It's on

[ebonlock]

Sweet baby Jesus, the filibuster is on!

Dear MoveOn Member,

Late yesterday afternoon, Senators Kerry and Kennedy announced that they will lead a filibuster against the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. The vote will come Monday, and now the rest of the Democrats have just over 48 hours to decide which side they are on.

To successfully block the nomination, 41 senators must join the Democratic filibuster. Most Republicans and a few conservative Democrats have already pledged to vote for Alito, so getting to 41 won't be easy. Every single Democrat could end up casting the last crucial vote—and this is the moment for us to weigh in.

Have you contacted your Senators yet?

Sure we may not win this fight, but dammit I'd rather try and fail than just stand by with my thumb up my ass. It doesn't take much to make a phone call or drop an email, just take a few minutes and let your elected officials know that we're holding them accountable for their actions.

Edit
According to the Majority Report this fight might not be as hopeless as it seemed:

Ben Nelson (NE) originally stated he would vote Yes for Alito. But it looks like he is putting his finger in the wind. He is now taking calls and tallies as well: 202-224-6551 .

Bill Nelson (FL) SAYS HE IS NOT HEARING FROM ENOUGH CONSTITUENTS! DC Phone: 202-224-5274 . He is hearing from tons of right-wingers who are saying that he should not filibuster!

Ken Salazar (D-CO) is taking your calls now regarding whether or not he should support the filibuster! Call the toll free line - 1-888-355-3588 (PRESS 2) . OR FAX: Senator Salazar: 202-228-5036 (DC FAX) .

As one of the commentors on Eschaton noted, "Really, if we're not going to fight over this, what are we going to fight over?"

Word.

Update:
I know I quote Digby a lot, but damn:

The chattering classes are all very sure that the Democrats have made a grave mistake on Alito. According to reports in the press, many insider Democrats believe this too. I believe they are wrong. This may look like a ragged strategy in some respects, but it is good for us to be seen doing things that have no obvious political advantage and for which we can legitimately claim to have taken the moral high ground. Yes, the tittering congnoscenti will flutter their fans and whisper that Democrats are witless and dull, but in this case we are talking directly to the people not to them. They have no idea anymore that a world exists out here where poltical calculation is beside the point.

Regardless of how this comes out in the end, and we don't know until the votes are cast, this may be seen as a defining moment for the Democratic Party. When a calculating political creature like Dianne Feinstein rushes to support a filibuster rather than reaffirm her opposition once conventional wisdom says a filibuster will fail, is meaningful. Democratic politicians (if not their moribund strategists) are feeling the pressure from the people to do the right thing.

Comments

[elo-sf.livejournal.com]

So let me put this out there, I think a filibuster here is a bad idea. Not liking Alito is not a good enough reason to filibuster, he is (unfortunately) qualified, I just 100% disagree with him.

In contrast many of bush's other nominees are not even remotely qualified and I think the filibuster makes sense. Trying to even use it here is just stupid and will hurt the democrats more than letting this one through.

The real question with a filibuster...

[scoreboard.livejournal.com]

"Is this fight worth sacrificing the filibuster for?"

Because the filibuster starts, somebody raises a point of order, it passes on a majority vote, and just like that, there's no more filibuster. For anything. So if they want to make this the point where they take their stand, well, Godspeed, but make damn sure this is the place to draw the line.

Frankly, it would be, if they'd done even a half-decent job in the committee hearings, but the sheer incompetence drove me right out of the Democratic Party. There were great whopping softballs about personal privacy and the overreach of executive power and they wasted their time with incoherent ramblings about college organizations.

The modern GOP sits on the right hand of Satan, make no mistake, but the Democratic Party in 2006 couldn't organize an orgy in a whorehouse. And thus, I have no home.

Re: The real question with a filibuster...

[ebonlock.livejournal.com]

I can't argue with you on the hearings, but let me point you to Hullaballo (http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_01_22_digbysblog_archive.html#113833086097594905) because I think Digby sums it up best:

Sustaining a filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee is a huge undertaking with the numbers we have. (Read Kos' Reality Check on this.) It's worth doing anyway because it's important to stand up for principles. We can "lose well" by beginning to make a case to the American people that we believe in something other than splitting the difference. And we might just pull it off. Either way, we make the country (and the media) see that there are lines that we won't cross.
[...]
Kerry and Kennedy stepped up today. They aren't going down without a fight. This is worth doing and if we lose it, we should reward them and those who stood with them with our gratitude and support not another round of complaints about how they are a bunch of losers.


