DNC subverts democracy

The Democratic party's rules and bylaws committee has just finished voting on what to do with Florida and Michigan. The result:

Florida's pledged delegates will be seated as they were chosen by the people, but each will only be given one half of a vote.

Michigan's pledged delegates will be seated as they were arbitrarily chosen by the state's Democratic party, with each given one half of a vote.

Both state's superdelegates have also been reinstated, with each given one half of a vote - despite the fact that many of them were the ones responsible for breaking the rules and jeopardizing the impact of their voters. But there is a bigger issue in the decision.

The result for Florida's pledged delegates makes perfect sense, as a compromise between the rules and the will of the people.

But the result for Michigan is a tremendous affront on democracy itself. Barack Obama did not have to take his name off of the ballot in Michigan, and once he chose to do so he completely forfeited any vote he could otherwise have gotten. 600,000 voters went to the polls, and they, by the very most fundamental rules of the Democratic party, are the only people with the power to allocate pledged delegates. This arbitrary decision of who gets how many, therefore, violates not only democracy in concept, but also the very rules supporters of the motion were supposedly seeking to uphold.

I don't think I have ever been this disappointed in the Democratic party. If, in this party, 30 people are allowed to impose an arbitrary allocation of pledged delegates and subvert the official will of 600 thousand voters, then I'm not sure I want to be involved with it. I think I'll register Independent.

The Race That Never Ends

The race for the 2008 Democratic nomination for president has been going on for nearly a year and a half. When it began, I was 16. I'm turning 18 next month.

For most of that time, up until he exited the race, I was a Dennis Kucinich supporter (with the exception of a week or so when Ron Paul seemed to me to be the best - what was I thinking?). Since Kucinich dropped out, along with Edwards, I've been a Hillary Clinton supporter. I've always thought - and continue to think - that Clinton is a better candidate than Barack Obama. And I have serious issues with the concept of Obama being the Democratic nominee. He's a hypocrite - calling for a "new kind of politics" with one breath and attacking Clinton and McCain with the next, calling for an end to partisan bickering one day and casting another party-conformant vote in the Senate the next. He's too inexperienced to deal with the Republican election machine. He's too susceptible to attacks against which no defense is really adequate. If he makes it to office, he has promised to completely transform the political system in Washington, something that has never been done and probably can never be done, potentially crippling his hopes for a second term.

But I'm really only clinging to Clinton as the lesser of two evils. Indeed, since Kucinich dropped out, I haven't had very high hopes for things to truly change when the next president takes office. I simply think more things that need to change would change under Clinton than Obama, because at least she has the political skill and experience necessary to push through the things that she does intend to change.

The point here, though, is that since I'm only supporting Clinton as a sort of plan B for what I really wanted, I am prepared to support Obama as a plan C if things become truly hopeless for Clinton.

And while it did become quite a bit more hopeless for Clinton two nights ago in North Carolina and Indiana, I still don't think the race is over. Clinton will probably win West Virginia and Kentucky, but what I'm really waiting for is the Democratic Rules Committee meeting later this month to discuss Michigan and Florida. I think there's a very good case for simply counting the votes as they were cast on the days of those primaries; and if that happens, Clinton has good reason to fight out the rest of the race. If, however, the Rules Committee decides otherwise, the race will, in my eyes, be over; and at that point Clinton ought to drop out for the sake of unifying the party.

After all, even if I can't get the candidate I wanted (Kucinich), it would be nice to at least get a Democrat. That's what's most important to me now - even if it means voting for the ridiculously flawed Barack Obama in November.

4,000

Yesterday, the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq reached 4,000.

That's 4,000 lives cut short. 4,000 hearts that will never beat again. 4,000 families and groups of friends that will never be the same again. And for what? For a war that was sold based on lies that those who told them knew were lies. For preemptive war, the idea that you can get rid of a threat before it becomes a threat, the most dangerous theory of modern times. For vengeance, against people who had nothing to do with what we seek vengeance for.

But that's not what the president wants you to think about. He wants you to think of Iraq as the next great proving ground of Democracy; the next step in our nation's legacy, in the yet-unfinished Grand Experiment begun by our founding fathers in a hot, cramped room in early July, 1776. He wants you to think of the Iraqi people suffering under the rule of a ruthless dictator, who does not think twice about slaughtering them by the thousands; and he wants you to demand that we stay in Iraq, to ensure Democracy prevails there, fulfilling the responsibility we brought upon ourselves by toppling that dictator.

