uselessness

[solarbird]

Once, again, Diebold voting machines FAIL overwhelmingly; exploitable security bugs claimed to have been fixed aren't fixed; it should be criminal, but somehow it's still not. Meanwhile, Congress fucks up and punts back meaningful reform. Thanks, bipartisan wanktitude! Oh, and also, thanks, Senate, for expanding warrentless surveillance, too, to the Chief Executive's whim. Liz Mair discusses it a bit. jwz has a great photo. Last chance to stop it will be in the house. I wonder if it's possible.

This bullshit is why we need two new parties, not just one. Maybe three or four would be nice.

ETA: Well, hell, too late already. Passed the house. NEW PARTIES NOW.

Comments

[wrog]

Right. The Complete Fantasy Parties that currently don't exist at all. And even if somebody magically manages to organize them they'll probably get messed up by all of the same personality/ego/corruption shit that messes up real-life political parties (cf. the Reform party).

I'm really getting quite sick of this "pox on both of their houses" mentality.

As I've already pointed out, the Senate is still effectively Republican in a number of ways. Or rather, a razor-thin majority doesn't do squat for you when 4 of your votes are Lieberman, Nelson, Landrieux and Feinstein.

The two parties are not the same. There are a whole lot of people within the Democratic Party who do get it, including the current DNC chairman, Howard Dean. But the Democrats are hamstrung by any number of factors, not least of which is the completely hostile media environment that pounces on them whenever they actually try to do something, especially anything that "conventional wisdom" deems is bad for national security. Elected officials do whatever they think is going to get them re-elected, no matter what the party might have to say about it.

And then there are the various powerful bad apples within the party (e.g., Hoyer, Wynn), people who've been around too long, occupy too many political choke points, people who badly need good primary opponents. Or people that are just plain clueless and need to be thwapped a few thousand times (Rahm Emmanuel). Getting rid of them or re-educating them is going to take time.

And, yes, I'm worried about Hillary. Note, by the way, that she is not the Democratic standard bearer yet, no matter much Fox News et al keep trying to annoint her -- and that should probably tell you something right there. To date, she hasn't won a single primary. Not that I'm expecting a Dean-style Iowa implosion in '08 -- it would indeed be foolish to underestimate her at this point -- but it still remains to be seen how this is going to play out.

Meanwhile, we have a Republican party that, over the past ten years has shown fantastic discipline, levels you normally only see in a parliamentary system. No matter how badly W fucks up, they stick with him, filibustering out the wazoo and voting lockstep to block whatever they can -- we've had evidence of malfeasance come out that far exceeds what was available in 1974 and yet this time around there seem to be no honest Republicans willing to do what's right for the constitution and allow for a credible impeachment threat. The founders assumed that at some point rational self-interest would take over but for some reason this hasn't happened yet. I have no idea what we do about this.

But it is not reasonable to expect that the Democrats are suddenly going to develop this same level of discipline that they've just never, ever had even going back 50 years.

And, the fact is, there are reasons there have been no major party realignments since 1860, and I'm pretty sure we're not going to see another one any time soon. Neither party is on the verge of collapse in any sense of the word.

Meaning, like it or not, we have one vehicle for fighting this fight, and that's the Democratic Party, imperfect as it may be.

[solarbird]

I'm really getting quite sick of this "pox on both of their houses" mentality.
And I'm sick of "the horrible party" and "the slightly less horrible in some ways party." I'm sick of being fucked in the ass by the Democrats and being told to thank them for not fucking me in the ass quite as hard as the Republicans would.

But it is not reasonable to expect that the Democrats are suddenly going to develop this same level of discipline that they've just never, ever had even going back 50 years.
Where does this "suddenly" keep coming from? You keep saying that, as if there weren't Democrats in 2003 or something. If the Democrats were a brand new party, that "suddenly" would make sense. Also, maybe if they hadn't spent my entire adult political life learning new ways to backpedal and demand that I thank them for it, if they hadn't spent the last 12 years learning how to bow ever more deeply to the GOP Machine, maybe they'd have spent some time learning how to show some fucking discipline.

