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I'm Not Blaming Dodd For Missing the Mukasey Vote (UPDATED)



See Amos's comment at the bottom for a detailed discussion of what occured. Make your own decision. I'm back to thinking that with something as vague as what Reid said, the Presidentials are to be forgiven for not knowing a vote was coming up that day. As Amos notes, that doesn't mean Congressional Democrats as a whole aren't essentially worthless.

As most Agonistas know the vote to confirm "Oh no, waterboarding isn't torture" Mukasey went down without any of the Senatorial Presidential candidates voting.

Now I can understand that coming from Clinton, who has refused to rule out using torture herself, in the past. And neither Biden nor Obama have made civil liberties their defining issue.

The first thought that passes ones mind in these situations is that Reid is doing the Presidentials a favor by giving them an out. But that doesn't make sense in this case -- there is no upside for Dodd or Obama in ducking this vote. Clinton might want to give it a pass, not just because torture is something she wants to do as President, but because she's also been very unwilling to hold up cabinet appointees, again, because as President she wants full discretion to appoint whoever she wants without the Senate taking "advise and consent" seriously.

So Reid doing this, to my mind, wasn't a favor to Dodd, though it was a favor to Clinton. And indeed the Dodd camp has said that the Senator wanted to go back and vote, but by the time he was told, it was physically impossible.

One can be cynical and say this is a lie, but I'm going to give Dodd the benefit of the doubt. There is simply no upside to him for missing that vote and he's been very reliable on civil liberties issues in the past. And Harry "I'll honor Republican holds, but not Dodd's hold" Reid has proven in the past that whatever words of friendship and comity pass back and forth he's more than willing to screw over Dodd to make bad bills pass that Republicans want.

Of course, if all the leadership candidates had been there that'd be 44, and then the questions would come up about "why not a filibuster"?

The answer to that, needless to say, is because a lot of Democratic votes were very soft. They wouldn't have held a filibuster.

And if they had, well, Republicans might have been able to say bad things about them:

According to sources inside and outside the Democratic leadership, Harry Reid allowed a vote on Mukasey because in exchange the Republican leadership agreed to allow a vote on the big Defense Appropriations Bill, which contains $459 billion in military spending but doesn't fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan...

...One key reason Dem leaders wanted this defense approps bill passed, sources tell me, is that they wanted to be able to argue that they had sent a bill to the President funding the military, if not the war itself. The idea was that doing this would allow them to protect themselves in the days ahead when the battle over Iraq funding heats up and Republicans inevitably charge that Dems are refusing to fund the troops.

"This lets us argue, `Hey, we just sent $450 billion to the military," one leadership source tells me.

According to sources, Reid went into this week with a few primary goals in mind: Get a massive $286 billion farm bill through the Senate, and get action on the Defense Appropriations Bill.

ie. Get the pork out the door and try and immunize against talking points that will be used no matter what Democrats do. If Dems seriously try and hold up the next Iraq bill (which they should, but which I really doubt) the fact that Democrats sent a regular appropriation will provide thin shielding indeed. If the battle is fought on whether the "troops need more money" rather than on "we should end the war", the Dems will always, always lose.

So, bottom line, Mukasey was a show vote and some of those 40 were soft. But Dodd, at least, doesn't deserve blame for not voting against.


Ian Welsh November 9, 2007 - 9:49pm
Ian Welsh's diary | printer friendly version | digg
( categories: USA: Campaign 2008 | USA: Congress )

Selise dug out Reid's 10 AM "what's up for today"...

...speech. It says that probably Mukassey would be up for a vote. (She's posted in both on FDL and TPMuckraker). They were given a chance to duck, and they did. I can see possible charitable reasons why (like maybe they have a deal with Mukassey), but who knows.

Gordon November 9, 2007 - 11:08pm
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Many to condemn but too foggy for the campaigners

I've tried to follow through the threads related to this post. The key one seems to be here -

Link

There's a pull quote from a statement made by Reid just before 10AM on the morning of the disputed vote. The only part of Reid's statement that related to any possible Mukasey vote was -

http://www.c-spanarchives.org/congress/?q=node/77531&id=8137288

..................................................
Finally, I have had some discussion with the distinguished Republican leader to try to work out an agreement to dispose of the Mukasey nomination. I thought I had that all worked out. Last night, a little wrinkle appeared, but I hope we can reach agreement on that today as well.
..................................................

Now I've no way of knowing what was happening behind the scenes to be certain of motivations on the part of individual senators.

