A look at the latest Senate polling shows just how bad things are for the Republicans. Mark Warner of Virginia has a 31 point lead, Tom Udall of New Mexico has a 28 point lead, Carl Levin of Michigan has a 22 point lead, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire has a 14 point lead, and Mark Udall of Colorado and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey have 9 point leads. Non-partisan polling shows Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky clinging to a four point lead and Norm Coleman of Minnesota clinging to a three point lead. Ted Stevens of Alaska and Roger Wicker of Mississippi are in deadheats, and Pat Roberts of Kansas, Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine, and Gordon Smith are polling under 50 percent.
It’s probably a good time to capitulate to Republicans in the Senate so they don’t take advantage of these current strengths.
Email from WA state just now: “Here in Washington State Dino Rossi & 27 other candidates will not ALLOW the word Republican to appear next to their name on the ballot”
And these are the guys the Dems are compromising with?
So is that sarcasm, BooMan? 😉
Exactly. We may as well just give up now.
WHY WHY WHY??? Do you think it’s just corporate interests, since political interests clearly don’t make sense?
I smell blackmail.
What do you think they were gathering with all those taps?
As Angleton said, if we can’t find out what’s going on in our own government, what kind of spies are we?
They’d tap Congress first. Use what they find to blackmail a few bigwigs and then they can get anything they want.
I swear on the grave of J. Edgar Hoover that the intelligence community would NEVER EVER spy on politicians! They would NEVER EVER use their powers to snoop on a politican. Just ask Governor Spitzer!
Wire taps begat blackmail,blackmail begat bipartisanship,bipartisanship begat IWR,on down the line.
All that begatting means that a lot of people got farked…
Correction.They are still getting farked with their mortgages,jobs,wars etc.
Dems Senators…so desperate for attention from a President with 27% approval rating, that’s why. Dem. Senators doing what there daddy W wants them to do like good little children, with no backbone.
It sounds like your Psych 101 Class made a big impression on you. But it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense in the world of politics.
that must have affected you some way..I was just writing it to be a smart-ass. But when does someone with 27% approval rating get what they want??
apparently pretty frequently, if you’re depending on a democratic congress to give it to you…
You know, there ought to be a law that snark be labeled as such.
I would only suggest that it isn’t Bush who’s getting.
This guy is still putting up a fight.
(h/t Spud1 @ kos)
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One of the Greatest Intrusions, Potentially, on the
Rights of Americans Protected Under the 4th Amendment
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."l don’t think it’s as simple as what we’d like to believe…”blackmail”, as lisa puts it.
l’m tending toward the opinion that much of what we’re seeing here, especially re fisa, is fear among the “elites” that their hold on the reins of power and influence are waning, and that there may indeed be consequences for their previous [in]action.
the silver lining in the house vote, is that 128 democrats voted nay v 105 yea…by my calculations that’s 55%. after the 08 elections, with a bit of luck, the number of those in opposition is going to increase; ergo: pelosi, hoyer, reyes, etal power is going to be diminished, perhaps significantly. since they willingly, or stupidly, allowed themselves to be co-opted on this issue, they have to make sure that it resolved prior to the new administration, if for no other motivation than self-preservation. further evidence of this craveness and lust for power if you will, will be even more obvious if pelosi and hoyer allow the odious resolution 362, aka: Iran War Resolution to come to a vote.
this obviously is not well formed yet, and in no way a definitive analysis of what’s going on, but it’s all l’ve been able to come up with so far… just thinking out loud, as it were.
but the timing of these really doesn’t pass the smell test.
dada, you do bring bad tidings. I do too. Your analysis seems close to the basic motive of so many Democrats to support this crap. Capitulations at this stage seems almost meaningless, as the Democrats can now see their way clear to control of the three branches of government. And by extension, the almost certain choice of two Supreme Court judges. So what’s up? Fear? Maybe. But most probably generally not. I don’t dare say it. A lot of Democrats actually believe that the bill is good and necessary, immunity is good, eavesdripping is good, they are standing up for their principles as stalwart defenders of the Republic, believe it or not. There is a very pervese twist in the whole thing because the Constitution is so clear in these matters. Let’s hope that Obama supports Feingold and Dodd to derail the bill. But hope is all he offers because he won’t. The irony is that he may now start to face is Hillary Clinton moment: she was once invincible, too. The repugnants still haven’t officially nominated McSame. I envisage that he’ll be indisposed at the last moment and someone else will be pushed forward at the convention. A general, for instance. Obama is overplaying his hand.
