Good Move

I just thought I would join the chorus in celebrating the fact that Harry Reid is going to force an actual filibuster over the Iraq War. The American people need to understand just how far the Republicans will go in supporting this horrible war.

I am also dying to find out how the pundit class is going to react to this. My gut tells me they will paint this as the Democrats being too partisan/political. Instead of what it really is, the Republicans ignoring the will of the American people.

Anger and the Democrats

I was going to reply to Disco in the comment thread of my last entry, but I thought it would be better to leave it as a post. As he notes:

The numbers are low because of Congress's inaction on 1] failure to substantially move towards redeployment in Iraq, 2] failure to move towards Impeachment, or 3] both issues.

I think 3 is probably right. However, I do worry that Democrats are somewhat misdirecting their anger. In the Senate we are operating with the thinnest majority possible. As of now, we have 50 Senators to their 49 (with Johnson of South Dakota still recuperating). However, on some issues we are actually in the minority as Lieberman sides with the Republicans on a lot of foreign policy issues. We also need to remember that the Senate provides the minority party with a lot of rights, hence the recent dust-up over the usage of the filibuster by Senate Republicans.

Even if we do pass something, we then must contend with the veto. President Bush has made it quite clear that he will veto just about anything now that the Democrats are in charge and with the current Republican Cult, overriding a presidential veto is damn near impossible.

I worry that over the next 16 months, many Democrats will forget that we are in a tough position on so many important issues. And as a consequence, will stop supporting good Democratic candidates. As I wrote about a few days ago, there already seems to be a disturbing trend where liberals are throwing up their hands in disgust over the fact that things haven't changed immediately. We need to stop doing that. Otherwise, I fear that we will end up losing big in 2008, and go through another 8 years of destructive Republican rule.

The Press vs. The People

I love this post by Glenn Greenwald. In it, he shows just how far removed the press is in regards to what the American people think by looking at recent poll results on a whole host of different issues. In short, the American people want greater oversight of the Bush Administration, an end to the war in Iraq and widely disagree with the Scooter Libby commutation. Yet, according to the Beltway press, all of these are thought to be fringe opinions.

He also points out something that is quite important- in regards to the current disparity between the press and the people. Pundits have been keen to point out that the approval ratings for Congress are very low which, they believe, shows that the American people want to see an end to partisan squabbles. The numbers, however, don't bear this point out. The reason for the low approval ratings is that Democrats are not happy with the lack of partisanship as nearly 50% of all Democrats disapprove of the job Congress is doing. We want our leaders in Congress to show some spine and not roll over when the Republicans start whining. We want them to fight back.

The Time for Serious Political Debate Is Now

The Child Caucus

Over at Daily Kos there is a rather robust discussion over Cindy Sheehan's decision to run against Nancy Pelosi, as an independent, if Speaker Pelosi does not move to impeach the President immediately (here, here and here).

Ms. Sheehan can, of course, do what she likes . But what bothers me about her announcement is the "I am taking my ball and going home" mentality of some on the left. I understand that there is great deal of frustration with the way things are going, I feel that too. However, I get the feeling that with these folks, they thought the electoral victories in '06 was going to instantly result in a liberal paradise. Unfortunately, that is just not the case.

I will say that we are certainly better off now, then we were a year ago. Jon Tester is an improvement over Conrad Burns, Jim Webb is an improvement over George Allen, Bob Casey is an improvement over Rick Santorum, etc.

Yet, as we saw yesterday with the Republican obstructionism on Webb's Amendment or the lack of press coverage on its defeat, we still have quite a fight ahead of us. What this means is that if we want to build a political movement which will last well into the future, we need to develop some political maturity.

We need to understand that we can't win every fight, and more importantly, we need to understand why we lost those fights. We need to realize that the changes we made to the party in '06 represented a beginning and not an end. And, lastly, we need to be both patient and vigilant, in regards to our political leaders. The problems brought about by conservatives, are going to take a long time to undo yet we shouldn't let this serve as an excuse for our leaders.