Stepping Up

by digby

Firedoglake reports that both Senator Clinton and Senator Obama are going to be in the Senate tomorrow to vote no on cloture on the FISA bill. Ari Melber at The Nation explains what’s going on:

President Bush is now daring Congress to defy his demand for more unchecked power to spy on Americans without warrants, vowing to veto temporary surveillance legislation and politicize his last State of the Union address for an attack on Democrats. Last week, Democratic leaders were considering a bill to grant a one-month extension of the administration’s spying powers, a “compromise” tilted in Bush’s favor, but Republican tactics have finally tried the patience of Majority Leader Harry Reid. He had been managing floor votes to advance the Republican bill and squash opposition from the majority of Democrats within his caucus, but that may change this week… read on

And he lays out what out two front runners might do about it:

And what, exactly, can they do? I see three major options:

1. Use their influence and political capital to recruit two more votes for the Leahy bill. That’s all Leahy, Feingold and Dodd need to keep their fight alive under the current rules. Obama and Clinton were endorsed by a total of seven senators who voted the wrong way last week. As DFA explains, “if these presidential hopefuls bring along the support of these senators, they can sustain a planned filibuster [and] defeat any cloture vote.”

2. Use their influence and political capital to press Reid to run the floor for the Leahy bill, instead of the Bush-Rockefeller bill. This is is tough for several reasons, but there’s an opening now that Bush has essentially slapped Reid around and drawn some rhetorical pushback.

3. Rally the Democratic Congress to confront Bush’s veto threat. Send the one-month bill to his desk and let this unpopular president remind the entire country of his irresponsible, cynical approach to governing. Maybe his approval ratings will drop into the teens like his Vice President. (I personally favor this third option the least, since it involves gamesmanship instead of a long-term policy, which Leahy’s bill offers.)

Or they could channel Harry Reid, complaining about Bush while essentially allowing him to win again.

Will it be door number 1,2,3 or 4? The truth is that it’s mostly a symbolic thing for the Monday leading up the SOTU, and that’s not a bad thing. It’s a hell of a lot better that they’re taking a public stand on this than if they weren’t. But the action is going to be on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and I will be shocked if either of them come off the road that long to participate. It’s possible they’ll exert some of their power and round up their endorsers, but it doesn’t seem likely.

Still, on balance, this is better than I expected and maybe they can at least get the news media to pay attention to this issue with a couple of rousing speeches in defense of the rule of law. The gasbags can waste days talking about ephemeral, campaign trail dust-ups so maybe they can find a couple of minutes to talk about the constitution.

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