Two important votes last week went against the majority of the party.

[madfloridian]

We are working to elect more Democrats. We elected more in 2006. Yet the votes on some serious issues are not changing.

Markos has a post up today that shows his concern as well. He talks about the fact that we the grassroots just can't match the lobbyists in power and money.

We don't have much power. In fact, we have very little.

As we've learned this year, Democrats in DC are more afraid of David Broder, Joe Klein, and Mr. 24%, than they are of their constituents. They are more concerned with Beltway opinion than they are with the national consensus. They are happier dealing with lobbyists than they are dealing with real people. They are more concerned with avoiding criticism than they are of delivering campaign promises.

So what can we do about it?

We've bitched and moan and pleaded and begged and threatened and cried -- and none of that mattered. We really can't hold up money, since quite frankly we don't have that much, and the lobbyists will always have more.

...."So what does that leave us? Well, we have one tool at our disposal, our only way to influence the behavior of our elected officials:

We can primary them.

He may be right. In spite of all the calls about getting out of Iraq, in spite of all the activities against the telco immunity in the Fisa bill....there were more Democratic votes than ever to fund the war. And Harry Reid deliberately put the immunity bill forward when he had a choice. It was a slap in our faces.

There appears to be a pre-set agenda in the Democratic congress. It worries me a lot, because many of us feel passionately about the way we invaded Iraq and may do so in Iran. I hear fear of Iran in the voices of Democrats all the time, and few take time to lessen that fear.

We have heard that we must elect more Democrats. I want to agree. I really do. Then I saw the vote this week for the Iraq funding bill without any conditions of withdrawal. An overwhelming number of Democrats voted for it in the House and the Senate. It showed me there is no intention at all on the part of the Democrats to use their constitutional power of the purse to end the Iraq debacle.

Here is the list posted here by DU poster Pro Sense. It includes the Yes votes from both House and Senate.

House:

78 Democrats:

Altmire
Baird
Barrow
Bean
Berkley
Berman
Berry
Bishop (GA)
Boren
Boucher
Boyd (FL)
Boyda (KS)
Brown, Corrine
Carney
Chandler
Clyburn
Cooper
Costa
Cramer
Cuellar
Davis (AL)
Davis (CA)
Davis, Lincoln
Dicks
Dingell
Donnelly
Edwards
Ellsworth
Emanuel
Etheridge
Giffords
Gillibrand
Gonzalez
Gordon
Green, Gene
Herseth Sandlin
Hill
Hinojosa
Holden
Hoyer
Kanjorski
Kildee
Kind
Lampson
Larsen (WA)
Levin
Lynch
Mahoney (FL)
Marshall
Matheson
McIntyre
Melancon
Mitchell
Mollohan
Moore (KS)
Murtha
Peterson (MN)
Pomeroy
Reyes
Rodriguez
Ross
Ruppersberger
Rush
Salazar
Schwartz
Scott (GA)
Sestak
Shuler
Skelton
Snyder
Space
Spratt
Tanner
Taylor
Udall (CO)
Visclosky
Walz (MN)
Wilson (OH)

Senate Roll Call

21 Democrats:

Daniel Akaka,
Max Baucus,
Evan Bayh,
Thomas Carper,
Bob Casey,
Kent Conrad,
Byron Dorgan,
Daniel Inouye,
Tim Johnson,
Mary Landrieu,
Carl Levin,
Blanche Lincoln,
Claire McCaskill,
Barbara Mikulski,
Bill Nelson,
Ben Nelson,
Mark Pryor,
John Rockefeller,
Ken Salazar,
Jon Tester,
Jim Webb

When you keep funding a debacle with no end in sight, it soons becomes your own debacle. You own it. No matter how often you call it Bush's war, the fact remains that the majority party is funding it.

On another front.....there is the effort to protect corporations who have the nerve to claim that they did not know any better. I can just imagine an average citizen standing before a judge and pleading ignorance of the law.

So many Democrats voted for cloture for the FISA bill last week....the one with immunity for the telecoms...that it is so much easier to post the ones who did not vote for it to pass out of committee. Harry Reid had a choice of another bill, one without immunity. He knew that was the one preferred by Democratic activists. He chose the one WITH immunity.

To me this is serious vote...those who voted YES knew that the majority of their party were totally against excusing the telcos on this issue. They showed their lack of concern for our views. So, thanks to the NAYs.

Senate Roll Call on Fisa bill with immunity

NAYs ---10
Boxer (D-CA)
Brown (D-OH)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Cardin (D-MD)
Dodd (D-CT)
Feingold (D-WI)
Harkin (D-IA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Wyden (D-OR)

Not Voting - 14
Biden (D-DE)
Clinton (D-NY)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Obama (D-IL)
Sanders (I-VT)

Only ten Democrats heard the grassroots and the hundreds of thousands of calls, numerous emails and letters. Only ten of them.

