John Kerry Sells His Soul
We’ve seen this before…it happened with Al Gore, as well. Having lost an election that he and his supporters were sure he would win (and, need I say, were convinced they deserved to win), Gore took some time to lick his wounds and emerged the Angry Old Progressive (an Angry Young Progressive is annoying enough, but one can console oneself with the thought that she will grow up some day – no such luck with Sir Albert).
Now John Kerry has done the same. Conveniently waiting until it was certain his move would have no real consequence (by way of simple vote-counting), Kerry has, in a supreme moment of egotistic bombast, tried to ‘out-Ted Kennedy’ Ted Kennedy (and from Switzerland, no less!). Now, he is appealing to his newfound radical friends at the Daily Kos:
I said yesterday that President Bush had the opportunity to nominate someone who would unite the country in a time of extreme division. He chose not to do this, and that is his right. But we have every right, in fact, we have a responsibility, to fight against a radical ideological shift on the Supreme Court. Just think about how this nomination came to be. Under fire from his conservative base for nominating Harriet Miers–a woman whose judicial philosophy they mercilessly attacked–President Bush broke to extreme right-wing demands.
This was a coup.
Miers was removed and Alito was installed to replace the swing vote on the Court. The President gave no thought to what the American people really wanted–or needed. So it’s up to us to think about what America really needs – that’s part of the true meaning of “advice and consent.”
Here’s the bottom line though and I’ll just be blunt and direct about it. It takes more than one or two people to filibuster. It’s not “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” I’m doing what I can, Senator Kennedy is doing what he can, but if, like me, you want to stop Judge Alito from becoming Justice Alito, we can’t just preach to our own choir. We need even more of your advocacy.
The transparency of the move is evident to all – even the New York Times (no stranger of late to progressive nonsense itself) recognizes the political calculus behind it:
Democrats cringed and Republicans jeered at the awkwardness of his gesture, which almost no one in the Senate expects to succeed.
“God bless John Kerry,” said Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican on the Judiciary Committee. “He just cinched this whole nomination. With Senator Kerry, it is Christmas every day.”
Steve Schmidt, a White House spokesman working on the nomination, said Mr. Kerry’s move “says a lot less about Alito than it does about the Iowa primary in 2008,” suggesting that Mr. Kerry, who lost the presidential race in 2004, was playing to his party’s liberal base in a bid to recapture its nomination.
Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, sounded almost apologetic about Mr. Kerry’s statements.
“No one can complain on this matter that there hasn’t been sufficient time to talk about Judge Alito, pro and con,” Mr. Reid said on the Senate floor. “I hope that this matter will be resolved without too much more talking.”
And on Friday, Senator Joseph Biden, a Delaware Democrat and member of the Judiciary Committee who voted against Mr. Alito there, said he would not support a filibuster and doubted one would happen.
One the one hand, we can see why Kerry and Gore would play the radical card: throw some red meat to the activist base and you’re guaranteed headlines and adulation from those whose every waking moment is consumed by hatred of all things Republican.
On the other, there is this: young angry progressives don’t vote. At least, not in the quantities required to win elections. Further, they tend to alienate the 98% of Americans who believe in taking showers and going to work. During the last election, many people on the ground in Iowa said the mass arrival of Deaniacs killed his candidacy. When the party regulars saw the kind of die-hard support Dean attracted, they ran in droves – the Dean Scream was just the icing on the cake.
Nothing says irrelevancy like losing an election that the intelligentsia assumed was yours to win. John Kerry, and Al Gore before him, can still steal a headline or two, based on their name recognition, and in Kerry’s case, his prominent office. But if they didn’t move the vast American heartland when they sang in its own key, who believes they can do it by scraping their fingers down the chalkboard?
Not me…
Mark,
Given how poor these two were as losers, it is obviously a blessing they lost!
BTW, I did extend the Carnival deadline
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1239
We could use help getting submissions in!
