Again, if he’s as all-powerful as some say, how come conservative Democrats like Florida’s Tim Mahoney and Tennessee’s Lincoln Davis (who actually waslinking Obama to terrorism), Louisiana’s Charlie Melancon, Mississippi’s Travis Childers, North Carolina’s Heath Shuler, and Oklahoma’s David Boren — all of whom voted for the FISA-with-immunity bill — wouldn’t endorse him even after Hillary quit the race? (Boren finally came around, kinda-sorta: He’ll vote for Obama but he won’t endorse him. The other gents haven’t advanced even that far.)
If Obama — who has only been the presumptive nominee for two weeks, after Hillary threw in the towel — has suddenly acquired such magic power over conservative Dems who either avoided him or attacked him during the campaign, and who are being very slow (at best) in backing him, I’m sure not seeing any sign of it.
Barack Obama is not the sole arbiter of FISA’s fate. All the hyperventilated emoting that feeds on itself in classic Lord of the Flies fashion isn’t going to make that so. This is not to say "Don’t call him up and urge him to do something". Call him up, urge him to filibuster, ask other Senators like Chris Dodd to do the same. But if the effort fails, don’t pretend the blood of the Fourth Amendment is solely on his hands. There are lots of other parties with claim to that blood.
Let’s look at some people who might have a tad more pull than Barack Obama, both now and in the recent past, with the wayward Blue Dogs in either the House or the Senate:
Steny Hoyer. For one thing, he’s a member of the House, unlike Barack Obama. Believe it or not, House members tend to listen to other House members over their Senate brethren and cistern. He and Nancy Pelosi have a long history of not getting along, a history that continues to this day as Hoyer and his allies line up on one side of an issue and Pelosi and her allies line up on the other. Hoyer also has a much better relationship with the Blue Dogs than does Pelosi (who had tried to shut them out from all the leadership positions), much less Obama. It was their backing that made him House Majority Leader, and it was their willingness to follow his lead on FISA — a willingness they have shown for months — that finally gave Bush and the telcos the House bill they wanted, complete with immunity.
Our so-called news media. They have either pushed the Bush line or done the old "he said, she said" routine of journalistic relativism, where nonsense and fact are given equal weight — which tricks the average reader into thinking that both arguments are valid. Since congresscritters are submerged in this viewpoint by virtue of being in DC, it tends to seep into their heads unless they actively fight it . Eric Alterman points to how CNN’s Ed Henry framed the FISA issue recently:
Unfortunately, the website of the ACLU is probably the best place one could get information on the bill these past few days, as media coverage has been remarkably void of any real discussion of the constitutional matters at stake. Too often, as with many domestic and world issues, it was shoehorned into context of the upcoming election, as it was, for example, by Ed Henry on CNN Friday morning, following President Bush’s statement on the bill:
HENRY: So again, I think the big picture here is that on both pieces of the legislation you’ve got the president and the Democrats claiming some victory because let’s face it, there are not going to be a lot of victories for both of them in an election year.
That’s the big picture here, according to Henry, not, say, the Fourth Amendment thing.
Hillary Clinton. I’m mentioning her because of the various people who think that the whole FISA battle would have gone differently if she was in Obama’s shoes as "party leader". Well, if being the likely favorite to win the party’s presidential nomination automatically makes you the all-powerful "party leader", with other elected officials rushing to fulfill your every wish, then it seems that a certain Senator from New York had held that position during all of last year and through at least the first month of this year, when FISA was every bit as hot an issue as it is now. Furthermore, one would think that this certain Senator, who touts her strength with hardworking white voters in areas where Blue Dogs are common, would have a better shot at getting the Blue Dogs to listen to her on issues such as FISA — and she did promise, back in January, to oppose telecom immunity. But when an amendment to remove immunity from the FISA bill came up in February, there was not only no evidence that she had tried to convince the Blue Dogs or anyone else to oppose immunity, but she herself blew off that crucial vote. At least Obama managed to take time out from the primary wars to get his skinny butt down to the Senate floor to vote in favor of the thing.
Here endeth my rant. You may fire when ready.
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