’s the real problem. Lobbyists just buy up whichever one looks to be the likely winner in the elections. It will continue until we change the way elections are funded.
According to Firedoglake, when Tom Coburn put a hold on Chris Dodd’s Emmet Till cold case bill, Reid let the hold stand and the legislation died.
Why did Harry Reid support a redneck, red-state, rethuglican like Coburn, but he refuses to support a senior member of his own party?
I think Harr Reid needs to stop calling himself “Give ‘Em Hell Harry” and start calling himself “Where’s my Hood Harry”.
Dodd’s gonna filibuster. Good for him. Fuck Harry Reid. he’s a lousy leader, and now we all know why: he puts his contributors before the Constitution.
The only thing shocking about Pelosi and Reid is that YOU are surprised that their ‘values’ don’t match yours.
I have never bought the ‘bought and paid for’ meme. It’s not the money that drives them. What drives them is that they REALLY believe corporations are a power for good in America. The rich and influential are the crowd they hang with, their ‘friends’. Even when no telecom members are at their dinner parties some other corporate type is there to sing a song of corporate interests.
By this time it is no secret what the telecoms have done, anybody paying attention KNOWS they have been helping the government data mine. Why do you think Mark Klein has never testified in congress? He has not testified because congress would be FORCED to act then. They want it to go away, because they AGREE corporations should be able to do this.
In this context Reid is irrelevant. The whole thing is a kabuki. Reid could not possibly take his position unless the democrats as a whole agreed with him. I include Dodd in this kabuki. I can easily be proven wrong. If I am wrong Reid’s ignoring the hold will not work, simply because other senators of `conscience’ will come forward. But of course they will not. They will pass immunity because they believe it is deserved.
Life rule #2; Never EVER listen to what a person says, watch what they DO. In that manner you will see what they really are.
nalbar
There were quite a few people, (myself included), who, in the run up to the ’06 elections, maintained that if the Democratic Party, under it’s current leadership, (and as currently constituted with all those blue dogs and so-called centrists), won majorities in congress that it would be a disaster not only for the party but for the country as a whole because, not only would these new majority leaders suck up to the big money folks while simultaneously cowering in the face of the GOP media-based wingnut propaganda machine, but they would also wind up making the Democratic party co-owner of the entire debacle that is the Bush Regime’s aggressive authoritarian juggernaut against the very foundations of of our country and against the world at large.
And that is exactly what is happening now. I wanted to hope otherwise, but, when Pelosi threw over Murtha in favor of that craven hack Hoyer, that was the clearest sign of all that my hope was a foolish hope.
In early 2004 I was returned from the dead, (literally), after a massive fatal heart attack. And in the spirit of ‘having a second chance at life’, I figured the least I could do later that year was to cast a vote against the dangerous imbecile Bush in an attempt to stop his regime before they did more damage.
But by the time the ’06 elections loomed on the horizon I had already lost whatever dim but hopeful faith I might have had in the Democratic party and the people at the top of it’s power structure. And now, I wouldn’t cast a vote for a single one of these pathetic creatures. Supporting the ‘lesser of two evils’ no longer works for me and it will only bring more tragedy for the country. IMHO
Got to get some progressive folks started in the local level pipeline if we ever want to replace these turds. Forget the national ones — but I think it worthwhile to work on the local ones. Otherwise, more of the same.
Here in South Florida I voted for Ron Klein against the odious Clay Shaw, a longtime gladhanding Repub cretin. Klein won, but, for the moment, so what? If he can’t deliver because hiw own party leadership sabotages true progressive efforts, I’d rather have the GOPs Shaw back in place to pin the responsibility on.
the dodd campaign just issued dodd’s response to reid… he’s willing to go to the senate floor and filibuster… that’s a bold move…
many good points here.
hell, i think he’s the worst president in the last 100 years. just wait to see what happens economically in 2008, it’s gonna be a meltdown. and still the demoRats can’t stand up to him. very discouraging indeed. and this endless war…..clinton will be like nixon with vietnam and iraq-Nam will go on for another 5-7 years.
what i wouldn’t give to see a few hundred thousand people protesting this war in DC, that would change things quite a bit within the democratic party.
what I wouldn’t give… I think that happened in Sept of 05.
Whether to vote, dem, green, or indy was rendered an irrelevant issue by our Constitution, and the electoral college. We are disenfranchised like blacks in the South, prior to the civil rights act, and we need a massive civil disobedience movement with boycotts, and targeting on businesses that fund the war, also anti recruitment efforts.