A Respectful Dissent
I'm going to go out on a limb and disagree a bit with two of my favorite bloggers who also happen to be the most popular bloggers in the blogosphere. Let it never be said that I am a scared bunny Democrat.
First, let me just agree that deep sixing the idea of ideological purity in favor of partisanship is a really good one. We must accept that in order to win the presidency and achieve a majority in the congress the Democratic Party is going to have to welcome all stripes of Democrats, even the hated DLC. It's a fact of life kids.
On the other hand, Kos says:
We have become a party of appeasers, afraid to respond lest the Rove boogeyman jump out of the bushes and bite them in the rump. Dean helped kickstart a change in our party's culture, but it has temporarily receeded as the Kerry people consolidate their victory and take over the party apparatus. Kerry has rightly kept quiet as Bush digs his own grave, but where are our attack dog surrogates? Where are our Democrats being Democrats?
This, I think is unfair. They are out there every day doing exactly what we are exhorting them to do:
Sen. Edward Kennedy launched a blistering election-year attack on the Bush administration's candor and honesty Monday, saying President Bush has created "the largest credibility gap since Richard Nixon."
The Massachusetts Democrat said that Iraq was never a threat to the United States and that Bush took the country to war under false pretenses, giving al Qaeda two years to regroup and plant terrorist cells throughout the world.
"Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam," Kennedy said at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.
Responding to the criticism, Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt called the veteran lawmaker the "lead political hatchet man" for Sen. John Kerry's campaign, adding that if it had been up to Kennedy, "Saddam Hussein would not be in prison but would still be in power."
[...]
Cong. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), a member of Congress since 1971 and a Korean war combat veteran, today called for the impeachment of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld unless he resigns or President Bush removes him from office...
I think America and the world want us to show the outrage not with rhetoric but with action! And, if the President does not fire Secretary Rumsfeld, or if he does not resign, I think it is the responsibility of this Congress to file articles of impeachment and force him to out of office. Then, the whole world will know - not just the military - not just Americans, but the whole world will know what we stand for!"
[...]
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will unleash a broad indictment of the Bush administration’s Iraq policies at a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors today.
Her speech will be a stinging rebuke of the process that led to war, the White House’s immediate reconstruction plans and its schedule and strategy for transferring sovereignty in just 74 days.
[...]
While campaigning for John Kerry in Georgia today, Senator Max Cleland made the following statement in response to the right wing attacks:
For Saxby Chambliss, who got out of going to Vietnam because of a trick knee, to attack John Kerry as weak on the defense of our nation is like a mackerel in the moonlight that both shines and stinks.
[...]
MARGARET WARNER: Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin went to the Senate floor this morning to slam what he called "the Republican attack machine on John Kerry."
[...]
The fact that the media doesn't cover these thing widely (or that the blogosphere doesn't give a shit either) doesn't mean they aren't doing it.
Kos:
And it's not just them. The whole party apparatus, from top to bottom, is afraid. No Democrats talk about taking back the House. "Not until 2012" I'm told. And it's just recently that Democrats have started talking optimistic about the Senate, even though it's been ours to lose for a while.
Republicans are always confident of victory, even when they have little chance in hell. It's a problem when those idiots take us to war based on lies and best-case scenarios and all, but politically, it works. Our side needs a little backbone. It needs a little optimism. It needs to remember that the (D) next to their name means something larger than "little (R)".
This has nothing to do with ideology, whether you are a moderate or progressive or conservative or whatever. It has everything to do with establishing a clear and confident party identity. We still don't have one, and we won't have one so long as the party continues to run scared anytime a Republican says "boo!".
Our entire Party "apparatus," from top to bottom, is afraid. We have no backbone. We have no identity. Other than that, though, we are clearly the best qualified to run the country while the world is blowing up around us.
Why would Americans who are not already partisan Democrats vote for a Party whose rank and file members believe they have no identity and who run scared of Republicans, much less Osama bin laden? I'm not even sure why I would vote for such a party and I'm as partisan as it gets.
