Liberal Street Fighter

She has pledged that as Speaker she would give the Republicans rights they’ve denied the Democrats, like allowing them to introduce amendments to bills. But she may have trouble reining in the Democrats’ appetite for revenge. There’s already talk of multiple investigations and impeachment of the president.

“No, impeachment is off the table,” she says.

“And that’s a pledge?” Stahl asks.

“Well, it’s a pledge in the – yes, I mean, it’s a pledge. Of course it is. It is a waste of time,” she replies.

“Wouldn’t they just love it, if we came in and our record as Democrats coming forth in 12 years, is to talk about George Bush and Dick Cheney? This election is about them. This is a referendum on them,” Pelosi says. “Making them lame ducks is good enough for me.”

It would have been better if she said something like:

Well, there hasn’t been sufficient investigation to even push for impeachment yet, but as Speaker, I will make sure that the House of Representatives fulfills it’s constitutional duty to provide oversight, to follow necessary investigations where they lead. We WILL return the voice of the people, disgusted with the waste and lack of accountability, to the Capitol.

If you need some help with your speeches Ms. Pelosi, drop a comment below, would you please?

Sadly, though, she didn’t do that. She won’t do that. Democrats running all over this country, when asked about the possibility of Pelosi rising to speaker, spew Republican talking points, reinforcing the right’s defining of the national debate. With her statement on 60 Minutes, Pelosi just rewarded that kind of behavior, and has herself REINFORCED THE REPUBLICAN DEFINITION of what is important in this country. Many argue that this is smart tactics, but all it does is reinforce the very thing that has moved this country steadily to the right for over thirty years … Democrats are weak and stand for nothing. Charles Pierce chimes in:

Impeachment should never be the first club out of the bag, god knows, and it shouldn’t be swung around for political purposes. (Ann Coulter, you’ll be amazed to learn, is wrong about that.) However, if a new Democratic majority doesn’t vigorously revive the oversight function of the Congress, and if it doesn’t do so regardless of where the investigations may lead, then it will not deserve to survive the next election cycle. (My choice? Extended televised hearings into war-profiteering.) If it were up to me, I’d put an armed guard around every paper-shredder in the West Wing about 30 seconds after the polls closed on Nov. 7. I don’t think impeachment hearings are remotely close to a good idea right now — but there is absolutely no way anyone can say that in perpetuity, given what we know about this administration’s penchant for secrecy and chicanery. And, let us face facts. The president has admitted violating FISA, hanging his reasons on a very dubious interpretation of his constitutional functions.

The template, if there is one, is the way Speaker Tip O’Neill handled his fractious caucus as Watergate gathered steam. (You can read about it either in Jimmy Breslin’s How The Good Guys Finally Won, or in Jack Farrell’s definitive biography of O’Neill.) He hedged. He temporized. He cut premature resolutions — like Robert Drinan’s attempt to impeach Richard Nixon over the bombing of Cambodia — off at the pass. He chewed his cud and told people he really didn’t know how impeachment should be undertaken. But he never, ever, took any option off the table.

What they DID do back then is let the attack dogs on the left run, do their thing, building the case, gaining momentum. This will not happen with Pelosi as Speaker, IF she becomes Speaker. The chances of a run from the right to prevent her from becoming third in line to the Presidency are high, and even if it fails she has made it clear she will capitulate to the center-right in the party, a number which may increase thanks to the zeal that Rep. Emmanuel has for recruiting former Republicans and warhawks.

The Democratic leadership, which Pelosi may, or may not, head come January, reinforces the rightwing, pro-corporate, pro-war Republican narrative at every turn, a problem that is reinforced by their subsidiary blogs:

Smith doesn’t come right out and say it, but there’s a name for a political ideology based on a projected, utopian past that can only be reacquired through political acts whereby the cultural radicals are ousted and an imaginary old order restored: conservative.

Kos and his followers imagine themselves bolsheviks of Democratic liberalism, but their political ideology, such as it is, is deeply conservative. It serves up a unidentifiable, unspecified time of general well-being and social harmony, a status quo in which the only change that occured was “progress” in an exceedingly vague sense of a general improvement to the social and economic wellbeing of the society as a whole. It locates the rupture with that vision in certain political triumphs of its opponents, whom it accuses of revolutionarism. It dedicates its political actions to the recapture of such a past, which was taken away, and which must now be taken back. Things were better before, and once we go back, they’ll be better in the future again.