78 Democrats voted to continue this war without conditions attached.

I thought we could make a difference, but they say we have nowhere else to go. I thought that being active in the party would get them to take stands, but now I am having some doubts.

[madfloridian]

1. Jane Hamsher and Glenn Greenwald will be sending alerts about the Fisa bill.

I signed up for them. Here is the link about how they are planning on staying on top of this situation in which our own party is fighting us.

From Fire Dog Lake:

Harry Reid May Punt, Extend Telecom Bill Through February

A Rockefeller aide said the senator would support the 30-day extension. But it remains unclear whether Republicans will block Reid’s efforts to extend the PAA.

“I don't see that it benefits us to continue to delay something that we know we need to do,” said Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.), vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee. Reid said he spoke Monday night with Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, who agreed that extending the PAA for one month was a “good idea.”

Without extending the time for debate, some Democrats fear that the White House will warn that failure to enact the bill could increase the chances of a terrorist attack and pressure Democrats to pass a bill they oppose — the same scenario as last August.

“People are firm for the moment … but then the intimidation starts,” said Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), a staunch critic of the telecom immunity provision. “Too often Democrats allow themselves to be intimidated by phony arguments.”

And a statement from the article.

The delay is good news for us, however, as it allows us more time to organize and get the word out. Working with Glenn Greenwald and others, we'll be sending out action alerts to let you know what you can do to fight the battle against retroactive immunity.

Sign up here.

Think about it. 78 House Dems voted to let Bush have his way on Iraq rather than set some limitations. Only ten voted against letting the bill with immunity for telecoms out of the committee. Only ten.

Seems like we are fighting our own party so much we don't have time to fight the Republicans.

[tbyg52]

2. Mine (Lampson) might as well not even be on the list as a Democrat.... nt

[madfloridian]

3. Wasn't that who Richard Morrison dropped out to support?

I still get emails from Morrison now and then, since we supported him as a DFA candidate.

[tbyg52]

13. Yes. He's running for precinct 1 in Fort Bend now

I hope to be able to support him, but he's announced and doesn't even have a website....!?

[Jim Lane]

7. Lampson is a good example of misplaced progressive ire

He's from a very conservative district. (It has a Cook Partisan Voting Index of R+15, meaning that it tends to be about 15 percentage points more favorable to Republicans than the nation as a whole.) Lampson won the seat only because Tom DeLay's maneuver to get his name off the ballot failed, and the Republican candidate had to run as a write-in.

What's the point of complaining about Lampson's lack of ideological purity, or threatening a primary against him? A truly progressive Democrat who ran in that district would get slaughtered in the general election. Even Lampson, with a conservative voting record and the benefit of incumbency, will have a tough time holding the seat in 2008.

If Lampson voted on every bill exactly as DeLay would have, we would still be better off with Lampson. He's one more vote to make John Conyers the Chair of the Judiciary Committee.

[madfloridian]

9. I no longer support the premise that people in "red" districts can vote against our best interests.

I refuse to accept that anymore as reality.

If we continue to condone it, if we continue to excuse it we will soon have a party that votes like Republicans.

In effect we already have that party.

[tbyg52]

15. If that ain't the truth.

Blue Dogs aren't Democrats, IMHO.... Tell it like it is.

[tbyg52]

14. Yes, and that's the *only* thing that can be said for him

That he's a Democrat in name.

[L0oniX]

4. check to see who holds stock in what company and there's your answer.

[jaybeat]

5. Be sure to thank your Dems who voted the other way

Otherwise, they'll think they stuck their necks out for nothing.

I hadn't tracked how Ron Wyden (D-OR) was positioned on FISA, but after the vote I saw he was one of the 10, so I wrote him and thanked him.

I'm also pleased to see Oregon's Dems in the House (Hooley, Blummenauer, Wu and DeFazio) and Senate are not on the list for the Iraq blank check--please let them know they did the right thing!

Otherwise, the siren songs of the corporate lobby money is just that much harder to resist.

[femrap]

6. K and R

On the House side, I wonder if all 47 of Blue/Bush Dogs voted with the Repugnants. These 'reps' need to go.

And I have been following the votes of our new Dem Senators....the only one who is worth his weight in gold is Sherrod Brown from Ohio. McCaskill, Tester and Webb are annoyingly voting against us.

[DCKit]

8. I believe Dumbya did say that he would veto any FISA bill without retroactive immunity...

for the TeleComs. but I am (literally) heartbroken that each of these Congress persons and Senators chose to vote against the spirit, if not the letter, of the Constitution as well as the wishes and the interests of the people - those who elected them and whom they clearly no longer represent.

