Apparently Barack Obama sent out an e-mail for the DSCC today urging people to help raise $2.5 million to go to Senate races. The hope is that the infusion of funds would put the Democrats over the 60 vote threshold to be able to beat back any filibusters from the GOP.
I'm as eager to get to 60 votes as well, but I really wish we didn't need to get to 60 votes. This isn't some stupid appeal for bipartisanship or centrism, but a real desire to see the Democrats act like a majority party instead of the mewing band of simpering wimps they've been for the past eight years.
If we win five or six seats, even with tossing Lieberman over the side to the GOP where he belongs, we'll have 55 seats to the Republican's 45. That means that over the last six years the American people have said that they prefer to have Democrats running the United States Senate.
That is millions more voters selecting the Democrats to run the show. The big states tend to go Democratic, and so with equal representation in all states the Democrats get far more votes than the Republicans.
Add on the 32 seat House advantage which appears likely to grow this year, and it will be even more evidence that the American people want to have the Democrats in charge.
And when Obama wins the Presidency it will be a slam dunk of a kind George Tenet couldn't recognize, with a downright mandate no matter how slight the Presidential margin that America wants the Democrats in charge.
But after watching Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid over the past couple years, and the lot of them for the six years before that, bending over backwards in order to improve the angle of the shiv Republicans were sticking in us I don't have hope.
We should be able to take the mandate and shove it down the GOP's throat whether we have 55 or 65 Senators in our caucus. If they don't like it, make them vote on it. Take away their committee seats. Make changes in the conference committee if the Republicans won't allow floor votes. Play hardball like the Republicans did with us.
Then use the carrot, too, for the ones that are willing to work reasonably and recognize that they lost their mandate and we now have one. Be generous with funding allocations and offices and the rest. If they are reasonable and willing to work in a real recognition of their position in the voters' eyes then they should be treated well.
We could easily enact anything we want with 55 Senate votes. We should be able to enact anything we want with 55 Senate votes.
But given the craven "leaders" we have in the Senate right now I don't see it happening.
So, please, let's get out there and get us to 60 votes!