Yesterday, it was "
It is Time" to call for withdrawal of Iraq,
today Armando says:
But it leaves out an important policy point: to change the Bush Iraq policy requires a change in the politics of Iraq, be it through a change in 2006 or a GOP reaction to political pressure.
A change in the politics of Iraq-- what does that mean? I couldn't disagree more if Armando is saying that Democrats should politicize Iraq as an issue-- over withdrawal. Look, Cindy has never won an election, Paul almost did. If you think Hackett won by calling for a withdrawl, you were not paying attention.
On to Digby. First, I followed the Hackett election pretty close, and the only way I'd support saying that Hackett made Iraq an issue, is that he did it by going to the right of Bush. Hackett appealed to the "now that we are in it, do it right" frame, and put himself under Bush's praise in a TV commercial. On other issues, like gay marriage, Hackett was an all-out libertarian, but on Iraq, he was doing exactly what Digby said:
Right now I think the right political move is to keep the pressure on the Republicans. Make them take ownership of this war, gas prices all the simmering discontent that you can see lurking in all the polls on every issue. Separate ourselves, not with our intellectual superiority (which is a given in any case) but by our energy and our disgust with the status quo.
Right, and that means the target is not Democrats, or calling for withdrawal by Democrats, but targeting the DC establishment as a whole, under Bush's leadership, which gets to Digby's question:
Will our "shrillness" help or hurt the party? I think the netroots believes it's time to try a message that has a little more heat than lukewarm water. The establishment, still smarting from their seminal loss in 1972, is scared to death of anything that resembles real passion. Far more than a serious division in the party over specific policy, that, I think is the real fault line. What kind of politics --- not policies --- do the Democrats think will win?
Change, running against the status quo... what always wins against an entrenched establishment. But to do that, it's not like you need the entire Democratic party aligned with the effort. Not at all, it just has to be the loudest. A terrible direction, but the loudest right now, and making the WaPo and WSJ stories, is the ones calling for Democrats to demand Bush pull out now. That results in a politicization of this war.
And I would argue that '72 is not the equivalent year in question, but instead, '68. By '68, the country had turned against the war; but also at that time, McCarthy ("I hear America sighing") came out as the face of the Democratic Party, advocating an immediate withdrawal of Vietnam. And we all know what became of that over the next 5 years, both for Vietnam and the Democrats. The politics of Iraq, if we want to both get out and replace the majority, call for not making Iraq a politicized catfight between Democrats and Republicans.
