To those of you who have been following the oregon senate race closely it is not be news that chuck schumer and the dscc have descended upon the beaver state to put their thumb on the scale weighing in on behalf of steve novick's primary opponent (jeff merkely).
early in the campaign it was common knowledge that schumer had brought their man in oregon back to recruit him to run again gordon smith, though it wasn't clear what financial, strategic or infrastructural resources they had offered him (or how it would affect that campaign he would run). as it became clear that the dscc was involved in the primary the merkley campaign took two tactics to deflect the issue:
the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee paid $73,000 to an Arkansas company for an advance team to help stage his kickoff as well as $20,000 for research.
Now, from Roll Call via Loaded Orygun the whole saga is laid out in more explicit terms, the Hill see's it as a power stuggle between schumer himself, and the grassroots campaign being run by steve novick.
"So yesterday, Senator Obama said, 'Well we shouldn't have gone in in the first place, and if we hadn't gone in in the first place we wouldn't be facing this problem,'" the Arizona senator said. "Well, that's history. That's the past. That's talking about what happened before. What we should be talking about is what we're going to do now.
"And what we're going to do now is continue this strategy, which is succeeding in Iraq and we are carrying out the goals of the surge. The Iraqi military are taking over more and more responsibilities, the casualties are down, and we will be able to withdraw and come home. But we will come home with honor."
This goes beyond even Joe Lieberman's "no one wants to end the war more than I do," spiel, and enters Nixonian territory of "peace with honor." And now McCain is pushing both sides of the blurring strategy, using surrogate James Baker to argue that even those in favor of withdrawal plan to leave troops in Iraq for a long time:
Baker, also well-known for heading up the Iraq Study Group, voiced his agreement with McCain's view of the situation in Iraq.
"I think what Senator McCain's position is today is quite consistent with what we said in the Iraq Study Group Report," Baker said. "We negated the idea of setting a timetable, a withdrawal date...we also said and pointed out that we're going to have American forces in Iraq for a long time to come."
So, McCain wants to end the war, but to do so with "honor." Also, he is in favor of a timetable, but like everyone calling for Iraq withdrawal, including Barack Obama, he knows that American troops will stay in Iraq for "a long time to come."
And so, we arrive at the full-blown Iraq Blurring Strategy from John McCain. No one wants to end the war more than he does. In fact, he is in favor of withdrawal. However, everyone who favors withdrawal, like Barack Obama, also wants to leave large numbers of residual forces in Iraq.
In some ways, it is a relief that after many congressional Democrats decided to take Iraq off the table in the 2008 elections, that John McCain became the Republican nominee and decided to make it the central issue. However, I would be lying if I didn't say I was worried about this strategy. I have long believed that Democratic support of residual forces provided the opening for such a strategy, and that Joe Lieberman's campaign provided the blueprint. Obama needs to make his differences with McCain on future plans for Iraq crystal clear, to the point where he starts talking about the different troops estimates for Iraq under an Obama administration and under a McCain administration. The argument can still be won as long as it is clear, and as long as the Obama campaign calls bullshit on McCain's phony desire to withdrawal from Iraq. Starting with an attack on McCain surrogate Joe Lieberman, who said the same thing in 2006 and then voted with Bush on Iraq, is probably a good place to start.
There is more than one way to engage the Iraq Blurring Strategy. While McCain has declined the take the Joe Lieberman approach of "no one wants to end the war more than me, but..." he has instead adopted the approach of "I don't want to end the war, but neither does Obama, and we agree on the reasons why." Here is McCain:
"I'm not embarrassed to tell you that I did not watch the Democrat debate last night," McCain said, "but I am told that Senator Obama made the statement that if Al Qaeda came back to Iraq after he withdraws -- after the American troops are withdrawn -- then he would send military troops back, if Al Qaeda established a military base in Iraq. I have some news: Al Qaeda is in Iraq. Al Qaeda, it's called Al Qaeda in Iraq, and my friends if we left they wouldn't be establishing a base, they wouldn't be establishing a base, they'd be taking a country. And I'm not going to allow that to happen my friends. I will not surrender. I will not surrender to Al Qaeda.
