Dem Senators: At the very least, ABSTAIN from the vote on cloture

[StefanX]

Several people have pointed out that opponents of Alito don't need 41 votes for filibustering -- it's actually the other way around: Alito supporters need 60 votes for cloture (where cloture means "prohibiting filibusters").

Looked at this way, this means that a Senator has three options: they can vote YEA or NAY or ABSTAIN on cloture.

Any Senator who's still "on the fence" needs to remember this:

This White House is ALWAYS a lot weaker than it pretends to be -- and with Plame, Abramoff, wiretapping, and Katrina (not to mention the election irregularities), Bush is looking VERY weak. Now, day-to-day partisan sniping may be normal -- but there's never been this much serious rumbling in living memory about a President's incompetence, corruption and possible illegitimacy -- and it's all backed up by polls showing solid majorities of the public (and our allies) AGAINST the President and ALL of major his policies -- from Katrina to Iraq, from Social Security to Medicare, from tax cuts to the environment to health care, from treason to wiretapping to torture.

Bush and Rove may have bought and paid for a few media mouthpieces such as Chrissy Matthews -- but if you look close, you'll see that the media tide is slowing but surely turning as well. If you're a Senator curious about emerging trends in politics and media in the US, I seriously suggest you take a look at some of the top interactive progressive political blogs, such as Kos, Atrios, SteveGilliard, FireDogLake, and (for strategy), Digby -- or if you're in a hurry, hire someone like Peter Daou to give you a quick summary of the action. Because there's a LOT of action going on out here in constituent-land -- probably more than ever since back in the days of Thomas Paine -- and you need to be aware of this new force coming at you so you can ride it rather than getting run over by it.

Remember, just one of these blogs (Kos) has more readership than the top 50 conservative blogs -- and would rank fifth place in national circulation if it were a newspaper. And the blogs are growing precisely BECAUSE they have started exposing the phoniness and the corruption of formerly respected media figures like Chris Matthews, Bill Russert, Deborah Howell, Bob Woodward, Bill Keller and Judith Miller. This instantanous, interactive, involved community is doing more than just raise awareness and money. TalkingPointsMemo was influential in stopping Bush's plans to gut Social Security; DailyKos and many other community blogs are able to help (and hurt) campaigns; Americablog got Microsoft and Ford to back down from supporting bigots; bloggers stopped WaPo from running with right-wing talking points on Abramoff; GlennGreenwald broke a major story showing White House lies on FISA -- the list goes on, and (more importantly) is now clearly growing faster and faster every passing day.

This is not the kind of President you have to "defer" to any more, and this is the kind of public you talk "down" to anymore. This is the strongest, most motivated and most articulate and aggressive public in recent memory, and the weakest, most befuddled, most impeachable President in living memory -- and these trends are only going to keep growing heading into the 2006 elections.

Voting YEA on cloture in an environment like this might just be political suicide. Anyone who can smell the prevailing political winds right now would at least hedge their bets by abstaining. There's plenty of months for Abramoff of Plame or NSA or Katrina or Iraq or Abu Ghraib to bring Bush down even further -- or possibly out of office in 2006. In this kind of situation, it makes sense to "err on the side of caution" -- rather than going out of your way to install a judge who wants to make this President into a King.

Bush looks like a "strong" president only because of the activist judges and the biased reporters who have sold their souls for him, and because of an uneasy and fragile alliance between fundamentalists and cheap-labor capitalists. In reality, this President isn't strong, he's just a bully and cheat who spends most of his time trying to look strong. This is exactly the kind of chief executive who most desperately NEEDS a Supreme Court justice who supports the crackpot theory about the "unitary exective" (or, as one of your former collegues put it, the "unilateral executive").

Bullies are always exposed as weaklings in the end. A YEA vote on cloture WILL come back to haunt you -- sooner or later. Time and time again, Bush has lied and cheated to pressure you into supporting him -- and then you're the one who ends up getting hung out to dry a few months or years later when it turns out Iraq intel was cooked or the Medicare numbers got fudged. With a President with such a track record of "speaking loudly" and then turning out to be carrying a "small stick", voting NAY on cloture is the principled thing to do and ABSTAINING on cloture is the practical thing to do.

