Oh, that poor dog!
The dog’s a balance. There are already two crazy bitches in that group. They just needed a sane one.
Generally speaking, a multi-party system is not better than a two-party system. Repeating it (or starting threads about it) does not make it true.
Think about this conceptually for a moment. The greater the dominance one party has in the legislature, the lesser it has to sell in anyone else on its agenda. It sells in its agenda by providing public goods. Very roughly speaking, Democrats in the Senate needs to provide enough public goods to 51% of the people in 60% of the states to maintain the Democratic majority. When you only have to please a few people, you obviously end up with inefficient and often wasteful policy.
Suppose for a minute it fails to deliver these public goods due to incompetence, corruption, or lack of sufficient oversight by a viable minority party (imagine that). Small failures only have to move the needle by a little bit for the dominating majority to disappear. And the more inefficient, base-pleasing agendas the majority pushes, the greater likelihood is that this will happen. This kind of dominance and certainly a “permanent majority” is not stable.
What is most stable intuitively is a legislature that has to provide the most public good to the broadest range of people. Consider under what conditions that will occur.
Here’s one observer’s theory on that:
The whole article is well worth a read.
There’s a video of this on dailykos.com. Sanchez just laughs in his face, its priceless!
Joe Lieberman is the sole victim? What about Al Wynn and Cynthia McKinney, both of whom faded into oblivion after being defeated?
Al Wynn I’ll give you, but Cynthia McKinney? She’s hardly what I’d call a moderate. Quite the contrary! She’s off the cliff on the left.
Perhaps I missed it in this thread, but am I the only one on the left who is not happy about this(or at Obama and really Biden ftm) and is kind of anxious about talk of Snowe and Collins jumping parties? Why don’t they actually stand up within their own party and fight? I want to see them make over their own party rather than try to jump into and change the course of the other.
Rather I see this as the rightwing(albeit the ‘moderate’ portion) elbowing their way into the Democratic party at the cost of crowding and pushing out those to the left that are already in the party to begin with.
I prefer multiple tents not one big one where key differences become blurred and no one really knows where anyone stands.
Rove’s stated intentions may have been to create a permanent Republican majority, but it looks as though it really was a slow-kill of one of the two major parties. I could not care less that it is to the benefit of the (now stronger to the right) Democratic party; having only one major party is not good news for the nation in general.
I forget who it was on the Rachel Maddow show last night, but they said something in regards to Obama, unrelated to this, but it still fits how I feel about this move- “right direction, wrong track”.
What really pisses me off though is to learn that it was likely going to be Rep. Joe Sestak, a solid progressivewith strongmilitary credentials, who would be the likely Democratic candidate.
However, that is likely not the case now as Rendell is saying he will do what he can to keep the field open and Obama of all people is saying he will support Specter even in the *Democratic *primaries. Just how well did making amends work with good ol’ Joe “Please don’t take my laser-plane” Lieberman, who was on CNN this weekend with Feinstein supporting the Cheney side of the torture debate?
Biden seems to be the White House’s main point man on this. It reeks of nothing more than self-serving career politicians looking out for each other rather than their own constituents; hell, Specter even said as much in his press conference that the only reason he is doing this is to get re-elected and has no interest in changing his voting pattern.
Change I can’t even take to the vending machine.
As a Kucinich caucusing, Darcy Burner supporting, Jim McDermott voting lefty, personally I think this sucks.
Sure, but if the GOP crash is hard enough, the Dem bluedogs and such can split off and form a new party without having to deal with all the religious and Reaganesque baggage of the old Republicans.
I’m not wringing my hands over the situation because IMHO, they’ll end up going somewhere for sure; eventually.
Fight who? Michael Steele? John Boehner? Rush Limbaugh? With what? Common sense? I don’t see it.
I don’t believe this necessarily follows, and see no evidence of it whatsoever.
i agree with you here.
Too early to tell.
Feinstein wasn’t supporting Cheney, was she?? 
Well, he didn’t say that was the ONLY reason.