Everything else that the president says about the War in Iraq - that if we leave, the terrorists will follow us home; that Al Qaeda in Iraq is the physical manifestation of the greatest threat America has ever faced; that we should not be opposed to giving up certain liberties to purchase the safety supposedly bought by the war - is, quite frankly, thinly veiled bullshit. And the reason why he brings up the support of Democracy in reference to the Iraq War - because every other justification for the war he tried simply failed - leads me to the conclusion that the president doesn't personally believe his own words, and is only really promoting the war for his own personal benefit, which makes me sick to my stomach.

But that one single idea - that Iraq can become a part of America's legacy of Democracy, the place where the West faces off once and for all with this newest form of extremism - makes more and more sense to me every day.

If it is indeed true that Iraq is "our country's destiny" - as the president put it in his Memorial Day speech last year (which I vehemently attacked in this very blog) - then there is no doubt in my mind that we are going about it with the wrong mentality. We need to step back, and look past the immediate danger of Islamic terrorism, and into the soul of America. We need an Abraham Lincoln to tell us that the conflict we are in right now is just one part of a broader narrative - a narrative which we can, in some small way, shape. We need to resolve ourselves - not to "kill all the damn terrorists" and perpetuate the irrational ideas that brought us to Iraq in the first place - but to continue our pursuit of Liberty and Democracy, at home and throughout the world.

If we cannot bring ourselves to see that deeper conflict, and declare our intent to see that through, the war must end now. But if we can turn this tragedy into the next step of the Grand Experiment, perhaps the deaths of these 4,000 brave men and women can be worth something.

Why Iowa?

This will be a short post, because my opinion on the matter can be summed up rather quickly, and I see no need to really go into extreme detail about such an obvious stance.

In this year's presidential primaries, a few states, primarily Iowa and New Hampshire, have received most of the attention of the candidates from each party. And this is a practice that has been going on for some time, and shows no signs of changing. Political pundits and analists speak openly about how the candidates can best strategize around their performance in these early primary and caucus states, as though that's the way it ought to be. The entire nation simply sits by on our couches and watches the pundits speculate on which way the vote in these two states of no particular significance is going to go, and we eagerly await the final results in Iowa today, hoping these voters of no particular significance go for the candidates we want. And if these voters of no particular significance happen to throw us a curveball, the pundits say it will probably change the course of our votes, openly admitting that the additional media coverage of the winners in Iowa and New Hampshire will sway more people to vote for them on Super Tuesday.

I do not even begin to understand the justification for this system. It is a direct affront on democracy, working to subvert the will of the people nationwide and replace our decision-making processes with the decisions made by a few voters of no particular significance.

In a perfect world, all the states in the nation would hold their primaries on the same day. The only way any other system could possibly be justified is if there were something wrong with that ideal system. And I have not heard a single solid argument against the idea of all the states holding primaries on the same day.

Primary Season and My Favorite Candidate

Note to reader(s): I intend to get seriously writing for the remainder of my Christmas break (which ends on the 7th). Primary season is coming up, and now's the time for all of us to be looking into the candidates and issues most seriously. I will be filling this blog, and the identical one over on MySpace, with posts dealing with the race for the presidency. For the first of these posts, I want to discuss my general views on the '08 presidential race, and profile the candidate who comes closest of all to getting my all-out support.

I know most people my age, and the majority of people in general, don't care about politics much, if at all. The 2008 presidential election, however, presents us with a choice that will shape American politics and foreign and domestic policy for years to come. A presidential election is never a good thing to get wrong. But with America having problems in everything from healthcare, to our civil liberties, to immigration, to the war in Iraq, the stakes are raised so high that we simply cannot afford to get it wrong this time around. For this reason, if not for any other reason whatsoever, we all ought to be very seriously considering our options.

The most significant piece of my opinion on the 2008 presidential field is a general disappointment in the choice of "top-tier" candidates; frankly, they all suck, spewing the same dressed-up rhetorical stump speeches their respective parties have been giving for years, trying to distinguish themselves from each other through the slightest of differences in opinion. This is not the political system as I imagined it when I was just starting to learn about it in the 2000 election. This is not the America I thought I was growing up in, where people have a diversity of opinions that are all (or mostly) given a proper place in the national debates and elections.

