F*********** !!!! Listening to the news today.

[jillan]

Chuckle chuckle - John Kerry's amendment only got 13 votes.

David Schuster on Countdown - "Kerry represents yesterdays Democratic party"

Comments about how there is a riff in the Dem party, and Kerry was asked
not to do this.

The only one I have heard that has given any kudos to Kerry so far has been Scarborough - yes -
Scarborough. He said that the left side of the democratic party, the ones that are on blogs, the ones that will be involved in GOTV are 100% behind Kerry, and that they would stay home before vote for anyone that did not vote for either of these amendments today.

Okay - breathe_
The other question that came out today was why did the Dems in the Senate vote against their own party - referring to the ones that voted against both amendments. And what kind of message does that send to the public about where the Dems stand. Point well made imho.

I have watched Situation Room (John King subsituting) Nora subbing for Tweety, Countdown and now Scarborough.

wtf really happened today?

[whometense]

1. deep breaths, deep breaths.

I've gone cold turkey on TV news, and don't miss it at all. Well, ok, Friday nights we always spend a half hour shouting at Tony Blankley on the McLaughlin Group, but that show's like a cartoon.

Seriously, I don't want to add my one click to their ratings, may they all sink like a stone. What's the point? I know what they're going to say before they say it.

Sad but true.

The thing is, I'm convinced they only preach to the converted. And it's up to us to keep talking about the Kerry-who-is, and not allow their Kerry-as-invented-by-Karl-Rove to go unchallenged.

[_dynamicdems]

2. We learned who we can truly trust out of all the Senate Democrats.

IMHO it is imperative that we all contact any Democrats who voted against the Kerry-Feingold Amendment. Ditto for Harry Reid. We also need to send thanks to the Senators who stood in unity.

What bothers me the most isn't the fact that the Democrats offered a second amendment but that many Democrats voted only for the Levin Amendment. I could understand them offering a less harsh choice in an attempt to get some Republicans on board. The Kerry-Feingold Amendment was never going to succeed because no Repug would ever vote for it. So it makes sense to have both amendments offered up.

However, every single one of the 13 Dems voting for the K/F amendment also voted for the Levin Amendment. But Levin and the supporters of his bill did not vote for the K/F amendment. In addition, many supporters of the Levin amendment spoke out and specifically and pointedly stated they were NOT for an ARBITRARY date for withdrawal. This was a direct jab at Kerry and Feingold but it WILL come back to haunt them.

The ARBITRARY date argument was a Repug talking point and these idiots took the bait. John Kerry and Russ Feingold and Barbara Boxer made it clear that the date for withdrawal was not arbitrary, but based on a consensus they arrived at using information from Iraqi officials and official reports of the numbers of trained Iraqi troops. This wasn't just a date the pulled out of a hat.

So basically we had a number of Democrats shooting the Democratic Party in the foot: whenever they DO finally decide that it is time for a withdrawal date, the Repugs are going to throw their words back in their faces. They have all the quotes they need right there in the Senate record. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

[jillan]

6. That's what I am afraid of.

The Dems that did not vote for either of the amendments,
sent the wrong message out there today.

Nancy Pelosi is trying to get out there and sell our message.
The dems have a chance to take over in November...
but today, the democrats took a step backwards.

The repukes always stick together no matter what. They are unified, no matter how assinine. There was no reason for any dem to vote with the R's today. If Kerry's amendment was too scary for them (ohmygosh an actual exit plan) then they should have voted with Levin. No excuse. Today was too important. The Dems could have set the tone on Iraq, instead today showed our weaknesses.

[_dynamicdems]

10. What a message it would have sent if all dems voted for both

amendments! We offer not one, but two different amendments and the Repugs vote them both down. They would have looked like idiots. Instead we handed them a way out of the corner they had painted themselves into.

[ray of light]

17. I totally agree with your points.

[jillan]

3. hee hee - check this out

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13490489/

Yes - it's from Scarborough's site.

See - Kerry and Feingold are right on target.

[ProSense]

4. It's the RNCMSM:

courage is yesterday's news!

[wisteria]

5. For one, three of the programs are on one channel.

MSNBC is not really known for their balanced opinions. John King had Chaney on so it was a Repub day.

