The wheels are coming off the Democratic machine, with angry voters starting to lose patience with the Party’s chronic inability to act decisively on any of the key issues of public concern.
In a Reuters dispatch on June 18, Democratic leaders in Congress concede that voters are angry with them for not doing enough to end the Iraq War. They might have added that voters are also angry at them for not impeaching the president or even for moving on Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s bill to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney (H Res. 333).
“I understand their disappointment. We raised the bar too high,” bleats Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid (D-NV).
No Harry. You didn’t raise the bar too high. You ducked under the bar, when it came time to act to defund the war.
Last month, instead of cutting off funding for Bush’s war in Iraq, Congress passed a measure providing him with over $100 billion to fund it, attaching no strings to the measure—not even any deadlines for starting to withdraw troops. This after running a 2006 campaign on ending the war.
No wonder Democrats and the independents and, yes, even Republicans who voted Democrats into control of Congress last November are furious.
“We can only do so much,” whines House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
No, Nancy. The problem is that you have done so little. Next to nothing really. Of the vaunted list of progressive measures you came into office as Speaker promising to push, only one—the minimum wage bill—passed, and you managed that only by making it “blood money”—that is, by tying it to the Iraq War funding bill so that the president wouldn’t veto it. That was a sick deal—making the same poor Americans who disproportionately carry the burden of fighting an insane, criminal and brutal war in Iraq also earn their raise by funding that war with their hard-earned tax dollars. And besides, it’s a pathetic measure anyway, offering workers only a minor raise for the first year, and ultimately, after a year and a half, bringing them to a wage--$7.25 per hour—that most workers in the country already receive, or will be receiving by July, thanks to state laws.
Thanks a lot!
Meanwhile, Speaker Pelosi, who cannot stand up to a criminal president, has continued to stand in the way of any effort by her own party colleagues to call the administration to account for the crimes it has committed against the nation and the Constitution. Sure, Congress is holding hearings, but the president and vice president are, quite predictably, stonewalling those hearings, refusing to allow key aides to testify, refusing to provide documents, and threatening to refuse subpoenas.
What Americans want is impeachment hearings on both men.
Let’s at least start with Kucinich’s Cheney impeachment bill. It has seven co-sponsors. That should be plenty to indicate that it’s a serious measure. So let’s push it forward and start hearings on it.
Meanwhile, if Pelosi wants Americans to start thinking better of her party, she should lift the shackles from her minions and let Democratic House members freely file bills of impeachment against President Bush. She should let John Conyers (D-MI), the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, start holding hearings on impeachment.
Too divisive?
Listen, Nancy and Harry, we Americans want a little divisiveness. Americans thrive on political conflict.
Besides, we’re sick of this war, and of the men who tricked us into it. We’re sick of seeing our cherished rights trashed. We’re sick of being told that we in this country are a bunch of whimpering wusses ready to surrender our rights in the fear that some third world bomb-thrower might attack the local Wendy’s.
Dave Lindorff, a columnist for Counterpunch, is author of several recent books ("This Can't Be Happening! Resisting the Disintegration of American Democracy" and "Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal"). His latest book, coauthored with Barbara Olshanshky, is "The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office (St. Martin's Press, May 2006). His writing is available at http://www.thiscantbehappening.net
Reasons why the Dem Party should be the target of serious
widespread resistance to the US political system:
Most decent people are aware that the Republican Party is the driving force behind US crimes on the world stage. What is less commonly appreciated, however, is that the Republicans could never have gotten away with these crimes, without the Democrats' complicity at every step. The political mechanism of the entire rightwards shift requires both a prime mover (the R's) and an (at least) tacit understanding that the "opposition party" will never do anything serious about exposing the crimes of the prime movers.
There are several significant differences between R's & D's, in terms of their relationships with their respective bases. First, the gap between the party officialdom versus rank-and-file is much greater with the D's than with the R's. Second, the gap between what the party purports to represent, and what it in actual deed represents, is greater with the D's than with their counterparts.
This means that Dem Party leaders & elected officials are obliged to posture more & to lie more; to deceive their own voters more, than Republicans are. Most Republican voters are either wealthy (& thus simply backing the party that directly fights for their financial interests); or they are racists, xenophobes, homophobes, yahoos, religious zealots, or bullying militarists who get their rocks off when the US bombs defenseless countries.
Many Democrats in the rank-and-file, by contrast, are relatively peaceful, trusting non-aggressive types, who are instinctively repelled by unjust US military aggression, and want very badly to believe that their party represents them in this. Since nearly all Congressional Dems are actually reliable stooges of the military-industrial establishment, however, they are obliged to play a double game with their constituents that their Republican counterparts don't need to bother with.
