Whatever clout the Clinton administration once had with congressional Democrats seems to have vanished. This was made abundantly clear during last week's Senate debate and near-unanimous vote to finally deploy a national defense against ballistic missiles. The Democratic posture had been that missile defenses are costly and unnecessary. Indeed, Joseph Biden recently told Newsday, "I don't think there is a real rogue-state threat." In fact, when senators Thad Cochran and Daniel Inouye tried to get a vote on their bill last year, they couldn't even get it scheduled because they lacked 60 votes.
The administration continued to oppose the Cochran-Inouye bill this year, and Tom Daschle, the Senate minority leader, obediently told his fellow Democrats a few weeks ago that the party position would once again be to keep the bill from even being debated on the Senate floor. But at a recent Democratic caucus meeting, the bottom dropped out. An array of senators, ranging from Bob Kerrey and Dianne Feinstein to freshmen Evan Bayh and Blanche Lincoln, said they weren't going to toe the administration's line any longer.
According to Senate sources, the Democrats' mutiny stemmed from a belief that carrying the administration's water was risky -- and that, in any case, it was likely the president would change course sometime next year in order to benefit Al Gore's presidential campaign. This produced an amusing spectacle on the Senate floor last week. First, Democrats proposed two meaningless amendments to the Cochran-Inouye bill related to funding and a pledge to seek continued reductions in Russia's nuclear forces. The goal? To provide an excuse for dropping their opposition to the bill. Yet some Democrats were so paralyzed with fear over having to vote on the bill -- it is strongly opposed by liberal arms-controllers -- that Biden offered to withdraw the amendments if Republicans would allow the bill to be approved by voice vote. Republicans refused. The, when Democratic senator Richard Durbin continued to speak out against the bill during floor debate, he was needled by fellow Democrat Charles Schumer as "Neville Durbin." In the end, Durbin was one of just three die-hard liberals to oppose a missile defense. Even Ted Kennedy voted for the bill. Congressional Republicans are suddenly more optimistic about the next two years.