Senate

On the Republican cover-up of Bush Administration spying on Americans, USA Today gets it right:

When The New York Times exposed the program, congressional leaders in both parties erupted, citing the need for judicial review to prevent abuse. Democrats are still complaining, and seeking hearings they could use to political advantage. Republicans are just plain trading principle for political expediency.

Under a tentative deal between the White House and Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee, the National Security Agency could wiretap Americans without warrants for 45 days. If the administration then decided not to seek a court order, the attorney general would have to explain the reasons only to a new subcommittee of seven senators. The wiretapping could then continue without judicial oversight.

There would be no investigation and no consequences for violating the 1978 law.

The plan would leave Congress, and Americans, in the dark about what has been going on - and with a laughable pretense of oversight. It's the equivalent of traffic cops pulling over a driver going 100 mph, and the driver says the law doesn't apply to him. Rather than conducting an investigation and issuing a ticket, the police change the speed limit to 100 mph, apply it retroactively, then retreat with plenty of backslapping.
Oh, and they love to backslap, especially when they've gotten away with something. (Meanwhile, the Democrats are congratulating themselves on having successfully avoided seeming "difficult" or "uncooperative." One wonders when a Democrat with charisma will emerge to actually articulate some opposing views to the neo-fascism fetish the Republicans seem to have these days.)

When it comes to getting away with something, I prefer the brand offered by Kinky Friedman:

DALLAS - An independent candidate for Texas governor rode in a St. Patrick's Day parade car Saturday with his trademark black hat and burning cigar — plus a beer in his hand, an apparent violation of the state's open container law.
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Kinky Friedman's spokeswoman acknowledged that he drank from a can of Guinness handed to him. Photographs taken by The Dallas Morning News showed Friedman, who wasn't driving, holding the beer and appearing to take a drink.
I would imagine that Kinky's poll numbers will only go up from this -- especially since Texas used to require open containers for all drivers until 1997. I'd like to think Kinky has a chance in Texas. Hell, he's more Texan than our blue-blood Connecticut Yankee pseudo-cowboy in the White House now, and he's honest about his drinking.

But enough about Kinky. He doesn't seem to take politics seriously, and there are people who take it verrrry seriously -- especially when it comes to power over the people. So on the megalomania front, the Republicans have started chuckling over who might be their nominee in 2008:

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - With home-field advantage, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist placed first in an informal poll of 2008 presidential hopefuls at a Republican conference Saturday night.

The two-term Tennessee senator received 526 first-place votes, or 36.9 percent, in the Southern Republican Leadership Conference's "straw poll" sponsored by Hotline, a political digest. Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney finished second with 14.4 percent and Sen. George Allen of Virginia finished third, tied with President Bush — who cannot seek a third term.
What an underwhelming line up of mealy-mouthed blobs! Could it be that the Republicans are trying to be more like Democrats?

Of course, with George Allen, the GOP would be presenting their bid for The Election to End All Elections, for with such a Jeebus insider running the country, we could just ditch the Constitution and get on with executing the heathens. (Methodists, you should be paying attention.)

John McCain, though, seemed to be either cracking a joke, revealing his Alzheimer's or unveiling the real Republican agenda:

Sen. John McCain of Arizona, among the most popular Republicans in national surveys, threw a wrench in the polling Friday night by asking delegates to vote for Bush as a show of support.--"But John, Bush can't run in 2008."

Could it be we already had The Election to End All Elections?

I have not been a big fan of NARAL's efforts of late. I've written of their ineptitude in hiring hack media companies to produce lame ads that seem to miss the entire point. I've not been alone.

But really, to actually claim that NARAL and Planned Parenthood are responsible for Alito's confirmation?

Puhleez!

South Dakota has now passed legislation making it illegal for a woman to have an abortion even in the case of rape or incest. It's a law perfectly timed to test the new Supreme Court now that Samuel Alito has joined their ranks. How exactly did we get to this place?

Ask Planned Parenthood and NARAL.

They sat back, bilked their membership like an ATM then didn't show up to fight Alito's confirmation, frolicking in their mountain of hoarded cash even as they pissed and moaned. Worse yet, afterwards they told their members to thank those in the Senate -- like Joe Lieberman -- who cast their votes to let this happen.

