Whatever happened to Jim Webb?

by Rich Miles

You know, of all the recently-elected liberal or progressive senators, the one who appeared to have the most solid liberal credentials and the most likely to raise some serious leftie hell in the Senate is Jim Webb of Virginia.

While he was a candidate, ol' Jim in essence told the good ol' boys to go fuck themselves, and made it clear that he was going to be his own man and big-biz interests could just screw off, thank you very much.

But since he's been elected? Not so much.

THe only times I've heard of ol' Jim, who does not represent my state, and therefore is not top of mind for me all the time, have been when he's voted for something extremely RIGHT-wing. Like yesterday.

Ol' Jim got not one but TWO chances to be a traitor to his progressive roots yesterday, and by golly, don't you know he took BOTH of them?

First, the vote was taken for the Jobs bill, already passed in the House, and on the spurious grounds of "deficit reduction", the Senate voted it down, including our trusty Mr. Webb. The final tally was 52-45, with every single slimebag anti-American family repug joined by about a dozen supposedly liberal Democrats, including our boy Jimbo.

Then, so as to make it a full day of work, they voted on an amendment introduced by one of the few remaining REAL progressives, independent Bernie Sanders. Here's what ol' Bernie's pretty straightforward amendment allowed: to "eliminate big oil and gas company tax loopholes, and to use the resulting increase in revenues to reduce the deficit and to invest in energy efficiency and conservation." See? Deficit reduction, just like the rationale for not passing the unemployment bill.

But deficit reduction only matters when it can come out of the pockets of ordinary Americans, not corporate "people".

Remember this, America!!! Remember how we were betrayed even by some of those who we had every reason to expect to be our champions, like Jim Webb.

In the interest of accuracy, the two bills mentioned above were NOT literally voted on on the same day. It was within TWO days, not that that really makes any difference to the traitorous thesis of this article.

But see, as so many have been saying for so long, Democrats don't need the repugs to defeat them, when they do such a good job on themselves. If Democrats can't be counted on to be at least somewhere left of the middle of almost every issue, then where is our beloved two-party system left?

In closing, let me mention that John Kerry voted against the Big Oil amendment, and Russ Feingold voted against the Jobs Bill.

Where o where are our liberal champions? If there are any anymore.

I'm getting old, and I'm not sure I can figger this stuff out any more. Are people really this conservative across the board? Do Americans really want their elected reps to vote this way?

Or are our elected reps not even taking our wishes into consideration before they vote, just like always?

Storm the Bastille. I'm tellin' ya, that's what it's eventually gonna come to.

And I'm not even going to MENTION What's-his-name Barton's apology to BP. That one made me a little ashamed to be an American.