| [I]t is one of the two best books I've read in years about the Democratic Party, its myriad problems and challenges -- Charlie Cook, National Journal
[A]n insightful guide to how the Democratic Party can retake power -- Peter Beinart, NY Times Book tour :: Amazon :: B&N; :: Powell's :: Chelsea Green
|
Credit Where Credit is Due
Fri Jun 23, 2006 at 12:26:12 PM PDT
GOP Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, who chairs the House Science Committee, requested that the National Academy of Sciences conduct a review of the evidence on global warming. The request was triggered by wingnut Rep. Joe Barton launching an investigation into the research of leading scientists in the field.
The NAS report is in.
The academy had been asked to report to Congress on how researchers drew conclusions about the Earth's climate going back thousands of years, before data was available from modern scientific instruments. The academy convened a panel of 12 climate experts, chaired by Gerald North, a geosciences professor at Texas A&M University, to look at the "proxy" evidence before then, such as tree rings, corals, marine and lake sediments, ice cores, boreholes and glaciers.
Combining that information gave the panel "a high level of confidence that the last few decades of the 20th century were warmer than any comparable period in the last 400 years," the panel wrote. It said the "recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia," though it was relatively warm around the year 1000 followed by a "Little Ice Age" from about 1500 to 1850.
... it considered the evidence reliable enough to conclude there were sharp spikes in carbon dioxide and methane, the two major "greenhouse" gases blamed for trapping heat in the atmosphere, beginning in the 20th century, after remaining fairly level for 12,000 years.
In response to the findings, Boehlert responded remarkably sanely, for a Republican.
"This report shows the value of Congress handling scientific disputes by asking scientists to give us guidance," Boehlert said Thursday. "There is nothing in this report that should raise any doubts about the broad scientific consensus on global climate change."
One wonders how long he's going to be able to keep his chairmanship, given this betrayal of the Rubber Stamp.
Update [2006-6-23 15:33:33 by mcjoan]: And we have our answer. LarryInNYC reminds me that he has annouced his retirement. One more moderate Republican down the drain. They've become an endangered species, if you believe in such things.
Midday Open Thread
Fri Jun 23, 2006 at 10:37:01 AM PDT
- The Iran Intelligence Oversight Act Harry Reid announced at Yearly Kos passed the Senate last night as part of the Department of Defense Authorization Act. The legislation requires intelligence community professionals to monitor and certify administration statements about the threat posed by Iran.
- Crooks and Liars has Geraldo at his most ridiculous worst. Granted, it's Fox, but why is this man still getting in front of a camera?
I've know John Kerry for over thirty five years. Unlike me-he is a combat veteran, so he gets some props, but in the last thirty five years, I've seen a hell of a lot more combat than John Kerry...
- Listen to Glenn Greenwald discuss How Would A Patriot Act in a podcast at Agonist. And if you haven't picked up a copy of the book yet, do so. It's an important, and very good, read.
- Bruce smacks down Coulter, and Soledad O'Brien to boot.
O'BRIEN: ...[S]ome people gave you a lot of flack for being a musician who took a political stand. I remember...
SPRINGSTEEN: Yeah, they should let Ann Coulter do it instead.
O'BRIEN: There is a whole school of thought, as you well know, that says that musicians - I mean you see it with the Dixie Chicks - you know, go play your music and stop.
SPRINGSTEEN: Well, if you turn it on, present company included, the idiots rambling on on cable television on any given night of the week, and you're saying that musicians shouldn't speak up? It's insane. It's funny.
- Peter Dauo makes an interesting point regarding the Sears Tower Terror plot: so much for the idea that we're fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here.
Apparently, they are here. Whether or not we're fighting them there.
Reporters are busy pushing the "cut and run" meme, but you'd think one of them would take a minute to point out the obvious....
- While I hate to give TNR any more attention than absolutely necessary, I just have to point out that they've gone just a little crazy with their phobia about the blogs.
It's hard fascism with a Microsoft face. It puts some people, like me, in the equally bizarre position of wanting desperately for Joe Lieberman to lose the Democratic primary to Ned Lamont so that true liberal values might, maybe, possibly prevail, yet at the same time wanting Lamont, the hero of the blogosphere, to lose so that the fascistic forces ranged against Lieberman might be defeated.
Hyperbole a little, guys? Fascists? All of us? I imagine the voters of Connecticut who support Ned Lamont and who also happen to frequent blogs are going to be nonplussed to learn they're fascists.
