From Working for Change
Sirotablog – Real-world wisdom from outside the beltway.
Oh, you’ve been hearing it everytime you tune into politics: Democrats in Washington saying they are serious about taking back the House. And yes, we would all like to believe them. But there is, after all, one essential, minimal, base-level indicator to seriousness – whether Democrats will even bother to show up to vote on the most critical legislation. And all you had to do was look at the most critical vote of the year early yesterday morning to suddenly realize that Democrats might still be oh-so-comfy in the minority.
The vote was on the GOP budget bill – you remember, the one that newspapers note "cuts $39.7 billion from social-welfare programs like Medicare, Medicaid and child-support collection."
It passed by 6 votes.
Why should we be asking Democrats questions about this vote when the House is controlled by Republicans? Well take a look at the official roll call and you’ll see that 6 Democrats didn’t show up to vote. They are:
Rep. Joe Baca (D-CA)
Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL)
Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL)
Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA)
Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-TX)
Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA)
Yes, you read that right – one of those missing six was Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) – the guy who heads up the Democrat’s House campaign committee. You know, the committee that is supposed to be most seriously focused on developing a message and a record that helps Democrats win back the House in 2006.
Before we rush to full judgment, let’s remember that it is possible that some of these 6 House members had really good reasons for not being there. But boy, they better be good reasons, especially considering even Republican Rep. Joe Barton was there, despite having a heart attack just four days beforehand. Knowing that, we at least deserve to hear from these 6 Democrats exactly why they missed the vote.
Because ask yourself this question: without a very good explanation from those absent, do you think Tom DeLay and the Republicans would allow themselves to lose a critical vote because their own members didn’t show up? And do you think if they did lose a vote, they wouldn’t demand an explanation too? That answer to those questions – and the different answer might get from Democrats – – is the difference between a party that is really serious about winning, and a party that perhaps is not.
More fresh information constantly being updated at Sirotablog‘ s website… where they continue to DEMAND answers.
More fresh information constantly being updated at Sirotablog’ s website… where they continue to DEMAND answers.
Yes, I’ve spent several hours today looking for mention and commentary about this. That budget was obscene and there’s been vast rejoying about saved caribou and ‘pristine wilderness’ in the blogosphere and little or nothing about this except for Sirota.
Baca, Harman, Emmanuel and Reyes are all card carrying DLC members and, while some of these folks actually have the balls to brag about their concern for the poor on their web pages I do not believe them, not after this vote or, rather, this abrogation of their most basic responsibilities.
I don’t know what to say about Roybal-Allard, she’s from Los Angeles, for Christ’s sake and likewise I don’t know what to say about Gutierrez, I just don’t know enough about them.
Gutierrez was one of the few Dems with the balls to endorse Bradley. I would be surprised if he didn’t have a good excuse.
As of this morning Roybal-Allard reports a death in the family, Gutierrez reports a “family situation” and Emmanuel spouts bullshit worthy of George Bush.
I used to wonder about vote totals like this all the time, but it’s not always as easy as the vote differential would suggest. House leaders are pretty good vote counters. The majority party doesn’t send up stuff just to get shot down, i.e. they are reasonably sure it will pass. If the Repubs needed a few more votes (because these six showed up and voted against it) there’s a darn good chance the Repub leadership would’ve done what it took to swing some Repubs who voted against it. The end result would be the same.
Still, I hope those absent have good excuses for missing ANY Congressional business. What we really need is a bullet proof majority.
If the Repubs needed a few more votes (because these six showed up and voted against it) there’s a darn good chance the Repub leadership would’ve done what it took to swing some Repubs who voted against it. The end result would be the same.
How do you know this? Because I don’t and I pay close attention to these close votes in both the House and the Senate and the pattern of members of the New Democratic caucus acting in a manner which produces this end result is so predictable that when I see a vote like this the first thing I do is run the google search.
Likewise and particularly when it comes to policies which directly impact the poor by killing them (as these cuts most assuredly will) and confirmations like that of Leon Holmes (a sitting District Court judge who believes that women should be subordinate to their husbands, that conceptions from rape are “as rare as snow in Miami” and who would not have been confirmed in the Senate without the help of 6 DLC Democrats) and the ‘library’ provisions of the Patriot Act (which continue due to one vote from DLC Adam Smith) the end results are unacceptable. And the fact is that time and time again I do see this pattern and the votes (or lack of them) always comes from the DLC caucus.
My focus in politics are the closely intertwined areas of civil rights and poverty politics. In other words I pay very close attention to how policies, budget priorities and strategy affects the bottom 20%. It’s a neglected area, the poor don’t have lobbyists and are useful to both political parties as scapegoats (see abortion politics and welfare deformation), props, demonstrations in morality tales and a source of cheap labor. The poor are the canary in our coal mine, what happens to them will happen to you eventually . And the one thing I am very clear about and the thing which causes me to reject the notion that the DLC aren’t ideological is the manner in which that caucus has operated to assure that the conservative contempt for even their right to basic survival and a place to be is part and parcel of the national character. This was a budget which will kill people and kill them for no other reason than because they are poor. So Jane Harman and Raul Emmanuel don’t bother to show up?
Exactly! Good post.
I’m with you on that one. And the lack of access to health care for those who are poor will not be the only reason.
