Kerry asked to resign

[Tmy]

"Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey, a Republican, said Kerry has missed nearly 87 percent of the Senate’s roll call votes this year and 64 percent of the votes last year while campaigning for president"



HAHAHHAHAH! This is rich!!! Did you notice this was said by the LT GOV.? Why not Govenor Mitt Romeny you ask??? Cause that stuffed shirt is as big an absentee Govenor as Kerry is a Senator. The guy is never in the state.!! He dodges the press and the other govt officials. Partison hypocracy.

 

[Nova Land]

It seems unlikely to me that the minority Democrats could have forced any such controversial issues to the fore in the Senate, nor would the Republicans have done so under Dole's leadership

Unlikely, perhaps, but that's what makes politics such a great sport!

I need to get off-line and get some work done, so don't have time to look up much right now (and, really, I'll probably need to visit a library to find what I think I recall, since the most likely source would be newspaper analysis and op-ed pieces from May 1996) but here's something that was available on-line. This is a CNN news story from April 19, 1996 -- a month before Dole resigned. Initially, Dole had not planned to resign. The events in this story are some of what led up to his changing his mind.

Daschle Outmaneuvers Dole On Senate Floor

Bob Dole intends to stay on as Senate majority leader. Bob Dole thinks he can use that position to showcase his leadership. Bob Dole got a big surprise this week. Bob Dole got sandbagged by the Democrats.

Dole was trying to showcase his leadership on immigration reform. That's a big issue in Florida. And in California. But the minority Democrats had an agenda of their own. They were upset because Dole wouldn't allow the Senate to vote on raising the minimum wage.

Sen. Ted Kennedy declared: "What's wrong with Bob Dole? You supported the increase in the minimum wage before. What's wrong with addressing that issue? What's wrong with letting the Senate and Congress address that issue?"

So the Democrats said, we'll just attach an amendment to any bill that comes along to force a vote on the minimum wage. So Dole got mad. He yanked the immigration bill from the floor.

"We are not going to debate the immigration bill," he said. "It is being held hostage now because of the demands on the other side. If we do not want to do anything about illegal immigration, I guess the Democrats can make that happen."

But Tom Daschle, the Senate Democratic leader, gave as good as he got. "So do not let anybody be misled," he said. "We are not holding this bill hostage. We did not pull it down. We did not ask that there be no opportunity to vote."

And get this. Daschle says to the majority leader, who began his Senate career before Daschle even finished college: "Welcome to the U.S. Senate. Welcome to the U.S. Senate."

...

By the end of the week, even House Republicans had broken ranks on the minimum wage. And Democrats were gleeful.

...

Suddenly, Dole's strategy of running for President from the Senate doesn't look quite as smart. He'll have to contend with an energetic and forceful Democratic minority at every turn.

 

[Nova Land]

Another difficulty ... is that there are many votes that one may not want to have to cast while campaigning for president. Candidates for national office like to be able to straddle the fence on controversial issues such as abortion. That's hard if a red-meat issue comes up for a vote, and if the Senate is in the control of the opposing party ... it's easy for those kind of issues to be scheduled to come up frequently.

And this just in! (Someone else has probably already started a thread about this.)

Senate Republicans Set Showdown on Gay Marriage, by Thomas Ferraro

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Republicans announced on Friday they will seek a vote to ban same-sex marriage next month, forcing Democrats to stake out positions just weeks before their presidential nominating convention. While many Republicans admit they lack the votes to pass the proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Democrats charge they are pushing the ban largely to rally the Republicans' conservative base and divide voters.

"We don't consider this as a divisive issue," Sen. Wayne Allard, a Colorado Republican, said in rejecting such criticism at a Capitol Hill news conference.

 

[Nova Land]

Joe Lieberman ran for senate re-election at the same time he was running for VP with Gore.

I once had respect for the guy, but not after that move.

Probably thought to himself, "This Gore guy seems to be a little off kilter and will probably find a way to blow it. Think I'll run at the same time for my nice safe senate seat. The voters in this state are clueless and won't even notice the disrespect I'm showing them.
...

Have to do what's best for your constituency. Right?

In 1960 Lyndon Johnson also ran for vice president and ran for re-election to the senate at the same time. He probably thought much the same as you speculate Lieberman thought: that there was a fair chance his ticket would not win the White House, and therefore it would be foolish to let go of the senate seat.

The difference between Lieberman and Johnson is that Johnson won both elections. In retrospect, then, the case can be made that what Johnson did was selfish, and inconsiderate to his constituents, putting his own interests ahead of theirs.

Lieberman, in contrast, won re-election to the senate but did not win the vice presidency. He was criticized during the election campaign for not standing aside on his senate run so that some other Democrat could have a shot at it, but in retrospect it turned out that the decision he made actually served the interests of his supporters better than if he had bowed out of the senate race.

Because he stayed in the race, his senate seat continued to be held by a Democrat (and a Democrat with considerable influence and seniority). So, arguably, he made the right choice and was actually showing respect for the voters who had put him in office.

(Of course, by refusing to give up the senate race, he displayed an apparent lack of confidence in the Gore-Lieberman ticket which may have led some voters to lack confidence in it as well, and thus may have contributed in some small way to the defeat. So one could argue he showed a lack of respect for Gore by continuing his senate run even after being picked for the VP slot. But the case that he was disrespecting the voters is a little shakier, until we perfect our mind-reading techniques and are able to read exactly what thinking went into his decision.)