We heard it a lot a few days ago -
I'll never vote for a Democrat who voted for torture. Tristero, for example, frontpaging over at Digby's place seems to sympathize with that view,
here and
here. Tristero writes:
Don't wanna vote for Democrats who voted for torture? Agreed. Don't vote for them. Vote for other Democrats.
Well, aside from the fact that this is illogical except in a contested primary, the reality is that almost every one of us - almost every progressive Democrat who is reading this diary - has knowingly supported and voted for Democrats who have been vocal supporters of torture. For example, Bill Clinton. And Howard Dean.
No, you say? They haven't been vocal supporters of torture? Of course they have. They both have been vocal supporters of the death penalty.
Oh, but that's different, you say. That's not torture.
This page contains many vivid descriptions of U.S. executions in recent years. Here is one of the least ugly ones:
It took medical staff more than 50 minutes to find a suitable vein in Rector's arm. Witnesses were kept behind a drawn curtain and not permitted to view this scene, but reported hearing Rector's eight loud moans throughout the process. During the ordeal Rector (who suffered from serious brain damage) helped the medical personnel find a vein. The administrator of State's Department of Corrections medical programs said (paraphrased by a newspaper reporter) "the moans did come as a team of two medical people that had grown to five worked on both sides of his body to find a vein." The administrator said "That may have contributed to his occasional outbursts." The difficulty in finding a suitable vein was later attributed to Rector's bulk and his regular use of antipsychotic medication.
(Rector was a functionally retarded man who had killed a police officer and a civilian during a store robbery and whose execution Bill Clinton famously returned to Arkansas to preside over during the '92 campaign.)
Well, you say, at least in the case of the death penalty, it's being done to a person who has been found guilty in a court of law of a heinous crime.
And we know the courts have never put an innocent person on death row. Except when they have. But as long as the legal T's have been crossed and the I's dotted...
The truth is that the death penalty is a blight on America's reputation in the eyes of people around the world, where most democracies have abandoned the practice of exterminating prisoners.
So, when politicians support America's anachronistic death penalty, it is, indeed, quite like supporting the bill that was just passed.
Yet you and I have supported and voted for politicians like Bill Clinton even though we knew full well that they were supporters of this barbarism.
And we would do it again. And we should. Because the alternative to voting to elect Democrats who sometimes take illiberal, unprogressive positions is to passively allow the election of Republicans who always take illiberal, unprogressive positions.
If you would vote for Bill Clinton if he could run again, or if you would vote for Howard Dean, or any other Democrat who supports the continued practice of killing prisoners - if you would vote for these Democrats rather than vote for their Republican opponents who also support the death penalty - then surely it makes no sense to now take some morally pure position and say you won't cast a vote for a Democrat who voted yea (just as his or her Republican opponent would have) on this bill.
The path toward greater progressivism and liberalism in this nation is not straight and fast - it's circuitous and slow - but over the last century, the Democratic Party has been responsible for many small and many great steps forward on that road, while the Republican Party has been responsible mostly for footdragging and backtracking.
Someday the death penalty, and this detainees act, will not exist in America outside of history books. That day will not come sooner by taking purist positions which help to elect Republicans.