(Crossposted at myleftwing
)
As far as I’m concerned, Senator Obama yesterday let the cat out of the bag: the Democrats are going to capitulate and let President Bush have his ‘clean’ Iraq supplemental bill. Okay, even if that wasn’t or isn’t the plan, ‘progressive’ Obama’s statement gets the capitulation bandwagon off to a roaring start.
Thanks, thanks a helluva lot, Senator.
Markos among many others has rightly criticized the inept politician (best interpretation) / war enabler (worst). But now, let’s clean up some business and admit that Big Tent Democrat over at talkleft was right on this, and the Harry Reid / Nancy Pelosi cheerleaders were wrong.
BTD has long predicted that either Bush will sign the present bill (after he discovers (he would be the last to do so (other than “binding language” David Sirota)) that its troop pull-out deadlines are mythical) or, especially now, will veto it knowing the Democrats will capitulate. The second option has to be preferred now, since Obama has relieved Bush of any doubt over whether the Democrats will stand ‘firm’ against his veto.
So now, if Bush signs the supplemental, he just gets the money. But if he vetoes, watches the Democrats capitulate and then signs the clean bill, he gets the money AND gets to watch congressional Democrats perform their excruciating ritual, “We are Weaklings in the Age of Terror.”
Has there been any dailykos criticism of Big Tent Democrat the last two, three weeks for his not hopping aboard the Supplemental Funding express? Yes, just a little, here and there. And how about David Sirota? Guess he’ll be the last guy to find out what many (including BTD) expected and based their analysis on, that the Democrats, even a vaunted ‘progressive’ like Obama, would stand soft not firm. Here’s Sirota still optimistic a couple days ago:
The real centrists are people like Ellison, Nadler, Doggett and the other antiwar Democrats standing firm – and at least judging by their public statements, it’s clear that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid understand this basic truth. Their public statements also suggest that they understand that they have a mandate to stand firm against President Bush, if he vetoes the entire bill when it reaches his desk. It will be up to us, the progressive movement, to help sustain and solidify public pressure and support for these leaders to follow through on ending the war.
Nope, don’t think so, and BTD never thought so. The ‘progressive’ pressure game is over before it started, General Obama has gone soft.
In contrast, here was BTD on March 24:
I think we all know what is going to happen — the “firm” date for withdrawal, August 31, 2008, will become a “goal.” And this “goal” was once December 31, 2006, then 2007, now 2008.
And earlier, on March 14 (emphasis added):
You want to stop the Iraq Debacle you can not fund Bush’s war. To pretend that there is another way is an insult to the intelligence of the American People. That is why I (And I speak ONLY for me) urge opposition to the House Dem Leadership/Blue Dog proposal, as it is a travesty that does nothing to end the Debacle.
He was right. He is right still. Now will we progressives act to de-fund rather than fund the occupation? Filibuster, 41 Senators, keep it simple.
Yes, Obama let the cat out of the bag, and it was a tom: a tom named DLC. And Obama continually undermines any true progressive message. Remember his Meet the Press performance during the Alito hearings? Instead of educating the public in this very public forum, he claimed Democrats should eschew procedural strategies of blocking nominations and instead educate the public. He disagrees with Democrats and with Republicans in one breath, a classic example of DLC triangulation. Now I know the Obama supporters will cry foul and try to ventriloquize their words and their desires into Obama’s empty suit. But I am not interested in fiction; I am interested in actual enactment.
Obama’s getting too big for his britches. It’s not his place as a first-term senator to speak for Senate Democrats.
But this doesn’t necessarily mean that BTD was right. We’ll know whether he was right or not when we see the supplemental appropriations bill that eventually gets passed and signed by Shrub—specifically, whether it will turn out to be weaker than the current bill. If it’s significantly weaker, then BTD will turn out to have been right.
I wish Congressional Dems had followed BTD’s approach but given that a recent poll indicates that only 46% support restricting funding for the war to “Block Bush’s plan”, while 51% oppose it, I can understand why the Dems didn’t do that. That would mean they would have to get in front of the public in terms of wanting to end the war, and things just don’t work that way.
So that will be tough to achieve. To escape its constraints, Bush just needs to shout “I’m gittin’ the terrorists” three times and he can have as many troops in Iraq as he wants, for as long as he wants.
I know. And it doesn’t even call for a full withdrawal, but only for a withdrawal of combat troops. So about half the troops that are there now would remain would be my guess, keeping themselves to the four mega bases.
But with polls supporting only moderate but not decisive action from the Dems, and with no massive demonstrations, I don’t see what else you can expect from the Dems. They are a war party after all, just like the Rethugs.
