Dick Durbin Deserved Better and So Does Our Democracy (or what's left of it)

This is what Liberal Oasis has to say in a resigned but cautiously optimistic post about the fight over the Bolton nomination:

The Dems are still showing fight, despite the odds, despite the White House pressure.

But why are they showing fight? How did Biden and Reid keep the caucus together?

Not by focusing on why Bolton’s nomination would be bad for America’s national security.

But by focusing on the rights of Senators to get information they request.

Granted, that is an important (small “d”) democratic principle.

But it seems like, outside of Social Security, the only time Dems can really show spine is when their rights as Senators are threatened.

As a practical political matter, the focus on Senators’ rights puts the Bolton battle far deeper into the arcane, inside baseball realm.

And it was already hard enough trying to explain why people should care about the UN Ambassador.

This battle should have been an opening salvo in the battle over the foreign policy direction of our nation, an opportunity for Dems to draw distinctions on how the two parties would protect our national security, as Bolton represents the reckless unilateralism of the Republicans.

Liberal Oasis has captured the over-arching problem that faces America: we are a stupid and willfully uninformed people, who don't care how the machine of our government is supposed to work.  This has put our country and the world at the mercy of global corpo-fascist network and its tools in government.  Our apathy and our fear, which are the only impulses we seem to value anymore, have allowed the Radical Right to make some impressive headway in dismantling the foundation America and have reduced the Democrats to playing procedural games as they hang on for dear life. 

The Dems, with their canine devotion to corporate money and their idea that going along to get along is the way to gain ground with the pack of jackals that run D.C. now, have certainly dug a good portion of their own grave.  And their belief that the only thing their base is good for is mailing checks is also destroying the party.  But our lack of interest and our cowardice - if you're going to call Durbin a coward, then we all share that label - are also helping the Radical Right win.

When I think about the problems the Dems face in holding back the Radical Right, I keep coming back to last month's Bias in Media Forum, hosted by John Conyers.  The panel came with plenty of ideas as to what needed to be done, but no real plan.  The members of Congress present only seemed interested in rattling off injustices that had been done to them by the media instead of  really hearing  what the panel was saying.   Both sides were asking the other for help and at the end, as far as I can tell, nobody knew where to start. 

Starting with Dick Durbin would have been a good idea since the stakes were so high and the fight so visible.  Every Dem member of Congress should have mobilized to support their colleague.  Ads supporting Durbin should have been bought.  They should have offered interviews to every televsion show from cable access to Nightline.  (but Nightline didn't call, boo hoo hoo ... )  Air America should have had wall-to-wall interviews with Congressional Dems.   They should have been on the blogs non-stop.  Let Atrios have Durbin.  Let Kos get Pelosi.  Do you think I would have turned down a call from Rep. Whoozit of the 15th district of the great state of Wyoming?   Where were they?  This was their job and they blew it. 

On the other hand where were we?   I include myself in that question.   I haven't combed blogtopia (All hail Skippy) but I know we didn't drop everything and get behind Durbin when he needed it, which was before the Noise Machine turned it's full attention to his destruction.   Face it, we're all smarty pants.  We could have found ways to carry on with our important thinking about other topics and still worked in five Durbin posts a day - especially if we had some feedback from the man himself.  Interested political bloggers on the left have got to wake up to the very sad fact that we are the Left Wing Noise Machine.  It's us and Air America a few other progressive radio outfits  and that's it.   Right now we're dominated by a few big blogs and several thousand satellites that for all intents and purposes can't break through. 

Look at the Downing Street Minutes for another example.  It's very polite to allow for the irrefutable fact that no big blog has to carry that torch if it doesn't want to.  But for the love of Pete, why wouldn't they all want to?   Why haven't we all signed on in an effort similar to what ThereIsNoCrisis.com is doing with Social Security?   The Big Brass Alliance welcomes all comers. Why haven't I been called by Rep. Whoozit to discuss the implications of a wartime president that we can't trust?   Why isn't Scott Ritter doing conference calls with us instead of writing for Al Jazeera?   What he is saying about Iran now is the natural follow-up to the Downing Street Memos. 

And speaking of follow-ups, Newsday has a story today that I picked up a week ago:

The British government, in sharp disagreement with the United States' ultimate position, believed that post-invasion Iraq should be run by a Sunni-led government and not one controlled by the majority Shias.

One of the so-called Downing Street documents, secret internal British memos stirring controversy on both sides of the Atlantic, drafted March 8, 2002, recommended two possibilities for a post-Saddam Hussein government -- one run by a benevolent "Sunni military strongman," and the second, which it clearly preferred, for a "representative, broadly democratic government ... Sunni-led but within a federal structure."

I think this is a bigger revelation than the line about the fixed intelligence because it opens new avenues of inquiry that support our twin claims that a) this war was never about freedom and it decided on well in advance of what BushCo continues to tell us and b) the planning was corrupted by an unwillingness to hear all sides.  I want to know When and why  did the Sunni Domination Plan run off the rails?   I bet Garner's ouster is related.  And what does "something like a functioning democracy," which is a phrase attributed to Wolfowitz, mean?  We're nowhere on this.  We should, at the very least, be softening the ground and providing cover for any member of Congress who is foolish and/or  brave enough to follow this trail. 

But we don't.  Instead when a Senator tries to stand up on a difficult issue, only to fall on a national stage under the attack of the entire RW Noise Machine, we call him a coward and whine about him letting us down.  Letting us down.  I have to say - with troops like us behind him, he didn't let us down as much as he surveyed the landscape, saw us missing in action and decided to fall back to regroup.

I hope that someday soon the Dem leadership figures out how to use the blogs who are eager to be at their disposal and even the ones that shudder at that phrase.  (I'm somewhere in the middle.)   John Edwards knows he has to, but hasn't figured out how to do it yet.   I have to admit that I don't either but getting the rank and file Congress members to pick up the phone and start building relationships with bloggers who want to listen would be a good start. 

Comments

[DavidByron]

Aha! So you do meta blog sometimes!

I'm always reminded of the scene from the Wallace and Gromit film, "A Close Shave" during the car chase where Wallace yells at the sheep, "Get yourselves organised!" and in the next clip the sheep have formed a reverse "sheep" pyramid balancing on the back of the motorcycle.

That's what the progressive blogs need to do.