And how pray tell, can the Democrats exercise "party discipline" on Senators who choose to defy them? The Republicans who control executive and legislative power can discipline their caucus by threatening to deny them pork for their districts or otherwise threaten their reelection. What great weapons does the Dem leadership have against Senators Pryor, Nelson or Lieberman?
----- Original Message ----- From: "Steven L. Robinson" <srobin21 at comcast.net> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2005 9:53 AM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Lieberman: "Roberts a decent guy"
Well, on the Supreme Court level, appointments of Democrat Presidents have been decidedly mixed- Truman appointed the justices that upheld the prosecutions during the McCarthy era for instance, Kennedy appointing White and Clinton appointed a pro-corporate centrist such as Breyer. The most liberal justices have been appointed by Republicans- Brennan, Warren, Blackmun, Stevens and Souter, The rest of your argument is a cop-out. The Democrats can exercise party discipline when they choose to (As do the Republicans, who do so much more often), the fact that they don't usually do so on issues that are important to the people who actuallly vote for them is telling. SR
>
> The logic of this is odd. Most of us don't get to vote in Arkansas and
> Nebraska and Connecticut to control how the wayward Senators will vote on
a
> nomination. That's why controlling the Presidency is so important, since
as
> you emphasize, power over Democratic decision-making right now is
completely
> in the hands of the most rightwing Democrats in the Senate who make all
> tactical decisions, since the rest of the caucus is powerless without
their
> votes on a filibuster.
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