I suggest that anyone who’s interested should look into how child protection services are funded in your state/county. I know that in ours, a lot of funding for case management with families who are reported for child abuse, comes from a medicaid program (Child Welfare Targeted Case Management). According to what I’ve heard, this program is eliminated in the cuts. It means that one third of funding in our county for child protection will be gone if the bill passes. And our own Senator Norm Coleman voted for the bill in the Senate because the Republicans gave him a sugar beet subsidy when he threatened to vote against it. Not that I have anything against sugar beet farmers – but we’re talking about abused children being abandonded in huge numbers if this bill becomes law!
Yup.
The process of knowing how many votes you will or will not have is a whip count. And in the whip count, you take account of who’s present or not (and someone could be out for any number of reasons); knowing how different voting blocs will vote (e.g. the “CATS”, a bunch of wingnuts is a bloc, the CBC, the Blue Dogs, etc.)
If in your count you come up short, you go looking for arms to twist. In this instance, b/c there were 6 absences, they just had to make sure they could beat the margin and “allowed” whoever needed to “defect” the space to do so. Even the rethugs know that depending upon the district, a member might have to vote vs. leadership to keep their seat.
But if the vote is a leadership priority and the vote is tight, then they do what they gotta using a carrot and stick approach: OK, we’ll give you money for X project, etc. if you vote with us (carrot) OR we WON’T give you X and/or you might find yourself with a primary challenger if you don’t vote with us.
There are times when the leadership just doesn’t have the votes and pulls the bill. It doesn’t happen often … and for a reason.
So even if all six were there, the repubs would have found 7 arms to twist. Period. Unless there were seven stalwart rethugs to withstand a must-pass budget and argued for a continuing resolution until they could hammer it out in January (right), the reality is that the rethugs would have found the votes to pass this awful bill. IMO, since this is a budget that affects the poor, rethugs aren’t going to go out on a limb for them. Just a guess.
But the main point: Why make their job easier by being absent?
Truth is, there are lots of reasons members may miss votes. They’re human, too.
But it better be a damned good reason.
…considering even Republican Rep. Joe Barton was there, despite having a heart attack just four days beforehand.
So did they wheel him in a la Pete Wilson?
Vote pairing is a fairly common practice in the House and the Senate (though usually not on critical legislation). This may be the case here, as there were also 10 Republicans that didn’t vote.
I’m not saying it is the case, because I don’t have that information, but it is possible.
For those who may not have heard of pairing.
interesting how pairing is parlimentary. i’d like to see W appear on the floor of the House and _answer_ questions for a few hours. nice and televised. i’d sit down every week with a bowl of ice cream to watch that.
That would be the best show around. I’d love it if he got heckled?
Ghandi, you are on fire, man! Two hard-hitting diaries in two days. Keep them coming, that’s all I’ve got to add!
Rahm Emanuel’s got lots to answer for.
For example, why is he pushing political novice Tammy Duckworth over Christine Cegelis for the Democratic nomination for Illinois’ 6th District?
For those of you who don’t know what it’s all about, in 2004, Cegelis got 44% of the vote against Representative Henry Hyde, the sixteen-term Republican and one of the Darth Vaders of the Republican Party.
44%–her FIRST time out.
Duckworth is an Iraq veteran with no political experience. But Cegelis, who could really give Hyde a run for his money in 2006, is being pushed aside because she committed a mortal since in Rahm Emanuel’s eyes.
You see, Christine Cegelis supports Representative John Murtha’s call for a speedy US withdrawal from Iraq. Unpardonable offense!
It’s all explained in greater detail in my own blog:
http://thebloggingcurmudgeon.blogspot.com/
The story is titled “Once Again, Democrats Prepare for Defeat”. And let’s face it, with “geniuses” like Rahm Emanuel running things, Democrats might just face a NET LOSS of seats in both the House and the Senate.
Yep, that’s right, the state-by-state polling shows that if the elections were held tomorrow, Democrats would lose 8-10 seats in the House and the Republicans would pick up 2 Senate seats.
That’s HUGE–because historically, 6 years into a two-term Presidency, the voters usually vote out a lot of the members of the President’s party.
Not this time, though. The Democrats blew their chances in 2002 and 2004, and now they’re blowing it again.
Jesus, doesn’t anybody know how to play this game?
It’s not about the game. It’s about supporting the Iraq War.
In the last month or so, Democrats — and the more slavishly Democratic parts of the “left” blogosphere — have been pushing the idea that it’s politically savvy for the party to avoid having any Iraq policy (despite polls that suggest that merely criticizing Bush on Iraq isn’t working politically).
It’s high time that progressives realize that the positions that the Democratic Party has taken on Iraq in 2002 and 2004, and that the party will take in 2006, are not the product of insanely stupid political calculations, but rather of deeply held militarism, sold to the much less hawkish party grassroots as political necessity.
Or to put it another way, the problem with the Democrats isn’t their strategy, it’s the team itself.
Picking on people who didnt vote or voted a certain way in single votes was a very effective campaign tactic of Republicans in 2004. It painted people negatively, often falsely, very effectively
Be careful how you judge people over who did or didnt vote.
Has the senate approved this legislation yet? If not, it will be more interesting to see how it fares there, where the Democrats DO have the power to block it.
This makes me think of the Colbert Reports Congressional District analysis. These people won’t even take feedback if you don’t live in their constituency.
These people won’t even take feedback if you don’t live in their constituency
No, but the DCCC does. And, seeing as Rep Emanuel chairs the DCCC, you could ask way he was absent for such an important vote here.
Thanks, the other colleen! Good tip.