My patience for Max Baucus and Kent Conrad is less than zero. It’s gone and probably irrecoverable. I hope Speaker Pelosi kicks their asses.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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I have the same problem with Evan Bayh.
Jeanne Shaheen was on Rachel Maddow’s show last night, Rachel asked her “You have 58 votes, why is the focus on getting Republican votes?”
Shaheen’s answer was depressing, centrist crap. “Well we’ve got people divided along geographic lines and we need to have legislation that can bring them all together…”
And yet bringing this issues up as reconciliation votes is just off the table.
from the article:
Harry Reid is one of those shitty democrats you mentioned two weeks ago. As i have said repeatedly, he is part of the problem.
heh. You normally sniff this stuff out, but you bolded the wrong stuff. Giving Baucus a chance before reconciliation means that reconciliation is waiting there if Baucus fails.
You know, a majority leader has to respect his chairman, brendan.
or, he coulda just shut his mouth.
My patience with Harry reid is about as gone as your patience with max baucus.
You know, a majority leader has to respect his chairman, brendan.
you mean like the same way he respected senate banking Chair Chris Dodd on FISA?
gimme a break man.
Banking=FISA?
No, that was Rockefeller.
yes, as in “chris dodd’s hold on FISA”.
the one harry reid ignored, while allowing coburn’s holds to remain.
what’s up with you making excuses for harry reid? you know he sucks just as much as anyone else does.
but he sucks for totally different reasons than you always blast his ass for.
Let me put to you like this, if Chris Dodd had been chairman of intelligence, we wouldn’t have had retroactive immunity and Reid would have been singing his tune. But Rockefeller was chairman and at least a third if not more of the Democratic caucus wanted to do immunity. Reid isn’t a dictator. He does what his members want and his respects his chairmen. And, remember, Obama took away cover for Reid when he adopted Rockefeller’s position.
The problem arises when you expect Reid to, you know, lead. But Majority Leaders don’t really have the ability to push a personal agenda. The Speaker was much more ability to do that, but even they have to resign themselves to the will of their caucus.
Reid’s problem isn’t that he isn’t good at reflecting the will of his caucus, it’s that he isn’t all that savvy procedurally and he is only so-so at doing media. His personal politics don’t really enter into things a whole lot. For example, you’d hardly know he’s anti-choice.
I know, i totally missed how he organized democratic opposition to roberts and alito.
/snark
uhhh, folks, I’ve been saying for some time now we need to DUMP 90% of incumbent, do-anything- progressive, lifer congressional dems.
these people are total Losers.
they are going to drag Obama down with their bullshit, i.e. not fighting for and passing EFCA and I think it’s a safe bet we’ll be lucky to get anything close to single payer health care.
if, having a dem president and a majority of dems in congress, the dems cannot figure out how to pass EFCA and single payer health care; the democratic party is finished as a credible political party.
Obama won crucial state Ohio by 204,000 some votes; you thing Labor is going to pound the streets again in 2011 for Obama if they do NOT get EFCA and health care?
no, they will not; they will STAY HOME and there’s goes 20 electoral votes; other states will be also lost.
First, Rachel had two Dem senators last night. Shaheen sounds like a “Party of No” Republican. Dorgan sounded as if he had put some time studying the subject and applied intelligence to it.
Having said that, the Senate, in my mind has two choices: either use the budget reconciliation process or do away with the filibuster.
Yes, doing away with the filibuster could be dangerous, but the rate of increase in health care costs is doing serious harm to our economic health.
I’d like to offer a dissenting voice here, perhaps just as devil’s advocate.
First, my premise is that Obama will and should continue to make public gestures of bipartisanship. Along those lines, I image that the public comments from the administration will be to agree that the reconciliation process should only be used as a last resort. (In fact, I think they may have said as much already.) This outreach will make it EASIER to use the reconciliation process when the GOP invariably slaps away the offer of bipartisanship.
So, if Obama goes along with this approach, then why shouldn’t the Senate Democrats too?
I suppose the rejoinder to this may be that Bayh and his pals may not be just posturing, but ultimately will refuse to go with the reconciliation process, regardless of what the GOP does. And if that happens, then I’m right there with you, hoping Pelosi goes directly after them.
Those dipshit regressive Democrats in the Senate don’t understand that opportunities for real change don’t come along all that often, and we’ve got to seize the moment. We suffered through eight miserable years of Bush, and now we have a brilliant new President who enjoys great popularity among the voters, giving us a window of time where we can substantially change the ground rules of this country.
l would posit that the senators in question know very well the position they’re in. prior to this congress, they had a RATpublican majority to hide behind, and were able to position themselves, prior to the election, much farther to the left than they in reality are.
now that there are significant majorities in both houses, the subterfuge is no longer sustainable, ergo, they resort to the bipartisanship rhetoric, and hide behind the arcane minutiae of the senate rules to maintain their power and influence, and keep the gravy train running.
they apparently believe that they have more to lose by being progressive and supportive of these plans, that will indeed change the ground rules, than by being obstructionists. a huge miscalculation in my estimation, as the people voted for and expect change.
it’s self-interest writ large, imo.