David Lindorff Educates Us About the Democrats and the Need To Impeach

Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Democrats Aren't Wafflers, They're Wifflers

The Democratic Party is not a bunch of wafflers. They are a bunch of WIFLers.

Let me explain.

If you assume that the Democratic Party leadership is not a bunch of idiots, then the only alternative theory has to be that they think that we are.

How else to explain this continuing failed “policy” of so-called progressive Democrats in Congress of passing terrible legislation and claiming that they will “fix it” later?

The approach seems to have first been developed early in the 1990s, when Bill Clinton came up with his disastrous “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy for gays in the military. Everyone knew it was a shameful climbdown from his campaign promise to end discrimination against gays and lesbians in the military, but the claim, and that the policy was doomed to failure, but Clinton and his supporters claimed that they’d “at least” get that lousy policy adopted and then they’d “fix it” later.

They never did.

The same approach was taken to welfare “reform.” Everyone could see that throwing people off of welfare after one five-year stretch in an economy that had no jobs and no childcare to offer was going to create more poverty and hardship, but Democrats promised that before that dire day came, they’d “fix it.”

They never did and poverty rates have soared in America.

Likewise with the Clinton-era “Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act,” which pandered to right-wing clamor for get-tough laws after the Oklahoma City bombing by undermining habeas corpus. “We’ll fix it,” the liberals promised.

They never did, and it paved the way for the vitiation of habeas under President Bush.

Democrats in Congress since 9-11 have continued with this cheap ploy, hoping that by voting for crappy legislation, they can get “cover” from attacks from the right, while hanging on to liberal support with the false promise that later they will “fix it.”

They did this when they provided their overwhelming backing for the USA PATRIOT Act and for its extension. They did it with the Military Commissions Act that seeks to retroactively legalize torture,

And now they’ve done it with the revision—destruction really—of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

In a sense, the Democratic backing for full funding of the Iraq War and occupation through September was the same kind of thing. “We’ll fix this in October,” was the mantra, as they provided Bush with all the money he wanted to keep the slaughter and killing going through the summer.

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