October 17, 2007 at 10:17:03

Will Dems Commit Political Suicide in '08?: An Address to Democrats Abroad

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By Bernard Weiner, The Crisis Papers (about the author) Page 2 of 4 page(s)

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But the Democrats, who inherited a clear mandate for major change in the midterm elections, especially on the need to get the U.S. out of Iraq, have little to show for their victory. Several committee chairmen (symbolized by Waxman, Conyers, Leahy, a few others) have conducted important hearings and investigations. But in the main, this amounts to Democrats nipping at CheneyBush around the edges, hardly ever confronting their impeachable offenses frontally. Certainly, the Democrats make a lot of noise, hold a lot of one-day hearings and the like, but CheneyBush made a conscious political decision to simply ignore them.

Executive Branch leaders are subpoenaed to testify or to provide potentially incriminating documents -- but these officials simply do not comply. The Democrats threaten them with, and then cite them for, "contempt of Congress," but then choose not to enforce those contempt citations. Time and time again, the Dems back away or roll over for the Republicans, who by holding together in Congress create real obstructionist problems for the Democrats.

Even so, the Dems allow their favorite bills to go down to defeat (especially on the war) on the mere threat of a GOP filibuster, without ever making the Republicans actually mount a filibuster, where they would have to put themselves on the record attempting to defend the indefensible. Similarly, the Democrats have within their power -- 41 Senate votes would do it -- to withhold war-funding for anything other than bringing U.S. troops home, but the Dems don't even attempt such a move. In short, the Democrats are mostly bark with no effective bite, and they've taken their major weapon, impeachment, "off the table"; as a result of all this timidity and embarrassing lack of progress, the approval ratings for Congress are even lower than they are for Bush and Cheney, especially so with rank-and-file Democrats.

2. THE PERMANENT IRAQ WAR

It seems plain that CheneyBush have no desire, and no intention, to withdraw from Iraq. They aren't building that humongous new embassy and those hardened military bases for nothing. Iraq is to be the staging point for U.S. policy in the greater Middle East for a very long time. Bush likens the mission and time-frame to U.S. troops remaining in South Korea for more than half a century -- ignoring that South Korea in the '50s had no insurgent rebels trying to force out the occupiers, no religious and sectarian civil war raging, no American leaders talking about a "crusade," etc.

Apparently, Bush figures that even though the U.S. can not "win" in Iraq, it can't "lose" either. The U.S. eventually will pull back to its massive bases inside the country -- where they will be sitting ducks for rocket and mortar attacks -- and remain effectively in charge of actual Iraq policy while it carries out its covert and overt actions all over the greater Middle East.

It's entirely possible, indeed likely, that the U.S. -- perhaps in coordination with its one dependable ally in the area, Israel -- will attack Iran's military infrastructure and weapons labs sometime between now and October of next year. All the signs point to that impending attack, and the campaign has begun in earnest to "catapult the propaganda" (in a manner eerily similar to U.S. actions prior to attacking Iraq) and to provoke the Iranians into taking some action or position that will outrage Americans into acquiescing to an attack on Iran, devoid of any imminent threat to the United States. The Democrats in Congress, incidentally, have done little or nothing to stem -- or even seriously talk about -- this likely attack; several of their leading candidates are on record as favoring an attack, should it come to that. Indeed, more opposition seems to be coming from inside the Pentagon than from Democratic leaders and candidates.

3. WHAT LIES AHEAD FOR DEMOCRATS?

So now we come to the future of our party, so filled with hope after November of last year, so frustrating and irritating to so many in the interim.

The Democratic leadership seems to be utilizing, to use a football term, a "prevent defense" strategy. They see the Republicans imploding in one scandal after another (sex, financial misconduct, political disasters), see the war in Iraq going nowhere except into a political and civil-war maelstrom, see the awful candidates the GOP is putting up (in one recent GOP poll, "none of the above" won). They look at all this self-destructive Republican behavior and seem to be saying: Why should we stick our necks out with any major "offense" initiatives? Let's just watch the Republicans' self-immolate and in November waltz into the White House and grow our majorities in the House and Senate?

But with these "loyal Bushies," who are always on the offense, if you only play "prevent" you run the very real risk of a catastrophic defeat as events change on the ground prior to the election.

I think it's true that if present trends continue, the Democrats will do very well in Senate and House races next November, and will extend their control of the Congress, maybe even obtaining a veto-proof majority. Theoretically, the Dems should take the White House as well. But, even without considering major changes beyond their control that could affect the presidential race -- such as an attack on Iran or major developments in Iraq, or a real or invented "terrorist" incident at home, or a successful manipulation of the Electoral College vote into congressional-district voting in key states instead of winner-take-all, etc. -- even without all that, the Democrats, as is their pattern in recent years, could well snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

How could this happen? Let's look at just two things.

1. The activist base is so angry at Democratic leadership for its weak or non-existent initiatives with regard to Iraq, Iran, Impeachment, Domestic Spying, Torture, Habeas Corpus, etc., that it could well decide to sit on its collective hands in November of 2008. Or bolt to the Greens. Or help create a viable new third party, perhaps in collaboration with the angered, frustrated Republican base -- those centrists, moderates, libertarians and old-fashioned conservatives appalled by the extremists who have hijacked their party and taken it into dangerous foreign adventurism, who have stomped all over the Constitution, who have created such outrageous deficits and debt. A bi-partisan, populist "Unity" ticket, in other words.

2. I've been writing about this anger building in the Democratic base for quite some time. Believe me, I'm not making it up. Just before we left the Bay Area to fly to Munich, the following, highly typical letter-to-the-editor appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle. I've seen similar letters and commentary in a wide variety of newspapers and websites; they speak for a huge chunk of disenchanted Democrats and others who normally would be voting Democratic in '08:

>> Third-party voter

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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 (more...)

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