Losing Karzai: Afghan Leader Deplores U.S. Tactics
Fri Jun 23, 2006 at 10:06:11 AM PDT
In the wake of a couple of the worst weeks of violence since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, a frustrated President Hamid Karzai, once praised by President Bush for "your honor and your courage and your skill in helping to build a new and democratic Afghanistan," voiced his objections to Bush's strong-arm tactics in his country, according to AP:
President Hamid Karzai criticized the U.S.-led coalition's anti-terror campaign Thursday, deploring the deaths of hundreds of Afghans and appealing for more help for his government.
...
But Karzai, who has previously scorned large-scale anti-militant campaigns, rejected the continued spilling of Afghan blood in military operations.
"It is not acceptable for us that in all this fighting, Afghans are dying. In the last three to four weeks, 500 to 600 Afghans were killed. (Even) if they are Taliban, they are sons of this land," a clearly frustrated Karzai told reporters in Kabul.
Apparently the "you've got to break a few eggs to make an omelet" Rambo strategy wears thin when no promised omelet arrives and when the "few eggs" are hundreds upon hundreds of your own citizens, most of them civilians.
Karzai's increasing public refusals to prop up the Bush administration with praise signals a return to reality that mirrors the major objections of American war critics as well, even those who initially supported the foray into Afghanistan - the president's stubborn inability to acknowledge that problems of terrorism in that country (and indeed, worldwide) cannot be simply solved with the bludgeon of the military:
Karzai said the current focus on hunting militants didn't address terrorism's root causes. "We must engage strategically in disarming terrorism by stopping their sources of supply of money, training, equipment and motivation," he said.
And of course, stopping the motivation is near impossible when indiscriminate slaughter of innocent bystanders who are mixed in with unidentified possible terrorists is a business-as-usual event. Letting God (or Allah) sort it out is a luxury it seems only the blind-as-a-bat administration can afford from the DC bubble thousands of miles away.
When the blood of your fellow countrymen and women are seeping into the ground, even hand-picked puppet leaders can discover a conscience.
Open Thread
Fri Jun 23, 2006 at 06:48:47 AM PDT
Get it off your chest.
Cheers and Jeers: Rum and Coke FRIDAY!
Fri Jun 23, 2006 at 06:13:19 AM PDT
From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...
JEERS to shooting America in the face. Wow...this is an unbelievable admission from Dick Cheney. Let's set it up step-by-step:
1. The Republican "hawks" love to boast of how quickly and efficiently the Iraqi security forces are getting trained and deployed to defeat the terrorists inside their country. They promise that "as the Iraqis stand up, we'll stand down."
2. The Republicans also love to boast that invading Iraq made America safer because we're "fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here."
3. Yesterday, Dick Cheney blew #1 and #2 all to hell with this jaw-dropping admission that we can never, ever pull our troops out:
"If we pull out, [the terrorists in Iraq] will follow us. It doesn't matter where we go. ... And it will continue---whether we complete the job or not in Iraq---only it'll get worse. Iraq will become a safe haven for terrorists."
The only conclusion that can be drawn from the vice president---the architect of this occupation---is, we're screwed. So today I bid a warm welcome to our Iraqi brothers and sisters who now belong to America's 51st state: Cheneyoming. Whether they, or we, like it or not.
P.S. Who's undermining the morale of our troops now by admitting the mission will never be accomplished? Who could that be, Dick?
Cheers and Jeers hits the bottle early in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Science Friday: The Edge of Infinity
Fri Jun 23, 2006 at 04:43:40 AM PDT
One of the neatest things about the blogosphere is that you can talk directly to experts in any field. Professor Sean Carroll is such an expert. From the fourth grade, Dr. Carroll wanted to be a physicist and a cosmologist. Fortunately for us, he happened to become one at a time when anyone can head over to his group blog, Cosmic Variance, and talk to cosmologists and physicists about the deepest mysteries in the Universe. They've even put together a great online pictorial about Dark Matter and Dark Energy in the Cosmos. Sean studies it all, from the infinitesimally small to the grandest edge of infinity.
DarkSyde (DS): How big is the universe?
Sean Carroll (SC): We've learned amazing things about the universe in the last hundred years. Our Milky Way galaxy has about a hundred billion stars, the observable universe has about a hundred billion such galaxies, and it all started about fourteen billion years ago. So it's a big universe, and getting bigger.
DS: When I was in school we were taught the standard inflationary Big Bang model, has that changed in the last twenty-years?
