Dreamِ Maidenِ and City

Targeting bad Democrats

(updated below – Update II – Update III)

House Democrats are expected to unveil and possibly vote on their FISA bill this week. While they may (or may not) end up securing some additional, mild safeguards against eavesdropping abuses as compared to the Rockefeller/Cheney Senate bill, it is almost certain that they will ultimately end up granting amnesty to lawbreaking telecoms and gutting most of the long-standing, core protections of FISA. The recent, extraordinary revelations of just how sweeping is the administration’s spying on domestic calls and emails of Americans seem to have had little effect thus far on what appears to be the inevitable course.

As this week’s red-district election to Congress of anti-telecom-amnesty candidate Bill Foster demonstrates, they’re not doing these things because it’s politically necessary. They’re doing it because more than enough Democrats believe in the virtues of telecom amnesty and warrantless eavesdropping — just as they believe in the continued occupation of Iraq, the abolition of habeas corpus, the “enhanced interrogation techniques” authorized by Military Commissions Act, concealing Bush’s illegal eavesdropping programs, and a long array of other radical Bush policies that now have bipartisan Congressional support.

There’s absolutely no point in helping to elect Democrats like that to Congress or helping them to stay there. Yesterday, there was some celebration over the fact that Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor will be re-elected without opposition this year. That’s the same Mark Pryor who voted for the Military Commissions Act, for the Protect America Act, for telecom immunity, against every Iraq redeployment measure, and scores of other similar votes. The fact that he’s being re-elected with no opposition demonstrates his extremely strong political standing, i.e., that he cast these votes because they reflect what he believes. What’s to celebrate about the fact that someone like that — with that belief system — is returning to the Senate?

Democrats are never going to change their behavior if there continues to be no price for what they’re doing. If even the most pro-Bush Democrats continue to receive reflexive support from other Democrats, regardless of how fundamentally they reject the political values of those Democrats, they will continue on the same course. Why wouldn’t they? And if Democrats whose political values are violated by these office holders refrain from ever working against them, solely because they have a (D) after their name, then this process will continue unabated.

The only real prospect for changing any of that is to attach a political price, some form of meaningful punishment, when they do things such as vote to abolish habeas corpus or to vest new warrantless eavesdropping powers in the President or to grant amnesty to telecoms. That needs to be done even if it means weakening the bad Democrat in question. Last October, when six House Democrats announced that they would vote to sustain Bush’s veto of SCHIP legislation, a group of blogs — including FDL and C&L — raised funds to run negative robocalls in the districts of all six, and five of the six ended up switching their position.

There is now an effort underway to repeat — and escalate — that process with the still-pending FISA and telecom amnesty fight. Six generally pro-Bush House Democrats, who have announced that they support telecom amnesty, have been selected. The goal is to raise as much money as possible to run local ads against one or two of them, alerting as many possible voters in their districts of their endless complicity with the most radical, corrupt aspects of the Bush administration’s chronic lawbreaking and illegal domestic spying.

The content of the ads will be catered to the specific Representative and the district which are chosen, designed to inflict maximum damage and pressure. Depending on the district and the amount of money raised, the aim is to run as many ads as possible on television, radio and/or newspapers, aimed specif

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