The Great Awakening

April 7th, 2007

In some polls, Bush’s numbers are in the 20’s — there’s a new Moral Majority says Stephen Pizzo, and it’s US.

You’ve probably seen Joe Klein of TIME mag at one point or another — he shows up on pundit news shows; Joe has been a very temperate reporter these last years. A few discouraging words but never an outright criticism of the Administration … and he’s caught hell from the Left for his wishy-washy stand. That’s why the first article is of interest.

The remainder is an encouraging collection on the political climate Bush is facing [in delusion and defiance -- much as he does the actual climate change that continues to produce violent episodes and chaotic swings. We're poised on record-breaking cold this Easter ... five days ago it was in the 80's.]

Consider this a weekend read, a satisfying one — including Klein, Blumenthal and a roundup of quotes from Froomkin, most from MSM. The last piece here is a Pizzo article that speaks to grassroots and is focused on Obama, who can only be called a phenom. It’s too early, in my opinion, to get candidate-crazy, but Pizzo makes cogent points about money and support.

Richard Gere was on Letterman last night, discussing his new movie, The Hoax — a drama based on Clifford Irving’s fraudulent “autobiography” of mega-monied recluse Howard Hughes. Dave asked if Gere thought it could happen now, indicating he didn’t think so. Gere said, more or less, “We’ve got a president who lies to us every day and nobody stops him.” He got thunderous applause.

The country has awakened … what will we do with that? Interesting Times ahead, my dears … tricky ones. The Cabal is still in control, the White House is in stonewall mode and the Dubby continues to spew out Bu$hCrap. The Washington Post reports that today’s radio address had the usual partisan signature:

President Bush used his Easter weekend radio address to suggest that while Americans are “blessed” to have so many brave, volunteer military service members, congressional Democrats are jeopardizing their safety by refusing to sign his $100 billion war funding bill.

Nothing new under Mr. Bush’s sun — PLENTY under ours. What happens next will make history, one way or another.

Jude

An Administration’s Epic Collapse
JOE KLEIN, TIME magazine
Thursday, Apr. 05, 2007

The first three months of the new Democratic Congress have been neither terrible nor transcendent. A Pew poll had it about right: a substantial majority of the public remains happy the Democrats won in 2006, but neither Nancy Pelosi nor Harry Reid has dominated the public consciousness as Newt Gingrich did when the Republicans came to power in 1995. There is a reason for that. A much bigger story is unfolding: the epic collapse of the Bush Administration.

The three big Bush stories of 2007–the decision to “surge” in Iraq, the scandalous treatment of wounded veterans at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys for tawdry political reasons–precisely illuminate the three qualities that make this Administration one of the worst in American history: arrogance (the surge), incompetence (Walter Reed) and cynicism (the U.S. Attorneys).

Iraq comes first, as always. From the start, it has been obvious that personal motives have skewed the President’s judgment about the war. Saddam tried to kill his dad; his dad didn’t try hard enough to kill Saddam. There was payback to be had. But never was Bush’s adolescent petulance more obvious than in his decision to ignore the Baker-Hamilton report and move in the exact opposite direction: adding troops and employing counterinsurgency tactics inappropriate to the situation on the ground. “There was no way he was going to accept [its findings] once the press began to portray the report as Daddy’s friends coming to the rescue,” a member of the Baker-Hamilton commission told me. As with Bush’s invasion of Iraq, the decision to surge was made unilaterally, without adequate respect for history or military doctrine. Iraq was invaded with insufficient troops and planning; the surge was attempted with too few troops (especially non-Kurdish, Arabic-speaking Iraqis), a purposely misleading time line (”progress” by September) and, most important, the absence of a reliable Iraqi government.

