self-hating dems

I’ve been running this FISA thing over and over in my head, trying to figure out the motivations of the 20 Democratic Dems that voted for it.

Sure, there’s telecom money. But that can only go so far when a solid Constitutional principle is at stake and the phone is ringing off the goddamn hook with incensed progressives cajoling, harassing, and pleading with their Senators to smother this bill in its cradle.

And, yes, even if those twenty fainthearted Dems had flipped to vote against FISA, the result would have been a 49-48 loss (or a 49-49 tie, with Cheney breaking in favor of his most salacious eavesdropping fantasies, if Sen. Kennedy* had voted on the FISA bill and not just Medicaid).

But this bill should have never passed a cloture vote, and 48 is enough with room to spare for the filibuster Obama had promised to undertake if immunity was not stripped from the bill.

The only answer I can come up with is that our stalwart elected Democrats have bought into the myth of Nixon’s “Silent Majority.” The tens of thousands of phone calls and emails that the Senators received on FISA were as nothing next to the perceived millions who Dems believe just want to be kept safe in their widdle beddies.

For whatever reason, elected Dems have an impotence-inducing inferiority complex that makes them hate themselves; but as politicians, their egos are far too large for such self-knowledge to fit inside their swollen craniums, so they hate us – the progressives – who represent their core values (lost somewhere in all that hot gas between their ears) instead. And so all that matters to them is that they win over the silent majority of real Americans who hate their inner DFH as much as they do.

Because no one likes a know-it-all, bleeding heart dirty fucking hippie, right?

I don’t know what the answer is. More and better Democrats, of course; but that’s what we thought we were getting with Obama and McCaskill* and Webb.

What we need are Progressive Dems with the balls and thundering righteousness of Feingold and Kennedy and Dodd. Dems who know how the game is played, but choose to kick over the board when the rules are rigged against us, their constituents.

I don’t know what kind of Democrat Obama will be after November, but we sure as hell better win a supermajority in the Senate, with more Dodds and Feingolds and Kennedys than Kohls and Landrieus and Nelsons (both of them). Otherwise, it won’t matter if we win the White House, the Senate and the House, because progressive causes will always lose when Dems are afraid of being kicked out of the Kewl Kids Klub.

These are shrunken times indeed.

*I believe the only reason Kennedy didn’t vote on the FISA bill yesterday, when he was in the Capitol at the time, was because he did not want to have to explain a disparity between his “Nay” vote and Obama’s “Yea.” I also believe that McCaskill, who had been loud and proud on her opposition to the FISA bill up until yesterday, voted “Yea” to stay in step with her Presidential nominee.