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TechnoratiThe "San Francisco Democrats" are the handmaidens for President George W. Bush: feckless, short-sighted and cynical. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., both wealthy San Franciscans, are leading voices in the congressional chorus that chooses convenience over principle and perceived political advantage over certain political truth.
Pelosi wants no talk of impeachment for Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other war criminals. She has done nothing to block funding for the war in Iraq, the only way to end the occupation, save Iraqi and American lives and let the Iraqi people determine their own destiny.
Feinstein made sure we now have as our nation's chief law enforcement officer a man who refuses to condemn drowning torture and believes the president has unlimited authority and need not respect the laws of the land.
The late Jeane Kirkpatrick -- once a faux Democrat and belligerent bully who went on to be Ronald Reagan's ambassador to the United Nations -- first coined the "San Francisco Democrat" appellation in 1984. That year the Democrats held their convention in San Francisco and nominated former vice president Walter Mondale for president. Kirkpatrick gave the keynote address at the GOP convention in Dallas. The scorching heat outside rivaled the oppressive rhetoric inside the Reunion Arena, a miserable event I had to endure.
That was the year the Republican Party re-coronated Ronald Reagan and plunged deeper into the abyss of intolerance. Rev. Jerry Falwell rode a bull at a barbecue as the party faithful bowed to him and Christian fundamentalism became the Republican state religion.
Young George W. Bush was there for his daddy's renomination for vice president, spending most of his time in Dallas bars sucking up Jack Daniels and acting like a first-class flippant jerk. Billy Graham and Jesus may have helped wean Dubya from the hooch, but otherwise little in him has changed.
Kirkpatrick, the godmother of the neoconservative movement, blasted the San Francisco Democrats for being weak in opposing the Soviet Union and claimed "they always blame America first."
The combative Kirkpatrick was also slurring San Francisco's large gay population, to the delight of Falwell and the frothy-mouthed haters then seizing the Republican Party.
Kirkpatrick went on to support selling arms to Iran and using the proceeds to illegally fund the Contra rebels in Nicaragua. She embraced the right-wing dictatorship in El Salvador that slaughtered tens of thousands, including Archbishop Oscar Romero.
Kirkpatrick argued it was in America's interests to support "authoritarian" dictatorships in Argentina, Chile and South Africa. She saw the U.S. invasion of Grenada as a great triumph.
In the Middle East, Kirkpatrick endorsed anything the Israelis wanted to do and advocated the disastrous deployment of U.S. Marines to Lebanon. Her crowning glory was providing weapons and support for a band of insurgents in Afghanistan, especially a rich young man named Osama bin Laden and the band of brothers he called al-Qaeda.
That's one hell of a foreign policy resume, but as we'll see, Jujitsu Jeane finally saw the light and learned -- unlike her neocon progeny -- that America the omnipotent can fail and foster violence.
As wrong as Kirkpatrick was, she was forthright and bold -- traits not found in our new San Francisco Democrats. Pelosi and Feinstein see themselves as finesse politicians, tip-toeing through the crunch issues, thinking they are so clever as Bush tramples on their flowerbed of phoniness nourished by the manure of Democratic consultants.
From the time she took over as House speaker, Pelosi has insisted impeachment would not be on the table. Even as evidence of wholesale criminality and assaults on the Constitution grew, Pelosi wouldn't hear any talk about doing what is required to hold the crooks accountable.
But Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, a presidential hopeful, had the guts to buck the Democratic leadership and pressed to get his bill to impeach Cheney to the floor. Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny "The Hack" Hoyer, D-Md., were furious.
Kucinich forced a vote of the full House, as Pelosi and Hoyer thought they could have the resolution quickly tabled and buried. But their gutless move failed when Republicans, intent on embarrassing the shameless Democratic leadership, joined Kucinich and his supporters in opposing the tabling motion.
Caught flat-footed, the hapless Pelosi then got enough support to send the impeachment resolution to the House Judiciary Committee. She hopes her ridiculous "impeachment is off the table" stance will prevail, but numbskull Nancy may get another surprise, and committee chair Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., may yet hold hearings on Cheney's serial crimes and impeachable offenses.