My point is that we need a goddamn schism. We need a couple of 'em, because I do not think it's going to get better without one. I do not - most emphatically do not - think that there is some magical Democratic Party to be pulled together in the Glorious Future when they will Finally Do The Right Thing. You do the right thing as you go if you're going to do it at all. Sometimes you fail, sometimes you succeed - personally, I just want to see more effort and less capitulation. Maybe they'd build some character. And that matters to me, because no, I do not give points for political cowardice, and I don't give points for being too afraid to face an election with your supposed principles on the actual record - o noes, can't do that, i ph33r t3h r0v3 machine! - and I do not give points for telling me that if they didn't give him everything he wanted, he'd get everything he wanted. I mean, it's apparently not even enough for them to let the Bush redefinition of the presidency into some sort of supra-lawful chief executive stand, instead of explicitly rejecting it as must happen. That's "off the table." No, that's not enough - they've decided they need to help.

Fuck that. I mean seriously - fuck that.

[wrog]

You do the right thing as you go if you're going to do it at all

And in this last vote 38 Democratic Senators indeed did the right thing.

Meanwhile, Jay Inslee has introduced impeachment articles for AG Gonzales. Over in the House, Conyers has been investigating the crap out of everything he can get his hands on. They may yet get an inherent contempt motion passed on Harriet Miers et al. Pelosi may have said (six months ago!) that impeachment is off the table but if the House Judiciary Committee votes its own articles or one of the state legislatures comes through then we're off to the races and it doesn't matter what she says.

Meanwhile over in Chicago, we have all of the major presidential candidates showing up at YearlyKos. Which just astounds me.

It's not enough? Fine; fair cop. What do we do about it? Give up?
Does this make any sense?

I am not asking that you thank anybody.

I'm just saying it is insane and counterproductive to ignore what progress has been made, that we should just throw out everything and start over somehow when (1) there will be nothing to start over with (I ask again, who are these new parties going to be?) (2) the only scenarios in which I can see any sort of schism happening would be some kind of Great Depression Mark II economic devastation making a sizeable fraction of the population ready for some kind of revolution, in which most of the people with guns will be militia nutjobs and I just don't see how that leads anyplace at all like what you want.

What I'm saying is the Democratic party is there. The structure of the party is such that if enough people want it to do stuff, it'll do stuff. If the party leadership isn't doing what you want, then you elect new leadership. If an elected official turns out to be a butthead, party resources can be thrown behind a primary opponent (cf. Lamont). And so on.

But people have to get involved for this to happen. If people don't get involved then the apparatchiks will just keep doing what they've always been doing. If we don't try to clear out the rot that's at the top, it'll just stay there.

And all of the same will hold true of whatever new party it is you want to form.

response pt 1 (sorry, ran long, had to split it)

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

I'm just saying it is insane and counterproductive to ignore what progress has been made

Okay, I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but outside of investigating Republican corruption, what progress ARE they making? I'm not being snarky here; I really can't think of anything. The minimum wage increase was too small to make any real difference (and as someone who is currently poor and could NOT live on said wage, please don't tell me if I was really living off this wage I'd be more appreciative; if I was really living off that wage I'd be living in a box or a car or a storage locker), extraordinarily mildly improved vehicle mileage standards over 13 years might as well not have passed for all the difference it will make . . . and I can't think of any other even inneffective symbolic measures they've passed.

The structure of the party is such that if enough people want it to do stuff, it'll do stuff.

