And yet the Dems are planning their first weeks in office post-November, as if all they need to do is to watch the GOP sink further in the polls and then waltz into control of the House and/or Senate.
PERMANENT CAMPAIGN, PERMANENT WAR
Why am I so snarky here about the Dems? Because there is a too-long history of Democrats tending to gear up once every two and four years for an election campaign, refusing to face the fact that the Republicans are in campaign mode every minute of every day, with the goal of decimating and destroying their political opposition. It's the permanent campaign which, not coincidentally, ties in to their permanent war ("the war on terrorism," a war against a tactic) that serves as the underpinning for their domestic and foreign agenda.
The end result has been an increasing slide into a homegrown kind of American fascism: a desire by the HardRightists for one-party rule; Bush's fondness for dictatorial governance; his 750 "signing statements," where he asserts that he can override laws passed by Congress whenever he so chooses (see Charlie Savage's mostly-ignored Boston Globe story, "Bush Challenges Hundreds of Laws: President Cites Powers of His Office"; ( http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/04/30/bush_challenges_hundreds_of_law) and Bob Egelko's "How Bush Redefines the Intent of the Law" ( http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/05/07/signing.tmp ) ); his conviction that he has a blank-check to initiate wars of choice; his authorization of torture; his ordering the NSA to spy electronically on millions of American citizens; his attempts at neutering the Legislative and Judicial branches of government, etc. etc.
And permitting all this to pass beneath the public radar is a cowed, cooperative mass-media, whose reporters serve mostly as stenographers rather than as true journalists holding government officials' feet to the fire. Clearly, if a Democratic President had behaved himself as Bush and Cheney have done -- lying in order to foment a war, breaking the law on innumerable occasions, leaking classified information for political reasons, authorizing torture, etc. etc. -- he would have been impeached and removed from office with extreme haste before he could do any more damage to the Republic.
WHAT ORDINARY CITIZENS CAN DO
So, if all this is true, with Karl Rove (assuming he's not indicted shortly for perjury and obstruction of justice in the Plamegate case) unleashing his campaign and foreign-policy "surprises" during the next six months, what do we ordinary citizens do about the situation? Specifically, what can we do about the reality of a corrupted election system?
Thankfully, many citizens and public-interest groups have become involved in the electoral-integrity issue, both on the national level and in various key states, challenging the reliability and transparency of e-voting machines and vote-tallying procedures, suing voting officials in civil courts when honest elections and verified means for re-checking the votes are not satisfactory, etc.
But angry citizens are ignoring another powerful avenue to counteract election fraud, and the increasing chances for more such illegality: They should demand that their state attorneys general and local district attorneys bring criminal charges in their jurisdictions against the GOP, Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia, et al. Were this to happen, the "discovery" process might well yield an abundance of incriminating documents that would have an enormous impact on national politics. Example: the phone-bank sabotage case in New Hampshire, where GOP officials with ties to the White House were convicted of interfering with the Democrats' phone system in that state just prior to the 2004 election.
But whether all these good-government moves will be enough to guarantee honest elections in November is up in the air, especially with many Bush-appointed judges on the federal appeals courts. The point is that by and large these legal moves are being initiated by citizens and organized groups, not by the Democratic Party.
(I have been following the suggestion of Ernest Partridge and others: I return solicitation letters to Democratic Party headquarters with a strong note saying I will send no money until the Democrats decide to fight like an opposition party should for honest, transparent, verifiable elections. No action, no donation. Similarly, many progressives are telling MoveOn.org much the same thing: stop being so timid; electoral integrity and confronting electoral fraud needs to be front and center for progressives. We can have all the good candidates and popular policies in the world, but if the opposition is running the vote-counting mechanism, goodbye honest elections and the chance to defeat the GOP and begin to restore America's traditional values to our political system.)
DIEBOLD MACHINES DANGEROUSLY VULNERABLE
New revelations about electoral integrity and fraud, both good and bad, keep breaking all the time. As I write this, more states have become aware of built-in problems with computer-voting systems and are being forced, at least temporarily, to consider more secure methods for voting and ballot-tabulation. Brad Friedman reports: ( www.bradblog.com/archives/00002787.htm )
>>"We've now been able to gather a great deal of additional information concerning details about the story we first posted yesterday on the official Pennsylvania state warning issued about the new 'security vulnerability' discovered in all Diebold touch-screen electronic voting machines.
>>"That warning, which has now brought a lock-down on all Diebold systems in PA, where early voting is about to begin prior to their upcoming May 16th primary election, was reported by the Morning Call yesterday. The warning says the serious security vulnerability could allow 'unauthorized software to be loaded on to the system'."
