Robert Parry: If Democrats Want to Lose...

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If Democrats Want to Lose...
by Robert Parry | Aug 23 2007


Many national Democrats saw last year’s election as a political turning point. They cheered the voters’ repudiation of a Republican one-party state; they hailed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s ouster the next day; and they were sure that resurgent GOP “realists” would help wind down the Iraq War.

In this Democratic view, George W. Bush was going to be both the lamest of lame ducks and a deadly albatross draped around the neck of the Republican Party in Election 2008. The Democrats believed they could pretty much start measuring their curtains for a move into the White House on Jan. 20, 2009.

But a very different reality is now confronting the Democrats. News of the neoconservative demise proved premature; the meaning of Rumsfeld’s departure was misunderstood (he was booted when he privately called for an Iraq War de-escalation); and the Republican “realists” remained outside Bush's inner circle looking in.

Then, the Democratic leaders stumbled and crumbled in the face of a president determined to escalate the war in Iraq, expand his “war on terror” surveillance powers, and ratchet up pressure for a possible new war with Iran.

The hard fact that the national Democrats missed was that the political dynamics of Washington had not changed very much. Plus, their wishful thinking in November 2006 and their irresolute actions throughout 2007 alienated millions of Americans who had hoped a Democratic majority in Congress might make a difference.

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