If we don't make a stand, if we don't even try then I'd say our party is dead and definitely deserves its fate. Yeah it's probably a losing cause, but dammit, we need to fight this. We've spent too many years bending over and grabbing our ankles.

And if not this fight, then what? Where would you set the bar or draw the line in the sand? What more does this administration need to do before it would be worth losing big?

[scoreboard.livejournal.com]

The place to take the one big shot is when public support will be a sure thing. Right now, if you tell people Alito's real position on issues, the majority goes against him...but nobody bothered to make a clear, unambiguous case about that, and as a result, that ship has sailed. If I had to take my one shot, I'd save it for the re-authorization of the USA-PATRIOT Act, which is coming up Real Soon Now, and spend every waking minute between now and that vote drumming home three points:

1) The original Act was a month after the 2001 attacks.

2) The re-authorization the Administration wants leaves the bill unchanged.

3) Therefore, the Administration literally has not come up with any way to fight terror in four years.

It wouldn't be hard at all to make people see that Bush keeps beating the drum of clear and present danger simply because he doesn't have a plan past tomorrow's breakfast, but to make that case, you have to start now. The American public needs an elephant crapping on the dinner table before they realize the circus is in town, which is why the Alito case is a botch: they didn't start selling the Democratic position early and often.

I miss Big Game James. Carville knows how to run a war room.

[ebonlock.livejournal.com]

The problem for me is that every single time we've tried the "bide our time and do the smart thing politically" card we've ended up folding our hand. Sometimes you just have to make some noise, raise a ruckus, get some attention. It worked for Gingrich, if you'll recall, he'd make a spectacle, even with a lost cause and the media ate it up. A little showmanship combined with a principled stand could get us farther than we think.

And the way I see it, we don't have to view each battle as an all or nothing situation. Yeah we could unleash the dreaded "nuclear option" but jesus, are we going to spend all of our time huddled in fear by the thought of it? I say it's time to drop the gloves and take a swing.

[ebonlock.livejournal.com]

By way of response let me point you at two blog posts on the subject that make a lot of sense to me:

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2006/01/filibustering-alito-for-reasons-other.html

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2006/01/filibustering-alito-clarence-thomas.html

Allow me to quote just this one bit:

There's many, many reasons to filibuster Alito, ideologically and politically. At the end of the day, sweet Senators, look at Clarence Thomas - look at his decisions, his dissents, his deep desire to eviscerate individual rights and freedoms like they're pig carcasses in the slaughterhouse. Ask yourself if, at the end of another decade and a half, you wanna look back and wonder if you did everything you could, even if you failed, to prevent another extremist from getting on the court. Ask yourself what kind of America would you be looking from. Act like that's what's at stake.

If you can honestly tell me you don't think Alito is an ideologue puppet whose only desire while on the court will be to undo years of progressive advances, then I might be able to agree with you. Of course, speaking as someone who will undoubtedly lose the fundamental right to control what goes on with her body if this guy makes it onto the court, I think my stake in this is a wee bit higher, and therefore my standards as well.

[elo-sf.livejournal.com]

So I assume Alito is an ideologue. That isn't the question, the question is whether a filibuster makes sense. And that answer to that is NO. Why, because the democrats don't have the votes to meaningfully do it and because if they do it the filibuster will go away and Bush will nominate ideologues who are also unqualified.

[ebonlock.livejournal.com]

So I assume Alito is an ideologue. That isn't the question, the question is whether a filibuster makes sense. And that answer to that is NO. Why, because the democrats don't have the votes to meaningfully do it and because if they do it the filibuster will go away and Bush will nominate ideologues who are also unqualified.

So you can't support an action like this even if it is principled and, at heart, is an effort to protect the rights of at least half of the citizens of this country because you think Bush and co. will be cowed by a continued (but perhaps never used) threat of filibuster?

[elo-sf.livejournal.com]

Here's the thing, it will not work: so pincipled or not, I would rather do things that will.

[ebonlock.livejournal.com]

Here's the thing, it will not work: so pincipled or not, I would rather do things that will.