General David Petraeus has repeatedly said, “A military solution to Iraq is not possible.” Translation: This thing fails unless there is a political deal among the Shi’ites, Sunnis and Kurds. There is no such deal on the horizon, largely because of the President’s aversion to talking to people he doesn’t like. And while some Baghdad neighborhoods may be more peaceful–temporarily–as a result of the increased U.S. military presence, the story two years from now is likely to resemble the recent headlines from Tall ‘Afar: dueling Sunni and Shi’ite massacres have destroyed order in a city famously pacified by counterinsurgency tactics in 2005. Bush’s indifference to reality in Iraq is not an isolated case. It is the modus operandi of his Administration. The indifference of his Environmental Protection Agency to the dangers of carbon dioxide emissions was rejected by the Supreme Court on April 2.

On April 3, the President again accused Democrats of being “more interested in fighting political battles in Washington than providing our troops what they need.” Such demagoguery is particularly outrageous given the Administration’s inability to provide our troops “what they need” at the nation’s premier hospital for veterans. The mold and decrepitude at Walter Reed are likely to be only the beginning of the tragedy, the latest example of incompetence in this Administration. “This is yet another aspect of war planning that wasn’t done properly,” says Paul Rieckhoff of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “The entire VA hospital system is unprepared for the casualties of Iraq, especially the psychiatric casualties. A lot of vets are saying, ‘This is our Katrina moment.’ And they’re right: this Administration governs badly because it doesn’t care very much about governing.”

Compared with Iraq and Walter Reed, the firing of the U.S. Attorneys is a relatively minor matter. It is true that U.S. Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President, but they are political appointees of a special sort. They are partisans, obviously, but must appear to be above politics–not working to influence elections, for example–if public faith in the impartiality of the justice system is to be maintained. Once again Karl Rove’s operation has corrupted a policy area–like national security–that should be off-limits to political operators.

When Bush came to office–installed by the Supreme Court after receiving fewer votes than Al Gore–I speculated that the new President would have to govern in a bipartisan manner to be successful. He chose the opposite path, and his hyper-partisanship has proved to be a travesty of governance and a comprehensive failure. I’ve tried to be respectful of the man and the office, but the three defining sins of the Bush Administration–arrogance, incompetence, cynicism–are congenital: they’re part of his personality. They’re not likely to change. And it is increasingly difficult to imagine yet another two years of slow bleed with a leader so clearly unfit to lead.

Blame It on the Democrats
snipped from Dan Froomkin, WaPo
4/4/07

President Bush’s Iraq strategy may be coming straight from Vice President Cheney, but his political attacks on Democrats who dare to demand a pullout are pure Karl Rove.

When the president is on the defensive, Rove’s signature move is to disdain the quaint constraints of reality and attack the critics where they are strongest — ideally, by tarring them with Bush’s own weakness.

The ultimate example, of course, came during the 2004 campaign when Rove was marketing a man who had ducked service in Vietnam against a war hero. Somehow, Rove managed to make John Kerry look like the guy with the problem.

Rove’s approach was very much on display yesterday at Bush’s Rose Garden news conference.

The president’s current weakness is profound. His war in Iraq appears to be a colossal failure, and as a result the public has turned against him and wants the troops home and safe.

But to hear Bush talk, it’s the Democrats who are the party of failure. It’s the Democrats who are defying the will of the people. And in the latest, truly dazzling talking point unveiled by the president yesterday, it’s the Democrats who would keep the troops in harm’s way.

What Rove can still count on, in spite of everything, is that the president’s assertions make it into the headlines no matter how dubious they may be — and that all too many reporters prefer uncritical transcription to the kind of tough but fair analysis that would be required to put what the president says in context.

[...]

The Coverage

Peter Baker writes in The Washington Post that Bush’s strategists see the fight over war-spending legislation as an opportunity “to demonstrate strength and turn the tables on a Democratic Congress that may be overreaching.

“Bush presented himself as an unwavering leader trying to avoid the ‘cauldron of chaos’ he believes Iraq would become if Democrats succeed in forcing him to withdraw U.S. troops. He sees the broader threat that others overlook and will do what needs to be done to defend against it, the president said, even though he knows his path is tormenting the country. . . .