Here's the problem with this logic: NARAL did not have a vote on that floor. Neither did Planned Parenthood.

For the better part of a year now, big sport has been made by A-list bloggers to kick NARAL and blame them for everything from John Kerry's election loss to, now, Alito's confirmation. When Kos does it, you can see the crocodile tears. After all, seeing a man who avidly endorses forced-pregnancy candidates actually whine and complain about NARAL's political tactics regarding reproductive rights is like listening to a deer hunter complaining about the WWF's ineffectiveness at protecting wild game.

But I really don't get the A-listers' front-page attacks on NARAL, an organization of limited effectiveness and little political clout.

Jane Hamsher gets this much right:

The conventional wisdom in Washington these days seems to be that the Democratic party will be just fine if it shifts dramatically to the right and "goes with the flow." NARAL was birthed by pioneering feminists like Betty Friedan who had fire in their bellies, but somewhere along the line they became an institutional behemoth who wanted to court the rich and the powerful more than they wanted to actually serve the cause that so many hard working Americans entrust them to do -- guard choice.

They began endorsing Republicans like Lincoln Chafee and giving money to Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. Yet when the Alito cloture vote went down -- the only meaningful vote, which could've been stopped with 40 "nay" votes from getting to the floor -- all of these people voted "aye." People like Chafee and Joe Lieberman later voted "nay" in the final vote which only required a simple majority of 51. They then ran around and huffing and puffing about this coathanger-wielding like they'd done something really brave on behalf of choice. Nobody was fooled.

Well, nobody but Planned Parenthood....

...

...And nobody but NARAL, who said "Thank your senator for opposing Alito!" and then listed a whole slew of Senators who hadn't supported them on cloture.

But to claim that "NARAL and Planned Parenthood Are Now the Enemies of Pro-Choice"? At worst, they're guilty of bad judgment and political ineffectiveness.

The enemies are the politicians who cast the deciding votes. The enemies are the activists who try to marginalize women's control over their own bodies as a "pet cause." The enemies are the political bloggers who push candidates like Casey in PA in primaries and attack (using Republican talking points) those who don't agree with them.

Kicking NARAL may offer some short-term satisfaction, and stir up some controversy. But it won't accomplish much of anything. The problems are the politicians -- the so-called "pro-choice" Republicans who have yet to vote to protect equal rights, and the so-called Democrats who seem to love voting with the Republicans.

"Pro-choice" doesn't count if they don't vote it.

"Democrat" doesn't count if they don't vote it.

That's where the problem is. And at this point, NARAL is at worst simply irrelevant.

For a week, just about all we've heard about is Dick Cheney's "simple hunting accident," and how the victim was a long-time Republican fundraiser, and the attempted White House cover-up, and his beer(s?) at lunch and the yahoo truck-based hunting style, and the fact that the quail in this "hunting trip" were in fact caged and released only when the good ol' boys were ready with their guns to blow them to pieces (hey, the rulers are entitled to privileges, aren't they?), and all the other horrid details of this incident involving this hateful man. We heard his unemotional apology, delivered like a military policy statement on the right-wing's propaganda news channel.

Some analysts have even declared that Cheney's recklessness with firearms has boosted his stock with the macho gun-loving lizard-brain constituents of the Republican Party. (Sometimes the Daily Show is just prescient.)

But when it comes to long-term implications in the political realm, the bigger news story was Paul Hackett's withdrawal from the Ohio Democratic primary race for the Senate seat up this year -- and how he was apparently pressured out by none other than the big shots in the Democratic Party itself -- many of whom recruited him to run in the first place.

"For me, this is a second betrayal," Mr. Hackett said. "First, my government misused and mismanaged the military in Iraq, and now my own party is afraid to support candidates like me."Since then, we've seen quite a lot of chest-thumping in the blogosphere, with an abundance of I-told-you-so's and offerings of revisionist history. ("We support Sherrod Brown. We have always supported Sherrod Brown.")

One example is yesterday's offering posted on Booman that comes close to accusing people who don't line up and vote for Democrats -- any and all Democrats, no matter what their political views or character flaws -- are, in effect, supporters of the Republicans. Never mind what kind of Democrats get elected. Never mind that politicians like Casey, whom the diarist supports, are to the right of Democrats like Ben Nelson and Ken Salazar, who've proven how unreliable they can be.

