Today’s AP story on the Kerry/Alito dust-up: “Democrats squabble over Alito filibuster.”
Oh, that’s great. The Republicans are dismantling the country as quickly as they can, and Democrats are “squabbling” among themselves over whether to mount a filibuster that everyone – including the guy pushing for it – knows is going to fail.
Doesn’t this have the air of fiddling while Rome burns? Look, no one needs to tell me how important the Supreme Court is, or what Alito is likely to do when he’s there. I know all of that. What I don’t understand is Kerry’s strategy. If the goal is to keep Alito off the Supreme Court, Kerry should have been working on Harry Reid and the rest of his colleagues for weeks, at least preparing them that if he wasn’t satisfied by the hearings, he would call for a filibuster and they should all join him. Now, maybe he was doing that behind the scenes. But I have to doubt it, judging from how annoyed Reid seems about the whole thing, and from the fact that Democrats and Republicans alike seem to have been quite surprised by this gesture, as though it had just beamed down from the USS Enterprise.
Of course, if the goal is to get a lot of press in the course of “taking a stand,” then he’s doing the right thing. And if the goal is to air the Senate Democrats’ dirty laundry in an embarrassingly public fashion while accomplishing nothing of any substance, well, mission accomplished there as well. But neither of those keeps Alito off the Court.
Apparently, I hold a minority view on this – comments on my earlier post, as well as Kerry’s post at Kos, seem generally to support his position. And sure, it’s nice to Kerry standing on principle. But I have to question whether the harm he’s doing to the party – and I do think he’s doing harm – is worth whatever benefit accrues either to him or the party by this quixotic bid for a filibuster.
and were told once again to keep their powder dry for later (for how long exactly – when will it be time to fight).
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Durbin and Stabenow (n 2 and n3 of the senate Democrats) were on board with Kennedy and Kerry, as well as Boxer and Feingold (assistant whips).
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Sadly, Reid and a few others leaders, helped by Southern Democrats, decided once again it was not time to fight.
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Our two (I noticed you are ignoring Kennedy) Senators are totally right on that. Now, could we hope that Reid will do his job and fight for us.
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as I said earlier, NYTimes reporters need to read their editorial pages. Yesterday, they were urging Democrats to get a spine. Today, they are shocked when some do.
The ones doing harm to the party are the Democrats who are either supporting Alito, or openly opposing the filibuster. They’re the ones causing the “squabbling” appearance. An attempt at a filibuster, even if unsuccessful, would be good for the party politically.
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Reid was undecided and apparently telling constituents that he would support a filibuster if he thought there were enough votes for it. Which, until this afternoon, seemed like a possibility (though perhaps a weak one). It was a possibility worth pursuing and I’m very glad someone decided to. Reid’s strategy of staying undecided and willing to go either way was okay too, though I wish he’d tried to organize the filibuster himself.
…and I couldn’t agree more. A real plan to filibuster should have been plotted out before the hearings, which turned into a FUBAR thanks to Democrats on the committee (including our senior Senator who seemed to forget he lived in a glass house when it comes to being a member of questionable organizations).
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And the rightwing blogs are having a great laugh at the fact that Kerry issued the press release on his filibuster while in Davos.
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And to back up you point, shouldn’t the full strategy have been developed and agreed to on Wednesday during the Senate Dem Caucus? Again a Democratic FUBAR.
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(For the record: I was in favor of a disciplined filibuster, but not by the keystone cops.)
you go to war with the Democratic party you have, not the party you want or wish you had. Sure, it would be great if all our Senators could count on being reelected even though they’re from purple or red states, so they could vote their conscience on every vote – and sure, it would be great if all of them voting their conscience meant supporting a filibuster. Probably neither of those is true. So, reality being what it is, and party unity being necessary to sustain a filibuster, Kerry miscalculated, IMHO.
you write If the goal is to keep Alito off the Supreme Court, Kerry should have been working on Harry Reid and the rest of his colleagues for weeks.
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It’s obvious to me (as someone who has been calling Kerry’s office daily for the past week, exhorting and finally just plain begging him to filibuster) that Kerry decided to filibuster because we convinced him to do so. What is the point of calling Senators with our opinions if we jump down their throats when they change their minds based on our calls?
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Several weeks ago, we were not calling our senators about Alito, we were unwrapping present and gorging on Christmas cookies. Last week, we started calling, and Kerry listened.
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I have said nasty things to and about Kerry before, but I am proud of and grateful to him today.
