I am a long-time reader of Daily Kos. I have made several comments over the years, but I've never written a diary entry until now. The inspiration to write a diary entry came from the deft maneuvering of the Democratic leadership on the FISA fight and some aspects of it that show how the Democrats are different from the Republicans, why the netroots and activism like we see here at DKos matter, and especially why the recent FISA maneuvering looks to me like something out of a novel or a movie. I've mentioned this in a couple of comments recently, but I'm hoping more people will see this fleshed-out diaried version so they can either join me in appreciating the magnitude of what the Democratic leaders in Congress have done or set me straight on why I'm giving them too much credit. Either way, the conversation makes writing the diary worthwhile for me.
After the fold, a brief intro to the diarist followed by a story so unreal it still has me pinching myself to see if I'm dreaming...
First, as the intro states, this diary is mainly about something truly remarkable in the work done by the Democratic leadership in Congress, but since this is my first diary ever at Daily Kos, and because my story is relevant to some of the things I want to say in this diary, let me introduce myself. If you prefer to skip this part, jump down to the boldfaced words "What inspired me to write" below.
I am an expatriate, a U.S. citizen living in South America. Before coming here, I lived in six towns in four states in the US. I'm a Ph.D. in physics and an ice cream man (I'm about to open an ice cream shop in the country where I live, and that's why my username here at DKos is what it is), so I was less than thrilled to read DarkSyde's description of the IL-14 race in this thread last week.
Living far from the USA, I have had a slightly different perspective and access to different media sources on world events, and at times, especially from late 2001 to whenever it was that Howard Dean appeared and started getting attention by saying publicly what I'd been thinking about the stupid, stupid war in Iraq.
I still believe Bill Clinton was the best U.S. president of my nearly 39-year lifetime, but at the same time, his triangulation and the blurring lines between Republicans and Democrats left me disgusted with US politics, to the point where I didn't even vote in the 2000 election (FWIW, my vote would have been in California, the last place I lived in the USA). I felt that while there were some really scary right-wing extremists in the Republican Party, the Democratic Party had done little to differentiate itself from the Republican Party, and it even seemed to me like the Dems were apologizing for not being Republicans and kept trying to be more Republican-like.
While it's very fashionable now to say one was "always" against the Iraq war and "always" against Bush, I remember my horror when I saw that while 90 percent of the people in the country where I lived thought then-Secretary of State Powell's presentation to the Security Council was unconvincing and something like 8 or 9 percent found it convincing, about 70 percent of people in the USA found it convincing, and support for Bush and the war ran even higher in the week when the actual invasion took place. Now lots of people say they were "always" against the war, but I remember when people like myself were marginalized and ridiculed by overwhelming majorities, and it was awful.
As I mentioned above, Howard Dean was the one who started to make me feel less alone with his outspoken opposition to the war in Iraq and his apparent viability as a presidential candidate saying what he was saying. Throughout my entire time as an expat, I followed news from the US, especially on political issues, by trying to filter through the crap available to me via the internet. That meant a lot of Slate and similar outlets. Like I said, crap. To be fair, there was some good stuff at Slate, including a fine article by Fred Kaplan warning before it happened that the Wolfowitz-Feith "Team B" would cherry-pick intelligence and come up with the desired conclusion even if the overall intelligence picture didn't support it.
I'm ashamed to admit it now, but I read quite a bit of Mickey Kaus too. Kaus used to mention and link to somebody called "Instapundit" a lot, and I quickly learned that there was little of value to be gained by following those links, but he mentioned and linked to "Kos" and "Atrios" too. Less often, yes. Much less often. But it only took one link to each for me to find interesting stuff by following those links.
Finding DKos and Eschaton was a big deal for me. I found other people who agreed with me about the war and about Bush, and who also liked Howard Dean (Kaus, for one, didn't like Dean at all, and made a big deal out of "the Dean scream"). It helped me feel less alone. I knew I wasn't wrong to feel the way I did about the war and Bush, and I had no trouble finding external validation, since most of the population of the world agreed with me on those things. But it was nice to find fellow U.S. citizens who agreed with me, and there was something about their activism and their refusal to give up, even in the face of
defeats like the 2004 election, that appealed to me.
I watched with some interest as "the netroots" grew from some talk among bloggers to a formidable political force. I watched as Howard Dean implemented the 50-state strategy, ridiculed by "very serious" people like Paul Begala as paying party employees in places like Mississippi and Idaho to "pick their noses." I watched as the new wave of Democratic activism and Howard Dean's reforms in the party suddenly made a Democratic takeover of both houses of Congress in the 2006 elections a real possibility. I watched as my fellow citizens slowly but surely lost their patience with Bush, no matter how much the major media outlets told them that deep in their hearts, they really liked him.
