What good are Democrats?

Chris Dodd is my new hero. He appears to be Dan Froomkin’s hero, as well, along with Glenn Greenwald of Salon — who called it “one of the most compelling and inspired speeches by a prominent politician that I’ve heard in quite some time.”

The reason is that Dodd has been hammering home the dangers of the Bush approach to surveillance and Congressional Democrats’ willingness to compromise to avoid appearing weak. Dodd’s assault — I think that is fair — on this cynical approach is a reminder in many ways that we will need to apply significant pressure to the Democratic nominee (the Republican nominee is a lost cause on this) if we are to keep him from tacking right.

Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic standard-bearer, has announced that he plans to support the FISA deal — an about-face from his early promise to fillibuster any legislation that included immunity from lawsuits for telecom companies that may have been involved in domestic spying. His reasoning: The bill

“firmly re-establishes basic judicial oversight over all domestic surveillance in the future”

and

“guarantees a thorough review by the Inspectors General of our national security agencies to determine what took place in the past, and ensures that there will be accountability going forward.”

He reaffirmed his position today:

“It is a close call for me,” Obama told reporters. But he said the addition of the “exclusivity” provision giving power to the secret court, along with a new inspector general role and other oversight additions, “met my basic concerns.” He said the bill’s target should not be the phone companies’ culpability, but “can we get to the bottom of what’s taking place, and do we have safeguards?”

That’s just not enough, as Sen. Russ Feingold, the Wisconsin Democrat, makes clear in comments about his Democratic House colleagues:

“That’s a farce and it’s political cover,” Feingold said. “Anybody who claims this is an okay bill, I really question if they’ve even read it. ”

“Democrats enabled [this],” Feingold went on. “Some of the rank-and-file Democrats in the Senate who were elected on this reform platform unfortunately voted with Kit Bond, who’s just giggling, he’s so happy with what he got. We caved in.”

It is up us to to force their hand.