Mikulski (D-NSA)
I admit to some surprise that “my” senior Senator, Barbara Mikulski, voted for the East Germany Restoration Act. It lasted about five seconds. Then I remembered: Oh yeah, Fort Meade. Yes, even domestic surveillance legislation is pork-barrel spending for somebody. But then, Fort Meade’s own Congressman, Dutch Ruppersberger, voted Nay in the House. So there goes that simple schema.
Anyway, dry your eyes, face the facts and then we can think about what it means. We had a couple cheers in comments downblog for the fact that Dem reps and sens broke about 3-1 to 4-1 against the EGRA, which is a much better ratio than the Republican Party where no signiificant support exists for reining in the Surveillance State, at least under the present occupant.
That’s very nice, but people shouldn’t oversell it. The record shows that, institutionally, the Democratic Party is a vehicle for the maintenance and expansion of government transfer-payment programs. In recent decades it has included a sizable constituency with sentiments in favor of something sort of like peace and something we could call civil liberties, but institutionally, the Democratic Party is not a vehicle for restoring peace or preserving civil liberties. Try to change Social Security or trim Medicare and the official Democratic Party forms a phalanx of spartan stoutness. Monkey with habeas corpus or the freedom from search and seizure and it’s every man and woman for themselves. I’m pleased to see so many Blue votes against EGRA and in favor of something sort of like a drawdown of our misbegotten war in Iraq, but these things aren’t matters for party discipline. And we know that Democratic Party discipline is possible, because we’ve seen it on issues the institutional DP cares about, most of which involve moving money from here to there.
You may believe that moving money from here to there is tremendously important. You may believe in peace and freedom too. But that doesn’t make the DP a peace and freedom party. It’s not. I’m happy to entertain ideas on how to make it such a thing; maybe it’s possible. But this is still the Party whose leadership consigned the country to war in Fall 2002 because what they really wanted to talk about was – was it Enron? Medicare? Who even remembers? – and if signing off on the invasion of another country would get the pesky distraction of whether the United States ought to be going around invading other countries “off the table” for the election, well, that was a small price to pay. Before that it was the party that built the national-security state in the first place, from the 1940s forward.
What I’m actually trying to say here is, don’t despair. The Democratic Party isn’t any worse this week than it was last week. It’s what it was then, and the week before that. And never in all that time has it been yours. It’s just that now you know. So, what do you plan to do about it?
Comment by Jim Henley —
August 5, 2007 @ 10:12 pm
Should just say: This was NOT my post for cheering up Nell, or challenging her even.
Comment by Thoreau —
August 6, 2007 @ 7:11 am
Good point about Fort Meade. I hadn’t thought about that.
And you’re right. It’s not that the Democratic Party is an institution designed to advance imperialism. Rather, it’s an institution designed to be completely ineffective in stopping it.
Comment by cleek —
August 6, 2007 @ 8:28 am
So, what do you plan to do about it?
i shall curse The System at the top of my fingertips.
Comment by sglover —
August 6, 2007 @ 9:10 am
Prescription drugs for our poor, downtrodden senior citizens. That was gonna be Fightin’ Tom Daschle’s brilliant, can’t-lose move to win solid Dem majorities in ‘02. And lo! A new GOP tagline was born, soon to echoe through the land: Iraq? You voted for it before you voted against it!
I’ve never been able to figure out which part of being a card-carrying Dem is worse — the sell-outs themselves, or knowing that the sell-outs are such transparently stupid politics.
Comment by Hektor Bim —
August 6, 2007 @ 10:46 am
As the Republicans continuously remind us, one thing much worse than being a card-carrying Dem is being a card-carrying Republican. That’s also an important thing to remember.
Comment by Jim Henley —
August 6, 2007 @ 10:47 am
“Important?” How?
Comment by Russell L. Carter —
August 6, 2007 @ 10:50 am
Yeah well I’m still independent, whatever that means. The key human failure is about trust. If I’ve interpreted what actually got passed right, all those Democrats who voted for the EGRA explicitly trust Alberto Gonzalez to make the right judgements. Webb trusts the NSA chief, whose own judgement is denigrated by his master. Gullible? Naive? Overwhelming innate urge to provide Hillary maximum powers in some hypothetical future? I don’t think any of this makes any sense, even viewed through IOZ’s hypercynical lenses. Maybe there’s a follow the money factor here I haven’t worked out yet.
Comment by Gsnorgathon —
August 6, 2007 @ 11:09 am
It’s important to remember that there actually are Democrats who vote against this stuff, Jim. It’s likelier to find more of them to replace the bad Dems than it is to find a good Republican. That much should be transparently obvious.
Comment by Hektor Bim —
August 6, 2007 @ 11:17 am
The reason this thing passed is that essentially no Republicans are willing to support fundamental rights, including (in this case) Ron Paul. Only 2 out of 202 (Johnson IL and Jones NC) were willing to go on record opposing this. That’s less than 1%. So one can write off the Republican party.
Comment by Don SinFalta —
August 6, 2007 @ 11:47 am
So, this would have passed without Dem support then? The fact that the Banana Republicans can be written off doesn’t imply that the Invertebrates shouldn’t be as well.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
August 6, 2007 @ 11:55 am
Really?
How do you figure that?
Comment by Uncle Kvetch —
August 6, 2007 @ 12:31 pm
It’s likelier to find more of them to replace the bad Dems than it is to find a good Republican. That much should be transparently obvious.
I’m with Eric–I don’t find this obvious in the least. Atrios’ call for “better Democrats” is all well and good but for the life of me I don’t know how we get there. For as long as I’ve been paying attention to politics, a large chunk of the Democratic Party has consisted of people I would never consider supporting. I’m finally ready to concede that that’s not likely to change in my lifetime, and that I’m quite comfortable in no longer thinking of myself as “a Democrat.”
