Responsibility Where It Belongs

The Editors point to some data that should compel us to keep things in perspective:

House vote: 253-168 60.1%
Republicans: 219-7 96.9%
Democrats: 34-160 17.5%

Senate vote: 65-34 65.7%
Republicans: 53-1 98.1%
Democrats: 12-32 27.3%

As he, and Glenn , Tom and Barbara remind us, let’s make sure we keep focus on where the responsibility for this belongs. Yes, 25% of Senate Democrats is far too many. Obviously, in places like Connecticut where there’s a chance to replace a collaborator with an actual Democrat, every effort to do so must be made. But this is a Republican bill, and it would not have passed if Democrats controlled Congress.

The most basic error that people who want to put most of the blame on the Democrats make is the assumption that you can infer voting behavior when you control the agenda from voting behavior that occurs after the agenda has been set by someone else. But this is foolish. The fact that John Kerry voted for the Iraq War does not mean that he would have sought to invade Iraq if he had been President–once a policy has been set in motion, or a proposal is on the table. Jon Chait made this point with respect to Nader’s ridiculous attempts to blame the Bush tax cuts on Democrats in Congress:

Before the election, a New York Times editorial rebutted Nader’s Tweedledee-and-Tweedledum analysis by citing the two candidates’ starkly different approaches to using the budget surplus — with Bush favoring a massive tax cut for the rich and Gore preferring other governing priorities. In his memoir, incredibly, Nader throws this back in the Times editors’ faces. “So what happens in June 2001, with the Democrats taking over the Senate?” he asks. “The Democrats call a $1.3 trillion Bush tax cut a victory for their side, as indeed numerous Democrats voted with the Republicans.” While repellent, the collaboration of a minority of Democrats with the Bush tax cut hardly vindicates Nader; quite the opposite. The tax cut fiasco, like Supreme Court nominations, demonstrates the difficulty of stopping a president’s agenda from moving through the legislative branch. But it was Nader who argued (at least implicitly) that controlling Congress mattered more than controlling the White House. He claimed all along that his candidacy would help the Democrats win Congress; indeed, he asserted that the extra turnout he spurred gave Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) her winning margin and that this would offset any advantage Republicans gained by controlling the presidency. The tax cut showed that Nader was wrong and that the Times was right: What really matters in setting governing priorities is which party has the White House. Nothing resembling the Bush tax cut could have passed with Al Gore in the Oval Office.

Right. The political dynamic in this case is not a perception among moderate democrats that the American public has an a priori preference for this particular bill. Rather, the problem is that once the Republicans have the votes to pass (or at least force a filibuster), it places a great deal of political pressure on the opposition who can be painted as “objectively pro-terrorist.” This isn’t to say that these calculations are right; I think the political ramifications are more ambiguous, Republicans will portray the collaborators as anti-American traitors anyway, and in any case if there was ever an issue where principle should outrank politics this is it. But it doesn’t matter what I think; it matters how legislators would act. Having a Democratic majority changes everything–it’s much easier to stop vulnerable Dems from facing difficult choices when you control the legislative agenda. And in addition, the Majority leadership has considerably more leverage over its members than the Minority leadership.

So while the Democrats who voted for the legislation deserve the criticism they’re getting, it’s also important not to fall into the narcissist trap. The way to stop legislation like this is to get Republicans out of office, period.

…Jamie Mayerfeld makes a great point in comments:

The most damaging part of the bill is the elimination of habeas corpus rights for foreign detainees. The Specter amendment, which addressed this problem, received the votes of every Democratic senator but one. Not only that, but passage of the Specter amendment might have derailed the whole bill. We came extremely close to defeating this thing, and on the crucial vote all the Democrats but one stepped up.