Sunday, August 5, 2007

Democrats cave in AGAIN

This just plain makes me want to retch.

4 comments:

armagh444 said...

I don't think it's a good idea to focus on the party as a whole. There were a lot of Democrats in both chambers who raised vociferous objections to the legislation, and many voted against it. For example, every Democratic member of my home state's Congressional delegation voted against the bill (both in the House and in the Senate).

The problem is that the White House managed to bully some of the Democrats in both chambers into caving. That is not a failure of Democrats in general; it is a failure of the leadership. Reid and Pelosi should have been able to keep the skittish folks corralled. The fact that they couldn't raises serious doubt about whether they should retain their leadership posts.

DBB said...

If it were reversed and it was legislation that the GOP leadership wanted blocked, 99% of the GOP would have voted to block it and the bill would be dead. Sure, it is in the abstract good that the Democrats aren't lemmings like the GOP when it comes to voting, but when it really counts, they simply cannot hold it together. This is why they never blocked a single GOP bill as the Senate minority and why I have such a low opinion of the party as a whole.

The Democrats have a 30+ seat majority in the house and they STILL couldn't block this. That's just sad.

armagh444 said...

You know, I think the level of discipline in the GOP is more of a problem than is the lack of discipline in the Democratic Party.

DBB said...

You are probably right - it is a concern that the GOP votes party line so consistently - usually after the handful of moderates get some mouthing off time in the press to sound moderate as they "protest" whatever it is they then lemming-like vote to support anyway.

But it would be nice to see the Dems actually stick together on issues like this one that really really really matter. Because the fact that the GOP ALWAYS sticks together means that unless the Dems manage to when it counts, the GOP will always get its way.