"It's pretty remarkable when Al Qaeda is in Iraq, and want to withdraw from Iraq and then say you will go back to Iraq if they have a base there. That's -- when you examine that statement it's pretty remarkable."
One of the main problems with the leading Democratic candidates promising to keep residual American military forces in Iraq is that such plans provide continuing justification for keeping American troops in Iraq, and comparatively little justification for withdrawal. Both Obama and Clinton have promised to keep residual troops in Iraq in order to attack Al Qaeda, although in fairness Obama has said that in his plan these troops might not actually be based in Iraq but instead just over the border. This position causes a serious credibility problem for withdrawal of any sort. As McCain points out, if you think American troops should be in Iraq to fight terrorists, then why withdraw the troops at all?
As long leading Democrats are arguing that we need troops in Iraq to carry out missions like "fighting terrorists," it severely weakens the public argument to engage in any sort of withdrawal. Democratic promises to keep residual forces in Iraq in general, and now Obama's promises to keep residual forces in Iraq in particular, have a net result of pre-blurring the Iraq issue even for Republicans like McCain who refuse to even say they want to end the war. Not only do residual forces give McCain further amminition on why we should stay in Iraq, but it also gives more credence to the argument that Democrats don't really want to end the war. It might be too late for Obama to promise no residual troops at this point, but as the campaign moves forward he is going to have to do a much better job of differentiating his position on Iraq, and his rational behind that position, from McCain's.
"I have some news for John McCain," Obama said, according to The Politico. "There was no Al Qaeda in Iraq until George Bush and John McCain" started their war.
That will likely become a stock message for Obama. He also uncorked this:
"John McCain may like to say he wants to follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of Hell, but so far all he's done is follow George Bush into a misguided war in Iraq."
That is a decent comeback from Obama, but it mainly talks about the decision to go to war rather than the decision on what to do in the future. He needs clearer differentiation on both in order to really bury McCain, and the Iraq war, once and for all.
The Chris Dodd campaign has done a great job with its debate talk clock meter. I would like to introduce a new debate meter, one that measures how many times Iraq was mentioned in each of the last five debates. The pattern is illuminating:
Iraq peaked as an issue in the Democratic primary in late September, when the residual forces issue hit the mainstream. Since then, it has been a straight, downward decline, with mentions of Iraq cut 80% over the last five debates. Iraq is clearly being "taken off the table," not only by Democrats but also by the media outlets that sponsor their debates. Bill Richardson seems to be just about the only candidate discussing Iraq these days.
Avoiding Iraq is a path to doom for Democratic candidates. In the two most hotly contested special elections this year, MA-05 and OH-05, Republican candidates over-performed first by blurring on Iraq themselves, and then by benefiting from the Democratic candidate taking Iraq off the table. It unfortunately seems to be the path we are walking down. I think we need a series of primaries that will match the impact of Lieberman-Lamont last year in order to, once again, make this point clear to the Democratic establishment.
Ever since TPMmuckraker first broke the story on "Iraq forever" declaration released by the Bush and al-Maliki administrations, some people have asked me to comment on the matter given my long-time focus on having no residual American military forces in Iraq. The Clinton, Dodd, Edwards and Obama campaigns all responded to the story, stating that they opposed permanent military bases in Iraq and, thus, also opposed the declaration set forth by the two administrations. I didn't say much, because I see the permanent bases issue as a subset of the no residual forces issue. If one doesn't have any residual American military forces in Iraq, then having permanent, American, military bases becomes impossible. The issues are intertwined, but the residual forces issue supercedes the permanent bases issue. In fact, I actually think that allowing candidates to state they will not have permanent bases elides the larger question of how many American troops they will keep in Iraq.