But voting YEA on cloture is just plain crazy.

[mom cat]

1. K&R...This is a key point and very well put. Voting "Yes" on cloture

will be political suicide.

[sallyseven]

5. I though it interesting the other day when

Katie told Howard Dean that the democrats were involved with Abramoff. Dean snapped back and said no. She started to foam at the mouth and he said not one cent from Abramoff. She said well I guess we will have to investigate. She was pissed off. Well there must have been an avalanche of letters and e-mails. I know I sent one. The next day Matty boy had to come on and say yes it is true that democrats never got any money from Abramoff. Set the record straight. Most of the red states look at Today so they got the scoop. I have called up to M in the Senate both Dems and Repuks. I said I did not like living in a dictatorship and would like them to put a halt to the actions of the president starting with mr alito. The look on Katie's face was priceless. Just as good as Wolfie.

[mzmolly]

2. One heck of an informative, insightful, positive post. Recommended.

Thank you!

[rzemanfl]

3. I keep saying they should find a funeral they have to go to, or a

sick relative they have to visit-anything to get them out of D.C. Or they could develop chest pains and check into Walter Reed.

[joemurphy]

4. Well said! n/t

[StefanX]

6. Edit for clarity (reposted after time limit expired -- couldn't get thru!)

This is an edit to the original post -- tried to edit the original but couldn't get back into DU and then the editing time-limit expired!

Several people have pointed out that opponents of Alito don't need 41 votes for filibustering -- it's actually the other way around: Alito supporters need 60 votes for cloture (where cloture means "prohibiting filibusters").

Looked at this way, this means that a Senator has three options: they can vote YEA or NAY or ABSTAIN on cloture.

Any Senator who's still "on the fence" needs to remember this:

This White House ALWAYS turns out to be a lot weaker than it pretends to be while they're trying to twist your arm to get their way -- and between Plame, Abramoff, wiretapping, Medicare, Iraq, Bin Laden, and Katrina (not to mention the election irregularities), Bush is looking VERY weak right now and is only going to get weaker as his lame-duck term drags on and his scandals and failures continue drag him down. Although day-to-day partisan sniping may be normal, there's never been this type of rumbling about a President's incompetence, corruption and possible illegitimacy -- and it's all backed up by polls showing solid majorities of the public (and our allies) AGAINST the President and ALL of his major policies (or lack thereof) -- from Katrina to Iraq, from Social Security to Medicare to single-payer, from tax cuts to the environment to No Child Left Behind, from treason to wiretapping to torture. Even some Republicans have started to turn on him, including Norquist, Bob Barr and Chuck Hagel. You might not see it in the media much (yet), but at the street level (and in the privacy of the voting booth) solid majorities of the public have turned against Bush. Comedians always poke fun at the current commander-in-chief -- but when Jon Stewart can get the kind of laughs he's getting just by running FOOTAGE of Bush in front of a semi-hand-picked audience in Kansas, and a SOTU parody is tearing up the internet before the real SOTU, you know this Administration's is badly wounded.

Bush and Rove may have bought and paid for a few big-media mouthpieces such as Chrissy Matthews -- but now that the strong Left is tired of being stereotyped as "weak" by the bed-wetting Right, the media tide is starting to turn as well. If you're a Senator who wants to stay on top of emerging trends in politics and media in the US, I seriously suggest you take a look at some of the top interactive progressive political blogs, such as Kos, Atrios, SteveGilliard, FireDogLake, CrooksAndLiars, MediaMatters, and (for messaging strategy) Digby -- or if you're in a hurry, hire someone like Peter Daou to give you a quick summary of the action. Because there's a LOT of action going on out here in constituent-land -- probably more than ever since back in the days of Thomas Paine -- and you need to be aware of this new force in politics you so you can ride it rather than getting run over by it.