And to make matters worse, it's all too heavily influenced by rich special interests and corporate lobbyists. Mike Gravel, as I recall, was fond of suggesting in the Democratic debates earlier this year that just about everyone else on the stage was a puppet of special interests ("Follow the money!" he would say, shaking his fist, though the fist-shaking may just be my imagination). Unfortunately, though Gravel tends to seem rather nutty in just about anything he does, he's not wrong. There is something ingenuine, something plastic about them all, and I can't help but feel like they don't really have the best interests of the people at heart, and are instead obsessed with getting the support of the special interests, at any cost.

Out of this disdain for the process and its front-runners came my love of Democratic candidate Dennis Kucinich. For the greater part of this year, I was in love with his campaign. He was the first politician I'd ever seen who is truly honest, intelligent, and reasonable. (generally, it seems, politicians are only one or two of those, if any at all). His ideas are all so fresh, so populist, so Democratic. Universalize healthcare. Reform trade negotiations with other nations, to reflect a pursuit of human rights and environmental protection. End the use of war as an instrument of foreign policy.

Recently, however, two things have happened that have persuaded me that he is not the best candidate in the race. Firstly, it has become quite obvious that his campaign is hopeless. He has not been treated fairly by the media, and his campaign simply hasn't come up with enough money or support to force anyone to pay attention. Secondly, I have found a candidate whose ideas make more sense than Kucinich's ever have, despite being on the opposite side of the political spectrum.

That candidate is Ron Paul.

Ron Paul is a Republican, currently serving as a U.S. Representative from Texas, a position he has held 18 of the 31 years since 1976. He is 72 years old, married (for 50 years) with 5 children. Before joining into the political arena, and during the lapses in his Congressional service, he has been an ob/gyn physician, delivering over 4,000 babies. He was also a flight surgeon in the Air Force from 1963 to 1965.

But it is his politics, not his personal life, that make this man extraordinary. In a day and age when politicians shape their views around the shifting of special interests and political parties, Ron Paul has not only stuck to his beliefs for his whole political life, but has based those beliefs on the most simple, powerful foundation imaginable: The United States Constitution.

And it is that foundation that makes his message so powerful. He's not treading new, radical ground, but urging us to go back to the old way of looking at the federal government: In the words of Thomas Paine, revolutionary and author of "Common Sense" (and who I'm possibly related to), "That government is best which governs least."

Profiling Dr. Paul's viewpoint on every issue facing America would make this blog far longer than I want it to be. But I'd like to look at a few highlights:

He is a strong believer in states' rights, prefering to leave issues like education, stem-cell research, abortion, and marriage rights completely out of the hands of the federal government.

He is a proponent of a non-interventionist foreign policy, in which the U.S. does not police the world with its military, but instead pursues, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, "Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none." He says the war in Iraq is patently unconstitutional; in the days leading up to the war, he repeatedly put forth a resolution to declare war on Iraq, and it was repeatedly struck down.

He believes the civil liberties of the people are vital to the interests of the nation, and that they have been seriously undermined by the war effort. In the words of James Madison, another of our founding fathers, "The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home." He believes that the best way to be a strong nation is to be a nation of free people. Liberty from government control and regulation is central to his message, and his belief system.

He wants to abolish the IRS and all federal income taxes and repeal the 16th Amendment that allows for it, citing the fact that income taxes account for only a third of federal government revenue, and that cutting federal spending by a third would put it at 2000 levels, which obviously wouldn't be very hard to do. In addition to this, he wants to phase out government entitlement systems like social security and welfare, prefering instead to allow everyone to keep the fruits of his or her labor and use them as he or she sees fit; again, a view straight from Jefferson, who believed we ought to "prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them". Ron Paul has great confidence in the free market, and in each person's ability, right, and responsibility to take care of themselves.

Through all of this, there is a clear theme of going back to the America that the founders intended to create, the America they set forth in the Constitution. In fact, Dr. Paul has a nickname on Capitol Hill, "Dr. No", which emphasizes his extreme unwillingness to vote for any bills or resolutions that are not expressely permitted by the Constitution. He is, in short, a true conservative, holding to the beliefs that made that political mindset actually make sense before it was hijacked by social conservatives in the past few decades.