As Democrats see it, Bush is having a hard time adjusting to life in a two-party government. His vow to veto any spending bill with timetables for a withdrawal, they maintain, betrays a unilateral approach to governing. ‘He is president of the United States, not king of the United States,’ Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) told reporters in his home state. ‘He has another branch of government, a legislative branch of government, he has to deal with.’”

And Baker notes:

“With Congress already out of town for spring vacation, the president’s news conference was an attempt to have the last word in Washington before flying to California and then to his ranch in Crawford, Tex., for a long weekend. He ridiculed lawmakers for leaving without finishing their war-spending legislation, but he opted not to use his power to call them back or to give up his own break.”

Jim Rutenberg writes in the New York Times:

[...]

“White House officials and Republican allies in Congress say they believe that the Democrats will lose the public if they overplay their position and are perceived to be putting troops at risk, while Democrats say election results that put them in power, and polls since, indicate that the public wants to pull out of Iraq and expects them to force a withdrawal.”

Here’s precisely the kind of lead Rove was hoping for:

Mark Silva and Jill Zuckman write in the Chicago Tribune:

With Congress in its spring recess, the president slammed the Democrats on a war funding bill that he pledges to veto because it includes timelines for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. It was the latest salvo in an escalating battle as both sides gird for a standoff that could echo the 1995 shutdown of the federal government.”

By contrast, Fred Kaplan writes in his Slate opinion column that Bush “made statements of extraordinary cynicism even by his considerable standards.”

Dana Milbank writes in his Washington Post column about the atmosphere yesterday:

“Bush’s perplexity may have resulted from the questioners’ failure to cooperate with his chosen theme: scolding Democrats for the ‘political theater’ — as Bush and Vice President Cheney have put it in recent days — of attempting to end the war in Iraq. . . .

“At first, Bush’s only uncertainty was how to describe his opponents. He referred to the ‘Democrat leaders’ and the ‘Democrat leadership’ before correcting himself to say ‘Democratic leadership.’

But reporters’ questions further snarled the Bush syntax. NBC’s David Gregory got him to say ‘My concern, David, is several,’ CBS’s Bill Plante got him to mention ’suiciders,’ while Bloomberg News’s Ed Chen elicited the phrase ‘air traffickers’ in lieu of airline passengers.”

Fact Check Watch

Jonathan Weisman writes in The Washington Post:

“But such spending has been part of Iraq funding bills since the war began, sometimes inserted by the president himself, sometimes added by lawmakers with bipartisan aplomb.”

William Douglas writes for McClatchy Newspapers:

“The president and most Republicans say the Democrats’ stance undermines the troops and micro-manages a mission that’s better left to the military, although Bush himself manages key elements of the war strategy, such as how many more troops to send to Iraq this year.”

USA Today reports:

“What Bush said: ‘The Army will be forced to consider cutting back on equipment, equipment repair, and quality-of-life initiatives for our Guard and Reserve forces . . . . to support the troops on the front lines.’

“What others say: The Government Accountability Office reported in January that many of the Guard’s equipment and supply problems were caused by the Pentagon’s failure to plan well. Army delays, the report said, hurt the Guard’s ability to buy equipment and supply local units.”

Bush yesterday responded to a reporter’s question about the Iraqi failure to meet benchmarks by ticking off several ways in which he said the Iraqis have stepped up. But Leon Panetta writes in a New York Times op-ed that there’s been little progress towards important milestones. For instance:

“By March, the government promised to hold a referendum on constitutional amendments (no progress).”

Michael Hirsh writes for Newsweek that “some of Bush’s warnings suggest that the president is holding the Democrats to a different standard than he held his own party when it ruled Capitol Hill — and building a political case against Congress’ course that doesn’t quite add up.

“Yet previous Republican-controlled Congresses have left for spring recess without passing the sort of supplemental bill Bush was talking about. In 2006, the GOP Congress didn’t approve the supplemental until the middle of June.”

