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What I am hearing from across the country is a surge of angst and discouragement. In conversations, calls, emails, and letters, people in general (and progressives in particular) are expressing profound dismay at the deterioration of America's democracy, not only because of the BushCheney regime, but also, and especially, because of the fecklessness of the Democratic Congress.
"For crying out loud! Why do we even bother to have elections?" Mark wailed in an email.
I am afraid of what this country has become and that at any minute the people in charge may bomb Iran, and I have lost all hope that there will be any checks and balances," Marshaleigh wrote, adding bluntly, "Congress doesn't work."
Jay bemoaned the dismal performance of Congress in this letter to the editor: "Despite the 2006 congressional elections and the overwhelming antiwar sentiment among our citizens...[Democrats] have become enablers of the White House's misbegotten Iraq venture."
Susan wrote, "What little optimism I had is vanishing. I am much more overwhelmed by the Democratic party's lack of gumption than I was by Bush's wickedness. And the small ideas offered by the presidential candidates make me cringe. I need help."
The damage now being done to America's political psyche by the Democrats' fizzle is way out of the ordinary. These writers are smart, engaged, committed people who are not easily surprised or discouraged by negative political developments. They constitute the grassroots base of progressive activism in our country, and it is truly worrisome that even they are becoming dispirited -- especially as we head into a watershed election year.
The capitulation Congress
It is not some vague funk that's afflicting the public, not some general ennui caused by seven years of Bushdom. Rather, it's a growing despair -- and a rising national embarrassment -- brought on by an ongoing series of specific, disheartening collapses by Democrats, who are turning out to be weaker than Canadian hot sauce. For example:
- The Iraq war rages on, and public anger over this is boiling not merely because the people's own clear opposition to the war is being dishonored, but also because congressional efforts to stop Bush are so halting and halfhearted. True, the Democrats' majority is so slim that they can't overcome a presidential veto of a withdrawal timetable, but this is only one approach. We The People want to see some real spunk, an all-out push that is equal to the seriousness of the disastrous damage being done by this war. There should be a barrage of investigative hearings, a proliferation of exposes on war profiteering, a surge of subpoenas, a hailstorm of contempt citations, a thousand specific cuts (none harming the troops) in Bush's war budget, an unleashing of Congress's "inherent contempt" power--in other words, a strategic, unrelenting antiwar offensive using all of the unique powers of the legislative branch to march right in the face of BushCheney executive arrogance, reframe the debate, and rally the people.
- A final straw for so many Americans -- conservative as well as progressive -- was the Democrats' surrender on Bush's nomination of Michael Mukasey to be attorney general. At first, the media ballyhooed the nominee as a "moderate" Bushite and considered him a shoo-in. Then he stumbled in his Senate hearing by declaring (1)that he couldn't say if waterboarding of war prisoners amounts to torture, even though U.S. and international law flatly say it is; and (2)that he believes Bush has the inherent power to ignore or overrule American laws. Right then and there, the Judiciary Committee should have shown him the door. Instead, two "liberal" Democrats, Chuck Schumer and Diane Feinstein (from the safely blue states of New York and California, respectively), betrayed us and the Constitution, leading the way to approval of Bush's bad choice. Pathetically, these two Democratic wimps claimed that Mukasey had assured them in private that if Congress passed a law outlawing waterboarding, he would enforce it. Yoo-hooooo...it's already illegal! If Congress votes to re-outlaw the practice, Bush can veto the bill or just ignore it. As for Mukasey's saying that Bush can unilaterally and autocratically negate the laws of our land, Schumer and Feinstein let this pass without so much as a whimper. Without the votes of these two Sadcrats, Mukasey's nomination would not have gotten out of committee. Now, we're stuck with him. They reduced Congress's mighty power of "advise and consent" to a rubber stamp for presidential supremacy.
See more stories tagged with: accountability, activism, progressives, republicans, democrats, democracy
From "The Hightower Lowdown," edited by Jim Hightower and Phillip Frazer, December 2007. Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker and author of Thieves In High Places: They've Stolen Our Country and It's Time to Take It Back.
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