SC: The overall "Big Bang model" is healthier than it's ever been. That's just the basic idea that the universe is uniform on large scales and expanding from a hot, dense state. We don't know much about the Bang itself, but we still know an awful lot about early times, all the way back to a few seconds after the Bang. At that point the universe was a nuclear reactor, and we can look at the leftover elements to check whether their abundances match what we predict -- and they do! The fact that we can extrapolate our theories fourteen billion years into the past to a time just a few seconds after the Big Bang, and check that they give the right answers, is one of the most impressive feats in all of modern science.
Even though the Big Bang model works really well, it raises questions. Why is the universe so smooth, and what made it "Bang" in the first place? The best current answer is inflation, proposed by Alan Guth in 1981. Inflation imagines that a tiny region of space can be dominated by "false vacuum energy" for a brief time, stretching out space and making it smoother as it expands. This model both explains why the universe is smooth on large scales but not perfectly so, since tiny quantum jiggles lead to fluctuations in the density of matter. These fluctuations show up in the Cosmic Microwave Background, leftover radiation from the Big Bang itself, and recent observations from NASA's WMAP satellite confirm that they look exactly like inflation predicts. A few billion years later, gravity has magnified these small perturbations into the galaxies that we observe today.
Left: The WMAP, an image of the very early universe. The individual colors and patterns represent the earliest precursors to galaxies/clusters. Center: NASA-Computer generated image of what the universe may have looked like a few hundred million years after the big bang. The glowing streamers are hundreds of millions of light years long and represent proto-superclusters of galaxies. Right: The Hubble Ultra-Deep Field View (Enlarge) shows the most distant galaxies we can observe as they appeared a few billion years after the Big Bang. Each point of light is an entire galaxy containing billions of individual stars.
DS: What is Dark Matter?
SC: "Dark" is a euphemism -- it means not only that the stuff is completely invisible, but that it isn't anything ever seen in a laboratory here on Earth. Clearly, we'd rather not have to invoke such stuff. Nevertheless, the data have forced us to believe that ordinary matter is only about 5% of the universe; another 25% is "dark matter," and the remaining 70% is "dark energy."
Dark matter is some kind of particle that doesn't interact with light, so that we can't see it directly. We know it's there because it creates a gravitational field, and we can detect that gravitational field. In fact, we detect it over and over again -- the single idea of dark matter allows us to account for the behavior of our Milky Way, of other galaxies, of large-scale groups of galaxies, of the expansion of the universe, and of the patterns we observe in the microwave background. The most popular dark-matter candidates are "weakly-interacting massive particles" (or WIMPs), which are predicted by models such as "supersymmetry." Supersymmetry is an ambitious idea that proposes a new kind of fermion (matter-like particle) for every existing boson (force-like particle), and vice-versa. The Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, scheduled to turn on next year, will be looking for supersymmetry, among other things.
DS: OK, then what is Dark Energy?
SC: Dark energy is completely different -- it's a certain amount of energy density inherent in space itself. Every cubic centimeter of space contains a fixed and immutable amount of dark energy, even if it's completely empty! The dark energy doesn't cluster into galaxies like dark matter, nor does it dilute away as the universe expands. Again, we have multiple independent lines of evidence in favor of this surprising idea -- from precision measurements of the expansion of the universe, to the evolution of large-scale structure, to the overall curvature of space itself. What the dark energy really is, and why it comes in the amount it does, remain a mystery; but there is plenty of evidence that it really is there.
Enlarge Illustration--Recent observations indicate the presence of mysterious Dark Energy which is accelerating the rate at which the universe expands. if this process continues unabated, it could result in The Big Rip: Time and Space, down to the scale of individual atoms, will literally explode.
DS: What is string theory?
SC: String theory is the very simple idea that, if we looked with a good enough microscope, we would be able to resolve elementary particles into tiny loops of vibrating string. Sounds simple (and goofy) enough, but it has powerful consequences, including the most interesting one of all - it includes gravity! Since gravity does exist, and since it's been extremely difficult to reconcile gravity with particle physics by any other means, string theory has become a very popular subject of study among theoretical physicists.
The problem is, at the moment we don't understand the theory very well, and in particular we don't know how to connect it directly to the world of experiment. It does predict supersymmetry -- but doesn't say whether it will be accessible at particle accelerators. It also predicts dark energy -- but at a much larger value, naively, than what we actually observe. At this point, string theory is a promising idea, but one that isn't understood nearly well enough to know how it fits into the rest of physics, if at all.
DS: Are there any indications from experimental physics or observations that strings even exist?
