Senate Rejects Extending Jobless Benefits- Measure Fails By Kerry's Missed Vote

AP ^ | 5/11/04

[PattonReincarnated]

I guess it doesn't matter if Kerry is AWOL from the Senate this year, even to the DemoRATS. I wonder if anyone has thought about how Bush has been running a war and campaigning at the same time. Geez, Kerry can't even manage to make a simple vote. What a F'ing WUSS.

[tenthirteen]

You know, in that picture of Kerry testifying during the 1970's, he looks just like Shaggy from the Scooby-Doo cartoon.

Guess Hanoi Jane really did lead him around by the leash....

[Cicero]

I'm curious how Specter voted on this. Did he pay Bush back for his support? I doubt it. He never has before, and I don't expect he will if he is reelected.

I assume the 59 include the usual suspects--Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Lincoln Chaffee.

[Darlin']

hehehe. You can't make up a candidate as inept as this one.

[Puddleglum]

Har har! To quote Homer Simpson from the tomacco epsiode, "but what can I as one person do?"

[BossLady]

LOL!

New George Bush Ad:

Voice over: Kerry sure talks a lot about American's being unemployment yet, what is he doing to help the unemployed?

Cut to: Empty Senate chair while vote for the unemployment insurance falls short

[jackbill]

Hell, when I first heard of this, I figured that Kerry's vote would just mean a tie and Cheney could break the tie.

But now I find that it was a cloture vote and KERRY MISSED IT.

Let's see how Partisan Media plays this in the morning. You can bet that I'll be looking at the NYT, Washington Compost, LA Times, etc..

Karl Rove should be able to ride this one at least through the election.

[Lockbar]

"I was for unemployment extensions before I decided to not vote on it."

LOL LOL LOL Too funny!!!

[F.J. Mitchell]

LOL! Kerry has sh*t in his own nest this time. Extending jobless benefits on and on is exactly what keeps the need for jobless benefits in demand. Thanks to you Kerry, the unemployed stay at home and sit on their assites, will have to seek employement that is plentiful and the whole damn world will be able to see that, it ain't the economy stupid, it's just the liberals, making sitting on your ass more profitable than working.

Thank you Senator Heinz-Kerry.

[Mo1]

So much for the "he's cutting your benefits" argument!

If Kerry keeps this up, he's gonna have to have surgery on another body part soon

[LoudRepublicangirl]

What an idiot!

[F.J. Mitchell]

In other words, Hanoi John is nothing more than a titless Hanoi Jane.

[mabelkitty]

He isn't the nominee - he knows it and doesn't care any more.

If he wants to shoot his mouth off about Iraq and the "scandal", he should at least who up for the hearings.

Now this with the unemployment? He isn't the nominee and he's bitter - wants to take down the ship is my guess.

[onyx]

So much for the "he's cutting your benefits" argument!




Ha!
Bump that straight to the top!

[boxsmith13]

"That is delicious."

Better yet Kerry was busy campaigning in a state he's sure to lose by 15 points

[TomGuy]

Ironically, Kerry has been running an ad locally which says he cast the deciding vote on BClinton's job creation package around 1993.

Trouble is, from other reports, it was Bob KerrEy, not John Kerry, who held up the legislation until he got some perk and then cast the deciding vote.

Johnny must have gotten himself confused with Bobby.

[livius]

Yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck!!!

[dpwiener]

Realistically, this was probably a Republican trap for Kerry. I suspect that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist had one or two Republican Senators in his pocket who he could have pressured into switching their votes to prevent cloture if it had been necessary.

If Kerry had returned to Washington, D.C. to vote on the measure, some Republican would have switched and Kerry's vote wouldn't have mattered. But in that case Kerry would have wasted a day (at least) of campaigning and disrupted his schedule for what would have turned out to be a pointless vote.

Instead Kerry stayed on the campaign trail and the Republicans made him look bad for missing a "decisive" vote. Frist probably deliberately encouraged some Republican Senators to vote for cloture just so that the absent Kerry would be the difference. And it also helped those Senators in close re-election races if they could say they supported more unemployment benefits.

If my analysis is correct, the neat thing is that the Republicans can play this game over and over. The amendment to extend unemployment benefits can be attached to other measures, forcing Kerry to again have to choose between interrupting his campaign or being blamed for the loss. If he comes back for a vote, one Republican Senator who previously voted for cloture will switch on the grounds that the amendment isn't "germane", but then say that he'll consider voting for it as an amendment to a more pertinent measure. And thus the game can continue.

[Southack]

Shrum doesn't even know enough to count votes ahead of time in the Senate. Ouch. Poor Senator Kerry, he's got the worst political team in modern history.

Even freshmen Congressmen know to count who's voting for what before missing (or not) a vote or roll call.

Worse, apparently even political veterans and insiders like Senator Kennedy and Clinton aren't even calling to give him a heads up about the status of the Senate floor.

[Sacajaweau]

Kerry the dweeb drives me nuts. The best I can do today is:

Hey John, why the long face? and

Teeny Tommy is totally ticked.