Get Real!

So now California's Ellen Tauscher is worrying about how her past associations (with such nefarious characters as Joe "Fish Eye" Lieberman, George "Uh... Wha?" Bush, and their ilk) will affect her fortunes in 2008. Good. She stood in one of those phenomenally fake signing ceremonies (this one for the crippling Homeland Security Act) with the most inhuman members of the Republican party and the most unprincipled and incomprehensible members of the Democratic party, and now she is doing her best to keep people from remembering it.

She is an extreme example, but what she's trying to get out from under, here, hangs over a lot of "electable" people in the Democratic Party.

In 2001-2003 the official mindset in politics and the press was that hawkishness was the only legitimate position. In the friggin' "March to War" against Iraq, it was supposedly political suicide to be soft on Saddam. Thus, a lot of people with an eye toward the White House felt obligated to vote for the AUMF against Iraq. This, despite at a minimum, some extremely questionable actions on the part of a White House supposedly trying to justify their case: they seized the Iraq response to the UN, censored thousands of pages, then distributed it as evidence that Iraq(!) was hiding something; they claimed that their evidence against Iraq was so sensitive that it couldn't be shown to even the legislators who needed to decide how to respond to it; they didn't even counter challenges to their arguments, they just threw out different arguments. Finally, after daring the UN to oppose their plans, when it was clear that the UN would indeed oppose their plans, they withdrew their final resolution rather than have unambiguous international disapproval of their actions. In summary, it was clear to pretty much the whole world that an invasion of Iraq was being crammed down everyone's throats. Still, these leaders of the Democratic Party decided it was better to stick with the herd and vote Yes than to risk making a vote against aggression that could be held against them later.

Fat lot of good that did them in 2004. They were still sold as cowards, etc. Now we look ahead to 2008. The chickens are coming home to roost, and a war that was an atrocity from the words "Shock and Awe" on is now an unmitigated disaster as well. A government driven entirely by bluff, bravado, and image is failing in every way possible. Supporting them is an albatross around anyone's neck. In Maryland this last go-around, the GOP governor and senator candidates were being sold as Democrats. Other Republicans just downplayed their party affiliation- even removing any mention of "Republican" from their websites (can't land a link offhand).

The point is, three years ago all the leading lights of the Democratic Party thought their political futures depended on being the proverbial Republican Lites. Better to be almost like the permanent majority and pick up some centrist Repubs and the frustrated Dems, who had no other choice, or something. Now it's ready to bite them in the ass. Hillary voted for Iraq. Kerry, who died in 2004 for putting presidential aspirations and calculations above backbone, seems to wish he could try again.

These are intelligent people, right? Lawyers, whatever, well-educated. Yet they couldn't see that 1) the Iraq war was a crock; 2) wars are not crocks you can casually jump in and out of; and 3) doing something for the sake of being in the cool crowd will never make you cool- it will just make you a transparent cool wanna-be. Hell, I knew that in high school. The people in the cool crowd were repulsive, and the truly cool people did their own thing.

So when did our leaders in Washington so lose the ball? It's no good to do stuff for the sake of being seen doing that stuff. Better to do what you really believe in. At least if it sinks you, you don't have to look at yourself as a double loser; you can take pride.