The chatter about Kerry was brought on by that NYT hit piece. I'm still undecided if this was Rove orchestrated or actual came from within our own party. There was a similar piece on Dean a couple of weeks ago and just today one on Murtha. They all start out the same. "Some insiders" or "Some Dem's" are saying .....gossip at it's worse. I would rather believe it was from Rove than think someone in our own party would sabotage us and gave the media and the repubs something to talk about.
I would suggest that you contact the station and complain about the coverage and let them know what your opinion is. Personally, I think we can spin this to our advantage. First, we can no longer be tagged the party without a plan. Second, we not only have one plan, but several good plans that can be further debated and changed. We are offering new ideas and a fresh approach to ending this occupation conducting a smarter war on terrorism and making our country safer. What are the repubs offering? Stay the course? Well, the course isn't working. There plan is stale and stagnant even though we have seen some small amount of progress. Kerry's plan offers a smarter, quicker and safer way of winning the war on terror and helping the Iraqi's help themselves.

Look, I believe Kerry must be onto something here, if he is a has been and he is washed up and so unpopular why would they spend so much time trying to discredit him?

[jillan]

7. Actually, I thought King did a good job on Cheney.

Keith is the one that shocked me. He spent more time on some stupid Connie Chung song than he did on the senate vote today.... and Schuster...he hates this admin as much as we do.

And I have come to a conclusion. Norah is beyond annoying. ugh. She giggles too much and is too loud.

[TayTay]

8. Whome is right, deep breaths.

This is complicated from all sides. What happened today, hmmmmm? That depends on who you talk to and what their opinion of the situation in Iraq and of John Kerry was before today. Sometimes politics is like watching a kabuki dance held in front of a hall of funhouse mirrors. What you see is subjective and depends on the angle that you are looking at. It also depends on what it is you want to see. I know this much, it's not what it seems to be and even that will change come tomorrow.

Some people will see every action taken by 'leading Democrats' as indicative of how they are posturing themselves for an '08 run. These folks, primarily paid commentators on all things politics, see this because this is how they process political events. They are trained to avoid being 'fan-like' and seeing politics through any kind of idealistic frame at all. They see things in terms of political goals and who wants what office and what they are willing to do to obtain that office. No one in this group ever gives kudos to politicians for their actual votes or stands. (What do you think I am naive or something. I wasn't born yesterday. Everybody is just working an angle as a way to get ahead of the other guy. I won't fall for any amateurs' game of believing that anything is actually at stake here. It's all a game.) These people see any action in the Congress as part of a horserace. Their job is to tell us which horse is ahead and if anyone else can catch up. (This is, imho, a cold place to be.)

Scarborough may be the most clear seeing here. (Though he is also playing the horserace game. He just sets a different horse in front.) Scarborough is looking at the Democratic Party as a series of pieces that will eventually fit together. He sees Sen. Kerry as trying to, in effect, round up some of these pieces now. He sees the activist wing of the party, the base, if you will, being energized by Kerry/Feingold and this move to call for a timetable to withdraw from Iraq. Scarborough thinks it's smart. The other commentators think the bigger pieces to go after are in the middle. (I disagree. I think there is a centrism, but it is over-played in the media. I still think the Dems are driven from the left and that the early adaptors, if you will, who propel electoral success are from the left, not the center. But I digress.)

What did you see today?

[ginnyinWI]

11. I saw good things--and some bad.

I saw the Dems get all of the Repub Sens., except Chaffee, on record as being in *'s back pocket and advocating "more of the same" and definitely not with the majority of the people! I say it was a good day for the Dems. And who says they're not united and didn't plan this as a two-pronged strategy from the get-go? Stranger things have happened!

Meanwhile, soldiers are still dying, and that nut Kim Jong Il is trying to get some attention with his missle test. The chimp is skipping around to this country and that accomplishing nothing, as usual.
The planet is warming (officially announced today!) and the Southwest is turning into a desert. And the repubs cut estate taxes for the wealthy--thanks for nothin', GOP Congresscritters!

[ProSense]

13. What I saw today doesn't make any sense to me!

Sure the American public's attitude is more in line with the Democrats. Sure the both amendments can be viewed as similar except for the timetable aspect. Sure Reid's speech laid it all out. I can even see the point about the Democrats offering two plans for withdrawal---with and without a timetable---and the Republicans rejecting them both. Despite all of that, it made no sense that more didn't vote for the timetable. That throws an unnecessary wrinkle into what could have been a banner day for Democrats. Sometimes it good to cut the MSM off, instead we get letters telling us they're on the same page.

