No Surrender

In his first post-election press conference, sparring nonchalantly with the toothless White House press corps, George W. Bush was relaxed, expansive, coherent, and condescending.

He expects that his election victory gives him the opportunity to set the media and political agenda, not react to it as he did so frantically and ineptly during the last days of his campaign.

Sorry, George.

No honeymoon.

No mandate.

No surrender.

We were right on the issues, just wrong on the arithmetic.

Whether Kerry won or lost, November 2 wasn’t going to be a finish line.

It was going a starting line for four years of marathon political struggle with the Republican machine.

Here’s the silver lining:

With control of all three branches of government in the hands of the Republicans, we don’t have to worry about the responsibilities of governing.

Or reassuring Midwestern farmers that we aren’t going to force them to throw aside their guns and Bibles and enter into compulsory gay marriages, or whatever else Karl Rove told them to worry about.

We can choose which targets to defend — and which to attack.

Don’t look for a line of demoralized Dems retreating to their holes for three months of self-flagellation and navel-gazing.

Don’t expect Democratic Senators and Representatives to line up to serve as window dressing for Bush legislative photo ops, hoping that an abject exhibition of humiliation and impotence will translate into home-state political advantage.

Any Democratic pol who rolls over for a president who scraped together only 51% of the vote won’t get political cover.

Instead, we will not only notice and condemn; we will remember, and in that election season when negative ads and primary challenges can decimate an incumbent’s war chest and prospects, we will attack.

Accommodation with Bush will get us — the Democratic Party and the American people — nowhere.

Attack and obstruction will force him to defend, respond, and overreact with that unique combination of incompetence and arrogance that has characterized Bush throughout his life.

We created a potent political machine for the election. We can’t let it wither away.

We can use it to give the Bush administration some headaches.

Most importantly, we can keep the policies that we champion before the American people, as a reminder of what might have been, what should have been — and what could still be.

First up: Ohio.

Let’s show that the Democrats still have a few teeth by demanding a county-by-county recount.

The DNC has recount money. Let’s force them to use it.

Let’s find out how people really voted, how the absentee and provisional ballots shake out, analyze the exit polling and draw a bead on the Diebold machines.

Nixon pursued his1960 recount effort against Kennedy in Illinois and other states well through December.

He did it through local Republican proxies, instead of exposing himself to ridicule and reproach by leading the effort himself.

We can do the same for Kerry.

Let’s educate America and show Bush we know what kind of garbage it takes for Republicans to win an election.

Next up: Social Security.

We draw the line: no private accounts. We don’t let a few Democrat renegades sell out the party in committee, as happened in the Medicare debacle.

We lead from the ranks, if necessary, and force our senators to filibuster against privatization.

Next up: Iran.

This president has demonstrated he lacks the judgment and integrity to lead this nation into war. If he tries to start another war, we hit the bricks big time: protest marches, civil disobedience, the works.

After all, if we believe in these things — and not just in winning an election — we’ll continue to fight for them.

Even if the Democratic Party is a smoking ruin, and its Congressional presence is powerless and risible.

Without top-down leadership, with no Democrat holding high office and the DNC cowed, marginalized, and risk-averse, we’ll have to develop our political agenda ad hoc from the grass roots.

We will need persistence, consistency, discipline, coordination, institutional memory, and money.

We’ll probably need an established, aggressively partisan organization like Moveon to fill the void that the defeat of the Democratic Party has left us.

Without a coherent network of think tanks, pundits, and media fellow travelers, we’ll have to find different ways to get our message out.

But we learned that, even if the progressive side of the Internet doesn’t move in lockstep like the right wing side, our ad hoc pack was able to savage Sinclair and drive a few stories in the mainstream media.

When we can provide activism, ardor, money, media, and organization, we can also provide a politician with courage — the courage to be the kind of leader we demand and need.

A leader who will confront, condemn, and mock the empty sham that is the Bush presidency.

Listen to Bush acting like a giddy fratboy smartass two days after riding the backs of the cynical, gullible, obsessed, and venal to power.

…

If we stick together, in a few months George will revert to form and be hiding from, instead of sarcastically invoking, the popular will.

We did a pretty good job of coming together behind John Kerry — and John Kerry did a pretty good job bearing our flag in the 2004 election.

Now we need to stay together for the sake of our country and the things we believe in.

There’s no shortage of good fights to pick.

And we can — and should — start today.

Copyright 2004 Peter Lee

Peter Lee is the creator of the anti-war satire and commentary website Halcyon Days. He can be reached at peter@halcyondays.info.