Don’t fret. It’s always darkest before the messia…I mean the Obam…I mean the dawn 
Well to be fair, she didn’t out right support him, upon rereading the transcript she seems to be more Peggy Noonan-ish about it. What I took from her comments was that from what she has seen of the classified material that torture might have worked, but on the whole, having any of this in public is bad and we need to just move on. Not that I’ve ever seen any other reasons to trust her half as far as I can throw her, but the fact that she didn’t come out and flat out smack down Cheney was a disgrace. Here is the transcriptand here is the relevant portion(bolding mine)…
No. The answer should be “No, torture never works” there is no room for parsing.
I know this is a hijack, but since I’m on it I just want to point out that should we ever be attacked again, because of our torture program, the blame lies at the feet not of those who exposed and opposed the program, but upon those that approved and committed the torture, as well as those, such as Feinstein evidently, who knew of and were complicit in its enacting.
What happens to Specters committee seats? Does he have the same seniority ? Franken is the only Dem he outranks.
Reid’s Specter deal stirs senior Dems’ anger
However, it’s not forever:
Not going to happen, until the GOP really melts down, since the Republicans in general seem to have the same opinion as you about who should be let into a party.
Crowding out? I don’t see that being happy to let Spector in implies the desire to push Kucinich out. I’m a former (liberal) Republican also, and I left for the same reason as Spector - the party of Rockefeller no longer existed. Plus I saw Dubya as a putz from day one.
You know where people stand. What you don’t have is a simple list of must-believes for membership, which is pretty much what the Republicans have today. Abortion rights? Not allowed. Tax increases for the rich? No way. Reasonable regulations? Uh-uh. Do you want the Dems to have such narrow criteria for membership?
A single party in power does have its dangers, but I feel a lot more comfortable when that single party has a very wide range of opinions in it, so that there are arguments on both sides to be heard and resolved before a position is arrived at. That used to be the way Congress worked as a whole, but with most Republicans adopting a “just say no” platform, we’ve lost the compromise. Notice they’re pushing out anyone who wants to negotiate.
This is not unprecedented. The old Democratic Majority had the Southerners. It was good that they left to increase diversity and to make the party more open to the new demographic situation, but they did exert a moderating force on it. The good thing, once Franken gets seated, is that for important stuff the bills hammered out after negotiations with rational players with lots of opinions can get passed without any crap from the Republicans.
There are two possibilities for the future. Either the Republicans are going to move left and back into the mainstream, or they will become irrelevant and the Democratic party will split into left and right parts, the right part being more like the old moderate Republicanism.
Keep your new pony happy now.
What’s he gonna do, run off to a better stable? 
It’s been said and alluded to a few times, but that last paragraph by **Voyager **seems to be blaringly obvious if the Republican party becomes a fringe.
Again, I must say that it wasn’t too long ago that people were ready to heap dirt on the carcass of the Democratic party. The Dems have an interesting spot. They have to demonstrate that their way of doing things is better, and the Republicans, instead of compromising and talking, are letting the Democrats show the differences because the Republicans are just saying no.
When everything becomes a deal-breaker, nothing becomes a deal-breaker. Eventually, nobody will want to talk to you.
Frankly, at this point I wouldn’t mind if he just ran off. Another person in the seat, even if it is a Democrat, is preferable to this man of little conviction, who mere months ago was saying how he couldn’t become a Democrat because it wouldn’t be good for “balance”.
He is 79 years old, and was a jerk even when he was younger. The backflips the political establishment of both parties make to save him his seat is disgusting. I was revolted when Republicans did it, frankly, and now we see how Democrats really feel now that their own are kissing his ass.
And it isn’t sour grapes - I grew up in Pennsylvania and worked in Republican Party politics for a few years before joining the Navy. I met a lot of interesting and wonderful people, plus my share of total jerks.
He’s a jerk.
It’s a bad sign when a politician’s political metaphors actually make less sense than those made by a cartoon character as a parody.
Yeah, I can see that, and I expect a lot of Dems see that too.
I’m not so much happy at having him as a Democrat, as I am happy that his defection moves the GOP one step closer to total discombobulation.