One day Senator Susan Collins won’t be allowed to play Lucy to our Charlie Brown anymore.
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About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
One of the bedrock rules in life is never listen to what a person says, instead watch what they do, because what they do exposes what they really want.
Never listen to what she says, watch how she votes…because those are the policies she really wants. She is not being `played’, she is playing her constituents. And the voters of Maine keep voting for HER…which shows they like how she votes.
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Or talks. Most voters don’t pay attention until election time, then few look at voting records unless they have an opponent who says something like “Senator X voted against Y 1000 times”, which may or may not be true. Around 50% of eligible voters, perhaps a majority, as totally disgusted and regard voting as a waste of time. They may well be right. Vote for the Replicrat of Democan, only difference is which demographic they fawn over. The only color either really cares about is green and I’m not talking about the environment.
Apparently you learned nothing from 2016.
True.
And chances are that on that day we still won’t have an answer to the single most under-reported political story of the past decade: how and why a “Blue Dog” caucus of moderate Republicans failed to emerge when they could have, on any number of occasions, have wielded the balance of power in Washington.
(Only one “have” needed at the end of that sentence.)
P. S. I welcome any theories as to why this is the case.
Didn’t Hastert and Boehner and Ryan have a lot to do with preventing it from developing, by not allowing any legislation on the floor if it wasn’t going to get all the most reactionary votes? by preventing collaboration with Democrats?
Hastert Rule. That guaranteed the squirrels had to be on board.
The squirrels could have told Boehner and Ryan to go fuck themselves and reached across the aisle. Senators Collins, Murkowski, McCain could have single-handedly done the same.
Senators Collins, Murkowski, McCain could have single-handedly done the same.
So could Sasse or Flake. It tells you they’re all full of shit. That their talk is cheap.
And like Charlie Brown, it could happen today if the democrats stop falling for it. Why they keep thinking she’ll hold the football and let them kick it when she never does, is just mind boggling.
. . . to get to majority-“no” outcome? Cruz? Graham? The aptly named Flake? . . .
She’s a highly-unlikely “no”. But who’s more likely? (Murkowski’s the other candidate of course, but need two.)
There’s no clear path to two GOP votes in any of ’em. All I’m saying is they shouldn’t put all their eggs in the Collins basket, knowing what she’ll likely do.
Right now its probably a 90% chance or more that Kavanaugh will be confirmed, and even if we did “get” Collins its possible the “car pool dad” could get 1 or 2 democratic votes.
I say pressure ’em all like never before and continue to expose Kavanaugh for the unctuous, far right, legally compromised fool he is, and make it harder for them to justify their vote.
And this would be after the fact but dems need to start keeping score on these so called GOP moderates. If Collins votes as expected after toying with us, they need to paint her as a mindless McConnell lackey who can’t be counted on to ever cast an independent vote. Start snatching the football out from under her every time And all the others, like this clown:
Sen. Ben Sasse Admits He `Regularly’ Considers Leaving The GOP
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ben-sasse-leaving-republican-party_us_5b9455eee4b0cf7b00406b39
Who the fuck cares what you “regularly think about doing”??
There’s a campaign on Facebook for secure money for a challenger to Collins. Any challenger, I guess.
Little late and don’t expect any help from the DNC.
Late? In what sense? The SCOTUS appointment? She’s not up for re-election until 2020.
Sorry I assumed you were saying someone would challenge her now.
My take is that the voters of Maine are probably idiots, who love getting smoke blown up their asses… But I admit that I have never been there, so I could be wrong. I did work for a guy that ended up moving there, and I thought he was pretty much an idiot- so that’s my data point.
Having said that, there is some polling that shows that they actually might not take kindly to having their fundamental rights thrown under the bus when she votes to confirm, so maybe they have some sense. I do think that she is counting on our Democratic shithole caucus to cover for her in “it was bipartisan” and if they don’t, I think she will have a very hard time continuing the reasonable “moderate” charade as the radical court that she put in place becomes even more insane and destructive.
I do not believe there will be bipartisan votes for Kavanaugh’s nomination. There were not bipartisan votes for ACA repeal or a number of other horrible things this horrible Congress has moved, including Trump judicial nominees. It’s clear to me that the climate around this nomination is not the climate that existed during the Gorsuch nomination process, and the Dem caucus was 3 Yes, 45 No on that nominee.
It’s pretty fucking discouraging when active progressives presume failure here and to act as thong we have no agency. I’m sick of the self-fulfilling prophecies. Let’s call Manchin, Donnelly and Heidcamp and make sure they vote the right way this time and organize West Virginia, Indiana and North Dakota voters to do the same. Let’s do the work.
