Note: I am having some trouble with the embed feature on YouTube. To watch it please click on the above link, or you watch it on the Ring of Fire website, here.
It is quite remarkable, given the nature of the recent debate overeconomic policy in Washington, that a Wikipedia articles exists today called, "2008-2009 Keynesian resurgence." Today, both political parties have had an obsession with "austerity measures" for at least last year or so - which includes putting Medicare andSocial Security on the chopping block. Barack Obama's weak job bill, which was dead on arrival, only further demonstrates how twisted priorities are in Washington. So, it is actually hard to believe that, in the aftermath of the near-collapse of the economy in 2008, Maynard Keynes, who advocated government intervention in the economy to increase demand during downturns, was making a comeback.
But for a brief moment in time, this was indeed the case. After the 2008 bailout of Bear Stearns, Martin Wolf, an economics writer for the Financial Times and normally a staunch supporter of free-market globalization, wrote: "Remember March 14 2008: it was the day the dream of global free market capitalism died." In the same article, he quoted Joseph Ackerman, the chief executive of Deutsche Bank, saying: "I no longer believe in the market's self-healing power." In an October 10 article, The Washington Post - in all seriousness - suggested that the current economic crises meant the "The End Of American Capitalism" as we know it. The cover of Time magazine in February 2009, said, "We are all Socialists Now," referencing the need for government intervention to save us from the ills of capitalism. "Whether we want to admit it or not," the article observed, "the America of 2009 is moving toward a modern European state."
As frightening and tragic as the economic crisis of 2008 was, having these widely held doctrinal assumptions about the power of the so-called "free market" spun on their head did provide some hope. Maybe there could be some sort of shift toward a more humane mixed economy that reined in the horrific excesses of contemporary capitalism. The country was optimistic; a new president had just been elected and his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, famously said that he "never wanted a serious crisis to go to waste." The Nation magazine even called for a "New New Deal."
What followed, unfortunately, was a very underwhelming flirtation with Keynesian policies (such as the too-small stimulus bill in 2009), which was then swiftly overwhelmed with bipartisan discussions about how to gut government spending and create on austerity movement. This occurred despite the fact that the need for Keynesian economic policies are just as great now, in the face of crippling unemployment, as they were in 2008-09.
Boston - President Obama delivered a stirring address to Congress last night, but the federal government's inability to truly overhaul our broken healthcare system – which now leaves more than 46 million uninsured – is becoming all the more apparent.
Speaking before a joint session of Congress, Obama declared that a public option to compete with private insurers, considered vital by many liberals, was merely a "means to an end," and not essential to healthcare reform. Earlier this summer, a New York Times/CBS poll showed that 72 percent of Americans support a government-run healthcare plan. But Obama's speech last night indicates that while a bill will probably pass, prospects for comprehensive reform – the kind millions of Americans voted for – have dimmed rapidly. Insurance companies, which have given large donations to both political parties, are winning the fight in Washington.
The inability of a popular president with substantial majorities in Congress to pass a progressive health bill is immensely frustrating to healthcare activists, and to all who gave Obama a mandate for change.
But their cause is not lost – they just need a new strategy.
The Democrats are facing serious political troubles and they only have themselves to blame.
Too often throughout the years, and especially during the Bush II Administration, the Democrats supported horrendous Republican policies: the War in Iraq; the Patriot Act - twice; some of them even supported the Military Commissions Act, described by the New York Times as "our generation's Alien & Sedition Act."
And sure enough, now that they Democrats have a supermajority in Congress, control the White House and have the Republican Party as close to dead as one can remember, their capitulations to the worst elements of Bush's policies have reared their ugly head. And it may come at the expense of much of their agenda, which now includes a desperately needed overhaul of our broken healthcare system.
The most recent and pressing example of this is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's political troubles regarding the CIA and torture. Pelosi, according to Republicans and CIA director Leon Panetta (who, it is worth noting, as former chief of staff to President Clinton and an Obama appointee, is a partisan Democrat), was briefed on US waterboarding in 2002 and is now lying about it.
