Updated: Latest from the horse's mouth.

Posted by Joshua Holland at 10:35 AM on January 30, 2006.

Just finished a conference call with Senator kennedy and a half-dozen writers from the leftisphere.

First, the news. At 3:30 the "Gang of 14" will meet and the whole thing will rest on whether they consider the Alito nomination to be an "extraordinary circumstance." If they don't, the seven Dems have made a gentleman's agreement that they'll vote for cloture and the final vote on the nomination will go ahead as planned tomorrow. Kennedy expects that 40-42 Dems and 2 or 3 Republicans will vote against; C-Span's tally is 56-37 on the final vote, with a few undecideds.

I pushed the Senator to give us a sense of who we should be focusing on right now, in the final hour. Here's who's on the bubble:

Cantwell
Murray
Akaka
Inoue
Kohl

Also uncommitted (and in need of attention) are:

Levin
Stabenow
Menendez (who I heard had signed on)
Lautenberg

Contact info at Democrats.com.

UPDATE: Some analysis below the fold ...

The call was a bit frustrating. There seems to be a disconnect among some Dems that Kennedy, who clearly didn't want to bash his caucus, tried to run around. Almost all agree that Alito's a bad judge, but they're split on tactics. As I've written before, the progressive and Dem establishment has fallen down when it comes to a broad, public education campaign to explain to the public why Alito is so frightening.

Kennedy pointed out today's New York Times piece about how Alito's nomination is the culmination of a long campaign by the right, and noted that the White House had retained Creative Response Concepts, the people who brought "Swiftboating" into the American lexicon, to flack for Alito. But when pressed for an answer about why Democrats and progressives hadn't tried to counter the PR campaign, he said that there was disagreement about strategy; some argued that getting the Dems united in opposition to Alito was the best tactic. That faction, I fear, needs remedial math - there are still 44 Dems and one Dem-leaning independent and that don't make 51, even with, theoretically, Specter, Snowe, Collins and Chaffee.

Kennedy focused on the fact that this nomination was only reported out of committee last week, but the truth is that's beside the point. Alito's record was well known, and the nomination process as it stands today is more about show-boating than getting to the heart of what makes a nominee tick. Saying that they are being rushed from the Committee report to the vote is true, but a broad public relations campaign should have been launched months ago.

Kennedy talked about how it used to be: Senators would get a nomination, they'd expect answers and they'd have time for meaningful debate. I think too many Dems are living in a long-gone past, when comity still existed. They're facing an adversary that's all about scorched-earth politics and it's high time they figure that out.

I look forward to seeing what Americans United -- the new group that grew out of the social security campaign and is trying to become our version of Freedomworks -- does in the future. We can no longer leave it up to these guys to prepare the ground for these battles.

What does make sense is how Senators perceive this issue in a larger political context. I'm not being an apologist, obviously, but it was interesting to hear it from a liberal Dem: "A Supreme Court justice will affect people's lives," he said, "but down the road. In six months. There are issues that are far more immediate in people's minds. When I went back to Massachusetts I heard what all the Senators are hearing: people are outraged by the prescription drug benefit. I have unbelievable numbers of letters and calls that are heart-wrenching. They're outraged about Iraq, about body armor. They're worried about home heating oil." These judicial fights are difficult to explain. But that's the reason we need broad public education campaigns to accompany the next one.

And the next ones are just as bad. Kennedy said that some members of the caucus wanted to save the filibuster for William Haynes and Brett Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh, you'll remember, is a fierce Republican partisan who c-authored the Starr report. Haynes may be the worst of the whole lot: the Defense Department Council played a pivotal role in crafting the administration's "torture-lite" non-torture policy.

Anyway, in fifteen minutes we will have done all we can. Let's see how it plays out.

Joshua Holland is a staff writer at Alternet and a regular contributor to The Gadflyer.