This morning I referred to Joe Liberman as “Goose” for his penchant for playing wingman to John “Maverick” McCain, but after watching the Democrats in the Senate distance themselves from Russ Feingold’s centure resolution, I’m starting to think Joementum fits in a lot better than most of us want to admit :

Feingold, a potential presidential candidate, said on the Senate floor, “The president has violated the law and Congress must respond.”

“A formal censure by Congress is an appropriate and responsible first step to assure the public that when the president thinks he can violate the law without consequences, Congress has the will to hold him accountable,” Feingold said.

immediate vote that Majority Leader Bill Frist requested. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said he didn’t know if there ever would be one. Durbin said that Feingold had sought to use the censure resolution “as a catalyst” for thorough hearings and investigations.

The referral averted a debate and a vote that Democrats privately worried would alienate voters who could decide close elections.

Throughout the day, Feingold’s fellow Democrats said they understood his frustration but they held back overt support for the resolution.

Several said they wanted first to see the Senate Intelligence Committee finish an investigation of the warrantless wiretapping program that Bush authorized as part of his war on terrorism.

Asked at a news conference whether he would vote for the censure resolution, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada declined to endorse it and said he hadn’t read it.
. . .
Across the Capitol, reaction was similar. Feingold’s censure resolution drew empathy but no outright support from Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Pelosi “understands Sen. Feingold’s frustration that the facts about the NSA domestic surveillance program have not been disclosed appropriately to Congress,” her office said in a statement. “Both the House and the Senate must fully investigate the program and assign responsibility for any laws that may have been broken.”

The way these people fall back into “we need to gather all the facts” mode is fucking pathetic. With this crowd playing “opposition”, if the President were found with a dead whore in his bed, the closest they’d get to criticism is to insist that they’re “withholding judgment until we’re certain that she was really a prostitute”. Feingold rebuked Pelosi and Reid’s cowardly verbal shuffling this morning on CNN :

S. O’BRIEN: But you know, you say, we listened and listened, but the truth is the issue is under investigation now. The jury is not back actually on whether this is a legal. Why not wait until…

FEINGOLD: Actually, Soledad, the jury has been dismantled. The only committee that was able to handle this was the Senate Intelligence Committee. The Senate Intelligence Committee, the whole committee, a majority of the committee, isn’t even going to be allowed to hear about what this program is. And, frankly, in those hearings, we’ve heard enough to know that we don’t know everything about the program.

But we also know that there is no basis and no argument that’s credible that this program is legal. In other words, there’s a lot more to find out about how the program works, but it’s already very clear, and many Republican senators have said that there is no legal basis for it.

We’ve known this program was illegal for three months now and we know the President intentionally broke the law even when proposals were floated to amend FISA, so what the hell are they waiting for? Either the Democrats in the Senate are too goddamn stupid to see the truth when it’s right in front of them or they’re too cowardly to stand up and do the right thing. Either way, they’re once again proving that the modern Democratic party can’t be counted on to do the right thing.

I honestly doubt the Democrats will take back either branch of Congress this November. I think they lack most of the qualities necessary to win. They don’t have the willingness to stand on principle, which just reinforces the stereotype that all Dems are weak. They’re afraid to fight dirty even after getting dragged through the mud for the Rove machine for the past seven years. They don’t know how to manipulate the media and get them to disseminate their message. They can’t be trusted to take a firm stand on any issue aside from Social Security. And after a year of GOP woes, including Plame, Schiavo, Abramoff, NSA spying, and Katrina, they’re still unable to muster the guts to even support a symbolic Senate resolution. All things being equal, if we’re gonna lose in November, I hope we lose big and get rid of some of these cowards. The party of Libermans (or is that Liebermen?) is just holding us back at this point.