Quote of the day: This is no time for Democrats to be "making nice" to Republicans, or to be rolling over for Dems who think and act like Repugs

"There are those who say that a confrontational stance will backfire politically on the Democrats. These are by and large the same people who told Democrats that attacking the Bush administration over Iraq would backfire in the midterm elections. Enough said."
--Paul Krugman, in his NYT column today, "Don't Make Nice"*

As Howie has already noted today, we already see the unspeakable Rahm Emanuel (would you want to be the poor sumbitch who's got him looking, er, the way he looks in this photo?) jockeying for position in the new Congress, taking credit for a victory that--assuming it materializes--he will have had shockingly little to do with. I wish there were something to be done about this, but as long as there are political power gatherers-brokers--and flacks like the Washington Post's Steve Hendrix to offer them P.R. fellatio--what are we going to do?

Well, we can try fighting back.

Howie and I have chatted about this, and he has pointed out that the Democratic class of House freshmen is likely to include a number of incoming members who not only aren't beholden to Master Rahm but hate his guts for either ignoring or actively opposing their progressive grass-roots campaigns.

Of course, as far as the master is concerned, they'll probably be just a bunch of fringe loons, and he no doubt expects Speaker Pelosi to look the other way while he puts the screws to them, encouraging them to choose between becoming more "pragmatic" and serving out their time in Congress on the farthest fringes. If this brings to mind the infernal image of Tom "The Hammer" DeLay (right), it's perhaps not accidental.

What we can do is make sure those people know we stand behind them, that there are people looking for a Democratic majority committed to real progress for the country, not the dawn of a new Democratic culture of corporatism and corruption. As Paul Krugman writes today:

Political considerations aside, American voters deserve to have their views represented in Congress. And according to opinion polls, most Americans are actually to the left of Congressional Democrats on issues such as health care.

In particular, the public wants politicians to stand up to corporate interests. This is clear from the latest Newsweek poll, which shows overwhelming public support for the agenda Nancy Pelosi has laid out for her first 100 hours if she becomes House speaker. The strongest support is for her plan to have Medicare negotiate with drug companies for lower prices, which is supported by 74 percent of Americans--and by 70 percent of Republicans!

What the make-nice crowd wants most of all is for the Democrats to forswear any investigations into the origins of the Iraq war and the cronyism and corruption that undermined it. But it's very much in the national interest to find out what led to the greatest strategic blunder in American history, so that it won't happen again.

If American voters rise up, as they are increasingly expected to do, and demand an end, not only to Republican ideological extremism, but to Republican cronyism and corruption, that doesn't give Democrats license to take over the cronyism-and-corruption turf.

The Democrats have an opportunity here. To return to Krugman:

The reason we have so much bitter partisanship these days is that that's the way the radicals who have taken over the Republican Party want it. People like Grover Norquist [right], who once declared that "bipartisanship is another name for date rape," push for a hard-right economic agenda; people like Karl Rove make that agenda politically feasible, even though it's against the interests of most voters, by fostering polarization, using religion and national security as wedge issues.

As long as polarization is integral to the G.O.P.'s strategy, Democrats can't do much, if anything, to narrow the partisan divide.

Even if they try to act in a bipartisan fashion, their opponents will find a way to divide the nation--which is what happened to the great surge of national unity after 9/11. One thing we might learn from investigations is the extent to which the Iraq war itself was motivated by the desire to have another wedge issue.

I don't suggest that we start taking anything for granted, that we have the luxury of devoting anything other than maximum effort to beating back the tidal wave of propaganda and filth yet to be unleashed by Karl Rove's political machine, with a view toward electing the most progressive Congress possible. At the same time, though we do have to start thinking past November 7 to the convening of the new Congress. Because one thing's sure: Master Rahm is.

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*Note: As usual, the full text of the Krugman column is appended in a comment.