Present and Accounted For

At this point in a campaign cynicism sets in for me and I pretty much take the charges flying around as ‘the game’. But Eric Zorn offers a powerful counterpoint to the claims that Obama has avoided votes on abortion.

“To provide cover for other Democrats who were shaky on the issue in an effort to convince them not to vote `yes,'” Sutherland said. “The idea is to recruit a group to vote `present’ that includes legislators who are clearly right with the issue.”

Sutherland said this tactic makes the “present” vote look less like a hedge or a cop-out and more like a constitutional concern or other high-minded qualm.

She pointed to the Parental Notice of Abortion Act of 2001, a bill requiring that an adult family member be notified 48 hours in advance when a minor seeks an abortion.

The complaint seems to me to be the equivalent of complaining about fake committees created to kill bills. Being more familiar with the House, bills problematic for certain blocks of Members are sent to an ad hoc committee by Rules. The ad hoc committee never meets, the bill dies. If one was to complain that the chair never even chaired the meeting, you would laugh them out of the room because Da Speaker told them not to meet–well actually Steve Brown told them not to meet, but you know.

UPDATE: I just read the Hotline and I did not take the Title from them. Really! In fact, I think I had this up first.

3 thoughts on “Present and Accounted For”
  1. As an Obama supporter (had him in law school, hosted a fundraiser for him last week with Studs Terkel), I had my concerns about these votes. They were basically allayed by the Planned Parenthood endorsement, but it’s very nice to see, finally, exactly why these “present” votes are not a cop-out.

    That said, with turnout expected low, I wonder if these new poll leads for Obama really mean much.

  2. I’m sorry, but these explanations are not persuasive. Eight votes and he could not assert leadership? This is consistent with Obama skipping lots of US Senate votes, too, where he is now the most “not present” voter.

  3. ===I’m sorry, but these explanations are not persuasive. Eight votes and he could not assert leadership?

    Assert leadership? This makes no sense–and as I pointed out in more recent posts, he killed these bills singlehandedly when he became a committee chair after Democrats took back the Senate.

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