Every election is like a coup attempt. Every election is about power. Who will control the resources of the community? Who will hold the purse strings, who will write the laws, what kind of judges will interpret those laws?
When we start thinking about the Federal government, the amount of power involved is staggering. There can be no bigger coup than one which wrests control of the Pentagon away from the incumbent party.
:::flip:::
It’s not just the F-16’s and B-2 bombers, and it’s not just the Intercontinental ballistic missiles. It’s the contract with Boeing to build 50 new warplanes for Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. It’s all the subcontracts. It’s control of the intelligence agencies.
Or how about control of the Justice Department and the IRS?
We’d like to think that our elections are decided on the up and up, with fair voting, and fair campaigning. But there is too much on the line for people to sit back and let such a pastoral process take place.
There is no question that we would be discussing impeachment hearings if the Democrats held the committee chairs in even one house of Congress. But that’s the point. By holding the committee chairs the GOP has the power to change what is legal, what is permissible. Many Bush policies are legal only so long as they have complete control, and they will become illegal if we take some of that power away.
That’s a hell of a situation for the GOP to be in, don’t you think? They must keep winning elections or risk going to jail. Doesn’t leave one with a lot of faith in their willingness to conduct free and fair elections, does it?
What would they go to jail for? We could make a list: deliberately deceiving Congress about Iraq’s intentions and capabilities, using bribery to pass the Medicare bill, signing unconstitutional executive orders on interrogation techniques…and so much more.
What the DLC doesn’t understand is that we cannot defeat the Republicans without a brawl. We have to come at them with all guns blazing. We have to call them crooks and criminals because they are crooks and criminals. They lost 9 billion dollars in Iraq! They have been stealing and redirecting our national resources at an unprecedented rate.
Forget GOP-lite, the DLC is recommending Looting-Lite. Paul Hackett came after the GOP with everything he had. He called the President a chickenhawk, and said he intensely disliked him. Joe Biden and Joe Lieberman will undoubtedly say that Hackett doesn’t speak for them. But he speaks for us. Hackett improved on the 2004 Democratic performance by 20%. John Kerry’s careful poll-tested approach lost ground to Al Gore.
If we want to win we need to be realistic about what we are trying to do. We are trying to seize control over the largest military and largest budget in the world. We are trying to take power away from an entrenched foe. Our foe feels no compunction about bending the rules. They will smear their critics, ruin their careers. They will set their attack dogs upon those of us that speak out. They will use blatant voter suppression, and quite possibly voter fraud, to get their way.
The only way to deal with these people is to be forceful, relentless, and unmerciful. So enough with denigrating ‘protest politics’…to the barricades!
BooMan,
You are one of the bloggers that I respect the most out of the entire blogosphere. I respect your pragmatism, your knowledge, and your insight. This post…well, it just makes me think….
FUCK YEAH.
We have to understand all the intricacies of why the Republicans have been so successful. Then we have to turn that on its head against them. We have to predict what they will do to try to continue their success, and come up with countermeasures to prevent them from doing so effectively.
We have to fight their disinformation with information.
We have to remember that the majority of people in this country are good people. And we have to figure out how to get them energized.
What a scream … we both come up with the same eloquent phrase. FUCK YEAH!
And oh isn’t that true about the Boo. Hell of a writer. And so damn coherent and logical. I can see why he majored in Philosophy!
I thought that phrase said it best 🙂
Yeah…what he/she said.
Okay.
You scared the shit out of me — YET AGAIN!
Then you made me go, FUCK YEAH!
BRUTAL, hard-hitting, all the way baby politics.
Hackett showed us with is RIGHT about us.
Craig Crawford this morning showed us what’s wrong with D.C.
Last night, with Sam Seder on Air America, Kos said that one reason he thinks that Hackett did as well as he did is because the D.C. Democrats didn’t want to bother with his little campaign, and so left him alone … that way, he got to DO HIS THING without them interfering. Fuck yeah.
have made stealing an art form, cheating a way of life and shredding the Constitution a mandatory intramural sport.
So we kick ass, take names and turn them out to the federal prison systems that they so richly deserve.
As they said in Armageddon: NASA, this is a kick ass ride.
So be it with the 2006 and 2008 elections, to the American people, lets us take this kick ass ride and regain our country.
Well Booman, you’ve really laid out what it’s all about.
And of course, it’s not just congressmen, politicans, Rovians and the rest.
It’s the lawyers too.
