The Premature Dirge for the Democrats' Chances in 2006
JIM KLOBUCHAR
The country's political psychiatrists are on the verge of burying the Democrats eight months ahead of the 2006 election.
The popular diagnosis reads like this: The Democrats are blowing their opportunities left and right with indecision and mediocre leadership. The Democrats are doing this against all odds, because Republicans right now are up to their eyeballs in graft and theft. At last count they lead the league in indictments, actual and pending, and we're still in the exhibition season. In fictionalizing documents like the federal budget and the true costs of a manufactured war, the Bush crowd has taken the art of broad-daylight fraud and fakery to heights previously unscaled. Its nominal leader is a president who needs a script to ask for the time of day. In the face of all of these temptations to actually win an election, we're told, the Democrats are falling all over themselves to gear up for combat.
We're getting this from smug Republicans, from sullen Democrats and even — are you sitting down? — from the New York Times.
It might be a little early to be sifting the ashes of a Democratic defeat in November, for two reasons:
The sheer weight of the Bush crowd's betrayal of law and the Constitution, its attempted destruction of the bedrock social contract between American government and the American people, may be enough to lift the public out of four years of comatose existence. This has been a dumbing-down process methodically inflicted on the American people by the Bush government and its media allies since 9/11.
But there's also evidence that the Democrats themselves, obviously without a whole lot of fanfare, may be working their way out of the debris with the oldest strategy in politics — the enlistment of credible, attractive candidates, including service veterans, with the energy and commitment to build trust with the voters.
The Democratic disarray in Congress isn't hard to explain. Who's going to lead what? The neocons run the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court. They didn't acquire all of these possessions legally, but they have them. Their goal is to create the conditions for a de facto emperor. The excuse is 9/11 and an open-ended "war on terror." This is not an actual war. It is a license to strangle opposition and to give cover to a power-driven gang that governs in secrecy. They put their attorney general before a congressional panel this week to explain why the government is breaking the law by wiretapping its citizens. The substance of his answer came down to something like this: I've been told not to answer your questions because I don't have to and you don't need to know.
I live in Minnesota. In the old days in February we maintained our muscle tone and hopeful outlooks on life by walking down to the lake to watch the ice melt. Today we do it in fitness centers. In the one I attend, a bank of television screens is strung out in front of the treadmill machines. There you can grip the handlebars and walk or run yourself into the bliss of exhaustion. You can also watch Fox News and CNN, side by side. This pairing once offered contrasting approaches to the news. It's changing. CNN is gradually going into the tank, selling out its newsgathering independence by swerving right in pursuit of better ratings and corporate approval. So I now ignore CNN to find out what Fox, the actual White House organ, is up to today. A day before they were banging the drums again for a war against Iran. It was the usual stuff, same technique as Iraq, softening up the viewers for whatever Cheney decides. But this day they were worried and seemed teed off because more than 50 former servicemen and women were running for Congress as Democrats.
The Democratic Party, somebody said, was actually recruiting some of these people.
Imagine that. Is this supposed by dirty politics? And why would the Democrats have to recruit them? The internet of today is filled with stories of men and women returning from combat, forced to battle for fair treatment and compensation. The stories are not an indictment of the Veterans Administration. What they reveal is the memory loss of a White House that exploits uniformed men and women as studio props for George Bush's speeches while it stonewalls veterans by underfunding the VA at the same time it is cutting the taxes of millionaires.
That night I attended a rally for women who will be running as Democrats for the Minnesota Legislature this year. They stood with other women who were incumbents. The hall was jammed. Campaign donations filled the baskets in the hallway. Among the candidates were two former service women, a couple of lawyers, teachers, businesswomen, mothers. Each gave a half-minute stump speech. This is a legislature where 13 new Democrats were elected in 2004 and came within one seat of reversing Republican control.
It isn't the Democrats who ought to be sweating out this election. They are going to wrangle over how to take the high ground on ending the war in Iraq. But what they have going into the campaign is the sight of a continuing feeding frenzy on the citizens' treasury by the politically privileged and the corporately powerful. The evidence of this is before us daily. It cannot be disguised or denied. Neither can the phony economic projections; the refusal to account for massive future expenses of the occupation of Iraq; the splay-footed bungling by this administration in all of major projects it has undertaken, from prescription drugs to Iraq to New Orleans; the daily deceits and smokescreens; the handouts to their enablers and the fairy tales about uplifting the millions left behind.
The Democrats don't need lock-step unity. They're not famous for it. What they need to do is open the public's eyes to what it has lost and is losing. They need to do it hard and straight, with feeling, and they need to do it every day.
