Dear Senator Reid

The Democrats want me to join them on the floor of the Senate. Not just me, anyone who agrees with them. The debate on the Republican “nuclear option” for shutting off debate comes up soon, and Harry Reid wants to take my words on the floor with him to show what real Americans think. I obliged him, good liberal that I am. I’ll bet the candy-ass doesn’t use them.

Let’s get one thing straight. We’ve done pretty well for two hundred plus years by allowing minorities as small at 41 percent to stop the show if they thought they were getting screwed. Republicans held up some court appointments this way themselves when Bill Clinton picked some judges they didn’t like. Now they want a rubber stamp on whoever Rain Man sends up there. It can safely be said that I’m against it.

On the other hand, the Democrats have become so devoid of anything resembling commitment that I refuse to have my name (such as it is) associated with them. Here’s the response I sent to Harry this morning.

Dear Senator Reid:

Thank you for sending me this message, looking for support on the Senate floor during the debate on the "nuclear option." As Democratic actions during the "debate" on the Terri Schiavo bill show, you need all the help you can get.

I have been a life-long Democrat, and I believe George W. Bush needs to sprinkle bread crumbs along the way to the Oval Office every morning so he can find his way home at night. Still, the recent action, or lack thereof, by Democrats in general, and Democratic leadership in particular, have disillusioned and disgusted me.

Not one Democrat could be found to request a roll call on the Schiavo vote, so it would be on the record? No one thought to suggest the absence of a quorum? I am against the nuclear option, as well as against President Bush's repeated efforts to jam unpalatable nominees through the process, and the Republican leadership's clear implications that the world's greatest deliberative body should serve as a rubber stamp to a President's idea of justice. (This seems to be a new concept for them, as Republican senators had no qualms about stonewalling President Clinton's nominees.) I would just like to see the Democratic leadership show some spine and come up with some ideas and strategies better than "we're against it," which is about all you've shown for several years now.

I thought Tom Daschle was gone. Show some strength for a change. You're losing ground because the Republicans stand for something. No matter how repugnant it may be to many of us, they have something to rally their supporters around. All the Democrats have given us for going on ten years now is "We're not Republicans." A noble motive, but hardly worth getting excited about.

So there.