There is a breakdown here. The Roberts nomination has always been a problem for us. We need to understand a few things.
- Bush was going to keep nominating wingnuts no matter what. And the next one might easily have been worse than Roberts, and the next and the next. That's what the public, the bastards, voted for in large numbers.
- Our theoretical strategy here of filibustering until 2009 was infantile.
- That the "moderates" are voting no tells you something. It tells you a moderate vote is a vote that is like the other votes moderates cast. Calculated. Pigs don't fly. (No aspersions on the Nays.)
- That Leahy and Feingold are voting as they are tells you something. These are two fine Democrats. Silk purses' don't turn into sows ears.
- It costs moderates nothing to vote against Roberts. Republicans hate them anyway, and often so do we, so they gain from pleasing us. Big business doesn't care whether they vote for Roberts or not. Rupert Murdoch doesn't care. Only we care, and only because we haven't accepted the forgoing points.
- Leaders lead. That doesn't mean people like what they do. They can't pause to explain every choice they make. Do you think people in Russ Feingold's district liked his vote against the PATRIOT Act, or the IWR, on the day he cast those votes? No, I don't think a majority did. And today we don't like the votes for Roberts. But that is because we are not putting one foot in front of the other and realizing that a wingnut was going to be put on that court.
- We are all so wrapped up in our objections. Like Roberts' records. That is a legitimate problem. It's the standard M.O. for the Bush Administration though, to be intensely secretive. No doubt they are up to no good. No doubt Roberts is an Opus Deist, maybe worse. But aside from the obvious fact that he is "one of them" there just doesn't seem to be any real powerful objection to Roberts.
- Yes the Right to Privacy concern is real, but our (and my) contention that a Right to Privacy is constitutional is a bit vague, unfortunately. And the way we are so sure that Roberts will trample all over it is a bit suspicious... Especially in light of the regrettable fact that we already have lost most of any such right, and without much of a fight on the one side and cheers on the larger side. Including many people in this very community.
Therefore, I conclude that although I would like impeachment proceedings, a filibuster through 2008, and a lot else besides... A vote for Roberts is acceptable to me. A vote against Roberts isn't wrong, and I am glad for those, but it is possible to read pandering into them, purely gratuitous pandering that gains us nothing while hurting the bad guys not at all.
However, I don't want to cast aspersions on any individual voting against Roberts. Not on Harry Reid or Sen. Kerry who I like. Not on Chuck Schumer or Hillary Clinton, my two Senators who I am rarely happy with.
What I have decided though is that I trust the leadership of Feingold and Leahy more than that of the leadership of the DailyKos site. That's not a slight. I just don't think that the issue was thoroughly thought through here. That is a consequence of being a community dedicated mostly to producing kneejerk opinions and turning them into forceful pushes. I don't think there is a mechanism here for coming to a decision methodically and collaboratively, or thereafter reconsidering it unless there is a critical mass. And in a case like the all-or-nothing call for opposing Roberts, the community wasn't going to generate that check. There was nothing in it for us.
While I may be wrong about Roberts not being the end of the world, and while I'll admit the slender possibility Leahy and Feingold may have been bodysnatched...
That doesn't change the fact that if this site wants to be trustworthy and therefore more influential, that there will be a more deliberative, less committal discussion of where the site ought to come down on an issue. Because there are some issues where there is more to it that what we want. There is more to being a political partisan than being, basically, political rugby fans.
We need to avoid being like wingers in thinking things are black and white, and thinking that it's always our way or the highway. And that a scorched earth approach with a massive bodycount and upheaval on our side resulting, is the only way to fight.
Furthermore, if we want to be politically relevant on the battlefield we will be better at picking political leaders and following them even when we don't immediately see the reasoning.
I think we have begun to do that, and I know many of them have indeed led against Roberts. The glass is more than half full... But there is still a ways to go. This isn't a polemic about my being right on all these points. I don't know for sure. But neither do you, sure though you may be.
