Going into todays's Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on domestic surveillance, there was talk that the Dems were, in Digby's word,
skittish about the issue. And
Tom Vilsack provided the evidence of this:
Gov. Tom Vilsack said Monday that Democrats risk political backlash if they object to the Bush administration's wiretapping but cannot show that Americans' civil liberties are at risk.
The Democratic governor, who is weighing a 2008 presidential bid, said the party will suffer if it continues to be perceived as weaker than Republicans on national security.
. . . "If the president broke the law, that's unacceptable. But I think it's debateable whether he did," Vilsack told Des Moines Register editors and reporters. "And I think Democrats are falling into a very, very large political trap," he said. "Democrats are not going to win elections until they can reassure people they are going to keep them safe."
Suffice it to say that not only does Tom Vilsack not have a clue what he is talking about (he is making a big mistake listening to these DC "insiders" who have been killing us on the national security issue for the last two elections), happily for us the Dem Senators on the Judiciary Committee did not agree with Vilsack at all.
Anyone who watched the hearings knows this. Was it the full bore roar that many want in these things? No. But it was something better. It was very smart AND very principled.
It criticized for undermining our security AND undermining our Constitution. It was largely sure footed. It was well done. Biden especially surprised me. He was very good I thought. Durbin's second round was fantastic. The best of all I thought. But I thought really they all were good. Leahy and Kohl. Schumer. Fenstein. Feingold. All of them. Confident and sure footed. Effective.
I think that if Dems take the time to consider how well they did, they can learn a larger important lesson from today. Do not be afraid to talk national security issues. Indeed, EMBRACE the opportunity. We have good ideas. We think clearly on the issues. We are right. And the evidence overwhelmingly backs this up.
With Rove poised to try to set the table again with the "keep us safe" question in the 2006 elections, this lesson must be internalized and made a part of our Dmeocratic DNA.
In 2004, I supported General Wesley Clark. One of the many reasons I did so was because Clark was so supremely (pun intended) confident in taking on the GOP nonsense on national security. In my mind, more than anything else, it is what Dems need politically.
Yesterday, a great diary on Clark discussed this very quality. I'll discuss it on the flip.
In the diary, reality bites back states that Clark argued:
Now let me just start by making one thing perfectly clear - General Clark is hell bent on the Democrats winning back at least one house of Congress - at stake he says - American democracy itself. `We all warned,' stated Clark `that if Bush won the presidency we would lose the court. Bush won. We lost the court. But if we lose in 2006, losing the courts will seem insignificant.' Democracy itself, freedom and liberty, our way of life, the very brotherhood that binds America together as a nation, that is what General Clark passionately urged those present to defend. That, he made crystal clear in somber tone, was on the verge of vanishing from the face of this earth; brought to this point by a power-crazed Republican leadership that seeks nothing less than total domination.
Now here's where the General earns his pension. I asked him straight up how the Democrats, prone to reason and debate, could compete with a Republican machine that exploits fear and crafts strategies to manipulate the instincts of our reptilian brain. I made the point that a proportion of the electorate was wired, through conditioning, so that any attack or threat to the nation would default them into the Republicans' hands. His response was quick, and deliberate: 'the Democrats need to get out there and engage the Republicans head to head on national security! We need to take the fight right to them! The Democrats need to make that the focus of their being; that the Republicans, who have so completely sacrificed the security of this nation through incompetence and willful indifference have not only failed to secure America, they have unified our enemies, depleted our resources and stretched our military to the brink. All before the watchful eyes of the world and our enemies. Enemies that will now see America as more vulnerable in the inability of our leadership to succeed.'
His passion was clear and real. `If the Democrats were in power,' he strenuously argued, `we would have gone after Bin Laden, we would never have wasted over $200 billion of the nation's wealth, we would never have ignored the threats of North Korea and Iran, we would never have ignored Putin's power grabs and suppression of Russian Democracy, we would never have completely ignored China's growing economic threat, and we would never have undertaken a policy of such ill repute that it creates more enemies in the world than friends. Only by directly engaging the Republicans on national security,' he stressed, `can the Democratic Party hope to win.'
Amen General! Amen!
Failing to do this is all that could possibly stand in the way of Democratic triumphs for the next decade. The Republican Party is a spent force with no ideas, vigor or competence. They chose to roll over for the worst President in history. We must take the fight on national security to the Republicans.
Corruption is an issue. the economy is an issue.
But THE issue is Iraq and "keep us safe." The #1 issue someone might say. Heh.