After six years of protecting Barack Obama so he could run to the far right of every campaign promise he ever made, morality is probably the last thing anyone at DailyKos would want to discuss. But before you get back to dissecting FoxNews and Republicans, I wonder if I might have a moment of your time to reflect on how much Howard Dean pissed me off this morning.
The thing is this, I knew the democratic party was a total waste of time decades before DailyKos existed but it was Howard Dean who pulled me back. It was on the basis of his moral fiber that I invested my voice, my time and my money into achieving this failed democratic cycle.
On Morning Joe today, the topic was the release of the torture documents. The debaters were Nicolle Wallace representing the right and Howard Dean supposedly representing the left. Joe Scarborough's style of mediation was to inject a laundry list of immoral acts by past Presidents supposedly to protect the American people. When Scarborough got to this administration and added the drone program to the list, Howard Dean interrupted Scarborough to make his support for the drone program known.
I guess there are several ways to rationalize Howard Dean declaring moral bankruptcy. Perhaps he's hoping for the number two slot on the 2016 ticket and there is big campaign money in drones. But as all evidence of the Howard Dean we once knew eroded in one sentence, as he diluted the argument of shedding light on the Bush administration misdeeds by standing in support of the continued secret killing of innocent people without little to no oversight, it's time to take inventory.
No, I don't need to take Howard Dean's inventory. But after holding him in such high regard for so many years, when he said those words, I needed to take a look in the mirror. How much of my moral backbone have I been willing to give away to support Democrats?
What I mean to say is that while Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is certainly the worse for wear, he is still alive. But one sixteen year old American boy along with hundreds of other innocents are dead and will continue to die because of what is going on today. I hate Dick Cheney as much as the next liberal but he's history now and I've been supporting a president who is making enemies faster than he can kill them.
I support Dianne Feinstein a little bit. Twelve years after the last person was water-boarded by Americans and well past Democrats are able to do anything about it, getting out the one news cycle message that her friend George W. Bush probably didn't know about it and Americans did not support what she calls "enhanced interrogation technique" is so typical of Democratic Party style action. Should I really be giving a shit if they are positioning themselves as the minority party that would have passed a bill against torture? It's just that what we Americans are doing, right here right now, seems far worse while nobody seems to care.
What can a decent person do? Blind partisanship prevents Democratic supporters from wanting to know about it. There's little chance of Republicans holding anyone accountable twelve years from now because they will just pick up where Obama left off. Just sit back and ignore the rising death toll from drone attacks abroad while supporting an endless series of empty domestic policy promises?
Even if we had something more from the last six years to cling to as far as progress is concerned. Had Barack Obama lifted one finger to keep his promises to Unions or had there been a Middle Class advance during the democratic cycle, had that bully pulpit been used to put and end to right-wing tax theories and talking points on minimum wage. If Americans felt more secure about the future of Social Security and Medicare while the social safety net was strengthened, none of those things would get me to worry about what Dick Cheney did ten years ago when the present administration puts an end to wedding parties with Hellfire missiles.
And the question I have for myself is "If I support the Democrats through the next cycle of continuous dry powder capitulation and wait until the Americans public gets so disgusted with Republicans again, if I even live that long, where will my moral compass be then?"