Typical "Ron Paul Revolution" banner.
Taken from http://www.rescue-us.org/

And unlike the other "long-shot" candidates in the race, Ron Paul's views have actually caught on, putting him in a position from which it is not entirely impossible for him to win the Republican nomination. His current fourth quarter fundraising total is $19.4 million, more than any other candidate in the race, including over $6 million on one day, December 16, the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. And this fundraising is entirely grass-roots, spontaneously organized by people who have no official connection to the campaign. His message has found a large niche in the Internet community, a community that has, through these donations as well as all the straw polls and post-debate polls that Paul has won, proven that it has the power to make a candidate viable.

I do have my misgivings about Ron Paul. I don't have the same unquestioning faith in the free market as he has. I think the federal government needs to be involved in some things like healthcare, in order to make sure the vital needs of the people are handled properly. I have said before that universal, socialized healthcare is the way to go, and I don't think there's anything Ron Paul could say to me to change my mind on that. I also disagree with him on some of his personal social views, but he says those things should be left up to the states, so it doesn't matter anyway. All things considered, though, he is the best candidate that I see in the race right now.

Any thoughts on this are greatly appreciated.

'Yes' to Socialized Healthcare, Part 2

Note to my faithful reader(s): I wrote part 1 of this 2-part series as a response to a debate prompt on helium.com, an online writers' community. Imagine my shock when, the very next morning, I saw a new prompt on that same site asking whether further privatization and deregulation of the healthcare system would solve the problem. I was forced to chime in on this, and the following was the result:

Many Americans believe that the solution to our healthcare dilemma is to further privatize and deregulate the system. If we free up the healthcare market, there is some reason to believe that it will behave like other free markets - costs will go down, allowing more people to get insurance, and quality will go up. This is the basis behind most Democrats' plans for what they call universal healthcare. However, this notion fails to take into consideration a few basic aspects of the healthcare system that make further privatization and deregulation a bad idea.

Firstly, the limited market. Let's say you're in the business of selling cars. It can reasonably be assumed that cars will never go out of style, and that, as more and more people around the world reap the benefits of industrialization, one of the things they will buy with their newfound money will be cars. Therefore, in this day and age, the automotive industry has a virtually unlimited market. This causes car companies to compete with each other for the constant stream of new customers. This is one of the prerequisites to a truly successful and beneficial free market: If there is not a growing market, a good deal of the helpful competition simply does not happen. If you've been buying Ford cars your whole life, you're less likely to go out and buy a Chevy, almost entirely regardless of the corporate competition going on. On the other hand, someone who is a first time car buyer reaps the full benefits of capitalism - Ford and Chevy both want them, so they'll both lower their prices and increase the quality of their products to win them over.

Healthcare doesn't work this way. There are a limited number of people in the United States (with a yearly population growth of less than .9%), and an even smaller number of people who are not already insured. Once all of those 40 million or so people got coverage, the burst of corporate competition that brought that about would immediately come to a halt. And after that point, there would be virtually NO market growth, and very limited competition, and corporations would be free to hike up their prices as much as they see fit. If the only two car companies in America were Ford and Chevy, and neither company had any new customers to entice, what's to stop them from both, little by little, increasing their prices?

This leads me nicely toward the second reason further deregulation of healthcare is unfeasible: the obvious greed of the conglomerates which currently have control over the system. If, as in the aforementioned scenario, they became able to raise their prices, they absolutely would. These corporations clearly do not hold themselves to very high moral standards - just watch "Sicko", or ask any of the millions of people who have struggled with their health insurance providers. Corporations that make money based on not giving people healthcare would have no qualms about raising prices, if it was a feasible business practice, which it is now and still would be under a further deregulated system. Even though the initial burst in competition would probably allow many of the currently uninsured people to become insured, eventually corporations would raise their prices again, once again excluding more and more people from the system while keeping corporate profits intact, and even growing.

Even if further deregulation and privatization of healthcare worked, and managed to permanently extend insurance coverage to all Americans, there still exist fundamental flaws in ANY privatized healthcare system. HMOs profit, and the system survives, based on how much healthcare they can deny their customers. This proposed plan would only give that same crappy coverage to everyone. That's like having an automotive industry in which Ford increases its sales and profits by building cars that break down beyond repair at 5,000 miles. And it's even worse, because we're not talking about a luxury, but a basic human right.