I even donated to two Democratic Senate campaigns, both of which were ultimately successful: Jon Tester's (I'd been following him since Kos started talking about him) and Jim Webb's. I read with fascination Kos's writings on the site about "libertarian Democrats" because I am definitely way out on the libertarian end of things (see, for example, the Political Compass), but never felt comfortable with the U.S. Libertarian Party (one hilarious description that has stuck with me over the years is that a Libertarian is "a Republican with a bong"). I actually found myself cheering as people-powered, netroots-powered, reform-powered change swept the USA, transforming the Congress. I looked forward to subpoena-powered investigations of the Bush Administration's possible (yes, I'm being charitable) crimes. I looked forward to an end to the "rubber-stamp Congress," and at the very worst, to a couple of years of gridlock before Bush was swept out by the growing wave, with the possibility of Congress actually getting something done during those two years despite Bush.
What Inspired Me To Write
Then, after the new Congress took over in early 2007, despite a few great moments (like Boxer showing Inhofe the gavel and explaining that because of the elections, she was now the chair, and Gore would be given time to answer questions and talk), what looked like an ugly reality set in. The media continued to favor Republicans. Republican party unity continued to be strong. Democrats, despite a clear mandate to stand up to a very unpopular president, continued to "compromise" with the Republicans by giving Bush and his Congressional accomplices everything they wanted. I began to get disgusted again, but I continued to believe that with people like Kos and Atrios giving like-minded people a forum in which to organize and plan, and with people like Dean reorganizing the Democratic Party to represent the interests of the people of the USA, and with presidential candidates like John Edwards (my favorite until he dropped out) and Barack Obama presenting the people of the USA with a vision for a better future, we might still see positive change with "more and better Democrats" (the "and better" being critical to me) elected to Congress and the possibility of a progressive president willing to actually do something about restoring and protecting the rights the Constitution was supposed to have guaranteed my countrymen, but that Bush and his gang had systematically weakened and removed, about restoring sane economic policy, and about working toward a better future for the USA and for the world as a whole.
As I said, Democratic "compromises" that turned out to be complete capitulation to Republicans and their unpopular president's unpopular and generally wrong-headed policies left me a bit disgusted. Pelosi saying impeachment was "off the table" bugged me. The lack of action and lack of use of the subpoena power to restore oversight and the rule of law upset me. But still I continued to hope that things would get better. Maybe not immediately, but at some point, perhaps with a bigger swing in the next Congress with a Democrat in the White House. I hoped, but I wondered if I was going to be disappointed yet again.
And then on Thursday of this week I read an amazing front page piece by Kagro X. If you haven't read it yet, please take the time to go and do so now. I'll wait right here. In that Diary entry/article, Kagro lays out the nuts and bolts of what the Democratic leadership had done to put the House in a position to pass a FISA bill without telecom immunity (and the Bush immunity that would result), and without giving the Republicans any way to block it. For the first time in my life, I found myself open-mouthed, marveling at what appeared to be an utterly amazing series of moves, not just because of how deftly they had been made, but also because of a lot of the details of what was involved in making those moves and what it all represented.
Kagro X summarized the moves again in another front page item on Friday. I'll borrow from that summary and add in some of the significant bits from Kagro X's comments from the item that appeared on Thursday.
- The House passed an immunity-free bill, H.R. 3773
- The Senate passed a bill with immunity in it, S. 2248
- The Senate stripped out the text of H.R. 3773 and substituted in the text of S. 2248, then sent the amended H.R. 3773 back to the House
- Conyers and Reyes have an amendment to H.R. 3773 (as amended by the Senate) that would strip out what the Senate put in (the text of S. 2248) and put in its place the new, immunity-free language.
Now here's the key point, the thing from Kagro's item on Thursday that left me blown away like the end of The Usual Suspects: since the Conyers-Reyes amendment is an amendment to an amendment, and the rules of Congress do not permit a member to move to recommit an amendment to an amendment, the motion to recommit (described by Kagro here), the Republicans' favorite weapon against FISA legislation without telecom (and Bush) immunity, was rendered useless.
It appears that the Republicans were just as surprised and caught off-guard by this as I was, but their reaction wasn't awe and the desire to laugh, like mine was when I read Kagro's diary, or like when I saw The Usual Suspects about 12 years earlier. Their reaction was probably more like Agent Kujan's reaction at the end of that movie when he figures out what's just happened. In desperation, they called for a secret session of Congress, possibly hoping the Democrats wouldn't give it to them so they could claim that important information wasn't considered. Instead, the Democratic leadership continued its deft handling of this legislative battle and gave the Republicans their secret session. When it turned out to be nothing more than a Republican bluff, the Democrats didn't even call it that, but Steny Hoyer was quite explicit in saying that no new information was presented in the secret session that would lead to any kind of change. The vote went ahead and the good guys won, as diaried by mcjoan here.