SC: No - not yet, anyway. But gravity exists, and we have to explain it somehow. There was one piece of data that dramatically affected work in the field: the discovery of dark energy. Before that, string theorists were considering solutions that had zero dark energy, and were hoping that such a solution would be unique. Now that they have started looking for solutions with non-zero dark energy, it has begun to look like such solutions are extremely non-unique! There could be something like 10 500 possibilities. Some of them will look like the world we see, most will look dramatically different. It's possible that there are many different parts of the universe, and that every possible solution to string theory is represented somewhere or another.
Maybe, maybe not. Ultimately, the important thing is the data that will be coming in from new experiments. Not only new telescopes and new particle accelerators, but schemes to detect dark matter, to measure gravitational waves from distant black holes, and look for new forces in laboratory tests. Over the last hundred years we went from knowing almost nothing to knowing quite a bit about our universe, and there's every reason to believe that the next hundred years will be just as exciting.
Prof. Sean Carroll is the author of the graduate level textbook Spacetime Geometry: An Introduction to General Relativity. Currently at the University of Chicago, he will be moving to Caltech in the fall. He blogs along with several other physicists and cosmologists at Cosmic Variance.
Open Thread and Diary Rescue
Thu Jun 22, 2006 at 08:44:26 PM PDT
Diaries up for rescue tonight:
- RichardR's Gay activism and civil rights in crisis gives a history of the gay rights movement, focusing on the pre-AIDS era through the immediate aftermath, and posits that "gay partyism" versus "gay activism" has complicated the future of the movement.
- T Rex's Blog Locally advises that local political blogging is where it's at because the top-tier national blogs already have bases covered while blogs about regional issues are minimal.
- LithiumCola's Broder: The Sound and the Fury is a feisty, quick, masterful takedown of the DC beltway pundit's condescending column about liberal blogs.
- Gegner's Since the days of Pharaoh is an essay focusing on class distinctions - their long, long history and how they persist even after death - after musing about distinctions in graveyards.
- wilbur's Metamorphosis of the The New Republic is a brilliant takedown of TNR, based on Kafka's Metamorphisis. Snark and literary brilliance rolled into one.
- H2O Man's Setting Dick Cheney's Picnic Table looks at the current American political scene through the lens of the extended family, and offers tips on how to reach the "out-of-touch" relatives - our fellow citizens.
- BarbinMD's News Round-up: The Senate Debate on Iraq offers a great analysis of how yesterday's Iraq Senate debate was played in the media as showing the Democrats were "divided."
- AdamR's Land Tax and "The Conservative Nanny State" discusses the use of land taxes and how a larger emphasis on them in the tax structure could lead to a more equitable distribution of taxation and services.
- Rusty1776's Progressives Are the Conscience of America is a beautiful manifesto of progressive beliefs, managing to be both full of sorrow and hope at the same time. Really great writing on display.
- nhcollegedem's How I Changed the Democratic Party tells a great true-life story about how one determined person can make a difference, from the grassroots to elected ears.
- etherapy's My Personal "Had Enough" Campaign gives a first-hand report of an initial VERY SUCCESSFUL foray using yesterday's suggestion by cheeselord of using "Had Enough" slogans. Great stuff.
- Lockse's In response to 'Strip-mining the Grassroots' offers a response to the recent series criticizing GCI by greggish.
- Graff4Dean's Taking back our elections challenges Kossacks to become poll workers - ideally in every precinct in America - and asks for help in organizing a database and campaign to do so. First-time diarist ... show some love.
- Superribbie's June Composite House Rankings by Pro Prognosticators gives a super up-to-date round-up of the House races, including leaners and likelies, on both sides of the fence.
- Jay Elias' Another Republican Tax Hike discusses the hidden tax known as "universal service" on your phone bills and explains the history behind the charge.
Add favorites from the day below and use as an open thread.
Small Group of Republicans Hijack Renewal of the Voting Rights Act
Thu Jun 22, 2006 at 08:17:59 PM PDT
A funny thing happened on the way to renewing the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The renewal of the Act was supported by the House and Senate leaders of both parties. It was co-sponsored by some 46 Senators and 152 House members. It enjoyed true bi-partisan support and was scheduled for a vote yesterday. But that vote has been indefinitely postponed.
House Republicans suddenly postponed consideration of the bill after some Republicans cried foul over--well, protecting the right to vote:
House leaders abruptly canceled a vote to renew the 1965 Voting Rights Act yesterday after rank-and-file Republicans revolted over provisions that require bilingual ballots in many places and continued federal oversight of voting practices in Southern states.
