[Update: The bill just passed — by 218 votes.]
[Update 2: More updating below]
This is a follow up to the last post, on the Iraq War supplemental bill being voted on today (noonish, CSPAN says).
Today people whose opinions I respect are arguing both for and against passage of this bill. The arguments boil down to this:
No — It allows the war to continue for nearly 18 more months. We can do better.
Yes — It’s not an ideal bill, but this bill has a chance of passage. Actually passing an antiwar bill (as opposed to voting for something better that fails to pass) will weaken Bush politically and perhaps make it politically tenable to pass something tighter and stricter in the future. But if this bill fails, passing something tighter and stricter in the future will be even more difficult than it is now.
The hurdle is 218 votes. There are 233 Democrats in the House. Although it’s not impossible that a stray Republican might cross party lines and vote for an antiwar measure, realistically Nancy Pelosi has to get 218 Democrats to agree to vote for the bill to ensure passage. If more than 15 Dems vote against the bill, it will fail. And, like it or not, 44 of those 233 Democrats are Blue Dogs — moderate to conservative Dems who mostly represent “red” districts. Roughly 50 or so more House Dems are DLC Dems. A few — not all — Blue Dogs are also in the DLC, and right now I’m not inclined to spend the morning sorting out exactly how many are or aren’t. Let’s say about half. That puts us in the neighborhood of 60 House Dems who are on record as not wanting to get caught moving too far left, possibly because they’re afraid they’ll lose their seats if they do.
Let’s look at the liberal side of the spectrum: The House Progressive Caucus has 69 members. At Democrats.com, David Swanson asks the Progressive Caucus members to vote no on the supplement bill. His arguments against the bill are valid arguments. His arguments in favor of Barbara Lee’s “fully funded withdrawal” bill are valid arguments. I’d much rather the House passed Lee’s bill than the one they’re voting on today.
I’ve never set foot inside the House of Representatives, and I don’t presume to understand what’s possible and what isn’t. But The People Who Understand These Things say there is no way enough Blue Dogs and other moderate Dems would vote for Barbara Lee’s bill to pass it. Maybe they won’t vote for it because they think it’s political suicide; maybe they won’t vote for it because they genuinely don’t like it. In the real world, in order to get those 218 votes, Nancy Pelosi has to give the House something that most of the Blue Dogs and most of the Progressive Caucus will vote for, as well as most of the other Dems.
Yesterday Rep. Jerrold Nadler — long a solidly liberal Dem — was quoted in the New York Times —
To vote “no,” in effect would be to say, “Let the war go on.” There will be other votes, but this at least starts in the right direction. It’s not as far as I wanted to go, but it’s a substantial step.
As I’ve said, there are people of good will with reasonable opinions who disagree on this issue. Unfortunately, there are some who don’t get that. All week I’ve been hearing accusations that various people or organizations — Moveon.org is one — have “sold out” because they favor passage of the supplement bill. I’ve heard people say that Nancy Pelosi doesn’t want to end the Iraq War. Late last night a commenter to my last post said,
The actual strategic hope of the people favoring this bill seems to be that the president will veto it. You can then show him to be against even an obligation to meet his own benchmarks, and this will demonstrate him to be an unreasonable man. Does that seem like the right way to understand what you are doing?
In other words, nobody actually wants this bill to pass into law. It’s just a messaging device. That seems to be Kos’s position.
‘Scuse me while I bang my head against a wall and scream.
First, Pelosi is putting forward a compromise bill that has some chance of passage, as opposed to an un-compromise bill that has no chance of passage. How does that translate into “nobody actually wants this bill to pass into law”?
Second, if Bush vetoes today’s bill, as he promises to do, what makes you think he wouldn’t also veto Barbara Lee’s bill?
Third, the Senate can’t even pull together enough of a majority to have a vote on a bleeping nonbinding resolution.
Sure I want the war to end tomorrow. I wanted it not to start. Our choices in Congress are to do something to end it, or to do nothing to end it. I’m for doing something.
