Reply #82: Here's how it worked [View All]

[sangha]

IIRC, the House had passed a resolution that was written by the Bush* admin. There were 49 Republican Senators who were going to vote for a resolution that was far worse than the one that passed. DINO Sen. Zell Miller said he was going to vote for it too. Those 50 Senators, plus the vote of VP Cheney, would garauntee that Bush*'s resolution would pass.

However Bush*, wanting at the very least, a sheer patina of bipartisanship (which may have been a reaction to the backlash from his own labeling of his opponents as unpatriotic (remember Daschle's tantrum on the senate floor? "How dare you politicize the war?")), was willing to negotiate with Daschle, who was objecting the resolution. Then during the negotiations, Lieberman and Gephardt appeared at a photo-op to "stand shoulder to shoulder with the President", undermining Daschle's negotiations. But Daschle negeotiated some more, and had some of the most noxious language removed or altered.

Then it became a question of "Which resolution gets passed?" Does one grant Bush* a measure of bipartisanship and extract some compromises in return, or does one vote no and then watch as an even more dangerous resolution sails through?

There is no escaping the fact that if every single Democrat, with the exception of Zell Miller, had done as you wished and voted no, then the Senate would have passed a resolution that was far more dangerous than the one that did pass.