The intensity of the complaints, raised in a closed meeting of GOP lawmakers, surprised Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and his lieutenants, who thought the path was clear to renew the act's key provisions for 25 years. The act is widely considered a civil rights landmark that helped thousands of African Americans gain access to the ballot box. Its renewal seemed assured when House and Senate Republican and Democratic leaders embraced it in a May 2 kickoff on the Capitol steps.
But many Southerners feel the law has achieved its purpose and become more nuisance than necessity in several respects. They have aired those arguments for years, but yesterday they got a boost from Republicans scattered throughout the nation who are increasingly raising a different concern: They insist that immigrants learn and use English.
This small, vocal and profoundly wrong group of Republicans believe that it is a "nuisance" to federally monitor states with a history of voter discrimination. Due to a history of voter discrimination, several states (among them Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Virginia, Texas, Arizona and Alaska) are required by the Act to submit changes in voting procedures to the Department of Justice for approval.
Major objections to the bill came from Republicans from Texas and Georgia, who argue that the law has outlived its purpose. To those who think that voter discrimination is a thing of the past, Congressman John Lewis (D-GA) responded as follows:
"[I]t was during the middle of the last census that the Georgia State Legislature authored a redistricting plan that severely diluted the power of the African American vote. It was Georgia that developed the modern-day poll tax, as one federal judge called it, that disenfranchises rural voters, the elderly, the disabled, students and other minorities who have no government photo ID. It is the state of Georgia that has received over 80 objections from the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice since the last reauthorization, pointing to discriminatory voting plans agreed to by state, county, and local governments. And Georgia represents only a part of the over 1000 objections the DOJ has seen fit to make since the last reauthorization in 1982.
"The evidence shows that voting discrimination in America is not dead, and the Voting Rights Act must retain its original power in order to assure that democracy prevails in every hill and valley, every city and suburb, on every fertile farm and every desert plain in America. If we as a nation and a people are truly committed to the full participation of every American in the democratic process, then there should be no serious impediment to the passage of H.R. 9. To every Member who has looked at the overwhelming evidence, it is clear that we have come a great distance, but we still have a great distance to go before we can lay down the burden of voting discrimination in America."
This necessary and bipartisan legislation is being held hostage by a core group of blinded Republicans who refuse to recognize the rampant voter discrimination and disenfranchisement in their own states. Ignoring voter discrimination won't make it go away.
Take a moment tonight or tomorrow and call your representatives in Congress. Please urge them to ignore this fringe group of misguided Republicans who are stonewalling the renewal process, and to get this crucial piece of legislation passed as soon as possible.
Update [2006-6-22 23:39:52 by georgia10]:: Eugene Robinson has more:
So there we have it. In one breathtaking moment of clarity, we see that a significant portion of the House Republican caucus is determined to deep-six, or at least fatally weaken, a landmark law designed to make it possible for the nation's largest minority groups to exercise their franchise at the polls -- and designed to make it difficult for anyone with nefarious intent to keep these minority citizens from voting.
Open Thread
Thu Jun 22, 2006 at 06:44:33 PM PDT
Get it off your chest.
Beyond Iraq
Thu Jun 22, 2006 at 06:41:10 PM PDT
The most infuriating aspect of the administration's "stay the course until we drive off the cliff" strategy in Iraq is this oft-repeated lie: that sacrificing some 2,500 lives and spending billions of dollars in a country that splitting apart at its seams is necessary to secure our safety here at home. The Vice-President repeated this lie again today as Democrats pressed for some sort of exit strategy in Iraq:
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Withdrawing American troops from Iraq would embolden terrorists and leave the United States and its allies vulnerable to new attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney said Thursday.
"The worst possible thing we could do is what the Democrats are suggesting," Cheney told CNN's John King in an interview at the vice president's residence. [...]
Neither an immediate nor phased withdrawal would confer any protection on the United States, Cheney said. "If we pull out, they'll follow us," he said of terrorists.
This is, of course, the most cowardly of lies, meant to lull the American people into a sense of security, as if tethering ourselves permanently in Iraq will somehow keep terrorists quarantined in the Middle East.
Yet there are daily reminders that Iraq cannot remain our predominate focus in combating terrorism. Four U.S. soldiers were killed today in Afghanistan, and another was wounded. And in Florida, a terror raid has revealed possible domestic terrorists:
MIAMI - Federal law-enforcement sources tell NBC News that the FBI has arrested seven men here as part of an ongoing terrorism operation.