Infuriating, and beyond sad. This will take energy to turn around.
not only do we have to fight the republicans
we have to fight the democrats in power….they are standing in the way too…sometimes it feels so overwhelming…last night really gave me a shot in the arm…the empowerment people felt was so tangible….we need to keep that part going…this is why i get so upset at what rendell did in pa with the casey annointment….forget that casey is better than santorum and will probably win…the act of making a backroom deal to get him annointed without letting the people decide in a competitive primary process disempowers people….all the people who came together and were inspired by howard dean, even though they lost and even though kerry went on to lose….those people were still full of hope and willingness to be involved and work towars something….for party bosses to take power away from the very people they need to get the job done is just so stupid and wrong…how can it not backfire?
i wish i could go to the dfa meeting tonite in philly…i hope someone somewhere brings up these issues and starts a discussion on how to overcome the obstacles we face in our own party as we move forward.
Did the fat lady sing in PA? Is there no primary? WTF then. Nobody “takes” power. People give it away.
there is a primary. Chuck Pennachio is still running.
But Rendell cleared the field of all the pols that were likely to have a chance against Casey Jr.
Well shit. You’re there. Do you think Chuck has a chance in the primary? Second question is whether he could win as an independent. (Taggaris, among others, doesn’t think much of that one.)
Chuck has my vote in the primary, but his only chance is for fortune to strike in some way or another.
Casey will win the primary, barring unforeseen events. And he will be an extemely tough opponent for Santorum to defeat.
Early on the DSCC decided that Casey was our strongest candidate and went out to recruit him. Apparently, he set conditions: like, he was not interested in a contested primary.
And so Rendell leaned on all the Dems that were considering a run to drop out…which they did.
This wouldn’t be so annoying except that Casey is pro-life.
As for Chuck running as an independent, that would be Man-on-Dog’s biggest wet dream.
but if you’re going to preach all-out political combat (with which I heartily agree and congratulate you on your clear call to action), you might consider starting by never ever again uttering or writing the phrase “pro-life” unless you’re talking about pacifist absolutists who oppose the death penalty, the drugwar, American imperialism, and trading off the environment for “jobs”.
Casey may or may not be “pro-life” at some level, but being anti-abortion does not entitle him or anyone else to the label. I’ve been preaching this for a decade and still don’t begin to understand why the left side of the aisle STILL gets suckered by this gross and obvious con job.
you frustration but I can’t be bothered to write anti-abortion every time.
Besides, it is nearly as misleading as pro-life, since it implies that pro-choice people are pro-abortion.
Personally, I’m more inclined to use anti-Roe.
You can nitpick all you want but I don’t respond to the language police and I am not going to go to battle over the use of terms.
I have too much respect for the English language and the nuances of meaning to abide by strict usage rules.
But that’s just me. Carry on the fight…
Alright you guys: the issue is medical privacy. The government has no right inserting itself into the doctor-patient relationship.
Jeez I hate it when people cite Roe as an “abortion” decision…..
that you apparently can’t be bothered to think about what you write. Why is it more of a “bother” to write “anti-abortion” than “pro-life”?
Language police? Strict Usage Rules? This is precisely about allowing the other side to frame the issues, you know, the stuff you preach so endlessly about? If you’re not going to battle over use of political terms I suggest you just pack it in and let the other side do whatever they want to.
For now I’ll assume you were well on your way to your hangover when you wrote this arrant nonsense. I know you can think better than that.
Hackett seems to understand this as Dean did before him. Does this mean we don’t have to hold our noses and get behind “electable” candidates?
My opinion is that, in the primaries, we need to get behind whoever is gunning for our goals. We have to ensure that these candidates make it to the general elections, where their no-bullshit attitudes will appeal to the masses who are, quite frankly, sick of the bullshit.
That being said, if an ‘electable’ candidate makes it out of the primaries, I think at that point we have to stop bitching about him/her and start making sure he/she gets elected.
The Republicans understand that even a Congressman for a podunk little district is still a cog in the national machine. We need to understand that too.
It is imperative that we fight to rebuild our party from within, without forgetting that having a majority nationally is how we get actual power.
That being said, if an ‘electable’ candidate makes it out of the primaries, I think at that point we have to stop bitching about him/her and start making sure he/she gets elected.
AMEN! This is so important.
We can go after the less desirable Dems once we regain a majority SOMEWHERE.
Well, this is where the press rears it’s ugly head. A straight-talker from anywhere left-of-center gets branded as a nut, while right-wingers suffer from no such handicap.
I agree with you that most Americans are “sick of the bullshit”. Unfortunately, the media are very much in love with their power to confer “electability”, and many primary voters are swayed by them. I believe Dean lost momentum because the TV outlets never presented his campaign seriously.
This is true. That makes it part of our job to push our candidates to the media.
