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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (75107)	5/24/2007 2:13:42 PM
From: Crimson Ghost	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

A Failed Democratic Strategy Got Us Here by Steve Soto Let me summarize my complaints against the funding bill and how this turned out. As I have said previously, my complaint starts with the position that the Democrats should never have gotten themselves backed up against the Memorial Day phony deadline in the first place. Reid and Pelosi made several attempts early in the session to move a bill that would express congressional sentiment for a change in course, and both times the GOP caucuses in each house opted for continuing the autopilot war. At that point, in early February, Reid and Pelosi should have told McConnell and Boehner to go find the votes for their autopilot war and when they had them, those bills would be scheduled for a vote with as many Blue Dog Democrats as the GOP could muster. The war would still be the GOP’s war, and the Democrats would have moved on with the rest of their agenda while holding the GOP accountable for supporting the autopilot war and a president with a 30% approval rating. Instead, Reid and Pelosi engaged in weeks of back and forth to arrange a deal with GOP caucuses that had no intention of dealing, and a White House that never intended to deal either, on the false premise that they could somehow negotiate a veto-proof resolution with an opposition that never intended to do so. Why this was still a mystery to Reid and Pelosi is beyond me, but the result was that as we moved into early May, the Memorial Day recess came into view as the White House’s biggest asset, and they used it to great effect, eventually getting a commitment from Reid and Durbin that a funding deal would be done and on Bush’s desk by the holiday. Any negotiator knows that when you cave in on a deadline, the other side has the leverage. And yet Reid allowed himself to get pushed up against a deadline anyway. Any Democrat who votes for this funding bill will be taking co-ownership of this war. There is no good, mealy-mouthed way for Biden or the rest of them to wiggle it any differently, and Democrats cannot escape such a charge from their base when the chairmen of the Senate Armed Services Committee (Levin) and Foreign Relations Committee (Biden) sign on to a funding bill that should never have come to a vote in May, when it could have been pushed back onto the GOP’s lap months ago. Email this • Add to del.icio.us Steve Soto :: 9:47 AM :: Comments (10) :: Spotlight :: Digg It! How Will Clinton And Obama Vote? by Steve Soto Keith said it well last night: if you want a good guidepost on whom to support for the 2008 Democratic nomination, you can focus your attention today and tomorrow on how Clinton, Obama, and the rest vote on the funding resolution. Chris Dodd has already come out and said he will oppose the funding resolution for all the right reasons. Biden has already come out and said he will support it because he doesn’t want to deny funding for the troops, even though the Democrats have already sent a funding bill to Bush and he was the one who vetoed it. Hillary and Obama have yet to commit on how they will vote. Nancy Pelosi will be doing the right thing and voting against the resolution, while Rahm Emanuel and Steny Hoyer will be supporting it. The Times reports this morning that House and Senate Democrats were more worried about getting blasted by Bush over the Memorial Day holiday for allegedly not funding the troops than they were about getting blasted by their constituents for funding the war without strings. As Matt Stoller noted this morning, the notion that caving to Bush now was a good move was fed to them by their Beltway political consultants, which is all you need to know about the political priorities of our House and Senate leadership, who seemingly are incapable of fighting on the merits and making their case that they have already funded the troops only to see the president veto that funding. Carl Levin regrettably will be supporting the war funding resolution, because he sees it as their only option.