To answer a question
Nov. 9th, 2007 01:20 pmAt this point, I think part of the problem with the Democratic party - which just helped confirm Mr. Bush's new torture-enabling unitary-executive-theory supporting atty. general in the Senate, right after helping smash the GBLT coalition into its constituent parts in the House - isn't that they don't represent their voters. I think part of the problem is that they do.
44 "no" votes. They could've stopped this nomination. It's the Senate; they had plenty of votes for a filibuster. They rely on the 60-vote requirement all the time to do stop efforts to reign in Mr. Bush - it's certainly one of the excuses I'm most often given - but then they can't seem to manage that kind of thing here. Clearly, what they wanted was a platform from which they could pretend they felt one way so they could then vote another, and they expect that to pay off in 2008. Rhetoric about being "wrong on torture" aside, they just didn't want to stop this, or, in the unlikely event they actually did, were just too damn cowardly to take the stand. Which is really the case doesn't matter.
So to answer a criticism question regularly lobbed at me; why don't I believe in trying to take over the existing Democratic party from the inside? Because that doesn't fucking work. They take over you. So we see it with this attourney general. So we see it with Barney Frank and the Human Rights Campaign. And this is why I'd rather go with the one-percenters hanging out on the fringes, hoping for an opening - because one percent is, at least, more than zero.
44 "no" votes. They could've stopped this nomination. It's the Senate; they had plenty of votes for a filibuster. They rely on the 60-vote requirement all the time to do stop efforts to reign in Mr. Bush - it's certainly one of the excuses I'm most often given - but then they can't seem to manage that kind of thing here. Clearly, what they wanted was a platform from which they could pretend they felt one way so they could then vote another, and they expect that to pay off in 2008. Rhetoric about being "wrong on torture" aside, they just didn't want to stop this, or, in the unlikely event they actually did, were just too damn cowardly to take the stand. Which is really the case doesn't matter.
So to answer a criticism question regularly lobbed at me; why don't I believe in trying to take over the existing Democratic party from the inside? Because that doesn't fucking work. They take over you. So we see it with this attourney general. So we see it with Barney Frank and the Human Rights Campaign. And this is why I'd rather go with the one-percenters hanging out on the fringes, hoping for an opening - because one percent is, at least, more than zero.