Well, my goodness! They've done it again, haven't they? For the who knows how manyth time, the Democrats in Congress have cheerfully provided to the American people the undeniable proof of their pathetic cowardice and timidity. Once again they have chosen political expediency over statesmanship. The amazing thing is the fact that after thoughtlessly giving this disgusting, murderous commander-in-chief a free ticket to send the servicemen and women of this country - not to mention the people of Iraq - on a hay ride straight into the pit of hell, they stupidly stood in front of the press, disingenuously consoling each other on how they tried to do the right thing for the country they profess to love so much. Huh???? MSNBC's Keith Obermann, on target as usual, called it their "Neville Chamberlain moment". How stupid do these people think we are?I left the Democratic party almost eight years ago in utter, bitter frustration at their abandonment of the ideals of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal. Every once in a while I would reflect back on that decision and wonder aloud whether I had done the right thing; that maybe I should come back into the fold. Yesterday, they merely reinforced that decision. The Democrats have proven themselves, yet again, irrelevant. Maybe Ralph Nader was right: they really are nothing more than Tweedle Dee to the GOP's Tweedle Dum. Oh! And speaking of Ralph Nader.....The party's "base" is as angry as they've been since their leadership nominated the pro war Hubert Humphrey over the vehemently anti-war Eugene McCarthy in the late summer of 1968. And yet it's not too late for the Dems to pull themselves out of the mess they have helped engender. It's now painfully obvious that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are not going to do the people's will. It's up to the Young Turks within the party apparatus to make damn good and sure that Pelosi and Reid are thrown onto history's ash heap and that new leadership is provided as soon as possible. Otherwise, a third party uprising next year is virtually assured.
Did these people understand the message we sent them in November? Apparently not. The reason we sent them to Washington was not to guarantee their re-election next time around; we sent them there to end this mind-fuckingly stupid war in Iraq. What part of that message didn't they get? Before this obscenity is over, an additional hundred thousand (or more) men, women and little children will end up getting slaughtered for no reason at all! (That's on top of the over half a million people who have been murdered to date). Don't they realize that doing everything humanly possible to end this war will benefit them in long run - not only at the polls in November of 2008 but in the pages of history?
Tuesday will mark the 90th anniversary of the birth of one of the icons of the Democratic party, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Have not one of these crybabies even read his Pulitzer Prize winning 1956 book, Profiles In Courage? Maybe they should. Perhaps we should all read it. The great senator from Wisconsin, Russ Feingold (a courageous senator if there ever was one) put it in perfect context yesterday when he said that, "the desire for political comfort won-out over real action"...."Action".... That was a word that Jack Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt were both prone to use. The Democratic party is in desperate need of people who are going to act. For that, new leadership is required - IMMEDIATELY.
George W. Bush does not need an enabler; he had that for six years with a sycophantic, rubber stamp Republican congress that bent itself backwards to his every stupid and reckless whim - and look where it's gotten us!. The American people sent that Congress, the 109th, packing last November. This president - this hideous, half-witted little thug - needs to be put in check - he has to be stopped. If the current Democratic leadership is not going to put a stop to this insanity, someone has to be found who will end it. And if that leadership is not to be found among the ranks of the party of FDR, I'm afraid that "the base" will once again be forced to seek the answers to the problems facing America from within a third party. We cannot afford to take that risk again.
It's hard not to be reminded of Robert F. Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy in times such as these. Although bitter rivals for the 1968 nomination, neither man was ambivalent as far as their opinions regarding another immoral and unpopular war. The stand they took against the Viet Nam war almost forty years ago - against the foolish ambitions of Lyndon B. Johnson, a president from their own party - was at great risk to their respective political careers - but they took that stand and never looked back - indeed, Kennedy's candidacy would cost him his life. Does that sort of courage even exist any longer?
No question about it: the American poltical landscape is in dire need of new leaders. Franklin Roosevelt, Gene McCarthy, Jack and Bobby Kennedy are dead and they're not coming back.
Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net
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