To win in '08, Democrats must "represent a decisive break, not a partially veiled continuity..."

[DeepModem Mom]

WP: The Silenced Majority
By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, October 10, 2007; Page A17

.... For millions of Democrats, the contested verdict of 2000 and the overturned verdict of 2006 -- war is repudiated, war is escalated -- were bad enough. The killer for Democratic prospects would be if millions of Democrats believed that a President Clinton, or Obama, or Edwards, would keep a significant number of troops in Iraq, too.

On this particular, Democratic primary voters do have some choices. Many of Hillary Clinton's foreign and military policy advisers, such as Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution, supported the war at first, then criticized its conduct, then supported the surge. On the war, at least, they could as easily be providing advice to John McCain. The same cannot be said of the majority of foreign and military policy mavens aligned with her two chief rivals.

Recently, Clinton herself resurrected old doubts about her foreign policy judgment that she had managed to tamp down over the past half-year by favoring a timeline for the withdrawal of most U.S. forces. In voting for the Lieberman-Kyl legislation that deemed Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization, she opened the door for Bush and Vice President Cheney to charge into Iran, or its airspace, with what they would claim to be congressional permission.

Clinton insists that the resolution provides no such permission, but she should know by now that this administration will take an errant cough as permission. These are, after all, the same folks who construed the half-million-vote deficit of the 2000 election as a mandate.
If Democrats are to win in 2008, it will be because they represent a decisive break, not a partially veiled continuity, with George Bush's policies, and with his war policies most of all. The Democratic candidates, Clinton especially, need to assure voters that their voice matters more than those of the Beltway theorists who supported the war at the outset and still can't contemplate ending the occupation. They need to assure voters, in short, that they take democracy in America seriously.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/09/AR2007100901733.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

[AtomicKitten]

1. The passing of the baton between Bush and Hillary is already in progress.

It is almost unreal to watch. America has an opportunity to change the paradigm this election. I hope they take the opportunity to promote a new direction and not validate the status quo.

[saracat]

2. me too.

[AtomicKitten]

5. I've thought a lot about this.

Although Edwards remains on my sh*t list for the IWR, I prefer him over Hillary who basically just signed on to more war. That, of course, after using the excuse "if we knew then," clearly demonstrating she did not learn the first time the dog bit her.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. Democrats must "represent a decisive break, not a partially veiled continuity..."

And none of the candidates represent such a break....

Except Dennis Kucinich.

Nuff said.

K&R

[babylonsister]

4. Blah, Hillary, blah, Hillary, a decisive break is imperative, and it could happen without Hillary. n

[Think82]

6. To win in 08, democrats must nominate:

this guy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OhPG7mk8yQ&mode=user&search=