It is unclear exactly how much political damage this will do to Pelosi, President Obama and the Democratic Party's agenda, but it could be considerable.The Democrats, just a few weeks ago, controlled the agenda and the news cycle in almost every conceivable way. Healthcare reform looked more and more like a possibility as even insurance companies were seeing the writing on the wall. One of the most popular presidents in recent history was able to pass a mammoth Keynesian stimulus package that would have been thought inconceivable just a few months before he took office.
And now, due to Pelosi's past transgressions, the news cycle will be dominated with talk of how the House Speaker — the woman in charge of the party's legislative agenda — stood by an did nothing about torture she knew was going on, and is now lying about it.And she now faces the wrath of an amazingly diverse group of constituencies: most of the left and the right, the Republicans, civil libertarians and the CIA, to name just a few.
In fact, the CIA — who has been exposed for some of the most sinister plots ever conceived — is twice as popular as the House Speaker. You can't make this stuff up.
If I am the GOP I am sending her flowers with a note that says "thanks for giving us six months of a news cycle where the Democrats are pro-torture liars ...P.S. Good luck with healthcare reform."
Indeed, one can't help but notice the glee on Newt Gingrich's face as he chastises Pelosi for her pro-torture stance. And while I certainly do not covet the idea of Republicans gaining a much-needed political boost from Pelosi's pathetic meanderings, it is hard to imagine how this won't damage Pelosi and the Democrats considerably.
As the Politico reported, "For Democrats pushing an investigation into potential criminal wrongdoing in the war on terrorism, the GOP now has a two-word response: Nancy Pelosi." At this point, it is not unreasonable to question if she remains Speaker of the House in 2010.
But make no mistake: this is a self-inflicted wound. Pelosi could have stood up and challenged torture in 2003 if she so chose.But one can imagine her fear at telling a post 9-11 society that you want to protect the Constitution and, perhaps, some terrorist suspects, from the pillaging that the Bush Administration was about to inflict on them.
But such an action would have taken political courage, a rare commodity now as it was then.
This is indeed one of the great tragedies of recent years. The Bush Administration, as awful as it was, was given far too much leeway and sometimes even direct support for its failed and sinister policies from the Democrats, with a few notable exceptions.
And so, as the revelations of exactly how criminal thier actions were — be it from torture memos or biblically- themed classified defense memos — the Democrats cannot even seek justice and transparency on these issues, lest they incriminate themselves for their own complicity.
One might hope Barack Obama, who was not even serving in the federal government for much of the Bush-era crimes, would serve to try and protect himself — and his agenda — from the consequences of Democratic Party acquiescence to the Bush Administration, but the prospects do not look good.
And now we see the great flaw of our political system. The two parties share much of the same policies.And now they both must face the wrath of an angry public that opposes virtuallyall of these horrific policies.
The new era of change is upon us; a new party is in charge.But, to channel George Orwell, it is simply hard too tell the pigs apart from the humans.
When Howard Dean’s presidential campaign floundered in 2004, many thought his days as a major player in politics were over. Four years later, Dean is credited for having rejuvenated not only his own political reputation, but also for contributing to the Democrats recent takeover of Washington.
It was more than four years ago that Howard Dean put an exclamation point of his sinking presidential campaign, with his now infamous “scream speech” after the New Hampshire primary in 2004. The speech featured a dejected Dean, coming off of a crippling second-place finish, screaming something along the lines of “yeeaargh” as he listed off a large chunk of the remaining states in the union that he was hoping to win.
Contrary to the ruminations of many pundits, the scream is not what did Dean in. The New Hampshire primary effectively ended his hopes for the nomination. Nonetheless, it was this speech that came to define Dean and his campaign.
But now, in the wake of an historic election which saw President-elect Barack Obama pull out a blowout win that included victories in traditionally red states, Howard Dean seems to have found redemption -amongst his party, its supporters and, in some instances, the media.
Earlier this week, as expected, Dean stepped down from his post as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. As speculation abounds over Dean’s future and his prospects for a cabinet level position in an Obama administration, it is worth looking into his role in this presidential election and in the Democratic Party’s campaign apparatus. Dean, by many accounts, deserves credit for two major elements of the Obama campaign and the Democratic domination of Congress: the implementation of the 50-state-strategy and his role in the growth of the “Netroots” which has grown into a crucial fundraising tool for the party establishment.