Rather than how the Democratic candidates responded to it, what concerns me far more about the declaration is how its residual force plan is strikingly similar to those laid out by Democratic candidates. From the relevant section of the declaration:
Security: To support the Iraqi government in training, equipping, and arming the Iraqi Security Forces so they can provide security and stability to all Iraqis; support the Iraqi government in contributing to the international fight against terrorism by confronting terrorists such as Al-Qaeda, its affiliates, other terrorist groups, as well as all other outlaw groups, such as criminal remnants of the former regime; and to provide security assurances to the Iraqi Government to deter any external aggression and to ensure the integrity of Iraq's territory.
The final clause describing border integrity basically means propping up the Iraqi government against a coup or rebellion. It also accomplishes one of the main Project for a New American Century goals for invading Iraq described in a September 2000 Bush campaign document: repositioning American forces in the Middle East to develop a forward position against Iran. From said document (PDF):
The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein. (p. 29)
From an American perspective, the value of such bases would endure even should Saddam pass from the scene. Over the long term, Iran may well prove as large a threat to U.S. interests in the Gulf as Iraq has. And even should U.S.-Iranian relations improve, retaining forward-based forces in the region would still be an essential element in U.S. security strategy given the longstanding American interests in the region. (p. 26)
Neo-cons have been publicly planning this before Bush even took office. Permanent bases in southern Iraq function to prop up a friendly Iraqi government, to reposition American forces in the Middle East outside of Saudi Arabia, to create a forward position against Iran, and widen the American sphere of influence over the oil fields both in southern Iraq and in Kuwait. That is really why we went to war, and it is clearly laid out in Bush campaign documents from 2000.
Other than that clause, however, what really worries me is that the other residual force goals expressed in the declaration are virtually the same as the residual force goals presented by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Note that I did not say they would require the same amount of troops, just simply that the goals of training Iraqi security forces and pursuing "terrorists" in the country are the same. While Samantha Power has indicated that Obama's residual force plan would "do counter-terrorism, as distinct from counter-insurgency," it has never been clear to me how "terrorists" will be defined as separate from militants who simply oppose the Iraqi government or who are engaging in further sectarian conflict. The long stated Iraqi troop training and counter-terrorism goals from the Obama and Clinton campaigns are simply not clearly distinct from those goals as expressed in the join Bush - al-Maliki declaration.
This worries me on two levels. First, it worries me that American troops will stay in Iraq indefinitely, under both a Republican and Democratic administration. Second, it worries me that the residual force plans expressed by Clinton and Obama will not be clearly distinct from those presented by the Republican nominee in 2008. If they are both talking about training Iraqi forces and conducting counter-terrorism, whatever actual differences there might be become extremely academic and blurred from public view. It would constitute Strategic Drift on both grounds, allowing both the galactic error that is American military involvement in Iraq to continue, and would also deny Democrats their current electoral edge.
So yes, it is nice that Clinton, Dodd, Edwards and Obama all came out against permanent bases, but doing so does not resolve the over-arching residual force issue. Even without permanent bases, we could still face significant American military involvement in Iraq, and we still face the Iraq blurring strategy. While it is a step in the right direction, declaring opposition to permanent American military bases in Iraq does not resolve either of those extremely important issues.
The Center for American Progress has released a must-read new memo, entitled Strategic Drift in Iraq, about the dangerous shift in the Iraq debate that has occurred over the past several months. In short, it presents the dangers of the Iraq blurring strategy in terms of American and Iraqi security, rather than in electoral terms. Here are some choice passages, rebutting the need for the oft-repeated residual forces mission of "training Iraqi troops":
Suspend training and arming forces in a deadly civil war. To guard against the threat of an even larger civil war, the United States should suspend efforts to train, arm, and support Iraqi forces-the tribal forces and citizens groups, as well as the Iraqi police and army units that do not demonstrate allegiance to Iraq's national government. Continuing these efforts in the absence of some degree of national accommodation risks an even deadlier conflict.(…)
Pledging to continue training Iraq's security forces without questioning whether our actions amount to essentially arming up different sides in Iraq's internal conflicts risks further inflaming an already unstable Middle East.