Clearly, this proposal is not the right way to handle the healthcare crisis. The best answer to our healthcare woes is not further "freeing up the market", but changing the entire system to a universal, single-payer, and yes, socialized plan.

'Yes' to Socialized Healthcare

When a nation's institutions are insufficient to meet the needs of the people, it is the government's responsibility to change national policy and fix those institutions. When every other industrialized nation in the world has adopted a different system, and it is clear that that system works far better than the one that we have, this makes the government's job in reforming the broken institution simple.

Such is the case with healthcare in America. The system is clearly broken - that's not even really up for debate. Insurance companies make money by not giving care. 31 cents on every dollar of healthcare spending goes to maintaining the conglomerates that have a stranglehold on it. Over 40 million Americans are uninsured, and even those who are insured must pay high premiums, co-pays, and deductibles, just to get insurance coverage that is clearly sub-par.

These same problems, or versions thereof, plagued every other industrialized nation as well. But while the American government has refused to address the issue, all these other nations have faced the problems, and fixed them. Socialized medicine has worked incredibly well for these nations - and it would work for us too.
One of the major arguments against socialized healthcare is that under such a system, it is necessary to ration care. A socialist system, in other words, would not be able to pay for everything for everyone. This is a sad truth. But it is a sad truth shared by ANY healthcare system. In the current healthcare system of the United States, over 40 MILLION people do not have insurance - that's one out of every seven Americans being "rationed" out of EVERY type of healthcare. Doesn't it make more sense to base the necessary rationing on the importance of different medicines and procedures, rather than on the patient's ability to pay?

Some people are still resistant to the concept of socialized medicine because of communism anxiety leftover from the Cold War. We cannot socialize our vital national institutions, they say, because that puts us on the path toward communism! While I agree that communism is the last thing this nation needs, the fact of the matter is that having a few socialized institutions does not make a country communist. For example: Since the beginning of the public education system in America, it has been a socialist institution - it is run and paid for by the government. Then there's our police, our firefighters, our infrastructure, and our military - all socialist. Yet no one would argue that America is a communist nation. Why, then, are we afraid of making one more of our vital institutions socialist, for the good of the people?

It's time to break free of the hold that unbridled capitalism has on the basic human right to healthcare. We consider ourselves to be the wealthiest, most advanced nation in the world, so we should work on having the best healthcare. Let's get on board the system that has worked for every other industrialized nation in the world.

A Fitting Title

Sicko, Michael Moore's latest documentary film, is funny, sad, and maddening all at the same time. But above all, it's simply sickening.

If you don't know already, it's a documentary about the healthcare industry. It starts off by examining a few stories about America's not-so-secret dirty little secret: The nearly 50 million of us who are uninsured. There's certainly enough there to make as much sickening film as Michael Moore could possibly dream of. But that wouldn't be ambitious. That wouldn't be Michael Moore. No, Moore's style lies in biting off what seems to be more than he can chew about the topic he's covering, and then proceeding to rip it to shreds.

So he dismisses the 50 million uninsured American's by nonchalantly saying, "But this story isn't about them." And that's when he dives head-first into the real dirty little secret: That even if you are fully insured, the healthcare industry is still a nightmare. And Moore makes that fact seem even more sickening than the fact that a sixth of us are uninsured.

Insurance companies, it turns out, have a system of denying care that one former HMO employee rightly described as "labyrinthine." There's a list of pre-existing conditions a mile long that automatically make you ineligible. If your body mass index is too low or too high (in other words, if you're too fat or too skinny) you're denied. There are mountains of paperwork for even the simplest of claims. And if they fail to weed you out with all of that and end up paying for your care, they can continue looking for ways to retroactively deny you and reverse the payment. They have teams of people that scour medical records for anything that can be used to retroactively deny care (this was done to one woman, for example, because she had once had a yeast infection and hadn't reported it as a past "serious ailment" on her application). This system is held in place because the industry has four lobbyists for every member of Congress, and they have consistently been able to pay off every politician that goes to Capitol Hill, including their old rival, Hillary Clinton, who was a crusader for universal healthcare during her husband's presidency, but who is now #2 on the Senate payroll from healthcare groups. Sickening, yes?