Remember, just one of these progressive blogs (Kos) has more readership than the top 50 conservative blogs -- and would rank fifth place in national circulation if it were a newspaper. And the blogs are growing in large part BECAUSE they have started exposing the phoniness and the corruption of formerly respected media figures like Chris Matthews, Bill Russert, Deborah Howell, Bob Woodward, Bill Keller and Judith Miller. This instantanous, interactive, involved community is doing more than just raise awareness and money. TalkingPointsMemo was influential in stopping Bush's plans to gut Social Security (and they've uncovered an interesting angle on the Bush-Abramoff photo coverup); DailyKos and many other community blogs are able to help (and hurt) campaigns; Americablog got Microsoft and Ford to back down from supporting bigots; bloggers stopped WaPo from running with right-wing talking points on Abramoff; GlennGreenwald broke a major story showing White House lies on FISA; myDD is starting to commission polls that show what the people are REALLY thinking -- the list goes on, and (more importantly) the trend is accelerating. The main thing to remember is: this White House is always weaker than it pretends to be. (And as a corallary to this: this White House hangs its allies out to dry once they've "served their purpose".)

This is not the kind of President you have to "defer" to anymore, and this is not the kind of public you talk "down" to anymore. This is the strongest, most motivated and most articulate and aggressive public in recent memory, and the weakest, most disloyal, most impeachable President in living memory -- and these trends are only going to keep growing heading into the 2006 elections. Kerry and Kennedy and even Feinstein and Hillary and a growing list of others have read the writing on the wall. Have you?

Voting YEA on cloture in an environment like this might just be political suicide. Anyone who can smell the prevailing political winds right now would at least hedge their bets by abstaining. There's plenty of months for Abramoff or Plame or NSA or Katrina or Iraq or Abu Ghraib to bring Bush down even further -- and possibly force him out of office in 2006. In this kind of situation, it makes sense to "err on the side of caution" -- rather than going out of your way to install a judge who wants to make this President into a King. It's pretty safe bet that Alito will wreak havoc of some kind or another. Do you want your opponents to be able to hang Alito around your neck when that happens?

Bush looks like a "strong" president only because of the activist judges and the biased reporters who have sold their souls for him, and because of an uneasy and fragile alliance between fundamentalists and cheap-labor capitalists. In reality, this President isn't strong, you know and I know he's just a bully and cheat who spends most of his time trying to LOOK strong. This is exactly the kind of guy who most desperately needs (and least deserves) a Supreme Court justice who supports the crackpot theory about the "unitary exective" (or, as one of your former collegues put it, the "unilateral executive"). For the first time in history, you've got a party with admitted felons in Congress; you've got obvious war profiteers, alleged traitors and possible war criminals in the White House; you've got a bulldog former Marine in Congress saying he wouldn't enlist in the Army after seeing what Bush has done to it; you've got a new wave of Iraq veterans gearing up to run for public office as anti-war Dems; and you've got an unpopular, incompetent, lame-duck President who got "appointed" by the Supreme Court and won a re-election amid serious charges of vote manipulation and electoral tricks -- and now he's trying to put a crony on the court who doesn't believe in privacy or checks and balances -- who doesn't believe the President really has to obey the laws YOU pass. No matter what your political leanings are, in private most people privately acknowledge this President is the least competent and least legitimate in living memory. And no matter what your political leanings are, you know history will judge him much WORSE later than he's being judged now. Do you want go on the record as having helped such an "unusual" President appoint a radical judge who doesn't even support checks and balances or the rule of law?

Bullies are always exposed as weaklings in the end. A YEA vote on cloture WILL come back to haunt you sooner or later. Time and time again, Bush has lied and cheated to pressure you into supporting him -- and then you're the one who ends looking like a chump later on when the Medicare numbers or the WMD rumors turn out to be phony. With a President with such a track record of "speaking loudly" and then turning out to be carrying a "small stick" (and hanging his supporters out to dry), voting NAY on cloture is the principled thing to do and ABSTAINING on cloture is the practical thing to do.

But voting YEA on cloture is just plain crazy.