American training of Iraqi troops has helped fuel violence in Iraq, not quell it. We all know this. It is front page news:
The Pentagon has lost track of about 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005, according to a new government report, raising fears that some of those weapons have fallen into the hands of insurgents fighting U.S. forces in Iraq.
And yet continuing to train Iraqi troops is exactly what both Clinton and Obama think America should do in Iraq until, say, 2013. I wonder how many more guns will go missing in that time period. This seems to make about as much sense as the "fighting terrorists" residual force mission. Because, you know, the presence of American troops in Iraq has really been effective at stamping out terrorism. We knew this in 2003:
War in Iraq has swollen the ranks of al Qaeda and galvanized the Islamic militant group's will, the International Institute for Strategic Studies said on Wednesday in its annual report.
Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of "professionalized" terrorists, according to a report released yesterday by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA director's think tank.(…)
President Bush has frequently described the Iraq war as an integral part of U.S. efforts to combat terrorism. But the council's report suggests the conflict has also helped terrorists by creating a haven for them in the chaos of war.
Several leading foreign policy thinkers and security institutes-some of the same ones who were wrong about going to war in Iraq in the first place and wrong about how to deal with the war's first four years-have helped build the case that aided the country's slide into strategic drift. Instead of offering plans that clarify the current drift, they have perpetuated it by triangulating against supposedly "irresponsible" withdrawal plans. Just as conservatives in Congress have done, they have failed to question the flawed premises at the heart of the administration's Iraq strategy.
Some progressive candidates have defaulted to policies of strategic drift because of legitimate fears about what might happen in Iraq, focused on three main concerns: terrorist sanctuaries, regional war, and humanitarian catastrophe. Yet ironically, strategic drift forestalls the actual hard work needed to avoid these potential dangers and does little or nothing to prevent them. Keeping tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq until the end of the next presidential term not only serves to prolong these problems but also creates new ones.
We are not going to quell violence or reduce terrorism in Iraq until we leave, and that includes residual forces. We are helping fuel sectarian violence when we train Iraqi troops and tens of thousands of weapons go missing. We are helping to increase terrorism in Iraq by serving as a recruiting tool. And we are going to have a very difficult time stopping any of this as long as the two leading Democratic candidates for president are advocating continuing these practices.
Last night, Deval Patrick and Hillary Bill Clinton held a rally for Niki Tsongas. Patrick had some choice words on the blurring strategy, which you can watch in this video:
Here are the passages that really caught my attention (emphasis mine):
But the change, the change has got to come from us, because we, regularly political people of every political background, keep falling for what Republicans say, and not holding them accountable for what they do.
There is a great deal at stake in this election, but if you listen closely to the two candidates, to the substance, they will sometimes sound a lot alike. And that's because if you are a Republican today in Washington, or rather if you are a Republican running to go to Washington, you run as fast as possible from away from the administration in Washington, and you try to blur the difference between that administration and Democratic principles and ideals.(…)
They both say, I've heard them both say, that they want an end to the war in Iraq, but one candidate wants to keep the troops there indefinitely. Does that sound like an end to the war in Iraq to you? And the other candidate, our candidate, is ready to make that hard call now.
In a funny way, both candidates sound like Democrats, but only one candidate is one. Only one is one, and that candidate is Niki Tsongas.
This is a great speech for Tsongas by Patrick, and it shows he really gets what is going on in terms of Iraq and electoral politics. Given that Hillary Bill Clinton was also at the event, I hope he has a chance to repeat the emphasized passage to Bill, and ask him to give the message to his wife. Hillary Clinton has still not said when she will pull all of the non-embassy troops out, and 2013 is apparently too early. To paraphrase what Deval Parick said, keeping troops in Iraq indefinitely does not sound like an end of the war to me.