The road to the chairmanship
When Dean took the chairman job in 2005 it was viewed as a fairly benign post that provided little opportunities for its holder to shape the direction of the Democratic Party in any meaningful way. The Party was coming off an embarrassing presidential loss to President Bush, after a lackluster campaign led by John Kerry that failed to take advantage of growing anti-war sentiment that had been fostering among the country, and would eventually catapult the Democrats into power in the legislative branch during the 2006 mid-term elections.
Dean had previously attempted to harness this energy into his presidential campaign, and for a while was quite successful. Weeks before the New Hampshire primary, Dean was leading in the polls. But, in the days before the primary, his stock started plummeting dramatically. Democrats feared Dean would be unelectable in the general election and members of the democratic establishment were resistant to Dean and went on the attack.
While Dean’s liberalism was often overstated (he is actually a fiscal conservative and a staunch drug warrior), he and his supporters represented something of a shift from the centrist, pro-business wing of the party that had dominated it for much of the 1990s and early 2000s.
Channeling the words of the late Sen. Paul Wellstone, Dean would argue that he was “from the Democratic wing of the Democratic party.”
But this line of thought did not sit well with the party establishment, the most powerful of whom (Bill and Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards, Joe Lieberman etc …) had aligned themselves with the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), a group which was started in 1984 in reaction to Ronald Reagan’s blowout win over George McGovern in the 1984 presidential election. The basic goal of the DLC was to move the party to the right, especially on matters of economics and foreign policy, under the theory that this was the only way to curb Republican dominance of the federal government.
The DLC sharply attacked Dean, saying he was from “The McGovern-Mondale wing” of the Party, defined “principally by weakness abroad and elitist, interest group liberalism at home.” In July of that year, Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, then- chairman of the DLC, said “The [Bush] Administration is being run by the far-right. The Democratic Party is in danger of being taken over by the far left.” They also joked about Dean’s web site following by asking: “Will he be the next dot com bust?”
The extent to which the “New Democrats” derailed the Dean presidential campaign is debatable, but as the world recalls, Kerry won the primary, called for a surge of 40,000 troops in Iraq, and lost to Bush in an election that was close (and, as an aside, controversial).
The Democratic Party, reeling from a woeful election which also saw the Republicans extend their control of both the House and Senate, had little to look forward to, but the race for DNC chairman did illicit some interest from Democrats, despite the fact that the position was widely viewed as essentially toothless.
In retrospect, it turned out to be a crucial moment for the Democratic Party, whose members never could have foreseen the drastic turnaround that was ahead.
Dean’s victory
The outgoing DNC chairman, Terry McAuliffe was a loyal Clintonite and fundraiser extraordinaire, who perhaps more than anyone in recent memory, epitomized the term “Washington Insider.” And clearly, the idea of replacing McAullife with Dean, the former Governor of Vermont, did not sit well with the same crowd that sought to kill Dean’s presidential campaign.
“Political and media elites in Washington are at once horrified and dismissive of Dean’s quest. They insist that Democrats would be crazy to pick a raving liberal like Dean as their next party chairman,” wrote Mark Hertsgaard in Salon, as Dean was campaigning for chairman. “But as is so often the case, this inside-the-Beltway conventional wisdom is based on dubious ‘facts’ and assumptions about how ordinary Americans relate to politics. Dean is exactly the leader Democrats need to become relevant again.”
Dean was a threat to the party insiders for several reasons and his pseudo-liberalism was only one of them. More worrisome to the Democrat elite was his opinion on the way the Democratic Party should campaign. Dean had long argued that Democrats should pour resources into all 50 states - whether they lean Republican or Democrat - in order to build a sustainable party that would not cede the South in every election. He famously said that Democrats should look to win over “guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks,” on top of the supporters the party already had. Dean was chastised by many Democrats for the remark, much like he was chastised for his early opposition to the War in Iraq, but, as Hertsgaard observed, “in view of how many centrist voters chose President Bush over John Kerry, even though Kerry’s economic policies would have benefited them more, Dean’s call to reach out to culturally conservative voters was prescient.”