Because this great gap exists, it is more likely that Democratic voters can be split off from their party, than is the case with Republicans -- many of whom still approve of the Bush administration. The problem with Dem voters is that they so badly want to believe in their party leaders, & their cognitive dissonance would be so painful if they fully recognized how consistently their leaders betray them, that many find it less painful to simply ignore the evidence & continue believing.
Since the 2-party system itself (and the collusion between the parties) is at the heart of the US's non-democracy, the question is how best to strike at this system. Somewhat paradoxically, it might be wiser to strike at the party that so many still think is the "lesser evil" -- because that's the party that deceives its own voters more, is the bigger liar, & is more vulnerable to having its voters wake up one day to "see the light."
by
Richard Mynick (2 articles, 3 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 1120 comments)
on Monday, June 18, 2007 at 3:16:41 PM
How satisfying to see that there are others still able to correctly see objective reality; yes - the Democrats are more a part of the problem than the solution. As a third party advocate and believer in the necessity of an Article V convention, I have always bought into Nader's proper characterization of the evil two-party duopoly. The worst victims of self-delusion are the neo-progressives that still want to believe that if they can get the "right" Dems elected, then our political system will be restored. Nonsense!!!
by
Joel S. Hirschhorn (118 articles, 22 quicklinks, 54 diaries, 470 comments)
on Tuesday, June 19, 2007 at 7:57:31 AM
What's needed now is a major effort to recruit and support alternative candidates rather than continue to rail against the Democrats. That's going to take time and real commitment. In the absence of such an effort the Democrats know they have nothing to worry about because they see voters as having no viable alternatives. It's too late for threats. It's too late for Democrats to redeem themselves. They never will unless pressed up against the wall and if they will only do the right thing when they have no other choice, who needs them?
by
Mark A. Goldman (80 articles, 2 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 242 comments)
on Monday, June 18, 2007 at 6:14:55 PM
As long as only millionaires can afford to run for high office, only millionaires will be represented.
As long as machines count the votes, the votes won't get counted.
As long as fear rules, we will be lead only by fear.
I absolutely believe that the cave-in to the funding of the illegal occupation and the consent to expand the wars was designed to split the vote and hand the WH back to the Repubs.
What better way to split the people? As you have so apply written, the refunding was for many the straw that broke their back. Not even if Gore should pick-up the handle, now wouldn't THAT be another big punch in the gut, would a Dem get to the WH. Which after all that's happened that would be pretty extraordinary. But then again, BECAUSE of all that's happened and what this criminal government has been able to get away with it wouldn't surprise me. I certain a Repub will be back in the WH because of this.
The vote will split. Hell, Gore might even go independent. No matter. The war will continue. It will even expand. This is just the beginning.
I don't think there is a "fix". I sincerely believe we're so corrupted that we'll collapse under the very weight of it. We've squandered our fortunes, our honor, the environment, our own children by handing them over to criminal madmen.
Believe me, I would love to be wrong here. But, as long as I see Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Feith, Wolfowitz, Rice, Rove, and at least a hundred more of these criminally insane, war-mongering, murderous people walking free and not in dockets at the Hague, I'm not getting excited.
by
Mr M (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 9 diaries, 1253 comments)
on Monday, June 18, 2007 at 8:33:11 PM
The disconnect between Democrats and their constituency
The disconnect between Democrats and their constituency is broader and more ominous than any of you seem to think.
About the war funding, for example: My guess is that there was a quid pro quo between the Dems leadership and the Bush administration: Dems promised untrammeled funding for the war; Bush promised GOP support for the Dems' immigration reform package.
That's bad enough for the country as a whole, but it's worse still for those who traditionally support the Democrats. The version of immigration reform pushed by this Congress represents an effort by Democratic leaders to divorce themselves from Big Labor. If the Dems can amnesty 12 million illegals and get them to vote Democratic, they no longer need Big Labor. Thus it's not merely that the amnestied illegals will break the unions -- it is that Big Labor will no longer have a voice in Congress. There'll be no one to protect Labor from rapacious management newly armed with the power of uncaring (if not overtly hostile) government.
Can anyone guess what happens to Labor in that situation?
by
Jimmy Montague (3 articles, 2 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 63 comments)
on Tuesday, June 19, 2007 at 7:08:07 AM
Let's not forget that most of these Democrats voted for the Authorization to Use Force; and let's not play stupid and pretend that they did not know what Bush was going to do - once he got that authorization. As any fool could plainly see, bush and co. had went to great lengths plotting and scheming, lying, and banging the war drums...I knew what he wanted and what he was going to do - and so did the Democrats - and you know this too.
The Democrats did not "Cave". They wanted a war - they voted for a war - and now they want to continue the occupation. Well, most of them do...