Hirsh concludes that “a quick reality check suggests that his Rose Garden offensive was all about politics, not policy. His administration knows it badly needs a victory in the arena of public opinion, which continues to tilt in support of early withdrawal.

Perhaps that’s one reason that Bush tried to make the case — in what was no doubt his biggest stretch — that the Democratic plan calling for a withdrawal date by 2008 ‘will mean that some of our military families could wait longer for their loved ones to return from the front lines.’

That’s a particularly difficult case to make–since the same day, the newspapers carried stories about how the surge was shrinking the amount of time troops had at home between tours of duty. And his own plan calls for an open-ended commitment — not exactly a hurry-home strategy. Despite Bush’s attack on the Democrats Tuesday, ‘the administration . . . has lost control of the [Iraq] narrative,’ says [Andrew Krepinevich, a leading military strategist in Washington]. Bush, with just 20 months left to serve, is trying mightily to get the country once again to listen to his side of the story.

The US News Political Bulletin reports that “White House strategists are increasingly resigned to a long, miserable spring because of bad news on so many fronts. . . . Bush is clearly aware of his PR problems. That’s one reason he lashed out so strongly against anti-war Democrats in his Rose Garden statement this morning. He’s attempting to regain the offensive on Iraq in domestic political terms.”

[open link for complete article]

‘Strangely Quiet’ Scene As Bush Visits Base Where Medically-Unfit Troops Were Deployed
Think Progress
4/5/07

Yesterday, President Bush visited Fort Irwin, California, the main desert training camp where most U.S. soldiers are sent before deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan. Bush told the troops:

Ours is a remarkable country when people volunteer to serve our country in a time of war. The amazing thing about our United States military is thousands and thousands have signed up knowing full well that we’re a nation at war. The government didn’t say, you have to do this, you chose to do it on your own. You decided to put your country ahead of self in many ways.

That message must have resonated in a unique way for some of the soldiers present. As Salon.com’s Mark Benjamin reported recently, Fort Irwin is where some soldiers with debilitating injuries and other medical conditions, including female soldiers who were pregnant, were deployed for weeks:

Military experts say they suspect that the deployment to Fort Irwin of injured soldiers was an effort to pump up manpower statistics used to show the readiness of Army units. With the military increasingly strained after four years of war, Army readiness has become a critical part of the debate over Iraq.

As Steve Benen noted, Bush’s remarks to the soldiers yesterday hardly produced the rally-like atmosphere of years past. Reuters reported that troops “sat quietly at their lunch tables, some joined by family members, as Bush spoke.” The Houston Chronicle’s Julie Mason described the event as “less than a rally, more than a stare-down,” and said the troops were “strangely quiet.”

Bush besieged
Sidney Blumenthal
Apr 7 2007

The rise and fall of the Bush presidency has had four phases: the befuddled period of steady political decline during the president’s first nine months; the high tide of hubris from 11 September 2001, through the 2004 election; the self-destructive overreaching to consolidate a one-party state from 2005 to 200, culminating in the repudiation of the Republican Congress; and, now, the terminal stage, the great unravelling, as the Democratic Congress works to uncover the abuses of the previous six years.

Richard M Nixon and George W Bush both invoked secrecy for national security. Both insisted war - the war in Vietnam, the war on terror - justified impunity. And both offered the reason of secrecy to cover political power-grabs.

In Watergate, “Deep Throat” counselled that the royal road to the scandal’s source was to “follow the money.” In the proliferating scandals of the Bush presidency, Congress is searching down a trail of records that did not exist in the time of Nixon: follow the emails.

The discovery of a hitherto unknown treasure-trove of emails buried by the Bush White House may prove to be as informative as Nixon’s secret White House tapes. On 23 March 2007 the National Journal disclosed that Karl Rove does “about 95 percent” of his emails outside the White House system, instead using a Republican National Committee (RNC) account. What’s more, Rove doesn’t tap most of his messages on a White House computer, but rather on a BlackBerry provided by the RNC.

