Dems Lack Spine: Sun To Rise In Morning

This why Democrats can't get elected:

"Democrats pulled an Internet ad that showed flag-draped coffins Friday after Republicans and at least two Democrats demanded it be taken down on grounds the image was insensitive and not fit for a political commercial.

The ad by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee called for a "new direction" and displayed a staccato of images, including war scenes, pollution and breached levees as well as a photograph of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay doctored to look like a police mug shot."

Insensitive!! My stars and garters, well, we don't want to offend the tender sensibilities of the radical right who made this mess, do we? We can stand to look at a thousand dying people in New Orleans as it happens, but we won't put up with having to look at videos of the broken levees after the fact, and the reminders of the criminal Republican negligence that made it all possible. No, that would just be crossing the line. In fact, this promo appears to have been just another sermon to the choir, and no one paid any mind, until some Republican's aide somewhere, no doubt trolling for trouble to make, managed to find it. Then everybody came down with a case of the vapors:

"Democrats had featured the video ad for nearly two weeks on the DCCC Web site where it had gone largely unnoticed until Republicans began objecting to it this week. On Thursday, more than a dozen Republicans, many with military backgrounds, called on DCCC Chairman Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., to apologize. Democratic Reps. John Spratt of South Carolina and Chet Edwards of Texas asked Emanuel to pull or alter the ad."

And whaddya know? The Dems caved, while the Republicans went back to harrumphing themselves into a self-righteous stupor:

"In South Carolina, Spratt's Republican challenger, state Rep. Ralph Norman, commended the removal. It was "the right thing to do for the state, country and especially the brave men and women who serve in our military," said Norman's spokesman, Nathan Hollifield."

Harrumph.

Listen, you bunch of hypocritical twats, you were all gung ho to send those brave men and women to their deaths and maimings back in 2003 when anyone who spoke a word against the war was tarred a traitor and given the old knife in the back. You didn't have any problems sending billions upon billions of dollars to that great, gaping black hole in Iraq and losing track of it all while the people in NOLA died because your president couldn't work up the cojones to do anything about it, after ensuring that FEMA would be so eviscerated as to be useless for the purpose. You had no issues with sensitivity as you helped Bush destroy the Office of Mine Safety for the industry's sake, then watched men die senselessly and repeatedly because of it, and you had no problem with handing over the natural resources of the people to any crony who could buy them. You let Tom Delay castrate every one of your own to maintain an indominatible wall against the Dems, wresting legitimate representation from over half the citizens of the country and holding us hostage to your plutocrats' agenda, but now you want to distance yourself from the corrupt carcass he left in his wake as if you had nothing to do with it? And you were jake with the underfunding of the VA just at a time when we were seeing more and worse permanent injuries to our vets than ever before, and you were fine with underfunding and undersupporting their procurement of body armor and armored vehicles and basic logistical needs as you signed off on no-bid contracts for Halliburton. And you rubber-stamped Bush's incompetent and illegal invasion into Iraq, then sat by and gave him everything he asked for as he and Paul Bremer ensured that the entire infrastructure of the country would be crippled and a Shiite culture of death squads arose from directly inside the puppet government.

Now you say you don't want to be reminded of all this, and that it's insensitive of the Democrats to put some paltry ad on their own website where only a few million people will see it and only the converted, at that?

And you Dems, you say you don't want to offend, so you'll take the high road and just focus on the minimum wage?

Oh, people! What world do you live in? Refusing to acknowledge the dead and dying doesn't do them honor...it only ensures we'll have more of them. No one ever won a political war by failing to engage the enemy. But that's what Dems have been doing for decades now, as the Republicans have given away the store. Dems, have some guts, have some character, and tell these assholes to go fuck themselves. And Republicans? You don't want to have to look at the mess you made? Well, maybe you should have listened to those of us who were crying in the wilderness about it years ago. Maybe you need to face the pictures, harsh as they may be, and say you're sorry. But you sure as hell have no standing to get up on the bodies of the dead and croak out your old hoary moans about how it's not patriotic (whine), when your selling our nation down the river for a few pieces of corporate gold has caused all the misery in the first place.

Fuck you all.


UPDATE: Just in case I'm accused of being all bitch and no solutions, these are my suggestions:

There are two choices, one of which is to take over the Party and ensure that it not only reflects our own ideals but fairly represents all citizens, whether they are in the minority or not. We may have never truly had this, but at least we came close in times past. We certainly don’t have it now, as those of us who have been turned away from the table know all too well. This means a takeover of the Party from the grassroots up, which is what Democracy for America is trying to do. You start with positions like Dogcatcher and get your feet in the door.

The other option is to actually jettison the whole venerable two-party-that-isn’t system, which has become so corrupted that it really only reflects the values and agendas of the plutocracy, costs so much to enter as a candidate that no truly working class person can even think about running, and is for sale to anyone with the swag to make his voice heard. This means a constitutional convention, and dumping the current graft-fest for a parlimentary government that would accept representatives of every faction, and ensure that everyone’s needs would matter. It would also mean adopting the ability to vote a government out of office mid-term with a “no confidence” vote. Had we taken this road, Bush and his cronies would have never been able to wreak the destruction they have, and they would have been long gone before 2004.

Frankly, my preference is for the latter.