This, I'm not so sure about. And I would also like a party that would sometimes do things based on something other than opinion polls. I strongly suspect one reason Kerry lost in 2004 (other than massive illegal tactics by the opposition), and certainly the biggest reason he didn't win by a substantial margin, is that even a lot of people who loathed the Bush and the Republicans voted for them anyway, because they were (wrongly) perceived as being straight shooters by some of those people, while Kerry was (rightly) perceived by pretty much everyone as not being willing to stick his neck out for much of anything. Which is pretty much how I regard most of the Democrats nowadays. They seem to miss that Gore was in favor of gay marriage despite it being less popular then than now at the polls, and he still won the popular vote. Clinton was supported by a majority despite most people opposing what he did in Haiti and Bosnia. Obviously these weren't the sole or even remotely dominant issues of his presidencies, but the people opposing those actions and favoring him realized, disapproving or not, that these were genuine humanitarian interventions and they appreciated his having the guts to stand up for something he believed in. Same for the people favoring Gore but opposing gay marriage. Or possibly they just (shock!) looked at the totality of the candidacies and didn't expect the candidates to pander to them on every single issue. Or both. The Democratic party now is losing sight of this.

Re: response pt 1 (sorry, ran long, had to split it)

[wrog]

And I would also like a party that would sometimes do things based on something other than opinion polls. I strongly suspect one reason Kerry lost in 2004 (other than massive illegal tactics by the opposition), and certainly the biggest reason he didn't win by a substantial margin, is that even a lot of people who loathed the Bush and the Republicans voted for them anyway, because they were (wrongly) perceived as being straight shooters by some of those people.

Once again: Completely hostile media environment. The whole proposition of GWBush being a "straight shooter" is entirely a product of media framing. The guy can't speak his way out of a paper bag. And yet for some reason reporters hardly ever ask him hard questions, or when they do, they almost never do the obvious followup; and if a bad moment gets caught on camera anyway, CNN et al just blow straight by it and you never see again unless it's stupid enough to get onto The Daily Show's radar. Meanwhile every last Democratic gaffe is amplified and repeated ad infinitum (cf. Dean scream, Wellestone funeral,...). Democrats that actually do stand up for something(and there are plenty of them) simply do not get covered or they're made to look stupid because they're "pandering" to some "far-left", out-of-touch base that nobody really cares about. How often do you see Maxine Waters or Russ Feingold or Pat Leahy or Dennis Kucinich on the sunday talk shows? vs. Lieberman and Biden? Do you think this is a coincidence?

Yes, Kerry was too cautious on any number of things, but Democratic primary voters decided in overwhelming numbers that they wanted an "electable" candidate. The assumption was that general disgust with Bush would be sufficient to carry the day and that all they had to do was not make any obvious mistakes, stay above the fray, and all that. At that time it was still hard to imagine that Kerry's military service could be attacked and that the media would just keep giving airtime to the Swift Boat Liars long after they'd thoroughly discredited themselves, but that they did, strenuously keeping to the "he said, she said" frame. And even so, we still managed 49% of the vote.

This time around, Edwards seems to be getting what we're up against. Likewise for Chris Dodd.

Same for the people favoring Gore but opposing gay marriage. Or possibly they just (shock!) looked at the totality of the candidacies and didn't expect the candidates to pander to them on every single issue. Or both. The Democratic party now is losing sight of this.

Who is losing sight of this? One thing to keep in mind here is that "the Democratic Party" is nothing more or less than the people who make it up. Some of them are more clueful then others.

Re: response pt 1 (sorry, ran long, had to split it)

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

Agree as to hostile media environment, especially as composed to how the other side is treated (a great cartoon about this some years ago, parodying tim russert, where the cartoon-russert cut dean off in the middle of an explanation to ask if some obscure thing he may or may not have said years ago having no apparent relevance to anything didn't prove that he was a liar, or somesuch, followed by cartoon Russert asking Bush to spell cat and praising him for his great leadership when he *almost* got it right). Hell, I don't even think the Dean scream *was* a gaffe, it was just something that, when portrayed as such, could look a little off in the eyes of people who had been told non-stop for weeks or months that Dean was a far-left, untrustworthy, dangerous nutjob, and then things spiralled because people were already predisposed to look at him a certain way due to relentless non-stop hostile coverage, etc. But .. . my problem isn't w/Dean. I would have voted 3rd party rather than Kerry last time except Kerry changed his campaign in response to Dean's (as,I think, would many others; there was no point in voting for the Bush-lite campaigns that all the lead guys other than Dean was running; that's another reason he lost momentum--by the time of the scream, Kerry was shifting ground and being praised by the same talking heads that were damning Dean).