Establishment types such as Rahm Emanuel and James Carville were adamantly opposed to the plan, preferring rather to focus their resources on states that the Democrats were traditionally competitive in. Former Bill Clinton advisor Paul Begala suggested that Dean’s plan was “just hiring a bunch of staff people to wander around Utah and Mississippi and pick their nose.”
“The point of a political party is not to hire people, it is to elect people,” Carville would later quip to the Christian Science Monitor.
Nonetheless, Dean proved triumphant and won the chairmanship. His main challengers, Donnie Fowler and Simon Rosenberg, dropped out when it became clear Dean would prevail. Members of the party shifted gears, perhaps thinking that business-as-usual had led John Kerry to what many thought was an inexcusable defeat. And the 50-state strategy, for better or worse, went into effect.
The elections
The basic theory of the 50-state strategy was to carve out a long-term strategy for success. This strategy worked for the Republicans in the past. Despite getting blown out in the 1964 presidential election (Lyndon Johnson vs. Barry Goldwater), Republicans had set the table for later success, which they found in the 1980s when Ronald Reagan unseated Jimmy Carter.
Few predicted that Democrats were in a position to take red states in the 2006 midterm elections, and take control of both chambers. Yet, that is exactly what happened in 2006. Jim Webb, defeated incumbent George Allen (who did his best to help the Democrats with his [11] racist comments on the stump); Jon Tester took a senate seat in Montana; Rick Santorum was taken down by John Casey in Pennslyvania; and the Democrats came tantalizingly close to stealing Tennessee from Bob Corker.
While at the time many hailed Dean for his vision, amazingly, members of the old guard still resisted. Carville, amazingly, said Dean should have been “dumped” for his part in the 2006 election, arguing that the Democrats would have won many more House seats had the old system been in place. He added that Dean was, “Rumsfeldian in its competence.”
But just a few weeks ago the Democrats again had great success in red states, winning the presidency for the first time since 1996 and expanding their majorities in Congress considerably; Dean’s strategy is lauded once again, and if James Carville is calling out Dean for ineptitude, he is doing it out of the public eye.
Of course, not all of the credit should go to the 50-state strategy. The Democrats ran on an anti-war platform in 2006 (though, it is worth noting, they did not follow through on it) and took advantage of Bush’s dismal approval rankings and the unpopularity of the war. In 2008, they were helped dramatically by an economic crisis that most blame on Republican policies (though both parties have largely supported deregulation in recent decades). More importantly, the Democrats have also worked with massive fundraising advantages in the last two elections. President-elect Barack Obama, for example, benefited mightily from online donations from grassroots supporters.
And this - the rise of the Internet fundraising apparatus that has helped sweep the Democrats into power - can also be attributed, in no small way, to Dean’s previous efforts.
Dean and the Netroots
Flash back to 2003, in the early stages of the 2003 presidential primary. Howard Dean’s long-shot campaign, while shunned by many in the party, was finding favor with a relatively young group of liberals, who spent a good deal of their time posting their musings on the web. One such person was Markos Moulitsas, founder of the one of the most popular political blogs in America, Dailykos.com.
Moulitsas, known on his blog as “kos,” was described at the time as “an obscure blogger” by rival campaigns. But, while he was obscure to some, his blog was one of many that were growing rapidly as they made an effort to use the Internet to push the Democratic Party to the left. These blogs, which also included sites like mydd.com and atrios.com, would later come to be known as The Netroots. In time The New Republic, a magazine that has not traditionally been an ally of the liberal blogs, would call this phenomenon “the most important mass movement in U.S. politics.”
When Kos was asked to assist the Dean campaign, he wrote: “The Dean campaign wants to prove that the Internet can and will change the way campaigns are organized and run.” Four and half years later, it is hard to argue that Dean was not right. The Netroots has become a major source of fundraising for the party, not to mention a popular place for liberals to pontificate online.
And Barack Obama, a shrewd politician no doubt, jumped at the opportunity to use this to his advantage (so too, did John Edwards, who hired Joe Trippi, Dean’s campaign manager in 2004, to run his failed 2008 presidential run).
