A BLUER AMERICA IS A SAFER AMERICA

I always look forward to Yom Yippur because it becomes a lot easier to get a last minute reservation in a good restaurant. Tonight I went to dinner with two low key Mainers, Roland and Lucas, who had never met, at a Moroccan restaurant in a Jewish neighborhood. It was pretty empty but I could see them both cringing a little when I started getting into the specifics of the punishment I felt would be fair to mete out to Bush and Cheney and their cronies. Later Roland told me I was too loud and could have freaked out the other diners who may have had less severe-- or even completely different-- political views.

Maybe they need to be freaked out. Maybe we all do. My rage runneth over; why doesn't everyone's? Maybe it was a mistake to re-read an old Naomi Wolf piece from April before dinner, Fascist America, in 10 Easy Steps. Every one of her "steps" raised my blood pressure by a few points, primarily because Bush has taken each and every one of them and because my countrymen have just shrugged it off.

A few days ago I was ruminating about how 30% of the colonists sided with the British during the Revolutionary War, conservatives like the 30% of the American public that still supports George Bush in 2007. Another 30% were the revolutionaries; I like to think I would have been one of them. And the rest... just wanted to go about their business and ignore "politics." I was the freshman class president in college and later chairman of the Student Activities Board when the Vietnam War was raging. 30% of my fellow students were opposed; 30% supported it... and the rest, just wanted to go about their business, etc. I marched, protested, got arrested, and, eventually left America and lived overseas because the thought of paying any kind of tax that would offset the price of a weapon that would be used to kill innocent civilians in the country we had invaded and occupied was keeping me from sleeping at night.

My anger towards Bush and his regime is bottomless. Do I think he's as bad as the other infamous tyrants of history? If you read DWT with any regularity, you already know the answer to that. I can barely keep my anger towards Nancy Pelosi in check about that off the table bullshit, even though I am painfully aware that a Congress that is incapable of putting aside partisanship even to give our soldiers some time away from the front lines is certainly incapable of impeaching, let alone convicting, the president they have enabled to commit war crimes and treason for the last half decade or so. Should every single member of Congress be tried and punished? No, some of them have been stalwart in their opposition to the encroachments against our liberty. But not too many.

If Wolf's 10 easy steps don't piss you off, there must be something wrong with you. This is what a would-be fascist must do to subvert democracy:
1- Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2- Create a gulag
3- Develop a thug caste
4- Set up an internal surveillance system
5- Harass citizens' groups (which is why the cowardly cooperation of so many Democrats with Bush's attacks on MoveOn so angered me this week)
6- Engage in arbitrary detention and release
7- Target key individuals
8- Control the press
9- Dissent equals treason (see #5)
10- Suspend the rule of law

Do any of them sound familiar? Are there any that don't? Go back to the link and read Wolf's whole report if there is something that isn't gelling for you. Democrats who vote to fund any aspect of the occupation of Iraq-- including for the casting of fake medals for Bush's political general and, of course, including the $200 billion Bush is asking for to perpetuate the catastrophe there for another ego-driven year-- other than the for the safe and orderly redeployment of our troops, can't expect Blue America to support their re-election bids no matter how much we otherwise like you and no matter how horrible your Republican opponent is. And if you voted for John Cornyn's resolution to condemn MoveOn... you're not one of us; you're one of them. Several senators we contributed to last year-- namely Amy Klobuchar (MN), John Tester (MT), and Ben Cardin (MD)-- were among the minority of Democrats to support Cornyn's scurrilous attack on American citizens. Good luck 5 years from now. We have long memories.

Today Glenn Greenwald deconstructs the Democratic majority in Congress with the purpose to discover what's gone wrong and he's hit upon a symbol of it's worthlessness: California hack Dianne Feinstein. Having lived in California for several decades, first in San Francisco and now in Los Angeles, I've been very aware of Feinstein and her modus operandi. I first heard her name from a close friend of mine who served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors with her, Harvey Milk. It was the assassination of Harvey and Mayor George Moscone at the end of 1978 by a crazed Republican politician, Dan White, that led to the political rise of Feinstein. As president of the Board of Supervisors she became mayor, a job she had sought, unsuccessfully, twice. She ran the following year and was elected. She has always been known as a bagwoman for her husband's financial interests and her career was always mired in a complex web of conflicts of interest which accelerated as her power increased. Jane Hamsher and I supported Jello Biafra. Feinstein ran for governor and lost but then went on to win three and a half Senate terms. I'm proud to say that I've never voted for her in any election. Glenn elegantly paints her as the quintessential betrayer of progressive values and principles.

