Ordinary Germans

People check in to see if I’m feeling okay whenever I go after Snowe and Collins. Why so harsh and angry? Have I gone off the deep end? I also get thoughtful written protests with reviews of their voting records included, proving that Maine’s senators are moderate enough. They get high marks for their 83% ratings from NARAL and for voting against their own party on renewable energy, ANWR drilling, tax cuts, and fuel efficiency standards while speaking out on – most recently – mercury pollution and the nuclear option. Writes one ex-Mainer,

By my measure, and using the voting tabulations and ratings from Public Citizen, a site that I find trustworthy and reasonably in sync with my progressive viewpoint, both Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe ARE moderates. That is not to say that they are at all liberal, but that they seem to function with an enough concern for their constituents to choose to vote for the benefit of all people, as opposed to the wealthy or corporate interests, nearly half of the time. When the voting records of the ladies from Maine are compared with those of a few registered Democrats in the Senate, Snowe and Collins have records that are definitely centrist.

All true. I've voted for Snowe and I respect her as a person and I respect her long and pretty honorable career. (Collins I see as more of a party hack, though she occasionally stands on her own.) Both have done a lot for the people of Maine.

But not this time around. Not this Congress, not this president. If they really cared about state and country more than about keeping their jobs, they could pull a Jim Jeffords and divorce themselves from a party that is no longer recognizable. They could be speaking out right now in direct language about corruption, abuse of power, torture, lies, thievery, theocracy, the shredding of the Constitution. In fact, we need them to do this. Democrats speaking these words is like howling in the wind, but they would be heard. They have it in their power to stop our national nightmare – not by mustering a bloc of opposition votes, an unrealistic proposition – but by not participating in it any longer. By speaking up.

These are not ordinary times, and in my opinion there are issues at stake more important than mercury and (God strike me dead for saying this) women’s reproductive rights.

And I agree with this commenter:

Mainstream liberals… don’t get it. They don't understand the depths of evil we are up against: within the Bush administration is a merciless crew that rigs elections, launders drug money, plants fake memos in the press, leaks CIA agent identities, pockets billions in war profiteering, and allows 3,000 people to be murdered in order to create a new Cold War. ..This is not an evil that one calls on the Democratic Party to real and eradicate. That's like calling an unarmed cafeteria security guard to catch the mafia.

If Snowe and Collins had voting records like Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa, I would still despise them for standing on the sidelines today. If they’re so sensible and moderate, what are they waiting for? Jesus Christ, are their jobs that important? How do they get up every morning and go to work? How do they sleep at night?

Remember all those good, ordinary Germans that did nothing in the face of radical evil. Well, that's Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins.

Besides, Maine is a blue state. Those are our seats. I'm tired of making nice to them. I want them out.