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked for two decades as a writer-editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org).
Excellent piece. Particularly the part about demanding leadership from the Dems as opposed to offering blind alliance.
We don't know yet if the Dems are up to it, but this fall should represent the Grand Test, determining whether they're worthy of progressive support. If not, a true opposition party emerges.
by
Jim Prues (15 articles, 33 quicklinks, 10 diaries, 77 comments)
on Tuesday, May 9, 2006 at 7:27:07 PM
The Democrats have failed every test for a decade or more. Clinton, that sacred cow for loyal democrats everywhere, threw thousands off welfare without job training or placement assistance, or even child care credits. He brought us NAFTA, CAFTA and GATT, making him just another republican.
The litany of failures by Democrats to oppose Bush for almost six years now should be very clear to everyone by now yet you demand another litmus test, what is it going to take, a house falling on you?
by
ardee D. (6 articles, 4 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 2377 comments)
on Wednesday, May 10, 2006 at 7:22:02 AM
There is a portion of the female anatomy between the anus and the vulva that old Yankees used to call the TAINT. “It taint one and it taint the other”. In politics this position has been staked out by the Democratic Leadership Council. They advise Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the cowardly Democrats who did not stand up with Russ Feingold in his demand for an investigation of the administration lies. . . lies that allowed Bush to attack Iraq. They also opposed Russ’s desire for an outside investigator to oversee the ethics committees in both the House and Senate. They stand in opposition to the sixty four percent of Americans who want us to get out of Iraq immediately. When Nancy debated a republican who asked her if she wanted us to “cut and run”. She replied that she certainly did not and that she simply asked the Bush administration for an exit plan. The reason for the equivocation of these so-called Democrats is that the DLC is a gatekeeper for the corporation money that has been allocated for the “friendly opposition”.
There is nothing progressive about the Progressive Policy Institute. It is part and parcel of the Democratic Leadership Council. On just about every issue that has the American voter up in arms; they have a fall back position. They are funded by AT&T, Eastman Kodak, Prudential, Georgia Pacific, Chevron, Amoco, General Mills, Bradly, Gilman, Amertech, General Mills, Bank One, Citicorp, Dow, Dupont, GE, Health Insurance Foundation, Merril Lynch, Microsoft, Morgan Stanly, Occidental Petroleum, and Raytheon.
Democratic Leadership Council president Will Marshall in his “serving the Democratic Party” memo of January 1985 advocated the formation a “governing council” that would draft a “blueprint” for reforming the party. The new leadership should aim to create a distance from “the new bosses”--organized labor, feminists, and other progressive constituency groups. He has urged Democratic stalwarts to back away from a political agenda that addressed poverty, discrimination, and crime and join the traditional conservatives in opposing affirmative action and safety net programs, and job creation initiatives, stiffer sentences, an end to affirmative action as well as welfare benefits.
The leaders proposing to help the American people jump out of the frying pan into the fire are Hilary Clinton, Joe Lieberman, Nancy Pelosi, and all of the Democrats who want to keep us in Iraq and maintain our position as the only country out of three hundred and forty seven that does not have single payer health care.
The Republicans are going to be slaughtered in the coming election and I think that true progressives should turn their invective against the Democratic traitors who seek to benefit from this and let them know that we are sick of the phoney wrestling match that American politics has become. It is time that Americans join their Latino brothers and sisters to take to the streets.
John H. St.John st.johnj@cox.net
by
gramps (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 107 comments)
on Wednesday, May 10, 2006 at 11:02:43 AM
Remember, this is a two party country.
Is it in the constitution? No.
Is it in law? In many respects, yes.
Is it in the basic folkish understanding of the people as to how politics works? Unquestionably.
The GOP won the 2004 election.
Kerry may have lost some precincts in Ohio, that would have given him an electoral vote victory, but thankfully, that didn't happen either.
Note, I did not write that Bush won the 2004 election.
Statewide winning GOP candidates pretty much all ran better than Bush.
The GOP tide pulled Bush into the White House.
They remain strong enough to retain their control of the Congress in 06.
With or without Diebold.
The Democrats are losing because we are not organized and we are not coalescing around our key issues or key constituents: the cities, the near older suburbs and urban issues.
We are the majority, but we are not able to mobilize our vote.
It is time to stop obsessing about Diebold and past elections and to organize and win governorships and state legislative seats to build for 08, 10, 12 and beyond.
Robert Chapman
Lansing, New York
by
Robert Chapman (28 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 556 comments)
on Friday, May 12, 2006 at 8:12:56 PM
4 comments
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