the point, nathan newman, focused on going by a politician's actions rather than their talk, by their record rather than their rhetoric. i can see why this point of view upsets you.
you give bush much too much credit. indicative of how shallow an understand of shrub and the forces shrub represents there is among dem party apologists.
>Once the final
>vote comes, no one is voting based on substance -- since the result is
>usually foregone -- but voting on positioning. The fact that I hear people
>going on and one about final votes, while ignoring sharp partisan
>differences on the amendment process, where actual victories are usually
>won and lost, makes me wonder if folks have even studied the basics of how
>Congress works.
a nice, meaningless lecture, suited to a mediocre freshman poly scie class, taught by a watered down, biased, "embedded" academic, rather than one knowledgeable of the system.
congress does not work, nathan newman. that's the point. as the results are foregone, the amendment process is equally foregone -- although more like dogs quibbling over table discards than is the sound bite facade of faux partisanship in the final vote.
don't you ever get bored studying the same cynical, predictable game over and over? there's no novelty, creativity, originality or integrity in the sick deals a group of people, who don't represent the american public, develop while arguing amongst themselves as to how they're going to position themselves and manipulate matters in order to best get reelected.
regarding this unwholesome and corrupt game as something more than it is, alleging it merits analysis or respect while pretending it represents fictitious "sharp partisan differences", speaks for itself. only a committed apologist would spread a glib margarine of credibility over institutionalized corruption, malfeasance and self-serving incompetence, solely to give himself and his party the facade of meaning or substance.
>If someone already has the votes for confirmation, there are good arguments
>to vote to confirm as well, even if you would have voted to oppose them if
>you had 50 other votes to actually defeat them. While leftists take great
>joy in mounting a record of losing all the time and being obstructionist,
>it's actually useful rhetorically at times to save opposition for when you
>can win, so you can say the guy (or woman) you are opposing is uniquely
>bad.
what a cynical rationalization.
there are no leftists in the US congress, the executive and the judicial. i'm sure you use this label "liberally" to tar those who don't agree with your lust to reduce everything to its lowest possible denominator.
one thinks of barbara lee, a woman with the courage and character to cast the *only* vote for sanity. and pay the price for it. you have a lot of nerve characterizing those who stand on principle rather than selling out their integrity and constituents as being obstructionist. shame on you.
>Dems have filibustered a bunch of appeals judges but they made the
>judgement that if they opposed them all, they wouldn't win the public
>debate and might even lose some of their more moderate colleagues, who
>wouldn't agree to be identified with their efforts.
calling this politically expedient cowardice a "judgment" is hypocrisy. "filibusted a bunch of appeals judges" indeed; until the party's right wing told everyone to cut it out. if the dems used common sense and laid the ground work to win elections, they wouldn't be in this position in the first place. if the party had "judgment" it would not be the minority party -- with decades to come of minority status, challenges from what once was it's own left wing which it abandoned, and repeated beatings from the right staring it in the face.
naturally, winning moderates is what the dems are all about; they've lost everyone else. winning moderates and loosing the support of the people. and, there is no public debate, unless you believe the corp mass media is capable of holding one. the dems lost that battle a few decades ago while they were busy supporting a rightist agenda. the current presidential and VP "debates" aren't even debates; even worse, they are controlled by the duopoly, largely the republicans.
what a marvelous rationale you've invented for moving backwards on everything, nathan newman.
even now, as sinclair broadcasting prepares to air pure political propaganda against kerry on what i understand is it's 25 percent of the national market, much of it in swing states, shortly before the election, the dems are impotent to stop this blatant violation of rule.
as usual, we see a committed democrat apologist on his heals, running from the reality that the party stands for the affluent and powerful, rejecting the grass roots, the disempowered, disfranchised and needy. while denying the reality the party is a mere whisper on the political scene, being blown into irrelevance by a right wing machine which -- unlike its nominal opposition -- is organized and effective; being blown from position to position in pursuit of the "moderate," fleeing from the grass roots, playing "politics" with the right, without the support of the public in the "public debate" because it's abandoned the public. the public, which might otherwise support it, quite accurately regards it as weak, irrelevant, indifferent, phoney and unrepresentative.
>You could have had 30
>Senators voted "No" on every Bush appeals judge, but the result would
>likely have been never getting the 41 votes needed to filibuster and defeat
>the ones they did.
>
>-- Nathan Newman
which sums up everything one needs to know about dem's role in the system. while making clear the degree of the chronic and lengthy failure of the democratic party to position itself to function on the national scene in any meaningful way.
the dems have their hands full defeating the worst, most flawed president in US history, after throwing the last election to him. we'll see if they can even do that. if they win, it will be a gift based solely on the depravity and corruption of the shrub group, and the ill will this engenders in the american people.
R