More on Durbin

Kos is ticked that Durbin apologized. As are a number of other liberal bloggers.

Personally, I can see how Durbin decided to finally stop the hemorrhaging. He was getting help from the blogs, but it didn't seem to me like he was getting much help from his fellow Democrats - well, at least not as much help as the GOP would have given one of their own members being similarly attacked. The Chicago Trib savaged him (Durbin is from Illinois), and then Mayor Richie Daley totally sold him up the river (your dad would be proud, Rich - not).

While I think what Durbin said was spot on - we are condoning torture, and we are acting like animals, and it's not un-American to defend the principles our country was founded on - it wasn't clear to me what more Durbin could do. Their noise machine was better than ours.

Durbin needed a coordinated and massive and overwhelming response from the left in his defense - equal to, if not larger, than the onslaught the right was throwing at him (even the religious right groups started contact-congress campaigns against the guy) - but our guys don't play that way. Just look at the lynching story.
The blogs banded together and made it a story, embarrassing the hell out of the GOP, putting a wedge between them and the black community and their own racist base. But did you see any help on that story from the Hill or the mainstream civil rights groups? Uh, no.

I rest my case. With friends like that, Durbin didn't need enemies. What's a guy to do?

Markos linked to, by the way, a rather well-done explanation of the Durbin saga from a conservative blogger who actually gets it.