Democracy for Vancouver

Use your left hook to knock those Republican fuckers out.

The FISA debate is going on this morning (voting tomorrow - CALL YOUR SENATORS NOW OR EXPLAIN TO YOUR KIDS AND GRANDKIDS WHY YOU DIDN’T).

Running parallel to the FISA debate is the progressive renting of garments over should we or shouldn’t we be pounding Obama for his shift to the center.

David Bender, in for Rachel Maddow on Air America last night, was chastising us all for being whiners and babies, ignorant of the process. Just beat up McCain until after the general election, he says, and then make President Obama stand up and do the right thing.

Wow, Mr. Bender: that worked out so well for Kerry and Gore, didn’t it?

Dems have been terrified since the loss to Nixon about looking weak and “radically left” during the general election. Bill Clinton was the only one able to make moving to the center work, and only then because the economy was in the toilet and Bush (HW) was such an easy, out-of-touch, barfing-on-the-Japanese-Prime-Minister target.

Sure, Carter won in ‘76 - but that was on the Watergate rebound. No one else has been able to win on the mealy-mouthed centrist platform.

That’s because no one likes a brown nose. No one likes a candidate who tries to be all things to all people, because he ends up being nothing to everyone. You can on-the-one-hand-this and on-the-other-hand-that yourself into a perfect flatline.

So, no, David Bender, I do not think we should stop pressuring Obama, precisely because the further he moves to the right the greater the chance he will lose. Without his über-energized base and the new voters he excited enough to come out for the primaries, we’ll be at the same 51-49 split with McCain come November that made it possible for the GOP to steal the elections in 2000 and 2004.

We need a blowout - and the only way to get that is to be forceful. If Obama’s not willing to fight for his - our - ideals now, when will he be? When he’s up against a bought Congress that’s so far shown no backbone to do anything but what their paymasters want?

Obama can’t just be a player to win in this game against a cheating GOP - he has to run the table. And the only way to do that is to stand up for principles. FISA is just the beginning - but it’s also the most fundamental issue facing any post-Bush presidency: will our civil liberties, our Constitutional rights, be restored? Or not?

If that’s not worth standing up and fighting for, David Bender, then nothing is.

And, yes, even in an election year.