Watch Anderson Cooper Asks, Is DADT's Failure Obama's Fault?
Anderson Cooper looks at yesterday's failure of the Senate to pass the Defense bill and 'DADT' repeal with guests Alex Nicholson of Servicemembers United, Dana Bash, Paul Begala and Ed Rollins.
Watch, AFTER THE JUMP...
Big emphatic YES, it is Obama's fault.
When you start from a position of waffling and negotiating and trying to please everyone that's opposed, you can't expect to get anything done. Leadership starts with the leader. If he appears weak, it's game over.
Hey POTUS: Grow a pair already!
Posted by: johnny | Dec 10, 2010 8:49:39 AM
the obumfuck administration has turned out to be little more than an adopted red-headed brat at k-mart by the repug, wife-beater-wearing madding crowd. they keep slapping down.
i thought that a harvard-educated constitutional scholar would know how to negotiate among the silliness. but, i've never been so wrong in my life. he is a eunich, incapable of taking a firm stance on anything, no matter how trivial.
hillary in 2012!
Posted by: nic | Dec 10, 2010 9:22:36 AM
Predictable LCR talking points from Alex Nicholson. How many times will Scott Brown and Lisa Murkowski have to vote against this before he sees that he's being played? Both have made clear that any commitment they have to this issue is less significant than their commitment to securing a bonus tax cut for millionaires and billionaires. They are the problem, not Harry Reid.
Posted by: Patric | Dec 10, 2010 9:42:15 AM
Hey Patrick how many times will the Democrats have to promise and then fail to deliver before you see that you're being played?
Democrats have had two years of total control of the legislative branch of government and haven't delivered for us, not even on
ENDA which should be a no brainer! Raid could have got this done, for God's sake he has the support, but no he had to play his political game with something important to the LBGT community.
We keep voting for these guys hoping for a different outcome....who's crazy here?
Posted by: major707 | Dec 10, 2010 12:30:02 PM
Major707, your comments about Senator Reid make clear your bias. Scott Brown (facing a tough re-election contest in 2012 in very blue Massachusetts)and Lisa Murkowski issue press releases saying they support repeal (wink wink), swallowed whole by many of the gullible here, and yet then vote against repeal (in Brown's case, for the third time this year!) because, as they themselves have stated, they won't vote for equality for gay and lesbian servicemembers unless and until Congress passes a bonus tax cut for millionaires and billionaires . . . and Harry Reid is the one playing political games?? http://www.bostonherald.com/news/politics/view/20101209sen_brown_votes_to_block_debate_on_ending_gay_military_ban/ As for Collins, I'll accept as more sincere her support for repeal but Joe Sudbay at Americablog today cites a Washington Post article suggesting she just voted for cloture yesterday after it was clear it would fail and concludes that "the notion that Collins somehow proved she wasn't against us is naive." http://gay.americablog.com/2010/12/washington-post-offers-competing.html
And then there's Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, who expressed to Rachel Maddow last evening his approval of Majority Leader Reid's calling of a vote on this issue yesterday without further delay, placing the blame for our failures squarely at the feet of those who have "held [the defense authorization bill] hostage for almost five months now [because they] want to put tax cuts first." I guess Aubrey Sarvis is being played by Harry Reid, too, and you know better than both of us that it's not Scott Brown and Olympia Snowe and Lisa Murkowski who are the problems, it's the Democrats, 55 of 56 present members of whom voted with us yesterday!
You state that "Democrats have had two years of total control of the legislative branch of government" yet surely you must know that that's not true now that 60 is the new 50 in the Senate. Republicans will not even allow some of the most mundane of business to proceed in the Senate without 60 votes and that's why not only our community but also labor (card check) and environmentalists (climate change legislation) and immigrant advocates (comprehensive immigration reform) have been frustrated in their hopes for progress (even when Democrats in the House in certain instances, working under the novel concept of majority rule, have passed bills).
As for ENDA, I agree that it should be a "no brainer" and apparently so do most Democratic members of the Senate. Forty-six of the 62 Democrats or Democratic-affiliated independents who served as Senators in this Congress (including the late and great Senator Kennedy) sponsored or co-sponsored ENDA. Two - yes, two - of the 43 Republicans who served as Senators in this Congress co-sponsored ENDA. If you can add, that means that there are fewer than 60 votes to overcome a filibuster of ENDA in the Senate and, according to your reasoning, I suppose that makes that the Democrats' fault since they have "total control of the legislative branch of government."
Clearly you'd prefer to return to the good old days of Republican control when, instead of Sonia Sotomayor, we got Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito and a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution which would have enshrined anti-gay discrimination therein and which secured the votes of 45 of 50 Republican Senators and was defeated only because 45 of 48 present Democratic Senators voted against it. You may again get your wish and then we'll see who's getting played.
Posted by: Patric | Dec 10, 2010 10:47:44 PM