If the supplement bill passes, as it’s expected to do, what should we as antiwar citizens do?
(a) Express support for congressional Dems, and do what we can to make pro-war politicians and the Bush administration feel more isolated against the tide of public opinion, thereby paving the way for more congressional action against the war, or
(b) Whine because it wasn’t the bill we wanted, and throw verbal brickbats at Nancy Pelosi and Moveon.org and everybody else who “sold out”?
You know where I stand on this.
Right now, with few remaining progressives willing to vote against the supplemental bill, and with the House leadership probably having enough votes to pass it (for more on this, see here), the remaining progressive opposition is being cast as “principled,” in contrast to the “pragmatic” progressives who have decided to vote in support. This is certainly the dichotomy proposed by McJoan in her latest piece on the supplemental over at Dailykos. This is a binary opposition with which I disagree, primarily because I have always looked at ethics from an applied perspective, where the ethical value of a given action can only be judged in the context of the consequences of that action. In this circumstance, I am, not arguing that voting against the supplemental from the a progressive stance is unethical, just that it is not any more ethical than voting in favor.
In the same post, Chris pasted a statement from the Progressive Caucus that they would not block the bill. Josephine Hearn reports for The Politico (yeah, I know, it’s The Politico), “California Democrats Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, Lynn Woolsey and Diane E. Watson said they did not want to stand in the way of the bill and have urged other liberal lawmakers to vote for it.”
I hope nobody accuses Barbara Lee of selling out.
Update: Here are the Dems who voted no, and it appears Lee, Waters, Woolsey and Watson were among the no’s.
Barrow
Boren
Davis, Lincoln
Kucinich
Lee
Lewis (GA)
Marshall
Matheson
McNulty
Michaud
Taylor
Waters
Watson
Woolsey
I’m not saying these Democrats are wrong. On the other hand, one more no vote would have, IMO, set back the antiwar cause enormously.
President Bush is expected to throw a public hissy fit about 1:45 EST.
This is the exact same type of nonsense that helped get Bush into the White House. Some of the true believers voted for Nader instead of Gore, as they bought the “Gush-Bore” line that there wasn’t really any difference between the two. We all know how that turned out. This is the “perfect is the enemy of the good” mentality. Incidentally, this is the same mindset that sometimes leads to demonstrators acting like jackasses and thus hurting their cause: they’re so convinced they’re right that they fail to consider how their actions look to others.
This was handled perfectly, Maha. Believe it or not, the Democratic party is far more credible having those who hold principles being willing to vote them, but the bill was passed anyhow. Like Barbara Lee, who is my own representative in the Congress and who I support completely, I withdrew my opposition to the passage of this bill last night.
Instead of banging your head on the wall you might realize that we’re helping each other even when we’re disagreeing, because we are demonstrating that there is a real dialogue on this side, while the Republicans self-destruct.
I hope you wouldn’t accuse Barbara Lee of being a bad Democrat.
Holy crow, whig, will you (dare I say it?) bleeping learn to read? The next to last paragraph, for example?
Straighten up, or you’re banned for being annoying.
In my perfect world, both houses of Congress would pass a bill allowing for an orderly withdrawal of all troops within 6 months, and passage of that bill would include veto-proof majorities. However, that Nancy Pelosi was able to craft a bill that could even get my centrist rep., Melissa Bean, to vote “yea”, is a major step forward. Personally, I suspect that the “conscience voters” among the Dems agreed in advance who would be allowed to bow out of the “yeas”. The reason I think that is that among the list of “yea” names was Jan Schakowsky, my former rep. and a fearless anti-war voice among the Progressive Caucus. Jan, however, has not tied her political future to a no-more-funding vote the way Reps. Waters, Lee and Woolsey have. I think they all knew the vote count going in, and those who voted “nay” or “present” were kept to the minimum allowed to still let the bill pass. If so, that was another carefully crafted compromise, and, IMO, a good one.
