Let's start with essentials. There is nothing bad happening in the U.S. that a lot of federal money now going to Iraq wouldn't make infinitely better. This includes the traffic nightmare. The lack of affordable housing. The miserable, under-funded schools in neighborhoods dominated by Latinos and African Americans. The paucity of resources for inner city kids. The fact that millions of Americans are "food insecure." The legions without health insurance. And the leaching of decent working and middle class jobs out of the country because of a scarcity of economic development and infrastructure funding.
Throw chunks of the Iraq-bound trillion at these problems and sit back and watch the difference it will make as compared to Iraq, where it has gone to secure a fundamentalist Shiite clergy takeover of most the country a la Iran and to enrich several of the sleaziest companies in America, all major contributors to the Republican Party, and their corrupt counterparts in Iraq.
This is our local reason for ending the criminally misbegotten Iraq event, which its perpetrators have used as an excuse to cut federal funding for the country's needs over the past five years. The very long list of non-local reasons doesn't need repeating here.
What desperately needs stating -- and then repeating -- is how to shut the nightmare down.
Which leads inevitably to the matter of money in politics, meaning the dollars that finance political campaigns. Accordingly, let us now all entertain the superb idea of defunding the Democratic Party as the fastest way to stop the Iraq war. Since Congressional Dems don't have the collective courage simply to stop funding the war, let's stop funding the Dems until they do. (Last month Senate Dems resorted to an "all night session" stunt they knew in advance they could not win -- a vain effort to insert a troop withdrawal amendment in a bill that will finance the war anyway, an amendment which would take 60 votes to overturn the Republican filibuster as compared to the simple majority needed in either the Senate or House to stop the money flow altogether. The Dems' idea is to bring pressure on Republicans to justify their blocking actions to their constituencies and give the Dems cover for an election that is a year and a half away while Iraq is happening now.)
Stopping Dem funding is an idea that has come about without any prejudice to the similarly fine notion of defunding the Republican Party, an act unfortunately less likely to have mass appeal among its campaign donors.
Because the Dems are the more vulnerable party, we need to start with them. An acknowledged, if ignored truth in Dem circles is that the individuals, unions and even some businesses who provide an absolutely crucial portion of Democratic campaign financing -- for the national party as well as for candidates everywhere -- are far more advanced in social awareness and basic human values than the party as a whole. Emblematic of our American disempowerment is the reality that these fine folks have en mass surrendered their potential influence over the party, doing so in the Mary-Poppinish hope (and self deception) that mainline Democrats, especially federal office holders, will block the worst excesses of the "Neanderthal" (in their view) Republican assault on the globe -- and on middle class and working people at home -- while one day delivering something big and meaningful, such as an end to the war or universal health insurance.
As the first seven months of Democratic control of Congress has shown, mainline Democrats and the national party as constituted, should be in another business, perhaps selling shoes. Their stark, stomach-turning failure to end funding for the war and their acquiescence to the Bush-Cheney police state, especially when wedded to their not confronting the Republican Party's sale of government policies, regulations and treasury to the highest campaign bidders (the fundamental mass corruption of the system of which Haliburton is the poster child), has revealed a frightful Democratic Party. A party composed of many hollow men and women who are spiritually, ethically and intellectually separated from the core values of those who finance and elect them. (This without counting the fact that Congressional Dems have made "unmentionable" the Impeachment word.)
Widely described as "wimps" as public approval of Congressional Democrats has plummeted from high-flying numbers in February to this month's lower than Bush's record low, in fact we are witnessing a much deeper soul disease than the word "wimp" can accommodate. It is the disease of icy self-absorption with their own selfish needs that Dante illuminates as the ninth and ultimate circle of Hell (in this case the need not to lose their privileged offices by appearing to be "not supporting the troops" or weak on national security -- a misbegotten and incorrect reading of the public mood if there ever was one).
No surprise then that Democrats are even deeper in the muck with their base after their cave-in to the commander of the growing U.S. police state. Our dear Prez had challenged them to overthrow the Constitution to an even greater degree than they had in the last few years by approving illegal warrant-less wiretaps. Counting heads, the leaders of the House and Senate found they did not have the votes among their own Members -- 16 in the Senate and 41 in the House -- to defeat the police state measure. But they did have the power to stop the vote by going on vacation and thus letting the folks at home work over the wayward Members while the leadership cooked up schemes to keep the Members in line -- like cutting off campaign money to them, or denying them money for "improvements" to their home districts, or by using any of a basketful of procedural maneuvers. You know basic politics the way real leaders play it in service of principal.
Not every Democrat is culpable, of course. The one-third in Congress who have nobly held their ground against the war and police state deserve support. But lacking a dominant leader who can capture and galvanize the public and media, these Dems could use the help of outsiders who deploy a different weapon to club their vacuous colleagues into alignment. That club will have to be FEAR of what they fear the most: losing their privileged offices.
And here is where Democratic supporters can launch a national movement and play a tipping point role.
Consider this basic question: What would happen if Americans simply stopped funding the Democrats at every level, not just nationally? What if they/we collectively demanded (instead of muttered) that the Democratic Party stop the war and divert the wasted hundreds of billions to local needs? What if they said: if you losers in Congress don't get your act together, we don't want any part of the Party at all -- at any level?
What if they declared we will not fund Hillary or Obama or Richardson or anyone running for President? We will not fund anyone in Congress. We won't fund anyone running for the state legislature or for City Hall or even a Democrat running for dog catcher. Not a dollar to a Dem anywhere.
