Good morning, everyone. I should probably be studying for my exam tonight, but this has been much on my mind of late. I won't be able to prepare for my last final of the semester (I'm a law student) until I've gotten this out.
Our party's majority will not last if we do not insist on a simple litmus test. All of our elected officials must meet it or we must remove them from office and/or the party. This test cannot be negotiable. Indeed, negotiability is itself the problem.
We cannot allow corruption in our party. We must expunge it! We must be free of it now when it is easy because it will only get harder in time.
We will have a large majority in either house of the Congress. The fate of nations no longer hangs in the balance if we offend or snub Joe Lieberman for example (no, he's not one of the people I'm writing about now, but I use him as an example of the dangers of a razor-thin majority). We are in the driver's seat. We just kicked ass and took names. The wind is at our backs and the people are with us.
We will never see a more favorable political environment in our lives.
We retook the Congress in 2006 based on a few factors. One of the most important (rivalled only by the war in Iraq) was the corruption of several prominent elected Republicans. Duke Cunningham, Tom DeLay, and others went down hard for what they did, and they did their party considerable harm. There are two lessons to take from this, and I don't think we've learned them well enough. First, public outcry against the corruption of one party helps the other party. Duh. We all learned that. We might even have learned from the Republican folly that it could happen to us. Great.
It's the second part that never really gets the time it deserves. Corruption is only really an issue when you're in a position of influence or power. The more power or influence you have, well, the more damage you can do and the more pressure you'll face to sell your constituents and principles out. The Republicans are only NOW pushing back against Don Young. Why are they doing it now? They're out of power. Pissing off one corrupt and asinine Congressman isn't that big of a deal when your legislative agenda is dead. Nobody's really watching, but at least you can say you did something positive.
The Republicans lined up behind President Bush and their Congressional leadership because they were terrified of losing elections. They didn't want to give an inch, so they all got in line. Senator Ted Stevens was never expelled from the Senate or from his party's caucus. Tom DeLay left when he wanted to. Cunningham never really got the pushback he'd earned. The only two Congressional Republicans I've seen smacked around by their own party were Senator Larry Craig and Congressman Mark Foley, and that was because of the gay thing. That was it. Apparently lying, stealing, and cheating is fine, but keep your pecker out of that other man's ass. Fair enough, I guess. It's their party, not mine, and if they want to run it into the ground that's their business.
But we need to learn the lesson they never did. We have to hold our people accountable. That requires a higher standard than "we won't support convicted felons in our caucus!" Allow me to provide three examples. The first requires zero time on my part. The governor of Illinois is a total wanker and he needs to go. The other two are slightly more complicated. Congressman Jefferson could, somehow, be innocent of the charges against him. I don't freaking believe that for one second, but fine, it's possible. He's entitled to his day in court and he'll get it. However, nobody really thinks he's clean. Nobody. Having him in our caucus hurts us in two ways. First, it looks really bad because we seem to be cool with having Members on the take. Second, we actually are cool with having Members on the take! That's bad in and of itself. What did we vote for? Was this it?
Congressman Charlie Rangel is the other example, and it's a painful one. I have long thought the world of Rangel. He and Barney Frank have always been favorites of mine in a way that nobody else in the House ever has been. There's something about those two, something snarky yet persistent, hard-charging, and brilliant. However, they part ways in one respect. Congressman Frank does not appear to be unable to follow the laws his Committee writes and oversees. Congressman Rangel's tax problems look pretty bad. This isn't a slam-dunk like the Jefferson thing, but it's still bad. This was complicated by that flap with him having had his campaign pay his son's company a shit-load of money to design a website so poorly I could have done it in an afternoon. These things add up.
The standard cannot be that we don't accept convicted felons. The standard must be higher. Can the people trust you? Do they trust you? Should they trust you? That's what it needs to be. Can we put you in front of a camera to represent not only your caucus, but your constituents and our country? Will a reasonable and fair-minded American think that we are full of shit for putting up with you?
Guys, we're going to see more of this shit. It comes with being in power. It'll happen again and it will break our hearts and bust in our heads. But it's simply not enough to say, after the fact like I did, that we're glad Jefferson lost. I, me personally, should have done something for his Democratic primary challenger(s). Congressman-elect Cao seems like a nice enough guy for a Republican and I prefer a single-term Cao over two more years of Jefferson, but that's hardly ideal.
Ideal would have been tossing Jefferson's ass out in EITHER primary since the "cash in the freezer" story broke. We failed. All of us. We are all on the hook for it. And we will be next time, too.
Daily Kos, MyDD, MotleyMoose, all of us have a responsibility to hold our people's feet to the fire. This goes well beyond simple ideological purity. We cannot allow our elected officials to damage our policy agenda or our honor by trading on their offices for personal gain. We have to be loud, proud, and fucking persistent voices.
We cannot allow ourselves a Ted Stevens. And mark my words, we will have one in the next eight years. When that happens we have to show his or her ass the door as soon as it is obvious that he or she is dirty. Yes, the politics are good for us if we keep our own house in order. But it's also the right thing to do.
Who is with me? Being a Democrat isn't enough. We'll have plenty more Democrats now that we're the party in power. People will want to work with us and be us because that's how they'll get power and influence. We don't just need more Democrats. We need better Democrats. We need to hold ourselves to a higher standard because if we don't we will fail.
Our majority will not last forever. We will lose it some day. I'd prefer that such a day be far, far off. We can govern better and longer if we are willing to aggressively root out corruption in our own party. Liking people isn't enough. I like and admire Charlie Rangel but he's turning into a liability and I don't think he quite understands the impropriety of some of his decisions. That doesn't mean you have to agree with me about Rangel in particular, but I'm using him as an example to make a point.