The past week or so has left me distraught. Once again, I have felt that all the months of writing, linking, networking, occasionally getting noticed in the national press - all this has come to nothing because it hasn't changed the fundamental discourse of Washington, or forced through to those who actually hold power and set the agenda that things have changed. I am reminded of reading about the run-up to the election of 1932. While it was clear that Hoover had bungled efforts to deal with the Depression, there was a consensus that Roosevelt would lose. For one thing, his management of affairs in New York as governor was too controversial. He angered the political bosses in New York City, riled up Al Smith at a Jefferson-Jackson Dinner a month before the election, when Smith came out and endorsed Hoover. He was disabled by polio, and a whispering campaign had begun about his relationship, or lack thereof, with his wife. On the campaign trail he was vague, speaking of balancing the budget and revoking Prohibition.
Back then, Maine voted in September. A rock-ribbed Republican state, Maine elected Democrats. Hoover took to the campaign trail and got even nastier toward his opponent, while Roosevelt continued to glide along. The results were the decimation of the Republican Party across the board. The national press acted as if it had occurred out of the blue. It hadn't. It was the result of years of Republican mismanagement, corruption, deference to big money, and a refusal to accept the reality that millions of Americans were suffering.
Flash forward, and we have a corrupt Republican Party in denial concerning the anger of the American people, not just toward an illegal war ill-planned, an occupation with no end in sight that is killing American men and women for no reason. We are angry because our government is destroying the Constitution. With every word from the Bush Administration, it is obvious these people are insisting that we believe them, not our lying eyes and lives.
The situation is made worse by a Democratic Party that seems bent on losing the good will of the voters who put them in office. Rather than demand a showdown with an unpopular President, they keep moving the goal posts, refuse to stand up and call a lie and a liar a lie and a liar. They have removed impeachment from the table - an utterly irresponsible act of political cowardice.
The problem we face is that Democrats are in the awkward position of attempting to work with true revolutionaries. The Republicans are committed to the notion that the rules of politics and public ethics and morality don't apply to them because they have been in the business, for the past quarter century, of overthrowing the political status quo. The Democrats seem to believe it is possible to work with these people, to compromise with them, to have comity and reach consensus with them. Our pundit class refuse to call the Republicans, and their governing philosophy what it is - revolutionary. They continue to treat Republican politicians as if they were not different from Everett Dirksen, Dwight Eisenhower, or even Ronald Reagan. Our chattering classes and the Democrats who listen to them assume the Republicans are open to dialogue and compromise.
They aren't. You cannot treat the contemporary Republican Party as if it was a continuation of the age of Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, or Bush 41. The men and women who currently occupy seats of authority and power as Republicans are committed to principles that do not allow for compromise. They are committed to a vision of the Executive that does not allow for compromise. As long as the Democrats believe they can work behind the scenes to forge consensus, the results will always look more like the horrendous immigration reform bill that died a swift death - it was not so much a compromise as a patchwork of incompatible carrots and sticks, the carrots being not enough and the stick being much too big. As long as the Democrats refuse to force a showdown in the name of Washington comity (I still can't get over Patrick Leahy refusing to put Gonzalez on the spot; this is the guy whom the Vice President of the United States told to "go fuck himself"; he has to know what these people are really like).
The Democrats, and to a certain extent we bloggers who have been their biggest boosters, have been committed to a practice of reform. The problem is reform can't work in an atmosphere in which the whip hand is still held by reactionary revolutionaries. It is a small, weakened hand, but as long as the Democrats continue to believe and quake in fear before the Republicans, it will fail. The first sign of real progress will be when there is no more talk between the White House and Congress over various people testifying. When warrants are issued, then I think I will take them seriously.