The ACA repeal was a done deal, or so the cynics said, until it wasn’t. Citizen action helped determine that outcome. Let’s do it again.
It may not matter but Heitcamp and Donnelly agreed to meet with Kavanaugh.
Considering that Kavanaugh has perjured himself, I hope Heitkamp, Donnelly, Manchin and Jones would vote no.
Me too. But they will all evaluate their own races. If they conclude their no vote won’t stop it, they likely won’t take the chance.
Of course that’s when this thing becomes a freaking bi partisan consensus and all run for cover. That’s why I would personally refuse to vote for any of the four. Probably not smart but we will never win if we can’t ever stay together.
Gina Haspel was nominated by Trump to run the CIA, because she ran a black-ops torture site.
She received 48 Republican votes. Jeff Flake and Rand Paul voted against her. John McCain missed the vote, but publicly rejected her for her actions.
So she should was on track to lose the nomination, until 6 Democrats decided to cross the aisle and support her. Donnelly, Heitcamp, Manchin, Nelson, Shaheen and Warner.
There was no universe in which their elections would hinge on their vote for Haspel, but they did it anyway.
If they didn’t have the courage to let that nomination die, I have no confidence that they’ll oppose the Kavanaugh nomination, even under the unlikely scenario that a couple of Republicans vote against him.
You have agency right now. We all have agency. We don’t have as much agency as Senators, but we have an ability to affect the final outcome on the Kavanaugh nomination.
Being a sadsack on this issue can cause demobilization and poor creative action, which could make the outcome a self-fulfilling prophecy.
. . . some chastising critique from me (see my signature line below), but since your disclosure was so transparently upfront about it . . . uprate (for the points made, of course, not just that)!
Snagged this at Balloon Juice, where it was snagged from Twitter:
@LobsterPilates
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.@SenatorCollins says she’s not hearing from her constituents, and now I know why. Today in her Bangor office we witnessed the interns taking many phone calls, but NOT writing down any of the constituents comments. They just said “I’ll pass that on to the Senator.” Then hang up.
So…
Yeah, noticed that in my Twitter feed earlier today. Collins appears to not want to know what her constituents want. The staff appear to be simply placating callers, pretending to take note of what is being said, and then doing zilch. I suppose the only thing a caller could do is to request that the staffer they speak with read back the caller’s statement. If nothing else, it can lead to a few uncomfortable questions to the staffer about why he/she is not communicating callers’ concerns to their Senator. May not change how Collins votes – wouldn’t trust her with much of anything. But never hurts to try.
. . . unresponsive form letter “response”, though. At least that’s usually been the outcome of contacting my congresscritters staffs.
When is the last time we played Charlie Brown to her? I can’t think of a time when we gave up something to get Collins on board since the Recovery Act, and she did actually get on board for that.
The current situation doesn’t involve us playing Charlie Brown, because we’re not going to be hurt or humiliated any more in the current situation than we would have if we’d not tried to court her.
. . . IIRC, she was courted AND sparked, concessions made to meet her demands . . . then she STILL voted against.
That’s still 7 years ago.
. . . to be saying is that in the interim, since Dems lost majorities and hence ability to move much of anything major, even with just a wee bit of “GOP moderate” (allegedly!) help . . .
. . . i.e., while there haven’t been any significant opportunities for Collins to play hard-to-get, then fuck us over anyway . . .
. . . that she hasn’t played hard-to-get, then fucked us over anyway?
Do I have that about right?
If so, ok then, hard to argue against that.
BYW, Ben Wittes is a fraud. He’s shilling for Kavanaugh, which is weird since he’s supposedly so anti-Trump. He says Kavanaugh is a good upstanding guy. And on the perjury issue, guess what was found? This:
That’s right. Wittes knows Kavanaugh perjured himself and doesn’t care.
Holy shit, thank you for sharing this. Wittes sure did leave himself exposed here. FTG.
Collins is annoying. But the three that bug me more are Flake, Corker, and Sasse.
They KNOW Trump is a menace to the republic. They KNOW it. Both Flake and Corker have have nothing to lose and are rooting for Dems in various elections. Sasse recently tweeted that he often thinks about leaving the Repub party.
Yet they do nothing. It’s outrageous they’ll vote in favor of a SCOTUS candidate who favors expansion of presidential power when there’s a mad man in the office. I’ve written to all of them a couple times. I’d love them to be bombarded with calls and letters right now, but don’t have time to organize something like that.
Flake’s Harvard speech… What? Are they all just posturing?