In that confusion of verb tenses you find the abject failure of the dreaming insurgents of the Democratic party.

Pelosi has made it clear that she is part of the problem. She has made it clear that she will hamstring any true liberal who becomes a committee chairperson. She winces and ducks before the right even throws a punch, keeping her left hand carefully tied behind her back. Given the current state of politics in this country, one should be under no illusions that lefties will roar to power and bring about utopia, but with the center-right party completely freezing them out, the Donks are left with no way to fight. Hell, as anybody who’s boxed knows, or even anybody who’s played Rock’em Sock’em Robots knows, you have to jab with the left to set up the undercut or overhand from the right. A healthy political party that actually fought for something, believed in something, wanted to be more than a rubber stamp, would realize and use this simple fact of conflict. It’s not enough to float like a butterfly, not if you’re not willing to sting like a bee, and it’s only outraged lefties like Conyers and Waxman who have the stingers and are willing to use them. Ms. Pelosi has made it clear that she will keep them locked away and unable to fight.  

Lefties, leftists, labor activists, GBLT fighters, feminists, humanists, peace activists … the Democratic Party is not on your side. They take you for granted. We hear over and over again that Pelosi is one of the most liberal members of Congress, but she abandons the left, denigrates the left, betrays the left. It’s time, PAST time, to walk away. Be willing to vote for a third party if you can, or leave the Dem line blank, if you’re confronted in the voting booth with a former Republican, a crypto-Republican or a wimpy status-quo worshipping centrist, then WALK AWAY. It’s time to face facts … the center-right of the party is driving because they did did just that, the Reagan Republicans, the Dixiecrats … you know, the Blue Dog Dempublicans. They stayed home or  abandoned the Party and McGovern and backed George Wallace. They backed Ronald Reagan. They backed George HW Bush. They hooted with delight when Clinton betrayed the party’s constituents and helped to expand the police state and wage war. They did the very thing they scream at you that you shouldn’t do. When their racism, their jingoism, their bloodlust, their greed and selfishness and worship of the growing power of the Corporation wasn’t kowtowed to, they bolted.

FAR past time to return the favor, to work locally and build from the bottom. Yes, support the few left in the party who share your values, but quit enabling the descendents of Scoop Jackson and their psuedo-liberal lapdogs like Pelosi. NEITHER party is willing to do what may be one of the most important functions of Congress:

Article I, Section 8, US Constitution

The Powers of Congress include:

To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court;
To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;
To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;

No, neither party, especially when it is US practicing piracies and felonies, US committing offenses against the law of nations. They enabled Bush, they enabled Clinton, they enabled Bush 41, they enabled Reagan and Nixon and Johnson. Decades of bloody imperial wars, and nearly our entire political establishment feast on the blood and carnage, cheering through their blood-encrusted mouths. Fear, greed and envy are the tools of our politicians. The brief victories in our history where we did actually expand justice for humanity are flickering glimmers spread out widely between broad periods of darkness, and the current leadership of the Democratic Party is part of the problem. Don’t capitulate lefties if your opposition starts to sting. Simple creatures like Vichy Dems only learn when they get burned … to back off right when the heat becomes uncomfortable only gives them quarter to wave you off after they’ve won. BE WILLING TO LET THEM LOSE. Better to build local movements, foster community-tied leaders who can offer real alternatives when the top-heavy indebted mess in Washington comes crashing down. Quit compromising yourselves, quit accepting their cash and access in return for shutting your mouths.

Ms. Pelosi has made it clear that she’s not a fighter, that she’s a coward who cares nothing for her constituents’ beliefs … no, she cares about what REPUBLICAN constituents, and the chattering class in DC, want. More of the same, only done “better” somehow. The endless fight for the “center” continues, while more and more Americans sink beneath the waves of a storm of rising corporate profits, as the bloodshed continues and the narrow constituency of comfortable suburbia and the rich are coddled.

Walk away … she’s just going to hit the canvas anyway. Walk away, and start working to build real fighters, new fighters, PEOPLE’S fighters.