The Technocrat

by db
1984. After the press successfully calls his bluff of extra-marital affairs, Sen. Gary Hart, the party’s self-anointed agent of generational change, loses any real shot at taking the nomination, much less seriously challenging, the party’s presumed leader, former-VP Walter Mondale. Mondale loses the general.

1988. Leveraging effective fundraising to build a cash advantage and a weak wider field, despite the surprising success of Rev. Jesse Jackson in some sections, Mass. Governor Michael Dukakis cruises to the Democratic nomination. Dukakis loses the general.

1992. Clinton loses Iowa, New Hampshire and several other early primary states to Tom Harkin, Paul Tsongas and Jerry Brown, but eventually turns the tide with a win in Georgia and cruises to the nomination. Clinton wins the general.

2000. Bill Bradley hits the cover of Time and quickly disappears as a competitor of any real threat to then-VP Al Gore. Gore loses the general.

2004. Howard Dean, after reinvigorating the base and leading a campaign that spawns a new generation of Democratic technology activists, implodes after a third-place finish in Iowa and, with that, ends any real threat to the former front-runner Sen. Kerry. Kerry loses the general.

Now, let’s do a slight contrast and compare with recent GOP primary history:
1976. President “by accident” Gerald Ford faces a surprisingly strong bid by CA Governor Ronald Reagan in the primary. Despite this, he nearly wins the general.

1980. Bush upset the presumptive front-runner Reagan with a victory in the Iowa Caucuses and nearly defeated him in NH. Reagan wins both the primary and the general.

1988. Then-VP Bush faces Dole and a series of other candidates in the nomination, struggling against headlines that mention the “wimp factor” and the “vision thing,” as he put it, but eventually prevails. Bush wins the general.

1992. Buchanan puts up a temporary threat to incumbent President Bush. Bush sails to the nomination and tanks in the general.

1996. Feeling their royalist roots, the GOP hands the nomination to Bob Dole, who suffers nary a bleep on the campaign trail, but gets shut down in the general.

2000. George W. Bush’s campaign suffers a near-death moment when Sen. McCain defeats Bush in the NH primary. Bush wins the general.

Net net: Competition in primaries makes for a better general election candidate. Conversely, less competition makes for a worse general election candidate. So, whether you feel Clinton or Obama started this week’s fracas surrounding meeting with leaders of rogue nation’s or who is most like the current administration, remember this: It’s a good thing.

by db
The Technocrat has been joined by a long-time friend and fan, Ben. I will allow Ben to introduce himself, but just wanted to send a note to readers that there are now two contributors while I hunt down the appropriate WordPress code to enable “author display.” Until then, we’ll mark our bylines in the articles.

by bk

Should Presidents Bush and Cheney be impeached? Should we do what’s right or what’s doable? It boils down to how we honor our constitution and fix the damage done while balancing that with policy needs (a workable exit strategy for Iraq) and political realities.

There are several things I firmly believe:
1) BushCheneyCo (BCC) has done serious damage, Constitutionally, Geo-Politically, Militarily.
2) They have done this thru extra-constitutional executive powers as well as deceit and manipulation including Cheney’s manipulation of what W sees and hears.
Therefore, they have arguably committed high crimes and/or misdemeanors and should rightly be tried for impeachment.
But I also believe that
3) There is no chance of getting 67 votes to impeach in the Senate. We can’t even get 60 for an Iraqi War vote with that polling as well as it does.
4) Impeachment hearings would dominate the conversation preventing any chance of coming to a solution on Iraq (or anything else) by pealing off vulnerable Congressional Republicans.

So right or not, impeachment won’t happen and nothing else will get done for the next 18 months. This would further cynicize a good deal of the populous which would stall or reverse the gains of Democrats on the issues, in party identification, donations, and voter turnout.

So what should the Democrats do?
For one, we should call it what it is, a constitutional crisis brought about by a power hungry executive using, like no executive before them, vague executive powers like executive privilege and signing statements which constitutionally don’t exist. And from people that would most certainly call themselves “strict constructionists”, it is especially ironic and helps demonstrates their ravenous hunger for power.

Secondly, we should highlight everything they have done, schedule a hearing of the week at which BCC officials will exert executive privilege and help prove the point. Okay, we may already be doing this one but we should be calling them constitutional issues and the whole affair a constitutional crisis and we should repeat it till peoples ears bleed.

Then we can magnanimously not exert our right to a constitutional solution (impeachment) and develop a 3 – 5 point plan for limiting and defining the executive powers that BCC has used to do as they wished regardless of the law. The plan should be devised with input from former Presidents, current and past Democratic Congressional leadership, and Democratic Presidential candidates. It should define executive privilege and where it’s applicable, define how signing statements can be used and how they can be reviewed, and it should address the classification system, can VPs de-classify on the fly, can they create their own classification? Then the irony is we use executive order as the means to enact the changes. Democratic Presidential candidates pledge to honor the plan via executive order as their first order of business.

We can then use the plan to link all Republicans to the current administration during the primaries and the general election. We ask Republican Presidential candidates to make the pledge continually thru the primaries while touting how all the Democratic candidates have. Basically we beat them over the head with it, forcing the Republican candidates to defend the BCC expansionist agenda or acquiesce. All the while talking about the Constitutional Crisis that BCC have brought about and how the only other recourse is impeachment which we’ve put aside because, like the American people, we desire to move forward while fixing the damage.

Impeachment proceedings almost explicitly says the Democrats have given up on getting anything done for the next 18 months. While it seems clear to those paying attention that the WH has done that already, that’s implicit in their actions and most people won’t catch it. So Democrats need to pick up the basic issue, the debasement of our Constitution, call it what it is a Constitutional Crisis and tell the America people how we are going to fix it, when a Democrat is back in the WH.