There was a lot of discussion on the post JK put up at dailykos yesterday.

Kos pulled out a quote he liked that’s worth repeating:

I’m not going to ask for patience, because the truth is big policy changes like this are only achieved by impatient people – in huge numbers.

JK made some additional points in responding to some of the comments and in his updates to the post that are worth higlighting as well. The first update was a response to a question by Granny Doc.

update: I’ve tried to answer a few of the recurring questions below, but one of the biggest sources of frustration I see is a feeling that you don’t see the process how I describe it. As Granny Doc said:

Will you PLEASE take the time to explain this line in your diary, Senator?

this supplemental was only the first avenue to begin to put pressure on the GOP

How? When? Exactly what pressure is being exerted by giving the Administration and the GOP exactly what they wanted?

I think I speak for many when I say, we really do not see what the hell is going on. If there is a Grand Strategy, please give us a clue

I want to reprint what I said up here for everyone to see:

Well, first of all, let’s be clear – I wanted this bill defeated. I’m not sugarcoating that, if I tried you’d call me on it, deservedly so. My “no” vote speaks for itself.

As for where we go from here, it’s not really a secret plan. We force votes on Iraq again and again and again. We pressure them every chance we can get. And I think these Republicans who stand with George Bush’s rotten policy will squirm. That’s why I launched the Roadblock Republicans campaign that a ton of you made a success. Look, the pundits and the horserace crowd can spin this vote as good for the GOP, then again when Russ and I got 11 votes for a deadline a year ago they thought we were handing the GOP a “wedge” issue in 2006 – and look how that turned out, it helped give us a Democratic Senate elected on changing course in Iraq. I think the Republicans are scared as hell because they can’t defend this policy. So we need to move forward with bills that are different from a supplemental, where the political calculus is different for some Senators. For example, we could continue to educate people on the awful record of the GOP on actually supporting our troops (groups like VoteVets are doing wonderful work there), then make sure to include troop readiness language in bills. And we use the pressure of one bill to set up the stage for the other, such as using the supplemental to get so many Republicans to go on record saying September was a deadline for success for them. They can’t wiggle out from this mess come then.

Political pressure can come in a variety of forms, of course. And it takes time to build it up around one specific course of action, even on an issue with such wide support as a new course in Iraq. We come out of this supplemental fight with a lot of suburban GOP districts swinging our way. We have a number of groups organizing in key Senate states, such as the AAEI’s campaign with USAction, that have been running ads and building field operations. All of this is slowly taking its toll— if we continue to build it, they will crack. As an old friend of mine used to say, nothing focuses the mind of a politician like the prospect of defeat at the polls.

I hope that helps explain what I mean when I say we need to “keep fighting.” I have to go for a while, but I have another time scheduled to come back. Although I have to say—over 400 comments already is a little overwhelming.

In the second update JK offered encouragement.

update2: Not much time right now, but one thing I want to emphasize is, I’m not blowin smoke at you about the progress we’ve made over months and months of fighting. Don’t just take my word for it - yes, I oppose this supplemental and I’m voting against it - but don’t discount how much we’ve shifted the dynamic already, it underscores why we can’t stop. Here’s what my original partner on this issue – Russ Feingold – just said on the Senate floor:

It’s been almost one year since 13 Senators supported a proposal I offered with Senator Kerry that would have brought our troops out of Iraq by this summer. Now, 29 Senators support an even stronger measure, enforced by Congress’s power of the purse, to safely redeploy our troops.

So let me just underscore - what if we’d thrown in the towel last June? Where would we be now? This is William Wallace time - time to dig in. —JK

Here are some of the other questions and JK’s responses:

Please help me understand why the Democrats lost this round, so to speak.

Why is there a bill coming up that you will vote no on? Why isn’t there a bill coming up that you could vote yes on?

Why didn’t the Democrats hold firm on their version of the supplemental? What pressure could a very unpopular president sitting on top a very unpopular war exert on them?

It seems to me that the Democrats had everything on their side and still couldn’t pull this off.

Why?

by johnny71 on Thu May 24, 2007 at 12:04:21 PM EDT

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That’s an excellent question, of course.

