The Hollywood Liberal

       The Democrats Color Coded Filibuster Vote.

by H.L.

I’m sitting here looking at the Filibuster roll call vote for Judge Samuel Alito’s Supreme Court nomination, and am noticing some interesting trends. Almost all of the voting for or against the filibuster went along blue state-red state lines. That is to say, if you live in a Liberal state, your Democratic Senator voted for The Filibuster, if you live in a red state, the vote probably went against The Filibuster. Let’s look at the data.

Democratic Senators From the red states who voted against the Filibuster.

North Dakota, (Conrad and Dorgan)
Arkansas, (Lincoln and Pryor)
West Virginia, (Byrd and Rockerfeller)
South Dakota (Johnson)
Montana (Baucus)
Louisiana (Landrieu)
Nebraska (Nelson)
Florida (Nelson)
Colorado (Salazar)
Total Population of these States 35 Million

Senators from Blue States who voted against Filibuster
Hawaii (Akaka and Inouye)
Connecticut (Lieberman)
Wisconsin (Kohl)
Delaware (Carper)

Only two Senators from a Red State voted for Filibuster
Indiana (Bayh)
Reid (Nevada)

All the others who voted for Filibuster were from Blue States
California (Feinstein and Boxer) -Total Population 35 Million
New York (Clinton and Schumer)
Massachusetts (Kennedy and Kerry)
New Jersey (Lautenberg and Menendez)
Illinois (Durbin and Obama)
Michigan (Levin and Stabenow)
Maryland (Sarbanes and Mikulski)
Connecticut (Dodd)
Wisconsin (Feingold)
Minnesota (Dayton)
Washington (Murray)
Rhode Island (Reed)
Oregon (Wyden)
Vermont (Leahy)
Delaware (Biden)

Of course all Republican Senators voted against Filibuster.

Wisconsin, Delaware, and Connecticut were the only states with 2 Democratic Senators, that split the vote (all blue states in ’04)

Its easier to understand why the Senators from Red States voted against, being that most of their constituents were for Alito, and Hawaii, was a toss up in the election, which means the 2 Senators who must be singled out for ridicule are Lieberman (No surprise there in that he is the biggest DINO, Democrat in Name Only, in the Senate) and Kohl from Wisconsin. These two should be tossed out on there ears come their next elections.

As Usual, the real problem seems to be that the people from the states with the smallest population get to decide for the states with the largest populations. The total population of the red states who’s Senators voted against the Filibuster is approximately 35 Million, which is the same as the population of California alone. Of course this all goes back to The Great Compromise of 1787 when it was decided that states would get House of Representatives members based on population, and each state would get 2 Senators.

Being that states with large cities (and therefore the most population) are blue states, and states with no large cities are red states, Democrats are screwed any time a vote comes before the Senate. Perhaps the solution would be to let the full congress vote on Supreme Court nominees, but of course Republicans would never go along with that. The only way the Democrats can ever get out of this quagmire would be to educate people from the red states. You know the ones who always vote against their own self interest, the poorest, people vote for the richest elitists, go figure. Howard Dean has stated that he wants to rebuild the Democratic Party from the grass roots, and try to take back some of the red states. Good luck Howard, you have your work cut out for you.

posted by H.L. @ 9:30 AM Permalink