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"Return" implies that it ever went away.

By Moe Lane Posted in Congress | FISA | I was for the war before I was against the war before I was for the war | Kneel Before Zod — Comments (6) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

FiveThirtyEight.com has some numbers up of how the Blue Dogs jumped on FISA. As they note, the final vote was 105 Yea to 128 Nay on the Democratic side, which in itself is instructive of the failure of the progressive netroots to impose their desires on their Party; but among competitive-seat Democrats (31, as per the Cook Political Report*) the ratio was 23 Yea to 8 Nay. A fairly significant difference: and one that suggests that the Democrats have a fairly significant disconnect between rhetoric and reality. But we'll discuss that below.

By the way, those 23 Yea votes were from: Harry Mitchell AZ-5, Gabrielle Giffords AZ-8, Jerry McNerney CA-11, Tim Mahoney FL-16, John Barrow GA-12, Jim Marshall GA-8, Melissa Bean, IL-8, Brad Ellsworth IN-8, Nancy Hoyda KS-2, Dennis Moore KS-3, John Yarmuth KY-3, Don Cazayoux LA-6, Travis Childers MS-1, Kirsten Gillibrand NY-20, Michael Arcuri NY-24, Zack Space OH-18, Chris Carney PA-10, Paul Kanjorski PA-11, Jason Altmire PA-4, Joe Sestak PA-7, Patrick Murphy PA-8, Nick Lampson TX-22, and Ciro Rodriguez TX-23. I mention this because I am given to understand that ActBlue is making it a point to target these individuals (as well as House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer), and far be it from me to stand in their way. Go ahead and spend that money, netrooters.

The rest of you, read on.

Back in 2007 our own Soren Dayton responded to a somewhat aggravated Matt Stoller's declaration that the 2006 election cycle had not actually eliminated the conservative majority in Congress. Stoller had called it "The Working Conservative (but not Republican) Majority," requiring Dayton's correction that what was actually taking place was a pro-security majority. A conservative majority would actually be doing something about spending, after all... yes, this is our favorite complaint, and will probably remain so until roughly five minutes before the sun goes nova, so you might as well get used to it. But even a politician eager to waste your money can still be opposed to putting American civilians at actual risk of getting killed - and they'll vote accordingly.

So examining the FISA vote in the light of this observation explains a good deal, actually. It should be noted that the GOP plus the Blue Dogs (if we use the above definition) was not actually enough by themselves to pass the FISA bill: we had 10** of the GOP vote "present" (and 1 vote against it), which would have given a total of 211 votes (not enough to pass) if Democrats from more reliable seats hadn't also voted Yea. The nay votes were in fact mostly from the Congressional Black Caucus (75% Nay) and the Congressional Progressive Caucus (something like 96% Nay); while the two factions are quite powerful, they apparently have merely a plurality, even in their own party***.

This explains Speaker Pelosi's own decision to support the bill - it might startle you to know that she is not a member of the CPC; in fact, I have been informed that her performance as Ranking Member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence wasn't actually bad, which (embarrassingly) startled me - but it doesn't really explains Senator Obama's. And make no mistake: whatever he says about trying to strip out the language regarding telecom immunity, he won't be doing a blessed thing to stop it. Senate Majority Leader Reid has his marching orders from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and given that this bill is slightly less odious to the progressives than the one that passed the Senate 68-29 (please note that Obama's opposition then did not extend to actually voting on it, which is a bit of a theme for both him and his supporters), it's going to pass, and probably fairly quickly. That's because there's a pro-security majority in the Senate, too: thanks to Senator Lieberman, McConnell can win a floor vote on national security issues if he needs to badly enough, and Reid knows it full well. This often gets obscured by the "60 votes for cloture" maneuver (which survives primarily because both parties find it too useful to destroy) - but that majority's there.

Fighting that majority is thus not really on the list of things to be done by the junior Senator from Illinois. First, he'd lose: second, there's no need for a second - losing is quite bad enough, from his point of view. Hence, this attempt at a balancing act: it's an open question whether it'll work, although I have my cheerful doubts. It's also an open question whether Obama wants to distance himself from progressives, or whether he just wants to appear to distance himself. Up to a couple of days ago I would have said the latter: but the sheer cynicism of his abandonment of campaign finance reform at least suggests that he might not really believe in anything.

I suppose that it doesn't really matter either way. Not to me, not to Senator Obama - and certainly not to the progressives themselves, given that they have precisely zero alternatives now.

Moe Lane

*Being defined as Toss-up (7), Leans Democrat (12), and Likely Democrat (14), minus 2 retirees.

**Most of the antiwar Republicans, the cowards.

***This is in marked contrast to the pro-security faction in the GOP, which is so powerful that people forget that it is a faction at all. In fact, it is so powerful that failure to adhere to its central tenets is considered proof that one is a fringe Republican Congressman - which habitually irritates those so tagged, mostly to the rest of the Party's profound indifference.