DiFi Watch: MoveOn Calls For Censure

Adding to the dozens of organizations trying to hold Sen. Feinstein accountable is MoveOn, who sent their 500,000-member list in California this today:

Dear fellow Californian,

Last week, every member of the Senate had a chance to take a stand against torture. Most Democrats did-they opposed the nomination of Michael Mukasey for Attorney General because he left the door open to torture. He wouldn't, for example, say whether water-boarding-an interrogation technique that simulates drowning-constituted torture.

But Senator Feinstein wasn't with the majority of Democrats-she actually cast a pivotal vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee to confirm him.

And that's not all. In recent months, Senator Feinstein backed the president on issues ranging from right-wing judges to immunity for phone companies that broke the law.

Now, California Democrats-led by our friends at the Courage Campaign-are seriously organizing to get her attention. They've launched a grassroots campaign to ask the California Democratic Party to officially censure Senator Feinstein when its executive board meets this weekend.

The medium is really the message here. The actual censure resolution is not going to pass. Establishment CDP types will squash it at the Resolutions Committee and ignore the grassroots call for change in the process.

"It is going to be thrown out and rejected," said Bob Mulholland, a veteran party strategist in Sacramento. "Sometimes people can't anticipate or can't understand the big picture."

State Democratic Party Chairman Art Torres did not return messages seeking comment. But his spokesman Roger Salazar told the Sacramento Bee, "this party supports our Democratic senator and will continue to do so...Period."

Bob Mulholland, by the way, is unbelievably out of touch.

I'm told that PDA is set to go forward with signature gathering to bring the censure resolution to the floor if it's blocked in committee, but apparently, because it's a late resolution, that would be out of order. The CDP bigwigs are likely to succeed in protecting their own little fiefdom here.

However, the real benefit is in the attention this garnered. Not just in the blogosphere, where stalwarts like Glenn Greenwald ripped apart the CDP's incumbency-protection-at-all-costs statement...

The Chairman has so decreed. And one can only marvel at the patronizing explanation that those who are angry about Feinstein's Bush-revering simply "can't understand the big picture."

So, in other words, they'll blindly support Feinstein no matter what she does. And she'll continue to support the Bush administration no matter what. That means, by virtue of the transitive property, that the Democratic Party apparatus will continue to support the Bush administration no matter what -- which is, of course, what explains what has been happening the last several years, and particularly this year.

...but throughout the progressive movement. Not all of MoveOn's membership aggressively follows the news. They share the organization's values and rely on it for information about what's happening. The liberal base of the party just got dropped on what Dianne Feinstein's been up to, and this will only snowball the calls for action.

The CDP has changed a little for the better overall, but at the upper echelons, they're still a relic, a by-product of insider hacks and wannabe politicians who worship at the altar of power and are stuck in a DLC-type mindset. The Legislature is too swamped by money and too concerned with self-aggrandizement. The reforms needed are obvious but there's a brick wall or hackdom you have to cut through to get to them. This mini-revolt against Feinstein is not an isolated incident, it's a symptom of something much bigger that's wrong with the Party. With a trashed Republican brand, we can do so much better than where we are right now.