I hope she just skips the vote so she won't stain her own record. In doing so she accomplishes not making Obama look bad but at the same time not staining her own record with a vote on a bill that will overwhelmingly pass without her vote.

Plus, there is no story that cannot be buried by another public unity love-fest event.

By: Jane Hamsher Monday January 28, 2008 9:25 am

Statement of Senator Clinton:

Today, I will vote against Republican efforts to shortchange the debate on the FISA Amendments Act, important legislation that would modernize our surveillance laws and give our nation's intelligence professionals the tools they need to fight terrorism and make our country more secure. Rather than allow the Senate the opportunity to consider important amendments to this vital legislation, Republicans are instead blocking meaningful debate on this bill by playing procedural games, choosing instead to score cheap political points at the expense of our Homeland Security.

Obama is or rather should be the de facto leader of the party at this point.  He's certainly taken actions like moving headquarters and consolidating fundraising consistent with leadership.  And there is no reason to think that he could not buck the congressional leaders of his own party and stake his own position.  He might lose on the issue but losing for the right cause is not a failure of leadership.

If Obama indicated his intention to lead on this issue and to use the power of the bully pulpit to strongly defend the Democratic position, and asked his colleagues to go along, I'd imagine some would and some would not.  But there's no way any of them would say, "Sorry, Barack, you're not even the official nominee yet.  Maybe after you sit down with Howard Dean and craft the party platform, I'll be more interested in doing as you ask."

The MCM Obama fluffers are protecting his flank on this, the death penalty, abortion, and some even for public finance rejection. It's all somehow been known that that was where he stood--the public just didn't notice it. Their bad.

And, in reality, there was reporting "out there" that indicated to many of us that he was not necessarily going to do what he was saying in the primary. But I recall how difficult it was to find that information. It took lots of googling, lots of reading, lots of going through comments to glean links and references which didn't come up readily on searches.

The MCM did not help to disseminate known information, leaving votes underinformed. Like my friend in HA who fell in love with Obama, voted for him in the primary, and now is feeling very uncomfortable about his choice since he learned about how he treated Alice Palmer. And sees similar things in his changes of position now he's the presumptive nominee. He consoles himself that Obama is more electable than Hillary....