There are a lot of earlier diaries damning Dick Durbin for his apology. However,I think we, as a community, fell down on this.
I have checked this site and others; while there were a number of posts condemning the Republicans for their assault, I don't remember anyone posting a diary to say let's organize to tell the Senate Minority leader that we have his back.
Did we do our part? No, I don't think so.
Did we:
- Call, email Dick Durbin's office to let him know that the netroots and Democrats supported him. No there wasn'tany such campaign. How many supportive statements did he hear? Not too many, I suspect.
- Did we call Joe Biden's office and other Dems who slammed him to let them know we disapproved of one Democrat undermining another Democrat in order to appease Tim Russert.
- Did we have any organized effort to counter all this MSM pressure. No
We just assume that somehow every Democratic poltician knows that the winds have shifted and that we as a community are here to apply pressure. It may seem self evident to us here at this site that we are important and influential, but it is not apparent to every hard working Dem politician.
Dick Durbin is the Asst. Senate Minority leader, and if we want other Dems to go out on a limb vis a vis our issues, we better stand by the tree making sure no one saws off the limb.
I don't think we have the right to condemn his apology because we didn't help him enough or stand up for him enough.