Chuck Schumer and Diane Feinstein drove a stake through the heart of the Democratic Party last week when they broke ranks and decided to confirm torture-supporter Mukasey for Attorney General. Feinstein’s laughable justification for her vote was that Mukasey will be more independent than a recess appointment. By that reasoning, she might as well head back to San Francisco until 2008 or, heck, why not permanently — it doesn’t matter how she votes.
This weak decision was wrong on the morals, and wrong on the politics. Instead of strengthening the Democratic Party they demonstrated just how weak the Party is, and helped to explain why, more than a year after seizing control of the legislative heart of the Republic, virtually no significant piece of Democratic-inspired legislation has become law. Instead of rallying the country against a deeply unpopular President, the Democrats have mounted only feeble opposition and allowed the White House to continue to set national policy on areas as diverse as the war in Iraq, the federal budget, stem cell research, and our use of torture. The most they have gotten, so far as I can see, is a good piece of political theater on SCHIP and about $1.5 billion in personal earmarks. They sold themselves that cheap.
My question is: what should the progressive wing of the Democratic Party (that’s us) do about Republican enablers like Schumer and Feinstein? Should we seek out opponents to these creatures, and support them; should we accept them as the lesser of evils — after all, they’ll vote whichever way they see their interests of the moment — and continue to target weak Republicans; should we abandon all hope and enter into the Third Party Inferno of modern American politics (“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here”). What do you think?
And in the meantime, if you don’t have any good ideas on that portentous question, maybe you can offer a suggestion for what to call the Republican wing of the Democratic Party? Blue dog Democrat is an insult to the dogs of America, who are fine creatures with guts and a strong sense of right and wrong.
[UPDATE: Schumer has written a mealy-mouthed justification for his vote today for the NYT. It is long on insider politics and “trust the Republicans” advice, and ignores the fundamental damage his vote has done to the functionality of the Democratic Party as an effective opposition. I call this another big win for the deeply unpopular lame-duck lost-the-last-election President. Very impressive for Bush and his team, and proponents of torture everywhere. A double-order of Spinocrat may be the only solution (hat-tip to KBusch).]
A fundamental problem is that there are enough conservative Democrats (Blue Dogs and New Democrats) that will vote with Republicans on a lot of these issues. The problem isn’t just Feinstein and Schumer. It’s also Landrieu, Backus, and Pryor. Similar problem in the House.
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We who don’t work in Congress might want Pelosi and Reid to take principled stands — stands with which we know Pelosi, by the way, agrees and Reid probably too. The trouble is it is also very important to keep the caucuses together. You don’t want to provoke a revolt of conservative Democrats. If you do, you risk having a worse mess.
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So what do you do in that circumstance? I think there are five things we need :
The Bush Dog campaign is the best thing I’ve seen on item #3. With conservative Democrats, this isn’t simple. There’s a range of actions. Rep. Lipinski from Illinois, an anti-choice war supporter who votes wrong on FISA, represents a solid Democratic district in a very Democratic year. Please contribute to his opponent Mark Pera. Stephanie Herseth, on the other hand, represents South Dakota. We’re lucky to have her representing South Dakota, but alas she votes wrong on both crucial issues. I’m not sure what we do to bring her along, but it’s not a primary challenger.
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For Lipinski, sticks; for Herseth, carrots.
Postscript: This article, Centrist Dems Rank with Fear by Chris Bowers is useful because it describes the maneuvers Republicans are pulling in the House to wedge off conservative Democrats.
Students for Obama won’t be doing much after January 3rd, maybe I can help out Mark Pera instead. Parts of the district are close to the University though its one of the most gerrymandered Ive seen.
To date I have been accepting (with strong reservations but accepting) of the concept that the Democratic Party had to protect House seats in red states and that an often moderate (read as rollover and play dead) stance against Bush was a necessay evil.
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Well no more. Schumer and Feinstein are from two of the safest, bluest seats in the US Senate. I am ashamed of them and pissed at myself for going along as long as I have.
Striker is right: “Schumer and Feinstein are from two of the safest, bluest seats in the US Senate.” So much for your carefully nuanced policy of carrots and sticks, no? If this is the best the Democratic Party can do, it can’t do much. And, indeed, the facts since the last election seem to bear out that assessment.
to be fair to Schumer (not that he deserves it right now), he’s actually been quite good on most key issues. He really screwed up on this, mostly (I think) because he introduced Mukasey to the Committee and therefore felt “awkward” about then voting against him. Weak. This was a pretty big mistake, so I’m not sure he gets a mulligan, exactly, but I’m also not sure it’d be a straightforward task to find someone better who could conceivably win.
