Back during the Samuel Alito hearings, I recall many Kos contributors -- particularly Armando -- performing exhaustive research and building strong, powerful arguments against Alito's confirmation. Few of these arguments had anything to do with simplistic "litmus tests" on any particular issue; they were, instead, broad-based, philosophical arguments that formed a potent narrative and provided an intellectually honest basis for keeping Alito off the SCOTUS.
All this work was provided for free, by dedicated Americans and Democrats concerned about the implications of Alito on the Court. The same Democrats who elected the various Senators entrusted with vetting Alito and making an informed decision to confirm or reject him.
So what happened? The Senate Democrats, with the exception of Russ Feingold, proceeded to pretend to grill Alito on a few scattered superficial issues, praised him to the skies at every opportunity, and sprung him out of committee in less than a week.
Then when the floor vote came up, John Kerry and a few other Senators suddenly seemed to realize that Alito was bad news, and half-heartedly called for a filibuster. Support among Democrats for the filibuster was spotty at best, and the effort collapsed as Alito skated right through the Senate.
And why did the filibuster effort fail? Because the Democrats had not developed an underlying narrative to justify it. They had spent two weeks fawning over Alito's qualifications, occasionally dropping a tough question to placate the base. They made no effort to define Alito to the public, while he was still an unknown. The last-minute calls for a filibuster had the smell of "pandering" attached to them, because the Dems simply had not laid the groundwork.
But as we've seen above, the framework for an effective anti-Alito narrative was very much available. Bloggers were but one source; plenty of well-regarded legal experts would have been thrilled to help the Dems build a strong case against Alito. The Dems simply didn't bother until it was too late.
After the Alito fiasco, and indeed after the dozens of times the Republicans have worked the media and steamrolled their various agendas through Congress, you'd think the Democrats might start understanding the value of building a case and a narrative for their positions. But again they have failed -- with disastrous consequences to the nation.
Imagine if, on the day the torture bill was introduced, Barack Obama had seized the podium and declared that this bill was immoral and unconstitutional. Imagine if he'd stood at that podium with a dozen religious leaders from all over America. Imagine if John Kerry had gone on a Sunday talkshow and explained the implications of the removal of habeas corpus. Imagine if Howard Dean had thrown a few bombs and called attention to what this bill was REALLY about. Imagine if Bill Clinton had made a speech or two about how wrong this bill was, and cast aspersions on Bush's motives.
None of that would have involved a "vulnerable" red-state Democrat risking his seat in Congress. The idea was to build a narrative -- a strong flow of arguments AGAINST this bill that would have permeated into the public consciousness. Harry Reid could have explained that the elimination of habeas corpus allows the government to kidnap U.S. citizens. Barbara Mikulski could have assailed this bill as a power grab that EXPANDS government, contrary to supposed Republican values. Mark Dayton could have pointed out that the terrorists HAVE been in custody for years, and that Bush could have tried them whenever he wanted to, but has chosen not to. (Even Saddam Hussein is getting a public trial!) All these arguments, buttressed by the legal and judicial community, could have helped sway public opinion, and made a filibuster MUCH MORE viable.
We got pretty, eloquent speeches from Kerry, Obama and Chris Dodd on the day that monstrosity went to a floor vote. But as with Alito, it was too little, too late -- there was no underlying narrative that could have made a filibuster look reasonable in the public's eyes. The time for those pretty and eloquent speeches was two weeks ago.
Sherrod Brown remarked that he voted for the police-state bill because it "polled well" in Ohio. But never mentioned was that he apparently made no effort to MOVE that polling with strong arguments against the bill, of which there were plenty. And the narrative would have helped him right through Election Day.
We've had six years of the Democratic message being stifled by poor communicating, poor framing, and poor understanding of the circumstances (the media is not our friend, and still way too many Dems believe we're getting fair coverage). We've had failure after failure, but the cycle will never end until the Democrats understand that we need to BUILD NARRATIVES.
If this group of Democrats, after all these years, still doesn't get this, it's going to be another rough November for all of us. But hey, at least the negative ads from Republicans aren't going to happen now. Right?