I imagine right now that bin Laden and his mentor Aiman Al-Zawahiri are offering up many thanks in their prayers that Bush/Cheney has done so much for them by helping them to restructure the hierarchy of Al Qaeda in such a way as to keep them on stage in Iraq, and by extension, in the world at large.

After all, it was the Bush/Cheney machine that developed the chief villain position of "Al Qaeda in Iraq"  and attached that job description almost by osmosis, (osmosis sometimes closely resembling a relentless media propaganda and disinformation campaign), to the hapless and probably unsuspecting thuggish sociopath Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi.

I've really learned a great deal over the last couple of days from everyone who participated in SallyCat's excellent diary "A Question"- Conversation Continuation yesterday and my diary From A Political novice; A Question from the day before.

I'm still a novice however, in the realm of grassroots political activism and awareness, and as such, I continue to have questions. One sort of large question, or perhaps more accurately, a large but perhaps important set of questions that have arisen in my mind out of all the great exploration and discussion in these two diaries has to do with how we variously view the Democratic Party and what we expect of it.

It seems to me there is wide divergence of perspective on the Party, and I think this is essentially a good thing, yet I sense that a joint exploration of our views on the Party, as we did in those other two threads on so many other aspects of the political calculus, might be very useful.

As I've been reflecting on my own perceptions of the Democratic Party, the more I think about it, the more complex, even contradictory, it all seems to get. As an acknowledged novice this makes sense; a sort of first plunge into the deeper teritory of familiairizing oneself and intensifying one's understanding of things frequently entails lots of work resolving conundrums and perceptual ambiguities, often with surprising results. But it struck me that, in general,  maybe most of us could gain more clarity in our own views through a productive discussion about all this party stuff, and with that in mind, I want to put forward some ideas and questions that might lead to fruitful discussion.

As regards the (Democratic) Party itself;

As far as the mechanics of political activism go, I'm a novice, despite having been around for a long time.  While I did some volunteer work on behalf of first McCarthy and then, (somewhat reluctantly), Humphrey back in '68, seeking to keep the obviously dangerous nutcase Nixon from ascending to the throne,  I was basically one of the least engaged grunts in those efforts; part of the herd, but indistinguishable from the rest. And, even having realized Nixon was a significant threat to the country and to our way of life, had I been eligible to vote in '68, (I missed eligibility by under a year because the voting age then was still 21 years), I probably wouldn't have involved myself in the democratic campaigns against him. I would have, (like so many others did), simply used my vote against him to fulfill what I saw as my democratic responsibility to oppose the bad guy.  All of this is preamble, a disclaimer of sorts, a way of acknowledging that I was never really an enthusiastic participant in the day to day dynamics of political activism, and because of this, I don't want anyone to think I'm attempting to represent myself as some sort of authority on that subject. I definitely am not such an authority.

In the current political climate, it seems indisputable that for those of us who regard the Bush regime in toto as the biggest threat to our country, to our way of life, and to the world at large that's ever come down the pike, we generally agree that we need to get these lunatics out of office and reclaim control of our own government. I think it's fair to say that we agree in general that if we can somehow achieve Democratic Party electoral majorities in the House and/or the Senate that our chances of restoring the mechanisms of democracy and strengthening our constitutional liberties and protections are greatly improved. Similarly, I think we (on the "left") generally perceive the Democratic Party in it's current state as an institution that is failing us; one that doesn't stand up for us often enough or with sufficient enthusiasm to have any meaningful effect.

But where we disagree, where we have, in my opinion a huge, (and widening) problem, is in what we think we need to do in order to achieve the aims of regaining control of the government and getting the BushCo maniacs out.

As a lifelong Democrat who loves his country and so very much values the liberties and protections with which we are endowed by our great constitution, I am pleased to learn that you will be voting against confirmation of Samuel Alito for appointment to the Supreme Court.

However, with heartfelt sadness, I have to tell you that a simple no vote against Alito is not enough. Should you fail to participate in an attempt to filibuster this nominee, I will regard such behavior as not only negligent on your part,  but as a direct abdication of your sworn oath as a member of congress to preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States.

It is inconceivable to me that you, along with so many other Democrats in congress, are seemingly more concerned  with a strategy of compromise in the (foolish, in my opinion) hope that such capitulation to the desires of the Bush regime will enhance Democratic Party chances for electoral victory in '06 and again in '08;  that you find this strategic calculus far more important than actually standing up against the most obvious threat to the very relevance of our constitution and the core principles that have guided our country from the beginning.

Samuel Alito is the personification of this threat, and the fact that you and so many of your colleagues can blithely determine to vote against him in open session yet fail to fully acknowledge the true nature and scope of the threat he poses represents a hypocrisy on an order of magnitude I cannot even begin to describe in words.

Whatever electoral calculus you and your Democratic colleagues may be using to legitimize this strategy, I can only say to you that there are literally tens of millions of us regular democratic voters and citizens out here who repudiate the very premise that not doing all that is possible to block this nomination from going forward is going to be advantageous on any level to the country or to the Democratic party.

There are many many more of us now than there were just a few short years ago who now understand fully the simple idea that,  as long as our Democratic representatives fail to stand up vigorously for our principles and beliefs, as long as they  continue to "go along to get along" with the Republican machine, we will not be sending you any money, any volunteers,  and certainly many fewer votes than previously.

I hope you may understand before too much longer that If you are not different enough from the Republicans to make a difference, we have no use for you, and the sooner we push you out, the sooner we'll be able to replace you with new representatives that will stand up for that which we value.

I sent this to my Senator Bill Nelson here in Florida. He's announced he'll vote against Alito, I haven't heard him advocate for filibuster, and I douibt I will. Hence the letter.

We're devoting a lot of good energy these days to exploring the failings of the media and how we may best affect that media from our vantage point here in the blogosphere. Recently we've seen an excellent effort led by Jane Hamsher at FDL to take down the ratings at Amazon for the odious Kate O'Bierne's latest piece of excresence titled "Women Who Make The World Worse". We've seen several paid off opinion writers resign or be fired after their financial dealings withoutside groups have been revealed.

Now we have the latest raft of insulting and tasteless bullshit from Chris Matthews, a prominent pundit on a steep ethical decline, and we wonder what we can do to effect significant pressure on him and his corporate enablers. I don't have any specific answers for this beyond all that's being said by everyone already; write letters to MSNBC, to Hardball, to sponsors, etc. But I do want to explore some of the other dynamics involved in the failure of the media in general and what, if anything, we can do about it directly. And I don't want to dwell on the money/profit angle too much because that is self-evident anyway. suffice it to say that if viewership goes down ratings go down and if ratings go down ad revenue goes down and if ad revenue goes down shows do, eventually, get bumped off. I'm not sure if this is still true but Matthews' show's ratings were on a pretty solid trajectory downward for a while. Olbermann's show consistently outranks Hardball in viewers and I'm sure this rankles the hell out of Tweety. The reporter David Gregory usually makes Matthews look prety lame by comparison too, and I expect Gregory is remaining alert to the potential of sabotage against his career by Tweety and "pumpkin head" Russert. But Tweety himself is headed for the pre-emptive demise of his own show as long as his current behavior continues.