A cornerstone if this kind of political position is the unstated but clear-as-day strategy of co-opting modern-day, pseudo-conservative Republican positions and "values" so that the only change in Congress is with which party the wingnut in question is registered.

Maybe it's not all that foolish. Maybe it's quite clever. We're supposed to be fooled into thinking that buying into such a rightward push in the Democratic Party is actually in our interests. Their calling card is the Republican boogie man, which doesn't need much embellishment to be convincing. And then they toss out a few bones to the voters.

I believe that if you are registered to vote in Pennsylvania, and you do not vote for Bob Casey over Rick Santorum in the general election in November, then you support the privatization of Social Security (which Santorum favors and Casey opposes). I believe that if you don't vote for Bob Casey instead of Rick Santorum, then you support the K-Street Project, which Rick Santorum helps run. I believe that if you don't vote for Bob Casey instead of Rick Santorum, then you think that the minimum wage should only be increased as long as several million workers lose all of their protections nationwide. If you don't' vote for Bob Casey instead of Rick Santorum, then you support CAFTA, which Casey opposes and Santorum supports.It's easy to offer such simplistic rhetoric. But let's set aside the self-righteousness of it and get to the logic: "Our misogynistic bastard is better than their misogynistic bastard."

This seems like a fool's strategy to me. If you become that which you abhor, how do you change back? If the Democratic Party is made even more of a faux-Republican party to obtain power, how would one change it into a progressive party? Where would be the mandate?

What all this party-insider grandstanding is based on is the unspoken and perhaps unexamined belief that neither party wants to address: Women have no right to have a voice in politics.

Every time you hear someone declare your interest in your rights to equal liberty, equal justice and equal protection under the law as your "pet cause" that fits your "single-issue voter" demands for "ideological purity," think about what they're really saying:

"Shut up, woman, and let us men deal with this! We'll get to your concerns later."

Chris Bowers, The Booman diarist mentioned above, probably does not believe he's a chauvinist or that he's blinded by male privilege from really seeing or hearing what women are doing and saying. (I think the jury is still out on Kos, who seems to be proudly anti-feminist.) But the fact that women are marginalized just for demanding equality in this country is very telling.

So as the bellowing gets louder, and the accusations that women's equal participation in all things political is only provisional and secondary to men's rule, remember this:

As long as it's left to men alone to pass judgment on whether women's rights should be respected, honored and protected as a minimum requirement for a truly egalitarian society, there will be no equality for women...

...and reproductive rights will always be a bargaining chip to be given away...

...and universal healthcare will be a lofty political plank with no credibility...

...and progressive values will suffer...

...because a non-inclusive "big tent" strategy will never turn on the regressive hand that feeds it.

So where are we? I say, same place as always. The party is top down, disinterested - for good or ill - in the base. Not too interested in the country under the Bush regime either, is my take.

And I believe in hard fought primaries... bare knuckle. I want survivors. Or I did, once. I personally believe we are post-collapse. Of the Democratic party, that is. It heaves and thrashes... about it. Last throes. You know how it is, takes a while.

I hope no one took ''Fighting Dems'' too seriously. Roll Call (subscription wall), in their round up of the Hackett walk, push, shove, mutual loss of love, whatever it really was or is!, makes the point, a Fighting Dem is of use til he or she is not. This is not news. Count out Ashe, Lentz (a Vice Adm. stepped in there) and no doubt a few more to come...

Just last weekend Iraq war veteran and attorney David Ashe (D) dropped his campaign for a rematch with freshman Rep. Thelma Drake (R) in Virginia’s 2nd district. Ashe garnered 45 percent of the vote against Drake in 2004, in a late-developing open-seat race sparked by the last-minute retirement of then-Rep. Ed Schrock (R-Va.).

According to a local newspaper report, Ashe’s decision was based primarily on the fact that he has been offered a position in the new administration of Gov. Tim Kaine (D). [...] his move clears the field for Virginia Beach Commissioner of Revenue Phillip Kellam (D), who had been viewed as party insiders’ preferred nominee. Kellam is a political legacy whose family is well known in the Tidewater area.

Meanwhile, in New York’s 29th district, it briefly appeared this week as if retired Navy commander Eric Massa (D) might be getting pushed aside within the Democratic establishment in favor of a self-funding candidate in the race against freshman Rep. Randy Kuhl (R-N.Y.).

