Not only that but Obama, the one that they were depending on to kill the bill, was one of the five not voting.
Previously, Crooks and Liars as well as DailyKos and others put out the call for progressives everywhere to appeal to Obama (this was before the house approved the FISA compromise bill but after they announced they had come to an agreement):
Don’t take this lying down. McJoan has some ideas of what you can do, including asking our new putative head of the Democratic Party, Presidential Nominee Barack Obama, to kill this before it comes to a vote:
Call Barack Obama and urge him to make a public statement reiterating his opposition to telco amnesty. His opposition could kill this deal: Phone (202) 224-2854, Fax (202) 228-4260
Call Steny Hoyer and tell him this is a bad deal: Phone (202) 225-4131, Fax (202) 225-4300
Call Nancy Pelosi and urge her to pull the bill from the House schedule: Phone (202) 225-4965, Fax (202) 225-8259
Call your representative and tell them to vote no on the FISA rewrite tomorrow.
That worked well and those representatives listened to the progressives well...NOT.
Hence the House then went on to approve the bill, telecom immunity intact, with a vote of 293 to 129.
Then Obama made a speech which really annoyed the progressives, which started more calls, emails, faxes and pleas from the liberal blogosphere to force the Senate to not approve the FISA compromise.
That is where we started today, and now we see that the first vote, for cloture, which means that the Senate will now consider the motion to proceed with the bill before getting to the actual bill itself, passed with 80 for, 15 against and 5 not voting. In the meantime, there will be a show of, theater if you will, to strip immunity, and when they do not have the 60 votes needed to strip the immunity, then they will pass this bill.
As one far left liberal says....this was the true vote. He is right, the rest is all show for the progressive supporters and won't mean a thing.
The FISA Cloture vote just passed. The Senate will now consider the motion to proceed with the bill, then they'll head to the bill itself (corrected procedural details, h/t and thanks to CBolt). Various motions will be put forward to strip immunity, odds are they will fail. Then a number of the 80 who voted to restrict debate will vote against FISA so they can say they were against the bill. However this was the real vote, and the rest is almost certainly nothing but kabuki for the rubes.
I will give that writer credit for understanding that they will be played.
To top matters off, even after all the howling after Obama's last statement on the FISA issue, after the communications, after MoveOn tried to push Obama around, HEH, seems Obama just pushed back, which has no one on the left very happy right now.
TPM provides the video, YouTube URL here. (video below)
Relevant text that seems to be angering the far left:
"The bill has changed. So I don't think the security threats have changed, I think the security threats are similar. My view on FISA has always been that the issue of the phone companies per se is not one that overrides the security interests of the American people."
That little pushback has people still howling ( you would have thought they would have lost their voices by now from screaming).
DailyKos:
In a reversal of previous policy statements, from October, 2007 and January, 2008, and again in February, 2008, Barack Obama now says telco amnesty just isn't that important.
Talk Left:
Can you say "willing to say or do anything to win?" Or if you prefer, the "new" politics.
That is representative of the temper tantrums being show, but you can continue to see reaction after reaction, over at memeorandum.
I will repeat what I said after the compromise bill was announced and before the House approved it and sent it back to the Senate:
After all, what are they going to do to him if he [Obama] doesn't bow to their demands .... vote for John McCain?
Not a chance on that, so basically, they can plead with him, they can beg, they can threaten, but Obama knows as well as they do, no matter what he does or doesn't do...they will go pull that lever for Barack Obama in November, like the good little children they are.
Everyone knew how this was going to turn out. They knew, so all their whining and temper tantrums now are the same type of "show" that the Senate is putting on for them.
.
