This afternoon, the leader of the democrats in the US Senate, Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada abruptly activated something called “Rule 21” which forced the Senate to go into a closed session to discuss a Democratic demand that the Intelligence Committee complete a long-delayed investigation into the intel that underlay the invasion of Iraq.
The “unilateral” way in which Reid did this marked a sharp break from the kowtowing “collegiality” that has marked the Democratic senators’ relations with their GOP (Republican) counterparts until now. Senate Majority (i.e. Republican) Leader Bill Frist yelped that the Dems were “hijacking the Senate”.
Reid’s move was, however, quite legal. Senate employees cleared nearly all the non-Senators out of the chamber, dimmed the lights (why?), made sure electronic devices were turned off, and secured the entrances so the senators could have their “closed-door” deliberation. It lasted a couple of hours; and according to this AP report by the end of that time the Republicans had ” agreed … to a bipartisan review of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation into prewar intelligence.”
At issue was the second phase of an investigation into the pre-war intel that the Intelligence Committeee started work on last year. The AP report said, “A six-member task force — three members from each party — was appointed to review the Intelligence Committee’s work and report to their respective leaders by Nov. 14.” But apparently the Dems were afraid the work was being delayed.
Just before he invoked Rule 21, Reid stated,
- The Libby indictment provides a window into what this is really all about, how this administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq and attempted to destroy those who dared to challenge its actions.
Fighting words! Some analysts– most notably Mark Schmitt at TPM Cafe— almost immediately identified Reid’s moment of feistiness as a “tipping point” or “power shift”. He wrote:
- there is often a moment when the effective majority switches, when the minority takes control of the agenda well before an election. It happened in 1994 when Gingrich forced the Crime Bill back to conference. It happened in 1996 when Kennedy forced the Senate to take up the minimum wage increase. After those events, the majority never quite had control of the agenda again.
I think the same thing just happened today when Harry Reid took the Senate into closed session to force a discussion of the delayed Intelligence Committee report on misuse of intelligence.
Bill Frist’s ability to run the institution now lies completely in ruins.
Not so fast there. It will take a lot more evidence than Reid’s single action of today to persuade me this is so. (And over at his own blog, Schmitt admits that, “I”ve never been a very good political prognosticator.”)
Yes, it would be great to think that the Democrats in the Senate could suddenly develop spines. But we’d need to see a lot more real protest, and a clear and principled anti-Bush movement developing in the country, before we could be confident of that. The party system in this country is so very different from that in most of the other countries I’m familiar with… Here, the social fragmentation and wide geographic dispersal of the citizenry means that parties don’t really have a forceful, continuing, and coherent political existence apart from being machines for winning elections. So the fact that the Senate Democratic leader has suddenly taken one semi-forceful action certainly doesn’t mean that tomorrow every Democrat in the country will take up the cause of “Show us where the lies were!” in a coordinated manner.
And then, of course, there’s the whole sad question of– even if we do find out all the details of who told which lie to whom, who fabricated which lie for whom, in the run-up to the war– well… So what?? What do the Democrats plan to do about it??? John Kerry’s little bleat last week about hoping to pull “20,000” US troops out of Iraq by Christmas really didn’t seem convincing or forceful, at all.
Well, maybe I’m too cynical. Maybe there is something new stirring in the Democratic Party…
Here in Virginia, and in a lot of other states, there will be some fairly interesting elections happening next Tuesday. Here we’re going to have elections for many state-level offices including the Governor, Lieutenant Governor (a separate race), Attorney General, and many state legislators. In Virginia, governors can only serve one four-year term each. Our present Governor, Mark Warner, is an android-looking political centrist who governed fairly effectively as a Democrat while having to deal with both houses of the state legislature here being strongly dominated by Republicans. Now, the present Lieut. Governor, Tim Kaine– also a Democrat– is running to replace him. The last polls I saw showed Kaine ahead of his GOP challenger by a hair.
Well, all politics is local; and in the case of some of these state-level races very local indeed. But I suppose that next week’s elections might give us one general impression of how much fight the Democrats have in them in various parts of the country… And of course, the other big issue at the national level right now is the latest Supreme Court nominee. But I’m too tired to write anything cogent here about that.
In this morning’s Johannesburg “Star”, the great liberal journalist Allister Sparks has a round-up of the disasters falling upon the head of President G W Bush. The article is accompanied by the fabulous photo of Valerie Plame in dark glasses and scarf with Joe Wilson in their coupe, posing in front of the White House.
Together with your report above, Helena, this all suggests to me a perfect possible meaning of a glorious mistake somebody made here the other day, referring to “West Wing Communism – an Infantile Disorder”.
That would be the idea that there are frightfully decent Democrats all ready and willing to take over and return us to the Panglossian best of all possible worlds.
It is an infantile disorder and a dangerous delusion.
The only time the Democrats are going to set off in the right direction is when they fear losing the initiative to their left. I think this explains the Harry Reid move. The only way they will be compelled to continue on such a road is if the formations to their left remain in place and grow.
As has happened in the past the Democrats will try by all means to co-opt the peace movement and return as quickly as possible to business as usual.
Let us not forget that the glamourous Valerie Plame is a dirty rotten spy for a viciously Imperialist (bipartisan) regime and Joseph Wilson IV is an ex-ambassador for the same bipartisan Imperialist regime. His “IV” suggests old money and reminds me of the saying that “the older the money, the bigger the scandal”. His complaint against G W Bush seems to be that Bush is not “playing the game”, as they say in England.
The peace movement has to establish its autonomy and guard it, most especially from the Democrats. In the US situation that is the most important thing to do.
As a veteran of the “US left,” I couldn’t agree more with Dominic. Democratic spine is either a symptom that they fear their base is restively drifting way to the left of them — or, as I think more likely in this case, a tactical move in a minuet with the more establishment members of the “other party.” This worked better when the right was also playing this game — substantial sections of the right now want it all and will take it if they can.
Meanwhile, the peace movement does have to keep moving in its own direction and can be confident the Dems will follow when they are forced to. So it always is.