The men -- part of a radical Black Muslim group -- were planning terror acts in Miami and Chicago, the officials say. The planned targets were the Sears Tower in Chicago and a federal building in Miami.
An official told The Associated Press the alleged plotters were mainly Americans with no apparent ties to al-Qaida or other foreign terrorist organizations. He spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to pre-empt news conferences planned for Friday in Washington and Miami.
Kudos to law enforcement officials for discovering the alleged plot before it could be implemented. Yet today's news from Afghanistan and Florida reminds us that terrorists are thriving in nations where we prematurely declared victory, and they are thriving among us on our own soil as well. Stubbornly remaining in the quicksands of Iraq will not protect us from terrorists here and abroad. And no spin from from the Vice-President can conceal that sad fact.
Eliot Spitzer Endorses Brian Keeler for NY State Senate
Thu Jun 22, 2006 at 04:58:47 PM PDT
Good news for our own hero of the netroots, NYBri, known to the rest of the world as Brian Keeler:
(June 22, 2006, Hopewell Junction, New York)
Today, the Keeler2006 campaign announced that Eliot Spitzer, Democratic candidate for Governor of New York, endorsed Brian Keeler in his race for the New York State Senate in the 41st District, which includes most of Dutchess and all of Columbia County.
"I look forward to working with Brian in Albany," Spitzer said. "From day one of our administration, the Spitzer/Patterson/Keeler team will work for real reform; transforming state government for the better every step of the way."
"We are pleased to be working with Eliot," Keeler said. "Together we can create a NEW Team, for a NEW vision of the future, for a NEW sense of hope and a NEW New York."
Brian went from blog reader to commenter to Daily Kos diarist to founder of ePluribus Media to endorsed candidate for the State Senate of New York in 18 months. Pretty good blueprint for crashing the gate.
Contribute here to Brian's campaign, and volunteer to help take back the New York Senate so the next Democratic governor, Spitzer, will have a Democratic Senate to work with.
Democrats and Iraq
Thu Jun 22, 2006 at 04:17:02 PM PDT
Paul Begala has a good post on Iraq over at TPM Cafe and an instructive take, I believe, on how Democrats can take on the issue in the coming months.
The media are hyperventilating about "Democrats in disarray" over the war in Iraq. ABC's "The Note" captures the stupidity, vapidity and gullibility of the mainstream media perfectly: "Democrats can deny it all they want (and not all do. . .), but they are on the precipice of self-immolating over the issue that has most crippled the Bush presidency and of making facts on the ground virtually meaningless. In other words, they are on the precipice of making Iraq a 2006 political winner for the Republican Party."
...
As usual, the Smart Guys have it backwards. Democrats can and will win the Iraq debate if they embrace the fact that they disagree and contrast it with the slavish, mindless rubber-stamp Republicans.
...
The only place in the American government where there is an honest and spirited debate over Iraq is within the Democratic Party. Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer are not on the same page - and that's a good thing. Hillary Clinton and John Kerry disagree. Hooray for that.... At least someone is debating what to do.
The fact is the American people want a new direction in Iraq, and the Democrats offer several. The Republicans, on the other hand, offer nothing more than a four-word strategy: more of the same.
...
In short, Democrats can and will win the debate over the war in Iraq not by playing defense (pleading "We're NOT for cut and run!") but on offense: the Republican Congress has blindly backed a failed strategy that has left 2,500 Americans dead, 20,000 wounded, and put us $2 trillion in the hole.
Being part of a party that has three or four different new approaches to Iraq beats the hell out of being part of a party that marches in lockstep off a cliff.
Begala's point is one that should be hammered home on every issue in which this Rubber Stamp Republican Congress is in lockstep with BushCo: contrast. We're actively looking for and debating solutions; they're doggedly "staying the course."
But no where will this carry more weight with American voters than in the Iraq debate. We've long since passed the point at which soothing half-truths (and outright lies) like "Mission Accomplished" or "last throes" will wash with a public whose eyes have opened to the truth of this debacle.
The Democrats have to have a plan to win the public's trust? Well how about we have three plans? How about we finally have an honest and open debate about the mess this administration created in Iraq, and the incredibly complex job we're going to have getting out of it? Isn't that what governance is? You can't count on the Rubber Stamp Republicans to force the administration to answer the hard questions. Hell, they won't even come up with the questions in the first place. The Democrats understand the complexity of this war, and are willing to start the hard work of debating and finding solutions.
