There are many in this community who, while applauding Cindy Sheehan's integrity and stamina, disdain her recent pledge to run against Nancy Pelosi should the Speaker not initiate, or support, impeachment proceedings against the President. They point out that in the FAQ, the daily kos charter if you will, it clearly states that this is not a liberal blog, but one to promote the election of candidates from the Democratic party. If she runs, apparently she will run as a third party candidate, which means that this blog will not, indeed cannot, continue to support her, at least not from the standpoint of being a political candidate. Her previous efforts have nothing to do with this position. It's the avowed mission statement of daily kos, so therefore what's the problem?
Strangely enough, I see similarities in this to the furor over theories of evolution against intelligent design, the current guise of creationism or creation science.
Most historians and political analysts have come to agree that one of the effects of a first-past-the-post voting system, as practiced both in the United States and in the United Kingdom, results in the stabilization toward two strong and opposing political parties. Other nations use proportional representation, and end up with a larger number of stable political parties.
Two strong political parties have been the norm in the United States since the formation of the very first ones during the Washington administration, the Federalists and the Republicans, the latter known today as the Democratic-Republicans to differentiate them from the current GOP. The Federalists did not survive very long beyond the War of 1812, and factions within the Republicans splintered, one of which eventually became the current Democratic party some time in the 1820s. The Whig party coalesced as its main opposition, its demise brought about by the stresses of the slavery question in the 1850s, during which time the current Republican party arose as the rallying point for abolitionists. Although dozens of lesser parties have come and gone over the past two centuries, since the Civil War the current two parties have been dominant.
In the years of its inception, the Republican party was clearly the more progressive of the two, sweeping Abraham Lincoln into office in 1861 and presiding over the legislation of the Reconstruction era. Had the Internet and this blog been in existence during the 1850s, I trust that the bulk of the diarists here would have been staunch supporters of the Republicans. (That decade saw the spread of a means of communication as revolutionary as the Internet, if not more so - the telegraph. For the first time in human history communication was not limited by line of sight or the top speeds of the horse, the railroad, or the sailing vessel. Information could now be transmitted at the speed of light, once the apparatus was put in place.) After the first Roosevelt administration leading up to World War I, the Republicans slowly abandoned their progressive agenda, by the 1920s adopting the pro-business platform they maintain today.
The success of the pro-business Republican platform during the Roaring Twenties, expressed in the administrations of Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover, led directly to the crash of '29 and the Great Depression. The tide turned against the Republicans and their business stances with the election of FDR and the implementation of the New Deal, and the Republicans spent the next decades scrambling under the self-perception of being the underdog party to the Democrats, even with the elections of Eisenhower and Nixon to the White House.
That all changed with the election of Reagan in 1980. The pro-business platforms were reasserted forcefully in the clothing of supply-side economics, and the Republicans gained control of the Senate in the largest swing in 22 years. The overwhelming landslide of Reagan in the 1984 election caused a shift in Democratic strategy, as they lost first their southern base in the late sixties, and then their blue-collar base to Reagan. The Democrats abandoned the left wing of their party, and moved to the center.
Although it's not this simple in all ramifications of governance and platform, in essence of tone what the Democrats have been doing for the past two decades is trying to convince the great centrist American public that although we're the 'left' party, not to worry, because at heart on the things that matter, like economics and taxes, we're really Republicans, wink wink. They did this to survive, which makes it about maintaining and regaining power, pure and simple. This is why Pelosi, Reid, and the other Democrats in the Congress have no interest in pursuing impeachment, even considering that no President, not even Harding, has ever deserved it more. They're afraid of a backlash, and won't commit for fear of jeopardizing chances in 2008. Just wait out the storm, they say, for once we regain the White House and solidify control of the Senate and the House, then we'll be able to do the right things.
What Cindy Sheehan has realized, assumedly, is that once you get into the habit of putting off doing the right thing because the conditions aren't yet perfect, you tend to continue. Sacrificing principles for expedience becomes the norm, and the conducive atmosphere for doing the right thing never arrives. Impeaching BushCo isn't about political expedience, it's about the future of the Congress as a viable institution in our frame of government.
I perceive that a main attraction that creationism has for many minds is its permanence; the biblical account of creation was correct nineteen hundred years ago, and it's correct now. The world doesn't evolve, God created it in a specific fashion, and we're the most important act of creation in it. Things are the way they are, always have been the way they are, and always will be the way they are, and that's a good thing.
The problem is, of course, that the world obviously evolves. To me, and I assume to Cindy Sheehan, the election of 2006 was a mandate to end the war in Iraq now, regardless of any mitigating circumstances. Given that BushCo has refused to view the 2006 election as a directive to pull out of Iraq now, and has ruled as if it had the kind of mandate Reagan enjoyed even with margins of victory in 2000 and 2004 measured at nonexistent and slim, it seems the only way to remove BushCo is through the impeachment process. This is position is simply beyond the scope of the Democratic Party at this time, apparently. They may evolve into this position, but it may take more time than can be afforded. It may also very well be that our electoral system needs to evolve beyond first-past-the-post for the voices of progressivism to gain a foothold from which to truly affect policy in this nation.
If this is the case, then daily kos may need to evolve beyond its strict allegiance to the Democratic Party. Again, had dailykos come into being in the 1850s to support progressivism, abolition, and the Republicans, undoubtedly it would no longer consider allegiance to the GOP a worthy directive today, 150 years later.
Right now, the Democrats are at least the lesser of two evils, and at best a far more attractive option than the spiritually, morally, and intellectually bankrupt Republicans. However, will that still be true in 100 years? Fifty? Ten? It could be that there will be no need to change this allegiance, as the Democratic Party will evolve into re-acquainting itself with its left wing and abandon the post-Reagan reactionary strategy of appearing as centrists only. Alternately, it could be that daily kos will change its support away from electing Democrats, and do so for all the right reasons. Dailykos could also evolve into a stance of supporting progressive ideals, but not necessarily the Democrats in all cases, in all elections.
Support of the Democrats has to be more than simply aiding the enemy of my enemy. The Constitution is worthless if the mechanisms of governance, as expressed in the dominant political parties, do not share its moral compunction and values, do not share its ability to be amended and changed. Our system has got to be about more than just the tactics of winning elections and defeating the Republicans. What if working toward the strength of third (and fourth and fifth) parties are the true solution, the true realization of progressive ideals? I'm not trying to sell Kossacks short by any means, diarists on this page prove their willingness and ability to embrace difficult questons every day, but like Google and Wikipedia, dailykos is becoming a flashpoint for political discourse and activity on the Internet. I'm not sure if strict allegiance to the Democrats should necessarily be a permanent part of this community. Evolution happens, and Cindy Sheehan may not be the crossroads for some future evolution in the attitudes and platform planks of this community, but then again she might.