Friday, April 27, 2007

Opposition Party

The line pushed by Timmeh and others is that the failure of journalism in the runup to the Iraq war is somehow the fault of Democrats. Now certainly plenty of Democrats - and the Democrats generally - can be blamed for many things in that period, but Timmeh's shitty show isn't one of them.

And plenty of Democrats did vote against the AUMF and were against the war, so I'll engage Timmeh on this and go over his guest list (Democratic members of Congress only) from the day the Senate passed the AUMF until Shock and Awe Day.
10/13/02 - No Dem member of Congress.
10/20 Schumer - voted for it (subject was gun control/DC Sniper).
10/27 No Dem member of Congress.
11/03 No Dem member of Congress.
11/10 Tom Daschle - voted for it
11/17 Landrieu - voted for it
11/24 Graham - voted against it
12/01 John Kerry - voted for it
12/08 John Lewis - voted against, but subject was John Lott Trent Lott..
12/15 Carl Levin - voted against.
12/22 no dem member of Congress. "Laura Bush, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and Rudy Giuliani discuss the emotional, spiritual and philosophical lessons and challenges of the past year."
12/29 Biden - voted for it.
01/05 - Reid - voted for it.
01/12 - No Dem member of Congress
01/19 - Lieberman, voted for it.
01/26 - Dodd, voted for it.
02/03 - Bill Nelson, voted for it (show's subject was space shuttle disaster)
02/09 - No Dem member of Congress.
02/23 - Dennis Kucinich, voted against it. Debated Richard Perle. Richard Gephardt, voted for with extra gusto.
03/02 - No Democratic member of Congress.
03/09 - No Democratic member of Congress.
03/16 - No Democratic member of Congress.


There were war skeptics who weren't members of Congress - Al Sharpton, Mike Farrell, Madeleine Albright, Wes Clark.


So, in that 5 month period you had 9 appearances by pro-AUMF Dem senators, 2 appearances by senators who voted against. Two appearances by anti-AUMF House members, though only one discussed the topic, and one appearance by a pro-AUMF House member.

23 senators voted against the AUMF (Dems+Jeffords), and the majority of House Democrats.