Pelosi demonstrably is out of stride with the American people, and especially Democrats, in protecting the Busheviks from the heat of the impeachments they richly deserve. The latest USA Today/Gallup survey shows Bush's approval rating is 31 percent, with 50 percent saying they "strongly disapprove" of the president, an all-time high.
Bush has finally unseated Richard Nixon as the most unpopular president in the history of the poll. Even though Bush's crimes are far more serious and have done more harm than Nixon's, Pelosi insists on sparing him from the constitutionally prescribed remedy.
Politics be damned! More importantly, it is a matter of justice and principle. Bush and Cheney deserve the stain of impeachment as a message to their successors that such egregious behavior and disregard for the Constitution, treaties and statutes will not be tolerated. To do otherwise -- as Pelosi wants -- sends the opposite message.
Over in the Senate, the other San Francisco Democrat, Dianne Feinstein, feigned noble purpose as she wallowed in depravity, helping to grease the skids for Michael Mukasey to win confirmation as attorney general.
Feinstein joined with her pal on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the loathsome grandstander Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., as the only two Democrats on the panel to recommend Mukasey to the full Senate, thus assuring his confirmation.
Schumer helped orchestrate Mukasey's nomination, and even when this "distinguished jurist" refused to condemn water-boarding as the torture it clearly is, Schumer was going to stick with him because he made his deal with the devil -- Bush.
Feinstein then proceeded to give some cover for Schumer so he wouldn't have to stand alone. During the Senate debate last Thursday night, Feinstein made one of the most nauseating, illogical and unprincipled speeches I have ever heard.
"Judge Mukasey is not Alberto Gonzales," Feinstein assured us. Oh, I get it. Mukasey is not a smiling, lying son of a bitch, and so we should embrace him because he is not the most corrupt attorney general we have ever had.
And if you don't buy that crap, try this from Feinstein's book of low expectations: We could do worse.
"I believe Judge Mukasey is the best nominee we are going to get from this administration," Feinstein argued, "and that voting him down would only perpetuate acting and recess appointments, allowing the White House to avoid the transparency that confirmation hearings provide and to diminish effective oversight by Congress."
Mukasey refuses to condemn water-boarding, because he knows that would leave Bush, Cheney and their henchmen wide open to civil suits and criminal prosecutions. He chose to protect the torturers and patrons, and Feinstein and Schumer made that possible.
Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., a man who understands principle and decency, voted against Mukasey on the Judiciary Committee and with the full Senate. He sees Mukasey as an enabler of those who threaten the rule of law.
"Democrats can no longer be part of the savaging of the U.S. Constitution." Feingold told a crowd in Madison before the vote on the nominee. The Senate's most ardent defender of basic liberties would not compromise and demanded an attorney general who "must be able to stand up to a chief executive who thinks he is above the law."
Feingold wanted an attorney general "who will tell the president that he cannot ignore laws passed by Congress. Unfortunately, Judge Mukasey was unwilling to reject the extreme and dangerous theories of executive power that this administration has put forward."
Don't expect such admirable standards from the San Francisco Democrats. They're too busy dancing, dodging, waffling and triangulating to get bogged down with principled positions.
The party leaders are lagging far behind the people, especially on the war in Iraq. According to a CNN/Opinion Research poll, a record 68 percent of Americans now oppose the war. Already 2007 is the deadliest year for U.S. troops since the war began, with at least 852 American military personnel killed. But, stubbornly trying to avoid the slur of "not supporting the troops," the San Francisco Democrats keep funding the futile war. Even Jeane Kirkpatrick, who initially supported the war, came to her senses in her dying days.
In her last book -- "Making War to Keep Peace," published after her death -- Kirkpatrick recognized what was happening: "Unfortunately, what we face in Iraq today is a vacuum of power, a lack of stable institutions needed to govern and the problem that the promise of democracy for which our nation stands may be lost in the essential scramble for safety and stability in the streets."
