A lot of folks are bashing Daschle over his defection on the energy bill. I'm not happy about it, but as Chris Rock would say, I understand-- you can't vote against large ethanol subsidies and survive in South Dakota.
But folks are really being ungrateful for the work Daschle has done as Dem leader in the Senate. With the exception of Zell Miller, he's held together most of the caucus on continual party line votes, filibusters and other legislative fights. Given the payoffs being offered by Bush, that was very hard in many cases.
But when Dems had control of the chamber from mid-2001 until the end of 2002, Bush was able to pass no major bills, other than the Patriot Act during the initial post-911 hysteria. Just to list off a few of the bills that Daschle helped bottle in various committees when he was Majority Leader:
- Blocked the Energy Bill itself
- Blocked the Bankruptcy bill
- Blocked the 2002 Corporate Tax Cut Bill (forgotten by a lot of people, but it would have been a massive giveaway direct to corporations)
- Blocked almost all judicial nominees
- Blocked the Homeland Security bill due to anti-union provisions (until after loss of Senate)
Given the supposed popular strength of Bush during 2002 and loss of the Senate in 2003, Daschle has done a pretty good job with a pretty weak hand. Maybe someone else could do a better job -- okay a lot of people could be better public spokespeople -- but as far as keeping the 41 votes in line to maintain filibusters, he's done a pretty damn good job.
It's partly the filibuster-ready discripline he's helped create in the Senate Dems that meant that even with his own defection, there was the automatic readiness of Dems to filibuster the current energy bill.
Folks have been lining up to burn heretics at the stake way too easily recently. Yes, punishing defections is occasionally necessary to maintain power, but so is some tolerance for allies' different parochial agendas in being tolerant of the occasional defection.