Last week, I was one of the folks who thought the filibuster was not worth fighting for.
Alito was a shoo-in: the right said so, of course; the traditional media and centrists said so; and to be blunt even many in the progressive activist community said so. It was not a fight we could win, and not a fight we should risk.
And frankly I never thought we'd get this far.
Let's just think for a minute what we accomplished this week.
The filibuster was seen as a pipe dream, even among lefties. Somehow we took that and pushed it and drummed it and brought a goddam filibuster to the floor of the US Senate.
I never thought we'd get this far? George W. Bush sure as hell didn't think we'd get this far. Samuel A. Alito sure didn't. Dick F.U. Cheney, in his cold black weak little heart, never dreamed it.
I thought this was not our fight. It was a fight we were going to lose, and you don't pick a fight you can't win. Politics is not about principles, it's about winning. The winners make the rules.
Boy was I wrong.
You folks said if we were going to lose, you wanted to lose fighting. You didn't want us to lose sitting on our hands. You didn't want us to lose with our bellies up, but rather with our teeth bared.
And that's how we lost. And damned if it doesn't almost feel good -- good, that is, compared to doing it politely.
I thought fighting this fight would only diminish us. We don't look too diminished to me. John Kerry doesn't look too diminished to me. The Senators who stuck by us are looking like leaders. Those who watched and waited -- they'll have other chances to show us if they're learning what it means to fight for a cause. They learned something today. (The slowest learners may flunk out before the year is through.)
So we lost the vote. Honestly, I never thought we'd get this far -- I never thought you would take us this far. You took a position that was even at the left-end of our own community, and you brought it front and center to the floor of the US Senate.
Pretty damn good for a week's work.
The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are; but it is one of the most consistent with our character... And one path we shall never choose, and this is the path of surrender or submission.
John F. Kennedy.