Several weeks Congress passed a bill to fund a study to determine those things which could lead to the rise of domestic terrorism. In response to one of the postings on the subject, I offered what I consider to be the root cause of all domestic terrorism: Disenfranchisement of the people by their government.

In every case that I am aware of - N. Ireland, Saudi Arabia, all of S. and Central America, Mexico, Indonesia, Myanmar, Malaysia, India, Sri Lanka, Cuba, Haiti, etc... - illegitimate governments and governments that have stopped acting in the interest of the people, or any specific group of people, are themselves the cause of domestic terrorism.

Those who attacked us on 9/11 weren't attacking the U.S. for any random reason, the attacked the U.S. because of our continued support for the governments of Saudi Arabia and Israel, our presence on their "holy ground", our long-term interference in Middle Eastern affairs and our lack of support for the Palestinian people. From an American perspective, none of these things should be a big deal, but the last time the United States was under the thumb of a foreign nation, it wasn't yet the U.S. and a revolution resulted. From our perspective, those who fought the British were freedom fighters, from the British perspective, terrorists, insurgents and rebels.

We are at a unique point in American history: The current administration is ignoring and dismantling our Constitution, corporations and lobbies are calling the shots in Congress, we are fighting an illegal and insanely expensive war and the economy is trashed, as is the value of the dollar. Though the MSM has been complicit in attempting to cover their asses, the people are waking up as they find they can no longer afford to properly feed their families, fuel their cars, obtain medical care, pay their bills or travel freely and unhindered within the United States, let alone across international borders.

Undoubtedly the first to crack will be (and have been) the mentally ill, but the poor, newly homeless/unemployed and true believers will quickly follow. Seemingly random acts of violence at public venues will become more common, then riots as groups of people either become, or realize they already are, disenfranchised. This is not the America any of us would chose, but, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, you live in the America you have, not the one you want.

The damage done to the economy and the people will take decades to repair, but the damage to the Constitution and rule of law could be repaired within weeks or months by Congress: If they had the will.

The names listed in the OP are, in my opinion and, for the most part, a list of those Democrats who no longer respect the rule of law, the people they were elected to represent or the Constitution they swore to uphold. While some may use the excuses of "political expediency", merely "going along" or "getting along" with the majority, the country and it's people would be better off if they were replaced by others possessing a true sense of what it means to serve The People and who would refuse to compromise the Constitution, for any reason. The Constitution may be "just a piece of paper", but it's the most brilliant and important document ever written and deserves far more consideration than it has been getting for the past seven years.

Many excellent quotes and writings by Thomas Jefferson:

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson

[madfloridian]

10. Jane Hamsher, Blue America say "Primary the bastards"

They agree with Markos's statement in the OP. They are not going to listen to us. They have an agenda already set. We have no voice except to stop things temporarily. Perhaps Markos and Jane and DWT are right.

From Fire Dog Lake:

http://firedoglake.com/2007/12/22/blue-america-primary-... /

She presents Donna Edwards and Mark Pera whom we donated to through DFA's Act Blue page.

We also support Darcy Burner and Eric Massa through the DFA Act Blue page

I guess it is all we can do to be heard. Several challenges have made a difference even though they were not won....it did make the one challenged show some change at least in rhetoric.

As it stands now, it appears our party, at least in congress, continues their policy of appealing to the Republicans more than to us.

[tnlefty]

11. Thanks again madfloridian!

I'm wondering what's up with Sanders' not voting on this telecom bill as it seems like something he would be happy to vote against.??

If this piece of shit legislation ever does pass I'll call AT & T and tell them we're done, I don't do business with collaborators.

[OneBlueSky]

12. even winning primaries and electing progressive candidates doesn't always . . .

make much of a difference . . . in my district, we did just that last election when we put John Hall in office as our representative . . . since then, John has disappointed me on more than one occasion, often voting with the DLCers on issues of importance . . . his support of Hillary Clinton is also a huge disappointment (though understandable, I suppose, given that he represents a district in her state) . . .

seems that most, once they get to Washington, quickly learn to "go along to get along" . . . in order to survive and have any voice whatsoever, they pretty much have to go along with the Boxers and Reids of the world . . . if they didn't, they'd just be totally marginalized . . . unfortunate but true I fear . . .

[rpannier]

16. Color me SHOCKED!!! SHOCKED I tell you

that useless piece of garbage Rahm Emanuel, that equally worthless Hoyer and repugnant skelton are on that list.

Oh and someone tell me again why we I should send money to Udall again?