In the wake of the series of profound failures that define the 2007 Democratic Congress, there is much debate over what accounts for this behavior. There are almost 300 "Congressional Democrats" and they are not a monolithic group. Some of them are unrelenting defenders of their core liberal political values and some are committed to providing meaningful opposition to the radicalism and corruption of the Bush administration. But as the sorry record of the 2007 Congress conclusively proves, they are easily outnumbered in the House and Senate-- especially the Senate-- by Bush-enabling and Bush-supporting Democrats... California's Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein provides a perfect case study for understanding why the Congress has done virtually nothing to oppose the most extreme Bush policies, while doing much actively to support it.

...Her votes over the last several years, and especially this year after she was safely re-elected, are infinitely closer to the Bush White House and her right-wing Senate colleagues than they are to the base of her party or to the constituents she allegedly represents. Just look at what she has done this year on the most critical and revealing votes:

* Voted in FAVOR of funding the Iraq War without conditions;

* Voted in FAVOR of the Bush White House's FISA bill to drastically expand warrantless eavesdropping powers;

* Voted in FAVOR of condemning MoveOn.org;

* Cast the deciding vote in August on the Senate Judiciary Committee in FAVOR of the nomination of far right Bush nominee Leslie Southwick to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

In 2006, Feinstein not only voted in favor of extending the Patriot Act without any of the critical safeguards sought by Sen. Feingold, among others, but she was one of the most outspoken Democratic proponents arguing for its extension ("I have never been in favor of allowing any provisions of the Patriot Act to expire."). Also in 2006, she not only voted in favor of amending the Constitution to outlaw flag burning, but was, as she proudly described herself, "the main Democratic sponsor of this amendment."

In October of 2002, she (naturally) voted to authorize President Bush to use military force to invade Iraq. She now self-servingly claims that she "regrets" the vote and was tricked by the Bush administration into believing Saddam had WMDs, yet Scott Ritter has disclosed: "This is far different from the statement Feinstein made to me in the summer of 2002, when she acknowledged that the Bush administration had not provided any convincing intelligence to back up its claims about Iraqi WMD." And when it was revealed in August of this year that Awad Allawi had hired the most influential GOP lobbying firm to help oust Prime Minister Maliki, there was Sen. Feinstein leading the way in demanding Maliki's ouster.

Time and again, not only does she vote in favor of the most right-wing aspects of the Bush agenda, she uses her alleged expertise in areas of intelligence to pressure or give comfort to other Democrats wanting to do the same. Several of the 16 Democratic Senators who voted in favor of Bush's FISA bill in August, such as Jim Webb, cited assurances by Feinstein that she had obtained Secret Information as a member of the Intelligence Committee which proved how necessary this bill was. Similarly, as a member of the Intelligence Committee, she was one of the Democratic leaders urging the confirmation of Gen. Michael Hayden as CIA Director notwithstanding the central role he played as NSA Director in Bush's illegal surveillance programs.

Her primary allegiance is to the Beltway power system and her overwhelming affection is reserved for Beltway power brokers who are her true colleagues and constituents. That is particularly true of right-wing members of the defense and intelligence communities. Here, for instance, is the praise she oozed for the illegal-surveillance-implementing Gen. Hayden when urging his confirmation as CIA Director:

"I think the most important thing is that the individual be a competent, qualified, intelligent professional, and Mike Hayden is all of those things."

Glenn concludes that she, and many of her prominent Democratic colleagues, "have contempt for their base and share virtually none of their values... This has clearly always been the case with Dianne Feinstein. Hence, Dianne Feinstein funds Bush's war with no limits while condemning MoveOn. She votes to vest vast new surveillance powers in the President. She defends and vouches for and places blind faith in the whole litany of Bush intelligence officials who have spent the last six years radicalizing this country and breaking the law." This is what she is-- what I sensed in her since the late 1970s.

More than anything else, Feinstein worships at the altar of the Beltway power system and its most revered members. Conversely, she has contempt for the liberal base which elects her and the constituents she represents. She long ago ceased being driven by the political values which serve as props for her campaigns, if she was ever driven by them. And that is the story of so many of the Beltway Democrats.

There is only one viable answer and I don't feel it's a third party because I don't think a third party will do more than perpetuate radical Republican dominance for another 4 years or 20 years and I don't feel this country will survive that calamity. Instead, in the words of Darcy Burner: more and better Democrats.

DWT is dedicated to finding better Democrats. No one gets onto our Blue America list of endorsed candidates until I speak to them personally about the important issues of the day. And the few who manage to fool me and then go on to betray us-- like Chris Carney did last year-- we call out and try to hold accountable.