Must read article from Observer's Chris Lehmann on Feingold and the Dems

[flpoljunkie]

Last four paragraphs of article. Worth reading in its entirety.

http://www.observer.com/printpage.asp?iid=12576&ic=News+Story+2

Former Clinton press secretary Joseph Lockhart, now a consultant with the high-concept political-marketing firm the Glover Park Group, sees no political downside to Senator Feingold’s proposal—and likewise sees much desperation in the Republican spin that it would be another self-inflicted Democratic wound that would haunt the minority party in the fall elections. All the G.O.P. bluster about an early vote on the Feingold proposal to smoke out weak-sister Democrats for elimination in November, Mr. Lockhart said, “is complete nonsense.”

He said: “One simple rule of politics is that the more ferociously you’re pushing your talking points, the less you believe in them. The Republicans jumping so hard on this tells you that they believe they’re in a really vulnerable position—that this issue is not the winner they thought it was.”

But Democratic Congressional leaders are treating the G.O.P.’s ability to dictate the terms of debate as a virtual law of nature. It is arguably the whole point of political leadership to make volatile forces swing in your direction, and harness them to a coherent stand. By contrast, Mr. Michael said, the reigning mentality among Democratic leaders is that “if we take a stand, we risk defeat. That’s a chicken-shit refusal to have a real debate …. The Democratic establishment and the press establishment won’t let that debate happen.”

Senator Feingold seems placidly determined to ignore all that. “Guess what? They’re out of touch,” he said. “That story is finally emerging, now that polls are showing popular support for a censure. It just shows that people in that town are only talking to each other. You can publish that. That’s on the record.”

[blm]

1. More Dems are for censure and investigation of NSA spying than media will

talk about.... and I don't think ANY Dem should believe whatever media says about the overall debate, or take it as a sign it's OK to attack each other.

Because media played the storyline against Dems to help GOPs force a quick vote, why did Dems buy into the spin?

Some for censure used the spin to say other Dems were weak and the GOPs used the spin to try and force a quick vote. Interesting how that works.

[AX10]

2. The GOP attack are occuring only because...

the GOP is scared shit about what is going to happen this November. The GOP is desperate to do ANYTHING to protect Bush and themselves.

[flpoljunkie]

3. Kick! More from must read article, "Russ Never Sleeps."

http://www.observer.com/printpage.asp?iid=12576&ic=News+Story+2

None of this fits any of the tried-and-true formulations in the red-and-blue American playbook. A mild- mannered Midwestern Senator—Russ Feingold—announces on a Sunday-morning chat show that he’s going to introduce a resolution to censure the President. His grounds are straightforward: that the President’s warrantless-wiretapping initiative violates the law and the constitutional separation of powers. His party’s leaders, all universally understood as coastal-elite figures drunk on their hatred of the President and hell-bent on his undoing—well, they flee en masse, literally hiding behind each other as inquiring reporters try to suss out what they make of the proposal.

“Both Democratic politicians and pundits are afraid,” Mr. Feingold said on March 21 by phone. He was between constituent tours during the week’s Congressional recess. “Time and again, they allow themselves to be intimidated from taking a strong stand against the administration.”

Mr. Feingold said that he came to the idea of censure after three months of watching the N.S.A. issue wend its way through Congress and flail slowly into nothingness. “Even though Specter was trying to hold hearings, they were weak. Gonzales wasn’t addressing the issue. They were putting up a brick wall—their legal arguments were not persuasive.

“Then, when they briefed the Intelligence Committee on the program—well, all I can say is that it was amazing how little we were told. All they get to do is listen to the administration—even when the administration doesn’t feel like talking. And then there was this proposal to break up the Intelligence Committee so that it could work even less effectively.”

From all this self-administered Senatorial gagging came only new legislation proposed by Senator Mike DeWine (R.-Ohio) that would essentially go back and retrospectively legalize the abuses of power under the N.S.A. program. “I wanted to see the headline then,” Mr. Feingold joked: “‘Republican Senate Proposes Law to Make Illegal Program Legal.’