Regular readers of this blog (both of you) may note I’m a fan of Keith Olbermann. He’s a good writer. I like me some good writing.
But everyone makes mistakes. Sometimes people all up-and-down a chain of command make mistakes. This happened tonight, with Olbermann at the wheel, and his producers at his side.
It was part of his "first story on the countdown," supposedly the #5 story of the day but actually the most important for this is the conceit of the show. Olbermann went on-and-on about how significant it was that Republicans did not filibuster a vote on the Iraq war today, how they let the vote go forward, and how a proposal to end it "won" by a count of 50-48.
This had more errors in it than an early Mets game.
The most important error is that no filibuster was possible on the proposal in question. It was a Republican proposal, an amendment offered by Sen. Thad Cochran, a Republican from Mississippi, to the emergency Iraq spending bill. The Cochran amendment was that withdrawal timelines written into the bill be taken out.
You don’t filibuster your own amendment. And you can’t force a 60-vote majority on a spending bill you need in order to carry out your own policy. To do so would be both silly and counter-productive.
Since Democrats were given control of the chamber at the start of the year (control which would not now pass to Republicans if, say, Joe Lieberman joined them, because the rules of the Congress have already passed and there was no provision in those rules to give power back and an attempt to change the rules could be filibustered) Democrats controlled the bill. Their committee wrote it. Their majority leader put it forward. And that bill contained the withdrawal language, written after a great deal of negotiation with (no, not Lieberman) Sen. Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska.
Nelson got the withdrawal language written in such a way that Bush can vitiate it. It’s binding in that it’s there. It’s not-binding in that it can be ignored at the President’s whim.
Anyway, the Cochran proposal to get rid of that language, weak though it was, failed 48-50. This was significant. It was significant not just because Nelson voted "nay," supporting the original language, but because Nebraska’s Republican Senator, Chuck Hagel, also voted "nay," opposing his party. (Another Republican, Gordon Smith of Oregon, voted with Democrats in both instances.)
The defections of Hagel and Nelson reversed the count of a previous vote, a few weeks ago, on a non-binding resolution proposed by the Democrats, one that (since it was a resolution, non-binding, and contained no money) could be filibustered. To be precise, cloture could be invoked on the non-binding resolution, requiring 60 votes to move toward a real vote. The cloture motion failed 48-50.
So 48-50 a few weeks ago, 50-48 this time. That’s the story. Nebraska changed its mind. (Go Cornhuskers.)
Can you explain that simply? Yes you can.
A Democratic funding bill for Iraq and Afghanistan survived an attempt to gut it today, with Nebraska’s two Senators changing their mind.
Let’s review. You can’t invoke cloture, that is filibuster, on a
funding bill you need to pass. The news is the Senate now favors a
withdrawal timetable, where before it opposed one. (The bloggers who spotlighted Hagel on this vote were wrong. It was Nelson who won the agreement Hagel finally signed off on.)
Oh, and while President Bush can veto the bill, once it goes to
conference and is passed again by both Houses, that does not guarantee
a "victory" for him. A veto would not be overridden, but in that case
no $100 billion plus for Afghanistan and Iraq is appropriated. Such a
bill must be passed by April 15 or Bush has to rob other Defense
accounts every day to keep things going.
What is likely to happen? The Senate language will be agreed to in
conference, the bill will pass both houses, and then (surprise) Bush
will sign it. Then he’ll ignore it. Because the language which brought
Democrat Ben Nelson on board allows him to ignore it.
That’s what happened. Olbermann’s producer should have known that.
NBC’s Congressional correspondent is paid to know that. Olbermann
himself was supposed to know that — he went to Cornell for pity’s
sake. There were mistakes all up and down the MSNBC chain of command, and the American
people were told convenient lies.
Wait. That was story number three.
Dana, I think that you’re wrong on this call about Bush not vetoing.
Bush just said that he would veto, and I believe that he will, regardless of the consequences.
Just look at his record. When pushed into a corner, he always takes the most divisive, most damaging route for the whole country, but which plays to his most fanatical base. In this way, he is a mirror of Osama bin-Laden, who advocates the most extremist rhetoric, even though most moderate Muslims disagree with his point of view.
OSL and Bush are playing a double squeeze on their respective constituencies; this is the only way they can stay in power. By stirring up anger and hatred from their extremist ends, and putting the squeeze on the moderates. Bush has more power, because he controls a state apparatus which, in any situation of his choosing, he can turn against his enemies. (It’s called the Patriot Act, ha ha! John Yoo has a nice sense of humor/irony.)
Both bet that hatred and fear can overcome the moderates at any time of their choosing. These two need each other, and they both know it.
Everything else is a scam.
Dana, I think that you’re wrong on this call about Bush not vetoing.
Bush just said that he would veto, and I believe that he will, regardless of the consequences.
Just look at his record. When pushed into a corner, he always takes the most divisive, most damaging route for the whole country, but which plays to his most fanatical base. In this way, he is a mirror of Osama bin-Laden, who advocates the most extremist rhetoric, even though most moderate Muslims disagree with his point of view.
OSL and Bush are playing a double squeeze on their respective constituencies; this is the only way they can stay in power. By stirring up anger and hatred from their extremist ends, and putting the squeeze on the moderates. Bush has more power, because he controls a state apparatus which, in any situation of his choosing, he can turn against his enemies. (It’s called the Patriot Act, ha ha! John Yoo has a nice sense of humor/irony.)
Both bet that hatred and fear can overcome the moderates at any time of their choosing. These two need each other, and they both know it.
Everything else is a scam.