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Feinstein’s a different matter. (Though I don’t actually know where she is on FISA and Iraq.) There’s no reason CA should have any trouble electing a progressive Dem. So, under the KBusch regime, sticks for Feinstein.
I dug that comment up because I thought it might be a useful framework.
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Feinstein has been much of a problem than Schumer of late — she also voted wrong on FISA. Both Senators are well-entrenched incumbents, though, and anyone opposing them in a primary would, no doubt be giving up a good House or State Senate seat for a vanishingly small chance of winning.
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The problem seems to be two-fold. One is money. Schumer has access to lots of it and a few big contributions speak louder than an auditorium of progressives.
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The other, though, is that there is no institutional accountability. In 2008, Senator Hagel would have faced a more conservative challenger if he hadn’t planned to retire. In 2006, Senator Chafee faced such a challenger. In 2004, Senator Spector did. Movement conservatives are quite aggressive about keeping their guys in line. It shows, too. They vote in unison. The challenge Spector faced affected his voting. It worked.
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Lamont’s challenge to Lieberman was the closest we’ve come on the Democratic side.
Unfortunately, there are a handful of Democratic Senators with voting records worse still than Feinstein’s. The problem is not spinelessness on the part of the Democrats. It is that the spine, sturdy in places, has some very soft spots.
there’s always spineocrat.
I can’t figure out how to embed it, or I’d front-page it as its own post. Anyway, points noted.
on DemoGlad which Mark Fiore produced right after the 2006 elections. Fiore is very funny and his site is worth a weekly visit to see the latest animation.
Feinstein is being disingenuous…
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Feinstein’s laughable justification for her vote was that Mukasey will be more independent than a recess appointment.
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…if Mukasey is not confirmed by the Senate, it is highly likely that he would be the recess appointment. Moreover, even if Bush has somebody else in waiting for a recess appointment, he could get Mukasey to resign and install that “somebody else” during a Congressional recess.
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And, aside from that, the Congress could, when considering the DoJ’s budget, just consider playing hardball and neglect to fund the Office of the AttyGen. That would make for an interesting power play.
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As far as I can tell, Schumer is merely a nominal Democrat. If the Dems increase their margin in the Senate sufficiently in 2008, they should consider jettisoning Lieberman completely and removing Schumer’s seniority. They won’t do it, of course.
Were Mulkasey to declare waterboarding a form of torture at the hearings he would then be required to retroactively prosecute every member of the US Government who engaged in that activity.
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For those of you out there who feel really outraged about waterboarding that probably sounds like music to your hears, but itd be a bad idea for several reasons.
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A)These guys didn’t break any laws
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It was the legal opinion at the time that this was legal, therefore they conducted these now illegal acts under pretenses of legality, its unfair to these officials
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B)Not the time to be doing this
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Who knows how many crucial CIA, NSA, Homeland Security personnel were involved with this, Id rather they keep doing their jobs instead of getting bogged down in an investigation
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C)Wouldn’t make the US look better
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We dont need to be investigating ourselves know when we are conducting two wars overseas in the Middle East, the last thing we need is more scandal and disgrace, I say lets focus on completing the mission first.
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D)Waterboarding stops either way
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Congress is taking affirmitive steps to stop this, Mulkasey just needs to say it will stop, not that it was illegal.
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Its a question of tactics really, he cant say its illegal, but he can say it will stop, but Senate Dems cornered him into saying its illegal thus creating the Catch-22 we’re in now.
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Id say Feinstein realizes this hence her vote, Schumer its because he recommended Mulkasey and he’d look bad voting against him now.
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Personally I would just have Comey become the actual Attorney General hes the one who did a lot of good stopping Gonzales from issuing the wiretap orders and other illegal moves.
…a legal opinion and the law. And two, you don’t understand the concept of “statute of limitation.”
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Yoo’s, Mukasey’s (and others’) legal opinions are not the law. They are merely statements of their clients’ lawyers (the clients being Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al.) as to what the law might be, and the application of the law to the relevant facts. Those opinions will not shelter their clients from prosecution if the DoJ changes hands in Jan 2009. Most assuredly, the opinions will not shelter their clients if the statement of facts in the legal opinions turn out to have nothing to do with reality. NB: correctly constructed legal opinions always contain statements of fact on which the opinions are based.
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What might shelter them from prosecution is the relevant statute of limitation. If, as is usual, the relevant statute of limitation in 6 years, the DoJ can prosecute acts that were performed as early as 2003.
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The rest of your comment (b, c and d) is nonsense. It appears that you would prefer that the US government keep sadists on staff, and that the information leak out to the world–as it certainly will–piecemeal.