But still, Moore's ambition is not sated. In order to really drive the point home to Americans, he knows he must not only show them that their system is broken, but that there are others that are better. And so, throughout the film, he profiles the universal healthcare systems of Canada, England, and France, which turn out to be so much better than ours that you absolutely have to see it to believe it.

And even then, he's still not done. The last portion of the film uproots whatever is left of your conviction that America's healthcare system works. If I were to say anything about it at all, it would spoil it for you. I wouldn't do that.

Suffice it to say that every minute of the film Sicko makes you more and more deeply convinced that America's healthcare system simply sucks. But all hope, Moore says, is not lost. It's a problem that we can fix. After all, we're America. If other nations have nailed down this concept, surely the birthplace of modern democracy, the wealthiest nation on Earth, can do it. The first step, as AA might say, is admitting we have a problem - which this film doesn't simply speculate on, but proves. That's why I implore anyone who reads this to watch Sicko.

(As an aside, don't believe the mainstream Democratic candidates when they say they have a plan for "universal healthcare" because, sadly, their plans are just to make sure everyone has insurance, and don't address the real problem revealed by Sicko - that that insurance system is crap. Dennis Kucinich is the only candidate who seems to actually have a universal healthcare plan, and that's one of many reasons why I think he's the best.)

CNN/YouTube Debate Question

I have submitted this video question for the CNN/YouTube Democratic presidential debate scheduled for July 23 in Charleston, South Carolina. (For more info, check out www.youtube.com/debates).

The Trouble With Politics

The trouble with politics is that it’s full of politicians.

You see, the official job description of a member of the United States Congress is to represent the voters of their district. In a perfect world, every person in the country would be able to vote for all the things that come before Congress, and Congress would be unnecessary. This is, however, unfortunately not a perfect world. So instead, we elect representatives to go represent us and do our voting for us in Washington.

And yet they don’t represent us. Partisan politics has become so rigid and severe, and politicians have grown such a sense of entitlement that the opinions of their constituents really only matter to the extent that they desire to be re-elected. If a U.S. Representative believes that we need to stay in Iraq, by God, it doesn’t matter if every person in his district disagrees. He has to stick to his beliefs, man!

Bullshit. No matter how dead set against something any representative personally is, in all honesty it shouldn’t matter. If you are an elected representative of the people, your job is to vote the way the people would if they were present. Thomas Paine said so in Common Sense, which was the single most important rallying point in the events leading to the Revolution. That’s what the people wanted. That’s what the founding fathers wanted. That’s what this country is. It’s a representational democracy, and the job of those representatives is to represent their constituents.

Not only do our representatives fail to represent us, but partisan politics has hijacked the system to the extent that getting any real change done is next to impossible. How is it, pray tell, that partisan ‘whips,’ whose job is to make sure their colleagues vote along party lines, are an official United States federal government office? If that doesn’t convince you that the system is fundamentally flawed, I don’t know what would. George Washington, in his farewell address, warned the fledgling nation not to slip any farther into the bog of partisan politics that was already taking hold. The party system is silly, especially when it’s entirely dominated by just two parties. Washington knew that; he saw what was happening, and he warned against it. Did we listen? Obviously not.

If we want to come closer to the dream that is America, the dream set forth in the Constitution, one of the most important steps we can take is to put Congress in line. Reform the party system, either by abolishing political parties or by splitting the two dominant parties into several smaller ones. This way, ideas from all across the spectrum will be fully entertained, and maybe some change can occur. Also, the people need to start demanding that their representatives take the opinions of their constituents much deeper into consideration.

It’s supposed to be a government by the people, of the people, for the people, after all.

D Is for Disappointment

There was a time when I thought that a Democratic majority in Congress meant that real change was coming our way. During the election cycle, Democrats promised change in several areas, should they be elected. Social Security would be reformed; healthcare would be reformed; the Iraq war would be openly and seriously discussed and re-evaluated. The American people wanted this change, so when Election Day came, they voted Democrats into the majority seat in the Legislature for the first time in twelve years. America held its breath for the last two months that it would have to endure the Republican majority. And then, on January 4, 2007, Democrats took the reigns.

