Look, I'm a life-long Democrat and much of me would be thrilled to have the Republicans rendered as impotent as the Democrats had been up until the last midterms. I would delight in the knowledge that Karl Rove's master plan to replace two-party rule with a permanent single-party hegemony actually delivered decades and decades of dominance to the Dems. The karmic jiujitsu could have made every day to me feel like Christmas.
But me waking up happy isn't worth one more young soldier losing an arm, his sight, her life. Me waking up happy isn't worth endangering the power of our democracy.
The Titanic that is the Bush presidency is no longer sinking. With 75 percent of all Americans disapproving, the ship has essentially sunk. As Eleanor Clift said on The McLaughlin Group last week, the question is not will the Republicans abandon ship and help the Democrats extricate us from Bush's war, but when.
The Bush presidency is turning out to be not only the Katrina of America's image abroad, the Katrina of the mightiest military the world has ever known, the Katrina of Iraq, the Katrina of Katrina, but now the Katrina of the Republican party itself.
Loyalty, in general, is a wonderful thing and much of the Republicans' recent successes stem from their ability to coalesce and remain so. Clinton's popularity was twice as high as Bush's when so many Democrats pulled out the long knives during the Lewinsky scandal.
The Republicans running for president don't vote in Congress so don't matter. Every day that they pander to the ever-diminishing pool of Bush loyalists and war fans is another day that they relegate their candidacies to irrelevance.
But how can we help nudge more Republicans in Congress to do what must already be in their hearts? It is sadistic to make our troops wait even one more day before someone in Washington lifts a finger to save them?
It is time for moderates and the middle-aged to take to the streets.
The young and the radical have been marching against this war since the beginning. The verbose, like me, have just been writing against it. I have shied away from groups like A.N.S.W.E.R. because even a whiff of anti-Semitism I find intolerable. Fortunately, just Googling ANSWER and anti-Semitism now I found this excellent article in Tikkun, the thoughtful and progressive Jewish magazine that allayed my fears.
It is time for more mainstream groups to hit the streets and shout. It's easy enough for Republicans to discount the wail of the usual suspects from the left. Republicans were never going to get their votes, anyway, no matter how many of them show up with a sign. It is something altogether more powerful if moderates come out in force.
MARCH ON WASHINGTON, SEPTEMBER 15th
This will be the next planned huge demonstration. I say it's time for every person who cares deeply about ending this seemingly endless nightmare to finally come out and vote with their feet.