It's time for
Democrats to put up or shut up
By Molly Ivins,
Star-Telegram on the Web, January 22, 2006
AUSTIN -- I'd like to make it
clear to the people who run the Democratic Party that I will not support Hillary
Clinton for president.
Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever
straddling, enough not offending anyone. This is not a Dick Morris
election. The senator is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on
the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure
to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on
flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges.
The recent death of Gene McCarthy reminded me of a lesson I spent a long, long
time unlearning. It's about political courage and heroes, and when a
country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics
will not do, and this is one of those times. There are times when a
country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief.
If no one in conventional-wisdom politics has the courage to speak up and say
what needs to be said, then you go out and find some obscure junior senator from
Minnesota with the guts to do it. In 1968, McCarthy was the little boy who
said out loud, "Look, the emperor isn't wearing any clothes." Bobby
Kennedy -- rough, tough Bobby Kennedy -- didn't do it. Just this quiet man
trained by Benedictines who liked to quote poetry.
What kind of courage does it take, for mercy's sake? The majority of the
American people (55 percent) think the war in Iraq is a mistake and that we
should get out. The majority (86 percent) of the American people favor
raising the minimum wage. The majority of the American people (60 percent)
favor repealing President Bush's tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the
rich.
The majority (77 percent) think we should do "whatever it takes" to protect the
environment. The majority (87 percent) think big oil companies are gouging
consumers and would support a windfall profits tax. That is the center,
you fools. WHO ARE YOU AFRAID OF?
I listen to people like Rep. Rahm Emanuel superciliously explaining elementary
politics to us clueless naifs outside the Beltway ("First, you have to win
elections"). Can't you even read the polls?
Here's a prize example by columnist Barry Casselman: "There is an
invisible civil war in the Democratic Party now under way, and it is between
those who are attempting to satisfy the defeatist and pacifist left base of the
party and those who are attempting to prepare the party for successful elections
in 2006 and 2008."
This supposedly pits Howard Dean, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, emboldened by "a
string of bad news from the Middle East ... into calling for premature retreat
from Iraq," vs. those pragmatic folk like Rep. Steny Hoyer, Emmanuel and Sens.
Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Joe Lieberman.
Oh, come on, people -- get a grip on the concept of leadership. Look at
this war -- from the lies that led us into it to the lies they continue to dump
on us daily.
You sit there in Washington so frightened of the big, bad Republican machine
that you have no idea what people are thinking. I'm telling you right now,
Tom DeLay is going to lose in his district. If Democrats in Washington
haven't got enough sense to own the issue of political reform, I give up on them
entirely.
Do it all, go long, go for public campaign financing for Congress. I'm
serious as a stroke about this -- that is the only reform that will work, and
you know it, and so does everyone else who's ever studied this. Embrace
redistricting reform, electoral reform, House rules changes, the whole package.
Own this issue or let Jack Abramoff politics continue to run your town.
Bush, Cheney and Co. will continue to play the patriotic bully card just as long
as you let them. I've said it before: War brings out the patriotic
bullies. In World War I, they went around kicking dachshunds on the
grounds that dachshunds were "German dogs." They did not, however, go
around kicking German shepherds. The minute that someone impugns your
patriotism for opposing this war, turn on them like a snarling dog and explain
what loving your country really means.
That, or you could just blow them off elegantly, as Rep. John Murtha did.
Or eviscerate them with wit (look up Mark Twain on the war in the Philippines).
Or point out the latest in the endless "string of bad news."
Do not sit there cowering and pretending that the only way to win is as
Republican-lite. If the Washington-based party can't get up and fight,
we'll find someone who can.
Molly Ivins, based in Austin, writes for Creators Syndicate.
5777 W. Century Blvd., Suite 700, Los Angeles, CA 90045.
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