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Edited on Sun Sep-07-08 04:46 PM by karynnj
He is and was a long shot and needed to do far more than Kerry to win. He needed to introduce himself as a likable, respectable person to MA - he didn't succeed there. (and that is the kind way of stating it.)
He needed to demonstrate that not only does he have the skills to be a Senator, that he is sufficiently better than Kerry that the change in seniority would be worth it. Instead, he showed that, even though he has done nothing for over a year except run, he knows little of how the Senate works. He also has no conception of what influence is - implying that Leiberman has more influence because there was some ranking (from who I don't know) that Homeland Security is a more important committee than Small Business. That is not a full metric given that each Senator is on many committees and may even be valued by committees they are not on - Boxer's environmental committee gave Kerry enormous praise when he testified before them on global warming. Notice that he, unlike Edwards, is not able to speak of specifics of what he "fought" or "negotiated" as a lawyer. No specific examples, makes the claim both exceedingly weak - asking you to take him at his word before he built up any credit and completely uninspiring. Is there NO case in 35 years where he did something he could impress people with?
It is also true that you do not have to be chair on a committee to be important - and importance is not measured by seniority. One example was shown when Senator Biden, with great humility, noted the importance of Kerry on getting his soft partition of Iraq amendment passed - an amendment that passed ONLY when he made changes Kerry had said were needed for about a year. (The changes were that the Iraqis defined the states and the relative role of state and nation.) Here are his words: "Senator Biden is much more aware of who is esteemed in the eyes of the Senate on foreign policy than O'Reilly is. Here is what Biden said on the floor of the Senate on September 25, 2007:
"But before the Senator from Massachusetts leaves the floor, I wish to say to him--and I hope it will not in any way cause him any difficulty--he and I have been close friends for over 30 years, and I want him to know, and I want my colleagues to know, that much of what this amendment we are hopefully going to vote on is about is what the Senator and I have talked about for the last 4 years and that he has led on, including the international piece.
As a matter of fact, he led on it from a different perspective, as a candidate, as well. So I wish to tell him how grateful I am for his joining in this amendment. Quite frankly, it is a big deal that he is, and it adds not only credibility to the amendment in terms of our colleagues, but it adds, quite frankly, an international credibility to it because an awful lot of people around the world look to my colleague for his insights into what we do about the most critical issue facing American foreign policy today."
As to Senator Kerry, in spite of the awful format with only short responses allowed, he did manage to explain many things he did for women, small business people, Massachusetts. EOR's comment that the tech funding bill started in the House is either precious or so uninformed he would fail the middle school class where kids learn that ALL funding bills start in the House - even if the program was first proposed in the Senate.
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