Obama has 2.4 million friends of Facebook, has been watched on YouTube four times as much as John McCain, and ended up raising hundreds of millions of dollars as a result of the Internet, much of it coming from small donors. These circumstances led some to call Obama, “The First Internet President.”
As one writer for The Root observed: “On my.barackobama, nearly 30,000 user-created electronic mailing lists, such as Harlem for Obama or Filmmakers for Obama, coordinated largely spontaneous activities of local, national- and issue-based groups. Group members could talk directly to each other and coordinate independent campaign efforts that ranged from sharing informal personal stories to planning big-ticket fundraisers, getting together for modest debate watching parties and organizing mammoth weekend get-out-the-vote efforts.”
This is exactly the kind of service the “liberal blogosphere” had been doing (and still are) for years. Raising money online and allowing the development of a community of supporters to organize online. And this is a method that was first popularized by one Howard Dean. This is not lost on those who forged this path. Following the election, Moulitsas wrote: “One of my goals the next few weeks is to make sure that Howard Dean gets his due props and, by extension, all of us who fought to make Dean’s vision a reality,”
The future for Dean and the Democrats
While Obama clearly benefited from Dean’s work, there is still a question as to how Obama govern, and who he will listen to as President. While some speculate that Dean may be up for a Cabinet position, it was Rahm Emmanuel, an adversary of Dean, who was appointed chief of staff. And while it was Dean’s opposition to the War in Iraq that made him a relevant figure, Obama’s aides told the Wall Street Journal that he plans on leaving some troops in Iraq indefinitely. In 2006, Obama also supported pro-war Democrat Joe Lieberman over Ned Lamont, who at the time was the biggest Netroots sensation since Dean. This, again, showed that Obama is by means toeing the line that many prominent progressive bloggers would prefer.
So even with Dean’s great success, it is not clear what direction the party will take. But, even though we may not know what the next era of Democratic Party politics will look like, we do know that it is an era that may have never seen the light of day, if it weren’t for the groundwork laid by Howard Dean and his earliest supporters.
Phil Primeau is right to point out that Barack Obama does have a somewhat curious cross-party appeal. However, this support — like Obama's campaign — seems a little empty.
For example, his piece does not point out one specific policy position that would make Obama attractive to Republicans or to anyone. This is not Primeau's fault: Obama does not care much for policy specifics, but rather enjoys vague platitudes about the "politics of hope" (his words) and "a place of stable jobs, amiable foreign relations (that is) not paralyzed by baby boomer culture wars" (Primeau's words).
Primeau mentions Andrew Sullivan's piece in the Atlantic, (Goodbye to All That, December 2007)), which, I would argue, was an assault to serious journalism and smart political engagement. In fact, Sullivan even admits that the logic behind an Obama candidacy “has little to do with his policy proposals.”
He writes:
“Obama’s candidacy in this sense is a potentially transformational one. Unlike any of the other candidates, he could take America—finally—past the debilitating, self-perpetuating family quarrel of the Baby Boom generation that has long engulfed all of us.”
This is just silly, Chris Matthews-esque politico hero worship. This worldview asserts that charisma and so-called “intangible” leadership qualities are more important that how one would run the country. And sadly it is dominant in the media’s coverage of US national politics. And we wonder why most American voters don’t really care about issues (AP IPSOS 3.11.2007). And this is without getting into the fact that Obama really has no proposals that appeal to the left either. His health care proposal is a continuing of the status quo; and he, like Hillary Clinton, is totally Rubinized with virtually no new economic ideas.
And this is what I think is at the root of Obama “cross-party appeal.” Indeed, not being Hillary is a good thing. But it doesn’t make him a good presidential candidate – and certainly not a “transformational” one.
The talented Derrick Jackson (who I had the pleasure of working with at the Globe) says Dennis Kucinich has it right on health care.
Dennis Kucinich rarely gets much airtime in Democratic presidential debates. That was underscored recently when ABC’s George Stephanopoulos called on him in an Iowa forum to talk about God. Kucinich said, “George, I’ve been standing here for the last 45 minutes praying to God you were going to call on me.”
With poll numbers at 1 or 2 percent, the Ohio congressman is the nudge kicking at the knees of the Democratic Party to offer more than incremental change. He deserves more attention than he gets. On healthcare, he says what Americans believe, even as his rivals rake in contributions from the industry.
