The Democrats Have Lost Their Nerve

An interesting note on the failed Webb Amendment yesterday is that Democrats are having their cake and eating it too and it smells rotten! A piece at Daily Kos calls Dems on their own hypocrisy. Why are there not TV stations and newspapers talking about the fillibuster the Republicans engaged in yesterday? Because it didn't happen.

Instead, the reason the Webb amendment failed even though it got 56 votes was that Senators agreed by unanimous consent that the amendment should have to get 60 votes to pass, even without a filibuster. The Republicans are already on a record pace to break any filibuster record ever recorded.

And the question here is not just why anyone would allow it, but why everyone did. A single Senator could have put a stop to this simply by saying, "I object" when the unanimous consent request was made. Just one Senator.

Yet, as the author at Daily Kos says no one objected. Not Russ Feingold, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders. Not a one. Everyone just politely agreed that 56-44 would be a losing vote for America's sons and daughters wearing the uniform in Iraq and Afghanistan. And they did it on national television. And America yawned, hit the snooze button, and slept in.

The author goes on in the article to explain what the Webb Amendment would do: Such a requirement, by the way (allowing troops just as much rest away from combat as in), is already a tremendous compromise. The Pentagon brass usually requires twice as much rest as deployment. But Webb's compromise required only half that much rest. Still, Republicans said no. Our troops -- including our "one weekend a month" National Guardsmen -- must be required to spend more time in combat than out. So that the rest of us can all shop, watch TV, cut taxes, or take a "wide stance" if we feel like it.

What we are not being told is the Democrats in essence said no as well. Why consent to a vote of 60 votes as a majority. A majority is 51 votes remember? The Democrats do not remember because they have no idea how to handle their power. They have forgotten, "they have lost their nerve" as Ralph Nader so eloquently stated.

The author concludes: Until recently, cloture votes were the easy way out of a filibuster. Forty-one Senators had only to make their protest last long enough to make it to the cloture vote, beat it, and then bask in their victory as the majority pulled the "defeated" legislation from the floor and slunk away. But believe it or not, Senate Democrats have found an easier way to do this, and begin slinking even earlier.

Bravo.

Democrats are just as corporate now as their Rethuglican counterparts and have forgotten how to represent the people. I will not give one cent to a Democrat until they prove they are worthy of it. Right now, none are worthy. Not even Bernie Sanders.

Read the article and go to the comments section here.