Kirkpatrick slammed the Bush war-planners who "did not seem to have methodically completed the due diligence required for reasoned policy-making because they failed to address the aftermath of the invasion."
This new generation of San Francisco Democrats could learn from Kirkpatrick's crisp candor. Wake up, shrug off careful calculations and stand for something.
Bill Gallagher, a Peabody Award winner, is a former Niagara Falls city councilman who now covers Detroit for Fox2 News.
© 2007 Niagara Falls Reporter
24 Comments so far
Show AllNancy and Dianne should be off the table. Let's just make them irrelevant.
Pelosy, Feinstein, Clinton, you name it = Bush enablers = supporter of Israeli Lobby = representative of military-industrial complex.
Oh, for Pity's-Sake...enough of the tired-discussion in CD about 'spineless-Dems' or the 'great-need' to install them as a super-Majority...
People -- they serve the same/damn-Interests that the Repugs do. What Dem's will bring-to-table is some slightly more-nuanced Lies, spread-the-Geld just a little-better, and succeed where the Repugs-can't (in stripping Americans of yet-more of your social-Commons and 'entitlement-Programs' -- like the bad-news coming re: SocSec).
If 'change' is wanted, then change either "American-Interests", or 'they who work the strings of both-Parties'...[you've fallen for 'good-cop/bad-cop' since Jefferson].
From the article: "Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., a man who understands principle and decency...."
Are we talking about the Russ Feingold who cast the deciding vote to confirm John Ashcroft as U.S. Attorney General?
Adequate campaign spending limits = better politicians!
For probably longer than anyone, Ralph Nader has been talking about how money in politics corrupts in a bipartisan way. None of the candidates is talking about electoral reform, publicly financed elections, IRV, or other reforms he suggested long ago. He ran on the GP and Independent tickets in part, to imbue these necessary reforms on the public conscience. Addicted to oligarchy bribes, candidates from both parties are completely ignoring the one issue that can restore our democracy.
Diane Lyinstein and Nancy Pusillanimous need to go. We need to sweep Congress clean of neocons, which they undeniably are. They may be a bit more progressive on social issues, but they have largely served as Bush's handmaidens. Maybe they can go over to the Hoover Institution (which seems to have more in common with J. Edgar than Herbert) and join Donald Rommel. They can have lunch with Condyloma Rice when she goes back to Stanford.
How Feinstein can justify supporting anything put forth by a man whose lies have led to the deaths of thousands of our young people and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, I cannot understand. That is integrity? The same goes for Pelosi. It is not her decision on impeachment although she asserts it as her perogative. She might consider that the rule of law and the constitution is above her political calculations. Impeachment should never be off the table no matter who is president or who is speaker. It is not a political chess game it is the substance and principle of our constitutional government. Pelosi is failing in her duty to follow the higher road. But then basically it seems that true principle, honor and decency and for that matter, common sense, have been lost in today's America.
You had no problem with the 'chosen race' comment, but for some reason are delaying my rebuttal, while posting others that came in after mine. Odd.
We have to do more than raise the specter of AIPAC each and every time Dems or anyone else votes to continue the illegal occupations in the Middle East, and the prospect of a never ending war. It is accurate to a point, but way too simplistic and smacks of scapegoating.se
These votes maintain the staus quo and simply provide rationale for Rich M's description of the MIC. The Cold War ended much to their dismay, so they had to create another "crisis" to justify their bloated budgets and their misguiided priorities.
As long as we accept the premise that "our interests" as a people coincide with militarism and imperialism, we will continue to feed the voracious beast with our resources and our children.
If we could start seeing it as a the beast that it is, we may have a chance of getting rid of it, or at least cutting it down to size.
Today I heard that Bush signed a bill authorizing military spending and vetoed the domestic spending bill arguing that the Democratic Congress' priorities are wrong. Can it get any clearer what we've come to?
We need to elect as many new faces as possible to Congress in 08. Disinfect... don't reelect!
