Lacking the bully pulpit and massive news coverage afforded the President and Donald Rumsfeld, the Islamo-fascist/Neville Chamberlain/appeasement smears of Democrats and anti-Iraq war critics continues. Democrats such as Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Rahm Emanuel are doing their best to hit back, but they don't have the visibility of the President's hatchet-men. And there is no single Democratic leader who stands out as speaking for the party as the November election approaches, while the party is weakened by divisions among Democrats about how to end the war.
But if progressivess need to make the 2006 vote a referendum on the president and nationalize the election, what are the Democrats doing to nationalize the campaign? What are the Democratic National Committee , assorted progressive "527" organizations and the Democratic and Senatorial campaign committees doing to pay for -- and craft -- ad campaigns with a well-honed message deriding the President's handling of the war? I'm just asking, but if we're relying on local candidates to devise all of their own ad campaigns -- even if backed with national campaign contributions -- don't we risk diffusing any response to the Bush Adminstration smears? Or are the national Democrats so fearful of seeming weak on security that they're not sure how to counterattack in a unified voice? We may not agree on how to get out, but we do know the many ways this bungled war has made us less safe, wasted billions and countless lives, and distracted us from fighting our real terrorist enemies.
To be frank, I don't know the detailed logistics of the ad campaigns for the 2006 elections, but unless we somehow harness the power of ads -- using honest Swift Boat-style techniques to tie Congressional Republicans to the Bush Administration's failed Iraq policies -- we risk letting these shameful attacks work and they may end up rallying his hard-core base in November 2006.
Even if a majority of the public now sees the war as a mistake and doubts the link between Iraq and the war on terror, how can Democrats avoid being effectively tarred yet again by those wily Republicans?