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) told reporters Thursday that he would likely support bipartisan legislation that would require President Bush to report on his Iraq withdrawal plans.
The bill, H.R. 3087, would require the Bush administration and Pentagon officials to report regularly on the status of their plans for withdrawing U.S. troops.
"I would be shocked if the Pentagon already didn't have this plan sitting on the shelf. That's what they do over at the Pentagon: They plan for every kind of contingency known to man," Boehner told reporters. "So I would expect that, if a bill on the floor looks like the bill that came out of the committee, I would expect all of us to be for it."
Granted, if Boehner really wants to engage the blurring strategy, he is going to have to sell it harder than this. In his comment he admits that the bill won't actually require the adminisatron to do anything it has not already done. However, I have a feeling that when said "bi-partisanhip" legislation actually passes, it will be sold by most talking heads as a real compromise, if not a real step toward withdrawal.
[Yes, Virginia, I've been asked to frontpage on the weekends.]
While I dared to dream of a Democratic landslide last year a little earlier than most, I started talking about about realignment just the month before the election. I wrote a post, "What A Dem Landslide Could Mean," in which I argued that political realignments happen when one party wins two consecutive wave elections in the House, It always starts in the House, though the timing of the Presidential election that gets all the glory can vary. In 1896, in fact, the Republicans actually lost a fair number of seats-but nothing compared to what they'd gained in 1892 and 1894.
Yesterday, there were two posts here that touched on the issue of realignment, which made me think it was time to write about it again. Then Chris invited me to start front-paging on weekends, so the opportunity seemed perfect-even if one of the posts was by Chris, and I probably disagree with it more than anything he's posted in months. But that's fine, because Chris's post is clearly part of a thinking-through process, and what I have to contribute here is part of that same process.
The first post is Chris's "It Is Either Iraq Blurring Strategy Or Iraq Realignment" and the second is David Sirota's "1994 Redux: The Consequences of Dems' New NAFTA". While I agree with a lot of the points made in both posts, I think that both contain some errors in perceiving the nature of realignment, what it takes to acheive, and what the possibilities for it are. This post will open up that discussion, and I'll continue it in a couple of follow-up diaries this weekend.
As a result of the Iraq war, the current coalition structure in America, which is dominated by the conservative governing majority for at least two decades and continues to be so now, has a reached a breaking point. Realignments in American politics take place when there is no compromise to be had on the major issues of the day, and when the current governing majority is actually in the minority position on those issues nationwide. Iraq is just such a dominant issue on which there is no compromise, and the current conservative governing coalition of George Bush, Bush Dogs, congressional Republicans, and anti-MoveOn, anti-Reid Feingold Senators is opposed to the will of 60% of the American people on Iraq.
We have come to a point where either we will witness the success of the last-ditch effort of the conservative working majority to stay in power, the Iraq Blurring Strategy, or we will witness the completion of the Iraq realignment in the 2008 elections. I explain in the extended entry.
After weeks of suggesting Democrats would temper their approach to Iraq legislation in a bid to attract more Republicans, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declared abruptly Tuesday that he had no plans to do so.
The Democratic leader said he will call for a vote this month on several anti-war proposals, including one by Sen. Carl Levin that would insist President Bush end U.S. combat next summer. The proposals would be mandatory and not leave Bush wiggle room, said Reid, D-Nev.
"There (are) no goals. It's all definite timelines," he told reporters of the planned legislation.(...)
When asked why Democrats won't soften the deadline, the majority leader said he doesn't have confidence Republicans are willing to challenge Bush on the war.
"I think they've decided definitely they want this to be the Senate Republicans' war, not just Bush's. They're jealous," he said with a smile.
Yes, yes, yes! Support a binding timeline, or support the war. It really is that simple, and I am thrilled Harry Reid has dropped a toothless "compromise" strategy. Non-binding timelines would have done nothing to end the war, while they would have given many Republicans cover on Iraq.
This is the way we need to operate. More like this, please.