What if they, or you, just said "no" when they got the phone calls to contribute or to come to a fundraiser. Or more precisely: "No, not until the party as a whole shuts down the war and re-directs the money to local needs. Not a dime."
What if?
Here is a guarantee: If every Democratic-donating person, union or business who wants the war ended, including you, cut off campaign donations and told the party why you are doing so, the war will be over in six months and the troops will be home. The screams that will go out to the national party -- and the firestorm of media and the bandwagon effect in other states and municipalities -- will be impossible for the Democratic Party to weather. For once, citizens will have some power in this bought-and-paid for "democracy." The ultimate power of the purse.
To date, the donor crowd has in a major way enabled the Democratic Party's failure to end the war (and therefore helped precipitate its collapse in the polls) by NOT TAKING SERIOUSLY its own potential power. Anti-war contributors are collectively under-organized and are unwilling to put real demands behind their bucks. They fret that if they don't back the party's candidates, something even worse will happen to America. They argue that they can't cut off the party that disappoints or betrays them in every way imaginable because, what then? The unimaginable will happen.
Wake up. Something worse and previously unimaginable has happened while the Democrats more than not have played Good Germans in the face of Republican challenges. It's called Iraq. It's called sanctioned torture, the lies that it is not happening notwithstanding. It is witnessed to by the end of habeus corpus -- the right in the English-speaking world since 1215 to challenge one's detention in court. It's trumpeted in President Bush's declaration that he has the Constitutional authority to throw in solitary confinement for life without trial any American citizen whom he decides (on whatever evidence or no evidence he chooses) that the person is a "terrorist." It screams from the skies in Bush's refusal to uphold hundreds of laws in which he has "decided" that the executive branch is paramount over Congress. You can smell it also in Bush allowing the FBI to break the law by "investigating" and spying on anti-war patriots and environmental activists, as if J. Edgar Hoover's criminal CoIntelpro program was alive and well. Wake up. The worst is also blaring from a Supreme Court bent on empowering a state where only corporations and police agencies have rights and powers. A court made possible by feckless Democrats rolling over and failing to block the ascent to the court of Roberts and Alioto, who are just at the beginning of what they intend for America.
This is the America the hollowed-out Democrats have been allowing to happen. Everyone who gives them a dime without a demand that they reverse the tide, starting with Iraq -- a demand not just on the candidate being donated to but a demand on the whole party -- is aiding and abetting the historical crimes. Try to grasp this simple principle: It is no longer sufficient in this extraordinary period in U.S. history to back a few good candidates. A whole party must be held accountable and forced to stand up for the donor's values.
You donors who have given and still give without first demanding and getting proper action, know that with certainly you have enabled the war to continue and enabled the killing of 600,000 Iraqis and the displacement of up to four million Iraqis, enabled the growing police state at home, enabled poverty to spread like wildfire in America, enabled the problems in America to get worse -- and enabled more of all the bad things you say you can't stand. And unfortunately there is no 12-step program for you as the country and world you want slip away.
The good news is there is a One Step Program. You have the power to change history and the world. Just say NO to Democrats asking for campaign donations and tell them why. Be strong. Don't give in to the ego desire to pal up with Hillary or Obama and certainly don't give in to the false belief that they or any single Dem will make a difference in the future when they haven't in the past. Don't think that "punishing" local Dems is unfair when in fact they need to be aroused against their national colleagues, who are somewhat more shielded by virtue of taking a slice of corporate special interest cash.
Don't buy into the false rationale that the Democrats don't have the votes to end the war when the truth is whether in the majority or minority, they don't use the tools at their disposal, including their majority control simply to stop funding the war (it's nonsense they need 60 votes), filibusters, moral leadership and challenges to the corporate media (another whole subject) among infinite possible resources. Look what the Republicans can block and enact because they have the collective will to do so.
Paying the Dems in advance is like hiring a bad contractor to remodel your house. The job never gets done and the overcharges are out of sight. Change the rules. Pay only after the job is done satisfactorily. This is Adult Time. This is Spiritual Warrior time. Pay the party only after it performs, not on the promise or hope that it will. End the war this way. It is within your power to do so.
In the last couple months I received calls seeking donations for the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee, for Obama and for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. I told them the same thing: No money for any Democrat until the Party collectively ends the war and re-directs the money to local needs -- and please pass this along to your managers and candidates. The deflation and fear could be smelled through the phone, followed by a scramble to appease me with promises they would pass the message on and that the Dems and their candidates were really, really against the war. "Fine," I said, "just get the party to show it and you get a contribution." (I also sent back a Republican Party mailer on their postage meter and scribbled "Not Until You End The War.")
Imagine if everyone did this. Imagine if just in my own city, Los Angeles, Steven Spielberg, Ron Burkle, Magic Johnson, Barbra Streisand, David Geffen, George Clooney, Steve Bing (all big LA Dem donors), if you did the same. If every one of you out there empowered yourself and did the same and recruited everyone you knew to do it. Imagine if every Democratic candidate in the U.S. for any position was braying for help to the national Democratic Party and members of Congress? How long do you think the war would last?
Republicans who oppose the war, might want to put it to your candidates as well.
And for those of you who support the war and who admire what the Democrats have allowed Bush to do to America, to Iraq and to the world, I wish you a midnight visitation from the Founders as prelude to George Bush mistakenly declaring you a terrorist.
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