THIS MODERN WORLD

Of the 10.5 Democrats who voted in favor of giving President Bush the powers of a despot, 5.5 are running for reelection. Since these men are all in heated election battles, I think it’s only fair that we get to know them and maybe get a better idea of why they stabbed their party and their country in the back.

Graduating from the ranks of “Who’s the hell is that guy?” is Thomas Carper of Delaware, who’s in a tough reelection battle against Republican Jan Ting. How tough? Well, with little more than a month before election day, he’s only got a 40-point lead over his challenger. That must explain why he was so quick to jump on the anti-habeas corpus bandwagon. Those wedge issues can be a bitch.



New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez has an even tougher challenge ahead of him. Not only does he have to struggle through life with an oddly-shaped head, but he’s only up by six in a state which hasn’t elected a Republican to the Senate in 34 years.



Then there’s the case of Nebraska’s Senator Ben Nelson. Yes, he looks like the dad from The Wonder Years, but I’m not going to mock the looks of two Senators in a row. Besides, he’s got other things to worry about, like being a Democratic politician in a blood-red state. After winning his first term by a narrow 51%-49% margin, you can bet that Sen. Nelson knows that he has to veer right to stay in office. If he didn’t support torture, his Republican challenger might start to catch up to Nelson’s 23-point lead.



At a glance, Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow’s surname kinda looks like “stab me now”. Kinda fitting for someone who’s giving the President the power to decide unilaterally what constitutes torture. The latest poll only has her up by 7 points, so you can see why she wants to give the President a blank check.



The other Senator Nelson also has a bad case of red state fever. Like most Democrats, Bill Nelson is a grand master in the “let’s wait and see what happens” school of political campaigning. Unfortunately for Bill, he’s up against Republican superstar Katherine Harris. Perhaps if Nelson caught a lucky break, then maybe Harris’s campaign would run into some troubles…things like having the National Republican Party oppose her candidacy or having her entire campaign staff quit or being tied to a bribery scandal or being accused of “increasingly erratic behavior” by a former campaign manager. Those things could sink a candidacy, but Harris only has to gain 28 points in the next 40 days. Just to be safe, Nelson should probably support the GOP’s efforts to shred the constitution.



This is Joe Lieberman. He only gets half a picture because he’s only half a Democrat. The other half is douchebag. Of course he voted alongside the Republicans. They’re the ones paying his bills these days.

So as you can see, these six Senators had to vote along with the Republicans. If they didn’t, the might risk the Democrat’s chances of retaking the Senate (which, including the 11 Democratic torture-supporters , will be a mixed blessing at best). Screw values. As long as we win the election, everything will take care of itself! They’re just pretending to be immoral assholes with no regard for the constitution, right? CLAP LOUDER!

Uggghh…wake me up in 2008.

Chris Floyd:

Who are these people? Who are these useless hanks of bone and fat that call themselves Senators of the United States? Let’s call them what they really are, let’s speak the truth about what they’ve done today with their votes on the bill to enshrine Bush’s gulag of torture and endless detention into American law.

Who are they? The murderers of democracy.
Sold our liberty to keep their coddled, corrupt backsides squatting in the Beltway gravy a little longer.

Who are they? The murderers of democracy.
Cowards and slaves, giving up our most ancient freedoms to a dull-eyed, dim-witted pipsqueak and his cohort of bagmen, cranks and degenerate toadies…

Who are they? The murderers of democracy.
Traitors to the nation, filthy time-servers and bootlickers, turning America into a rogue state, an open champion of torture, repression and terror.

Who are they? The murderers of democracy.
Threw our freedom on the ground and raped it, beat it, shot it, stuck their knives into it and set it on fire.

More. My favorite part is “their coddled, corrupt backsides squatting in the Beltway gravy,” but it all helps.

Is it just me or is every major Democratic defeat in the Senate always preceded by barn-burner speeches from Senators Kerry, Feingold, Dodd, Obama, Kennedy, Biden, and others? I’m getting tired of this shit. It’s not enough to say the right things, you need to do the right things. In this case, the “right thing” is to do everything you possibly can to protect our basic freedoms from a party that’s willing to destroy them. This editorial at the NY Times gets it :

Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.
. . .
There is not enough time to fix these bills, especially since the few Republicans who call themselves moderates have been whipped into line, and the Democratic leadership in the Senate seems to have misplaced its spine. If there was ever a moment for a filibuster, this was it.

The Democrats need to use every parliamentary trick at their disposal to stop this bill. If they don’t exhaust all of their options, I can’t help but conclude that the Democrats are bothered more by political concerns than the fact that the President wants to undo some of the fundamental freedoms that are established within the Bill of Rights.

