Republicans vote in lockstep and Democrats do not. Republicans vote for terrible bills that they know are terrible, because that is what advances their overall cause.
Republican centrists voted for the House GOP proposal despite their misgivings.
[Sen. Susan] Collins [R-ME] told The New York Times Tuesday: “There are a lot of cuts that I think are ill-advised. There are programs eliminated halfway during the year rather than phased out in an orderly fashion.”
Why vote for a bill that will never become law but which includes massive cuts in all kinds of popular programs? That’s the definition of creating political difficulty for yourself. The answer may lie in the pressure applied by organizations like the Club for Growth and Americans for Prosperity, and their Frankenstein monster, the Tea Party. Susan Collins has more to fear from them than the general electorate.
Eleven Democrats voted against Harry Reid’s budget proposal. Carl Levin and Bernie Sanders voted against it because it doesn’t raise enough revenue to help reduce the budget deficit, instead relying almost exclusively on spending cuts. But the rest of the nay-sayers voted against it because they didn’t want to vote for a bill that cut less than will actually be cut in the end. In other words, they’re afraid. But they’re not afraid of us, the rank-and-file Democrats who vote in primaries. They’re afraid of all the corporate money that will be used to defeat them.
It sure is nice being the party of BIG MONEY.
It’s about two years late to complain about the unity deficit in the Democratic caucuses in Congress. For two years, there have been a bunch of Democrats who seem to be flaunting their maverickiness.
Now the list of Democrats who are pursuing Third Way has become huge. My Democratic Senator Kay Hagan is one who has decided that corporate persons are better to represent than the human persons who voted for her.
It’s time to get some new, young, and non-corporate candidates into the field. The dwindling number of those who still are up to a fight are getting very long in the tooth. I doubt if there is one of them under 65 besides Franken and Sherrod Brown.
Why is it too late to complain?
I’ll tell you what, though. I think it’s healthy to have dissent within the party. I wouldn’t mind if it weren’t for the supernatural unity on the other side. It’s the latter that I am really complaining about. The former only concerns me because it is inadequate to the challenge.
Hopefully Wisconsin is the start of something. The reality is that wishing for better candidates, or even taking the practical step of individuals donating small amounts of money to progressive candidates, isn’t going to do much. We get the candidates that our electoral and political institutions create. Our campaigns are bankrolled by the rich and powerful so you’re going to get candidates, on both sides, that represent those interests. If we can change the rules of the game of fundraising and elections, we’ll get different (and hopefully better) candidates more adaptable to those changes. I know Booman gets cranky when people harp on Obama, but my biggest critique is that he came to office and didn’t focus enough energy on reforming our institutions. “Institutional reform” is really just the technical version of “change you can believe in” and for Obama, he thought he could change those institutions just through his own example. In that respect, he was either lying to us (no interest in changing institutions) or naive in thinking that they could be changed (and we’re gullible for believing him)
It’s the start of something all right. The start of a fascist takeover of the USA.
There will be a “unity deficit” as long as Conservadems are allowed to run wild. The fucking DCCC spent a million dollars supporting Bobby Bright, who had just about the worst voting record of any Democratic Representative, for re-election. Until the DSCC and DCCC impose some kind of punishment for lousy voting records, Democratic Congresscritters will be free to vote the against their party. (Spending a million bucks on a lousy Dem in a R+16 district is doubly stupid.)
And weren’t you musing about inviting Lugar into the party a few weeks ago? That wouldn’t help the unity deficit one bit.
lets be clear what “unity” means in today’s senate. it means giving your procedural vote to your leadership. in an ideal world, you have a big tent in terms of how votes are cast on a substantive basis, but everyone votes the same on procedure. So yea, Lugar, welcome to the big tent (he’s probably to the left of Mancin anyways) as long as you let Reid cast your procedural votes for you. He basically let McConnel cast his procedural votes for him last Congress so that shouldn’t be too much of a stretch.
For whatever reason, our caucus is much more willing to buck its leadership (and its President) on procedural votes. Its a major problem