And yes, for all that, Kerry got close. Because he had Bush to run against. Bush isn't running next time, though, and most people aren't likely to hold everything he did against Thompson or Guliani.

Same for the people favoring Gore but opposing gay marriage. Or possibly they just (shock!) looked at the totality of the candidacies and didn't expect the candidates to pander to them on every single issue. Or both. The Democratic party now is losing sight of this.

Who is losing sight of this? One thing to keep in mind here is that "the Democratic Party" is nothing more or less than the people who make it up. Some of them are more clueful then others.

Apparently the less clueful are running things, then.

Re: response pt 1 (sorry, ran long, had to split it)

[wrog]

Apparently the less clueful are running things, then.

as I said, if new leadership is what's needed, then we do that.

But to do that, we need the votes.

Re: response pt 1 (sorry, ran long, had to split it)

[wrog]

I'm just saying it is insane and counterproductive to ignore what progress has been made

Okay, I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but outside of investigating Republican corruption, what progress ARE they making? I'm not being snarky here; I really can't think of anything.

Once again, they control the House. That is all. Forget actual legislation that does anything meaningful when you have a president that's just going to vetoing everything. Investigating, messing with funding bills, and making noise is pretty much all they can do at this point. The White House is now brazenly ignoring subpoenas. Which means they now need to do some kind of contempt motion (which again is going to need votes in the Senate to pass). But even so, we know a lot more now than we did six months ago, none of which would have happened if the Democrats hadn't taken the House.

And every time they try to set a date for withdrawal from Iraq, the media/pundits lay into them for "not supporting the troops" and it peels off enough votes that we lose. And yes, I want to beat the 20 or so cowardly dipshits who are causing us to lose these votes over the head with a rusty bag full of nails. But it is completely unfair/counterproductive/stupid to use this as an excuse for branding all Democrats as useless. You're just throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

The structure of the party is such that if enough people want it to do stuff, it'll do stuff.

This, I'm not so sure about.

This I'm absolutely sure about. Something like 3 out of 5 precinct committee officer slots in King County are vacant, similar patterns hold elsewhere in the state (and even if you don't actually live in WA, I'd still be willing to bet it's a similar story where you are). Pay 1$ and fill out a form next July and you're in, or if you can't wait, show up at your local party org and get yourself appointed. At that point you get to vote on everything that matters. In our district, there are a whole lot of new people that have gotten involved in just the last few years. Last meeting, we elected a new state committee rep.

To be sure, any kind of sweeping change is going to take time and work and lots of people getting involved. Some of it's happening already, but there's more to do. But there's also a kind of snowball effect, too, since the apparatchiks, if they see that there's momentum on your side will start helping you, because that's the way they are (people who care more about their position than anything else want to be on the winning side...).

Re: response pt 1 (sorry, ran long, had to split it)

[wrog]

... Pay $1 and fill out a form next July and you're in, or if you can't wait, show up at your local party org and get yourself appointed. At that point you get to vote on everything that matters.

This, by the way, is pretty much exactly what the Christian conservatives did to the Republican party, and they had a much tougher road because the Republican party is much more top-down-organized. Which is why it took them 20 years -- figure there was a whole decade in there where the fundies had solid control of the lower levels but still couldn't make headway against the moderates higher up.

response, c'd

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

As far as primary candidates --I'm with you, but the national party is putting their weight behind anti-choice candidates like the dude in Pennsylvania whose name I forget and misogynists like Webb in Virginia who basically is a Republican outraged about their handling of the Iraq war and who paid enough attention to reality to notice that the poor and middle class were not actually doing well these days, many libertarian/conservative efforts t o say otherwise notwithstanding. These were two of the people we were supposed to be happy about getting elected; both voted for the warrantless wiretapping shit.

