I think this summarizes how I feel about Mukasey getting confirmed:
We spent a boatload of money and a whole lot of time trying to get the Democrats a majority in the House and Senate, and we did it. But the point wasn't just to get a whole bunch of D's on the TV screen when we watch C-SPAN - we were supposed to get an orderly end to War against Iraq, good policy making, and, at the very least, a stop to every absurd nominee Bush put forward.
That last one was supposed to be the no-brainer. If someone's not a good choice for a position, just vote no.
It doesn't require putting together complicated legislation, reading thousands of pages of policy reports and assessments of financial impacts, visiting a country on the other side of the world, or trying to broker peace after two peoples have been in conflict for centuries. Just listen to what the man says in his testimony, check out his background, take into consideration the opinions of both your base and constituents, and voila, vote no on Mukasey.
It's the MO for the not-so-new Congress: a lot of singing and dancing followed by messing everything up. Most Americans oppose torture and having a president who can determine which laws he wants to follow as long as he can rationalize a way it fits with his Constitutional duties dictator. Those were two things that all evidence showed Mukasey didn't have a problem with. I don't need to go into why those two things are bad, so, really, there isn't much reason for them to have confirmed him.
And then there was Leslie Southwick....
It reminds me of how Chef Ramsey, after finding out one of his contestants on Hell's Kitchen pulled food out of the trash and tried to serve it, snarled: This isn't hard.
That'd be bad enough, but this was our Numero Dos, something we were holding onto mainly because of our incredibly lowered expectations. There was good policy making, which, while they haven't been all bad on, they certainly could be doing better.
An example from just this past week, the House passes an employment nondiscrimination bill based on sexual orientation, not gender identity. Forget the fact that 65% of Americans support job protections for transgender people, the Democratic leadership said they just couldn't find the votes. And the Senate's probably going to table the whole thing even though around 80% of people support these job protections for gays and lesbians. Of course, when Republicans want to interfere with the life and death choices of a family in Florida, they only need 20% of the public to agree with them.
That's not the way democracy is supposed to work. When a two to one majority of people want something, it ought to at least be presented on the floor of Congress. When 80% of people don't support something, it shouldn't pass.
But that's our Numero Tres, and it hasn't been a complete failure. The Democrats have put together some other wonderful bills, but their capitulation on major policy initiatives makes me feel like they're just singing and dancing with the platter, promising they won't spill it, and then they do.
The Numero Cuatro, the number one thing most people were looking to the Democratic Congress to do with its power, was to ensure a sensible finish to US involvement in Iraq. I don't need to explain to Kossacks how that hasn't panned out.
In the end, I know I'm going to vote for whatever stooges the Democrats put up for the federal-level elections I can vote in, because, like the blue dude in the video who has no other options because Grover's his waiter no matter what restaurant he goes to, the Democrats are always materially better than the Republicans. And I'll even end up voting for Senator Bayh when he's up for reelection, even though he was one of the Democrats who voted to confirm Mukasey. I guess I just expected better from them, I thought that something more would change. I thought that the Bush administration would at least have to follow the law and that water boarding could be condemned as barbaric by everyone in high office.
I know that there are lots of wonderful Democratic politicians that it's a few bad apples that are ruining a lot of things right now, but notice how no Republicans voted "nay" on Mukasey. Even former torture victim John McCain abstained. Why can't we even approach that kind of discipline? Why can't whatever justification for bad Democratic behavior be equally applied to Republicans?
But at least they're willing to sing and dance. That's something.