NPR: Democratic Senators Reeled Back to Senate

Democratic Senators Reeled Back to Senate

The quartet of Democratic senators out furiously stumping to be president may have to revise campaign plans for Friday and Saturday.

The reason boils down to both "duty calls" and showing how much they DO care about meat and potatoes Iowa issues. See, back at their paycheck-producing gig in the U.S. Senate there are Republicans filibustering two bills that have Iowa written all over them.

Senate Democrats will try for a second time on Friday to break a filibuster of the $280 billion farm bill, and they'll try on Saturday to do the same with a huge energy bill loaded with mandates for boosting corn-based ethanol production. Majority leader Harry Reid needs sixty votes to break those filibusters, and he has only 51 senators in his Democratic caucus.

So for the first time since Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Chris Dodd began chasing their presidential dreams, Reid is reeling them back to the Senate chamber to vote. He's actually only telling them to be there on Saturday morning for the energy bill vote — but as one of his advisers put it, if they're not smart enough to be on hand Friday for the farm bill vote, they have no business seeking higher office in the state of Iowa.

But don't worry — all the voting should be over by the time Obama's due to hook up with his pal Oprah Winfrey for two events in Iowa on Saturday. And in case anyone missed the fact that Chris Dodd is bowing out of four events scheduled in Iowa to vote Friday on the farm bill, his campaign has thoughtfully sent out e-mails with the not-so-subtle message "DODD CHANGES SCHEDULE TO SUPPORT FARM BILL TOMORROW IN SENATE".

Just don't expect a similar posting from the McCain campaign, whose candidate looks at both bills and sees pork...while Democrats see bacon.

- David Welna

2:57 PM ET | 12- 6-2007 | permalink

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