Obama and FISA

Stupidity warning added Thursday:  This post was written yesterday morning before the actual vote and is fundamentally flawed.  See post above.

This stinks.

You don't need me to tell you that.

My pragmatism and yellow dog partisanship go only so far.  I will vote for a yellow dog as long as he's a Democrat but I won't vote for a yellow yellow dog.

Unfortunately I can't vote against Hoyer or Pelosi or Reid or any of the Bush Dogs.  All I can do is hope that this costs them their leadership jobs come January.

My Senators and my Congressman are voting against it.  But they're not putting up much of a stink.  You know why?  No point.  If a stink could have stopped this it would have stayed dead.  Chris Dodd and Russ Feingold have been trying.  Reid wants this.  Pelosi wants it.  Hoyer wants it.  The Republicans want it.  The Media want it.  And enough of the Blue Dogs want their paychecks from the telecoms.

But the other reason my Senators aren't going to put up a stink is that they don't want the smell to attach to Barack Obama.

The smell of loser.

They don't want to embarrass him.

I've read some posts and comments around this side of the bandwidth saying that Obama could have stopped this if he'd wanted to.

How?

By asking Harry Reid to develop a backbone?

By threatening the Bush Dogs that when he's President he will get really really angry at them when they threaten to block, scuttle, water down, or otherwise sabotage bills he wants passed?

Democratic Senators live to embarrass Democratic Presidents.

Bill Clinton's worst enemy in Congress wasn't Newt Gingrich.  It was Sam Nunn.

Unless Obama wins in a landslide he's not going to have a whole lot of clout with the conservative Democrats. 

If he'd made a fight of this, he'd have lost.  It would have been a double loss.  He'd have shown up his weaknesses to his political enemies too early.  And the Media and the Republicans would have finally found the narrative they've been looking for to define him to defeat him.  Obama the weakling and loser who can't even get his own party to agree with him.

If Hillary Clinton was going to be the nominee, the same thing would have happened to her.

More and better Democrats.  If you can't get behind Obama, find a good truly liberal Democratic candidate for Congress to support.  Or for governor.  Or state assembly.  Washington is a sink hole for principles.  More good has been done on the state levels over the last few years than has been done in DC.  Vote nationally, fight locally.

And maybe, come January, we'll see Senate Majority Leader Hillary Clinton and Speaker of the House Barney Frank.

Ah, the audacity of hope.

Comments

[Bob]

RE: This and the previous post; who are you and what have you done with Lance?

[Kenneth Fair]

Exactly. This is Steny Hoyer's doing, not Obama's. I'll continue to support Obama, but the DCCC isn't getting another penny from me.

[Judith]

"If he'd made a fight of this, he'd have lost. It would have been a double loss.

Actually 3 losses, he would have lost wall street enthusiasm.

But he would have had one big win - his credibility.

[MikeT]

Yeah, I pretty much gave up on telecom immunity a while back. I'm not happy about it, as I think the threat of prosecution could have been used to extract useful information, but for that to actually happen would have required too many congressional invertebrates to spontaneously evolve.

Thank god I'm a cynic. I can't imagine how painful this would all be if I was still idealistic.

[Linkmeister]

As I just wrote: "Better Democrats, please. I just wrote Senator Inouye to tell him he's already gotten the last vote he'll ever get from me."

[Susie]

Yum, yum. More contorted rationalizations in defense of Obama. These canapes are especially tasty.

Obama didn't have to wage a full stage fight. I think many would have been happy if he'd avoided caving in with a full throated endorsement of this appalling legislation.

On the other hand, maybe it wasn't a cave in. He told us recently to take him at his word. Perhaps we should.

Harry Reid likes his job and has no plans to go anywhere, last I heard.

[Lori]

Senator Majority Leader Clinton does have a nice ring.

But in the meantime, this is all very simple: Clinton did the right thing this time. Obama didn't.

Votes do matter. Even when one is running for president. He caved. No more rationalizations about electability and those mean old Bush Dems, please. Your veering too close to Beltway Think. Get a hold of yourself, man!

[Lori]

Senator Majority Leader Clinton does have a nice ring.

But in the meantime, this is all very simple: Clinton did the right thing this time. Obama didn't.

Votes do matter. Even when one is running for president. He caved. No more rationalizations about electability and those mean old Bush Dems, please. Your veering too close to Beltway Think. Get a hold of yourself, man!

[lina]

Holy cow, Lance. You're a lot smarter about politics than I ever gave you credit for. Impressive.

[Beel]

The most important reason to vote for Obama and nearly every other Democrat in sight is to clearly repudiate the Fasc...errrr...Republican Party and its bankrupt policies and philosophy. As Doghouse Reily says, Rush Limbaugh's corpse is the only thing blocking the drain at this point. But... as Chomsky and Arthur Silber and many others keep correctly pointing out, real, serious, significant change may not be possible. If Obama has gotten this far, that's a clue isn't it? Yallerdogism is the only choice in town. Or, as Robert Creeley said long ago, "Drive, He said..."

[Avedon]

I don't know. Let's suppose, just for a moment, that Obama picks a replacement for Justice Stevens who is far, far more conservative than what we need and what he could have gotten.

How hard do you think the Democrats in Congress will fight to force a Democratic president to pick a less conservative choice?

This is what worries me. Clinton passed a lot of ugly legislation because too many team players in the party let him get away with it, and too many rank and file Democrats weren't paying attention or were willing to trust him when they would have screamed about the same proposals from a Republican.

There are still an awful lot of people with stars in their eyes about Obama. I'm afraid he will be just what he sounds like, and most people just won't be able to believe they are being sold down the river by a black man whose policies are no different from the white guys who've been selling them out all along.

[Doghouse Riley]

I think the real question is how long the Democratic party will be able to convince people it "compromised", or "was played", or even "sold out". At this point it seems painfully obvious that the power in the Democratic party is held by people who want this sort of thing just as much as most Republicans do, who want the power, who don't want to stop the Iraq disaster, or prevent further ones, just to get out from under existing public failures so they can conduct their own.

The Republicans won elections for twenty-five years by promising their red-meat, Jesus-praisin' constituencies the moon and delivering nothing. Are rank-and-file Democrats as easily placated with "We're more like you than those other guys?"

And Barack Obama thinks he's going to raise half a billion dollars. Tell me again that he wasn't holding any cards here.

[Judith]

"As Doghouse Reily says, Rush Limbaugh's corpse is the only thing blocking the drain at this point."

This is hysterical! Well done.