From `moderate’ Senate Dems, no end to the follyBy Greg Sargent
David Kurtz, on the folly of moderate Dems who are poised not to vote for the jobs bill tonight:
We know going in that this bill isn’t going to pass. But how many Dems line up to support it — or more importantly how many fail to line up — will be the difference between whether Democrats come out of the vote with a clear political message or a muddied result where both sides share the blame for not doing anything.
Joan McCarter adds another critical point — the timing could not possibly be more ridiculous:
ow is not the time for ConservaDems to try to prove they are not really Democrats, when the Democrats are actually, finally, working on the issues that matter the most to the majority of people in this country, whether those people are in New York or California or Montana or Louisiana. Even Nebraska. Now, more than ever, it’s time for Democrats to be on the side of the 99 percent. If they want to keep their jobs, that is.
Still more from Steve Benen:
The president has done absolutely everything that could be asked of him — his White House crafted a serious plan; he sold it well to a joint session; he hit the road to present it to voters; and he’s used the kind of arguments the “professional left” has been urging him to make.
And yet, House Republicans are still extremists, Senate Republicans are both radical and obstructionist, and a few Senate Democrats are more comfortable cowering under the table in a fetal position, hoping the GOP isn’t too mean to them.
Exactly right. Again:
Obama has done what skittish Senate Dems and their aides asked him to do — he has waged a public campaign to build support for his proposals. Have we already forgotten that only a few short months ago, the papers were filled wiith quotes from anonymous Dems complaining that Obama had failed to (a) focus on jobs; and (b) use the bully pulpit to rally public support for job-creation proposals?
By any measure, Obama has addressed those complaints. As ABC News polling director Gary Langer put it the other day, Obama proved that "it’s possible to move the bar” when it comes to public opinion on jobs. And yet, now that Dems have finally made that pivot to jobs and are finally fighting it out on turf favorable to themselves; now that Obama has shown it’s possible to move public opinion in the direction of his proposals, despite his low approval numbers; and now that Obama and Dem leaders are hoping to use GOP opposition to the jobs bill to cast the GOP as the number one enemy of progress on the economy, a handful of moderate Dems are still prepared to help Republicans muddy those waters. By Greg Sargent
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/from-moderate-senate-dems-no-end-to-the-folly/2011/10/11/gIQAhzpscL_blog.html 
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