Maybe it is because it is very early in the morning and the entire day seems ahead of me, but I have a sudden burst of optimism regarding the Iraq blurring strategy I have often fretted about. The simple fact is that a "centrist" or "compromise" position on Iraq is actually the least popular position of all. Like most DLC-nexus / Bush Dog proposals, it does not actually have a real base of support. About 60% of the country wants troops out of Iraq now, 30% wants Iraq to go on forever, while only about 10% believe that there actually is some form of compromise to be found. Consider, for example, that in NY-25, Jim Walsh's faux opposition to the war has not earned him any new friends among anti-war supporters, while angering the conservative party in the district:
But in the end, Walsh's move was met by little more than continued criticism from anti-war activists and silence or disappointment from his supporters.
John DeSpirito, chairman of the Onondaga County Republican Party, was in the unusual position of being almost speechless Friday when asked about the 10-term congressman.
"I'd rather not comment," said DeSpirito, a Marine Corps veteran who served in Vietnam. "I don't have anything to say at this time."
The chairman of the Onondaga County Conservative Party, Austin Olmsted, said Walsh's decision could put him at risk of losing its endorsement for the first time.
"I wasn't shocked or stunned by his remarks," said Olmsted. "It's kind of what I expected from him. He looks at his position in Washington as a career path. He's not serving in a capacity as our congressional representative. He's serving as a career. Most of the people I spoke with feel the same way. It's a very sad event."
If Walsh loses the conservative party endorsement in the NY-25, it is game over for him. Dan Maffei will cruise to victory, as Walsh immediately drops at least 8% of the vote in a district he only won by 1.5% in 2006. He isn't going to make that up within an electorate that is angry over the failure of the both Bush and the Congress to end the war, especially since he still apparently opposes a timeline for withdrawal, has offered no specifics on exactly how his position has changed, and has only voiced support for the toothless Castle-Tanner proposal. From the same Post-Standard article:
"As far as specifics, he's not going to commit to anything yet," Gage said. "We have to wait and see what legislation is offered. So it's premature which bill he would support. I think Mr. Walsh is open to everything."
Walsh plans to join discussions Tuesday with other Republican House members who support a compromise bill on Iraq, Gage said.
Walsh is interested in a bipartisan approach being pushed by Reps. Mike Castle, R-Del., and John Tanner, D-Tenn., Gage said..
Wow, that is a really strong stance coming from Walsh-he doesn't even know how his position changed, and doesn't know what he supports. That will really win him a ot of votes. Unless more Republicans are willing to go as far as Jim Ogonowski in MA-05, and I seriously doubt that many will, this could be a pattern we see in many other areas. With an electorate angry that the war continues unabated, and a conservative base ready to dump any Republican who favors serious, meaningful opposition to the war, "compromise" solutions are basically just going to piss everyone off. The many Republicans who narrowly survived in 2006 will lose far more support from their conservative Republican base than they will gain from an electorate that is angry more hasn't been done to stop the war do far.
Ironically, the failure of the Democratic Congress to make a dent in the war might actually torpedo the political effectiveness of any "compromise" blurring strategy before it starts. When it comes to vague, toothless promises to end the war, the electorate has already been there and done that. At this point, voters don't want Congress to do less to end the war, they want to see more done:
NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll conducted by the polling organizations of Peter Hart (D) and Neil Newhouse (R). April 20-23, 2007. N=1,004 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.1 (for all adults).
"What concerns you more -- that Congress will go too far in pressing the President to reduce troop levels in Iraq, or that President Bush will not make enough changes in his Iraq policy?"
Congress will go too far: 31%
Bush Won't Make Enough changes: 61%
This poll was taken after Democrats had already passed a bill with a binding withdrawal timeline through both the House and the Senate, and only 31% of the country thought that went too far. The idea that pulling back will appease them is ludicrous. Essentially, these compromise bills are just like pretty much everything else that comes out of the center-right, pro-elite, media and political establishment: it pisses everyone off, and has nothing in it that anyone likes at all.