There's the list of Democrat senators that was read into the record just before 7PM (when debate was to start) as scheduled to speak during the Mukasey debate. This was supposed to be an indication that a Mukasey vote was something more than wishful thinking.

http://www.c-spanarchives.org/congress/?q=node/77531&id=8137540&p

Senator Leahy, 45 minutes;
Senator Dorgan, 15 minutes;
Senator Durbin, 20 minutes;
Senator Cardin, 10 minutes;
Senator Reed, 15 minutes;
Senator Kennedy, 10 minutes;
Senator Harkin, 10 minutes;
Senator Boxer, 15 minutes;
Senator Salazar, 10 minutes;

But this senator list is far too thin a piece of evidence for condemnation of any of the senators that missed the vote. I'm assuming that they weren't in D.C. If any were then there was no excuse.

It seems a stretch to think that the list of senators who would speak during the debate indicates that they were forewarned far in advance. Senators probably had their speeches ready days before and could ask and be placed on the debate list within minutes. Not really a piece of information to base condemning anyone for missing the debate.

Also, the morning Reid statement about a possible upcoming vote on Mukasey later in the day is so sketchy that I wouldn't base anything on it. Likely if campaigning senators had to pay close attention to such statements then they could never campaign outside of D.C. If Reid was concerned about having a full complement of senators to vote on Mukasey he could have easily done much more to facilitate the situation. Instead he seems to have done the opposite with a barely worth considering "CYA" at 10AM.

I don't think there's any doubt that Reid rammed this through. There's some speculation that the "unanimous consent" should have been objected to, but that request was made 10 minutes before the actual debate was to begin. Sure, someone should have objected to prevent the rush to vote. But then some Democrat senator should have call a filibuster, at least to take a stand in defense of the constitution and the rule of law. Even a losing stand.

In my mind much of this depends on where the particular senators campaigning were during the day. If they were far from D.C. then expecting them to jump based on the bull Reid said at 10AM doesn't make much sense to me. Reid may make a statement like that every day. Again, Reid should have made a date for the vote that was well in advance of a firm notice. Whether that lack of notice was an arrangement Reid made with the senators to provide cover is an open question.

But no Democrat stood up for democracy. That's why it's the Democrat Party. Some may have wanted to, but if so, they didn't try that hard.

Where was "maverick" Soupy Feingold?

Amos Anan November 10, 2007 - 1:42am
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responsibility

sorry i wasn't here for the conversation, since i think it's my comments at tpm you are referencing...

anyway, my comments were in no way meant to exonorate reid - i agree that it looks pretty conclusive that he made a deal with the Rs and then pushed it through. but his deal with the Rs was not done without participation with other Ds - and that is the question, who else participated in orchestrating the kabuki?

good possibilities (although not conclusive) include Leahy, Dorgan, Durbin, Cardin, Reed, Kennedy, Harkin, Boxer, Salazar - those who reid had scheduled to speak thursday night.

another group of good possibilities were dodd, clinton, obama and biden - presidential candidates who were not present for the vote (but note they were not present for the veto override vote earlier in the day either).

reid's comment earlier in the day warning that he hoped to get the mukasey matter disposed of thursday night, is to me the most damning - if any of the presidential senators cared about this vote, they had reason to know it would likely be thursday night (reid's statement was not atypical - take a look at reid's typical morning schedule briefing to the senate - he frequently says what he hopes will get done, but can't commit to w/o an agreement from the minority leader).

so... here's what i'm left with. it looks like the presidential candidates should have known the vote would likely be thursday night. possible senarios i can come up with are:

1) did reid's office (or someone else in a leadership position the presidential candidates (at some point during the day, after reid's morning schedule briefing) that there would be no vote?

2) did dodd, clinton, biden, obama even care about making it back for the vote? maybe it wasn't a very high priority - for whatever reason.

3) did the biden, obama, clinton and dodd prefer not to be present when the vote went down?

of course, the answers can be quite different for each of these four senators.... but absent an explanation from them - i'm not giving anyone a pass.

p.s. the only one of the four who was willing to give me an "official" statement was clinton's office who told me that she had a schedule conflict - although not what it was.

selise November 11, 2007 - 8:56am
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buy a spine $199


http://www.buyamag.com/anatom1.htm

I'm tired of excuses and the 'they will talk bad about us' excuse is lamest, they are going to do it anyway.

Tina November 10, 2007 - 3:17am
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For some reason they want Mukasey in

I'm very curious as to what that reason was.

Hey, we don't call 'em the Vichy Democrats for nothin'.

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

Charles Darwin

darwin November 10, 2007 - 7:09pm
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