Senate Democrats Defend Ted Stevens

by: Matt Stoller

Tue Jul 29, 2008 at 14:36


This is just lovely.

Senator Daniel Inouye, Democrat of Hawaii, who is the chairman of the defense appropriations subcommittee and a friend of Mr. Stevens, said that "he is innocent until proven guilty." Mr. Inouye said he did not expect that the indictment would interfere with Senator Stevens's ability to work in the Senate.

Other lawmakers, including Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, the chairwoman of the ethics committee, said they needed to know more about the indictment before commenting.

Question: How hard is it to say 'An indictment is a serious matter, though I can't comment specifically because I haven't seen it'?  Answer: Not very.

Something serious is rotten in DC.  

UPDATE:  I'm reading the comments, and people are defending this crap.  Have you not been watching war funding, FISA, Lieberman-Warner, Countrywide scandals, the Housing bill, the Wall Street bailout, oil subsidies, the Energy bill, the endorsements of Joe Lieberman in 2006, the Alito confirmation, etc?

The Senate is a damn club.  I'm not saying these are bad people, though some of them are, just that they are part of a rotten system that compels them to make immoral choices.  They deserve criticism for it, they are the MOST empowered parts of society.  The sooner we learn this the sooner we can start to fix it, but if you keep denying that these people are part of a corroded system it won't get better.  We're supposed to be smart activists, not blind obedient morons following elitist DC Democrats off a cliff.  

Is everyone that comments part of the 9% of the country that approves of Congress?  Do you realize how out of touch you are when you defend this kind of behavior?  Don't you see that when you cheer the Bush Department of Justice and excuse the enabling Democrats in the Senate you are part of the problem?  

Update again:  And Inouye held a fundraiser for Stevens earlier this year.  Ah, postpartisanship.

Matt Stoller :: Senate Democrats Defend Ted Stevens

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Senate Democrats Defend Ted Stevens | 39 comments
I would say polite things about him too (4.00 / 2)
At least up until Sep. 17th, or whatever the "point of no return" date is when he can no longer be replaced on the Republican ballot.

We don't want him stepping down or being replaced. We want to beat his ass at the ballot box.

doesn't matter (4.00 / 1)
What Senate Democrats think is not that important in terms of him stepping down.  This is just them protecting him.
[ Parent ]
Interesting take, Matt, (0.00 / 0)
how do you read this as Democrats protecting Stevens?  What kind of "protection" might this offer?  From what?
[ Parent ]
after thinking it over (4.00 / 1)
I realized you were right. This is a perfect opportunity not only to slam Stevens, but to further tarnish the GOP brand. Whether Stevens survives the primary or not is not our problem, we should use this to demonstrate how corrupt the Republicans are to this day.

So I stand corrected.

[ Parent ]
This is Daniel Inouye (4.00 / 1)
C'mon.  They have been buds since statehood fopr npth theri states.  They are two 80-plus year old guys who won't desert a friend.  They'll both be gone soon.

And Boxer?  What's wrong with "I'd like to know more before I comment so I can comment intelligently"?


John McCain--He's not who you think he is.

matt thinks you are out of touch! (0.00 / 0)
get with it mimi
[ Parent ]
Yeah, well what can I say (0.00 / 0)
I'm closer in age to Stevens than to Matt, and I've learned to value compassion.  And I'm not inclined to look for the cloud in every silver lining.  Not my nature.

Of course what Stevens did was wrong and an abuse of the public trust.  I just don't get exercised about an old pal of his saying a kind word.  I think that his fellow Senators think he's toast but out of kindness aren't taking the opportunity of his indictment to dump all over him.  I understand it.

John McCain--He's not who you think he is.

[ Parent ]
compassion (4.00 / 3)
I choose to show my compassion for the victims of the policy choices made by Ted Stevens and various bad leaders in the Senate.
[ Parent ]
I Undertand It.... All Too Well, I'm Afraid (4.00 / 4)
The Senate is the most exclusive gentleman's club in the world.  It is arguably the most anti-democratic, and racist institution in our system of government.  The bonds of affection nurtured there have embraced far, far more men of brutal savagery and privilege than anything remotely resembling a cross-section of American life.