The country's political psychiatrists are on the verge of burying the Democrats eight months ahead of the 2006 election.
The popular diagnosis reads like this: The Democrats are blowing their opportunities left and right with indecision and mediocre leadership. The Democrats are doing this against all odds, because Republicans right now are up to their eyeballs in graft and theft. At last count they lead the league in indictments, actual and pending, and we're still in the exhibition season. In fictionalizing documents like the federal budget and the true costs of a manufactured war, the Bush crowd has taken the art of broad-daylight fraud and fakery to heights previously unscaled. Its nominal leader is a president who needs a script to ask for the time of day. In the face of all of these temptations to actually win an election, we're told, the Democrats are falling all over themselves to gear up for combat.
We're getting this from smug Republicans, from sullen Democrats and even — are you sitting down? — from the New York Times.
It might be a little early to be sifting the ashes of a Democratic defeat in November, for two reasons:
The sheer weight of the Bush crowd's betrayal of law and the Constitution, its attempted destruction of the bedrock social contract between American government and the American people, may be enough to lift the public out of four years of comatose existence. This has been a dumbing-down process methodically inflicted on the American people by the Bush government and its media allies since 9/11.
But there's also evidence that the Democrats themselves, obviously without a whole lot of fanfare, may be working their way out of the debris with the oldest strategy in politics — the enlistment of credible, attractive candidates, including service veterans, with the energy and commitment to build trust with the voters.
The Democratic disarray in Congress isn't hard to explain. Who's going to lead what? The neocons run the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court. They didn't acquire all of these possessions legally, but they have them. Their goal is to create the conditions for a de facto emperor. The excuse is 9/11 and an open-ended "war on terror." This is not an actual war. It is a license to strangle opposition and to give cover to a power-driven gang that governs in secrecy. They put their attorney general before a congressional panel this week to explain why the government is breaking the law by wiretapping its citizens. The substance of his answer came down to something like this: I've been told not to answer your questions because I don't have to and you don't need to know.
I live in Minnesota. In the old days in February we maintained our muscle tone and hopeful outlooks on life by walking down to the lake to watch the ice melt. Today we do it in fitness centers. In the one I attend, a bank of television screens is strung out in front of the treadmill machines. There you can grip the handlebars and walk or run yourself into the bliss of exhaustion. You can also watch Fox News and CNN, side by side. This pairing once offered contrasting approaches to the news. It's changing. CNN is gradually going into the tank, selling out its newsgathering independence by swerving right in pursuit of better ratings and corporate approval. So I now ignore CNN to find out what Fox, the actual White House organ, is up to today. A day before they were banging the drums again for a war against Iran. It was the usual stuff, same technique as Iraq, softening up the viewers for whatever Cheney decides. But this day they were worried and seemed teed off because more than 50 former servicemen and women were running for Congress as Democrats.
The Democratic Party, somebody said, was actually recruiting some of these people.
Imagine that. Is this supposed by dirty politics? And why would the Democrats have to recruit them? The internet of today is filled with stories of men and women returning from combat, forced to battle for fair treatment and compensation. The stories are not an indictment of the Veterans Administration. What they reveal is the memory loss of a White House that exploits uniformed men and women as studio props for George Bush's speeches while it stonewalls veterans by underfunding the VA at the same time it is cutting the taxes of millionaires.
That night I attended a rally for women who will be running as Democrats for the Minnesota Legislature this year. They stood with other women who were incumbents. The hall was jammed. Campaign donations filled the baskets in the hallway. Among the candidates were two former service women, a couple of lawyers, teachers, businesswomen, mothers. Each gave a half-minute stump speech. This is a legislature where 13 new Democrats were elected in 2004 and came within one seat of reversing Republican control.
It isn't the Democrats who ought to be sweating out this election. They are going to wrangle over how to take the high ground on ending the war in Iraq. But what they have going into the campaign is the sight of a continuing feeding frenzy on the citizens' treasury by the politically privileged and the corporately powerful. The evidence of this is before us daily. It cannot be disguised or denied. Neither can the phony economic projections; the refusal to account for massive future expenses of the occupation of Iraq; the splay-footed bungling by this administration in all of major projects it has undertaken, from prescription drugs to Iraq to New Orleans; the daily deceits and smokescreens; the handouts to their enablers and the fairy tales about uplifting the millions left behind.
The Democrats don't need lock-step unity. They're not famous for it. What they need to do is open the public's eyes to what it has lost and is losing. They need to do it hard and straight, with feeling, and they need to do it every day.
Powered by Blogger
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home