The whole party is moving consistently rightward; if it takes abandoning that and letting them get crushed/wiped out for one cycle in 2010 to stop this, unless things improve, I don't see how this is counterproductive. Notice I said 2010 -- I agree in 2008 unless they put out someone who favors nuclear power (why there is no longer any chance I will vote for Obama) or is anti-choice or a complete fascist or something, I'll almost certainly vote for the presidential candidate, but the rest of them may lose my vote to the green party -- even people I used to like such as Boxer are scaring me lately.

I despised Nader for running in 2000, because I thought Gore would have done a good job and Bush was awful (tho I had no idea what he'd be able to get away with at the time), but since 9/11, Nader's previous claims about the democratic party are becoming more and more true. Since 9/11, most of the Dems since have proven that they will NOT do a good or even adequate job when given the chance; they pay lip service to most causes I care about w/out even trying to *do something* about them (the environment across the board, fair trade, improved labor conditions, civil rights) except in some cases where even their lip service is shaky (choice/reproductive freedom/bodily integrity). At this point, looking at parties as a whole and ignoring some individual examples to the contrary in each, it really has become a choice between Evil Stalinesque Monsters and Complete Losers I Totally Despise. Obviously the second of those choices is better, but not something to make me disinclined to look for other options.

Re: response, c'd

[wrog]

Bill Casey was the choice of the PA state party, and he happens to be immensely popular within the state, never mind that PA is notably weird for its large contingents of both pro-choice Republicans and anti-choice Democrats. The DNC ultimately had very little to say about it, and probably couldn't have done much about that primary even if they'd wanted to.

note that "new parties" are pretty much never going to be able to address stuff like this. If somebody is popular, then, chances are, they're going to be in your Senate and you have to deal with them...

And yes I'm definitely unhappy with Webb's vote, but Warner would have done no differently and would have been bad on a whole lot of other things. Keep in mind this is Virginia we're talking about; it's something of a miracle that we've gotten a D out of them at all.

The whole party is moving consistently rightward

Simply not true, at least not in recent years. The media has been moving consistently rightward and milking the 9/11 gaslighting for all it's worth, but don't confuse the party with the Fox News coverage of the party. The Dixiecrats are finally gone, and the DLC has been steadily losing ground for the past several years.

In fact, this is probably the first time ever that the Democratic party has been able to get a majority in the House not dependent on votes from the South; that has huge implications for the long term. And if they can pick up the seats in '08 to have solid control of the Senate, which looks hopeful at this point, then the same will be true there (since it won't be Southern seats being picked up).

To be sure, the DLC may yet experience a revival if Hillary gets the nomination (i.e., and wins; if she gets the nomination and loses it'll be the final nail in their coffin). She is by far the most conservative of the bunch. We'll just have to see.

Re: response, c'd

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

Ehmanuel and whoever else it was that did the handpicking of candidates were notorious for trying to marginalize/force out of races candidates they didn't like in the primaries.

And let's say my memory is partially wrong on this, and they simply got behind whoever the state party wanted, that being Casey, he of the father who refused to endorse Clinton in '92, IIRC--then they should have at least stayed out of that state primary, since there were two candidates who were NOT conservatives running as democrats in the race. Instead, they had politicians from all over the country endorsing the guy.

And as I predicted at the time, they learned totally the wrong lessons from their gains in 2006-- they don't get that they campaigned poorly for shit candidates and won only because of massive anti-Republican outrage--people in Rhode Island *liked* Chafee and still dumped him because he was a republican; but when you get a chance to at least make noises and fail to even try to do *that*, you can't count on getting that vote next time. And don't deserve it. I would *wish* for a democratic defeat as their deserved reward for gross cowardice and incompetence except that would leave us stuck w/more Republicans; so I'm stuck trying to figure the best way to influence the Dems. Telling me that they're already doing the best they can doesn't make me want to get behind them; it makes me think they're beyond hope and want to get going on that third party right now.

