The Senator from Likud
In a 76-22 vote, the U.S. Senate today approved the so-called Kyl-Lieberman amendment to the 2008 Defense appropriations bill. Kyl-Lieberman is a non-binding "sense of the Senate" statement which nevertheless carries a moral weight easily translated into policy. In effect, the amendment identifies the government of Iran as a threat to the vital national interests of the United States, suggests a number of specific areas where a confrontation with Iran should be undertaken, puts a large bipartisan majority of the Senate on record favoring such confrontation over diplomacy, and generally invites the White House to provoke Iran wherever possible.
It's possible that the Democratic leadership sees this as one more "cheap vote" of no real consequence with which to burnish their national security credentials. I think, however, it's much more likely that the Democrats have calculated that if the White House eventually does decide to attack Iran they're better off not getting in the way.
One wonders, then, why did we elect them?
Let's be quite clear on this: the anti-war vote put the Democrats in power in the Senate. Less obvious is to what extent the anti-war vote may or may not have put them over the top in the House, but certainly it accounts for their reasonably comfortable House majority. Amazingly, the Democrats repeatedly demonstrate no loyalty whatsoever to this voting bloc — no doubt assuming that there's nowhere else for the anti-war vote to go.
There's really no excuse. In a marvelous mini case study of Dianne Feinstein, Glenn Greenwald argues persuasively that even "safe" Democrats (perhaps above all, "safe" Democrats) have been bought off by Washington. Which raises an interesting, important, and practical question: Is it more reasonable to work within the Democratic Party to reform it, and vote Democratic, than it is to work outside the system, perhaps with a third party, or in any case identify problem politicians systematically on a bipartisan basis and try to vote them out? There doesn't seem to be an easy answer.
Thinking about it, I don't believe anybody's yet seriously tried to create a third party using the internet. We have the example of Howard Dean blazing the way to tap the internet, as a Democrat. There are big internet issue groups, like MoveOn.org (always unable to figure out what its relationship with the Democrats actually is), or Kos, which aren't parties. And there are plenty of examples of third party campaigns such as Ralph Nader's and Ross Perot's — but none of those, going back a long time, have done too well. It remains to be seen whether a good third party idea, plus the internet, might work.
Indeed, if one looks at the outsized influence of Joe Lieberman, ostensibly an Independent from Connecticut but in practical terms a member of the hard-right Israeli Likud party, where a closely divided Senate gives him much of what he wants, it's natural to wonder whether a different type of small, independent voting bloc might acquire similar power?
Could two or three genuinely progressive Senators, elected not as Democrats or Republicans but as something else, also swing the majority? Or perhaps become the majority? It seems to me it's worth a try.
Posted by George Kenney on September 26, 2007 11:25 PM 
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Comments
I find it very disheartening to hear the excuses given by faithful Democrats for why their chosen leaders have failed so utterly.
I got into a fairly heated debate with a man trying to recruit financial support for the DNC here in Manhattan yesterday, and he really did resort to the "support the troops" cliche to explain the Democrats' ongoing support for the occupation of Iraq.
He also couldn't understand my lack of love for Hillary or Obama.
What's worse, now that the Congress has passed this legislation, as I understand it, it means that any soldier who refuses to participate in an attack on Iran will be subject to court martial or other consequences. They've been robbed of the right to refuse, in part by a party who claims the support of anti-war liberals.
By no small coincidence, I've just started reading Morris Berman's book "Dark Ages America," and I'm afraid it's this kind of moral failure on the part of the only real "opposition" available to us that makes me think his pessimism is well-warranted.
Posted by: Monkismo
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September 27, 2007 11:34 PM
Silber's analysis on this seems the most incisive I've read to date --
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2007/09/once-more-into-land-of-blind.html
Posted by: greg | September 28, 2007 8:11 AM
Monkismo said:
"as I understand it, it means that any soldier who refuses to participate in an attack on Iran will be subject to court martial or other consequences."
I'm not sure that this is the case. As George pointed out this is simply a "sense of Senate" which gives a 'moral blessing' to any attack, but is not the same as a full congressional declaration of war, which according to the constitution ought to be in place before the opening of hostilities with another country. This Kyl-Lieberman amendment, with earlier resolutions regarding the 'war on terrrer' is part George's fig leaf, should ever come to impeachment.
A soldier could theoretically argue that an unprovoked attack is unconstitutional in the absence of a Congressional declaration of war. As a Brit, I don't know if this has ever happened, or even when the last formal declaration of war by the USA occurred.
Posted by: David Wilson
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September 28, 2007 2:23 PM
The key for any voting-based insurgency is how to leverage its assets to overcome the always substantial disadvantage that any insurgency faces against the existing two-party system.
If you envision a grassroots-based insurgency, then taking over one of the existing parties from the inside is the only way to go. The Republican right used this strategy, starting with Goldwater's defeat in 1964, working inside the shell of the Republican Party. Note that this insurgency was also receiving substantial financial support from right-wing foundations, who built up the media and think tank infrastructure, and provided the decent, well-paying jobs, that allowed people to spend their adult working lives within this insurgent movement (as opposed to the left-wing model of relying on starving volunteers none of whom are ever around long enough to provide the trained, experienced cadre that you need to beat an entrenched party.)
The Democratic Party is at least as much of a shell operation as the Republican Party was in the mid-1960s. All of the apparatus is there, the access to the ballot, the national convention delegate structure, etc. What is missing is a decently funded coordinated effort to make this party over into one that can excite voters about a non-imperialist, environmentally sound, socially progressive agenda.
There is another route to a third party, which Ross Perot demonstrated most lately, and which Bloomberg might yet undertake, what we should now call "the billlionaire third party route." The right billionaire could use his or her money to create an entire campaign apparatus and party de novo, a process which the Internet would facilitate such as surely as the net facilitates less well-funded political efforts today.
The billionaire third party effort is dangerous because it can turn so easily into a cult of the individual, an individual who will in turn be inheriting all of the extra- and un-constitutional powers with which Bush has so greatly enlarged the power of the Presidency. With only the most ephemeral of grassroots bases, exactly who would such a billionaire need to attend to?
As to Nader-like efforts to create a free-standing third party with minimal funding, I would take the history of Nader's runs as sufficient to show that this approach is worse than a waste of time, since it creates a strong possibility that the Republicans will win, and since Nader failed to use his runs to create the foundations for a real independent third-party. (Just as Jessie Jackson earlier failed to leave behind any ongoing campaign structure.)
Posted by: Richard Bell | September 29, 2007 1:45 PM