Democratic Strategy: Cower and Hope

I've been a bit boresighted on work. Has the Senate finally tried to investigate and take action in the domestic spying case? No? Right then, nose back to the grindstone.

I guess we can all be forgiven for not knowing much about Sen. Feingold's attempt to have the President censured. Now, I personally think that practically and leagally speaking, censure is a bit premature as we haven't actually had any hearings. Cant sentence anyone without some actual facts to go on now can we?

So, yes this is all a bit of grandstanding by the Wisconsin Senator and increasingly likely 2008 presidential candidate. In my eyes Sen. Feingold can be forgiven for some grandstanding as the majority party has barred all legitimate inquiry into these activities. Every day in every way the Republican Party more closely resembles an organized criminal enterprise than the ruling party of the United States of America. So yeah, a little jupmping up and down is probably called for.

I'll leave aside the utterly unsuprising nearly uniform dismissal by mainstream press' of Sen. Feingold's attempt to shame the United States Senate into investigating what has every appearance of an very illegal overreach by the Bush Administration. Next person who says the words, "liberal media" to me gets punched in the face, okay?

No, what really ticks me off is the fact that pretty much everyone in the Democratic party has run for cover. No one even has the courage to say anything along the lines, "Sen. Feingold may be jumping the gun a bit but his slight excaggeration is as nothing compared to the willfull ignorance, malfeasance and downright accessory to criminal behavior of the Republican leadership."

So it is little wonder that Sen Feingold said the following:

"I’m amazed at Democrats, cowering with this president’s numbers so low. The administration just has to raise the specter of the war and the Democrats run and hide. … Too many Democrats are going to do the same thing they did in 2000 and 2004. In the face of this, they’ll say we’d better just focus on domestic issues. … [Democrats shouldn’t] cower to the argument, that whatever you do, if you question the administration, you’re helping the terrorists."

The Democratic Party leadership needs to realize a few things:

1. Just because the other party is deeply unpopular, doesn't neccessarily mean that you are very popular.


2. Voters have a long history of holding their noses and voting.


3. No matter what the papers say, it isn't just "the left wing" of the party that is angry about this stuff.


4. If you don't stand up for something, you stand for nothing.

Bush's poll numbers will probably give the Democratic party a few new seats in Congress. But the Democratic party is never going to retake the leadership of this nation if cannot find the backbone to confront the GOP and its commercial media noise machine and display some moral backbone. Most people already assume the Democrats are just as crooked as the Republicans, they just steal less obviously. The leadership is doing nothing to dispel that myth.