And come to think of it, health care is not the only issue where the Kuc is right. He is, and has long been, right about Iraq. So here we have a candidate that is right on the two most pressing concerns for the country -- let alone Democratic primary voters -- who is dismissed as a fringe candidate and polls at 1-2 percent. Something is seriously wrong with the way we handle elections in this country.
First a few quick notes on The Iowa Debate was on this morning. You have to admit John Edwards puts the other Democratic candidates in a tough position when he forces Dodd, Clinton et al to admit that they will take money from lobbyists.
But Richardson is the winner so far today. His campaign is flailing, but he is doing something right when he notes that residual forces in Iraq is a bad idea. I was glad that the moderator, George Stephanopoulos, pressed the other candidates on the issue. (Gravel: "This is American imperialism here.") I was very dissapointed in Edward's "Any Democratic president will end this war" response. That is simply untrue. Most of them will leave residual forces and have no plans for private military contractors, which now make up almost half of the troops. But Richardson made Clinton, Edwards, Obama all look hawkish -- and in doing so appeals himself to the base. Moreover, he forced a rare substantive discussion.
Unfortunately, the rest of the debate was fairly unhelpful. The religion question irritates me. Watching eight of them try to out pray each other seems out of place. Gravel's response was somewhat humanistic, which appealed to me.
I was also pleased to see Dodd mention media concentration. This ought to be a huge campaign issue and I wish Clinton would get pressed more on it. She is cozy with Rupert Murdoch and the Clinton Administration passed the awful Telecommunication Act of 1996 which has led the way for unprecedented concentration of media ownership.
It is not often I agree with the Washington Post's editorial page (see here) -- but this editorial about the Democrats weak-kneed capitulation on warrantless wiretaps is on point.
Meanwhile Jim Webb gives a lame explanation. Indeed the 110th Congress has been beyond disappointing.
The Absurdity of Modern Discourse: The Democrats and Gay Marriage
By Michael Corcoran
Last year when an amendment to ban gay marriage was debated in the House, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) gave a passionate speech on the floor. “I take it personally when people decide to take political batting practice with my life,” he said.
It was a sharp retort to the Republicans in congress whose disdain for marriage equality, and their desire to have discrimination written into the constitution, has sadly become a staple of modern-day conservatism. It is not merely a position that legislators take, but a political tool used to scare the population into believing that gay marriage would destroy the "sanctity of marriage" and lead the country into a cesspool of moral chaos. Rick Santorum went so far as to say that homosexuality is a step towards bestiality.
(Being from Massachusetts where gays are allowed to marry, I can report that Santorum's bigoted projections have blissfully not come to fruition)
So now that the Democrats are in control of the legislative branch and look well poised to take the White House in 2008, one might hope that gays would be optimistic that the 14th amendment, which guarantees equal rights for all US citizens, will soon be applied to them.
Not so fast.
Sadly, most of the Democratic candidates, including the three frontrunners, oppose gay marriage. At the recent “You Tube” debate, a couple from Brooklyn named Mary and Jen asked the candidates if they would, should they be elected president, “allow us to be married to each other?" Barack Obama, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton – all seemingly too concerned about the political consequences of taking that stance – had to find a way to say no to the couple. Only Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) could pointedly say “"Mary and Jen, the answer to your question is yes."
Edwards, whose wife Elizabeth has come out in favor of gay marriage, has said he has yet "to cross that bridge yet," Obama observes that "his Christian beliefs dictate that marriage should be between a man and a woman." Clinton "firmly" opposes gay marriage.
The Democratic frontrunner’s refusal to support equality for gays, while disappointing, is hardly a surprise. In 2004, both John Kerry and John Edwards opposed gay marriage, instead giving their support to consolation prize that is the “civil union.”
In 1996, when Bill Clinton passed the Defense of Marriage Amendment, a law that, according to the New York Times, says states and the federal government do not have to recognize gay marriages and unions from other states, Hillary Clinton supported it “without exception.”
