Democrats, Activists and Ending the War
by Chris Bowers, Tue Feb 27, 2007 at 03:09:19 PM EST
Clearly, as Matt notes in the post below this one, there is growing consternation within the progressive netroots about what many consider to be the slow and ineffective steps Democrats in Congress have taken to end the war. Given this, I think it might be helpful to review the various means the netroots and grassroots can take to pressure congressional Democrats into quicker and / or more effective action. I do this because I want to shift the debate over whether or not Democrats are doing enough to end the war towards how we can all help to end the war. That, and because I also hate engaging in arguments with people when I am not sure what we are arguing over.
Now, I actually feel much worse today than I felt yesterday, so please bear with me.
I see four basic avenues of pressure, which are somewhat interrelated:
- Primary Challenges. In the Senate, Democrats and the netroots have pretty much maxed out when it comes to using primary challenges as a means of hurrying the end of the Iraq war. At this point, Joe Lieberman is the only Democrat in the Senate in favor of escalation (see here) and he was hit with perhaps the most publicized Senate primary challenge in history for his hawkish views. After Lieberman, almost every other Senate Democrat who the netroots are not particularly happy with when it comes to war is not up for re-election in 2008: the Nelsons, Schumer, Clinton, and Reid. Of the two candidates who are up for re-election, Carl Levin and Mark Pryor, only Pryor seems like a viable primary target. Levin has a generally progressive record, and I have a difficult time seeing how running against someone for bad message control will gain a lot of traction. If Pryor fails to go along with the rewrite of the AUMF and / or the Murtha restrictions plan, it should definitely be time to look into a primary challenge. However, that will not be an easy front, considering the stranglehold conservative Democrats have over the Arkansas state Democratic Party.
In the House, there are already a few prominent primary challenges lined up (Wynn, Tauscher). It takes a long time to put together a compelling narrative behind a successful primary challenge, and even the best challenges in the House usually fall well short (see Marcy Winograd in CA-36). If people really wanted to make a splash, develop a compelling narrative about how Steny Hoyer is not doing much to further the end of the war, and attack there. That would certainly make some noise, but the attack would have to be made credible fashion. As is the case with Levin, a primary challenge over inept messaging is just not going to gain any traction. However, a primary challenge against someone who is overtly against ending the war in Iraq would gain traction, no matter how Republican the district may be.
- Withdrawing Financial Support. In the House, one tactic I think Democrats should consider pursuing would be to withdraw DCCC financial support from endangered Democratic representatives like Jim Marshall and Gene Taylor. Quite frankly, after he was only one of two Democrats who voted in favor of escalation, it feels like a self-defeating waste of money to dump resources into Marshall and Taylor's district. This wasn't a big deal in 2006, since the DCCC spent virtually no money helping out those two incumbents--the wave kept Marshall and Taylor afloat. However, what is the point of defending Democratic incumbents in fairly Republican districts who vote with the opposition on the main issue of the day? Defending these two guys certainly does not make it seem to me that Democrats are using their resources to try and end the war, which was our mandate after the November elections (and how we won the election). At some point, the amount of resources Democrats give our incumbents to defend themselves must be tied to some metric of party loyalty. Otherwise, our message will remain muddled.
- Direct Activism. There is already a decent amount being done on this front, including mass protests, the "virtual march," and occupying offices. In my opinion, however, virtually all of this will be unsuccessful either in pressuring Democrats to do more or in convincing the progressive base that not enough is being done, unless it is tied to a single legislative plan of attack. What I mean is that this activism needs to be geared toward pressuring reps to pass the Murtha plan, and to rewrite the AUMF. If the direct activism is out of synch with the legislative drift, it is hard to see how the former can impact the latter.
One problem with this is that dramatic activism, such as occupying congressional offices, does not tend to be done on behalf of gradualist policy, such as rewriting the AUMF or the Murtha plan. I actually got into an argument about this with someone as Dailykos yesterday, who was arguing on behalf of occupying congressional offices but simultaneously arguing against the Murtha plan because it didn't go far enough. It strikes me as self-defeating for anti-war activists to engage in activism opposing a plan to end the war. My dream would be direct activism of all sorts targeted against Democratic members of Congress who are not supporting Murtha's plan and / or the rewrite of the AUMF. However, I am not particularly confident that is going to happen.
I also worry that one of the reasons the left does not want to engage in activism on behalf of the gradualist plans to end the war is because, in the event that the plans fail to pass, they don't want to be tarnished with those failures themselves. Better to be tagged with a plan that occupies the moral highground but that never had any chance of passing, than with a compromise plan that had a real chance to pass but did not. Within your base of support, the former always makes you look better than those weak Democrats who failed, while the latter means you look just like those weak Democrats you rail about all the time.
- Ending the grace period in the base. There is a fourth, and significantly vaguer, form of pressure that a few people are floating around. The best way I can describe that pressure is to use blogosphere messaging in order to convince the activist base that Democratic leaders in Congress, especially the Senate, no longer deserve the benefit of the doubt. Consdering Harry Reid's low approval vote in the most recent Dailykos straw poll, that seems to have been pretty much accomplished (or, at least is in the process of being accomplished). However, in my opinion, if this form of pressure is not tied to a carrot, it isn't really going to get us anywhere on Iraq. We have to define both what a favorable outcome on Iraq in the Senate would be, and what we will do ourselves to help the Senate Democratic leadership achieve that result. If we are simply on the sidelines not offering support to help pass the rewrite of the AUMF, or if we do not define what a successful outcome in the Senate would look like, then I am not sure how we are helping to end the war through this form of pressure. Yes, we need to push the leadership to push Democrats to do the right thing, but we need to push ourselves to push Democrats to do the right thing too.
Anyway, I am posting this because I hate engaging in arguments where I am not sure what the parameters of the debate actually are. If we are angry at Democrats for not acting with all due speed and effectiveness, I would like to know what all due speed and effectiveness would mean. If we are mad at the netroots for not applying enough pressure to Democrats in congress, I want to know what sort of pressure would be both desirable and effective. From my point of view, this means pressuring the specific Democrats who are not working to pass either Murtha's plan or the rewrite of the AUMF in a variety of ways. Those who straight up oppose Murtha's plan or a rewrite of the AUMF should be targeted in primaries or see a withdrawal of party committee support for re-election. Those who we are certain are not working fast enough or effectively enough should receive the negative messaging and direct activism I described above.
In a nutshell, that is the best method I can think of to hasten the end of the war in Iraq. If I disagree with people in what they write about Democrats and ending the war, it is because I disagree with them in these terms. I hope that the people who disagree with the tactics I propose would disagree with them while simultaneously offering a different tactical path. I don't want to disagree with people for the hell of it, because we have different temperaments, or because we have different levels of patience / trust in varying leaders. I want to see different plans to bring the war to an end, and debate the varying plans on their relative merits. If you have one, I would love to hear it.
Update:
It turns out the DCCC actually spent around $200K on Marshall. Not one of their higher expenditures, but it was still $200K we spent to help continue the war.
Tags: Democrats, Senate, House, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, netroots, activism, Iraq (all tags)
You are not logged in.
In order to post a comment, you must be logged in. If you have a member account, please log in to comment.
If not, you can make an account right here. It's quick and free.