By this method, Rove and other White House aides evade the legally required archiving of official emails. The first glimmer of this dodge appeared in a small item buried in a January 2004 issue of U.S. News & World Report: “‘I don’t want my E-mail made public,’ said one insider. As a result, many aides have shifted to Internet E-mail instead of the White House system. ‘It’s Yahoo!, baby,’ says a Bushie.”

The offshoring of White House records via RNC emails became apparent when an RNC domain, gwb43.com (referring to George W Bush, 43rd president), turned up in a batch of emails the White House gave to House and Senate committees in mid-March. Rove’s deputy, Scott Jennings, former Bush legal counsel Harriet Miers and her deputies strangely had used gwb43.com as an email domain.

The production of these emails to Congress was a kind of slip. In its tense negotiations with lawmakers, the White House has steadfastly refused to give Congress emails other than those between the White House and the justice department or the White House and Congress. Emails among presidential aides have been withheld under the claim of executive privilege.

When I worked in the Clinton White House, people brought in their personal computers if they were engaged in any campaign work, but all official transactions had to be done within the White House system as stipulated by the Presidential Records Act of 1978. (The PRA requires that “the President shall take all such steps as may be necessary to assure that the activities, deliberations, decisions, and policies that reflect the performance of his constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties are adequately documented and that such records are maintained as Presidential records.”) Having forsaken the use of executive office of the president email, executive privilege has been sacrificed. Moreover, Rove’s and the others’ practice may not be legal.

The revelation of the gwb43 emails illuminates the widespread exploitation of non-governmental email by Bush White House officials, which initially surfaced in the investigations and trial of convicted Republican super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Susan Ralston, Abramoff’s former personal assistant and then executive assistant to Rove, who served as the liaison between the two men in their constant dealings, used ” georgewbush.com” and “rnchq.org” email accounts to communicate with Abramoff between 2001 and 2003. In one of her emails, Ralston cautioned that “it is better to not put this stuff in writing in [the White House] … email system because it might actually limit what they can do to help us, especially since there could be lawsuits, etc.” Abramoff replied: “Dammit. It was sent to Susan on her rnc pager and was not supposed to go into the WH system.”

The Ralston emails were not fully appreciated as a clue to the vast cache of hidden emails at the time the justice department’s inspector-general (IG) conducted a probe into whether Abramoff had been involved in the firing of the US attorney in Guam in 2002. That prosecutor, Frederick Black, who had been appointed by George HW Bush and served for ten years, had opened an investigation into the $324,000 in secret payments Abramoff received from the Guam superior court to lobby in Washington against court reform. The day after Black subpoenaed Abramoff’s contract, he was fired. In a 2006 report, the IG found no criminal wrongdoing - but he did not have access to the non-governmental e-mails ( i.e., those sent outside the official White House system). Now, the IG may have cause to reopen his case.

Under the RNC’s gwb43.com domain a myriad of email accounts flourish, including the ones used by Rove’s office to conduct his business with Abramoff. Among these accounts are ones for Republican Senate campaigns, for RepublicanVictoryTeam.com and the like, and, curiously, for ScooterLibby.com. The latter email account serves the website of the defence fund of vice-president Cheney’s former chief-of-staff, convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice. ScooterLibby.com amounts to an in-kind contribution from the RNC.

On 26 March, Representative Henry Waxman, chairman of the committee on oversight and government reform, sent letters to RNC officials demanding that they preserve the White House emails sent on RNC accounts. “The e-mail exchanges reviewed by the Committee provide evidence that in some instances, White House officials were using the non-governmental accounts specifically to avoid creating a record of the communications”, he wrote. “What assurance can the RNC provide the Committee”, he asked, “that no e-mails involving official White House business have been destroyed or altered?”

Fall gal vs fall guy

Even as the Bush administration withholds evidence that would allow Congress to fulfil its obligation of oversight, administration officials are having difficulty keeping their stories straight. The release of each new batch of e-mails forces them to scramble for new alibis.