Re: response, c'd

[wrog]

Telling me that they're already doing the best they can doesn't make me want to get behind them; it makes me think they're beyond hope and want to get going on that third party right now.

Depends who "them" is. I'm not saying you should get behind Rahm Emmanuel. Far from it. He may indeed be drawing the wrong lesson from 2006; it doesn't matter.

I myself haven't given a dime to the DCCC or the DSCC and probably never will.

What matters is that BlueAmerica promoted candidates that nobody thought had a chance, a batch of 30 or so that put us over the top. They don't owe anything to Rahm.

And every single one of them voted NO on the FISA bill

And Rahm is no longer running the DCCC.

And in 2008 we get another batch in. And Donna Edwards blows away Al Wynn in the primary, and maybe somebody takes out Steny Hoyer, too.

There is serious progress being made. I'm sorry it's not as fast as you would like.

What you do is support individual candidates that you want to see elected. Show up at your caucus/primary next year and vote; if Hillary doesn't get the nomination that will be all for the best. Join your local orgs and make sure they endorse/nominate the best Ds they can, because whoever you elect locally, that's the future.

More and better Democrats, enough to render the DLC folks irrelevant. That is the only way we win this.

[risu.livejournal.com]

. . .

Dude, it's pretty clear that when you look at solarbird's post, you're seein' a massive means/end confusion, but are you sure it's in her and not your eyes?

[wrog]

I'm not quite sure what your point is.
Politics is the Art of the Possible.

[risu.livejournal.com]

The point is that there is no dichotomy between political realism and outrage. Why do you respond to outrage with the assertion that we have to settle? That sentiment is corrosive, and suggesting that "there has been progress" is incompatible with "a pox on both their houses" seems to suggest that passion about political causes and a demand for standards doesn't belong in the public sphere.

What you're saying only makes sense to me if you're reading solarbird as asserting that the need for new parties is best met by going out and splintering the progressive vote, which seems to me to be every bit as naive as, well, going out and splintering the progressive vote would be. If not more, since trying to silence honest voices of outrage will inevitably throw victory to the Republicans as *well* as the worst of the Democrats.

[wrog]

The point is that there is no dichotomy between political realism and outrage. Why do you respond to outrage with the assertion that we have to settle?

You seem to have completely misread what I'm saying. I am not trying to silence voices of outrage. Yes, be outraged and yes, be realistic.

But part of being realistic is recognizing what it is that political parties can and cannot do and directing your outrage at the right people.

The fault of this latest fiasco is not "The Democratic Party",
and it's not even "The Congressional Democrats",
the overwhelming majority (over 220) of whom did the right thing and voted NO.

The fault lies with the Salazar, Nelson, Bayh and the other 35 or so yes votes (I'd repeat the list but it's up at Kos and a bazillion other places) and the braindead DLC consultants who advise them. If you want to reserve some ire for Reid and Pelosi for letting this get to the floor at all, I'm okay with that, too, but really that shouldn't have mattered if the votes were there to send it down in flames.

But trashing the entire Democratic party and insisting we have to start over again from the ground up? That's cutting off your nose to spite your face.

if you're reading solarbird as asserting that the need for new parties is best met by going out and splintering the progressive vote

can't tell because solarbird has been notably vague on exactly what these new parties are going to be. But, given our system the way it is (first-past-the-post,winner-take-all) and the growing progressive contingent of the Democratic party, I don't see what other effect new parties could possibly have (i.e., if you're talking about progressive parties you could possibly vote for; I suppose if the idea is instead to create a bunch of new whackjob parties to split the Republicans by siphoning off all of the folks who think they're too liberal, well, that's an interesting thought but has its own perils (do you really want people getting press who make the current Republicans look reasonable?))