Why I'm So Impressed, Plus What It All Means To Me
OK, so now I've talked about who I am, how I got here, what major political events before the last week meant to me, and what the netroots mean to me. I've also recapped the way the Democratic leadership was able to get something good done. So what's the big deal? The Democrats were bound to win something other than elections eventually, having control of both houses of Congress, having two presidential candidates who individually are both more popular than the Republican candidate, and having positions that poll much better with the people of the USA than those of the Republicans.
But that's the thing. This is so much more than just winning one. Let's start with how they won.
First, Republicans and their apologists in the media don't seem to respect people who pay too much attention to details like policy. There is a definite anti-intellectual bent in the modern Republican Party. There is also a definite trend among Republicans, especially in the White House, of ignoring the rule of law. The Democratic Congressional leadership managed to put the Republicans in this position by studying the rules of Congress and then using them to put the Republicans in a position where they would not be able to prevent the Democrats from passing legislation without immunity for the teles and Bush. And while the Republicans would have loved to skip over or change those pesky rules, the fact that Democrats control Congress prevented them from doing so.
Further, the way the Democratic leadership played this, the result ended up being a surprise to just about everyone. I think The Usual Suspects surprised me more than it surprised a lot of other people because I became convinced I was watching yet another Hollywood movie where the cop is smarter than the criminal and gets his man in the end. But I don't know anybody who understands what happened in Congress this week and who wasn't surprised by it. So that means that the Democratic leadership, while executing these maneuvers, managed to keep it quiet to prevent the Republicans from finding a way to stop it. In doing so, they endured heavy criticism from progressives like myself and many others at DKos who felt disappointed with the way the Democratic Congress had failed to really curb the Bush Administration's excesses. Given that criticism of the Democratic leadership in Congress from the extreme Right is constant, heavy, and in heavy rotation in the news, that means that the Democratic leadership allowed itself to be subjected to heavy political fire from all sides for a time in order to get this legislation passed. That means they acted in exactly the opposite of the way Republicans act most of the time. Republicans generally put their own political interests ahead of everything, including national interests. The Democratic leadership put the interests of the country ahead of its own short-term political interests, and deserves a lot of praise for that. In addition to being the right thing to do, it was a brave thing to do, and I thank the leadership for doing it. The fact that they were able to do this at all now was impressive, and the way they did it makes it all the more impressive.
Seriously. Sit back for just a second and reflect not just on what the Democratic leadership managed to accomplish, but how. Doesn't it sound like the plot of some kind of political novel or movie?
OK, so it's impressive, but it's by no means the end. We need to keep fighting. Activism, organized through communities like Daily Kos, has made a huge difference already, and we're just getting started. We have a chance to elect "more and better Democrats" to both houses of Congress, especially on Obama's coattails, given how he has shown that he will continue to pursue Dean's 50 state strategy while Clinton appears to want to go back to the "50%+1" politics of the end of the last millennium.
Why?
First, so this kind of crazy maneuvering isn't necessary to do the hard work that's coming. Bush and Cheney and the Republican rubber-stamp Congresses have made a mess. Bonddad, Jerome a Paris and others have done a great job of showing how badly they've screwed up the economy, and I think we all know how seriously citizens' constitutional rights, the country's standing in the world, and the preparedness of the military for important engagements have been compromised by Republican mismanagement. The next president and Congress will have a lot of hard work to do, and you can be sure the Republicans will do everything they can to block it and try to blame Democrats for the mess the Republicans have made, rather than trying to help fix it.
Second, so that Congress can take advantage of the lack of telecom immunity and shine some of the "best disinfectant" (bright light) on the darker corners of Bush malfeasance. I don't believe Bush will ever be held accountable for the numerous crimes he and his Administration may have (there's that charity again!) committed, but the major investigations I hope to see the Democratic Congress and the Justice Department under a Democratic president undertaking starting early next year should at least turn up a lot of interesting information on just how far the Bush government went in violating the rights of the people of the US, the Constitution, and the laws of the country. And then we'll have the tools we need to make sure that kind of thing never happens again.
So I end this, my first diary ever at Daily Kos with renewed hope and a new purpose: to help the netroots, Howard Dean, Barack Obama, and the oh-so-praiseworthy Democratic Congressional leadership reshape the Democratic Party into a tool for positive change rather than the "Republican Lite" flavor it took on in the 1990s, and to try to help that party do the hard work that's coming to make the United States safer and stronger. I hope everyone who has endured reading my verbose commentary will join me in that purpose, and join me in praising the Democratic leadership on a job well done in getting this first step accomplished.