Comment by KCinDC —
August 6, 2007 @ 3:21 pm
It seems obvious to me that it’s easier to find good candidates among the party that votes 75% the right way than among the party that votes 1% the right way. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, especially in some parts of the country, where large majorities of the voters disagree with me. But Jon Tester, for example, gives me some hope for the West, at least, though I’m sure he’ll cast votes I dislike.
Curling up in a fetal position, screaming on the street corner, or voting for Nader, while perhaps tempting, doesn’t seem to me to give a better chance of success than continuing a long-term effort to improve the party that’s better.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
August 6, 2007 @ 4:25 pm
That’s begging the question, KC – you’re just rephrasing the very claim we’re asking you about.
As this weekend’s vote proves, merely “being better” means nothing. How do you know your party has more than 75% right-minded folks on this issue? Why exactly do you think you can raise that number in actual office-holders?
Comment by Michael B Sullivan —
August 6, 2007 @ 4:30 pm
KCinDC: Sure, it’s absolutely easier to find good Democratic candidates than good Republican ones — at least, right now, and for the forseeable future. That’s great. Yay.
The point is, though, that having “a large percentage of good candidates” is not enough. Both parties contain a spectrum of opinion on all issues — really! They aren’t robots! — it’s just that on some issues, the party institutionally demands discipline and on other issues, it doesn’t. The Republicans demand discipline on voting for the misbegotten enterprise whose sprawling strictures all go under the general category GWOT. The Democrats do NOT demand discipline on voting against it.
The solution is not to try to find one or two — or ten or eleven — more nice Democrats. The solution is for the party to start saying, “Returning civil rights to America isn’t a matter for your individual conscience, it’s Democratic policy, and you’ll damn well vote for it, even if you have reservations, or you won’t enjoy the support of the Democratic Party.”
Comment by Jim Henley —
August 6, 2007 @ 4:35 pm
Michael B Sullivan = Labor-Saving Device
Comment by Eric the .5b —
August 6, 2007 @ 4:42 pm
Michael’s entirely right. I withdraw my question and replace it with, “How do you expect to change Blue policy to exactly that?”
Comment by Eric the .5b —
August 6, 2007 @ 4:58 pm
And I just want to emphasize to Gsnorgathon and KC that I ask because I want that change to happen. I think this country needs that change to happen.
I just don’t have y’all’s optimism that it’s so easy.
Comment by KCinDC —
August 6, 2007 @ 5:17 pm
I never said it was easy. I’m just not sure what your easier alternative is. This isn’t something that’s going to change in one election.
Comment by Jim Henley —
August 6, 2007 @ 5:23 pm
KC: It’s a mechanism we’re interested in hearing about. How, precisely, to turn civil liberties and a decent reluctance to start wars into an issue on which the leadership enforces party discipline.
I’m not even saying you’re wrong that it beats all the alternatives. But right now “it” isn’t a program, it’s a hope. What’s the “How?” I won’t pretend there’s no element of challenge in my question, but I’d really like to know because I’d really like there to BE an answer.
Comment by Nell —
August 6, 2007 @ 6:50 pm
@Jim #1: Thanks for that; but it was bracing anyway. ;>
Comment by Hektor Bim —
August 6, 2007 @ 7:49 pm
The “How” revolves around a lot of boring, tedious pressure work. Writing letters to the editor, organizing protests, organizing candidates to challenge the consensus, etc., etc.
That’s part of what the Ned Lamont challenge was all about – getting rid of a guy who despite his relatively liberal voting record, was totally wrong about the war and the Bush administration. And it made a difference, electing more Democrats and pulling the Democrats away from Bush and against the war in Iraq.
It’s slow, tedious work. But I don’t see an alternative.
Comment by Gsnorgathon —
August 6, 2007 @ 10:55 pm
What makes y’all think I’m optimistic? And: (so far as I can tell) I didn’t say anything at all about making my preferred policy Democratic party policy; I just mentioned that some Democrats support my preferred policy while virtually no Republicans do. From that basic empirical observation, I made the (reasonable) prediction that it would be easier to find other Dems who support it than to find Republicans who do. It’s purely a probabilistic statement. Nothing more.
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Meanwhile, it also seems to me that making life hard for Democrats who don’t support that policy – e.g., contributing to primary election opponents like Ned Lamont – will increase the likelihood of Democratic party policy becoming more congruent with my preferred policy. The more supporters there are, the harder it will be to go against the grain.
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And no, I don’t expect it to be easy, or pleasant. I expect it to be difficult, unpleasant, and disappointing. I’m not the kind of person who votes for candidates. For me it’s just trying to forestall the worst of the two most probable outcomes (given the semi-democratic U.S. electoral system); and for me, that’s usually the Republican candidate being elected.
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None of this even vaguely implies that I actually like any given Democrat or the Democratic party in general.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
August 7, 2007 @ 10:30 am
You seem to think it’s possible; I don’t know that it is. You’re the relative optimist, here.
Comment by Michael B Sullivan —
August 7, 2007 @ 10:46 am
I had a thought: one pretty good way to do this would probably be to elect a strongly anti-war Democratic President. It seems that if a party has a sitting President, that person’s personal take on the party often (not always, but often) becomes party dogma.
It’s a shame that none of the realistic Democratic candidates are strongly anti-war.
Comment by Gsnorgathon —
August 7, 2007 @ 11:04 pm
Oh, heck. I do think it’s possible. In my lighter moments, I even think it’s plausible.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
August 8, 2007 @ 11:46 am
I rest my case, Gsnorgathon.
That doesn’t say anything as to which of us are right on the question, but just that I’d certainly rather believe that you are.