Why aren't we hearing about potential candidates whose thinking would be outside this box
Cindy is one such candidate and no matter what anyone says, if she runs a serious campaign against Pelosi, she could win.
Where are the other new candidates like Cindy? If we wait then the party machine will pick for us. Elect new thinking to a status quo Congress... elect the new guy. The old ones have created this mess.
Commander n chimp
It is precisely this crap that you posted that convinces the vast majority (those not on the loony left) that all progressive ideal are spawned in some circle jerk nest of emoting idiots. QUIT your mental masturbation and stop giving the right wingers fodder to bash the many significant progressive initiatives that can move the country forward.
Yes, and LITTLE BROTHER's got it right: the Dems are not opposed to the Repubs; most of them belong to the powerful, rich elite and they are doing just fine under the Bush kleptocracy, the likes of which they may have been hesitant to impose themselves--but now that it is in place...The Dems are not gutless or spineless; excepting the few Kucinich's, they DO stand for something: the Bush system of centralized power (tyranny of the elite) and endless war-profiteering, and profiteering by stripping the poor of their assets and labor via "globalization." Feinstein is the poster-girl. And they don't really care that much about winning elections (except to maintain the illusion that we have more than the one party, and minus the vanity factor: Hillary) since they will do fine under the continuation of the present system (multimillionaire Kerry and his curious roll-over in '04 when his election was stolen right from under his nose). We've got our own Putin-ville in the USA, and here as in Russia, most people's thoughts are on other things.
I cheered the moment I read the headline of Jeane Kirkpatrick's death. May a flight of devils sing her to her rest.
Sadly, Pelosi is demonstrating that the naysayers were maybe correct, and a woman IS too weak to be Speaker. At least she is too weak. She is too busy protecting her career to do her job, and will be a millstone around the necks of all the progressive women who come after her.
jerry1208 (12:04 pm) gets many things right in his short but excellent post. I second his mentions of Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine," the World Socialist Website ( http://www.wsws.org ), and his deceptively simple-sounding comment that "War will NEVER end as long as vast profits are to be made. Global Warming will never end as long as the profit of polluters is held sancrosanct..."
Take a moment to reflect on the doomsday mechanism sketched out in that last comment. The present monstrous power of the military-industrial complex (MIC) is the inevitable consequence of the profit system. As long as such activities are richly rewarded, an MIC is going to arise, and continue to grow, until it dominates national decision-making. This is our condition today: for most practical purposes, we are in effect ruled by this entity. It promotes ideas & policies favorable to itself; its power is such that it can "veto" ideas it dislikes; and its basic interests conflict directly with the interests of the rest of the US population. It is answerable to no one. Far from being answerable to the government, it has purchased the government, and tells the government what to do.
All "support" for Democrats or Republicans is in effect support for the MIC; & for its implicit cornerstones of militarism, belligerent nationalism, imperialism, & corporatism. Every time a politician says, "We need a stronger America...," it's a pitch for the MIC. All the countless hours wasted arguing about "Which Dem candidate do you prefer," or "Are the Dems really less evil than the Republicans" -- all of this is a complete waste of energy, because ultimately, the Democrats are solidly tethered to the MIC itself, and to its foundations in corporatism & nationalism.
"I realize that writers generally don't write the headline, but "Pelosi, Feinstein Betraying Dems" strikes me as inaccurate.
The Democrats have long since abandoned the concept of being an "opposition party". The party bosses ("leaders" is too euphemistic) are corporate co-dependents whose belief in Amerikan exceptionalism and imperialism differs only in degree from the criminal Republics in charge."
The betrayal is the betrayal of Democratic voters, who were snookered into standing by Bill while he was helping demolish the New Deal & laying the groundwork for the post-Cold War empire.
In 2002, there was a good deal of anger from below as congressional Dems hastened to pledge & wave flags & be the next in line to lick the presidential phallus; in 2004, there was frustration and eventual fury with the corpse-like I-married-a-Millionaire Kerry; but their behavior since January of this year has been the catalyst for the birth of revolutionary spirit, however that revolutionary spirit is realized in practice. The majority will no longer eat the air, promise-cramm'd; we know who the crooks & compromisers are, and who backs them.