As far as the previous comment is concerned. One of your best, raj, in MHO.
Balkinization has had some truly excellent discussion of Mukasey, and the torture issue generally, and here, for example, Jack Balkin addresses the “he can’t say it’s torture because then he’d have to prosecute CIA interrogators” claim.
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(Balkinization is, in fact, worth keeping in your feed reader, period.)
Considering the present internal and external threats that face the safety and security of USA, I’d just as soon that USA and its agents have the option to use “extralegal” means to to obtain information tthat may save American lives. If it has to be done at the expense of an enemy agent—-so be it. After twice being on the receiving end of enemy projectiles, it would certainly be a moral and confidence booster to know that my government, and by extension its citizens, was doing everythin by whatever means necessary to give me the best fighting chance. After all, my primary job was to kill the enemy and destroy his will to resist. That’s just the way it is. The gloves come off.
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I became privy a few days ago that the FBI used a gentleman by the name of Gregory “The Grim Reaper” Scarpa
to travel from NYC down to Mississippi to lean on some Klansmen. Seems that the Klansmen had murdered three civil rights workers and the FBI couldn’t break the case.
I remember it well, as I was down in the vicinity)After a short drive into the countryside, the klan bubba decided it was far more prudent to trust his luck with the courts than with a mafia triggerman. Extra legal methods of obtaining information do in fact produce credible results. Does the end justify the means? Yes, sometimes it does.
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http://www.nypost.co… by the name of
Stupidity meet immorality.
But they are right on this one.
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Somehow the Congress must exercise its power to be a check on the executive. Something–anything– muts be done to kill the “unitary executive” view of our government. We need our Congress to exert its authority over the government and over the executive branch in particular.
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When this, or any other Bush nominee states that they won’t violate statutes enecated by Congress, what they really mean is that they cannot violate the law because they are not subject to the law.
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Never mind Iraq. That mess will eventually be cleaned up and pass into history. This radical theory of executive power has done unspeakable damage to the fabric of the republic, and has raised the specter of monarachy in which the monarch serves four year terms.
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Even if a Democrat is endowed with all of the “unitary” power claimed by Bush and Cheney after 2008, I do not trust any of them to exercise it. The power of the executive must be curtailed.
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It was a dreadful idea to try to do this by cutting off funding for troops in the field. Attempts to oversee and conduct hearings have been good, but sporadic. This was a real opportunity, and one that seems about to be lost.
Even if a Democrat is endowed with all of the “unitary” power claimed by Bush and Cheney after 2008, I do not trust any of them to exercise it.
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Back when the Clintonians were in power, I predicted that they woould not be reined in because the Republicans would want to exercise similar power when they got into the Oval Office. And it is clear beyond peradventure that the Dems would want to have the powers that have been granted to the Bushies over the last seven years.
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Both parties are vile.
I’m not sure it is just that the parties are vile (you’ll hear no argument from me that they are not). It is just human nature.
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Anyone from any background that is President of the United States has an intensely difficult job. They have any number of public and secret crises to confront on a daily basis. Limitations on executive authority are, by design, a hindrance to their ability to do their job. It would be so much easier to govern if it could be done by decree and without having to answer to a pesky Congress, media, or anyone else. This would be true even of men or women who enter the office with the best of intentions.
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It was in anticipation of this basic fact of human nature that the powers of the office were, in their design, curtailed, and pretty severely. Those powers have grown like kudzu in recent years, and must be curtailed again.
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Electing a Democrat isn’t enough (though it is a start, even if the Dem is HRC). Congress is going to have to have a bitter confrontation with the executive. I’d rather that the confrontation happen before January 2009 if possible. This Congress’ primary attempt to do that– de-funding the war– just happened to be on the worst possible battleground, and they lost and looked stupid losing. It is frustrating to see them now blithely bypass an opportunity to take on the White House on an issue that won’t instantly split their caucus.
Think FDR played by the rules? FDR actually was playing it pretty straight with Joe Stalin, all the while Stalin was about to shove it up his Kiester. FDR didn’t live long enough for the big event. Had FDR known what Stalin was planning, and about to execute, WWII would have ended quite differently—–and the world today would be a different place.
Are you defending unlimited presidential power? I prefer a republic to absolute monarchy, but maybe that’s just me.
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FWIW, The Soviet Union had a much higher tolerance of massive, massive casulaties than did the US. In order for the war in Europe to end as you apparently wish it did, we would have had to redouble our efforts in Europe after May, 1945, and never mind that whole war in the Pacific thing. The country was pretty fucking tired of it in the summer of 1945, and starting a brand new war right on the heels of the old one would have ended very badly. By the time that they figured out the bomb worked, the situation in Europe had already solidified.
