Statue of Liberty Play

by digby

There’s much to say about the Hamdan decision and I’ll leave it to the legal experts to parse the decision for it’s implications. According to the pundits and insiders, the politics of the decision are quite simple:

Republicans yesterday looked to wrest a political victory from a legal defeat in the Supreme Court, serving notice to Democrats that they must back President Bush on how to try suspects at Guantanamo Bay or risk being branded as weak on terrorism.

In striking down the military commissions Bush sought for trials of suspected members of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, the high court Thursday invited Congress to establish new rules and put the issue prominently before the public four months before the midterm elections. As the White House and lawmakers weighed next steps, House GOP leaders signaled they are ready to use this week’s turn of events as a political weapon.

John Boehner has already framed the issue by saying that giving suspected terrorists any form of due process as provided by our treaty obligations and Uniform Code of Military Justice is giving them “special rights.” (I love that one — it’s brilliant. Now the terrorists have successfully been conflated with gays!)

Here’s the thing. This is just more trash talk. The WaPo article I excerpted above goes on to say this:

A Washington Post-ABC poll this week suggested that while Americans continue to favor holding suspects at the U.S. military installation at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, they are leery of an administration policy that has resulted in almost all of the 450 detainees being held without charges. Of those polled, 71 percent said the detainees should be either given POW status or charged with a crime.

Call me naive, but it sounds to me as if the Supreme Court, the Democrats and the American people are all in agreement. It’s the Republicans who want to continue this fiction that the government should be able to hold these presumed terrorists in limbo forever.

A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the issue is still being debated internally, seemed to hint at the potential political implications in Congress. “Members of both parties will have to decide whether terrorists who cherish the killing of innocents deserve the same protections as our men and women who wear the uniform,” this official said.

The assumption, again, being that these people are all guilty when everyone knows for a fact that many of them are not. That means that this administration just doesn’t give a shit if innocent people are held prisoner forever. I suppose that there are people who think that’s just the price that must be paid (by someone else) for our “freedom,” but moral people cannot believe this.

On a practical political level, you can see by the way the WaPo article is written that the narrative frame for the debate is going to be the same as all the other war debates: will the weak, ineffectual Democrats be able to resist the strong, aggressive Republicans this time or will they give in once again to the presidents’ bold, controversial plans out of fear of being seen as soft on national security?

Can we all see the problems with that?

Let’s hope that the Democrats are smart enough to start reading polls and stop listening to beltway pundits and journalists. They have the support of the people. All they have to do is speak out and say it, in the same terms as that poll question:

“We need to either give the Guantanamo suspects POW status or charge them with a crime. We have rules and laws on the books that have served us well for centuries and it’s time we used them. This isn’t a movie or a TV show. This is about our national security and our place in the world. It’s time to stop all this nonsense and start behaving like the United States of America again.”

I’m sure that Rush would pop a Viagra over that one, but who cares? The majority of American people are on our side on this.

This is what the Republicans are getting ready to run on:

“It will be worse for the Democrats to be seen as favoring the terrorists than favoring the New York Times,” Liddy said.

That’s what it’s come down to. I desperately hope the Dems will not take the bait. That is a base turnout message, not a message to broader America and it certainly will not help the Democrats get their base out if they fall for it.

One final little note. The LA Times/Bloomberg poll showed Bush improving his standing a bit. But there was also this:

The survey’s results suggested that an old challenge — the gender gap — could pose a renewed threat to the Republican hold on Congress. Although men split about evenly when asked which party they planned to back for Congress in November, women preferred Democrats by nearly 2 to 1.

Doubts about Iraq appeared to be a powerful contributor to that trend. In the survey, women were much less likely than men to say the war had been worth the cost.

“As far as the war goes, we never should have gone in there without United Nations backing,” said respondent Kathy Bocklage, a registered Republican from Wayland, N.Y., who said she was planning to support Democrats this fall. “Why [Bush] thought the U.S. could finance this alone — it’s ludicrous.”

However, beneath the large Democrat lead on the November ballot test, the poll offered potential warnings for the party.

On a variety of questions — including satisfaction with Bush’s handling of terrorism and the likelihood of progress in Iraq — it showed modest but perceptible movement in the president’s direction since the last Times/Bloomberg survey, in April. Also, the share of Americans who viewed the Democratic Party favorably declined.

There’s a lot to chew on there. But I would suggest that instead of reacting to the macho posturing bullshit this time, the Democrats look to where their voters are and figure out what they need to do to get these women to the polls. And keep in mind that it isn’t “girly domestic” issues that have motivated this change. It’s Iraq. Being less likely to be impressed by all this macho posturing in the first place, after watching it play out over five long years it’s quite likely they’ve just had enough.

Instead of trying to appease to the 25% of overgrown boys (including the media) who continue respond favorably to this GOP foolishness, maybe the Dems should take a look at the other 75% of the population and fashion a message for them. As those of you who read this blog regularly know, I see some ominous signs in the fact that in this political environment, Democrats are being viewed less favorably lately. That translates at least partially to disillusionment among the base and that spells trouble.

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