I am happy to support individual Democrats, but the party is for all intents and purposes, as dead to me as the GOP. Those of you anti-Naderites who still nurse a grudge based on the childish notion that Nader's ego torpedoed Gore's presidency, well, feel free to say that I am claiming the GOP and Dems are equivalent. I'm not, but feel free to say it.
Following another brilliant post by Glenn Greenwald (diaried in this rec'd diary), as well as now on the front page, I have come across yet another instance--for the 4,237th time since the elections of 2006--of the rhetorical question, "Why aren't the Dems confronting this Administration?" or some variation. And I have come to the conclusion that there is only one credible answer: Dems (as a party) support this Administration remaining in power, exercising the right to
• wage war in Iraq,
• to bomb Iran,
• to ignore global warming,
• to jail innocents,
• to torture at will,
• to shred the Constitution,
• to spy on potential political adversaries,
• to take from the poor and give to the rich...
• even to making $1 actually equal 75¢
You see, I am a student of philosophy, including logic, and Occam's Razor (not to mention our own Ockham's Hatchet) is very important to me. It solves many mysteries in short order. The mystery in question is why Dems behave the way they do? Why not at least require 60 votes for a supporter of torture and extra-judicial behavior to become the man in charge of "justice"?
The answer is quite simple: Dems are not motivated by the same desire to protect our liberties through restoring the Constitution; they are not motivated by the absolute imperative of ending the adventure in Iraq; they are not motivated by their duty to confront the Administration's crimes. No, as Debbie Wasserman Schulz has pointed out so clearly (and so unscrupulously), they are motivated by purely partisan political interests. They have decided they are better off sticking with Bush than sticking with the "Netroots" or Americans.
I have to tell you that I would feel somewhat differently, but only somewhat differently, if there were two-and-a-half years left in the Bush Administration. But I think that we need to tough out the next 12 months and focus hard on the results-oriented Democratic Congress that we know we are and make sure that we deliver that new direction to the American people so that they reward us by electing more of our Democratic candidates to the 14 – now 14 – open Republican Congressional seats because they are giving up and bailing out.
Now the point here is that I don't think any results obtained by the "results-oriented" Congress mean diddly-squat if they are results numbers 241, 247 and 262 on the list which begins with results 1, 2, and 3: restore the Constitution, end the Iraq adventure, and hold the criminals to account so it cannot happen so easily again. Not to mention education, health care, global warming, basic equity in taxation, etc.
Sure there are differences between Ms. Wasserman-Schultz and her GOP opponents, but here's the problem: in the overall scheme of things, the differences between her positions and the GOP's positions are negligible and mean virtually nothing to me; meanwhile, the differences between our priorities and her's are almost irreconcilable.
While the Dems are still patting themselves on the back for Congress' 11% support, let me just remind everyone that with a Presidency, a war, an economy, a Consitution and a foreign profile all in tatters, anyone credible should be earning at least a 75% approval rating. The message is clear--Americans no longer support this most wretched of all Presidencies, but they can't bring themselve to support Dems, either. I will personally never trust another thing Sen. Schumer says, since, after all, despite being against torture, he voted to place a torturer in charge of the DoJ. Why should anyone trust this man?