I think this shows that unlike the Republicans who never said no to Bush and just voted for whatever he wanted the Democrats are not ideologues that wish to destroy this democracy. I like to see all the different thoughts coming from one party. Not being in lockstep with a narrow ideology is a good thing. Compromise is a good thing. Also, allowing the Dems who voted no to vote their consciences and not calling them names or sellouts, etc., afterwards is a grownup thing to do. Out country has been run by a bunch of bratty three year olds; it’s time the grownups finally showed up.
Like Maha, my preference is that the war in Iraq had never been started. It was an illegal and immoral action. We can’t go back in time. If we could, no one could still talk any common sense into W. So let’s get what we can and keep building on that.
I couldn’t disagree more. The Dems bear a lot of responsibility for this war by allowing themselves to be bullied into authorizing it just before the 2002 mid-terms. This bill just extends their culpability another 17+ months.
You don’t make compromises with people’s lives. You take a stand and you make others go on the record doing the same. And you do that with a bill to get out now rather than delay the inevitable, and with a bill that isn’t tied to a spending authorization or anything else.
If the Dems were serious about pulling out the troops, they would introduce a bill on that issue alone, for a plan to pull out the troops as soon as possible, not 17 months and hundreds more US deaths from now, and make each senator and rep take a public stand on it. But tthat isn’t going to happen, because most of these people put their careers and perks and egos ahead of anything else. That’s what got us into this bloody mess in the first place.
I also couldn’t disagree more with beckya57 and others like her who think “true believers” like me put Bush in the White House. In fact, voting for a Dem (or Repub) because that’s who you’ve been told has the only chance of winning, rather than who you believe would make the best president, is the kind of thinking that is keeping us in Iraq, that is keeping us from adopting a fair system of health care, that furthers the widening gap between rich and poor, and on and on. Not voting for the best candidate because you’ve been told that candidate can’t win is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Sorr for the length.
The Dems bear a lot of responsibility for this war by allowing themselves to be bullied into authorizing it just before the 2002 mid-terms.
Yes, no question.
If the Dems were serious about pulling out the troops, they would introduce a bill on that issue alone, for a plan to pull out the troops as soon as possible
Uh-huh. How in the world would it be more “serious” to put forward token legislation that is guaranteed to fall short of passage? Why would that not, in fact, be an empty gesture?
Let’s repeat what Jerrold Nadler said,
Your approach is the un-serious (and, may I say, juvenile?) one.
I also couldn’t disagree more with beckya57 and others like her who think “true believers†like me put Bush in the White House.
Oh, you’re one of those brainwashed saps who voted for Nader, huh? So do you still think there’s no difference whatsoever between Bush and Gore?
I knew there was a huge difference between them in 2000. I knew that Bush would be an unmitigated disaster in 2000. I knew that Nader was playing at self-serving demagoguery in 2000. I can only assume you weren’t paying attention and fell for the lies Nader was peddling.
Sorr[y] for the length.
The length is fine; it’s the stupid that creeps me out.
It’s the stupid that creeps me out.
Well, I guess you certainly told me.
But you didn’t read what I said, or chose to ignore it. I’m not proposing token legislation. I’m proposing making our reps go on the record with a vote to continue this misbegotten war. That, combined with real leadership from the Dems highlighting all the lies that got us into this mess in the first place, might have a chance of sucess, or it might fail. But it would be a genuine attempt to end this war.
By the way, if you don’t think yesterday’s bill wasn’t pure showmanship, with no chance of being enacted, you’re kidding yourself.
Thanks for the nasty remarks.
I’m not proposing token legislation. I’m proposing making our reps go on the record with a vote to continue this misbegotten war.
And you didn’t read what I said, which is that such legislation has no chance in hell of passing in the House.
Granted, the bill passed yesterday has faint hope in the Senate and most certainly will be vetoed, but by passing the House it’s putting the Dems in a better place to work toward ending the war. It’s also already forcing an important confrontation with Bush. This is working in our favor already, even if it doesn’t become law.
Voting on legislation that fails to pass in the House, however, weakens the Dems and sets the antiwar cause back.
In the real world, those are the choices.