You might be right, Chris. But it’s an entirely unnecessary veto. There’s no legal force in the Senate’s deadline.
One idea I read this morning is interesting. The Democrats provide a funding bill that only gets Bush to the deadline. And they say no more money after that, unless major changes take place in strategy meantime.
End the funding at the deadline.
You might be right, Chris. But it’s an entirely unnecessary veto. There’s no legal force in the Senate’s deadline.
One idea I read this morning is interesting. The Democrats provide a funding bill that only gets Bush to the deadline. And they say no more money after that, unless major changes take place in strategy meantime.
End the funding at the deadline.
Dana, I’m wondering if this isn’t a case of you misunderstanding what you heard on Olbermann’s show, rather than him and his producers both getting the facts wrong.
You say “Olbermann went on-and-on about how significant it was that Republicans did not filibuster a vote on the Iraq war today, how they let the vote go forward, and how a proposal to end it ‘won’ by a count of 50-48.” But he didn’t really do that.
Olbermann said the Senate joined the House in “voting to send Mr. Bush a specific timeline for redeployment of U.S. troops out of Iraq.” That’s exactly what they DID do when they failed to pass the Republican amendment that would have removed the troop withdrawal timeline from the funding bill.
It’s true Olbermann said “Republicans there will no longer block debate on the vote,” but there, he was reporting a fact–as far as the BILL was concerned. Mitch McConnell said back on Monday that the Republicans would not filibuster the bill. Their strategy was not to kill the bill through filibuster, but rather push it through so that if Bush vetoed it, there was little choice but to come up with a new one. Their stance was that the troops needed the money, and they were not going to look like the heavies by stalling the vote.
In essence, this amendment represented Republicans’ last chance to dump the timetable in this bill, and its failure meant the bill’s last real meaningful roadblock to Senate passage had been effectively removed.
Olbermann did say “Hagel‘s fellow Republicans could, in fact, have won this fight today, because they had well over the 40 votes they needed to sustain a filibuster to prevent the vote on this timeline alone from ever coming to the floor. But they chose not to.” But what he seems to be saying there, again, without quoting McConnell, is that they had already decided they weren’t planning to filibuster the BILL (timeline or no). So their only chance at stopping it, really, was getting the AMENDMENT to it passed–which they didn’t. Which meant that the bill, too, would pass. In other word, as soon as they voted for the failure of that amendment, they were essentially saying “Here, Mr. President–if you want to play the heavy, so be it. It won’t be us.”
Could all this have been spelled out more obviously by Olbermann? Could he have explained that he meant the Republicans had already decided not to attempt filibustering the BILL–not the amendment? Possibly. Could he have quoted McConnell saying “We will not filibuster this bill when the vote on it comes up”? Yes. Could Nelson’s role in all this have been more properly attributed? Probably. But really, nothing said was technically or factually wrong. Olbermann never said the amendment had been introduced by the Democrats; he never said the Republicans had opted not to attempt a filibuster on the amendment. His references to a “filibuster” were exclusively to the bill itself.
The problem here was one not of inaccuracy, or mistakes, but of clarity. Or perhaps of trying to cram too much information into a very brief script.
Dana, I’m wondering if this isn’t a case of you misunderstanding what you heard on Olbermann’s show, rather than him and his producers both getting the facts wrong.
You say “Olbermann went on-and-on about how significant it was that Republicans did not filibuster a vote on the Iraq war today, how they let the vote go forward, and how a proposal to end it ‘won’ by a count of 50-48.” But he didn’t really do that.
Olbermann said the Senate joined the House in “voting to send Mr. Bush a specific timeline for redeployment of U.S. troops out of Iraq.” That’s exactly what they DID do when they failed to pass the Republican amendment that would have removed the troop withdrawal timeline from the funding bill.
It’s true Olbermann said “Republicans there will no longer block debate on the vote,” but there, he was reporting a fact–as far as the BILL was concerned. Mitch McConnell said back on Monday that the Republicans would not filibuster the bill. Their strategy was not to kill the bill through filibuster, but rather push it through so that if Bush vetoed it, there was little choice but to come up with a new one. Their stance was that the troops needed the money, and they were not going to look like the heavies by stalling the vote.
In essence, this amendment represented Republicans’ last chance to dump the timetable in this bill, and its failure meant the bill’s last real meaningful roadblock to Senate passage had been effectively removed.
Olbermann did say “Hagel‘s fellow Republicans could, in fact, have won this fight today, because they had well over the 40 votes they needed to sustain a filibuster to prevent the vote on this timeline alone from ever coming to the floor. But they chose not to.” But what he seems to be saying there, again, without quoting McConnell, is that they had already decided they weren’t planning to filibuster the BILL (timeline or no). So their only chance at stopping it, really, was getting the AMENDMENT to it passed–which they didn’t. Which meant that the bill, too, would pass. In other word, as soon as they voted for the failure of that amendment, they were essentially saying “Here, Mr. President–if you want to play the heavy, so be it. It won’t be us.”
Could all this have been spelled out more obviously by Olbermann? Could he have explained that he meant the Republicans had already decided not to attempt filibustering the BILL–not the amendment? Possibly. Could he have quoted McConnell saying “We will not filibuster this bill when the vote on it comes up”? Yes. Could Nelson’s role in all this have been more properly attributed? Probably. But really, nothing said was technically or factually wrong. Olbermann never said the amendment had been introduced by the Democrats; he never said the Republicans had opted not to attempt a filibuster on the amendment. His references to a “filibuster” were exclusively to the bill itself.
The problem here was one not of inaccuracy, or mistakes, but of clarity. Or perhaps of trying to cram too much information into a very brief script.