Party Unity

The Democratic Party, long known for eating its own in vicious infighting have turned over a new leaf. In a desperate move to regain the majority in congress and hampered by a thrice-failed “stand for nothing” strategy, they are clinging hopelessly to politicians who have long ago worn out their welcome in the mind of American voters.

In response to the open revolt of fed up Democratic party members, Rahm Emmanuel, when he is not destroying the campaigns of progressives, is strong-arming the few remaining credentialed liberals and popular Democrats into holding their noses and stumping for damaged goods like Joe Lieberman and sly misleaders like Maria Cantwell.

McCain/Feingold was a “gold mine” for political parties. Thanks to the limitation on individual contributions and the relaxation of limits on soft money, party leaders are in control of horde of cash. Incumbents know that if they want party support for their next campaign or for their presidential ambitions, they are going to have to embrace the Judases among them.

Bill Clinton, won’t run again but his wife will most certainly try, making him an easy target to push the clueless and craven party leader’s big money agenda.
I don’t know if it’s all the time he has been spending with the Bush Sr. or as Matt Stoller says, it’s no longer the nineties, but the big dog’s coat has lost its luster. A man out of time and out of rhyme.

In going to bat for a candidate like Joe Lieberman, whose campaign is floundering as much from his elitist voting record and closeness to Bush as his position on the Iraq war,
he is surely abandoning the populist message of his presidency as well as contradicting his own record of a measured response to threat.

He told his audience that they shouldn’t let war divide us; that Democrats should unite to concentrate on taking back Congress.

Well, his audience isn’t divided and neither are Democratic voters.
At least 80% of Democrats think this war is wrong and strongly object to it continuing. It’s Bill, Hillary, Lieberman, the DLC, corporate bagmen like Emmanuel and their wholly owned members of Congress that need to do the uniting and pull the plug on this failed chapter of PNAX dogma for us.

Isn’t Clinton saying, ever so politely, that we ought let ourselves be knuckled under by a handful of losers who are suffering from the GOP amoral/inhumanity virus?

Not only are Democrats unified, but the nation is unified.
64% or so of Americans think it’s time to go home. In a nation this large and diverse that suffers from spineless pro war media, that’s a home run.

Hell, 50% of Americans still believe that we a found the weapons of mass destruction and that Saddam Hussiein had a hand in 9-11. Almost all those who are not getting soul wrecking rich off the war support it because they hold these misapprehensions.
Do the Democratic strategists think that the 36% that still support the war are going be more enthusiastic about staying in Iraq when they realize they’ve been hoodwinked?
Do they think that support for the war will grow along with the pile of body bags, amputees, PTSD victims and insupportable debt?

Having a Democratic majority in congress is no panacea. Since his retirement, Bill obviously hasn’t been tracking how Congressional Democrats vote. Lieberman and far too many other Democrats vote like Republicans and perform oversight like Republicans. .
So why exactly should we return these people to Washington? So they can screw us in another orifice?

If the ranks of Democrats aren’t swelled with the likes of Ned Lamont, having a Democratic congress won’t make a dime’s worth of difference. We’ll still have wars and more wars, class warfare, a flaccid economy, mind boggling corruption and one system of justice for ordinary American and other for the racketeers running the government and their partners in private industry.

Clinton goes on to say in a quote I haven’t been able to recover that it doesn’t matter whether a person was for or against the war, it matters what we do about it now.

Just what it is the Democrats intend to do about Iraq remains a mystery. Clinton says telling would help the enemy. That idea is almost Rovian in concept.
The “enemy” are the Iraqi people fighting against the American occupation of their country and thumping on each other because of the sectarian hornets nest Bush’s policies have stirred up. Neither his puppet PM nor the 135,000 members of the US military can stop it. Experts outside the Bush administration all agree that our presence is exacerbating the violence, not preventing it.

Except for an occasional voice crying in the wilderness like those of Russell Feingold or John Murtha, Democrats vote for every war spending bill that comes down the pike and turn a blind eye to gut wrenching war profiteering, reckless endangerment of troops and the mindless
fleecing of their constituents.

Starting a war isn’t really, first and last, a matter of public opinion; what or whom you are for or against. It must be a matter of necessity. Anything less is a war crime.
It is the job of congress to decide if there is such necessity.
Instead of letting the UN inspectors finish their work, Lieberman and almost all the other Democrats, partnered with the GOP in breaching the constitutional separation of powers and handing to the most corrupt, inept executive in American history, carte blanche and a blank check. That matters.

Iraq is, on its face, is a war crime justified by a whole pack of deliberate lies. That matters.
There are places for people who support war crimes and it isn’t the Congress of the United States.

Carol DW

PS Glenn Greenwald has some less buoyant figures on anti war sentiment. Even so, it falls within the parameters of information haves and have-nots and is a solid majority.