US politics

Glenn Greenwald on an old malady that still grips the Democratic Party:

The reason these posts are worth noting is because they so perfectly capture the mindset that needs to be undermined more than any other. It’s this mentality that has destroyed the concept of checks and limits in our political system; it’s why we have no real opposition party; and it’s why the history of the Democrats over the last seven years has been to ignore and then endorse one extremist Bush policy after the next. It’s because even as The New Republic Syndrome has been proven to be false and destructive over and over — even its practitioners have been forced to recognize that — it continues to be the guiding operating principle of the party’s leadership.

The defining beliefs of this Syndrome are depressingly familiar, and incomparably destructive: Anything other than tiny, marginal opposition to the Right’s agenda is un-Serious and radical. Objections to the demolition of core constitutional protections is shrill and hysterical. Protests against lawbreaking by our high government officials and corporations are disrespectful and disruptive. Challenging the Right’s national security premises is too scary and politically costly. Those campaigning against Democratic politicians who endorse and enable the worst aspects of Bush extremism are “nuts,” “need to have their heads examined,” and are “exactly the sorts of fanatics who tore the party apart in the late 1960s and early 1970s.” Those who oppose totally unprovoked and illegal wars are guilty of “abject pacifism.”

An excellent diagnosis, but Glenn still has gotten one thing wrong in his write-up. It’s not just that there are rightwing forces within the Democratic Party that paralyse its opposition to Bush, it’s that the party as a whole has decided early on that they won’t oppose Bush if that means moving leftwards, or giving their own leftwing more of a voice within the party. Instead, as I’ve said before, both here and at Wis[s]e Words they’ve contended themselves with waiting for the Republicans own fuckups to drive the voters back to them as the only existing alternative. Bush was able to do things, like declaring war on Iraq, or driving through social legislation that they themselves could never do but were largely sympathetic towards, so by waiting until the electorate was fed up with the Republicans, they can have their cake and eat it too.