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November
6, 2006
The GOP Should Lose, the Democrats Don't
Deserve to Win
The
Message of Campaign 2006
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Is the half-hidden message of the 2006
campaign season that in the presidential showdown in 2008 we'll
have Senator John McCain running as both a Republican and a Democrat?
It would certainly sweep away any remaining doubts that there
is any difference between the two major political parties. And
maybe it would open up some space for outside challengers, assuming
all vociferous opponents have not by that time been arrested
and stuck behind barbed wire in an internment camp in the western
deserts.
And what candidate would be
more appropriate as the next commander-in-chief than the mad
ex-POW who now serves as Arizona's senior senator? McCain, don't
forget, was under consideration by his senatorial colleague,
Democrat John Kerry, as his vice presidential pick in 2004 before
he picked John Edwards, whose prime distinction is that he is
married to Elizabeth Edwards, the only Democrat I've seen in
recent times to display any of the qualities one might hope for
in a Democratic presidential nominee.
McCain is obviously aware of
his impending responsibilities as the fusion candidate. As the
US congress prepared its craven assent to President Bush's destruction
of Habeas Corpus with the Military Commissions Act, he was one
of three Republican senators who raised a bleat of protest. True,
as is always the case with McCain, it was a very brief bleat,
but as against the complaisance of Democrats such as Joe Biden
(who chortled happily that Democrats would be happy to "sit
on the sidelines" as the Constitution thumped into the trash
bin) this counts as a lion's roar.
Even the word "bleat"
is a fierce overstatement of the noise raised by any U.S. senator,
including McCain, as Bush finally junked legal restrictions on
the role of the U.S. military in domestic law enforcement, a
deed consummated with his signature on the same day, October
17, that he signed the Commissions Act which permits warrantless
incarceration and torture of suspected terrorists.
Speaking of what is now Public
Law 109-364, Senator Pat Leahy whispered into the Congressional
Record on September 29 that he had "grave reservations about
certain provisions of the fiscal Year 2007 Defense Authorization
Bill Conference Report". The language of these provisions,
Leahy said, "subverts solid, longstanding posse comitatus
statutes that limit the military's involvement in law enforcement,
thereby making it easier for the President to declare martial
law."
At least when the Military
Commissions Act was striding through Congress, the press did
demurely note the fact, albeit without alarm sirens that Habeas
Corpus is headed towards a display case in the Smithsonian. The
only story I've seen on the significance of Public Law 109-364
came from Frank Morales, on Uruknet, describing its license for
the President to "declare a 'public emergency' and station
troops anywhere in America, taking control of state-based National
Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities,
in order to 'suppresspublic disorder.'"
Does McCain's latest statement
Iraq--a call for 20,000 fresh U.S. troops to be sent there--square
with the Democrats' position on the war? The answer to this is
of course that the Democrats don't have a position on the war
beyond the de facto one of trying to make sure no peacenik candidates
slipped past the guard post supervised by Rahm Emanuel, chair
of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
As is the case with the American
people overall, the majority of ordinary Democrats want US forces
leave to quit Iraq in the immediate or relatively near future.
This was not the posture of Democratic candidates approved by
Emanuel, particularly in tight races. Most of them have talked
about withdrawal as a matter of many months. The Democratic leadership
would sign onto a McCain beef-up plan in minutes, flailing away
at Bush for the next two years for losing the war. For the left
position we'll probably have to wait for the commission headed
by James Baker or a mutiny by the generals, aware--just as they
told Rep John Murtha this time last year--that the war is a bust
and it's time to quit Iraq.
Campaign 2006 has shown us
clearly enough that about the outer limit of popular sanction
is the ability to lodge a formal protest on Election Day. Such
protest can only have actual consequences in the very few remaining
congressional districts not gerrymandered into permanent incumbency
or rotted out with vote fraud. Mostly the voters seem to have
felt that both parties are pretty awful, but as the outfit that's
been running the country without opposition for six years the
Republicans deserve to get a kick in the pants.
The fact that this protest
is purely formal is attested by the adamant refusal of the Democrats
to offer anything by way of a substantive alternative, beyond
saying Bush is an incompetent fellow. Indeed, the substantive
effect of Campaign 2006 has been to state in terms plain enough
for a simpleton to understand, that resistance is futile, since
both Republicans and Democrats agree that the Bill of Rights
is a dead letter and that wars must go on, and jobs to disappear,
despite overwhelming popular disagreement with such policies.
Pick a topic--the war, the
economy, a two million-plus prison population, the environment,
the condition of organized labor, the Bill of Rights--and can
you recall any Democrat this fall having said anything suggesting
that in the event Democrats recapture either the House or the
Senate or both anything of consequence might occur?
The week before polling day
the New York Times had a story about the Business Lobby's plans
to sweep away all irksome laws and regulations passed in the
wake of the Enron and WorldCom scandals. Did anyone cry, "that's
just the kind of corporate villainy we need the Democrats to
guard us from!" Of course not. It would be as unrealistic
as to hope that a Congress controlled in both chambers by Democrats
would simply vote to deny Bush the money for the war in Iraq.
As things stand in organized
politics today a purely formal protest is the most we can hope
for, and the significance of this fall's campaign is that no
one has pretended otherwise.
Footnote: This column appeared
in slightly shorter form in the print edition of The Nation that
went to press last Wednesday.
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