Don't Go Wobbly

I may have been overly effusive in my praise of Democratic efforts to come out swinging at Republican corruption and cronyism. This article, where Sen. Reid inexplicably apologizes to 33 GOP Senators, not for specific allegations in the report (none of which have been questioned) but apparently for creating it on Senate letterhead, is deeply puzzling. It allowed the writer to operate in a fact-free universe, and imagine the scandal as a bipartisan one:

The Abramoff investigation threatens to ensnare at least a half dozen members of Congress of both parties and Bush administration officials. Abramoff, who has admitted to conspiring to defraud his Indian tribe clients, has pleaded guilty to corruption-related charges and is cooperating with prosecutors.

With the midterm elections 10 months away, Democrats have tried to link Abramoff to Republicans, the main recipients of his largesse.

As Josh Marshall notes, not one Democratic member of Congress is under investigation in the Abramoff case. And "trying to link" Abramoff to Republicans is like "trying to link" Superman to the Justice League of America. Abramoff is a Republican. The former head of the College Republicans. A Bush patriot whose personal contributions of over $150,000 have all been given to Republicans. In fact, once Abramoff started dealing with tribal clients who historically gave money to both parties, these tribes started giving less money to Democrats.

The article is a piece of garbage. But the fact that Sen. Reid apologized allowed it to venture into "everybody does it" territory. Digby made his concerns known about this a couple days ago, referring to a Reid interview with Jim Lehrer that I didn't see:

Here we have Harry Reid trying very hard to make Jim Lehrer see that this is a Republican scandal. But because he is focused on "lobbying reform" --- just like the Republicans are --- Jim doesn't see the beef. Everybody knows that politicans and lobbyists are in each others' pockets. This seems to him like a tempest in a teapot. (Or he's pretending it does. Lehrer knows very well what the real story is.)

The problem is that Reid and the rest of the Democratic party believed that they had to "offer a solution" because otherwise the public would think they are just being negative. (And yes, the punditocrisy would have been all over them for not offering any solutions, just like they always are.) But had they simply said, "this is way beyond lobbying reform. Republicans like Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff have been running a criminal enterprise out of the US congress," they could have framed the argument as Republican criminality instead of systemic problems that can be fixed with a few changes in the rules.

It upsets me to say that this sounds very right. I think the drip drip drip of the Justice Department will eventually compel the suggestion that this is Republican criminality in Congress that we're dealing with here. But remember, it's Bush's Justice Department. And he won't even go on the record about repeated visits by Abramoff to the White House for meetings with staff members.

So now is not the time to go wobbly. Democratic strategists that are afraid to challenge the White House on illegal domestic spying because they think it will damage credibility on national security are the same people that have consistently lost elections for over a decade. They're the same people that have dove public opinion on Democratic national security right into the shitter, simply by buying in to Republican framing and spin. It's as if there is no contact between these strategists and the base constituency. There are admirable Democrats who have been doing their job, but far too many are still way too reactive to these bullshit spin arguments. As soon as they say "Democrats have no ideas" they offer up a plan for ethics reform without detailing that Republicans have broken existing laws. As soon as they say "Democrats are soft on national security" they fret over discussing ANYTHING to do with the topic, even if Republican credibility on Iraq is shot, and if the real issue of civil liberties is incredibly resonant to most Americans.

Then they go ahead and get a guy to give the Democratic rebuttal for the State of the Union who needs a public speaking coach. And that's not a metaphor, he ACTUALLY needs a public speaking coach.

It's like we're trying to lose. Sigh...