Look, I feel as confident in my no vote as I am about anything I’ve done here – this broken policy won’t be changed with a blank check. But, and this is the key point, legislation is a blunt instrument. And when you use blunt instruments, you need to have overwhelming political support to pull it off. The work all of you did to build our majority for a deadline has been amazing. It’s that work that makes me confident that we can keep going and building. But we’re not quite at the place we need to be yet, obviously - but that’s not a reason to quit.

by John Kerry on Thu May 24, 2007 at 01:35:01 PM EDT

Thank you, Senator.

Can you filibuster? Is that an option?

by kyril on Thu May 24, 2007 at 12:03:00 PM EDT

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• Not really an option

There’s no fancy way to say “no” and I’m not going to try. There’s just not enough support to make a filibuster work. You know I’ll filibuster against steep odds – think about what we did on Alito. But a filibuster would be over in about a minute on this bill – we wouldn’t have a fifth of the votes needed for it. This isn’t a one shot deal. We get more bites at this apple. We need to shift our focus. There was very little chance that this was ever going to be the end of it, and we have many avenues available to us to continue the fight. We need to change the political dynamics before we win this, and parliamentary maneuvering can’t do that right now. If it would, I’d be doing that.

by John Kerry on Thu May 24, 2007 at 01:40:41 PM EDT

Thank you

The only reason that people get so upset, is that troops and innocents are dying in the time it takes to get things done. That fact just never goes away.

It’s always in the back of our heads, always. If you are like me and know people who lost their lives in Iraq, and I have no doubt you do sir, then you know that the pain never goes away – and the delays in ending the war just create more dead bodies and more people with a hole in their heart, where their friends’ life used to be.

Cheers, keep fighting!

by cycloptichorn on Thu May 24, 2007 at 12:19:38 PM EDT

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Never forget

Never out of my thoughts, and never will be. It hurts like hell to go to some of the funerals I’ve been to, more and more as this war goes on. Those faces at Walter Reed never leave your thoughts either. You bet this is personal. I’ve seen what happens in war; I know what it’s like, I’ve seen my friends wear it for the rest of their lives, and I have friends I loved who never got to grow old the way I did.. It’s exactly for that reason that I fight for this.

by John Kerry on Thu May 24, 2007 at 05:12:06 PM EDT

This is how cynical I’ve become.

I’ll probably get flamed into dkos oblivion, but right now everyone is suspect to me. Is Senator Kerry, who has been a friend and fighter here, now charged with calming that progressive blog down? He’s gained our confidence, but when you’re selling out the base, who better to distract them? Maybe Feingold or Wes Clark, but..

As you can tell Mr. Kerry, I AM BEYOND DISAPPOINTED AND DISILLUSIONED. I feel used, ignored, manipulated, abused and taken for granted. It’s one thing if I were that single voice in the wilderness. But there are a fucking 210 million of us.

If you are sincere, god speed and god bless you. If not, go away and let me mourn!

by madgranny on Thu May 24, 2007 at 03:32:36 PM EDT

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Cynicism

I think this Administration is counting on us to get cynical, disillusioned, and just quit on the whole enterprise. That’s how they win. These are really good reasons to be fed up—fed up with Washington games, turned off by a political process that moves too slowly while good people die. But none of those are reasons to pack it in, they’re reasons to become more activist, to redouble our efforts. I understand your feelings, as well. This is a bitter struggle, I’ve been there before and this feels like déjà vu remembering Vietnam and a President who wouldn’t budge back then too. But one thing I’ll tell you is, I don’t come here to do anyone else’s bidding or speak out of anything other than my own conviction. I actually think it’s a strength and not a weakness of our Senate leadership and our caucus that no one in the leadership even knew I’d post a diary here; that’s not the way we operate, that’s the way the other side operates. They’re the ones who demand Stepford-like message “discipline” – hence the reality of Roadblock Republicans who know this policy is a bust but cling to it with a stubbornness that reflects their leadership. I’ve been here before calling for action, I’ll come here to celebrate when we win, and I thought I owed it to you to come here now when the bill didn’t go the way I wanted. If I came here to call for support for the bill, you might have a point, but I didn’t.

