A Different Disconnect

A fascinating day in the big blogosphere. The Senate voted cloture this afternoon by 72-25, though Democrats might have gotten more votes against it if it had looked closer. Apparently fillibustering a Supreme Court nominee would set a precedent that some Senators didn't want to have to deal with when (or if) the tables are turned.

But the southpaw blogs were immediately filled with anger and despair. I hung around Booman Tribune for a bit, since what gets posted on dkos by the many hundreds gets posted there by the tens. But even as I was interupting the moaning and the I'm changing my registration to Independent/Green/no body, I'm leaving the country, etc. with metaphors of being battle-tested, of letting the enemy win by discouraging the movement they actually fear, at dkos the more mature voices like Meteor Blades and Kos Himself were making these points with more authority and more grace.

They were also pointing out, as did The News Blog, that this issue was front and center nowhere else but the blogosphere---and what Americans watching TV in particular were paying attention to was very damaging to Bushcorpse: the injury from hostile explosives of an ABC anchor, and the video of a kidnapped American woman reporter in tears, pleading for her life. "So while we're kicking around the Dems for not filibustering, America was seeing the Iraq war with a human face"--that is, with an American face they know (at least somewhat---Bob Woodruff has been an anchor for only a couple of weeks) and the kind of American face that people seem to identify with--the pretty white murdered mother, the pretty white kidnapped child, and now the pretty white young woman kidnapped by insurgents, who happens to be as fine a representative of America as anyone could be.

Earlier in the war this might have helped Bush. But the public has turned against the American presence there long since, and this is unlikely to move Bushiotism ahead of anger and disgust at Bushites who don't get it.

What's Bush going to say about this tomorrow? He can't avoid the subject, but bringing it up in whatever context just reminds people of Iraq. And repeating his sententious stay the course is further evidence of his disconnect from the sentiment of the voters.