Mario Cuomo, either sought out, or asking for time, just elaborated with precision and impeccable logic the great dangers inherent in the Lieberman/Kyl vote. Frankly, he seemed very, very worried.
Like many others I presumed the Iraq vote was part of a plan to send George W Bush into a showdown with all the aces in his hand so that he could bring Saddem down without the use of force.
Cuomo argued that however clever that may have seemed it is simply wrong for Congress to delegate its authority to declare war. "You don't give it to the Secretary of State.. not even the President".
Cuomo distanced himself dramatically from Hilary Clinton's position in a way that was clear and firm.
The power to make war Cuomo said was deliberately not given to the President in the Constitution on the grounds that any one American president might be... paraphrasing here.... mad, stupid, or badly informed.
The Lieberman-Kyl resolution, Cuomo argued passionately, repeats the error. He argued that "lawyer-thinking" will construe the declaration of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a "terrorist entity" as permission to widen the war.
The urgency and force of Cuomo's comments certainly suggests to me that he fears the use of this resolution.
Richard Clarke's "hair on fire" metaphor applied here.
If this was merely about "electoral politics" I believe he would have been more circumspect. I doubt very much that he wants to say something fatal about Hilary Clinton's judgement, motivations or voting record.
Whatever damage it may cause to "Democratic unity" was secondary to his passion that a grave constitutional error has been repeated.
On the one hand it may have sounded like the very best articulation of why Democrats should have voted uniformly and loudly against the resolution, but it seemed more like he was alarmed on behalf of all Americans that this is the very wrong time to empower the executive with language to justify a war on Iran.
He was unusually driven on the topic of preventing a quasi-legalistic provocation of war with Iran. This wasn't "just another Democrat with a critique of Bush foreign policy". This was a very worried man.
Tweety barely spoke... it was that intense.