Although I will tell you something else, a completely personal aside that you can take as you will, Harry Reid and I haven’t always walked lockstep in the tactics of how to change the Iraq debate, but the depth of his feeling that this Iraq policy is tragically wrong is something as sincere and genuine as it comes. Look at Harry Reid’s face, he wears the anguish of this war for everyone to see, and he cares as deeply as anyone about forcing a change of course. He has more quiet determination than anyone about seeing this through.

by John Kerry on Thu May 24, 2007 at 05:18:20 PM EDT

GlobalVillage caught JK speaking on the Senate floor about the Iraq Supplemental Spending bill and posted it in 2 parts on youtube which you can check out here and here.

Here’s some of my favorite quotes from JK’s speech:

History has proven that it was a mistake to give this president the power to go to Iraq. And I believe that history will prove that it was a mistake to give him the open-ended power that this supplemental bill leaves in his hands.

This war is not what this president says it is. And I believe that we have an obligation not to vote for continuation of a policy that empowers the president to simply continue the war at his discretion.

[…]

This bill does not provide a strategy worth of our soldiers’ sacrifice. Instead it permits more of the same. A strategy that relies on sending American troops into the allies and back roads of Iraq to referee a deadly civil war. … [W]e had an opportunity here to elicit a legitimate fundamental change and some commitments from this administration with respect to the way in which we would hold the Iraqis accountable and the way in which this administration itself would be held accountable. … [T] hat is what the American people voted for in November of 2006. That is what they have a right to expect from this Congress.

[…]

And I am convinced, because the last years have proven it, the president is wrong to keep suggesting that we’ll stand down when they stand up. I believe—they will not stand up until we stand down. That is the reality.

[…]

Now let me say very, very clearly because I’ve been there before in this argument. I know what happens when you vote here in a way that people can easily try to pick up and construe as a vote other than what it really is.

There is good in this supplemental. Yes, we need money for readiness for troops and every single one of us wants our troops to be as ready as they can be. Yes, it is good that there is money for care for veterans. And our veterans deserve the best care in the world. In fact, the money available in this bill is a far cry from the real needs of our veterans with respect to mental health, outreach centers, veterans centers, the VA, the care at the hospitals. That could be a great deal stronger. But we’re for that, Mr. President. We’re also for the money for Katrina so let me make it clear to anybody who wants to try to distort this vote. I am in favor of the money for readiness. I am in favor of giving our troops all the care that they need and deserve. I am in favor of money for support for Katrina.

But the fundamental gravamen of this bill – the heart of this bill – is the strategy with respect to the war in Iraq. The heart of this bill are the consequences that we invite as a result of our votes.

I think in the last week or two, I’ve been to 3 funerals, Mr. President. One funeral, the son of a man who has opposed the war, a military man, a West Pointer himself, a man who gave us his career. But he’s opposed to this war. And he dared to use the word to me in a conversation on the very day his son was being buried about how it was important for us to redouble our efforts here in the Senate, to bring this to a close. How it was important for us not to allow these young men and women to have their lives wasted; a word that if any politician used, we’d be pilloried for. The father of a man who was being buried used that word on the very day his son was being buried.

Another funeral I attended where the father was overcome with emotion speaking from the pulpit, left the pulpit, came down, stood beside his son’s coffin and said, “I have to talk beside my son.” Put his hand on the coffin and talked to us about his son’s pride and his son’s patriotism and his son’s love of his fellow soldiers, his son and his commitment to what he was doing personally. … [W] e have a responsibility with respect to those young men and women, with respect to those families. And I believe that responsibility is not met when you give the president the very same power to continue on a daily basis what he has been doing for these last years.

[…]

There is not in this supplemental, one benchmark that can be enforced, not one. … How do you say to an American family that their son or daughter ought to give up their life so Iraqi politicians can spin around and play a game between each other at our expense. It’s unconscionable. It’s bad strategy. It’s bad policy. It defies common sense. That’s what this vote is about.

[…]

And I have no fear about casting this vote against this, Mr. President. Because this is the wrong policy for Iraq. This continues the open-ended lack of accountability. This allows the president to certify whatever the president wants, to waive whatever the president wants. And I promise to my colleagues, we will be back here in September having the same debate with the same benchmark questions and they will not have moved in their accountability.

[…]

It’s time for us to get the policy right. That’s how you support the troops.

Or as he said, earlier, “This is William Wallace time… Time to dig in.”