Well, and this is another case where I want to blog something, but I’m not sure what I have to say about it. The Return of the Ambivalent Blogger, doncha know.
Peter Daou, who is at least moderately influential in Left Blogovia, is fed up with the Senate Democrats and the party generally, particularly at our inability to fight the nomination of a radical like Judge Alito. Which is understandable, and is a feeling shared through much of Left Blogovia. Heck, I’m fed up with it. On the other hand, in his note on The Broken Triangle, he suggests something that I find troubling. And although I’m pretty much falling between two stools, here, which makes for a lousy blog, I thought I’d, you know, go over it with you.
You see, Mr. Daou’s suggestions essentially mount up to three things: (i) come up with a few small, general points that are easy to repeat and not easily verifiable, (2) work the ref by bullying the press into repeat your sound bites rather than the other guy’s, and (C) maintain tight discipline so that the Senators on the committee, the party officeholders and their surrogates on interview and chat shows, the bloggers and columnists and radio hosts and everybody would work together tightly, with bloggers feeding quick-response stuff to the other players, and everybody adhering narrowly to the previously agreed-upon talking points.
And, you know? That’s not my Party. That’s not the Democrats. Now, the Democrats of the last few years have been particularly incompetent over the last generation or so, to the point where I don’t get the feeling that the members of the Judiciary committee had a pre-hearing meeting where they agreed on a common strategy (or even common goals; is the goal to cover yourself for an eventual vote for the nominee, or to maximize the chances of blocking the nominee, or (by my preference) to highlight the Party’s opposition to the nominee so as to increase national awareness of the two Parties’ differences, and the superiority of our Party?), so I am on the one hand sympathetic to those who want to kick their asses from here to Washington. On the other hand, even in opposition, the strength of our Party’s thinking has been our internal differences. We come together on common ground, and I think that common ground clearly includes opposition to Judge Alito’s getting his bottom on the high bench, but it is, as Jesse Jackson said, a patchwork quilt of a party, big enough only by virtue of having enough patches, and strong enough only because the threads that bind us together are integrity, trust and um, some other kind of metaphorical thread. Strengthened with the wax of our genuine celebration of diversity, and knotted with the square knot of History.
Where was I?
Oh, yes. Look, does Mr. Daou seriously think that you can have a disciplined Party only when you need it? If we build a Party that can do what he wants, it means grooming our leaders and our press surrogates by virtue not of their thoughtfulness but of their loyalty, their willingness to say what we tell them to, and their ability to put over whatever crap they are compelled to drivel this week. We can’t do that in a month. The Republicans didn’t do it in a month. If we do manage to do it, we will become the sort of Party that does that, and we won’t ditch that way of doing things when we take back the House and the Senate and the Executive, either, because the people who will be in the leadership will stick with what works, and the people who have successfully made careers with discipline won’t become thoughtful constructive critics overnight.
So, no thank you, Mr. Daou.
Only, you know Gentle Readers, how I speak slightingly of the Clean Hands philosophy, the voter who won’t dirty himself with a vote for an imperfect candidate but prefers the clean third party fellow who won’t win, even if that means that the actual government will govern more corruptly, more viciously, more fascistly? Fascisticly? Whatever. I wonder if this is the point where I am not willing to dirty my own hands to get something done. Because, really honestly, if Judge Alito is confirmed, then over the next twenty years life will be a lot worse for quite a few people.
If Judge Alito is confirmed, there will be more of those horror stories about the teenage girl who gives birth in the airport bathroom and leaves her newborn infant on the diaper deck. If Judge Alito is confirmed, there will be more of those horror stories (although of course they won’t be reported so much) about the teenage girl who has to tell her father she wants an abortion because she was gang-raped by the football team, and her father beats the crap out of her.
If Judge Alito is confirmed, there will be more people who are dicked by their insurers, but can’t sue. If Judge Alito is confirmed, there will be more people who die in workplaces (some of those workplaces being coal mines), without any punishment for negligent employers. If Judge Alito is confirmed, there will be more people denied standing to sue in federal court when they seek redress against corporate wrongdoing. If Judge Alito is confirmed, there will be more workers accepting workplace conditions that degrade them, put them at risk, or are simply disgusting. And, of course, if Judge Alito is confirmed, even more companies will engage in even more union-busting with impunity.
If Judge Alito is confirmed, there will be more unauthorized spying on American residents. If Judge Alito is confirmed, there will be more torture, in more secret prison camps, by more American soldiers. If Judge Alito is confirmed, there will be more egregious breaches of the law by Presidents and their underlings.
I don’t think I’m exaggerating. None of this is wild conspiracy stuff, this is pretty straight-forward on-the-record Scalia/Bork/Roberts judicial philosophy, the reason why Ms. Meirs was withdrawn and replaced with someone more dependable. And I’m not sure I have the right to demand a patchwork-quilt Party if it means that Judge Alito is confirmed. That is, I don’t want to look that teenage girl, that maimed non-union worker or his widow, that political prisoner in the eye and say ‘I’m not a member of any organized political Party; I’m a Democrat’.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.
we don’t need a karl rove. rove is a terrorist, scaring the daylights out of people for political advantage. against one such person, we need many counterterrorists, a multitude of richard clarkes, backed by an army of ruthless activists, to dispel clouds of nerve agents.
people like bill moyers on the outside and paul wellstone on the inside who are concerned with the path taken, understanding the road taken to be the real result of the process – finish lines exist in the mind, just as the horizon is an event not a destination. unfortunately both those people were born from movements that are now essentially dead in our politics.
tracking back republican party discipline it’s been more than 30 years since watergate, the moment that our current battle lines seem to have been drawn in the minds of righties. there has been nothing on the left to parallel the program of systematic revenge in the works since nixon went down. nothing to definitively prove that non-right-wing paranoia was justified in the fullest. even the bush administration’s actions appear non-ideological to the casual observer because of their incredible ability to cast line items in their task list as separate and unrelated, to hide the net result from scrutiny by dividing the program pieces among many skirts of bread-and-butter maintenance bills.
if one were looking for solace the chickens**t methods that the republican legislative majority is putting through its favorite programs is as unseemly as is the path of least resistance the senate democrats have crafted. the problem was phrased well by the guy who just got his book on the florida recount published – if the elites don’t care about democracy in a representative system, kiss it goodbye.
on the other hand
is there a vision, outside the far right, of an american persona that combines “big dog” and “common future”? it seems like rather than voting on values americans are looking for a sufficiently butch leftie, so much so that they projected leftie qualities onto dubya so they could vote for him over the cheese-eating fag senator (whose emasculation even trumped his war vet status).
again i mourn the death of wellstone. the lack of an organizer’s ear for visceral storytelling is leaving the dems defenseless against the berserkers. granted the loose system of noble behavior that prevents outright lies from becoming policy is struggling under this immense load and the dems’ fight is also the entire constitutional concept’s fight. the republicans are acting like sharks. where is our hero with the spear gun? why are so few people showing the courage of mike moore? why aren’t i, for that matter.
for me it seems clear – i’m having a real problem with the whole setup, the bureaucracy of both public and private sectors, of the “consumer” sector (meaning: everybody), and how DUMB DUMB DUMB we are being regarding the major, world-threatening troubles of the day. i want to flush the entire thing down the toilet before nature does it and kills a lot of people to boot. but apparently i’m not angry enough yet, because i don’t actually want to kill any republicans. that seems to be the standard.