Damned DINOs

What's it take to be a Democrat these days?

Does one simply have to show up to earn a (D) after their name?

The scores say they're a Dem, but they don't vote like it when it really counts. Byrd, Conrad, Johnson, Landrieu score better than 70% as Dems, but failed miserably when it came to the Alito vote this week.

What will they do when the budget comes before them, clogged up with more Republican pork? will they vote against it?

Their track records suggest they will, but each vote should be viewed with increasing skepticism when they can't vote as real progressives when it truly counts.

I don't personally believe that an overall trackrecord is enough; there are extenuating circumstances that can make any vote substantively different from previous votes. Byrd, for example, is running for office and now has a well-funded opponent; did he sell out on the Alito vote to play to the moderate base? Or is he simply slipping? He says he believes Alito, takes him at his word; I find it hard it hard to believe that Alito, who can cite verse and chapter from thirty-plus years of judicial decisions before circuit and Supreme courts, would have forgotten the details of his membership in a racist and misogynist club like CAP.

Or Landrieu, whose state was devastated by Katrina...did she think by voting with the Republican Party that she'd do better by her state? I want to shake her out of her naivete; if Trent Lott and Haley Barbour weren't able to get FEMA to do better by their state, why the hell would anything Landrieu does to curry favor make any difference now? That ship sailed. Without her. (She's got plenty of work to do on her environmental protection scores, too; this is NOT what Louisiana needs to build a future offering greater protections against hurricanes.)

I don't know what to make of Conrad and Johnson, particularly since their overall scores are better than Byrd's or Landrieu's. I know of no extenuating circumstances in South and North Dakota that would influence their votes, other than their bases may be more centrist. But Alito represented a clear threat to the working people and farmers of their states, a clear threat to the libertarians who live in these two states; it's hard to imagine why they voted as they did.

We have a lot of work to do, no matter the reason. We need to find a way to make it clear that being a Democrat means more than voting like one most of the time. It means taking a stand for Democratic and democratic principles, 7x24x365, 100% of the time, every vote.