Let's review Senator Schumer's strategy last week. After having pulled bigtime for Mukasey, he kept his head down during the waterboarding fiasco, then bonded with DiFi, stuck with his man, and got the bad news out quick as part of the Friday afternoon news dump. Then Monday he will move on and try not to comment further.
But we must not move on from this. When the majority of Democrats on the Judiciary Committee come out against Mukasey what are we to make of the fact that senior democratic senators from the two most progressive states in the union buck their consituents and buck their colleagues on the committee and green light a nominee who thumbs his nose at habeus corpus, embraces the unitary executive, and plays dumb about waterboarding? I for one have spent the weekend in frustrated consternation. What do I do in two years when, as a New Yorker, I am given the Hobson's choice of Schumer versus some neandrathal repuglican? Not vote? Vote Green? None of these are very palatable, but I can say this - I will not vote for Schumer.
Schumer and Feinstein and Lieberman make a mockery of the Democratic Party - and Reid & Pelosi's acquiescence and refusal to invoke any semblence of party discipline in any of these capitulations is just shameful. It all forces me to a painful conclusion.
We are the DINO's, not them. Feingold, Kennedy, and others like Kucinich, and maybe even Edwards, are not Democrats like Schumer and Reid are Democrats. But the latter group - Schumer, Reid, Pelosi, and Emmanuel, they control and define the party such as it is, and will continue to going forward. I recall Reagan's lament (can't believe I'm quoting him!) "I didn't abandon the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party abandoned me." Well, even though I despised RR, this quote fits, and for several years now I have felt thoroughly abandoned. And this latest cave - endorsing an AG nominee who will not defend Habeus, and isn't sure that the President has to obey the law THIS AFTER ALL THE SCANDALS AND LAWLESSNESS WE'VE BEEN THROUGH- this may be the last straw for me.
So to those of you in New York and California who will continue to pull the lever (or touch the damn screen) for old line democrats, be aware that by going along and getting along you are voting for torture, voting for a monarchical executive, and voting for imprisonment without trial.
May the Schumers Feinsteins and Liebermans of the world find themselves forced to witness just some of the suffering they have brokered, and recognize their part in it.