It's 8pm Hawai'i time, that means it's 4am DC time. Blink, blink.
I just posted a comment about the topic of this diary on the Allnighter-make'emblatheron Liveblog (which is documenting the historic resurrection of the right-wing filibuster), but it scrolled up pretty fast and this topic is a diary unto itself anyway, so here goes:
At the beginning of the 110th Congress, the first thing the Dems attempted was to enact a raise in the minumum wage. The red team threatened to filibuster and the Dems promptly backed down.
Kossactivist and blogger-in-his-own-right thereisnospoonwrote a diary as that scene was unfolding. Amazingly, the strategy in that six month old diary is being enacted as I write this, 4am DC time.
Blink.
Here is the gist of tins' argument 6 months ago (go to the original diary for his emphasis and links):
Harry Reid(...)scheduled the cloture vote on the Senate floor today to demonstrate to Pelosi and Rangel that there was "inadequate support" for the minimum wage bill without the tax cuts. I call bullshit on that.
As much as I would like to see the rest of Pelosi's 100 hours agenda come before a Senate vote as soon as possible, I cannot think of any political theater more advantageous to Democrats than watching the GOP attempt to filibuster a minimum wage increase. Especially when the cloture margin is as slim as six measly votes.
Remember, if you will, the polling on the minimum wage: 81% popular support, with a full 66% of self-described conservatives! Filibustering this thing would be nothing short of political suicide for the GOP.
Me, I'm not afraid. I have absolutely no problem with watching the GOP bring Speaker Pelosi's incredibly popular 100 hours legislation to a dead halt in the Senate by filibustering the one most popular piece of that agenda.
I have absolutely no problem with letting the month's entire bitter partisan discourse be about nothing BUT the minimum wage.
I say, "Bring it On." Bring this bill to the floor, Senator Reid. Bring on the filibuster, Republicans. And let's allow the chips to fall where they may.
Nice bit of prescience, no? Well...the consensus here at dkos at the time was, in fact, no. A "heated debate" ensued and a number of posters railed against tins for promoting a clearly impossible scheme, one that made no parlimentary sense (see the top of the diary where, convinced by a very convincing BTD, he recanted and apologized for leading the site down a rabbit hole).
Well, need I say it? Here we are in Wonderland, folks, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone on Reid's staff (or the Senator himself) hadn't read that diary and filed it away for future (read: now) reference. tins was dead on, and all the get-your-head-out-of-the-clouds crowd was dead wrong.
So, if you need a break from the liveblogging, or if you just want to do what some archivist is going to do in a few years as he or she discovers yet another blogosphere gem that presages the unfolding of historical events in real time, go ahead and read some of those debates that tins' beautiful diary has preserved. And then think about how we pontificate at each other here, going through bolts and bolts of whole cloth to make up our positional arguments so that we can bee seen to be authorities about, well, just about everything.
And don't get me wrong: I'm not saying to back down from our convictions. I'm just saying that dismissing others' ideas as bogus without a basis in reality (or by creating our own little reality out of whole cloth) is not just bad form, it can lead to bad results in the real world. I mean, what if Harry Reid had read that diary and come to the conclusion that tins' idea to call the filibuster bluff of the GOP was actually impossible, as this community (or most of it) seemed to conclude? We wouldn't have, in the record about an hour ago, John McCain dissing Jim Webb for not being aware of what's happening in Iraq where Webb's son is fucking serving for chrissake. That little vignette, which puts a highlight on the weak position of one of Bush's strongest Iraq supporters, alone is worth Reid's bold move.
And furthermore, we wouldn't have the ghost of Strom Thurmond skulking about the halls of Congress this morning scaring the hell out of all of the reasonable people left in this country.
Congratulations, tins! Great strategy (and btw, are you going to officially retract your retraction and apology?).
Oh, and congrats to Harry also. Nice to see you back in the ring, Senator (and don't bother with the gloves, man)!