Connecticut voters who fell for the blurring strategy in 2006 now feel a real sense of buyer's remorse. Even beyond Lieberman, around the nation, after an election that turned on the Iraq war was immediately followed by an escalation in American troops levels in Iraq, we might be past the point where voters are willing to hear out any "compromise" proposal to end the war. Simply put, at this stage, there just might not be any compromise to be had on Iraq. In fact, it could actually be a great opportunity not just for Democrats, but for progressive Democrats. Most Democrats in key districts will still take a position to the left of Republicans on the Iraq war, and those who do will prosper. Those who don't, well, then it will be their own damn fault if they lose. If Democrats in key districts are willing to call out the blurring strategy for the fake end to the war that it is, and if they are led by a Democratic nominee who says the same thing about what will almost certainly be the Republican nominee's faux promises on Iraq, then the electorate situation should be fine. The key, of course, is finding enough Democrats who are willing to take that position, which will require a lot of effort in upcoming primaries.
Jean Shaheen has entered the Senate race in New Hampshire. From what I am told, I am pretty sure this means both Katrina Swett and Steve Marchand will drop out. As for Jay Buckey, I honestly don't know, but I hope he stays in. Not only do I like Buckey, who is both an astronaut and a progressive (two of my favorite things), but the last thing Shaheen needs now is an uncontested primary. While polls show her ahead of Republican incumbent John Sununu by anywhere from 16-28 points, I do not have a lot of confidence that those enormous leads will hold. At the very least, Shaheen needs to be pushed to become a better campaigner in the primaries. Hopefully, such a primary will also force her to adopt a more progressive outlook (seriously, check out that link)
Now, even if he stays in, I am under no particular illusions that Buckey would have anything more than a moonshot to actually defeat Shaheen in the primary. However, to be perfectly frank, I feel like Shaheen is one of the many, many Democrats who first helped lead the party into simultaneous minority and pro-war status back in 2002-2003, but who is now capitalizing on the favorable electoral stage that was prepared mainly by the progressive movement during four years of intense guerilla warfare against conservatism from 2003-2006. While the Jean Shaheen's and Rahm Emanual's of the party were supporting things like the Bush tax cuts, the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq, and legislation to support Terry Schaivo, it was the netroots who were doing the bulk of the heavy lifting in opposition to Republicans. I feel like they are capitalizing on what we rightfully earned, and both dissing us and preparing to destroy all of our work in the process. They are pretenders to the new Democratic majority.
Why am I so pissed at Democrats lately? Simply put, it feels like many Democrats are taking something that does not belong to them--their excellent 2006 and 2008 electoral advantages--and then thoroughly ruining it. And why am I so convinced they will ruin it? Because, as a progressive Democrat, I have already seen the blurring strategy on Iraq successfully used against my candidates by centrists from my own party. The most graphic example was Joe Lieberman against Ned Lamont in the 2006 Connecticut Senate general election. While nutmegers now regret falling for that strategy, it still worked, and Joe Lieberman is still in office. Now, with even Bush supposedly promising withdrawal by next summer, with the country grossly misinformed about withdrawal plans, with supposedly "anti-war" Republicans not being forced to vote on anything that will actually end the war, and with Republicans starting to capitalize on Democrats refusing to say how many troops they will leave in Iraq and for how long, I can see how it will broadly be used against progressives in 2008. Bush Dogs will be empowered. Progressives will find "moderate" Republicans much more difficult to defeat. Our chances for sweeping gains in the House might be wiped away. Even our advantage in the Presidency might disappear, as long as our nominee ends up supporting an indefinite amount of American troops in Iraq for an indefinite period of time. And so, like a nightmere version of Groundhog Day, those same, pretenders to the new Democratic Majority could very well lose because they shat on their base, and refused to take stronger stances on Iraq.
