Speaking Truth To Power

[See also previous entry- When Are We Going To Have A Grownup Debate?]

The wiretapping debate brings us back to Sen. Feingold... Despite the cowardly actions of his colleagues (they now have a recess to hide behind), the Senator's decision is receiving praise from many. When Feingold returned home to Wisconsin for the congressional recess, he spoke with some of his constituents who reacted positively to his stand. He said- "We cannot allow the president of the United States to break the law. Censure is a quick way to solve the problem. Pass a resolution. It's over. We can get back to the work of fighting terrorism, dealing with health care issues." Those responding noted that this was not a "safe issue" for him and thus they appreciate him putting himself on the line for it.

People are inspired by him and that's not been the case with a Democratic senator in a long time.

His appearance on the Daily Show last night also proved a positive showing for the Senator.

Money quote from Stewart: "Your Democratic colleagues are reacting as though you're Jack Abramoff and you have a casino you wanna talk to them about."

Meanwhile, the NY Observer has an excellent cover story on the power of Russ Feingold:
Russ Never Sleeps

‘Politicians and Pundits Are Afraid,’ Says Wisconsin’s Feingold, As Democrats Abandon Him on Bush Wiretap Censure Motion; Will Senator Become the Eugene McCarthy of ’08 Primaries?

None of this fits any of the tried-and-true formulations in the red-and-blue American playbook. A mild- mannered Midwestern Senator—Russ Feingold—announces on a Sunday-morning chat show that he’s going to introduce a resolution to censure the President. His grounds are straightforward: that the President’s warrantless-wiretapping initiative violates the law and the constitutional separation of powers. His party’s leaders, all universally understood as coastal-elite figures drunk on their hatred of the President and hell-bent on his undoing—well, they flee en masse, literally hiding behind each other as inquiring reporters try to suss out what they make of the proposal.

“Both Democratic politicians and pundits are afraid,” Mr. Feingold said on March 21 by phone. He was between constituent tours during the week’s Congressional recess. “Time and again, they allow themselves to be intimidated from taking a strong stand against the administration.”...

...“What [Congress] succeeded in doing, in other words, was to sweep the illegality under the rug,” Mr. Feingold said. “I decided it was time to include that on the record and came up with the censure proposal, to bring accountability back into the discussion. And I succeeded in doing that. That’s been achieved.”...

The article is long, but a highly recommended read for anyone looking to feel proud of a politician again.

Greg Sargent at the The American Prospect Online has a great analysis of the article and of the censure resolution-

People around the Clintons are supposed to be too cautious to embrace Russ Feingold's censure resolution, right? Well, it turns out that one Clintonite is not at all frightened of it: former Bill Clinton press secretary Joe Lockhart.

Lockhart speaks out in an interview with Chris Lehmann in his entertaining piece on Feingold in this week's New York Observer. Lehmann writes:

[Lockhart] sees no political downside to Senator Feingold’s proposal—and likewise sees much desperation in the Republican spin that it would be another self-inflicted Democratic wound that would haunt the minority party in the fall elections. All the G.O.P. bluster about an early vote on the Feingold proposal to smoke out weak-sister Democrats for elimination in November, Mr. Lockhart said, “is complete nonsense.”
He said: “One simple rule of politics is that the more ferociously you’re pushing your talking points, the less you believe in them. The Republicans jumping so hard on this tells you that they believe they’re in a really vulnerable position—that this issue is not the winner they thought it was.”

Whatever you think of censure, Lockhart's hitting on a really critical point that can't be emphasized enough. Reporters and commentators have grown conditioned to believe Republicans when they say an issue's a political winner for them -- mainly because Democrats too often act as if they're convinced they're going to lose. When Karl Rove threw down the gauntlet in that speech about NSA wiretapping, few if any commentators even thought to imagine that Rove might be bluffing, even though it was perfectly likely that he was trying to psych out moderate Dems and get them to break ranks. And of course, some moderate Dem thinkers immediately followed Rove's script.

The point is that Rove knew he could count on such folks to do this. And when Feingold floated censure, Republicans immediately -- and very confidently -- tried to force a vote on it, because they knew they could count on Dems to reveal a craven fear of losing and otherwise project a general aura of indecisiveness. More and more Dem strategists are arguing that Dems need to stop tripping over their own caution every single time the GOP says they've got a winner on their hands -- after all, the Republicans can always be counted on to say that, regardless of whether they even believe it -- but it's especially refreshing to hear a Clintonite saying so.

Sargent gets the main point many have been trying to make in the past two weeks... namely that the idea that the Republicans want this issue out there because it's win for them is a complete bluff. They are scared of what will happen when someone as smart and strong as Feingold can rally public support in his favor and they are reacting desperately- trying to squash investigations and running ads accusing Feingold of undermining the war on terror.

Glenn Greenwald has an excellent debunking of myths:
Myth-making and excuse-making on the Feingold Resolution

The Democrats need to call this bluff.

They need to become unified as a party standing together with one message; after all, their failure to do is what has cost them elections. They need to start fighting. Stand up on principle like Feingold did. Don't debate on the White House's level. Debate on the grownup level... on the law, on checks and balances, on what good this program has done, on how pervasive the surveillance has been, and so on.

Worst case scenario- censure doesn't pass- the Democrats can at least have proven that they stand for something important and will fight for it, no matter what the Rove noise machine has said about them in the process. However, given the ambivalent polling on the issue, there's good reason to believe that this is a debate the public is ready to hear.

The White House wants the Democrats to be afraid. That's a great sign that they shouldn't be.

[PS- One newspaper wants to find out whether innocent Americans were spied on:
Newspaper sues for documents in NSA wiretap case]