Rhetoric check

I thank my friends and colleagues on this blog for their reaffirmation of the Democratic Party as our best hope to resist and turn back the terrible, anti-Constitutional, unAmerican (etc., etc.) actions and impulses (more war, more censorship, less environmental protection, and on and on and on) of the Apparatchiks in power. I will hold on for now. I am also helped by some things that Glenn Greenwald said the other day ("Beltway Democrats are seriously flawed, but. . .", cited below).

But then I want to come back to the seriousness of our rhetoric. Do we really believe that we are dealing with (neo-)fascism in The Regime and in the reigning elements of the Republican Party? Fascism is serious, absolutist stuff, and requires, it seems to me, a correspondingly total rejection and opposition. And this doesn't square with "our" current desire to see 2-party politics as usual at work in the upcoming elections-- particularly as the Democratic Party is not there yet.

We hear and reject complaints about rabid, hysterical left-wing bloggers. Yet, we are using very serious language while advocating not really comparably serious responses here. Isn't there a disconnect somewhere? Sounds like we don't quite believe what we are saying, then, to me. I have used the term "fascism" myself, so there is no finger-pointing here, but I am getting very worried that the term is less and less rhetorical and more and more descriptive as time passes.

At any rate, the promised quotes from Greenwald:

Down side:

There is no point in trying to glorify the conduct of Democrats. I think the larger-than-expected Senate Democratic opposition to the torture/detention bill is illusory, almost a by-product of sheer luck more than anything else. The large number of votes against the bill seems to have been driven more by Democrats' objections to the significant changes made to the bill in the last several days (ones made even after the Glorious Compromise was announced) than objections to the core provisions of the bill themselves -- and even then, the Democrats' anger was more about the fact that they were excluded from the negotiating process rather than anger towards the substance of the changes themselves.

It seems that this is what accounts for the fact that most of the Democrats did not even unveil their opposition to this bill until the very last day. Many of them were likely prepared to vote for the "compromise" and only decided not to due to the substantive worsening of the bill in the last few days. After all, if they are so gravely offended by the core provisions of torture and indefinite detention, why did Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, etc. all refuse even to say how they were going to vote on this bill until yesterday (I suspect many of their votes against the bill were sealed only once the habeas corpus amendment failed yesterday). And until yesterday, most prominent Democrats made themselves invisible in the debate over torture and detention powers. All of those criticisms are accurate and fair enough.

"Compromise" with . . . with what? Fascism? Say it ain't so.

Up side quotes:

For all their imperfections, cowardly acts, strategically stupid decisions, and inexcusable acquiescence -- and that list is depressingly long -- it is still the case that Democrats voted overwhelmingly against this torture and detention atrocity. The vote total on yesterday's House vote on Heather Wilson's bill to legalize warrantless eavesdropping reflects the same dynamic: "On the final wiretapping vote, 18 Democrats joined 214 Republicans to win passage. Thirteen Republicans, 177 Democrats and one independent voted nay." And, if nothing else, Democrats are resentful and angry at how they have been treated and that alone will fuel some serious and much-needed retribution if they gain control over one or both houses.

And in his first Update--

And I think there is one other point that needs to be recognized about yesterday's vote: In 2002, virtually all of the Democratic Presidential hopefuls in Congress (Kerry, Edwards, Gephardt, Graham) voted for the Iraq war resolution, because they thought they had to be accommodationist in order to have a chance to win.But this time, all of the Democratic Presidential hopefuls in Congress (Biden, Clinton, Feingold, Kerry) voted against this bill, because now they know that they can't be accommodationist if they want to win the nomination. Call that the Joe Lieberman Lesson. That is genuine progress, no matter how you slice it. Is it glorious, tearing-down-the-gate-with-fists-in-the-air Immediate Revolution? No. But it's undeniable incremental progress nonetheless.