So, the MSM goes about its spin and the few people who Democrats could have swayed today, and I'm sure the debate swayed some, but those few people they could have swayed with unity are lost to a barrage of MSM noise. The noise is loud and Iraq is complex, so it's easy to confuse the situation. That's why Santorum threw out the WMD crap. Anyway, that's my take.

Even less sense is this:


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2692744&mesg_id=2692744

I could be wrong, but unity would have given this event (if it makes any sense) more impact!

[ProSense]

14. Wow! Never type stuff when you're in a rush. Cleaned up now n/t

[TayTay]

16. We are never going to get total unity, that's largely irrelevant anyway

The Republican unity is a smokescreen. They have rallied around a banner of not 'cutting and running' in one of the first Congressional tests of the Iraq War. That was the easy part for them. They used this first debate in the Senate since Oct 2002 -- and it was the first real debate over the war since then, btw -- to show 'unity' to ahm, something. (But what exactly? Nobody knows.) This is a false unity and is not very strong.

Republicans have rallied around a slogan, not a war. Remember that. They are opposed to the slogan of 'cutting and running' and they fear that anything they do to bring this occupation to a close will look like surrender. That is the box they have put themselves into. They had no choice but to march in lockstep with a policy that has unilaterally and wholly failed. (They know this. They may bellow about all the hope and sunshine they see in Iraq, but don't be fooled by this empty rhetoric. They know the policies of the Bush Admin in Iraq have utterly failed. They know this.) They have pinned their future to a war that cannot be won. They will pull out the '02 and '04 playbook of 'but the other guy is worse and is indecisive' and attempt to sell it to the electorate. They will get a short-term bounce of about 4-6 percentage points out of this as they squeeze the last measures of hope out of a public that desperately wants to believe that the US did the right thing in going into Iraq. But it won't last. It can't, it isn't based in reality and the public wants to see something concrete achieved or it will stop hoping and stop believing in the Republican falsehoods.

The Democrats are beginning the real debate in the country. As in any other war, no one wants to really be the front man in admitting that the country is off course and has made a mistake. Traditionally, Americans only like courageous truth-tellers way after the fact. (We put up monuments and statues to the brave long after their causes are over. You pick anybody in American history that we now think of as brave and forward thinking and I can show you press clippings of the time that showed they were vilified and harassed for 'rocking the boat.' That is how it works in America. We honor the path-finders, but only when it is safe to do so.) Sen. Kerry is challenging the Democratic Party to stand for something. This is very risky and the Democratic Party would much rather not do this. There are many in the Party who believe this will not further the cause of garnering more votes in Nov and might hinder the take-over of at least one branch of Congress. Of course they are yelling, 'Stop doing this John.' They fear that Kerry's stand will endanger them and make the public angry at them.

Sen. Kerry is making a moral argument to a political body. They don't want to have to make moral choices. Those choices are, by definition, subjective, gut-wrenching and carry great risk. They are angry at him for putting them in this position. They would rather not have to consult with God and soul on what is the right thing to do. They would rather play with the consultants and the money and numbers guys and pick issues that are strategically right or that play well with known polling groups. Kerry has muddied the waters. He is a reminder that there are debates that cannot be avoided and issues that cannot be explained away in a briefing book. I can completely understand why he is resented for doing this. But the good and true Senator from Massachusetts is correct to do this. The Democratic PArty must have this debate, we must thrash out our differences. It matters little what the pundits think of it. It matters that we do it and we will. That much is inevitable.

Remember what Kerry said the other night in the dialogue with Sen. Warner because it's meaningful and will have echoes that the straight politicoes can't see right now:

Years later, we read in Robert McNamara's book how he knew, as Secretary of Defense, while he was sending troops over there, that we weren't going to be successful. Now, from 1968 until 1975, when we left in that dramatic helicopter moment off the embassy, almost half of the people who died were lost in that period of time--for a policy that our leaders knew wasn't working.

I am not going to be a Member of the Senate in good standing and in good conscience and support a policy in Iraq that I believe is going to add people to whatever Iraqi memorial will be created, at a time where I am convinced this isn't going to work for them and it is not going to work for the Iraqis. I believe we have a moral responsibility to those soldiers who died to do our best to get it right, and I just don't believe staying the course, more of the same, is getting it right.

Sen. Kerry and Sen. Feingold are challenging the Democrats to confront reality and to admit in public what they no doubt talk about in private. We cannot stay in Iraq and condemn all these 'kids' to the horrors of war for a cause that is lost. That is salt in the wound and is a terrible thought to bear. But the Dems must begin to see this. And this week, we had a beginning.