there’s no positive way to spin this. pelosi tried, and ended up coming across, as greenwald put it, as devoid of dignity as…integrity, and hoyer’s trying mightily to spin it as “a significant victory for the Democratic Party”.
it’s all bs. they don’t give a two-penny damn about the constitution, their constituencies, or anyone but themselves.
steve soto, at the left coaster, would have you believe that Telecoms Bought Immunity From House Dems. and if their ethics are for sale for the infinitesimal amounts of $’s he ‘quotes’, then they didn’t have any to begin with.
this is all about maintaining power and control, and if obama’s real, he’ll take them on over this. his capitulation will do extensive damage to his campaign, and will have negative coattails as well.
we shall see whether or not he’s overplayed his hand…if he follows up his statement with an aye vote, it will bite him in the ass.
either way, mccain is going to lay out the meme that he’s “weak on terror”. that the house leadership saw fit to saddle him with this at this time speaks volumes about their principles, or lack thereof.
bottom line: he stands to gain a great deal more by working very hard to make this go away until next year than by acquiesing to this travesty.
as for j-mac, imo, he’ll be the nominee. the RATs have written this election off. just like dole, he’s the old war hero, scapegoat, sacrificial offering. they’ll let him pad his resume, and retire. he won’t run for office again.
Why is this a capitulation to Republicans if the Dems are going to have all this extra spying power in January with their majorities in both houses and Obama in the White House?
The answer, clearly, is that it’s not a capitulation to the Republicans. It’s a capitulation to the NSA and the intelligence community.
Bob, I think you are close.
Capitulation is the wrong word in this instance. Nancy Pelosi voting to make illegal actions retroactively legal is not capitulating. She could have easily blocked this bill if she wanted to. What she has shown is that she wanted the bill. Bush is at 25% approval and the Repubs are on their heels. She wanted unimpeded surveillance powers. She wanted no discovery of past actions that she aided and abetted. She got the bill that she herself crafted. Nothing was compromised with Cheney.
What is obvious is that the political elites from both parties and the corporate elites believe there is no law that governs their actions. They are the law. The rule of law is only for the plebes.
No matter who it is. Their rhetoric will never match their actions. Obama is just showing us how he will act. The difference between his rhetoric and his actions will be night and day. No different than Nancy Pelosi or Hillary & Bill Clinton.
Look Pelosi represents San Francisco. Do you think her FISA vote represents her constituents? But she feels so entrenched and so confident in her re-election prospects that she has no problem shafting her constituents. That’s what it has come to.
Speaking of entrenched. I was on a picket line is SF on Friday. Cindy Sheehan showed up and I don’t think three people noticed her. There is no opposition to Pelosi.
doesn’t matter who it’s a capitulation too..Dems just don’t understand…compromise is a sign of weakness to Republicans.
John McCain will have a field day with this during his campaign. It should be tabled until after the election..why compromise today when tomorrow..after January 2009..the Democrats can write the rules.
It will be interesting to see where they concentrate their resources in the fall. Both for Senate seats and also for the Presidential race. Many of the Senate seats will be written off fairly early. Remember that in 2004, Obama had an exceptionally weak opponent, and this freed him up to campaign for other candidates. I suspect the same thing will happen again – some of the more popular Democrats may be out on the stump in states other than their own.
In terms of the Presidential, the polls are still all over the place, but it looks like there are very few truly “safe” seats for McCain right now. In this case he can’t write off too many states or he would essentially be conceding defeat ahead of time. I expect that they will adopt the old Democratic strategy of picking some subset of the 50 states that would get them just barely over the 270 EV needed, and then hoping for a miracle.
Sarcasm. Fine line.
Sarcasm seems bad. Yet, funny.
<sigh>
Pelosi, Reid, and many other senior democrats in Congress want this bill because they themselves were fully aware of, and therefore complicit in, the illegal activities of the W administration in going past, well past, what the law allows in spying on American citizens. They know that giving the telcos immunity will make it very hard if not impossible ever to prosecute any government official for these misdeeds because there will be no threat of prosecution to force the telco execs to sing.
So, there is no capitulation here. It is CYA on a grand scale.
I’m sure that’s a part of it, but the Fourth Amendment is a high price to pay to save Steny Hoyer’s behind. There’s more.