Like a lot of people, I complain about Democrats not having any backbone or fight, so when a mainstream, very mainstream establishment guy like Chris Dodd finally stand up, he deserves to be recognized for it. He did that today in filibustering the Telecom Amnesty bill that his own party leadership was trying to ram through. Harry Reid reluctantly took it off the table in response to Dodd’s opposition to it. Let’s hope more Dems follow his lead. NY Times story here. Glenn Greenwald’s commentary here.
P.S. Minimal blogging for the next two weeks. Need more time for my real life.
UPDATE: A You-Tube thank you from Chris Dodd . This could be a watershed event, not because this is a momentous and decisive victory, but because it shows what can be done when people get organized and find elected representatives who are willing to do their job. They will do it if they know there are people out there who will support them:
As Greenwald puts it:
The most important lesson to learn here is that it is always possible for citizens to influence and disrupt even the most fortified Beltway establishment schemes. When that fails to happen, it’s never because it can’t be done, because it’s impossible, because the deck is too stacked against it, etc. Rather, when there is failure in this regard, it’s because the right strategy wasn’t discovered, or because not enough pressure was generated, or because there were insufficient tools of persuasion deployed.
The most important value of victories of this sort is that they ought to serve as a potent tonic against defeatism, regardless of the ultimate outcome. And successes like this can and should provide a template for how to continue to strengthen these efforts. Yesterday’s victory, temporary as it is, shouldn’t be over-stated, but it also shouldn’t be minimized. All of it stemmed from the spontaneous passion and anger of hundreds of thousands of individuals demanding that telecoms be subject to the rule of law like everyone else. And this effort could have been — and, with this additional time, still can be — much bigger and stronger still.
Hope does not lie with our elected representatives; it lies with us. It doesn’t matter how pure Dodd’s motivations were. The only thing that matters is that he listened, and he acted. Our representatives act, even on principles that they profess, only when they feel pressure to do so, and that pressure has to come from an aroused and well-organized citizenry.
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