Just look at how the Vietnam war ended. Congress dragged its feet for years then, too.
To take decisive action now, the Dems would have to simply have to take the opinion of people who consistently vote for Republicans as not mattering, the way the Bushies treat us. That would be the sensible and decent thing to do. But unfortunately, Dems are genetically programmed not to think that way.
and individuals, like MoveOn and David Sirota, who bought into a bill that fully funds occupation till 8/31/07.
Dear David Sirota: A progressive has to be for Iraq withdrawal, it’s not complicated. So if you work hard for a bill that funds the occupation, you’re being ‘progressively’ counterproductive.
MoveOn definitely showed they’re more tied to the Big Dems than they are to peacenik progressives who are their membership. Or, at least who are their ‘human’ membership; I’ll assume their $$$ membership is different.
It’s hard to say what the Dems should do, since they consistently buy the Republican issue framing and then whine that they can’t do anything because they’re boxed in by the Republican frame. So, in the current ‘Iraq debate’ frame, Democrats who make peace the highest priority need to re-frame the debate as “supporting the troops means getting them out of Iraq,” not as approving occupation funding. Now, how many and who among the Dems really makes peace the highest priority? We don’t know, they’ve never been forced to show which side they’re really on. So, it would be nice to start smoking out the real from the fake anti-warriors.
For example, and soon, it would be very useful just to know which Senate Dems will vote ‘yes’ on a filibuster of occupation funding. Maybe true anti-occupation progressives could choose one of those and support her/him strongly for President in 2008.
I advocated filibustering occupation funding here at BT, but got minimal response. I also had an exchange about it at dKos with BTL, but he wasn’t interested in the idea, because he thought you can’t filibuster a supplemental authorization bill, which turns out to be false. So he should have pushed for a Dem filibuster, instead of what he pushed for. The filibuster strategy calls for one courageous Dem to actually do the filibustering, and 40 additional votes to go along with it. BTL’s strategy requires having the Dem Congressional leadership with you. In other words, the filibuster approach allows you to bypass the leadership. What BTL advocated never made much sense. Filibustering does, but it is radical, in that it says “We know we are right, so we are going to dismiss the views of roughly half of the American population which isn’t on board with us about this.” It’s also called leadership, of course.
I agree with you about MoveOn. They’re a pressure group with a lot of money. That means they should push the envelope on the left, as opposed to following the Beltway view of what is “practical”. I haven’t followed Sirota on this, but from what I know about him, I think you’re probably right in lumping him together with MoveOn.
I also had a brief exchange about the filibuster strategy with Booman, so I know he is aware of it. For whatever reason, he didn’t embrace it. In any case, I think his views on what the Dems should be doing to end the war make more sense that BTL’s, because there is no way to get the Dem leadership on board to stop the war by cutting funding, given the poll numbers.
and regards Iraq as a hopeless failure.
However, the Republicans and most Democrats have reframed the ‘debate’ as “You can’t defund the troops while they’re in the field! They’ll run out of body armor and bullets!” (It’s a paper-thin lie, but that’s what “we’ve all” accepted.) Consequently, there is no debate. We must keep funding the war as long as Bush wants to do it, otherwise we aren’t ‘supporting the troops’.
And I think that’s why the polling numbers collide so headlong with my sense, and I think most people’s senses, of what is the American people’s common sense perspective on the war.
Yes. The polling numbers about people not being for a cutoff of funding probably don’t mean much, since most people don’t understand that the argument that cutting off funding for the occupation “would hurt the troops” is bogus.
Another thought just occurred to me. The obvious person to do the filibuster is Feingold. So we learned today that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is co-sponsoring Feingold’s bill setting a timetable for leaving Iraq, a bill that is pointless, since Bush would veto it, supposing it passed.
Could it be that Reid is trying to co-opt Feingold? Just a thought.
Yeah, that could be. Good noticing there!
just the theme of pumping up big taffy.
get a grip.
but maybe it came out that way, too much. Me and many others were saying the ‘antiwar’ vote for fully funding the occupation was a horrific strategy that would backfire, soon. Not just what’s his name.
I just think it’s interesting how many big names over at dkos (and maybe Booman too) were attacking the left opposition to the bill, and now when Obama shows the way things will resolve themselves, entirely in Bush’s favor, BIG liberal blog SILENCE on how that contradicts what they were saying just a week or so ago.
To put things differently, BTD is kind of a very low rent Scott Ritter character for the time being.
If BTD said it, it HAS to be wrong.
the title just sounds like he was the sole voice.I think the author rather acknowledged that, and did not overreact.
