athenae chimes in…

…on a point raised by Ezra. With some of the 'vote the person, not the party' types all aflutter because some Republican Senators have gone ahead and supported the Republican nominated for Chief Justice by a Republican president, she makes the obvious but too often overlooked case for partisanship in a post at First Draft...

...I'm not 19 anymore, and hopefully the people running NARAL aren't 19, and we can all understand that it's about power, not personal conviction. We are better off with Ben Nelson and Harry Reid in office than we are with two Republicans in those seats, I don't care how pro-choice those Republicans would claim to be. A Democratic Senate, and there would be no Chief Justice Roberts. A Democratic House, and there would be no President Bush.

It's a relief to realize there are a few more voices in the lefty blogosphere that appreciate the way government is organized in the US. Our legislative bodies, at the Congressional and Legislative levels particularly, is organized on the basis of partisanship, not merit. You can argue until you're blue about how it should, but as the late, great Lenny Bruce famously pronounced, "What should be is a lie. The truth is what is." If being 'reality-based' means anything, it means dealing with the world as it is, not with a lie about how it should be.

That's why, for instance, it's dismaying to see labor and some lefty bloggers piling on folks like Illinois Rep. Melissa Bean. Has she taken some votes that are just objectively wrong from a Democratic perspective. What is, though, is that she was the upset victor in a Republican district, and if she doesn't hold her seat, it will revert to the GOP. As a commenter at Swing State Project notes, there seems to be some hope that if we cut off our noses in spite, Bean will faint at the sight of our blood.

While I care about all the votes on which Bean has disappointed, it's the role of her caucus leadership to apply such discipline and sanctions as they see fit. If they seem to be reluctant to punish Bean for a bankruptcy vote, or a trade vote, maybe it's because they know they need her for an even more important vote - the election of a Democratic Speaker of the House in 2007.

That's got to be the bottom line for Blue Dogs like Bean, or for the wayward Senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee, or for any Democratic candidate. With Democratic leadership, the opportunity to take many of those awful votes will simply disappear.

Save the litmus tests for safe seats and hopeless causes. Where there's something worth keeping to lose, let's curb the impulse to purge until our majorities are insurmountable.