I'm with Matt--I'll save my sympathy and compassion for the victims of Stevens and his Senate buds.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
No Compassion in Politics. If they guy's a sleazy turd (0.00 / 0)
(and they ALL are), scroom. Gut 'em, fillet 'em, and cook 'em right now. Ted Stevens is and has been an embarrassment in a Senate where nobody is embarrassed by our Chimperor.  

Mimi, I just don't buy it. They're covering each others asses. As Lieberman, Obama, Salazar and that whole coterie of cowards demonstrated when they rejected the Conn. voters, the only thing that matters worth a shit to ANY of 'em is that THEY stay in the Club. Fuck 'em.  

[ Parent ]
Isn't it best (0.00 / 0)
for Democrats to be as cordial as possible in order to disarm Republican attempts to put up the conventional smokescreens--e.g. the indictment is "politically motivated," "partisan witchhunt," etc.
WTF??? ... (4.00 / 5)
it's the Bush DOJ that is handing down this indictment ... and you are worried about Stevens indictment being a politically motivated witch hunt?  What was Siegelman?  That was politically motivated!!
[ Parent ]
Huh? (0.00 / 0)
I'm not suggesting that it was a politically motivated withchunt.  I'm just pointing out how that's a conventional way to spin these things.  
[ Parent ]
Maybe if Clinton's DOJ had indicted Stevens .. (0.00 / 0)
but given what we know .. it's a pretty far stretch now to say it was politically motivated
[ Parent ]
If it was politically motivated (4.00 / 2)
It was to get Stevens, a pretty sure loser, out of the race.  Interesting that primary opponent, the self-financing Vic Vickers is starting a $400,000 ad buy tomorrow, as I mentioned below.

John McCain--He's not who you think he is.
[ Parent ]
that is interesting (0.00 / 0)

[ Parent ]
Does Vickers .. (0.00 / 0)
have any name recognition up there? ... I know TPM thought Vickers was pretty far right
[ Parent ]
Speaking of Siegelman... (4.00 / 3)

  ...any sign of the Democrats having HIS back?

  If the Democrats protect Ted Stevens and leave Don Siegelman hanging out to dry, they deserve to be thrown into volcanoes.  

"We judge ourselves by our ideals; others by their actions. It is a great convenience." -- Howard Zinn

[ Parent ]
They haven't seen it? (4.00 / 1)
It's right here.

...given, it's pretty long. Nice and detailed though! Is 28 pages a normal length for an indictment? I wouldn't know.

(Source Pam's House Blend, dunno where she got it from.)

don't have to kick a dog when its already down (0.00 / 0)
or do ya?
Yes, you do. (4.00 / 3)
What's so hard to understand about that? We should be ripping the GOP's spines out and feeding them to them any chance we get. They don't play nice. We should play hardball like they do, with the one big difference being we don't make shit up.

You can read more of JD Ryan at five before chaos, but why would you want to?
[ Parent ]
re your update (0.00 / 0)
I understand the annoyance with Inouye. Of course, it's hardly surprising given the HI and AK senators always have each others' backs, party affiliation aside.

But I don't understand at all why you have a problem with Senator Boxer's "no comment" like response. I mean, who cares? She isn't supporting Stevens.

Calling it a club is a bad analogy... (4.00 / 5)
In the sense that if the roles had been reversed, what are the chances that Stevens would go to bat for Inouye in the press?  Uhh...zero.  When was the last time a Republican passed up a chance to kick a figurative Democratic dog when he's down?

A club suggests that all the members would go to bat for each other.  But that has not been the case in the Senate in at least 28 years.  Democrats foolishly think it's a club, but Republicans know that friendship never gets in the way of business.  If there's a political advantage to be gained, they will take it, regardless of the consequences to friendships.  Tim Johnson, anyone?  How long did it take for Republicans to call for him to be replaced by someone appointed by the Republican Governor after his stroke?  5, maybe 10 seconds?

That's not a club, it's an abusive spouse syndrome.

don't know about that (4.00 / 1)
Stevens did say that if Inouye hadn't run again he would have retired.

[ Parent ]
The difference in party strategy (4.00 / 4)
I have no doubt that Stevens and Inouye are friends, and perhaps very close friends.  But the difference is how Democrats and Republicans respond to political opportunities.  It's far more likely that, with tables turned, Stevens would have kept his mouth shut in public, and happily allowed other Republicans to make nasty accusation and unfounded slurs, all while he professes eternal friendship in private.