The late Walter Karp said the two parties do not contest for power. Rather they have a monoply on power and collude to keep reformers out of power.
Having a monopoly it doesn't matter which party hack wins.
However both parties are so hollowed out they are ripe for reform. It is much easier to reform a tired dead old party than to try and start a new party.
Reform can be achieved by filling each Precinct Committee Officer slot with reform minded citizens and then voting in your own slate of chair, State Committee Person and so on. Most PCO slots are empty anyway.
I have seen this strategy work. Nothing else will work because the hacks in both parties will never give you what you want.
Indispensible Enemies is the Karp book which explains the Civics of the Smoke Filled Back Room. Exquisite.
Bo
Just as a broken clock is right twice a day, the far right has its moments of clarity and did not hit too far from the mark in creating and promoting the label "limousine liberals" to tag some in the Democratic Party, Feinstein and Pelosi being two of the most egregious examples.
This entire piece is perhaps a "progressive" commentary for a "Fox2 News" spin master. McDee is closer to reality.
Nancy Pelosi is now fully complicit in the crimes of the Bush gang. Blood is now on her hands. Both Democratic and Republican parties are fully funded and controlled by corporate interests and agendas. War for profit, health care plans that keep corporate profits flowing, etc. are common to both parties.
To understand more read Naomi Klein's book:
The Shock Doctrine - The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
The Democratic Party is not reformable. No one "individual" is going to save us. Not Cindy Sheehan, not Kucinich, not Nader.
The fundamental truth is that we must end the corporate capitalist system that has seized control of the Federal government (privatization).
War will NEVER end as long as vast profits are to be made. Global Warming will never end as long as the profit of polluters is held sancrosanct.
We need a new political Party. Perhaps a People's Peace Party that refuses corporate money to end corporate control. A socialist party that works to manage the economy for the benefit of all the people and not just for the profit and greed of a few.
Break out the mental box of so-called "progressive" thought, which in fact is now today's conservatism.
Read World Socialist Web Site at http://www.wsws.org
Do we need any more evidence why these people should be thrown out of office? Let's start with Nancy Pelosi by replacing her with Cindy Sheehan!
Gallagher writes "...shrug off careful calculations and stand for something."
Sadly the Dems have been calculating and triangulating far too long to remember how to stand for their erstwhile constituents.
They do know how to stand for the Empire and for the Rich and for the Corporations and the Defense Industry and Big Pharma and Big Healthcare. They are about to nominate Hillary Clinton, God help us, for the Presidency.
Gallagher is right there with Tom Hayden, and others, who keep writing "...it's time for the Democrats to..."
They've got it all wrong. It's long past time for the Democrats to do something. It's now time for us to act.
We see it every day here at CD and other places: "Give them another chance, they have a tough job, stay the course, they aren't after all Repubs, things could be worse, etc."
BEEE ESSS! The time is here to quit waiting on this bunch of sell outs and enablers and co-conspiritors to do something that is right and good. We must BE the change we want.
Cindy Sheehan for Congress is a good place to start.
I realize that writers generally don't write the headline, but "Pelosi, Feinstein Betraying Dems" strikes me as inaccurate.
The Democrats have long since abandoned the concept of being an "opposition party". The party bosses ("leaders" is too euphemistic) are corporate co-dependents whose belief in Amerikan exceptionalism and imperialism differs only in degree from the criminal Republics in charge.
Thus, Pelosi and Feinstein are simply being good team players. It's We the People who are being betrayed, not the decadent and moribund Democratic Party.
Pelosi told Cindy Sheehan that if she gets 10,000 letters she'd 'consider taking impeachment off the table'.
http://www.cindyforcongress.org/
Let's call the bluff.
If you follow the trails of all those belonging to the 'chosen race', you will see that they all lead to AIPAC.