An old saying in politics has it, 'You can't beat somebody with nobody." When it comes to explaining the way the Democrats are still getting rolled by this lame-duck, unpopular administration, something similar obtains. But in this case, it's at the spiritual level. And the problem is, "You can't beat some spirit with no spirit."
WEAK AND INEFFECTUAL
With this audience, I don't need to spend much time and space proving that the Democrats have not done an impressive job in confronting the Bushite regime since taking over the Congress early this year. The recent FISA extension bill removed all ambiguity about how ineffectively the Democrats have stood up to the Bushite lies and manipulations and power-grabbing crimes. Other illustrations could readily be assembled.
But perhaps I should clarify a bit what my standards for success are. For, unlike some others, I do not particularly fault the Democrats for not being able to stop the war in Iraq, nor more generally for not being able to accomplish great things. Such expectations fail to take into account the real limits to their power: so long as the Republicans hold together, they can prevent anything from getting through the Senate; and so long as the Republicans hold together, what passes Congress cannot be resurrected after a presidential veto.
Aside from the largely unrealistic goal of making decisions and passing legislations that are binding to the nation, the Democrats' goals could also be:
**putting significant pressure on the Republicans in Congress, (and while the Republican Party may be imploding, it is hard to see how the Democrats can take much credit for that);
** rallying and satisfying their political base (instead, of course, they've alienated much of it);
** and especially, effecting a necessary change of consciousness in the American public generally, arousing their outrage at the unprecedented assault on the American system of government that this regime has been conducting;
** and to do these things by dramatizing effectively the TRUTH about the pervasive dishonesty and lawlessness of the Bushite regime.
What I fault the Democrats for is that in many of their battles, they've achieved NONE of these goals.
A LIMITING CASE IN POINT
A propos of this "dramatizing," let me demonstrate what I mean by showing the shortcomings of one of the BEST of the Democrats in Congress --a kind of limiting case-- Senator Patrick Leahy.
Leahy, in his capacity as Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been relatively tough in his pursuit of Bushite lawlessness. Relatively. Compared to a lot of other Democrats. But not so tough, not so dogged, compared with the urgency of the challenge.
The Bushites have repeatedly stiffed the Congress --with respect to subpoenas for witnesses and evidence, for example-- and Leahy has not backed down. There has been this glacial movement toward a showdown in the courts, "contempt of Congress" and all that.
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