AJStrata
I don’t care much for Wonkette, but her comment on Kerry’s proposed fillibuster pretty much nailed it:
“Hey John! I can think of one thing you could have done that would have kept Judge Alito off the Court for sure.”
speaking of kerry out of country.
switzerland?
is that DAVOS?
the world-o-crat convention where eason jordon cut his wrists last year?
The same…
I couldn’t hear the audio (at gym) but I think Reid is now supporting the filibuster. This is insanity.
I think you must have heard wrong – or else the news pages haven’t caught up yet…
I couldn’t hear it at all–I was reading the Fox ticker. Apparently he does support it but admits it’s hopeless.
http://www.nationalledger.com/artman/publish/article_27263076.shtml
Which begs the question, don’t they have anything better to do–like something, anything with an outside chance of succeeding?
Hmmm…sounds like a very Kerry-esque position…how fitting!…
Let me make sure I’ve got this straight. According to the junior senator from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, if conservatives convince President Bush, a nominal conservative himself, to dump Miers because they don’t think she’s conservative enough, that’s a coup.
If liberals convince President Bush to dump Alito because they think he’s too conservative, that’s a sacred duty?
Mark, your reference to Al Gore is right on target. I didn’t vote for Gore or Kerry, but had either prevailed, I wasn’t especially worried, because I figured both seemed to be reasonable, sober men who could be decent presidents. Neither seemed especially moonbatty.
Now look what’s happened. I guess when you lose to a guy who you and all your friends have been denigrating as a moron for years, it makes you a bit peevish. Maybe that’s why Jimmy Carter still seems so snippy about Ronald Reagan.
I’m not one to bring up 2000 over and over again, but it does seem a bit disingenuous, and misrepresentative of the actual facts, to state blindly that Gore “lost to Bush,” and that’s that. Gore was screwed by a system that elected him President, by any measure, but stopped counting before it could be proven.
Fargus, I don’t want to go through the 2000 thing again, either, but there is only one method of electing a U.S. president, the electoral college – all else is besides the point. Bush won the electoral college vote, and thus defeated Gore…not an opinion, but a fact…
I understand the method of electing the US President. And notice I didn’t mention the popular vote. I was, in fact, talking about the recounts in Florida that were halted by court order, but later found by nearly all measures to favor Gore over Bush.
Fargus, I know you do, and I’m not trying to be patronizing…but believe me, if Gore had won, I think you would get a little tired of people questioning his victory six years later still…
Bush is the President. I’m not refuting that. Only that if you had won the popular vote AND the electoral vote 6 years ago, but had had the counts to prove it halted by a court order, you’d probably still be bitter as well.
No, no, no…sorry Fargus, that won’t do at all…Al Gore most decidedly did not win the electoral vote, and we’ve covered this issue exhaustively (do a search on my blog for Paul Krugman for more than I ever care to go through again – this is the very issue that got Krugman in trouble with the NY Times ombudsman)…
Thanks for pointing out the story. I had stopped keeping up with any kind of news for a while later last year, and I missed that one.
Bear in mind that I wasn’t just being a completely ignorant, conspiracy-theorist type of guy. I was going off of the last reports I’d seen, from years ago, that had said that by most other recount methods Gore had won. But this one is more extensive, and I thank you for pointing it out.
Well, to be fair, he would have won under some recount methods…
Gore would have won Florida if the vote had continued until Gore was in the lead–and then stopped before Bush could regain it.
The Secret Service must be putting something into the water they give the losing Presidential candidates–they all go bonkers. Every time Gore gives a speech he is frothing at the mouth. John Kerry was always a twit but has gotten even twittier, if that were possible. As for Bob Dole….
[...] Decision ‘08 discussing Gore, Kerry, and the unhinged moonbat left’s recent bizzare and counterproductive behavior: Nothing says irrelevancy like losing an election that the intelligentsia assumed was yours to win. John Kerry, and Al Gore before him, can still steal a headline or two, based on their name recognition, and in Kerry’s case, his prominent office. But if they didn’t move the vast American heartland when they sang in its own key, who believes they can do it by scraping their fingers down the chalkboard? [...]