Letters to the Editor
Amity
Published Letters: 1114 Editor's Choice: 106
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Kitt on hard figuring
[Read the article: Harry Reid's FISA games]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Hard to figure how the Democrats of Nevada could unaware (or in favor?) of how poorly Reid is leading the Senate.
Hard in the painful sense, maybe not so much in terms of the sheer difficulty of finding reasons:
- lack of education on important subjects
- denial about how severe the country's political crisis is
- insulation from cultural foment
These are all things that American liberalism in general has suffered from for quite some time, so it's hard to fault Nevadans for any crime greater than being slower on the uptake than the rest of us. (In fact as I read more I'm astonished to find that Nevada is turning blue at a rapid rate, so maybe not so slow...)
But let's take a step back and try a rationalist exercise: assume that they're happy with Reid because they're getting what they want — that they are, as Kitt suggests, in favor of where he's taking things.
Then they might be just like those Rhode Islanders who kept sending liberal Republican John Chaffee, and then his son Linc, to the Senate term after term and cheered louder the more they opposed their own party.
I'm not suggesting that resisting the GOP's encroaching insanity is on the same moral level as Reid's flipping the bird at Dodd's courageous (and immensely lucrative) stand against Bush's telecom pardon. But to some extent they are equivalent — you score those all-important points with the home team that keep you coming back term after term.
There's also a more important difference: the GOP would never in a million years have made either Chaffee their majority leader. Senators like Dodd and Feingold have known Reid for decades, and must have known what choosing him as their leader would mean. So why did they agree to it?
To me that keeps coming back to the coalition thing — even if Lieberman (thankfully) doesn't quite hold the sword of Damocles over the Senate that Jeffords did, one way or another he was part of the equation that gave us as majority leader one of the Senate's few red-state Democrats.
The test of that assessment is what happens after a hypothetical 2008 Senate race in which the Democrats pick up the few additional seats necessary to protect themselves from the tyranny of caucus holdouts. I'm predicting that in such a case we'll see a major shakeup in how the Senate is run — if that doesn't happen then it will lend considerable weight to the argument that most of them really are screwing around.
(To that end, I wonder if it would be useful, rather than to call Reid's office and complain, to call our own Democratic senators and tell them that whatever they do, Reid needs to be out of the majority leader's seat next Congress.)
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"if ever, in the future..."
[Read the article: Inside the CIA's notorious "black sites"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Dwight Eisenhower, army general and eventually Republican president, thought it vital to document German atrocities "in order to be in a position to give first hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations to propaganda."
A day may come when a modern Republican politician or military leader follows Eisenhower in forcing his people to face the truth about atrocities they would prefer to ignore.
One can hope, anyway. Until they do, we have Salon.
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Just an observation
[Read the article: Harry Reid's FISA games]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A few days ago a few commenters described as "trollish" the hypothesis that Senate Democrats were dancing on a razor's edge in an effort to retain their control of the Senate floor. Why would that matter, they asked. The Senate's president pro temp has no power, they said. You are wrong-headed and should be ignored, they said.
I confess that I find it darkly amusing that in less than a week, we've had such a stark reminder of how important procedural control of the Senate floor really is.
Now, my inner Glenn Greenwald is asking, "Oh yeah, smart-ass?* Your original claim was that Reid is doing what's necessary to prevent the collapse of his caucus. How could a Republican majority leader be any more oppositional to Democrats than Reid?" To which the response is, of course: in the case of FISA? Not.
But that's my point. Democratic committees would face this kind of thing every day, on every issue — not just on issues related to war and national security. The Senate does occasionally vote on things other than FISA bills. There is much worse that it could get.
So to everyone still wondering how Reid is able to "get away" with all of this, or are wondering what convoluted conspiracy is at the heart of his stance, fundamentally I think the answer is the same. Reid is a red-state Democrat (I won't say DINO — Nevada Republicans hate his guts and Nevada Democrats support him by a wide majority, so if you want to accuse Reid of betraying his party you'll have to take it up with them) and he was chosen as such to lead a Democratic caucus that most certainly would have never come together in the first place under anyone truly anti-war.
Reid is dancing with them what brung him. The phone calls, the letters, the faxes and everything are magnificent — everyone gets to congratulate themselves sincerely if Reid budges from his position even a little bit. Let him feel the heat. But let's not kid ourselves — Nevada Democrats are happy with what they have, and Senate Democrats are getting the best deal they could.
And here's a hint: if you want to change the hearts and minds of Nevada Democrats, telling them they're exactly the same as Republicans is not the way to do it. Many of them used to be, and probably switched for a reason.
* Simulated comment only. No claim that Glenn Greenwald actually uses words like "smart-ass" should be inferred.