PDHblog
This is a place for members of Progressive Democrats of Hawai‘i to express their thoughts
and exasperations about political happenings. The opinions and views are not necessarily
those of PDH's steering committee or membership as a whole.

Glenn Greenwald wrote an important blog today on the subject of bipartisanship, which seems so earnestly desired by many. Here is what he found:

“bipartisanship” is already rampant in Washington, not rare. And, in almost every significant case, what “bipartisanship” means in Washington is that enough Democrats join with all of the Republicans to endorse and enact into law Republican policies, with which most Democratic voters disagree. That’s how so-called “bipartisanship” manifests in almost every case.

So no matter what Obama and Clinton say, “bipartisanship” does not look appealing from a progressive point of view.

He then identifies a dozen bills that have passed in this “bipartisan” fashion, and most of them are on any progressive list of the most notorious bills that have made it through Congress in the past year or two:

1. To support the new Bush-supported FISA law
2. To compel redeployment of troops from Iraq:
3. To confirm Michael Mukasey as Attorney General:
4. To confirm Leslie Southwick as Circuit Court Judge
5. Kyl-Lieberman Resolution on Iran
6. To condemn MoveOn.org
7. The Protect America Act:
8. Declaring English to be the Government’s official language
9. The Military Commissions Act
10. To renew the Patriot Act
11. Cloture Vote on Sam Alito’s confirmation to the Supreme Court
12. Authorization to Use Military Force in Iraq

Greenwald provides for each bill a clickable link to the actual roll call votes.

So, since we have so many Senators running for president, I decided to see if this list might provide any clue as to which candidate was most progressive. Since most of these are bad bills, “Progressive” usually means a “No”. For comparison, I included Senators Biden and Dodd, even though they have dropped out. I made up a spreadsheet on the results; if anyone would like a copy, I’ll send it if you provide an email address.

The senators differed only a little bit. Clinton’s “Yes” vote for Kyl-Lieberman sticks out like a sore thumb—Biden and Dodd voted “No,” and Obama did not vote. Consequently, Clinton voted with the Republicans 3 times, Biden and Dodd twice, and Obama once (he was not in the Senate when the others voted for the AUMF, #12, and has often stated his opposition to it.) On the other hand, the senator voting most often for the progressive position was (surprise!) Joe Biden (7 times), with Clinton and Dodd at 6 times, and Obama only 5 times. How does Obama rate least progressive and least Republican at the same time? Because he did not vote on 5 of the bills! Dodd did not vote on 4 of these bills, while Biden and Clinton did not vote on 3 of them.

So there is no clear winner here. Even though these dozen votes should be good to identify the Blue Dogs and Bush Dogs, they won’t help us much in identifying the most progressive candidate.

Bob