A lot of people aren’t aware, but there was an effort by the Bush administration to protect communications companies from being held accountable for committing illegal acts, assuming they were committing the illegal acts in the course of trying to make the government happy. So, in other words, they were being given permission to do illegal things as long as they could blame it on a government request.
There is no way in which this is good. Sen. Dodd proposed some legislation which would remove that protection, but it was soundly defeated.
Despite that defeat (which must have been pretty obvious), Obama voted in favor of civil liberties. Hillary didn’t vote. Norm Coleman voted against civil liberties, as did McCain. (cite)
I knew this wasn’t going to fly — it’s just too direct an attack on the corporatists that run both parties. It didn’t even make it into the media or blogosphere, so it wasn’t a hotly watched race. Specifically because it was a lost cause which could be quietly swept under the rug, I have been watching it as key way to see who takes civil liberties seriously. More than anything else, I want a President who will restore civil liberties and will lead us toward healing from this culture of fear. And that’s definitely not going to be Hillary Clinton or John McCain.
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There is a difference between the parties. I note that one party voted 48-0 against this bill. Not one opposed the measure, and only one even abstained, everyone else stood up and were counted. The other party voted 31-18 in favor- not just Obama and Klobuchar, but names such as Kerry and Kennedy and Reid and Dodd and Boxer and Schumer and Feingold and Harkin.
And it’s not just this vote- vote after vote, you see a minority- a large minority, but a minority none the less- of Democrats breaking away to vote with the unanimous Republicans to pass some truely horrid peice of legislation. These days, “bipartisian” means “all the Republicans and just enough Democrats to get it passed”.
Now, the second party definitely needs some work. About 40% of it’s members need to be given a hard lesson and/or given their walking papers. Including the current leadership- both Reid and Pelosi have pissed me off. But the bulk of party is in more or less the right place. There isn’t a single Republican fit to hold office currently in the Senate. Not if you care about civil liberties and the constitution and the rule of law. Not one.
So don’t tell me the parties are indistinguishable. I’m not having a hard time at all distinguishing them from here.
I don’t say the parties are indistiguishable. I used to, but since the Democrats have come to power, I’ve discovered that’s wrong.
In the Democrats, it seems like there’s a populist minority kicking around which doesn’t exist among the Republicans. I assumed that the populist minority was a political play which wouldn’t be reflected in actual votes or legislation, and that it mainly existed because the Democrats were the minority. My assumption was that it would evaporate when the Democrats became the majority in the Senate, because then they could pander to the big donors and actually offer those donors something of value. Part of the reason I expected this to happen was because I saw it happen with the Republicans — they were the party chanting for civil rights and against beltway corruption back when they were the minority, but at the end of Clinton’s Presidency, all of that just evaporated.
With the Democrats, though, the story has been a bit different. Although some Democrats have voted against their advertised populist roots in favor of corporations and unions (most notably in the person of Sen. Clinton), it hasn’t happened to nearly the extent that I expected.