The thing about the blogosphere, is that there isn’t a whole lot of news on it that isn’t based, at some point, on what some person in some MSM outlet wrote. But what it does do, is make it so that no little detail goes unnoticed or unchecked. The blogs are starting, slowly, to put the accountability back into the media.
In addition, the large majority of people are not particularly interested in politics. This means, that, if we (those of us who DO pay attention) can focus, cooperate, and make our voices heard with a concentrated message, we will be louder than the sum of the number of us shouting. We can start to steer the direction of the coverage.
Molly Ivins says that we should vote with our “hearts” in the primaries and with our “heads” in the general election. This really helped me get out of the trap of thinking “electability” in he last presidential primary and freed me up to put all of my time and energy into the Dean campaign. For the rest of my life, I will be proud of all that I did, but I eventually had to hold my nose and work/vote for Kerry. This has been played out for me so many times in local races as well. My passion gets poured into the primaries and then I do what I have to do in the general election. One of these days it would be a real kick to actually see a candidate I support win in the primaries!!
If you hear vague traces of skipping reels of rhyme
to your
tambourine in time, it’s just a ragged clown
behind.
Thanks Boo – I’m right beside you.
The next cycle won’t be won by anyone coming at it from a strictly partisan “D”emocratic perspective. Paul Hackett is alot of things: Major in the Marines; straightforward; honest; someone with integrity; and somewhere towards the end of the list – a democrat.
’06 will raise more candidates of the same intensity across the country, who will, I hope, run on a “D”emocratic ticket. That doesn’t necessarily mean they will come from within the party. That’s a huge change, and one the party will need to acknowledge and accept.
There is no more pyramid. The construct is now flat. No more dictates – or resources – will flow from the top down. As long as party central embraces that change Dems have a chance in ’06.
And I think this place is the barricade.
that the American system has genuine control over the Pentagon. It’s been half a century since President and ex-General Eisenhower first hinted at this possibility. Since then the Pentagon and supporting programs now command half the military spending of humanity, and their economic, intelligence and persuasion tentacles reach into all areas of life these days.
Look down the list of the ownership and leadership of all the other institutional forces that make up the United States–most especially the infrastructure of communicating with the electorate–and check how many stand with the right vs the left. Add up the fraction of total American wealth that favors the right vs the left.
So I’d say that even this diary’s sober assessment understates the task we face. But that only reinforces the conclusions about the degree and force of effort needed. There is indeed a war on, and it is indeed a type of war that hasn’t been waged in the past. But it’s not against terrorism, it’s against democracy.
“What the DLC doesn’t understand is that we cannot defeat the Republicans without a brawl.”
I’ll join in the crowd that is with you all the way on this Booman. I think it is really the heart of what we need to be thinking about right now. I don’t understand where the DLC and some of our elected Dems are in their reactions to what is happening. Sometimes I want to scream “Wake up and smell the FASCISM!!!”
I too had a “YEAH” reaction to this at the same time that it taps into my fear. Just how for are “they” willing to go in the fight to hold on to their power? And what will it take for us to win?
Keep this front and center Boo!!
Jean Shmidt is a monster. Anyone catch her Hardball appearance today? “I stood outside the polls for 13 hours and no one was talking about the war, they were more concerned with local issues, stuff that affects their lives”.
Fuck that. She is either lying or blacked out, I find it hard to believe that no one mentioned the war. GRRRRRR
yup, gotta fight fire with fire. That is all they know what to do…speaking of the gop. if the democratic party should ever wake up to see this straight in the face for what it truly is, they just might win. Just look at what happened in Ohio yesterday. A very good begining and I seriously think many are looking for us to fight fire with fire at this point.
Thought you’d enjoy a snippet from Chris Floyd — the fiery columnist for the Moscow Times and St. Petersburg Times — on this:
Bushist apparatchik Jean Schmidt
I had to look up the word. It’s “Russian colloquial word for someone who has been engaged full time in the work of the CPSU (qv) and/or the republic communist parties. Sometimes used in a derogatory sense.”
Thanks for the link to Chris Floyd. I’m seriously concerned that Floyd’s analysis is correct.
I find I have had to continuously adjust my thinking over the duration BushCo rule, from “this can’t really be this bad” to “Oh My God, What Will They Target Next!!”
It’s like you think you comprehend the situation, the tip of the iceberg, assume another 6/7ths you don’t know, then before long that 7/7ths becomes just another 1/7, and on and on…
This situation is 100 times more damaging than Nixon, Reagan, and Bush I, combined.
Obviously a very serious effort will be required to unseat this cabal.
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time
to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” — Thomas Jefferson
“They must keep winning elections or risk going to jail.”
That’s the best summary I’ve seen in quite some time. Thank you.