Yeah! We Won!

Yes, it came with a cost. (It always comes with a cost. Always. If you don't understand that, then give up now. That's the essential nature of politics.)

Give WillPitt some love over here. He is 100% right.

The not filibustering unless there are extraordinary circumstances is just jargon. WE WON! We stuffed Frist. He is toast.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3713311#

I PMed WillPitt and he said to send all you good folks here:

http://blog.pdamerica.org/?p=74

(Thanks Will!)

This is their cartoon:



I like this. Do you see Frist on the floor? He looked like he was being forced to drink fish juice soda. I loved it.

it was mostly about the supreme court and roe v wade anyways and we will have the filibuster for that.

but you know, i'm not even sure some Republicans really want to overturn it. sure, the religious right wants to. but the Republicans in power and the corporate whores. right now there is a silent agreement on the part of some republicans that they will vote republican and put up with the anti abortion talk as long as the Republicans never actually overturn it. once they do things would be different and people will feel it personally when it affects them or relatives and friends.

all over the faces of Reid, Boxer, Schumer and Durbin at their news conference. And the long, sour face on Frist. Told me all I needed to know! Sen. Warner looked happy too.

It's not the greatest thing since sliced bread and we have pain. (Those judges are awful I would rather not have any of them.) But the REthugs hold the cards right now. They could have done this thing if they really wanted to and we could not stop them.

But they are stopped. No one knows what 'extraordinary circumstances' means but that is for later. We have saved the filibuster and this means His Imperial Majesty, the Idiot King has to actually consider what the hell he is recommending and see if it can pass the moderates in his own freaking party before he tries to cram it down the throats of the Senate.

Some of this sucks. (Ccompromise always sort of sucks) But that's politcs. We got a win. We live to filibuster another day. And we stuffed Frist. (Who is now revealed as a weak leader.)

The whole point was to prevent these judges from being in striking distance of SCOTUS and we placed them there.What good is a filibuster we agree NOT to use? The only judges that aren't going to be seated are the unimportant ones! What will we win if Owens or Pryor end up on SCOTUS? We could have won this completely. But we struck a "deal" Sorry. There is NO such thing as bipartisanship and anyone who thinks the repukes can be trusted is naieve.Sorry Tay Tay, we must disagree. I am disgusted tonight.

But numbers can. And * has to learn to count to 7. That is the number of members of his own party that said 'No' to him on the loudest, biggest stage in maybe his whole friggin presidency.

Democrats could not win this fight alone. We do not have the numbers. (That's why the losses last year were so painful. We lost a great deal and have to make do with what we have until next year.) We live to fight another day. And our leader, Harry Reid, beat Bill Frist in a lopsided fight where the odds were against Reid.

Nobody wants those judges. But we were not going to win this fight without Rethug help. You don't actually think that comes without a price do you?

Let me say it louder: Bush lost tonight. He wanted total control. And he over-played his hand. The Rethugs showed him he doesn't have total control. And this was a big damn stage to show it on. We won. And in the wizardly world of PR, the Dems should be able to spin this into a David and Goliath situation wherein David won.

I just hope someone is paying attention.

44 Dems + 1 Indy + 7 Moderate Repubs = 52

This is why Frist was so down-in-the-mouth last night. This is why Dobson is freaking out. The far-right fringe has been shown that it no longer has the power to by-pass democracy and ram things through the Senate. Seven repubs have slipped off their chains.

:)

Rehnquist will be replaced with a lunatic, we already know that. It'll fly right through. O'Conner is a bigger fight, but the moderate Repubs will want a reasonable person there and just flexed their muscles on that. It isn't until one of the liberal leaning judges, like Stevens, needs to be replaced that we have a huge problem.

Personally, I'm more concerned about what we're going to do with these right leaning Democrats in general. We can "show up" all we want to, but if people just genuinely disagree with us, then what.

I think the moderates may be taking control back from the extremists. Time will tell.

last night, so I listened to the people whose judgment I trust (including you, TayTay!). Here is my last night's reaction, if you're interested.

Every person on my personal respect list felt the same way TayTay did, so I'm going to tip that way too.

There were a number of newspaper articles last week pointing out that the Senate hotheads tend to be ex-Reps who switched houses, and who fail to understand the ways in which the Senate is fundamentally different from the House. They were the ones most eager to pull the trigger.

I'm not ecstatic-happy about this. It's hard to be. But seeing Frist-and-Dobson defeated is great. Seeing the White House lose one is GREAT. And, as suspicious as I am of McCain and his maneuvers, a return of a republican moderate coalition is a wonderful development. I don't agree with them on much, but if you have to compromise (and that's what the Senate is all about, isn't it?) it's a lot better for us if we're compromising with moderates than with wingnuts. That moves the compromise seriously left-ward.

from Steve Clemons:



Link to the Post article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/23/AR2005052301938.html?sub=AR