Has anybody heard anything from the Congressional Black Caucus on the Dem's plans to block Burris from being seated? Did I miss a thread on FR about it?
There are no blacks in the Senate. Therefore there can be no members of the Black Caucus in the Senate. Obama was the ONLY black in the Senate.
But it would not matter. The Black Caucus is an organization made of of House Members. They tend to vote as a group in votes before the HOUSE. However they have no vote on who does nor does not get a seat in the Senate. Only seated Senators get to vote on seating a new senator. There will be 98 white seated senators who get to vote.
If 40 Republicans vote to seat him they will only need 10 Democrat votes to override Reid. The question is will they Republicans vote to seat him. I would suggest the answer is NO. The longer this goes on in Illinois, it will be hard for Obama to get his agenda passed in the Senate.
Since everyone knows the Democrats are in control, it will be hard to blame Republicans and make most voters believe it.
Since 2006 the media coverage of the Senate and Republicans blocking Democrats, that a majority of voters actually believed that the Republicans had control of the senate. After this election they know that the Democrats are in charge.
It is in many respects like 1992. The Republicans did all they could to block the Clinton agenda ... including Hillary Care. When it went down in defeat the Democrat voters blamed Bill and Hillary and took it out on the Democrats in the House and Senate in the election of 1994.
Because of the Republican opposition of Clinton and his agenda they were predicting a 50 vote Democrat pick up in house seats in 1994. They were shocked to learn that Democrats lost 50 house seats in 1994.
It was real proof that when a party is totaly out of power as the Republicans were in 1992, that there are voter rewards for total opposition. Both parties are well aware of that situation.
Thus Obama is trying to use his initial popularity to get his economic agenda passed in the first 3 or 4 days the congress is in session. And they have refused to even let the Republicans see the bill until it comes up for vote.
It will be blocked and with out Democrat Senators from Minnisota and Illinois it is likely the Repubicans can make a filibuster stick. Thus Reid wants Franken.
The question is do they want to have the Republicans do to Obama what they did to clintion in 1993 and 1994 or do they want to let blago appoint a senator. So far they want to trash Blago.
Reid is stupid. He must not have read the Florida returns from 2006 When a party leads on taking out one of their corrupt or immoral senators, the voters assume most of that party is immoral. They vote them out of office.
The more Reid and Democrats trash Blagojevich for criminal behavior, the more likely voters are to elect a Republican governor and Senator at the first chance they get.
The more Democrats try to impeach or convict Blagojevich, the less chance they have of holding control of the Illinois government. They think it will cause voters to believe that Democrats are good guys becaue they are trying to clean up their own house. That is not the way voters look at it. Voters tend to put the other party in power.