This moral paralysis was on display earlier this year when General Peter Pace said that "homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral.” Reporters quickly asked the Democratic frontrunners for their thoughts on the issue. "I am going to leave that to others to conclude," said Sen. Clinton, who clearly didn’t feel she could answer the question without consulting her political advisors first. Obama was likewise frozen, and simply refused to respond to repeated questions about his position on the issue. After a couple days of angry letters, both candidates made statements expressing their disagreements with Pace, but the message was not lost on the public. “[W]hat's a little bigotry in the name of campaign season moderation?" asked Jonathan Stein of Mother Jones.
When the Democrats act with such cowardly trepidation they only serve in helping the anti-gay undercurrent of the modern conservative movement. But there is good news: the young people of this country have shown a tolerance towards gays that is unprecedented. A poll released by Pew earlier this year which surveyed people born between 1981 and 1988 showed that more people supported gay marriage than opposed it, with more than 60 percent believing that gays should be able to adopt children. Both of these numbers are substantially higher than older demographics, and show a sea change in thinking on the issue of gay rights. (It is also worth noting young people are also by far the most tolerant of immigrants, interracial marriage and atheists.)
There was a time in this country when there was so-called serious debate over whether or not women should have the right to vote, or if blacks should subjugated and enslaved. The fact that these issues were once debatable in America is now universally understood as a national embarrassment. And there is every reason to believe, that as young people grow up to become the power brokers of this country, the debate over whether or not gays should be allowed to marry will be viewed in much the same way.
When this day comes, the Democrats who today oppose equal rights for gays will be remembered through the lens of history as enablers of discrimination—from a time when “playing batting practice with people lives” was, sadly, a bipartisan phenomenon.
The dismissal of the US attorneys controversy is indeed an unsettling series of events, but is it really the one the Democrats should pursue against Bush with the most vigor?
If you look closely at today's Times article on last night's debate there are a couple of not-so-curious omissions. The words "Kucinich" and "Gravel" are nowhere to be found.
They don't even bother mentioning them dismissively.
I was worried that with the Democrats grabbing control of Congress, Keith Olberman may become a bit too easy on Democrats. His January interview with Hillary Clinton did little to change that.
But a recent "Special Comment" -- easily his most powerful one yet -- is a pretty harsh condemnation of the Democratic leadership, and rightly so.
The Democratic leadership has agreed to finance the deaths of Americans in a war that has only reduced the security of Americans; The Democratic leadership has given Mr. Bush all that he wanted, with the only caveat being, not merely meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government, but optional meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government.
[...]
You, the men and women elected with the simplest of directions—Stop The War—have traded your strength, your bargaining position, and the uniform support of those who elected you… for a handful of magic beans.
Harry Reid talking about the Bush-Democrats Showdown:
"For him to talk about something being unconstitutional, that's a little unusual, and I don't want to get into the other things that have been done with this administration which have clearly been unconstitutional," Reid said.
Um, why the hell not Harry? As a member of a branch of government that is a check on executive power, isn't that your job?
The debate over the Democrats approach to the war rages on amongst the left.
One hand you have William Greider, who in The Nation, hails the legislation as historic.
Take a deep breath. The nation has arrived at an extraordinary political moment. The Congress is about to instruct the President he should withdraw from the ongoing war. Yes, I know the fine print in the House and Senate versions has lots of wiggle room. But the congressional action is still breathtaking when you think about it, possibly without historic precedent.
I assumed it would take many months and numerous failed efforts for the new Democratic majority to reach this juncture. When House leaders kept softening their terms, I even thought it might be a good thing for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to lose the first time around. She would then be assailed by outraged Americans and get the message: stiffen up, this is not business as usual. I was mistaken. Many of the final details are disappointing, but the message has been delivered and received--get out of Iraq. It will rule politics until the American exit actually occurs.
But what Greider calls "wiggle room" others call outright capitulation -- "a complete farce."
Having been one of the unfortunate geeks who actually read the bill, I can tell you only one thing -- it’s a complete farce.
In order for troops to come home the Bushies would have to confirm whether or not “progress” had been made in Iraq, not Congress. So with more money in hand and sole authority on deciding whether or not the war in going as planned, the White House, even if Bush signed the bill, would never have to end the thing. The proposal wasn’t a compromise as many have claimed, but a dagger in the heart of all those of us who want to bring this war to a screeching halt.
