Today's cloture vote illustrates perfectly the reason why Democrats cannot seem to win elections.
I was at first against the idea of filibustering Alito. It seemed like a gut reaction to the sheer shittiness of Alito as a judicial nominee, and, while justifiable, not a wise move. A filibuster would have little to no chance of success, possibly be used to paint the Democrats as obstructionists, and cause the Republicans to invoke the nuclear option and remove the practice altogether. It just didn't seem like a smart move.
But then I was browsing some personal blogs of a few friends of mine. Someone had wrote as their title,"Republicans: The party of bad ideas. Democrats: The part of no ideas." I'm not going to debate whether or not this true because it doesn't matter. What matters is that this is exactly the attitude that keeps the Democrats from winning.
Today's vote does not exactly challenge this notion. The Democrats were given a perfect chance to make a moral stand. If ever there was a judicial nominee to filibuster on principle, it was Alito. A united Democratic filibuster of Alito would have told the American people that the Democrats care, that they have values and are willing to fight for them, to hell with the political consequences.
Instead, half the Dems vote to end the debate, assuring that Sam Alito is going to be the next Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. A perfect chance to make the principled stand that the American people demand was blown.
No matter how badly the Republicans fuck things up, they will always win as long as the Democrats are perceived as idea-less, spineless politicians. People are going to prefer the party of bad ideas to party of no ideas. Or, worse in many ways, just not vote. And who can blame them? If the only choices are Republican or Republican-lite, what's the fucking point?