Just What Happened?

The lightning speed of the Mukasey confirmation on the floor of the Senate is puzzling everybody, particularly the Presidential candidates, all of whom were caught flat-footed. Greg Sargent did some digging, and finds out this:

According to sources inside and outside the Democratic leadership, Harry Reid allowed a vote on Mukasey because in exchange the Republican leadership agreed to allow a vote on the big Defense Appropriations Bill, which contains $459 billion in military spending but doesn't fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Reid had wanted to get this bill passed before the end of this week, and in fact, the defense bill did come up for a vote late last night and was passed after the Mukasey vote.

One key reason Dem leaders wanted this defense approps bill passed, sources tell me, is that they wanted to be able to argue that they had sent a bill to the President funding the military, if not the war itself. The idea was that doing this would allow them to protect themselves in the days ahead when the battle over Iraq funding heats up and Republicans inevitably charge that Dems are refusing to fund the troops.

"This lets us argue, `Hey, we just sent $450 billion to the military," one leadership source tells me.

I want to pull my hair out.

For the last time, it DOESN'T MATTER what you can argue, Republicans are going to call you anti-American troop-haters, and the general public ISN'T GOING TO CARE. This has been proven for about three years going. Getting to make a symbolic argument is useless. The public isn't going to give a shit until you stop the war; that's all they want. And the Republicans aren't going to give a shit, period. No matter how many times you sit on command, they're not going to pat you on the head.

And in the process, you just allowed a guy who won't say waterboarding is torture to be the top law enforcement official in the country.

This leadership is absolutely clueless.