Democrats – Page 4

I vote for blue

Wally Edge raises an interesting question about the upcoming mid-term election:

If Democrats are successful in bucking the trend of mid-term elections going against the party that controls the governorship, as they were four years ago, it might be a signal of just how blue a state New Jersey has become — or evidence that Larry Bartals’ 2001 redistricting map was, as the GOP claims, truly one-sided.

He lists the last three decades of mid-term results, showing that the party that controlled the governorship has historically lost seats.

I have two issues with his analysis. First, the Florio mid-term and the first Byrne mid-term occurred at times when the electorate was teed off over new taxes. The backlash that created had a lot to do with those results.

My other issue is one of time: Going back 30-plus years is rather meaningless given the drastic demographic changes that have taken place.

I have another theory, however. The Florio mid-term was actually an aberration based on his unpopular tax plan, as was the election of Christie Whitman as governor (she eaked out a win over Floiro and then barely held on against Jim McGreevey — the two smallest margins of victory in memory). Whitman’s first win was a function of lingering anger over Florio, while her second win, I think, came courtesy of her incumbency and little else.

Using these suppositions — and that’s all they are — as a baseline, and adding the recent blue votes in presidential races (and the fact that there has not been a Republican U.S. senator from New Jersey since the Carter administration), one could make the argument that a different trend is in play: That the GOP is slowly disintegrating, consistently losing seats regardless of who is in the governor’s seat.

I’m no political scientist, but this is as plausible a description of the New Jersey political landscape as any other.

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Calling out the hypocrites

Dahlia Lithwick links the U.S. attorney scandal to the recent FISA vote, calling out the Democrats for, in her words, “hypocritically berating the attorney general with fingers crossed behind their backs.”

‘Nuff said.

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Dem bums

There have been thousands of words written in recent days about the Democrats’ failure to show any backbone and stand up to one of history’s least popular presidents on an issue that is vital to the health and survival of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

The New York Times, for instance, called the party’s Senate leaders “feckless” today in an editorial; Glenn Greenwald offers this dissection; and Chris Floyd of Empire Burlesque offers this and this.

But none have been able to top Arthur Silber, who makes the point — a valid one I think — that the Democrats and Republicans share a basic goal, shared also by corporate America: Control.

(T)he Democrats may differ from the Republicans on matters of detail, or emphasis, or style. But with regard to the fundamental political principles involved, everything that has happened over the last six years — just as is the case with everything that has happened over the last one hundred years — is what the Democrats want, too.

It may seem a bit extreme, but an honest evaluation of Democratic presidencies — and wars, as offered by Silber — doesn’t exactly show the party to be a shining light of populism or progressive principles. State liberalism in the form of the Democratic Party has really been little more than the flip side of the old business conservatism — a system designed to keep the corporate engine humming.

They could have made a stand here, stopped the president in his tracks and forced the national GOP to stand as the paragon of repressive government the party has become.

But instead the Democrats stood down. A cowardly move, perhaps, but as Floyd says in his post, the Demcorats “cop to cowardice to cover up complicity.” (This criticism exempts Rush Holt, Dennis Kucinich, Russ Feingold and the others who were willing to fight, but whose swords were taken from them.)

Am I sounding a tad angry? Is my natural lefty populism showing through? What do you expect when a party that has been elected to reverse six years of domestic neglect, foreign misadventure and religious pandering manages to cave on the most important of issues and refuses to truly engage the public on several others (universal health care, anyone?).

The game, of course, is rigged. We are not likely to see a viable progressive third-party presence running at the national level. The system affords just two choices — bad and dangerous. Democrats may be bad, but the current crop of Republican candidates are downright dangerous.

I may not be ready for a return of Clinton corporatism, but I can’t see how a Rudy Giuliani presidency would be good for America or for the world — and he may be the best of this ugly lot of Republican wannabes.

So I and too many others will vote for a candidate come November 2008 that we don’t like because we dislike the other major candidate more. And then we’ll complain about our lack of choices for four years and do it again.

Is this any way to run a democracy?

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
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Stand up to the president or get out of the way

I’m still not sure that Cindy Sheehan is making the right move in threatening to challenge House Speaker Nancy Pelosi next year, but she is right about the weakness of the Democrats.

They need some backbone — especially when it comes to defending the basic principles of our constitution.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, in a farely pointed editorial today, calls the Democrats “gutless chumps” who “are worried about being cast as weak on terrorism” and “willing to cave before they fully understand how thoroughly they were hoodwinked by President Bush on other surveillance matters.”

Congress has only a scant notion of how contemptuously the White House has treated a 1978 law that requires special judicial review of surveillance in intelligence cases. And what are the Democrats poised to do? Give the executive branch anything it wants.

“Gutless chumps” might be an understatement.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
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Debating the debates

I missed the debate — got hom late from work and, well, it just didn’t interest me. But as my last couple of posts show, I’ve been watching some of the post-debate coverge. My sense from the handful of clips I’ve seen — and the few minutes at the end that I did manage to catch — is that I didn’t miss anything.

There are three front-running candidates, with maybe Bill Richardson hangign around the endges and two longshots with aggressively antiwar views (yes, I like Dennis Kucinich best, though I am also a realist and just don’t see him going anywhere).

So it comes down to two candidates for me: Barack Obama and John Edwards. I don’t have the sense that a debate that takes place a full 10 months before I’d have a chance to vote in the primary (it’s the only reason that I, a committed independent, remain registered as a Democrat) will help me decide.

Right now, I rank my own preferences this way:

Kucinich — against hte war, skeptical of military engagement in general, extremely liberal on other issues
Edwards — the two Americas
Obama — he speaks of hope without pandering

It gets a little more difficult from here. I think I like Richardson and Dodd next, though I can’t pinpoint why, and I don’t like Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden, though I think he is correct in his assessment that committing to a unified Iraq — a nation that was cobbled together by the British in the early part of the century when the major powers carved up the remnants of the Ottoman Empire — is almost delusional. the natural divisions are going to win out in the end, I think, though I think his suggested partition — given the mass relocations it would require can only further enflame things.

I’d rather watch Baseball Tonight and read the paper tomorrow (or tonight).

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
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