Faint Hearted Faction Update

by Gary Boatwright, Thu Jan 13, 2005 at 11:00:46 AM EST

An update on the fainthearted faction at Talking Points Memo with a link to the updated list:

Update [2005-1-13 16:31:31 by JollyBuddah]: [Rep. Adam Smith came around].

Rep. Allen Boyd (D-FL) (L&P!)
Rep. Robert "Bud" Cramer (D-AL)
Rep. Harold Ford (D-Tenn) (#)
Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wisc)
Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN)
Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO) (#)
Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA)
Rep. John Tanner (D-Tenn)
Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss)

Senate
Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE)
Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR)
Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE)
Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN)
(Say It Ain't So) Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT)
Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) (#)

Associate Members
Gov. Ed Rendell (D-PA) (#)

(ed.note: 'L&P!' designates members who are "Loud and Proud!" in their support of the president's private-accounts-based Social Security phase-out bill. "OFO?" designates members who may already have "One Foot Out" of the Fainthearted Faction. Linked asterisks (*) note events, statements or stories that have affected a member's position within the Fainthearted Faction.)
Jolly Buddah editors note: asteriks replaced with #

And an interesting Robert Novak editorial in which he claims that:

When Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina proposed the broad outlines of a Social Security compromise last month, he was accused by conservatives of negotiating with himself. He changed that last Thursday by beginning to negotiate with the Democrats to achieve the breakthrough of personal retirement accounts.

Four Democrat senators met in Graham's office with him and two GOP committee chairmen. It was not really negotiating, but the prelude to negotiating a bipartisan agreement. Graham put it to me this way: ''Nobody has crossed the Rubicon yet, but maybe they can see it.''

Novak names names:

The four Democrats who met with Graham last week -- Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Max Baucus of Montana -- certainly are not committed to anything approaching Bush's proposal. Of these four, only Nelson could be called a moderate conservative.

Baucus has denied being in the Fainthearted Faction. Lieberman, Nelson and Lincoln deserve some extra special attention. These three in particular, need to hear from their constituents and anybody else who doesn't want to see Social Security dismantled.

This also raises a challenge from the DNC Chair candidates about how they would handle this situation if they became chair. Do Dean, Rosenberg and Fowler think it is acceptable to let the Fainthearted Faction go their own way on Social Security? What sanctions are any of them willing to impose for any Democratic member who crosses the rubicon and gives Bush bi-partisan cover to dismantle Social Security?

Josh also links to a list of 25 vulnerable Republicans at The Left Coaster with large senior populations in their district. How many seats do we need to win back the House?

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They are ALL MEMBERS OF THE DLC

and most have been supprterd by Rosenbergs NDN

by Parker 2005-01-13 10:02AM | 0 recs

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Re: They are ALL MEMBERS OF THE DLC

Has anybody asked Rosenberg what his position is on supporting Bush's secret plan to dismantle Social Security? We need to call him and Roemer out on this issue. Dean and Fowler and Webb also need to take a stand.

by Gary Boatwright 2005-01-13 10:50AM | 0 recs

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LIEBERMAN!!!

Why doesn't he just admit that he's a Republican, already? He supports the war, Bush's tax plan, the Patriot Act, privatizing social security, and God only knows what else!

Why doesn't he just join the ranks of the Rockefeller Republicans and be done with it?

by craverguy 2005-01-13 10:27AM | 0 recs

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You mean Sen. Zell Lieberman?

I think Zell Lieberman would fit in quite nicely at Faux News with Zell Miller. For my money Rep. Ford may be the biggest disappointment. I don't know what kind of game he's playing, but it's time to send a Loud and Proud message that giving Bush bipartisan cover is not acceptable.

This is a drop dead issue. We need to ask the DNC Chair candidates what measures they would take to get complete party unity against dismantling Social Security and what type of sanctions they would impose on anybody who crossed the line.

I'm looking up how many of these fainthearted Dino's also voted for the 2004 Medicare Prescription Drug bill.

by Gary Boatwright 2005-01-13 10:46AM | 0 recs

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Re: You mean Sen. Zell Lieberman?

It looks like Sen. Lincoln, Carper, Landrieu and Nelson also voted for the 2004 Medicare Prescription Drug bill. They either come around or they don't get party support.

by Gary Boatwright 2005-01-13 11:15AM | 0 recs

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Update on Rep. Adam Smith

Rep. Adam Smith came around as reported by Ryan Lizza in an article in TNR WHITE HOUSE WATCH: Hardball 101. I couldn't get the links to work in the update.

We can win on this issue. All it takes is a little subtle persuasion with a few public pressure two by fours.

by Gary Boatwright 2005-01-13 11:38AM | 0 recs

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But there's this...

Before we get caught in SS and DNC hysteria, there's this to remember. The mainstream media pushes our commercialized society as status quo. Bloggers don't have to keep that paradigm going.

By Matt Taibbi in June of 2003 on Fukuyama and the 9 Democratic candidates running for nominee: Then, a few weeks ago, I thought about him again, while attempting to determine the reason why I wanted to pack all of the Democratic presidential candidates into a missile and shoot them into space.

What I ultimately came up with was this: Here we are, in a world that is completely and utterly insane-where giant fast-food companies spend fortunes researching the responses of three- and four-year-olds in order to exploit them, where billions of dollars are pissed away every day on shitty movies like Finding Nemo while schools are going down to the four-day week, and where the average New Yorker sees three or four thousand ads a day, most of which tell him he's fat and impotent and a Nissan is a better buy than his wife-and these candidates are up there tinkering, talking about a balanced budget and repealing tax cuts. There isn't a guy among them who even hints at anything like horror before our fatuous, commercial lives.

The Democrats, just like the vapid artists that Fukuyama correctly predicted would dominate our lives, don't want to be anything other than better caretakers for that museum of human history. They don't try to imagine a fundamentally better world, because they actually believe that there isn't one. They're buffoons straight out of Voltaire, running on a platform of "Our mild improvements to this best of all possible worlds."

by janfrel 2005-01-13 12:29PM | 0 recs