On 12 March, attorney-general Alberto Gonzales testified before the Senate judiciary committee that he had nothing to do with the dismissal of eight US attorneys in late 2006. How they happened to be removed remained a mystery to him. “I was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on”, he said. But emails released last week show that he was informed of the plan twice in late 2006. In fact, on 27 November 2006, he met with at least five senior justice department officials to finalise a “five-step plan for carrying out the firings of the prosecutors.” With the appearance of the incriminating emails, Gonzales’s spokespeople have been sent out to tell the press that there is “no inconsistency”, a brazen assertion of the Groucho Marx defence: who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?

Despite the resignation on 12 March of Gonzales’s chief-of-staff and counsellor, Kyle Sampson, another fall-guy has emerged, deputy attorney-general Paul McNulty. On 18 January, Gonzales testified before the Senate judiciary committee, presenting a public explanation that politics had nothing to do with the US attorney firings - “we would never, ever make a change in the U.S. attorney position for political reasons” - and private assurances to Republican senators that they were dismissed for disagreements over policy.

Three weeks later, McNulty appeared before the committee, contradicting his boss, explaining that the US attorneys were fired for “performance-related” reasons. Then he admitted that the US attorney for Arkansas, HE “Bud” Cummins, was being replaced by a Rove protégé, Tim Griffin. McNulty’s testimony incited the US attorneys to defend their reputations, agitated the Democrats to ferret out the underlying political motives and forced the administration to react with a spray of excuses.

On 26 March, the administration leaked an email to ABC News in an attempt to blame the entire scandal on McNulty. “McNulty’s testimony directly conflicted with the approach Miers advised, according to an unreleased internal White House email described to ABC News”, it reported. “According to that email, sources said, Miers said the administration should take the firm position that it would not comment on personnel issues.” The leak fit the administration scenario that the US attorneys’ scandal was nothing but a PR mistake - and now McNulty was the one fingered as the culprit. But in trying to shift blame the leaking of the email would seem to undercut the White House’s claim of executive privilege that it cannot give internal communications to Congress.

Also on 26 March, Gonzales’s senior counsellor and White House liaison, Monica Goodling, invoked the fifth amendment right against self-incrimination in her refusal to testify before the Senate. (Goodling, who graduated from law school in 1999, is one of the highest-ranking officials in the department of justice. Her doctor of jurisprudence degree comes from Regent University, founded by the Reverend Pat Robertson. Its website boasts that it has “150 graduates serving in the Bush administration.” Perhaps not coincidentally, Kay Coles James, a former Regent University dean, was director of the US office of personnel management from 2001 to 2005.)

Goodling’s lawyer’s extraordinarily argumentative letter explaining her silence accused “certain members” of the committee of “already” having “reached conclusions about the affair”; stated that the inquiry is “being used to promote a political party” and that it lacks a “legitimate reason … basic fairness … objectivity”; and stated that an unnamed “senior Department of Justice official” had told Senator Charles Schumer, that he was “not entirely candid” to the committee because “our client did not inform him of certain pertinent facts.”

McNulty, of course, is that official. As Goodling’s lawyer’s letter reveals, he is refusing to go gently into that good night and declining to cooperate with the latest cover story. Hence, she is taking the fifth amendment, perhaps more because she doesn’t know what story to tell than because she might face a perjury trap before the committee. So the fall gal blames the fall guy.

As Congress extends its oversight, President Bush stiffens his resistance. He treats the Democratic Congress as basically illegitimate. He reacts to every assertion of oversight as an invasion of presidential prerogative. Not only does he reject compromise and negotiation, but he also transforms every point of difference into a conflict over first principles, even as every new disclosure reveals his purely political motivation.