UPDATE : Just kidding guys. The Democrats, in their infinite wisdom, have already agreed to buckle under :

The bill’s ultimate passage was assured on Wednesday when Democrats agreed to forgo a filibuster in return for consideration of the amendment. Any changes in the Senate bill, however, would have made it impossible for Republican leaders to meet their goal of sending the bill to the White House before adjourning on Friday to hit the campaign trail.

They gave up everything for the right to have their certain-to-fail amendments “considered”?! Cowards. This is what happens when Mr. Smith spends too much time in Washington.

That’s the Democratic party for you. They’ll do anything the Republicans want as long as they can avoid being labeled “obstructionists” in an election year.

Iraq, that is:

BAGHDAD, Sept. 26 — A strong majority of Iraqis want U.S.-led military forces to immediately withdraw from the country, saying their swift departure would make Iraq more secure and decrease sectarian violence, according to new polls by the State Department and independent researchers.

In Baghdad, for example, nearly three-quarters of residents polled said they would feel safer if U.S. and other foreign forces left Iraq, with 65 percent of those asked favoring an immediate pullout, according to State Department polling results obtained by The Washington Post.

Another new poll, scheduled to be released on Wednesday by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, found that 71 percent of Iraqis questioned want the Iraqi government to ask foreign forces to depart within a year. By large margins, though, Iraqis believed that the U.S. government would refuse the request, with 77 percent of those polled saying the United States intends keep permanent military bases in the country.

I applaud Markos for being patient enough to stand by the Democratic party and encourage people to not drop out of the political process, but when is enough enough? At what point do you say “screw it” and come to the conclusion that the people in Washington don’t represent your core values? You know the Democratic party is in a sad state of affairs when a post encouraging people to stick by the party ends like this :

Democrats think “looking strong” means bombing Iraq or Iran, when “looking strong” really means standing for something because you believe in it, even if you might not think it’s the smartest political play. Whimpering every time Rove says “boo!” is not strength. Caving in to the administration is not strength. Surrendering what should be core beliefs because of political expediency is not strength.

Update: Rereading this, I don’t think I was clear on this point — please do put pressure on Democrats to do the right thing. On torture or whatever. Please get angry when they fail us and core American values.

Why should we continue to put pressure on politicians to do something that would come as second nature to any decent person? What does it say about our leaders if we have to beg them to oppose torture? If the Democrats aren’t willing to risk their careers for a higher principle like preserving the right of habeas corpus or protecting the separation of powers, isn’t it reasonable to conclude that they don’t feel strongly about these issues and probably shouldn’t be representing us?

I’m not ready to abandon the Democratic party, but I’m ready to make my protests against their lack of action mean something. Over the weekend, I wrote a pair of posts at the Huffington Post that pissed a lot of people off for saying, essentially, “Don’t Vote Democrat”. In it, I advocated voting against every incumbent, regardless of party, under the theory that starting Congress over with a blank slate would be better than the corporate whores and lapdogs that we’ve got now. Although it was more of an intellectual exercise designed to provoke discussion, my essential point was this :

If you’re willing to vote Democratic every election no matter what’s going on because they’re always better than the Republicans, then you’re just helping reinforce the cowardice that’s plagued the party for well over a decade now.

The biggest flaw in the blogosphere’s enthusiasm for the prospect of the Democrats taking over the House and/or Senate is the notion that the Democrats are suddenly going to grow a spine. It’s not gonna happen. Do you really think they’ll view as a mandate their change from a slight minority party to a slight majority party the way the GOP has arrogantly asserted with their recent electoral wins? Investigations, subpoena power, etc. sound awesome, but we’re talking about the same people who we have to beg to oppose torture.

It’s not enough for Democratic politicians to do the right thing after being hounded. We deserve leaders who have well-tuned moral compasses and don’t need to be reminded the difference between right and wrong. But these cozy, beltway incumbents are the ones who are going to be running the committees, who will be practically unstoppable in future primaries, and whose fetishes for centrism will have them all waiting in line just for the privilege of getting to co-sponsor draconian legislation with St. McCain. Crashing the gates is a great goal, but at a certain point you might need to just tear down the whole damn fence and build a new one.

Which is not to discount the hard work of the netroots. Ned Lamont, Jon Tester, and Jim Webb (among many, many others) are doing great work to shake up the status quo and deserve all the support you can give them, but I’m not willing to do thing to support the politically and morally tone-deaf Democratic incumbents who take the support of their base for granted. If you’re not willing to stand for something as basic as human rights, then why should we stand for you? Is it really worth all this effort to replace people who support torture with people who tolerate torture? Either way we’re stuck with a lawless President who gets to do anything he wants.

Are you willing to risk losing another election in order to rid the Democratic party of cowards and fools? Hell, I’m a Democrat. At this point, I’m used to going to bed on election night depressed. So I don’t take it for granted that the Democratic party is going to win in November. Unlike many of my friends on the left, I’m not afraid of losing this election. My big fear this election season isn’t that the Republicans keep control of the House and Senate, but that the Democrats win and do nothing.