On Monday, Democratic officials released a news release from businessman David Nachbar in which he announced that he would challenge Massa for the nomination.

Privately, Democratic Congressional leaders had high hopes for Nachbar ... who was expected to pour at least $100,000 of his own money into the race. But problems with his candidacy became immediately apparent Tuesday morning. [laugh now]

Nachbar is an unaffiliated voter, not a registered Democrat, meaning he would have to go through extraordinary measures to get on the Sept. 12 primary ballot — an effort that would have been complicated by the fact that seven of the eight county Democratic chairmen in the expansive 29th district had already endorsed Massa.
[keep laughing, Massa was a Republican til sometime last year]

A high-ranking New York Democratic official who did not want to be named said state party leaders were huddling with lawyers Tuesday afternoon to determine whether the county chairmen had the ability to put Nachbar on the ballot — a scenario that would have worked to Massa’s advantage — or whether the full Democratic committees in each county had the responsibility to determine whether he could compete.

But the fact-finding would prove to be moot. Nachbar said Tuesday night that he would not run because he did not want to be “a divisive force.�
[leave "divisive" to the party leaders]

Quite a few round up pieces out there on the Hackett withdrawal.
Cilliza in the Wapo, Robert Parry's Consortium News (broad based round up) and The Washington Note - Clemons is on point with what is required of insurgency inside the party:

Furthermore, to win this battle for control -- some candidates, like Hackett, will have to vigorously run until the end, even if their candidacy looks doomed, or cash-strapped. It is certainly true that a slug-fest between Sherrod Brown and Paul Hackett may have harmed the Democratic Party -- and may even help Mike DeWine -- but to win a seat at the table and to chair the meeting when decisions are being made, the insurgent Dems will have to line up behind a number of candidates willing to go all the way. [...]

A successful insurgency won't care what Emanuel does. The insurgents will see victory behind both short-term defeats and short-term wins. Hackett needed to go all of the way -- win or lose -- to give the insurgents validation and strength in the Democratic Party.

Dem insurgents also over-invested in Hackett without lining up the rest of the insurgent candidacies. There are some out there, of course, but not enough. Hackett became the face of their overall campaign which I believe was a mistake.

MSNBC/Curry and Sirota, as well.

From the Curry piece (cue Blogger Boyz):

'Brown better win this'

“I just have one thing to say right now: Sherrod Brown better win this,� said Democratic blogger “Adam B� on the Daily Kos web site. “I hope that once Hackett's many supporters get over this disappointment, we can all work together this fall to make it happen. At the end of the day, Chuck Schumer's not the enemy -- Mike DeWine is, as is every other Republican who stands between us and control of the Senate.�

oh but ''Adam B'' is part and parcel of the Casey push in PA... goose - gander? Fillies and foals, stem cells and abortion, when DOES life begin in the Democratic party?

I ask you!!

Casey and the Democratic party - and abortion? NO squeeze there? hmmm?

Heck! Back to another blogger boy:

But blogger Bob Brigham, who played a role in Hackett’s House race, had a scathing and obscene reaction.

“Schumer has now ***** up beyond all recognition the primaries in both Pennsylvania and Ohio,� Brigham said in an e-mail distributed Tuesday morning. He called Schumer “a complete ******* fool.�

Cool rag for the fevered brow. Now now. This all smacks of Chinese Opera. Much doings on stage. But the audience, in my experience, comes and goes thru the perfomance. They eat, visit, chat, gossip and look up from time to time. The stories are known.

The Democratic Party, it's not "Chinatown" but it is Chinese Opera. And the crowd of 7, 8 or 9, the bloggers who are tightly linked together, are so tied into the party or factions or offshoots or dependants or aides or or or or each other! The incestuous amplification is ... repetitious.

The close of Curry's piece for MSNBC:

Assessing bloggers' importance

The negative reaction to Hackett’s exit “will certainly pass, it may even pass before the next news cycle,� remarked Jennifer Duffy, an analyst with the non-partisan Cook Political Report.

“Hackett is the kind of candidate who illustrates that the blogs are loud, but not necessarily representative,� she added. “In this election cycle in particular, people are watching blogs and assigning them enormous importance that isn’t necessarily warranted.�

The Hackett episode showed that party leaders had decided it was worth risking the wrath of pro-Hackett bloggers in order to get the candidate they judged to be the stronger one.

