Saturday, September 30, 2006
Sick In Bed, 20/20 Hindsight Blogging
What did those Dems. who voted for the McCain Torture Bill think they were doing? If they thought they were scoring political points, they were wrong. Hastert, Frist, et al., are still going to use the general Dem. opposition to this bill against even those Dems. who supported it: "sure Sen. X and Rep. Y voted to keep us safe, but if the Dems. are in the majority they'll also vote for unhinged moonbats like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, who'll undermine our dear leader's quest to keep us safe". Meanwhile, Sen. X and Rep. Y, having voted for the bill, cannot actually respond to this charge by explaining how people who voted against the bill also can and will keep us safe.
How much better would it have been if the Dems. could have unified against the bill. Sure, it would have still passed, and a filibuster may have been politically destructive (even if Dems. could get some good speeches in, all they'd be is speeches, not action -- and most people are clueless enough about the mechanisms of legislatures, which is part of how we're in this mess in the first place, btw, that they will hold it against the Dems. that they didn't do the impossible and do more than just speak about it), but if the Dems. could at least have unified against this bill, and had a piece of paper with some words printed on it pretending to be an alternate bill (these words should have been mere platitudes -- you don't wanna give the GOP specific proposals to either oppose or steal, but platitudes pass for bills in most people's minds: when concern trolls say Dems. need to come up with specific "policies", to the extent that they are really more concerned than trolling, such platitudes, rather than the concrete policies of which Dems from centrist wonks to lefty moonbats are used to thinking, is what they mean; in general, Dems. need to learn something I learned in the aftermath of my oral qualifying exam -- when concern trolls give you advice you know to be bad, it behooves you to still figure out what piece of good advice would be similar and to follow that advice the concern troll ought to have given you rather than just completely ignoring the advice of the concern troll and floundering with something entirely different), then come the election season, when Hastert and Frist made the inevitable allegations against Sen. X and Rep. Y, they would not have been in the awkward position of having to defend votes they did not make but rather could respond: "we had an alternative that really could have kept us safe, but you guys refused to give it fair hearing: instead you railroaded through a bill that will allow the President to name any individual as an enemy combatant if he so chooses, all the while the real enemies would slip away".
I know this is too little too late, but if I can think of this lying in bed sick with the worst cold ever, why can't people who are paid to be leaders think of this in foresight? A large part of being a leader is having the foresight to see what everyone sees in hindsight. If the Dem. leadership cannot do this, well, then, no wonder people don't trust them to have the foresight to anticipate and keep us safe from terrorist attacks.
*
Meanwhile, people hate the GOP Congress in 2006 as much as they hated the Dem. Congress in 1994. Except in 1994, the GOP gave voters a fancy "Contract with America" and hence a reason to vote for them. Why should Joe and Jane Sixpack vote Dem. in 2006 rather than just staying home? Dems. need to come up with a reason fast. And, don't ask me to do so -- nobody's payin' me to think up reasons while I'm sick in bed.
*
Also -- am I the only one who's worried that page-gate and Macaca-gate will eventually, in spite of how well the individual Dem challengers are rising above the fray, sour people on "Democratic negative campaigning" (with appropriate spin from the media, at key points?) Already NPR is focusing more on page-gate (and mentioning the relatively innocuous e-mails in detail while throwing in the fact that there are more explicit IMs as an after-thought: they make it sound like the Congressman is being targeted for being just mighty-right-friendly to a young-'un) at the expense of covering real debate about what really is a "do nothing Congress", etc.
Alas -- we get the government the media deserves.
How much better would it have been if the Dems. could have unified against the bill. Sure, it would have still passed, and a filibuster may have been politically destructive (even if Dems. could get some good speeches in, all they'd be is speeches, not action -- and most people are clueless enough about the mechanisms of legislatures, which is part of how we're in this mess in the first place, btw, that they will hold it against the Dems. that they didn't do the impossible and do more than just speak about it), but if the Dems. could at least have unified against this bill, and had a piece of paper with some words printed on it pretending to be an alternate bill (these words should have been mere platitudes -- you don't wanna give the GOP specific proposals to either oppose or steal, but platitudes pass for bills in most people's minds: when concern trolls say Dems. need to come up with specific "policies", to the extent that they are really more concerned than trolling, such platitudes, rather than the concrete policies of which Dems from centrist wonks to lefty moonbats are used to thinking, is what they mean; in general, Dems. need to learn something I learned in the aftermath of my oral qualifying exam -- when concern trolls give you advice you know to be bad, it behooves you to still figure out what piece of good advice would be similar and to follow that advice the concern troll ought to have given you rather than just completely ignoring the advice of the concern troll and floundering with something entirely different), then come the election season, when Hastert and Frist made the inevitable allegations against Sen. X and Rep. Y, they would not have been in the awkward position of having to defend votes they did not make but rather could respond: "we had an alternative that really could have kept us safe, but you guys refused to give it fair hearing: instead you railroaded through a bill that will allow the President to name any individual as an enemy combatant if he so chooses, all the while the real enemies would slip away".
I know this is too little too late, but if I can think of this lying in bed sick with the worst cold ever, why can't people who are paid to be leaders think of this in foresight? A large part of being a leader is having the foresight to see what everyone sees in hindsight. If the Dem. leadership cannot do this, well, then, no wonder people don't trust them to have the foresight to anticipate and keep us safe from terrorist attacks.
*
Meanwhile, people hate the GOP Congress in 2006 as much as they hated the Dem. Congress in 1994. Except in 1994, the GOP gave voters a fancy "Contract with America" and hence a reason to vote for them. Why should Joe and Jane Sixpack vote Dem. in 2006 rather than just staying home? Dems. need to come up with a reason fast. And, don't ask me to do so -- nobody's payin' me to think up reasons while I'm sick in bed.
*
Also -- am I the only one who's worried that page-gate and Macaca-gate will eventually, in spite of how well the individual Dem challengers are rising above the fray, sour people on "Democratic negative campaigning" (with appropriate spin from the media, at key points?) Already NPR is focusing more on page-gate (and mentioning the relatively innocuous e-mails in detail while throwing in the fact that there are more explicit IMs as an after-thought: they make it sound like the Congressman is being targeted for being just mighty-right-friendly to a young-'un) at the expense of covering real debate about what really is a "do nothing Congress", etc.
Alas -- we get the government the media deserves.
# posted by alberich @ 9:10 PM 
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