Sometimes I wonder if this problem is a combination of the progressive movement growing too effective too quickly, and Bush policies creating national and international disasters even more rapidly than expected. It takes a long time to build a bench. We are talking at least four years to build a member of the US House, and probably more. It takes ten years to build a US Senator, and often more. To build a President, it takes at least fourteen years, and often more. In the five year period from 2002-2007, the movement simply did not have enough time to build up a series of candidates and professional activists to replace the pretenders in Congress, in the party leadership, and throughout the progressive establishment. So, we set the table, but most of the people available to sit down and eat were the same Democrats who screwed everything up so badly from 1994-2004. And so, Jean Shaheen loses in 2002 while supporting the war and the Bush tax cuts, is floated as a "stop Dean" candidate for DNC chair in late 2004, but then gets to re-enter the Senate in 2008 largely because of the work of other progressives who she largely opposed. However, many other Democrats could easily end up losing in 2008 because of a blurring strategy on Iraq that Democrats like Shaheen will facilitate.
That, in a nutshell, is why I am directing so much vitrol at members of my own party right now. It feels like pretenders have usurped our new majority. Right now, I feel like a wave of primary challenges and trying to put an end to the blurring strategy is practically a last ditch effort to keep the situation from growing even worse. The Iraq blurring strategy is largely engineered by Republicans Bush Dogs as a means of keeping the conservative working majority in place. In order to break the conservative governing majority, that strategy must be smashed.
Watching today's goings-on related to Iraq, I am starting to see a path for a total Democratic collapse on the issue of Iraq for the 2008 elections. Given the following, it now seems entirely possible to me that Republicans will be able to thoroughly blur the differences between the two parties on the subject, thus eliminating any possibility of a second wave election that would cement a realignment. Here are the problems:
One of the compromise plans includes a bi-partisan bill that sets withdrawal as a goal, but does not actually mandate it. This will allow numerous Republicans to make it appear as though they are in favor of withdrawal from Iraq just as much as Democrats are, since they both proposed the same bill, and then voted the same way on that bill. This is particularly important, since the majority of Republican sponsors of the bill are on the frontline of Democratic pickup possibilities in 2008. In the House, the districts they represent include IL-10, NY-25, NY-29, PA-03, PA-06, PA-15, WA-08, VA-11, all of which are clear Democratic pickup opportunities. In the Senate, the sponsors include highly endangered Republicans Susan Collins, John Sununu, and Pete Domenici. Basically, we are talking about giving cover to Republicans in at least half of our top-tier pickup opportunities. There are also several more second and third tier possibilities in that sponsor list.
According to a Diageo Hotline poll from July (PDF), only 37% of Americans believe Rudy Giuliani would continue the war in Iraq, while 37% believe he would end it within a year or less. For McCain, 26% believe he would end the war, while 44% believe he would continue it. When it comes to Romney, 22% believe he would end the war, while 34% believe he would continue it. In every case, a majority of Americans are unaware that major Republican presidential candidates want to continue the war in Iraq at its current level. The blurring as already begun.
The escalation will end next summer, simply because we will run out of troops to deploy to Iraq. However, it could still look like withdrawal has started, and that Republicans are in favor of it.
Now, this is something of a doomsday electoral scenario for Democrats, and there is no guarantee it will happen. Right now, according to the same Diageo / Hotline poll, a Democratic member of Congress is viewed as ready to end the war by a 68%-20% margin, while a Republican member of Congress is only viewed as likely to end the war by a 35%-46% margin. Further, in all likelihood, the Bush administration won't actually withdraw any troops that they don't have to, and troops level sin Iraq will remain at least at pre-escalation levels going into 2008. However, the possibilities for potential blurring of the two parties in key elections are mounting, and that is something to worry about. This is largely due to the actions of Democrats by proposing indeterminate numbers of residual forces, and by their willingness to engage in meaningless "compromise" that does nothing but give Republicans cover. We are not yet in a position where the differences between the two parties has been truly blurred on this issue, but it isn't hard to see how that could happen in the future unless we change our tactics now.