You know it may not, but it will give us the chance to at least a) take an action rather than just sit around wringing our hands, b) garner the party a little time in the news cycle, c) maybe, just maybe open a few eyes as to what it will mean to have this wingnut tool on the highest court in the land for the remainder of his life.

Yes, the Dems may be throwing off the gloves and taking a swing at an opponent who's got two feet and a hundred pounds on them, but dammit I'd rather they took that swing than sat around moaning about being the minority party for another year.

There is only one question...

[scoreboard.livejournal.com]

Hang the principles and the tactics and everything else - the only thing to consider in anything the Democrats do for the next year is this:

"Will this help us win control of at least one house of Congress?"

If the answer is no, then no matter how right or decent or honorable it is, it's not worth doing. Nothing the Democrats can say or do matters one iota in the universe until they are in a position to exercise power. Anything and everything they do has to be focused on getting into the majority.

Ideally, the Senate would be best - partly for the sake of confirmations and preserving the filibuster, but mainly because the Senate is the place where the rectangular states gain wildly disproportinate power. (The 44 Dem Senators represent many, many more actual voters than the 56 GOPs.)

Re: There is only one question...

[ebonlock.livejournal.com]

"Will this help us win control of at least one house of Congress?"

And I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad position to hold, but realistically speaking, can you say that you truly believe the current Democratic party leadership has even the vaguest clue what it'll take to do that? It's like they're trying to win a street fight by adhering strictly to the Marquis of Queensbury rules.

We've spent the past 5+ years letting the GOP tell the public that we're wimps, elitists, political game players. How do you reverse that? By fighting back. To be honest I'd prefer that my party picked its fights based on the core beliefs of its constituents rather than on a cost-benefit analysis of what it might mean to our political chances in 2006. But that's just me.

[scoreboard.livejournal.com]

I don't think the Dems have anything in the way of leadership. I think we see way way way too much of the old guard out front - Kennedy, Biden, Kerry, a bunch of has-beens (and in Biden's case, a never-was). Which is why I think they need to put the young talent out front sooner rather than later.

Of course, they also need a simple narrative, one that will cut through GOP obfuscation, media idiocy, and general public inattention. When Ford's laying off a quarter of its workers, GM's having its worst financial performance in a decade and a half, companies are defaulting on their pensions, there's no end to the war in sight, Medicare's gone pear-shaped and the President's gone completely crooked in full public view? It should be a nice easy combination of "Had enough?" and "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?"

The time to start fighting was January 2001. For that, Daschle deserves what he got. But if they go out there now and start swinging in a way that fits into the media's pre-fab framework of "loony feckless Democrats from the 80s acting foolish," the end result will be worse than if they did nothing.

In short, if I don't see Barack Obama on every channel but Sci-Fi, somebody's fucking up. ;]

[ebonlock.livejournal.com]

In short, if I don't see Barack Obama on every channel but Sci-Fi, somebody's fucking up. ;]

I'd add Murtha and Dean to that list, myself, but I have a fondness for Howard that I know a lot of Dems don't share.

[elo-sf.livejournal.com]

So here's the thing wasting the last filibuster on this leads to much worse.

[ebonlock.livejournal.com]

So here's the thing wasting the last filibuster on this leads to much worse.

I think the operative word here is "if", if we lose the last filibuster it *could* lead to much worse. I think it's a risk worth taking.

[elo-sf.livejournal.com]

ok.


You have any plans tomorrow?

[ebonlock.livejournal.com]

Yup, we're having a long hair extravaganza, I'm trying this fun herbal gunk on mine. It's supposed to be a great conditioner. As long as it doesn't turn my hair green I'll be ok :)

[elo-sf.livejournal.com]

Hmm, with my hair measuring in at 1", I think I'll pass.

Let's try to get together soon...

[ebonlock.livejournal.com]

Well, let's see, next Saturday's all booked up, but Sunday is all free for me!

[elo-sf.livejournal.com]

Should work... feb 5...

[ellid.livejournal.com]

I just wrote to mine commending their courage...yes, I live in Massachusetts, so I don't need to tell Kennedy and Kerry to filibuster. :D

[ebonlock.livejournal.com]

I envy you that, I'm reasonably sure Boxer won't punk us, but you just never know.