As I noted several days ago, reasonable people can be conflicted on how to approach the legislative end of this issue. But it is quite clear that the Iraq supplemental bill, even if it were to survive as it stands, does not and will not serve to end the war. Knowing this, those of us who oppose the continuation of this criminally misguided occupation would be wise to continue to pressure our representatives.
Matt Stoller notes that while Hillary Clinton has kept command of the race, there seems to be too much quiet out in the wilderness.
Hillary Clinton, while no George Bush, cannot by any measure be considered an anti-war candidate. So I'm wondering, and this is the big danger to our party, why there isn't more of a profound concern about how dangerous she really is. Why aren't there PACs lined up against her stance on the war? Why are donors rushing in to support her? Why are her supporters going along with the fiction that opposition to her candidacy comes from some blind hatred of Clinton instead of a real disagreement with her policy choices and her judgment, both of which are demonstrably bad for America and the Democratic Party? Why aren't local bloggers demanding she answer questions at events? Why does Vilsack get off scot-free for endorsing her?
We're having a big fight over a supplemental bill, which we all know can only bring the date of the war's end closer but cannot end the war before Bush leaves office. And the fight is among a group of progressives who all agree on the ends but disagree on tactics. The amount of heat generated is high relative to concern about what happens in Iraq after 2009. That does seem to be where we actually have leverage. Whatever you think about the supplemental fight, our party's standard-bearer at this moment does not represent the party or the country.
What is going on with us Democrats? Are we really that stupid?
A fair question. Democrats elect a new Congress because they are fed up with income ineqaulity and the War in Iraq, and yet, they seem poised to choose the candidate who is the most friendly to big-business and the most hawkish on the War on Terror. It boggles the mind.
For a pretty solid analysis of the fine line Democrats are walking between finding a bill that will garner support, as opposed to one that will actually end the war, read John Nichol's latest post at The Online Beat. (A blog at The Nation)
So, in hopes of initially uniting Democrats and then creating a new center of gravity in the House that might see a significant number of Republicans sign on to a "troops home" measure, Pelosi and two of her closest allies, Appropriations Committee chair David Obey, D-Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania Congressman John Murtha, who chairs the Appropriations subcommittee charges with oversight of military spending, have set out to use the spending bill as a tool to reframe the debate about the war.
It is the sort of serious legislative move that gets points from government teachers but that leaves activists cold. And Pelosi has struggled to keep her balance in the face of fierce attacks from the White House and the Republican National Committee for trying to "micromanage" the war – GOP press releases refer to her deridingly as "General Pelosi" – and from progressives who say she is not doing enough to bring the troops home.
The essential objection to the legislation Pelosi, Obey and Murtha are pushing so aggressively is that it does not end the war. In fact, it funds the war for a year or more – perhaps even providing sufficient resources for the president to pursue his objectives until the end of his tenure in 2009.
Pelosi and her allies speak of establishing benchmarks and timelines designed to force the president's hand; "We are trying to end the authorization of the war if the Iraqis and the administration don't perform," says Obey, who got in trouble last week for referring to critics of the plan's caution as "idiot liberals."
Unfortunately for Obey and Pelosi, the "idiot liberals" have a point when they say that the Democratic leadership plan offers no assurance that U.S. troops will be extracted from Iraq in 2008.
There is an inclination for progressives to apologize and make excuses for Democrats. They did it for Kerry and Edwards in 2004 regarding their support for the war (among other things), and it is happening now in the case of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Caucus.
This pattern is born out of fear -- mainly of losing elections to Republicans. But this fear is unfounded. Americans want a new health care system, want better wages, and, most importantly want to end this war. And it is up to the progressive community to apply pressure to the Democrats, so that they adhere to the will of the people.
Referencing the latest Iraq War proposal by House Democrats, David Sirota, as he often does, hits the mark with this post.
To those automatons who are so blinded by partisan rage that they can’t see the need to pressure Democrats, I say that this new announcement [setting a date certain for leaving Iraq] by Democrats is a vindication for all of us who have tried - like studious movement participants - to hold both parties’ feet to the fire.
