Sen. Chris Dodd's Make-or-Break Moment

Sen. Chris Dodd's Make-or-Break Moment
Submitted by dlindorff on Mon, 2007-10-22 19:18. General Discussion

President Bush is no chump. He has figured out how to emasculate the Democrats (those that aren't already eunuchs). Instead of making a decent estimate of the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and asking for it up front for the 2008 fiscal year, he is asking for it piecemeal, giving Democrats opportunity after opportunity to turn him down and end it all, knowing all the while that they'll cave and give him his war money.

Each time he does this, and each time House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's minions deliver, the Democrats sink in public esteem, to the point that they're now approaching single-digit approval ratings.

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), a veteran legislator and son of a senator, and a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, has shown, however, how to fight back. Not on the war funding, although he claims to want the war ended immediately, but on the issue of the Constitution, and specifically the warrantless spying on Americans by the National Security Agency.

Dodd, last week, announced that he was placing a "hold" on new permanent legislation developed by the Democrats, in coordination with some Senate Republicans, saying he would not let it pass unless a provision granting immunity to telecom companies that had been aiding the NSA in their spying activities was removed. He vowed to filibuster the bill if his colleagues tried to move it to a vote.

In so doing, he gave the lie to the fraud that has been perpetrated by Pelosi and Reid that they and the Democrats are "powerless" to stop the war unless they have "60 votes" in the Senate. (That canard has been spouted so many times, and repeated so often uncritically in the media, that many Americans now actually think it takes 60 votes, not a simple majority of 51, to pass legislation in the US Senate!)

What Pelosi and Reid are alluding to actually is the 60 votes needed to override a veto. They are claiming that efforts to end the war cannot succeed because any bill calling for withdrawal would be filibustered by Republicans and that the Democrats, with a 51-majority caucus in the Senate, could not stop a filibuster. Dodd, however, is showing that they can prevent bad legislation by being the ones doing the filibustering, and that they then only need 41 votes--something they clearly could muster if the party's leadership were behind it.

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http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/27935

because the Repigilickins all march in lockstep to Bush** and will filibuster any bill Bush** does not like.

filibuster. giving up because the republicans claim they will filibuster is pretty absurd. This idea of "let's not vote or talk about anything the Republicans may not vote for" is completely out of control!

With one small mistake:

'Obama and Edwards, who are in the Senate with Dodd, would be forced to decide whether they wanted to continue to play to the party's right wing and its corporate funders, or whether they would cast their lot with the peace wing.'

I think it's meant to read Obama and Clinton,

Simple as that.