But here, the opposite is true.  Inouye is foolish enough to profess friendship in public, and there are no Democrats speaking the truth of how corrupt Stevens is given the weight of the evidence.  That's a fundamental difference.

A similar point can be made of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.  She is allowing her friendships with Republicans interfere with Democratic efforts to pick up three Republican seats in Florida.  There is no way that any Republican would make the same mistake.  It may not be spousal abuse syndrome, but it's still fucked up.

[ Parent ]
maybe so maybe no (0.00 / 0)
Inouye and Stevens are some of the oldest, longest-tenure members of the Senate, and have a mutual appreciation society that has helped deliver BIG TIME for their states.

HI and AK receive a greater per capita share of federal money than almost any other state.

So, I think you have a special case here, and you can't generalize it to typical Democrat or typical Republican behavior; although I know that feels better.

[ Parent ]
You Make A Good Point, But... (0.00 / 0)
It's actually not that rare at all that clubs have inner circles who abuse the trust of members as a whole.  What the Reps have done is to be quite systematic about this sort of thing across the entire spectrum of political and cultural institutions, without Democrats at the top of any of them seemingly catching on even after 30 years.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3
[ Parent ]
I will take that and run. (0.00 / 0)
I'm a big fan of yours, Paul.  Thanks.

It still poses the question of "why?".  Why haven't Democrats been able to catch on after all these years, even for such a straightforward issue as this?  Perhaps this is just one more symptom of a larger problem, but it still surprises me that Democrats blow it so badly.

As I stated above, Inouye's friendship should have been irrelevant to a coordinated Democratic response.  He could have kept silent while others put out the "message" about Stevens' corruption.  But no, he opened his mouth, and worse, the rest of the Senate Democrats had no message at all.  sigh.

[ Parent ]
I'm A Big Believer In Over-Determination (0.00 / 0)
So I think it's a combination of many different factors, including temperament, culture, cognitive factors, institutional values, etc., as well as the simple fact that Republicans practice hegemonic warfare, while Democrats do not.

So, for the sake of argument here, start with the fact that liberals and conservatives think differently, particularly in terms of right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation.  Conservatives assume they have special privileges, and--at bottom--everyone else has none.  Liberals assume fair play.  These assumptions aren't universally held, but they are fairly pervasive, and get reinforced over and over again, with the result that the differences get more and more pronounced as people get more deeply involved in politics.

One result of this is that people simply refuse to see what's right in front of their faces, or else readily shrug it off as an anomaly.  When the anomalies become to common, they then graduate to "mystery."  There's always something. The step-by-step management of this process is one of the chief concerns of the conservative movement.  It's part of the basic hegemonic struggle.

This is just a brief gloss on a much more complex process, but I think it captures enough of the gist of it.  There are always some people on the liberal/Democratic side who catch on--such as Don Siegelman (going to jail can do that to a guy)--but the perceptions they come up with in doing so are simply too much at odds with the mainstream of liberal/Democratic values and beliefs, so there's always a struggle, at best, to get their voices heard.  Whereas, on the Republican/Conservative side, even the most fair-minded of them inherently believe that they're morally superior and hardball tactics are just part of life, not anything unusual at all.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
As an overall analysis, I agree... (4.00 / 1)
But I think it misses the mark somewhat in this specific instance.  The unwillingness/inability of Democrats to comprehend the fundamental asymmetry in how Republicans and Democrats approach politics is certainly a painful phenomenon to watch on TV in all its various manifestations.  And that overall disparity can not be overstated (at least with the current crew of Democratic leaders).  But I think the Stevens' indictment is evidence of a more conventional problem - a mundane lack of coordination and strategic planning.  Sense of fair play or not, Democrats are inarguably a confused lot of disorganized units.  They have no strategic plan, no sense of party unity, no mechanism to maintain message discipline.  That's just bad management.

The sole exception to the disorganized mob that is the Democratic Party was early to mid 2005 when they responded with a unified voice against Bush's crusade to privatize Social Security.  Pelosi, to her credit, kept the herd of cats in line by developing a strategy, and enforcing party discipline on that message.  It was a beautiful thing to watch, as Bush toured the country crying that the sky is falling, but actually refusing to introduce any actual plan.  As the Democrats refused to take the bait, Bush inevitably gave up, and looked like an idiot in the process.  That, as much as any other act by Democrats, really exposed Bush as the hack he is.  Sadly, whatever lessons that Democrats could have learned from that episode were completely ignored.

