Author's Note: Approximately six million U.S. citizens live overseas, most of them eligible to vote back home. Democrats Abroad has so many active chapters all over the world that their ex-pat members have some leverage in shaping Dem policy and a number wind up as delegates to the National Convention. The largest German chapter is in Munich and they have been kind enough to invite me, as a progressive blogger/public speaker from the States, to meet with them during my occasional trips to Germany when visiting my wife's family.
In the two weeks prior to my most recent DA talk, I had the occasion to speak with numerous Germans and Austrians about their take on American foreign and domestic policy. As on previous visits to other countries in the past six years (Crete/Greece, Morocco, Italy, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos), the virtually unanimous reaction of the locals was to commiserate with me as an American with leaders as ignorant, reckless and incompetent as Cheney and Bush. This attitude, voiced by everyone I met on my recent trip to Europe -- from service providers to businessmen to college professors to current officers and former employees of multi-national corporations -- was expressed even before they learned my political persuasion. The roof message above, photographed in Vienna, seems to capture the general point of view.
As for my recent presentation to DA-Munich, the meeting room was packed with activist Dems living and working in and around Bavaria's largest city. These Democrats mirror the progressive, activist base back in the States: They are politically savvy and deeply perplexed by their party's timid leadership in Washington. Here are my brief opening remarks, with a few updates:
Many of you may remember that the last time you had me here, a month or so before the 2006 midterm elections, I said that it looked like the Democrats could well sweep into control of the House and Senate, but, if that happened, CheneyBush might react with even more criminality and desperation. And that having majority control in the Congress would not be an instant utopia for Democrats, but merely the first steps for a new beginning. And that's pretty much what has occurred.
This evening, a little more than a year out from the next presidential election and only a few months before the first primaries, I want to talk about three overview subjects: 1) The imploding CheneyBush Administration, and the dangerous actions of that cornered, wounded beast. 2) The ongoing Iraq Occupation and the impending attack on Iran. 3) The positive and negative nature of current Democratic Party policy, including some discussion about the leading contenders for the nomination.
My take is that of a blogger activist in the States; I'll be interested to hear what the situation looks like from your perspective on the other side of the pond.
1. DOWN IN THE BUSH BUNKER
The ranks of the Bush Bunker crew, the loyalists who still remain in White House, are shrinking fast, especially with the departure of Rove, Gonzales, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Libby, et al. The first-tier decision makers left include Cheney, Addington, Hadley, and Bush; I don't include Defense Secretary Bob Gates (as he's being frozen out by Cheney&Co.), or Rice and Chertoff, who are basically toadies to their boss.
Given the catastrophe that is the war in Iraq (and the one about to begin against Iran), along with the various corruption and sex and policy scandals involving Republican stalwarts, and the enormous unpopularity of Cheney and Bush -- given all those GOP negatives, one would be tempted to say that things look rosy for Democrats going into the November 2008 election.
But if we've learned anything in the past six-plus years, it's that the CheneyBush crew do not give up easily, and are quite happy to continue their smashmouth, in-your-face, big-lie brand of politics until someone stops them. Given their bleak situation, they are worried, to be sure -- GOP members of Congress are especially anxious about being wiped out in 2008, but they are sticking with the Administration for now -- but CheneyBush are not in any mood to give up and slink away.
Why? Partially because they realize their criminal culpability and wish to remain outside the federal slammer. They continue to control enormously powerful governmental forces to help protect themselves and their friends and punish their enemies. I'm referring to their control of the Judicial Branch, including the Department of Justice, the U.S. Attorneys around the country, the courts they've packed with their ideological brethren, and FEMA, the agency that would supervise martial law if and when it were to be invoked. CheneyBush also still control much of the mass-media, who either are ideologically in bed with them or afraid to openly challenge the Administration on its behavior and blatant lies.
In terms of the military power center, there are scores of retired generals and colonels, and currently serving officers, who snipe at the Administration's dangerous and failed military policies; a few days ago, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez ( http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/101207.html ) who commanded the troops in Iraq in 2003-2004, blistered Administration policy from the occupation then to the current "surge" now. But CheneyBush still can count on the military services to execute their orders, reckless or no.
THE ABANDONED DEM MANDATE
Now you may say that I'm ignoring a very real impediment to the CheneyBush juggernaut: the Democrats, who defeated them handily in the 2006 midterm elections. Surely, one would think, the Democrats would be able to use their considerable majority muscle to roll back one bad Administration policy after another, and to make sure CheneyBush do limited major damage in the next 15 months before they depart the premises.
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.
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).
i found your article very interesting. indeed, the majority of expats are Democrats or Democratic-leaning. According to Mark Crispin Miller in his "Fooled Again", absentee voters living abroad actually receiving their ballots in time and having them counted was no sure thing. in Florida 2000, for instance, military ballots were counted even if they missed the deadline. If they were missing information, obliging party operatives and officials, state-wide. Harris and Co. looked for any excuse to throw out absentee ballots; they were counted last or discarded altogether. (p. 241).
