Perhaps I should have titled this post in the plural, as in The Problems with Democrats, as they are many. I’ve been talking about them incessantly for a while now, but two things happened yesterday that underscore the severity of the problems and need immediate addressing.
The first one was on full display yesterday as the Senate actually wasted some of their precious little time left in charge of that chamber to hold a vote on the Keystone XL pipeline – a vote that they fought successfully against for the past few years – in a fool’s errand to help Mary Landrieu retain her senate seat in next month’s runoff election.
Yes, they went through the looking-glass into opposite world (mixing metaphors is the least of my worries today). As Rachel Maddow so eloquently expressed last night, this is insanity in all its Democratic Party grandeur…
Sadly, in the clip above, MSNBC chose to cut the second half of Maddow’s commentary when she criticized the party for their “amazing” idiocy. I played the audio on my show so you can hear the whole thing by clicking the player above. That segment continued with Rachel lambasting Harry Reid and the Democrats for using their time on this ridiculous maneuver instead of taking up more pressing issues on their plates, like confirming President Obama’s nominee to replace Eric Holder as Attorney General, Loretta Lynch.
She explained how Harry Reid explained to the caucus that they wouldn’t take up her confirmation, and she offered some theories as to why he might have made this misguided choice.
Today, the top Democrat in the Senate, Harry Reid, spent some time talking about the stuff that they are not doing in the lame duck period because instead they wanted to do stuff like this inane Keystone vote. Harry Reid explained that one of the big things they could do but have decided not to do is confirm President Obama’s choice to replace Eric Holder as Attorney General of the United States.
Loretta Lynch is the first African-American woman to be nominated for Attorney General, ever, in the history of our country. The Democrats clearly have enough votes to confirm her in the Senate if they wanted to, even if no Republicans sided with them. There are no substantive objectives that have been raised to Loretta Lynch’s nomination. Under current senate rules, they can confirm her with a simple majority vote of 51 senators. Democrats have got that and change while they’re still in control – until January.
But Harry Reid explained today that the White House and Senate Democrats agreed that they wouldn’t prioritize that matter, they would not try to get that done while they still have the power to do it.
So, what’s the thinking there? I mean, why do Keystone – which is like bad news, bad news and oops news – why spend your time doing Keystone and not do the Loretta Lynch vote? What’s the thinking there? It’s got to be either one of two things, right? Either they think there’s no reason for Democrats to spend any time trying to confirm Loretta Lynch because, ah, the Republicans will confirm her. Republicans won’t have a problem with that! Just leave it to Mitch McConnell .
One of the things Mitch McConnell is really looking forward to when he’s in control of the senate is confirming a lot of really high-profile Obama nominees. Maybe? I mean maybe they’re thinking that. In which case, I would love some of what they’re smoking.
Or, conversely, maybe more strategically, more realistically, they’re thinking that Mitch McConnell and the Republicans maybe are not going to want to confirm Loretta Lynch for Attorney General, maybe they’re going to slow walk or outright oppose her nomination they’re gonna find some way to demonize Loretta Lynch and drag her through the mud once they have the power to do so by controlling the timing, the hearings, everything.
Maybe the reason the Democrats don’t mind that prospect is because they’re thinking that would make Republicans look terrible. If that happened, Republicans would be rejecting the first black woman nominee to be Attorney General. And Republicans will not want to do that because they’re very concerned about what black women think of them- they’re very concerned with the face that they put forward to women and, specifically, to black people. Republicans know that appearances matter on these things.
While she was saying that part, about appearances mattering to the GOP, this picture of the new GOP group of committee chairmen – all white men (except for the one woman who will chair the House administration or “housekeeping” committee) was showing on the screen.
And then she concluded the segment by saying
So Democrats can surely trust them to do the right thing if only because there’s no chance they’d want to be that embarrassed on issues of race and gender. They’d never, they’d …. Democrats, you are amazing. You have been astonishing for a long time but right now, in this lame duck period, you are ASTONISHING. Now roll over and play dead.
Gee, I wonder why MSNBC didn’t include that part in the segment they posted?
But this morning, it was a two-fer of stupidity from the Democrats. This time, instead of coming from Harry Reid, it came from Nancy Pelosi. Jon Stewart explains.
Vox & HuffPost point out that there’s more to the story:
But Stewart’s recounting of the incident leaves out some of what took place. A motion to allow Duckworth to vote by proxy was actually proposed at a meeting of House Democrats last week. This is what ensued, according to HuffPost Hill:
What came next was a parade of Democrats who thought they could follow in the wake of the Iraq war vet and double amputee and get out of the meeting themselves. It began with Gwen Moore, who said she had a funeral to go to, and cascaded downward from there. Jerry Nadler suggested a medical exception, but with as old and rickety as the caucus is, where does that end? Jim Clyburn spoke against the exception and Nancy Pelosi stepped in to say that granting one would create just the slippery slope they were already seeing.
The HuffPost Hill authors also point out that the exemption would have been “the first exception granted in decades, if ever.” It’s also probably worth noting that letting members vote by proxy could weaken the leadership’s hand in these elections. It’s more difficult for any leader to twist arms and nail down the votes she needs if members are spread out across the country, rather than in a building where party leaders can corner them one-on-one and get commitments out of them. None of that makes what happened to Duckworth fair or right — but it’s a bit more complicated than Stewart’s presentation.
Aack!
Today on the show, Susie Madrak joined in from Crooks & Liars to talk about the “Democratic Party problem” and more, including the asinine governor of Indiana Mike Pence who wants to punish people on food stamps. She also told us about a really good governor, Connecticut’s Dan Malloy. And we both told vacationers from other nations to stay away from the US or you might be hit with a $950,000 medical bill!
And finally, with the president visiting Asian nations last week and still pushing hard for Fast Track authority to pass his horrific Trans Pacific Partnership, I thought it was time for an update. Melinda St. Louis is International Campaigns Director with Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. She gave us an update on this secretive pact that is mostly not about trade. I hope you’ll listen to our conversation and visit StopFastTrack.com and ExposetheTPP.org to weigh in with your representatives and learn more, respectively.
Tomorrow’s Thursday, so we’ll visit with Amy Simon of She’s History. And Greg Palast will give us his post-mortem on the election and tell us what role the Crosscheck voter purge system played in the results… radio or not!