I’m just trying to get you to see the yawning gulf between the Bloggerati and Armando, a gulf that in my opinion has been brewing for a long time and is now self-evident.
Ratings abuse by Louisiana Girl?
obsessed with me.
smileyfacedemoticonandallthat.
understands why I find Obama so insidious. Here is a sculptor entitled “Blessing” by a senior at the Art Institute of Chicago named David Cordero:
Obama’s response to the sculpture?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070403/ap_on_el_pr/obama_as_jesus
Clearly Barack Obama knows nothing about the history of political art at the Art Institute of Chicago. And clearly Obama believes art should serve the role of confirming the previous beliefs of the beholder. May I say he is woefully wrong, indeed ignorant?
It has been asked on these blogs…often…”What does it take to get a really progressive candidate for President?”
Say it takes 30 apples to bake a set of pies.
And all the orchards are thoroughly controlled by people who want their pies baked a certain way.
Which bakers do YOU think are going to be supplied with sufficient apples?
The ones who bake pies the way the owners like them baked or the ones who have other ideas?
Let’s get real, here.
The best we can hope for is a baker who at least knows how to bake pies and isn’t a total apple thief.
I got yer “reality”, right HERE!!!
AG
So for a really progressive politician to get elected President, it will take really mainstream, big money approved, positions on the issues that really matter. Well, in that case let’s all give up and put on our serf outfits.
Your apple supplies analogy is not accurate, anyway. We still have a little union power in this country. We also have had a progressive blogosphere ready to put its money where its mouth is if we had an at least Russ Feingold to give to.
Also, I don’t think it takes all that much money when things are so far out of whack politically in this country, when they’re so extremely counter to 3/4s of the population’s interests and so blatantly warmongering, that makes it easier and easier for an authentic progressive to run and win.
Better to put on our guerrilla warrior outfits, fairleft.
Serf’s certainly not up for me!!!
Union power!!!???
Dop you beliong to a union?
I do.
Like civil service.
Post office level.
Soi”centrist”…read wallowing in MSM bullshiot…that the majority of them couldn’t tell the diference between George Bush and Emma Goldman.
Unions?
STUPID!!!
The progressive blogosphere?
Liuke what…dKos??
All the money in the world…even if the people who now populate that blogospghere were NOT presently about 90% Time/Newsqueak “leftists”…didn’t save Howard Dean. And Dean was about as “progressive” a candidate as you are EVER going to see come to any position of potential power here.
Sorry, fairleft. Dream on. I cannot join you. Awakening was rough enough the first time.
Later…
AG
Just thought the following — “The best we can hope for is a baker who at least knows how to bake pies and isn’t a total apple thief.” — was a little too bleak.
Reality is bleak sometimes, fairleft.
So it goes.
Short of successfully disassembling the hypno-media system now in place and functioning very well here in Scamerica, I see no other options.
And I cannot get any traction on THAT idea even from your vaunted left blogoshpere.
Sorry.
The media decides who runs.
On the evidence.
And it does NOT want to rock the boat.
Not far enough to risk capsizing, anyway.
On the evidence.
We had our chance on ’04, and the media “ARRRGHED” a boat rocker out in favor of a good-for-business centrist.
And then it got all neutral and let the centrist be drowned in the swiftboat political waters of his own cowardice, hereditary privilege and upper-class entitlement/incompetence.
Net used to it.
Nothing will change in ’08 unless there is a monumental catastrophe of some sort.
And you know what?
I’ll bet you don’t want to see that, either.
I don’t.
The last true “progressive” President of the United States? We needed a Great Depression to elect him and a World War to keep him in office.
Check it out.
JFK, RFK, MLK? The mere threat of some sort of effective progressivism got all three of them shot.
McCarthy? McGovern? Dean? None of them had a snowball’s chance in hell of surviving the media.
None of them.
The media.
The assassin’s bullet of the late 20th/early 21st century.
Bet on it.
Hillary/Obama is the best you are going to be offered.
All the rest?
Off the table.
Off the trable and on the floor, right next to impeachment and an end to economic imperialism enforced by military occupation and/or covert action whenever needed.
Sorry, fairleft.
That’s the news…fresh and unexpurgated.
Best learn to deal with it. because it ain’t gonna change without massive loss of life and property.
Bet on that as well. (See my sig below for more on that idea.)
Later….
AG
I think politicians with some progressive content have gotten decently far in the nomination process in the past three or four Democratic Party races. Dean in ’04, Jerry Brown in ’92, for example.
And I agree with you and have shouted it for years: the Dems only will win when they run against the mainstream media, when they learn that lesson. People freakin’ hate the media right now, or quickly would, if someone directed them to what you outlined in your comment.