A shock to the system

Bush’s radicalism becomes more fervent as he becomes more embattled, and separates him from presidents past. Richard Nixon compromised regularly with a Democratic Congress, even as he secretly laid the foundation of an imperial presidency, his unfinished project left in ruins after the Watergate scandal. Ronald Reagan, the old union leader, president of the Screen Actors Guild, stood resolutely on his convictions until the better part of political valour led him to cut a deal, as he did when he abandoned his long-held belief in privatising social security, conceding his supposedly inviolate ground to speaker Tip O’Neill, and happily proclaiming the pact afterward. George HW Bush, a former congressman with many friends across the aisle, famously jettisoned his tenuous conservative bona fides as Reagan’s heir, a credo he embraced in his 1988 acceptance speech before the Republican National Convention - “Read my lips: no new taxes” - when, anxious about the expanding deficit, he cut a deal with the Democratic leadership to lower it through tax increases.

The Republican right’s excoriation of the elder Bush’s betrayal, rather than his overriding sense of responsibility, was the lesson learned by the son. His imperative to avoid making enemies on the right is compounded into his larger notion of an unfettered presidency.

For six years, Bush had a Republican Congress whipped into obedience - and it provided him his only experience in legislative affairs. The rise of the Democratic Congress, reviving the powers of oversight and investigation, is a shock to his system. But he is not without an understanding of his changed circumstances. Bush sees the new Congress as the same beast that ensnared his father in fatal compromise and as a monstrous threat to the imperial presidency he has spent six years carefully building.

As the return of oversight suddenly exposes pervasive corruption throughout the executive branch, Bush struggles against Congress as though it were an alien force. Bush has no sense that the framers, wary of the concentration of power in the executive, deliberately established the powers of the Congress in Article I of the constitution and those of the president in Article II. Once again he straps on his armour and clasps his shield. His defence of secrecy, executive fiat and one-party rule has become his battle of Thermopylae.

Buying Back America
Stephen Pizzo
Apr 7 2007

Almost four decades ago Republicans came up with the concept of the “Silent Majority”? Then they claimed it as their own. It turned out they were right. There really was a Silent Majority, and it was tired of politics as usual.

Back then politics as usual was associated with what had become an entrenched Democratic legislative majority. Republicans were able to lay claim to a large pool of voters who, for various reasons - legitimate or otherwise - had turned sour on Democrats. Familiarity really does breed contempt in life and politics.

Ronald Reagan was the first to tap into that discontent, giving rise to that breed of political hermaphrodite known as the “Reagan Democrat.” Then came the 1994 GOP sweep of the House. Total victory arrived with election of George W. Bush in 2000 along with GOP dominance of both houses of Congress.

Ah, but the worm has turned. Now it’s the GOP that’s in the cross hairs of America’s new Silent Majority. And it’s not just familiarity that’s breeding contempt for GOP governance. It’s the lies, the functional incompetence, the deficits, the careless arrogance and disregard for consequences usually reserved for cocaine addicts.

But wait, there’s more to this story than just voters turning against the GOP. This new Silent Majority doesn’t like old-time machine Democrats either. You know, like the Clinton machine.

How do I know that a new Silent Majority has emerged? Just follow the money.

The top three Democratic Party candidates for President raised $30 million more last quarter than the top three Republican candidates. That’s pretty remarkable in itself, since the GOP has always been able to tap the wealth of their corporate and wealthy supporters.

But there’s more evidence buried inside those numbers. Barack Obama raised $25 million, of which 100,000 were small ($100 or less) donors. Not corporations, not bundlers, but individual, ordinary voters… members of the new Silent Majority.

Obama’s Campaign Takes In $25 Million
He Nearly Matches Clinton, With Twice as Many Donors

Washington Post: Sen. Barack Obama raised at least $25 million for his presidential campaign in the first quarter of the year, nearly matching Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s record-setting total and making it all but certain that Democrats will face a costly and protracted battle for their party’s nomination. (Full Story)

Stop and consider for a moment who we are talking about here. We’re talking here about a black guy with the strangest name ever associated with the US Presidency. A guy who only just decided to run. A guy up against the well-oiled Clinton machine and it’s smarmy money-man, Terry McAuliffe, who twisted every donor arm in Hillary’s and Terry’s Rolodex to get to that money before Barack did.