I don't know what the solution is, but I do know that we must stop supporting all these fake and traitorous democrats...
by
RCG (3 articles, 0 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 352 comments)
on Tuesday, June 19, 2007 at 12:09:36 PM
What was the House vote on the timetable? 218 to 216. The timetable passed the House by 2 votes.
When the compromise Iraq funding bill was passed, weren't there over 230 votes in favor and 170 some opposed? How many opposed had Rs behind their names.
The fact remains that the President and the GOP leadership in the House and in the Senate still have enough juice to keep the war going. Until and unless 60 Republicans in the House and 12 Republicans in the Senate break with the President and their congressional leadership, we can't stop the war.
This is a battle of political will. Who has the stronger political will, the GOP waverers currently strong-armed into backing the President on Iraq, or the anti-war activists forced to work the opposition- the Democratic Party?
The stench of tireless leftish indignation and defeatism rising from this article and its responses must be savory fragrance to the GOP vote counters.
Keep the pressure up for a change in Iraq policy, but keep the pressure on the people supporting it, not the ones opposing it.
by
Robert Chapman (28 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 557 comments)
on Tuesday, June 19, 2007 at 2:09:44 PM
This is dishonest & misleading spin, typical of Dem Party
apologists.
You claim that in the recent war funding, there were "over 230 votes in favor and 170 some opposed." Then you ask how many opposed to the funding were Republican.
Here is the actual vote: There were 280 in favor, 142 against. Of those against, 2 were Republicans, & 140 were Democrats.
On the surface (and this was Pelosi's intention), this makes it appear that the D's were more "against" funding the war than the R's. However, that was a deliberate deception by the Dem leadership, because Pelosi split the appropriation into 2 parts, allowing a separate vote on each. She knew perfectly well that almost all R's would vote 'Yes' on "Amendment No. 2," the military part, which had no strings attached to the money. She also knew that about 86 of her own Democrats would vote 'Yes,' thus guaranteeing the bill's passage. (How could she NOT know how her own Democrats were going to vote? Don't you think a House leader polls her own troops?)
Therefore, by letting this amendment come to a vote, Pelosi understood in advance that she was giving Bush the war money. At the same time, she saw that this gave her room to let many Democrats vote 'No', so they could deceptively posture as opponents of the war spending. (All but 7 Democrats voted in favor of structuring the final vote this way -- so they ALL knew exactly how it would go down, & were virtually all responsible for the final outcome.)
Your comment is designed to fool people into falling for Pelosi's deception. If the Dem leadership didn't want to give Bush the war money, they didn't have to allow this amendment come to a vote. They could simply have forced a vote on a bill that either cut off the war money, or put stiff restrictions on it. Instead, they engineered a way to give Bush the money, insisting only that they be allowed to falsely posture as war opponents.
You also write "The fact remains that the President and the GOP leadership ...still have enough juice to keep the war going." No, that's flat-out wrong, too. No bill gets sent to the president for signature unless a majority in each house approves it. The Dems have majorities in both houses. If all Dems oppose any bills permitting further war spending, Bush gets no money. (In fact, since the Dems have about 232 House seats, 14 of them could betray their constituents, and they would still be able to block all further war spending.)
The real stench is coming not from the "tireless leftish indignation," as you write, but from the traitors of the Democratic Party & their dishonest apologists. As for "savory fragrance to the GOP vote counters -- " that comes from the Democrats too, because they are the best allies the GOP ever had. They defend Bush at every turn, refuse to talk impeachment, and help him fund his criminal war while refusing to expose it for the atrocity that it is.
by
Richard Mynick (2 articles, 3 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 1120 comments)
on Tuesday, June 19, 2007 at 4:36:39 PM
If not, please think twice before you come through as sounding like one. Yes, Karl Rove may have realized that the GOP is in such deep trouble with the voters that the only thing he could do was start a whispering campaign and line up trolls to say the Democrats are just as bad. Get the base out –convince them they might as well keep voting Repug “like I always did; they say the Dems are just as bad”.Get Democrats and Independents to stay home or vote third party, nicely splitting that vote. Then we will need only about 40 % of the vote and we win. Oh, and get the Republican candidates to pretend to distance themselves from Bush/Cheney. That will be a little extra insurance. Well worth it to stay in power. No telling how many nasty investigations the Dems might start if they get in power.
by
Christie (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 149 comments)
on Tuesday, June 19, 2007 at 4:53:28 PM
The Dems in Congress are the real "Karl Rove trolls,"
if what you mean by that is a group acting to sabotage the goals that the group purports to stand for. There are no better friends of the GOP than the Democrats, who protect Bush, refuse to discuss impeachment, ensure that the war is fully funded, confirm all Bush's reactionary Court appointees, & protect all of his other co-thugs. They're even letting that slimeball Gonzales get away. They haven't lifted a finger to reverse the torture policy, the loss of habeas corpus, the PATRIOT Act, or any of the other atrocities.
