Here They Go Again

The Democrats left for Congress’s summer holiday by capitulating shamelessly to the Cheney/Bush government’s war on freedom (aka the War on Terror). Now The Washington Post (Aug. 31) reports that, when they come back, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is prepared to “compromise” with Republicans on Iraq War funding by dropping demands for “time lines” for troop withdrawals. Compromise? The man is about as compromised as anyone could be; anyone, that is, except the other party leaders and the all the self-declared “progressives” wallowing in Pelosiite hypocrisy.

If that isn’t bad enough, Washington is swirling with rumors of a post-Labor Day PR offensive promoting Cheney’s much desired extension of the Iraq War into Iran. Will Congressional Democrats do anything to counter the coming barrage? Not likely. Combine abject (and freshly rejuvenated) spinelessness with subservience to the government of Israel (which, not unrelatedly, wants war with Iran as much as Cheney and his neo-cons do) and what to do you get! One wonders why Cheney thinks he needs a PR campaign at all. With Democrats for an “opposition,” he can get what he wants anyway – notwithstanding the fact that three-quarters of the country and almost four quarters of the rest of the world are against him.

There is a smidgen of good news, though. The “base” is becoming more fractious and John Edwards is finally taking the gloves off, ever so slightly, in dealing with the threat of a Clintonite restoration. But, it’s one step forward, two steps back. With the fervor of right wing “think” tank ideologues promoting yet another war, the “liberal” media’s guardians of conventional wisdom are mobilizing to declare that “divisiveness” threatens to undo the Democrats’ chances in 2008. Apparently, they want things to get much worse, so that they can become marginally better. In fact, because many Republican and independent voters are wise to the Clintons and their ways, the Democrats’ electoral prospects depend on intensifying, not smoothing over, divisions in the Democratic Party. Victory in 2008 is the Democrats’ to lose thanks to mounting popular revulsion towards the Bush government. But the task will be much facilitated by putting forward a clear Democratic alternative; in other words, by handing Clintonism a resounding defeat. Many, probably most, party strategists will disagree. To them I appeal to ethically more demanding, but vastly more compelling, standards. As Democrats in Congress prepare to collaborate yet again with the Decider (and the vice-decider who runs him like a puppet), minimal decency and concern for humankind require that Democrats who know better and have the courage to act on what they know run against Democrats – still, alas, the vast majority --who don’t.