While Hillary did beat Obama by $1 million, she (and Terry) had to pull out all the stops to make it happen. She had to tap her biggest and most reliable sources this early hoping that the shear size of her war chest would scare other would-be contributors into jumping on Hillary bandwagon before it’s too late. That plan failed. And worse yet for Hillary, those easy sources of hard money have now been tapped, a likely tapped out.

Simply put, Obama’s mushrooming grassroots support trumped Clinton’s special interest, business as usual machine. It was the first tangible evidence of the new Silent Majority, and it caught the attention of not just his would-be GOP opponents, but Obama’s Democratic opponents as well.

Which brings me to my point. Are you a latent member of this new Silent Majority? Are you among those of us out here who are just plain sick of watching big-money special interests call the tune election in and election out?

If so join those 100,000 who already do so for Obama, get your checkbook out and start firing back.

Because the real message in Obama’s $25 million is that little money really can beat big money — when little money donors join forces they become big money. And when enough of small donors join forces behind a single candidate they become the biggest money.

And here’s the sweetest part of the tale. This is one of those rare moments when all those politicians who spent decades pandering to big money donors with tax cuts, regulatory and environmental free passes, one-sided trade deals etc, get hoisted on their own petards. Because, you see, the wealth gap has widened over the past decade thanks to all this big-business favoritism. The result on the ground have been that fewer and fewer Americans feel they have a stake in America’s prosperity. The rich got a lot richer, the poor got poorer and America’s once upwardly mobile middle class discovered someone had pull up the ladder to next level.

The net result — the number rich now represent as smaller number of donors than the now expanded pool of “non-rich,” ordinary folk. The GOP created the situation and now they are going to pay dearly for it. The new Silent Majority understands it has been shut out of game, and American workers have seen their dream of upward mobility dashed by outsourcing and so-called “free trade” deals. They are not amused and they now outnumber well-heeled donors by the widest margin since just before the Great Depression of the 1930s.

That’s the new Silent Majority. And, while feeling the stress of over a decade of GOP rule, they still have credit cards and checking accounts. While they may not be able to afford anything like the $2300 maximum individual contributions, they can write $25, $50 and $100 checks. And that’s just what they did last quarter for Barack Obama.

Now we enter the second phase of the march towards November 2008. The new quarter has begun, ending on June 31. Hillary and Barack will be back out there shaking the money tree. If Barack can raise more money than Hillary during the next quarter — and I believe he can — it could spell the beginning of the end of the potentially catastrophic Hillary Clinton candidacy. And, as Martha would say, “that’s a good thing.” A very good thing.

I’ve made no secret of my support for Obama. My money has been on this remarkable young fellow since the first day I heard him speak. There is something real there, real and good. Also America needs a fresh face, fresh ideas, a fresh start. In all my six decades I cannot recall a time when this country was in a more dire state.

Take a moment and try to imagine an Obama presidency. Imagine Barack and First lady Michelle Obama in the White House. Both accomplished as professionals, attractive as individuals and yes, “articulate.” Imagine the picture a black man and woman in the US White House - and this time not pouring coffee at state dinners, but running the America. Imagine that. What more could send the message to the world that America is back - the real America - the good old “E Pluribus Unum America. Our America - the one we had before the Neo-con/neo-fascists stole it and had their way with Her.

So imagine that. Then grab your checkbook or credit card and join those of us who are trying to buy our country back. I too wish it were not so, that politics was first about ideas and only second about money. But the Supreme Court has ruled that money is equal to speech in politics so, as the lottery folks like to say, “you can’t win if you don’t play. It’s been said before that “money doesn’t talk, it swears.” Okay, if that’s the way they want it, then let’s swear like sailors. Tell Hillary and the other big-money sycophants to f–k off. Then, come the general election, send the same message to Republican candidates.

But for now, just write a check to Obama. Be a small-money donor for big change. We can do it. Together we can buy our country back. Imagine that.

[open link to] Contribute right here.

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

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