But then, I don't actually see the Democratic Party this way. Basically, it is assumed that the Party is a big loser because we are a bunch of sissies when in fact, the Democratic party won the last 3 presidential elections and is out of power in the congress by a mere handful of seats. And the fact that we aren't in the oval office today and aren't in control of the Senate is not because we are cowards.
But, there are reasons, and it behooves us to figure out what they really are.
Here's David Brock from his interview yesterday in Salon:
One of the most frightening experiences I have had in recent years in talking with rank-and-file Democrats is the extent to which they unconsciously internalize right-wing propaganda. To add insult to injury, too many Democrats have a tendency to blame the victims of these smears -- their own leaders -- rather than addressing the root of the problem. For instance, when Senator Daschle made the factual statement that "failed" diplomacy had led to war with Iraq, right-wing media accused him of siding with Saddam Hussein. The ensuing controversy caused many Democrats to think Daschle had put his foot in his mouth.
Check out Buzzflash on any given day over the last two years and you will find some kind of nasty, demeaning over-the-top headline about Daschle. When he came out swinging, it was "Finally, Daschle shows some cojones," even though he often came out swinging. And there was almost no understanding of the fact that a legislative Party leader has to be more than just a liberal partisan. His job also requires him to help red state Senators get re-elected. I know that isn't something we liberals are happy about, but it is a reality and Daschle deserved a lot better from the left wing of his own party.
My fellow Democrats, this endless criticism of the Party for being too timid is naively playing into their hands. The problem is not the Democratic Party. It is the Republican Party and the media that serves them. This "Democrats are a buncha pussies" meme comes right out of the Mighty Wurlitzer.
The Party's identity is as clear as its ever been. It's the party of fairness, freedom, opportunity and equality for all Americans, not just the few. That this has been distorted by 30 years of highly focused GOP propaganda is not surprising. But, this is what we've stood for since FDR and the only thing that's happened is that the Republicans have managed to convince a whole lot of people that Democrats are too cowardly to keep their towns and country safe, it is in their best interest for rich people not to pay taxes and that they won't be able to practice their religion if civil society doesn't become more religious.
This whole "we have met the enemy and he is us" business is looking inward when the most important thing we can do is start to look outward and deal practically and pragmatically with the real problem we are confronting --- an American public that is incresingly subject to right wing propaganda and a media that is more than happy to give it to them.
I don't have a problem criticizing outrageous examples of appeasement in the Party, like those of Lieberman and Miller. They are what they are and we have nothing to lose by exposing them. Neither do I have a problem criticizing Kerry or his advisors on strategy or policy. That's politics.
But, what I object to is criticizing the character of the Democratic Party in general and insulting the characters of Democrats specifically, who don't need to be called cowards all the time when they are in there fighting the good fight while we sit safely behind our keyboards and monitors dispensing advice.
There are real problems to be solved if we do win this election. And it is going to be very tough to do what needs to be done in the current environment.
As Brock warns in his excerpt:
With the right-wing media now a seemingly permanent and defining feature of the media landscape, if Democrats cut through the propaganda and win back the White House in 2004, they still face the prospect of being brutally slammed and systematically slandered in such a way that will make governing exceedingly difficult. There should be no doubt that the right-wing media's wildings of 1993 -- which led to Clinton's impeachment four years later -- will be replayed over and over again until its capacities to spread filth are somehow eradicated.
This is the central political problem of our times, not the alleged cowardice of the Democratic Party.
It's not smart to help them spread their memes. Nor is it a good use of our energy and passion to put a reformation of the Democratic Party at the top of the agenda as if we were a hundred votes shy of a majority in the House and under the thumb of a filibuster proof Senate.
We've been out of the White House for only four years and even that was the result of masterful GOP manipulation of the media and their unprecedented willingness to use the levers of power (and the threat of civil insurrection) in Florida and the Supreme Court.
We are not in the wilderness, we are in a death match for the soul of the United States of America at a time of enormous instability in the world (made far, far worse by Republicans) and a usurpation of democracy at home (at the hands of Republicans.) Our character isn't the question in this political battle. Theirs is.
And I would suggest that one of the first things we need to do a lot more of is what Atrios advises instead of calling Democratic politicians cowards all the time:
... the best way to encourage them is to support them when they go out on a limb.