What are the Democrats waiting for? How does supporting a liar to retain her high office credentials help convince the country that the Democrats care about telling the truth?

A majority of Democrats voted to confirm Condoleezza Rice. If all the Democrats had voted not to confirm her, it would not have changed the outcome of the confirmation vote. However, by supporting her, the Democrats threw away a chance for a signal vote, a chance to tell the country that they care about telling the truth and that they deserve to send a member of their party to the White House in 2008.

I understand a few of the Democrats’ votes:

• Sen. Joseph “I never met a weapons contract I didn’t like” Lieberman (D-CT) has shown unwavering support for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Objecting to (now Secretary of State) Rice would have meant “flip-flopping” and possibly making friends with a few anti-Iraq-war people, or anyone who knew that the evidence used to support the war was bogus (this would be millions of people around the world and in the US, probably a lot in his home state of Connecticut).
• Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) is treating this Senate gig as a stepping stone to becoming President. And the Democratic Party fans don’t seem to care that he’s in favor of economic sanctions against Iran (again, I remind you, dear reader, that the economic sanctions against Iraq during Clinton’s administration killed an order of magnitude more children than civilians that have been killed in the Iraq war so far). Then, after the sanctions have killed Iranians, he would, however reluctantly, be willing to fire missiles against Iran. Sen. Obama will do whatever he can get away with, and so far that seems like a lot (right Oprah?). He was shamed by Sen. Dick Durbin, Illinois’ other senator (“In the end, I could not excuse Dr. Rice’s repeated misstatements.”).
• Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) who was critical of the lies from media organizations when the FCC media deregulation issue went before the Senate committee, somehow found the strength to give a pass to Rice for her lies.

I love the unintentional punch line from the AP in the above linked article (“In addition to mending fences among Democrats on Capitol Hill […]”).

It’s confirmation votes like these that make one wonder what the Democrats are really doing and whether they deserve to continue to be in office. An “opposition” party that doesn’t oppose much of anything can’t be that useful to the people. It reminds me of the hearings where Antonin Scalia was unanimously sent to the US Supreme Court. Back then, the Democrats knew much of what they know now: that they wanted to be seen as the pro-choice party and that Scalia was adamantly not pro-choice. Regardless of your thoughts on the issue of abortion, look at this from the perspective of how well the Democrats are supporting their own goals.