[whometense]

15. Nice sidebar to today's Boston Phoenix article

about where progressives should look for real news.

http://www.thephoenix.com/PrinterFriendly.aspx?id=15743

For example, read The Fix, NOT The Note.

And The Fix had some way interesting stuff today about fundraising:
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2006/06/leadership_pacs_and_the_early.html#more

...For Warner, raising tons of cash for his leadership PAC and then doling it out to Democrats around the country makes perfect sense from a strategic perspective. A politician who has held only one office in his career, Warner must work extra hard to court party leaders around the country and he lacks the kind of national organization already in place for most of the candidates people he will run against in 2008. The strength of his fundraising through Forward Together also proves that Warner can raise money despite the stricter limits on national PACs -- restrictions he never had to deal with running for office in Virginia.

Sens. John Kerry (Mass.) and Russ Feingold (Wisc.) each raised $271,000 in May for their PACs, and each ended the month with more than $500,000 in the bank. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) continued to draw down her fundraising for HILLPAC even as she continues to raise millions for her main campaign committee. In May HILLPAC raised $122,000 and made $22,500 worth of direct donations to candidates and party committees. HILLPAC closed May with $100,000 in the bank.

And for all the excitement and energy within the so-called "netroots" for retired Gen. Wesley Clark, his WesPAC did little in the way of fundraising last month. It raised $26,000, spent $58,000 and had $16,000 in the bank at the end of the month.

Remember that any money left over in a leadership PAC can't be transferred to a presidential exploratory committee. As such, many of these candidates -- Clinton, Kerry and Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana to name three -- have raised the majority of their dollars through Senate campaign accounts, which can moved to a presidential committee.

Here's are two charts listing leadership PAC financials for the nine likely 2008 White House contenders:

Republicans

Candidate....PAC.....................Raised......Spent........COH*
McCain.......Straight Talk America..$488,000....$803,000....$762,000
Giuliani.....Solutions America.......159,000.....141,000.....241,000
Frist........VOLPAC..................466,000.....449,000.....659,000
Hagel........Sandhills PAC............19,000......60,000.....139,000

Democrats

Candidate..PAC........................Raised.....Spent........COH
Kerry......Keeping America's Promise.$271,000...$257,000...$502,000
Feingold...Progressive Patriots Fund..271,000....112,000....546,000
Clinton....HILLPAC....................122,000....150,000....100,000
Warner.....Forward Together............1.1M......508,000.....4.1M
Clark......WESPAC......................26,000.....58,000.....16,000

* COH = Cash on Hand

[ProSense]

9. Forget the news!

I feel like I'm reading FR out there. Some of the posts are surreal!

[sandnsea]

12. Bush's failed collision course

That's really all that matters and all the Repubs are on that ride with him, on the record.

I still say we've got a solid home for the get out folks under Kerry, and a solid home for the phased withdrawal folks. If Dems move forward correctly, that's an easy majority in November.

And who would you rather have being the leader of the "lefty loons" anyway?? Wouldn't it be great if the cult worshippers started listening to John Kerry?? We might actually make some progress.

[babylonsister]

18. Read this and feel better.

As usual, it's the damn media distorting things. Oh, and repugs, but that's their job.:eyes:

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0622-20.htm

Why the Senate Debate Means Progress

by Tom Hayden

Let's not fall for the media and Republican spin that the Democrats are self-destructing over Iraq. I was in Washington last week, and met with both senators Feingold and Kerry, among others. Here is a more positive interpretation:

First, Feingold was alone last year when he called for an 18-month phased withdrawal. Today at least six senators have come around. (Actually, Kerry/Feingold resolution got 13 votes.)
Second, Kerry finally has resolved to push for a deadline, as the anti-war movement has long demanded.
Third, under pressure the moderate Democrats have invented a new formulation, to set a date for beginning to withdraw this year. Therefore, instead of arguing with each other over when to withdraw, they are in agreement on when to begin leaving.

This is real progress, at least on the political level.

It's easy to understand why the Republicans want to spin it as Democrats hopelessly divided. It's harder to understand why the media, especially the New York Times, wants to give Kerry a hard time for taking a stand. They are echoing both Kerry's Democratic and Republican critics. Maybe it's just "news," but we should never forget one thing:

With the exception of USA Today, not a single mainstream media outlet has editorially supported the US ever withdrawing from Iraq They are with the Pentagon, White House, and Republican Party on "staying the course." That sets them against the vast majority of Democrats, and the majority of the American people.