A legitimate question to ask is how Democrats living abroad can assure that their ballots will arrive and that their votes will be counted. We're talking about literally millions (MCM says up to seven million) of votes, often concentrated in key swing states. The importance of this can not be minimized.
Any ideas?
joan brunwasser, voting integrity ed., OpEdNews
by
Joan Brunwasser (127 articles, 3326 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 572 comments)
on Wednesday, October 17, 2007 at 3:30:18 PM
Dear Joan: I've raised this question several times with Democrats Abroad officials in Munich. A year or two ago, they complained about the same problems you raise, and indicated that they have never received totally satisfactory answers about late ballots, receipt of ballots in their home districts, accurate tabulation of ballots, etc. In short, the absentee system of voting abroad seems to be just as screwed-up as the voting system in the States. More justification for a thorough examination of the entire electoral structure, so that U.S. citizens, at home or abroad, can feel certain that their votes are received and honestly and accurately recorded. -- All best, Bernie
by
Bernard Weiner (136 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 6 comments)
on Wednesday, October 17, 2007 at 4:58:42 PM
One can only pray that the Dems do indeed commit suicide.
It couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch.
The author writes in his closing paragraph, "Clearly, there are significant differences between the two parties. The question is: Will there be enough of a difference between our candidates and those put forward by the Republicans to justify yet again holding our noses and voting for the lesser of two evils?..."
- There's way too much focus on whether the 2 parties are "different." That's not the real issue. (Of COURSE they are different, because only the Dems are wolves in sheep's clothing, while the R's are more or less out-front about being vicious wolves.)
The real issue is whether or not the Dems can reasonably be counted on to vigorously oppose what Republicans do (& to undo what Republicans have done). And the answer is obvious -- they can't at all be counted on to do that. When the likes of Cheney rattle sabers loudly, the Dems' response is to be quietly supportive, while rattling the same sabers somewhat less loudly. That's not good enough. The Democrats are not even on the correct side of the big issues, let alone being passionately committed to fighting the necessary battles.
The author casts the main issue as whether there will be "enough of a difference" between the parties to justify once again "holding our noses and voting for the lesser of two evils." This is the same tired old thinking that has gotten us to where we are today.
Supporting Democrats brings only the victory of Republican policies. Even if the D's win the White House next year, they're committed to "The War on Terror" -- a Republican concept, & a Republican policy. Everyone sees by now that precisely nothing was gained by the Dems' victory in Nov '06 -- the Dems won the seats, yet Bush's policies have prevailed on every front. Not a single BushCo criminal has been held accountable for anything -- despite the Dems' newly-won "subpoena powers" that Dem voters wrongly expected to be put to serious use.
Look at the Bill Clinton admin, too -- the whole 2 terms were really a period of intense corporatization of US society, as well as a great deal of warmaking (though admittedly, Clinton was a lot smoother than Bush Jr as a warmaker). Bill Clinton did to welfare what Republican presidents would have loved to do, but were unable to. And he enacted an entirely Republican agenda with the Telecom giveaway of 1996, the shipping away of jobs under NAFTA, a few nice little wars, and a defense budget no smaller than the Cold War budgets -- despite the fact that the USSR had ceased to exist. Essentially, though a Democrat sat in the White House, we still had a president politically to the right of Richard Nixon.
by
Richard Mynick (2 articles, 3 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 1013 comments)
on Wednesday, October 17, 2007 at 6:04:55 PM
in that I must spend more time with you and Earnest Partridge at crisispapers.com.
So many good points, where to begin:
Hillary Clinton...assuredly the nominee. Far too much money, far too many favors to call in, far too much political savvy and far too weak an opposition to be defeated. I wouldnt vote for her myself but I do believe that, despite the torrent of mud the right will rain down upon her ( perhaps the single most vicious campaign in American history is impending) she will surprise any number of folks. Make no mistake, Mrs. Clinton is every bit as smart as President Clinton and has a great deal of political know how. I think she will handle herself rather well in the campaign.
The Democratic Party...Inept, incompetent, poorly led, avaricious and unable to outhink GOP strategists ever. Just look at this latest bungle in the jungle from Pelosi over the proposed Armenian declaration of genocide. She couldnt see the really poor timing? She couldnt see the backlash from Turkey coming, and by the by, Turkey is not the Ottoman Empire for crying out loud. She couldnt keep her own party from defecting from the vote! What a maroon!
The decision to keep the war alive and funded in order to have it as a campaign issue, and make no mistake about it that is why we have seen no defunding in Congress, serves only to further alienate decent moderates and liberals from the Party. Condemning many of our young men and women to death, and countless Iraqis as well, in order to make political capital is cruel, heartless and the truth of it.
I believe we are at the cusp of a great change in American politics, one that, as this article touched upon, will see a realignment of the two parties and the emergence of one or more third party forces upon the current Duopoly. I say its about time!
by
ardee D. (6 articles, 4 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 2388 comments)
on Wednesday, October 17, 2007 at 8:01:50 PM