More and better Democrats, to me, is not just about throwing spineless hacks like Carney and Barrow, but also throwing out the current cadre of Democratic Strategists who are behind the curtains whispering in the ears of Democratic leaders.  They are perhaps the worst political strategic planners since Hoover's election campaign in 1932.

[ Parent ]
Don't Look Now, But... (0.00 / 0)
They are perhaps the worst political strategic planners since Hoover's election campaign in 1932.

John McCain's campaign strategists are giving them a real run for the money.


"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
out of touch (0.00 / 0)
I have to say Matt, it's very condescending to say "do you see how out of touch you are..."  The responses were essentially two-fold:

1) They are friends, so I can understand what he said.
2) What's the point, maybe we can keep him around until he's won the primary and then Begich can beat him.

You seem to be envisioning a calculated decision in the answers.  There's no following off a cliff here, or even defense of any of the awful legislation you cited.  This was simply an exercise in, "well, maybe Inouye said that for reasons other than the nefarious ones you suggest" and the people who think that might be right.

This doesn't mean that the Senate it isn't rotten, or a rotten club, but maybe you should trust the people who take time to comment on your website a little more than to insult their intelligence by shouting, "don't you see you fools!"

Versailles Villagers (0.00 / 0)
They deserve criticism for it, they are the MOST empowered parts of society.  The sooner we learn this the sooner we can start to fix it, but if you keep denying that these people are part of a corroded system it won't get better.

very true

Not sure it's post-partisanship (4.00 / 1)
It's pre-partisanship. It doesn't seem to have entirely registered in Daniel Inouye's head that Alaska and Hawaii are now both states and that their interests are not necessarily identical.

Further, he doesn't seem to have noticed that Ted Stevens and Alaska are not the same thing.

I really hope this is his last term. Akaka gets a lot of flack for being ineffective, but at least he isn't as relentlessly devoted to being a disappointment as Inouye is.

Forgotten Countries - a foreign policy-focused blog

I'm with Matt (0.00 / 0)

 If anything, Matt's too tame. I'd go further.

 These ARE bad people. Inherently, intrinsically effed-up people.

 Bad senators, bad Amercians, and bad humans.

 

"We judge ourselves by our ideals; others by their actions. It is a great convenience." -- Howard Zinn

I see Stevens gave $10K to Inouye in 2004 (4.00 / 1)
I'm not defending him, but this is a special case.


New Jersey politics at Blue Jersey.
Corroded system? (0.00 / 0)
I can certainly understand that the legislature is dysfunctional.

They are corrupt because they are beholden to corporate money.

They are corrupt because of their byzantine rules, and backroom deals to protect pet projects.

And they are corrupt in half a dozen other ways.

They aren't corrupt because they make friendships with people who disagree with them ideologically.

They aren't corrupt because they recognize that everyone charged with a crime is entitled to a presumption of innocence.

In fact, I find these last two qualities admirable.

I can no longer tell the angry whiners of the left from the angry whiners of the right.  They both lack values and decency.  The only standard of right and wrong they hold is unyielding loyalty to their particular narrowly defined tribe.

It's sad.  I had such hope for the arrival of a movement on the left based on values of decency and fairness.

Since when did we become (0.00 / 0)
as bad as Bush? Convicting and sentencing somebody - regardless of what crimes he is accused of - is posse justice. Inouye said the right words, so what?

If a "club" means that the Constitution is above our personal opinions of a person, then, yeah, I'm one of the people who believe that a person is innocent until proven guilty!

WTF??? Nobody's Talking About Locking Stevens Up & Throwing Away The Key (4.00 / 1)
So cool the Bush comparisons, okay?

We're talking about moral outrage, which the netroots also called for in the case of Democratic Congressman William Jefferson.

Everyone has a right to a fair trial.  No one has a right to a seat in Congress.  That is a position of trust.

Now, if there was good reason to think this was a Don Seigleman type situation, then I'd be with you 100%.  But it's not, and everyone knows it's not.  This is one of the rottenest of the rotten finally exposed to the light of day.

Period.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
Senate Democrats Defend Ted Stevens | 39 comments
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