| And why not? The fast talking,
wise-cracking Carville represents the days when Democrats
had a spine (kind of) and won elections with the aid
of finger-on-the-pulse, media-savvy spinmeisters rather
than losing them with the thumb-up-the-butt hacks who
have steered the last two Democratic presidential campaigns
into a ditch.
Carville had company, too. Right next to him on the
kitchen counter was the Democratic National Committee,
urging my wife to respond to the Bush administration’s
nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court with
a hefty check.
Chances are I'm on Casey's fundraising list because
I contributed to Joe Hoeffel, Arlen Spector's Democratic
opponent in the Pennsylvania Senate race in 2004. My
wife gave the DNC a little something back in February
when they begrudgingly admitted Howard Dean as their
new chair.
But that was then. This time around, there’ll
be no checks.
Because by now, we’ve both seen that the Democrats
are going to cling to their post-2004 strategy of attracting
voters by turning themselves into Republicans.
And if that’s the case, I have bad news for them.
They can’t have our money.
No amount of Carvillian mojo will invoke dreams of
Democratic resurgence in me so powerful that I’ll
overlook the views of, let alone contribute to, an anti-choice
candidate like Casey. And the DNC should win a chutzpah
award for trying to fundraise around a Supreme Court
nomination that they haven’t strongly opposed.
In fact, they show every sign of waving Roberts through.
Sure, the Washington Post’s article a few weeks
back in which a number of Democratic insiders confided
there would be no real fight caused such a
flood of complaints from voters like me that Kennedy
and Leahy stepped up the next day and talked
real tough.
But who are they kidding? As the recent recess appointment
of John Bolton to the UN demonstrates, the current Democratic
strategy of choice — trying to stonewall an objectionable
nominee by refusing to vote until the White House releases
all requested papers — doesn’t work so good.
And why fight a morally empty war of technicalities
anyway when there’s so much damning material to
actually challenge Roberts on? Alexander
Cockburn has the answer in The Nation: “The
Democrats have long since lost the appetite to confront
a nominee at the level of political philosophy, the
terrain on which they defeated Bork in 1987.”
But it’s more, and worse, than that. As Cockburn
points out, Democrats have been so busy siding with
Republicans that they’ve left themselves no higher
ground on which to stand. They can’t grill Roberts
for his recent ruling upholding the denial of rights
to “enemy combatants” — not after
their
own silence on Abu Ghraib in the spring and summer
of 2004.
But that’s only one example of many. The beginning
of Bush’s second term, and the installation of
Harry Reid of Nevada as the new minority leader in the
Senate has only perpetuated this pattern, where the
Democrats erode their every potential campaign issue
— and definitely their base as well — by
voting for, or barely opposing, every piece of Republican
legislation.
There was the Schiavo fiasco this past winter, followed
by the bankruptcy bill written by and for credit card
companies this past spring. And last month’s energy
bill, which Paul
Krugman labeled “an exercise in corporate
welfare, full of subsidies and targeted tax breaks,”
that won’t do anything to reduce America's dependence
on imported oil.
April’s much-touted Democratic “compromise”
on judicial filibusters was rightly
characterized by Kim Gandy of the National Organization
of Women (NOW) as being “more like a mugging,
where the thug says 'If you give me what I want, I won't
shoot you…at least not right now.’”
And Hillary Clinton’s recent co-sponsorship of
a bill that will increase troop strength in Iraq by
80,000 troops comes at a time when the
majority of Americans now disapprove of the way
in which the war has been handled. Even some Republicans
are calling for a timetable for withdrawal.
Meanwhile, oddly enough, the Howard-Dean-led
DNC website has become fiercely outspoken in its
criticism of the administration. Its headlines blare
out news about the latest GOP corruption scandals and
Bush’s most recent retreat on his promises about
Iraq. Sidebars tout the CIA leak scandal and a “50
state strategy.”
Won’t someone please notify the Democrats in
DC that their own website is out-butching them, so they
can coordinate their policy-making arm with their fundraising
wing and become an opposition party again?
Until then, the only thing the party’s leaders
seem willing to learn from Dean’s candidacy, which
proved that 1) you could boldly attack a popular sitting
president, and that 2) Grassroots fundraising could
be astoundingly effective, is #2 — the money part.
So now they’re sending Dean and Carville to sit
on the kitchen counters of people like me.
I sent Carville back empty-handed, along with a note
to the Casey campaign telling them that I don’t
support anti-choice Democrats — and neither should
Carville. My spouse wrote on the DNC letter that they
should fight Roberts first and then come back for her
money.
I encourage you to do the same with the fundraising
letters that will land on your kitchen counter with
increasing frequency as the 2006 elections approach.
You would be surprised by the stir that dozens of negative,
handwritten notes create in a development office.
So don’t just throw them away. Reserve your wastebasket
for those toxic credit-card offers brought to you courtesy
of a president and congress who couldn’t care
less if you sweat your life away on a debtor’s
treadmill — so long as MBNA
keeps contributing to their campaigns.
But your local mailbox should be flooded with envelopes
returned by voters who are clever enough to use the
free prepaid postage, or flush enough to use a single
stamp, to make their opinion count.
Nancy
Goldstein’s column appears on Raw Story every
other Thursday. She can be reached at goldstein.nancy@gmail.com.
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