Dems launching "nasty investigations?" You must be kidding. They had enough evidence on Bush & Cheney to send them both to the Hague the day the new Congress was seated in January. Since then, they have basically done precisely nothing --- allowing the worst criminals this country has ever seen in public life to get away with crimes that we hanged Nazis for in Nuremberg.
by
Richard Mynick (2 articles, 3 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 1120 comments)
on Tuesday, June 19, 2007 at 7:29:57 PM
Why is politics treated like a game in America, when it literally means life or death for billions of people everywhere? This political narcissim is so frustrating to me as a first-generation born-raised here. The disillusion is total, and the frustration of Dem rank and file understandable to the hilt, But -
Why are we so unanalytical of what we ourselves have done to get here? Our own party has been corrupt for so long, taking payoffs from corporations and thugs who took over our unions and made them apologists for those corporations. We've thrown our most progressive weight behind the most confrontational, least likely to win candidates. We scream wildly during campaign season and focus on the horse races, but ignore all the details throughout the months in-between that support the selling out that makes our voices mute. We don't even know the names of our state reps, and don't work when it's not election season to prep candidates to oppose the sellouts right here at home, or to change campaign financing to public-only, not on the state level or the federal. Most of us don't even know who is and isn't a member of the DLC, the Democratic "Leadership"/Leading-Class Council that has led the charge to cater to corporate donors and marginalize us. We rail at every Dem and are oblivious of efforts being made on our behalf by the few.
Talk of 3rd party organization is heard everywhere every election season, from both sides of the aisle. Yet, when the elections are over, how many of us are then putting our time/energy into a 3rd party? When we do try, we find another group with a ruling clique and ideology that tolerates no questions on compromise. We find few that are not led by a straight white elite with a few token people of color and queers thrown in. We seem to almost have to want to lose to tell everyone how stupid they are, if we want to have the "right" attitude to participate in a 3rd party.
Almost every progressive person I speak with who is so fed up with it all, also does not want to track a bill or a legislator to make them accountable. Sure, folks on these blogs are a bit more involved, but to those of us whose families come from countries where such an opportunity to be involved are non-existent, it seems like a pitiful waste how most Americans can't even name their local reps, have no clue what bills are in line that will impact them directly, and have no faith in their ability to put forward alternative candidates. Americans have surrendered their courts, scarcely even know what The Hague is, and sell more arms to poor countries than it feeds and provides healthcare for. Americans don't know they have more prisoners than Russia did at the height of its gulag years, and most of those prisoners didn't commit violent crimes. Americans think 12 million immigrants came as a horde through their borders, when at least 5 million of them entered legally, but couldn't get their visas extended because of bureaucratic dehumanizing practices that have always favored the rich. Most Americans don't know that a millionaire from any country who wants to start a company here gets automatic legal residence, even if all he's selling is trash. Even here, a labor rep uses immigrants to stoke fear, when it's proven that as soon as they are able and often when it's extremely dangerous for them, immigrants organize with unions as soon as they're allowed by the unions! Immigrants who had no rights at home often work harder to keep those rights here than multi-generation Americans!
Until all those issues are confronted daily, stringently, with dedication and not just lip service, by the "progressives" of which I claim to be one, the grassroots we need to push change forward won't be bothered. From the outside of these political-junkie-cliques, we look like squirrels fighting over a nut, while the tree above us drops dozens of juicy morsels all around us.
We're free, we have to be involved all the time and be glad we can be, or it won't matter what parties are in place. It's our lack of making them accountable that makes them so easy to corrupt. If corporations neglected the daily vigilance needed to keep politicians in line the way we do, we wouldn't have anything to complain about except individual egotists.
by
Inaru (0 articles, 8 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 2 comments)
on Tuesday, June 19, 2007 at 7:18:23 PM
It's too bad that if I cursed you out like I want to, and like you deserve, then my comment would be deleted and I might get banned.
So I will just say, how dare you? How dare you compare those of us who demand accountability from the democrats that we elected to the abominable monster that is karl rove? You go to far.
Now I demand accountability from my representatives and you can wrongly apologize for them all you want - but I will not support people who do not represent my most important ideals. I will not support people who vote to continue the death and destruction in Iraq. I am against these politicians and I don't give a damn what label they wear (i.e. Republican or Democrat).
If you supported the war and this ongoing occupation, then not only will I NOT support you, but I will do my best to ensure that you do not get elected or reelected. And i invite others to help me with this humanitarian life and death goal.
Got that?
Got a problem with that?
Tough nuggies.
by
RCG (3 articles, 0 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 352 comments)
on Wednesday, June 20, 2007 at 12:38:12 AM