This was primarily about publicity for Kerry, not about power politics and keeping Alito off the court, in my view. The NY Times was editorializing for the Democrats to unite, block Alito, and make the Bush administration realize they have an opposition to reckon with. They were not calling for a quixotic last-minute bid with no realistic chance for success run by remote control from Switzerland. The Democrats are weaker now, I think, than they were before Kerry made his bid. Sadly, I think many of the positions Alito took in his testimony were radical enough that the Democrats — all together, now — could have made a convincing case against him, but that is a separate issue.
You write he NY Times was editorializing for the Democrats to unite, block Alito, and make the Bush administration realize they have an opposition to reckon with. They were not calling for a quixotic last-minute bid with no realistic chance for success run by remote control from Switzerland.
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The Times wrote two anti-Alito editorials: one on January 23, and one on January 26th. Kerry announced he would filibuster on January 26th. If the Times were not calling for a last-minute bid, then what exactly were they calling for? We would all have preferred a united front, but we take what we can get. Republicans are vaunted for their united fronts, but they frequently get them through endless last-minute pressure and arm-twisting.
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To me, “quixotic” “last-minute” “no realistic chance for success” and “remote control from switzerland” sound like defeatist, Republican talking points.
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Kerry was in Switzerland on Senate business. He stepped up because no one else had. If others planned filibusters and were shot down by party leaders, then Kerry did the right thing in taking the fight to the people. He galvanized the grassroots to keep on calling other Senators, and this has resulted in people who were originally against the filibuster planning to support it.
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Whatever his motives, (and no one’s motives are ever entirely ‘pure’), he responded to his constituents, he took a risk, and I am proud of him.
that nobody remarked that the filibuster was pushed originally by Kennedy and Durbin, and was overrulled by Reid.
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So the main issue is: are Bob and David mad because “Kerry” is the one who is in front, or do they think that progressive senators have to defer to red-state senators and do nothing.
In the first case, this is a total misreading of the facts as they have been presented by the media. They spoke about the filibuster on Wednesday. They were overruled by the “wimps” in the Senate. Those who believed that they needed a filibuster (included Durbin, Stavenow, and our 2 senators) decided to go for it.
In the second case, I dont see why I should continue to vote for progressive democrats in Massachusetts if we have to wait for Pryor and Reid to do anything. We can as well vote for Brian Lees. He is no more RW than these two. Durbin should have been minority leader. We are paying for that.
I think Kerry is smart here. He needs to show that he’s the stallwarth of the party, that he’s not going to be cowed by polls, that he’s not going to be shut down by this pathetic administration because he’s too careful. Kerry has spent most of his career being too careful. I’d rather he lose a big battle that he chose to fight, then just slink back into the obscurity and do nothing unpopular, like he’s been doing for too long.
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He still won’t have my vote in the primaries, but I have a lot more respect for him now than I did.
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And I love that he forced other Dems, like HIllary, to finally take a stand on something other than “I hate Bush.” We all do.
I remember in the 1980s, when I thought Kerry was great. He used to be feisty, show political courage on a regular basis, and on the important votes, I could usually tell how he was going to vote based on what I knew of his views.
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That started changing in the mid 90s, and for a few years I was confused about it. Then I realized he was planning to run for president, and that meant he’d still be Kerry most of the time, but when a big vote came up, or something potentially controversial, you could always predict his vote by asking “what does conventional wisdom say would be least harmful to a future presidential bid.” That heuristic had a nearly perfect record for his votes on high profile or potentially controversial things from about 1995 and on.
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Once Kerry lost the presidency, I thought one silver lining would be that we’d get a good Senator again, once he stopped worrying about running for president. Unfortunately, it sounds like he wants to run again, and I think he won’t really be the Senator he once was until he loses that idea.
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So by all means, praise him for this, and plan not to vote for him in the primary.
Yes, a filibuster will almost certainly lose and Alito will be confirmed. But that does not mean that Democrats should go gently into that good night and accept defeat gracefully with fulsome senatorial courtesy.
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Democrats have to stand for something. There are some fights where you win by losing. This is such a fight. The Alito filibuster draws a line in the sand on principle that dramatizes the stakes in this nomination in a way that the Judiciary hearings failed to do and defines where Democrats stand. It elevates the discussion beyond the trivialities of Concerned Alumni of Princeton, Vanguard funds, and Mrs. Alito’s tears to constitutional principle and the next 30 years of legal history.
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Give Kennedy and Kerry credit for seeing that and for seeing beyond the conventional wisdom in Washington. If Democrats have “dirty laundry” it’s because not enough of senators see that.