The Missing Candidates: I Blame Harry Reid

[Wayward Episcopalian]

Bill Richardson is having a field day blasting the four Senate candidates for President for missing the floor vote on Michael Mukasey. This leaves a bad taste in my mouth, for several reasons. One is that it takes 51 votes to confirm a nominee, and Mukasey had 53 - four more "no" votes wouldn't have made a difference. Two, there were 41 no votes, so four more wouldn't have made a difference in preventing cloture, and besides, not even Russ Feingold called for a filibuster. Three, this is the independent-minded Senate, not the pack-mentality House. "Leadership" rarely changes votes, Biden's outstanding efforts on the 1988 Bork hearings being the rare exception. Which individuals do you think would have flip-flopped to parrot Clinton or Obama? Do you really think Schumer or Nelson are that fickle? And if so, why wasn't Richardson on the Hill lobbying harder than ever to show such leadership? Four, I very much doubt that if Richardson were a Senator, he would have made the vote. Dole missed major votes, Kerry missed major votes, Edwards missed major votes, and so on. Richardson would not escape the same trap that all other Senators fall into, and it's quite arrogant for him to suggest otherwise.

But above all, it's not really the four Senators' fault that they missed the vote. It's Harry Reid's fault for scheduling a last-minute vote with no regard whatsoever for his party's future leader and nominee (whoever that might be). I'm currently in New Hampshire, and it would be near impossible for me to get to the Capitol Building in DC within the next five hours, even if I had $70 million and my own private jet. Greg Sargent at TPM writes,

According to Senate sources, as the Dem Senate leadership remained in closed-door negotiations with their GOP counterparts over whether to hold the vote, Senators were getting mixed signals throughout the day as to whether the vote would happen by the end of yesterday. The actual notification that there would be a vote didn't come from leadership until at least 6:30 or 7 PM last night -- catching aides on the staffs of the presidential campaigns and on the staffs of other senators off guard.

"I had my coat on and was walking out the door when I first heard about the vote," one staffer said.

The senators were notified that there would be five hours of debate, and that a vote would be happening at midnight, or possibly before, sources said.

Aides to one of the senators running for President said they were surprised at how adamant the leadership was that a vote would be coming so quickly -- with or without them present. One aide to this senator said that his staff told leadership that they couldn't get back for a vote until later in the night.

But, this source says, the leadership told this Senator's staff that they could not promise to hold the vote for his return. Leadership said that the vote would happen at the end of debate whether or not this senator got back in time for it, this source tells us. So this senator gave up the effort to return for the vote.

So basically what happened here is that leadership was adamant that the vote take place by midnight last night. And the senators running for President, who were scattered far afield, either couldn't make it back in time for the vote, or decided that it wasn't worth returning. The thinking apparently was that Mukasey's confirmation was assured, and they were already on record against him. As Robert Gibbs, a spokesman for Barack Obama, put it last night: "He's already announced his position on it. I don't think the vote will be close."

None of the other senators' campaigns has commented on record about this.

As for the possibility of a filibuster, it was never likely that anyone other than Dodd would have gone through with it at any rate -- again, because all the Senators can say that they're on record against him. Even if any of them had been willing to filibuster, it seems clear that the timing of the vote was such that it was unlikely that any of them could have gotten back to the Senate floor in time to do so.

Meanwhile, it still remains unclear exactly why the leadership suddenly declared at 6:30 P.M that there would be a vote -- and that it would have to happen by midnight at the latest.

Update 3:26pm: Richardson's attacks are here (the source for my "field day" comment above): http://action.richardsonforpresident.com/page/community/post/joaquinguerra/CLtT