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You seem to overestimate the willingness of our citizens to send vast numbers of our kids to their deaths.
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Would it have been helpful for Eastern Europe not to be Soviet Sattelites? Surely. Wasn’t going to happen.
…I could go on for pages, but CMD, you are pretty much correct. The US was fighting a two-front war, which actually began in 1933. The Russians–with more than a bit of help from the Canadians and British, and the US defeated the Nazis. The US, with more than a bit of help from the Canadians, Australians and even the Indonesians, defeated the Japanese Empire.
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The US didn’t do it alone, regardless of what the Amerikanen-Ueber-Alles like MCRD might want us to believe.
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The sad fact is that the Bush malAdministration believes that it can go it alone throughout the world. They have shown, in Iraq, that they cannot.
Though I can’t fathom Feinstein at all..
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Schumer strikes me as the furthest thing from mealy-mouthed that the Left has seen in a long long while. He’s pugnacious and vindictive and usually three steps ahead of anybody opposed to him. I think that’s the case here. And I rather agree with confirming the evil that you know as opposed to waiting for the known evil of a recess appointment: especially when you’ve got a commitment to resign from Mukasey if Bush doesn’t get with the program. It’s a multi-pronged approach, with legislation that has to pass and other democrats have to grow spines (ncluding the spine necessary to disappoint librul bloggers…) and much could wrong. Still, it’s a strategy that’s not reactive and that I like.
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Don’t get me wrong, this round sucks, but Schumers in it for the tournament, not just one hand o poker. I think, down the road, this could potentially be big.
…Is that they can have your balls in their pocket at any moment…
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Seriously, why wouldn’t we want to be in this position? (I mean, sure, we don’t even wanna be having the torture discussion and I’d sleep better with President Gore and/or President Kerry in the WH, but in situ now…) Mukasey has a rep, unlike Gonzalez (or even Ashcroft) as a pro. OK. Deny him, for the short term gain of embarrasing Bush and for all we know Alberto Gonzalez comes back as a recess appointment. (Out of the question, you say? So thought I, pre-katrina… Post katrina, I’m expecting anything from Bush, et al)
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I think there is a method in this madness, on the part of Schumer. I think it could be big. There’s too much else going on, though, to say its all good..
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I can’t imagine this is anything other than in exercise in giving Republicans enough rope to form a tight noose.
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I may not always like or agree with Feinstein or Schumer, but they aren’t this stupid.
Both Senators were elected for and campaigned as friends of Israel. They have consistently supported America’s small ally. Now they support a nominee that won’t say what “torture” is. They support him. Good for them and good for him.
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Both Israel and the United States are at war with people that would gladly kill thousands of civilian people. If you tie the hands of the defenders with rules as to what they can and cannot do, the defenders will lose. Both Israel and the America use enhanced interrogation to save countless lives. Announce what America considers “torture” and Israelis and Americans will face imprisonment in foreign lands as “war criminals”. This can of worms would be deadly to the defenders of the West.
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Don’t fed me this “Moral High Ground” nonsense. Was it MHG to firebomb Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima? It was war. This is war. War is terrible. The alternative is worse. Throw away the crying towel and join the fight.
The Jewish congressional members have an acute awareness of the Holocaust and what led to it. They also are acutely aware that Israel has a tenuous hold on what territory it now enjoys and the external threat to Israel’s existence increases daily.
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Does anyone think for a second that Shin bet and Mossad does not use any and all means necessary to save Jewish lives—and extract reprisals. You can bet your ass and everyone elses that they would carve someone’s heart out with a rusty can opener to save a Jewish life after 1945 and the Munich Massacre. Let’s get real here. This ain’t bean bag.
Great post. I don’t have any easy answers about what to do with Schumer and Feinstein, but it seems to me that we are all buying into a flawed media construct: that the Judiciary vote was the only place to block the nomination.
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Remember when Jesse Helms et al. placed dozens of holds on Clinton appointees for judgeships, embassy posts et al? Why aren’t we demanding the same of our delegation — to say nothing of the senators-who-would-be-president?
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Right now, they get to SOUND good by saying they oppose Mukasey without having to actually spend any real capital on it. But they are much more vulnerable on this than Schumer because they ARE on record against Mukasey, and look like hypocrites if they won’t follow through on their words.
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It seems to me we should be asking the media why they aren’t raising the issue. And, we should be raising the issue ourselves, with Kennedy, Kerry, et al. Even if a hold isn’t possible, shouldn’t there be questions raised about filibusters, etc.
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