Letters to the Editor
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New Strategies are needed all around
"Craven Cowardice" is the standard blogospheric complaint against elected Dems, and so efforts are redoubled to elect more of them, and by golly, too often the newly elected Dems turn into Craven Cowards, too.
Wait a minute. They are Craven Cowards because they won't stand up to Bush and the Party of Warmongers he serves and ostensibly leads.
On the other hand, they will stand up to you -- enthusiastically -- and to everything you represent and all your kind and your ilk as well.
They will happily stand with the Busheviks and the warmongers against you (and me) and the vast majority of the American People. And what I want to know is how that translates to Craven Cowardice?
To my way of looking at things, it translates to monumental stupidity and moral failure. But not to cowardice. And not even to cravenness if they agree with the Busheviks and McCain and their overwhelming bloodlust.
And every indication is that those Dems who go along with the Rs actually do agree with the Party of Blood.
So what is the strategy to deal with that? Call them Cowards when they are anything but? Call them Craven, when they are acting on what appears to be their sincere beliefs?
That's been at the core of the long-time efforts (years and years now) to convince Democrats to end the war(s) and thwart the consolidation of the Autocracy. Hasn't worked. Not even close. No, we're deeper into the wars now, with expenses growing exponentially, and ever more human and material resources committed to them. The Regime has suceeded in vastly expanding its authorities and powers well beyond anything contemplated when they began their quest. Dems have been enablers all along, but since the restoration of their control of Congress, the body has been more willing to accommodate Bush and Cheney and the Pentagon than it was under Republican control.
These people are cowards? No they are not. They are wrong. They are morally bankrupt. They are bloodthirsty fools. But they are not cowards.
And these Dems combined with the Rs form the working majority in both houses of Congress, and they are determined to thwart pretty much everything that would interfere with the prosecution of endless wars abroad, and the consolidation of endless executive power at home.
These Dems, combined with their Republican cohorts, would much rather work with a President of their Own Kind (ie: Senator McCain) than work against someone like Hillary or Obama. But if they have to work against them, they'll do it.
It is their job.
A new strategy is called for, one that states as clearly as possible, that expanding warfare and consolidating executive power (McCain and his cohorts would do) is wrong. The word to use is WRONG. It's "Morally Bankrupt." It's "Foolish." It's "Anti-American." It's "Shameful." It's "Contemptuous." It may well be "Corrupt."
And it is fair to say that those terms apply equally to every single Republican in office who serves the Regime directly or who votes in Congress to do so, and it applies to every single Democratic Congressperson or candidate who approves and enables expanding warfare and consolidation of executive power.
But it is not cowardice.
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Well...
Henry Wallace loses elections every time, in this country, and while I'd like to see the Dems be more assertive on security issues, I'd also like to see the risks of this clearly laid out. It isn't as simple a political win as Glenn is, and has been saying, it is.
Some candidates are just way ahead of their time on some issues.
Wallace's 1948 presedential platform advocated an end to segregation, full voting rights for blacks, and universal government health insurance. His campaign was unusual for his time in that it included African American candidates campaigning alongside white candidates in the American South, and that during the campaign he refused to appear before segregated audiences or eat or stay in segregated establishments.
OTOH...
Wallace suffered a decisive defeat to the victorious president Truman. Gaining 2.4% of the popular vote, he ended up third runner-up behind Republican Thomas Edmund Dewey and Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond.
Wallace might have been a foreign policy nightmare, like Ron Paul or Kucinich. You can't tell me that either of them are polling all that well. Cook/RT Strategies released some head-to-head polls for the general election about a week ago before Romney dropped out:
Clinton 41% McCain 45%
Obama 45% McCain 43%
Clinton 48% Romney 42%
Obama 50% Romney 41%
As you can see, McCain as the GOP nominee beats Clinton but loses narrowly to Obama. We got stuck with McCain and he's only a "Great and Honorable Warrior" to the rubes. Americans are not the sharpest tools in the shed. In any case, the election is a long way off and McCain has ample opportunity to lose his temper. Maybe Huckabee will surge.
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Heh
But if Americans love bloodthirstiness as much as you claim, why is Bush one of the most unpopular Presidents of all-time?
There are many reasons for Bush's unpopularity, Glenn. Factor out Iraq like it never happened and his failure on Katrina alone warrants his unpopularity and that is only one in a long line of failures. Bush is just a lousy president like he was a lousy governor.
Why is the war in Iraq so widely despised even as they are told how great the war is going?
Unreasonable expectations. No slam dunk. People feel like they were conned. They were.
Why did they throw the war-supporting Republicans out of office in 2006?
Because Republicans are hypocritical fuckwits who can't govern.
Why do polls consistently show that Americans do not want a new war with Iran?
War doesn't usually poll well, unless you have a slogan, like Remember The Maine. The upside is that it will be much more diffiicult to sell this generation a pig in a poke. Give it 30 years.
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Americans on Iraq
Doubtless, sysprog could do it better, but just skimming the surface...
http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm
CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll. Feb. 1-3, 2008. N=1,192 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.
"Do you favor or oppose the U.S. war in Iraq?"
2/1-3/08 (Favor Oppose Unsure) 34% 64% 2%
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http://www.gallup.com/poll/104185/Majority-Continues-Consider-Iraq-War-Mistake.aspx
PRINCETON, NJ -- The latest USA Today/Gallup poll finds that a majority of Americans continue to express opposition to the war in Iraq, attitudes that are unchanged in the last two months. According to the Jan. 30-Feb. 2 poll, 57% of Americans say it was a mistake for the United States to send troops to Iraq, while 41% say it was not a mistake. Those numbers are identical to what Gallup measured in late November/early December.
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http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/view/29741/
iraq_war_not_worth_fighting_for_americans
Polling Data
When it comes to the war in Iraq, do you think that removing Saddam Hussein from power was or was not worth the number of U.S. military casualties and the financial cost of the war?
.........Jan. 2008 Sept. 2007 Jan. 2007
Worth it ......32% ........35% ......33%
Not worth it ...59% 56% 57%
Depends .........4% 4% 5%
Unsure ..........5% 5% 5%
My html skills aren't good enough to format this within Salon, but I think folks can get the drift.