Ouch!

Jim Dean, brother of Howard and now head of DFA
weighed in (click if you want the commentary about Hackett, I am for bigger game):

Today that baby-sitting job got a lot tougher.

Even after 15 years of losing, too much of our leadership continues to waste valuable time and donors' hard earned money trying to maintain a party machine in second place.

They do this by trying to bring new and exciting ideas to heal for the sake of their own second place status, because to them second place in DC is better than fighting for our country, our values and our party.

By late afternoon, Hackett had cooled a bit and voiced support for Sherrod Brown (whose people had worked his summer House campaign against Schmidt, one thing about politics, hand washing, back scratching, back and forth, back and forth... that ceaseless motion... LOL).

Later, Howard popped up, speaking to HS students in FL:

Dean told a student audience in Miami that "some skulduggery in Washington" improperly led to Hackett's decision to end his bid. And he said Democrats will have a tough time winning if similar things happen to others.

Skullduggery? Oh to be sure... and Howard would know. Osama and the Democratic 527. But to Howard I would say: Pennsylvania. Casey.

There is ''skullduggery'' to spare.

A last few words for Howard, his inspired stump from February/March of 2003. Truly, he has forgotten:

I want my country back. We want our country back.

I am tired of being divided.

I don't want to listen to the fundamentalist preachers anymore. I want America to look like America.

Where we are all included, hand in hand, walking down. We have dream. We can only reach the dream if we are all together – black and white, gay and straight, man and woman. America. The Democratic Party. We are going to win in 2004.

Thank you very, very much. Thank you very, very much.

Stand up for America, Stand up for America, Stand up for America.

Fuck the non-establishment candidates, and they'll walk.

Mr. Hackett staged a surprisingly strong Congressional run last year in an overwhelmingly Republican district and gained national prominence for his scathing criticism of the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq War. It was his performance in the Congressional race that led party leaders to recruit him for the Senate race.

But for the last two weeks, he said, state and national Democratic Party leaders have urged him to drop his Senate campaign and again run for Congress.

"This is an extremely disappointing decision that I feel has been forced on me," said Mr. Hackett, whose announcement comes two days before the state's filing deadline for candidates. He said he was outraged to learn that party leaders were calling his donors and asking them to stop giving and said he would not enter the Second District Congressional race.

"For me, this is a second betrayal," Mr. Hackett said. "First, my government misused and mismanaged the military in Iraq, and now my own party is afraid to support candidates like me." This just goes to show that the Democratic candidates all must represent the Democratic Party first, and the people second.

I know nothing about Hackett, really, and his dropping out makes no difference to me. Frankly, I'm suspicious of the so-called "fighting Dems" and this notion that having worn a uniform automatically makes one a worthy legislator. But Party maneuvers like this make one wonder why the Party even pretends to have primaries.

Asked about Mr. Hackett's contention that he had been pressed to leave the Senate race, a spokesman for Mr. Schumer, Phil Singer, said, "We've told both Sherrod Brown and Paul Hackett that avoiding a primary will make it easier to win the Ohio Senate seat, " but he added, "Obviously, the decision to run is Mr. Hackett's and Mr. Hackett's alone."Spoken like true lawyers. You believe them, don't you?

Jennifer Duffy, who analyzes Senate races for the Cook Political Report, said that part of what made Democratic leaders nervous about Mr. Hackett was what had also made him so popular with voters.

"Hackett is seen by many as a straight talker, and he became an icon to the liberal bloggers because he says exactly what they have wished they would hear from a politician," Ms. Duffy said. "On the other hand, the Senate is still an exclusive club, and the party expects a certain level of decorum that Hackett has not always shown."

Mr. Hackett was widely criticized last year for using indecent language to describe President Bush. Last month, state Republicans attacked Mr. Hackett for saying their party had been hijacked by religious extremists who he said "aren't a whole lot different than Osama bin Laden."

Though Republicans called for an apology, Mr. Hackett repeated the mantra of his early campaign: "I said it. I meant it. I stand behind it."No wonder the Democrats are afraid of him. He might actually have a chance at winning, and then where would all the high-paid D.C. consultants be?