Sunday, November 19, 2006

Democrats: What to do Now

The election of Hoyer over Jack Murtha for majority leader is a worrisome smoke signal that the Democrats in congress are going to play the centrist, bipartisanship card in order to keep their asses fat and happy without having to do much work. This is the time to understand how the right-wing base works. When they put their boys in place, they're not done. They're just getting started.

If their representative doesn't nominate someone right-wing enough for a big job, they start with nasty phone calls. Forget emails, a phone call ties up the lines and makes it hard to get business done. Ditto for faxes. An email you can just delete. If you only have time for an email, it's better than nothing, especially one worded in a way that makes clear what a cheap, two-bit traitor to the cause he is.

Right wingers skip the reasoning part. They know what makes these political animals tick. Votes, contributions, exploratory committees for primary challenges, and threats of bodily harm. Somehow they wind up getting their way. Just remember, they tell their congressmen, at office meetings, town hall meetings, anyplace they show up in public, over the phone with everyone taking turns calling them, and through old fashioned paper letters: if you aren't up to doing what you were elected to do, we'll find someone who is. It's called representative democracy, and it's beautiful.

Democrats are playing the can't-walk-and-chew-gum-at-the-same-time game. Either we LOOK FORWARD with a positive agenda, or we LOOK BACK with investigations. But when Republicans had congress they pushed their agenda AND tried to impeach Clinton. Yes sir, they could do it both. What's with this Attention Deficit Disorder in our guys?

It's not either-or. That's the set-up for the yaboos, a carefully-crafted talking point agreed upon by both sides to snooker the slobs into thinking, well, shucks, I reckon I don't want to look BACKWARDS, do I? Backwards is like, no good.

Fulfilling your constitutional duty is not looking backwards. It is looking forward to a restoration of our hard-won republic, and rights which men died for. Tip: the right-wing base has the toll-free numbers of a dozen or so key legislators stuck on the refrigerator beneath one of those little magnets. So they're handy for a burst of outrage after reading the morning paper. If they were in power, they would say things like, Don't you sucker punch us with this looking forward or backward crap. You can do both. We want investigations of the criminal wrongdoings of the Bush administration. And we want you to roll back those damned billionaire tax cuts. A few of us are planning a trip to your office to elaborate if you don't change your tune. What day is good for you?

Limber up your dialing finger, get ready to use it. It gets easier as you go, then it gets fun. The challenge is for citizens to organize in ways that shadow the role of the evangelicals in the right-wing base, who use church-based study committees and telephone banks to pressure their congressmen. It could be a couple of friends or neighbors calling yourselves a local committee to coordinate talking points and phone calls.

Any strong action against the Bush adminisration is branded as coming from the "left" of the party, and go-along-to-get-along, mild Democratic reforms as the "center." But a majority of Americans believe Bush should be impeached if he lied about the Iraq War, and a majority want our troops out of Iraq, like, yesterday. We ARE the center.

Right-wingers don't worry about pissing off their representatives, like liberals do, afraid they won't get their agendas prioritized. This is the heart of the matter: right-wingers are under no illusions as to who is the employer in this situation, and who is the employee. They don't just tell their congressmen to jump. They tell them how high. Over and over.