And then...nothing. Well, not nothing, but certainly not much. Some excitement over the first female Speaker of the House, a little campaign finance reform, and a bit of discussion involving the areas in which Democrats promised change. This discussion, though, has been rather disgraceful and disappointing. The Democratic majority has not pushed as strongly as they should for the things that got them elected.

Consider the Iraq debate. For the first few months of their newfound power, all the Democrats did was push for non-binding resolutions denouncing the war. These resolutions didn't really mean anything, and even if they did they were weakly worded. Overall, fewer words were used in these resolutions to denounce the war than to pledge support for the troops - a cause that, as I spoke of in an earlier blog, would best be served by bringing them home. Democrats allowed themselves to be pushed around, adding pointless sections to pointless resolutions, fearing that if their Iraq war denunciation did not include "but we support the troops," the American people would turn on them.

Even as they have attempted to take the debate more seriously, they've allowed themselves to be pushed around. Their new Iraq war budget plan includes timetables for American withdrawal - an excellent step in the right direction. But they've allowed the president and his Republican cronies to hold the moral high ground: Bush has promised to veto the bill, and every day he denounces Congress for not passing an acceptable budget. Congressional Democrats don't realize that if they shot back, saying that Bush was the one refusing to pass an acceptable budget, the American people would agree with them. So they just take the tongue lashing, and continue to push for a bill that promises an automatic veto, without applying pressure on Bush to support it.

Change in other areas has been even slower in coming. The disgrace of an Iraq war debate has occupied most of the Democrats' attention, so the other things they promised simply aren't on the docket. Where's the Social Security or healthcare reform? Where's the revocation of Bush's ignorant 2001 and 2003 tax cuts? Where are the Democrats we were promised?

It would appear that Congressional Democrats grew so used to their minority role from 1994 to 2006 that they don't realize just how powerful they can be. A stronger group of lawmakers in place of the disorderly mob we see today could really fulfill Democratic promises to the people. A stronger group of lawmakers could stand up to the president and his followers.

Congress, not the president, was set forth in the Constitution as the most powerful branch of the American government. But in recent decades, and especially with the Bush administration, presidential power has become paramount in Washington. If Democrats turned their attention to the Constitution, they could easily find support to call for a reversal of this trend. At the same time, Congressional power would be expanded. America would stop sliding farther and farther into becoming a dictatorship, and move instead closer to true Democracy. Congressional Democrats could lead this fight against expanding presidential power, and in doing so would probably gain even more support from the people.

But I no longer have very high hopes for the weaklings who hold this responsibility, as well as the other pressing demands of Congress. I am overall quite disappointed in them. The position they're in is perfect for pulling America in the right direction, but they simply don't seem capable of this.

My last hope for them lies in the attorney scandal. If they can stand up to the challenges of the Congressional vs. Presidential power struggle that this has caused and will continue to fuel, then perhaps they're not doomed. And perhaps, after all, their legacy will not be one of disappointment.

Announcement: I'm running for president!

My fellow Americans:

I come before you today to announce that I have formed a Presidential Exploratory Committee, and that I am looking into the possibility of running for the office of president of the United States. Many of you may not know who I am, but I promise, in the coming weeks and months, to make myself known to all of you.

If elected president, I promise to lead the American people with strength and determination. I will not stand down from what I believe. I promise that I will make my judgments without any consideration for such things as "reason" and "public opinion," but rather that I will stick to my beliefs no matter what. Washington is full of people who change their minds for reasons so trivial as evidence to the contrary and experience and being convinced by the other side's arguments. These flip-floppers have no place in American politics.

I promise to take the reins in the War on Terror. That is not a promise to go after Osama bin Laden and other top members of Al Qaeda, but rather to lead America deeper into the Middle Eastern quagmire, and closer to causing the entire region to burst into flames. To solve the Iraq dilemma, I propose we send at least 100,000 more American soldiers to the war zone. With these troops, as well as those already stationed there, we will annex the country, and claim it as a territory of the United States. It will be run under martial law by generals answering directly to me, until such time as we can quell the insurgency and convert all Iraqis to Christianity, the only true faith. It can then be a shining beacon of Democracy and Christianity in the midst of the evil Arab world. To this end, I will immediately more than double the annual budget of the Department of Defense to just under $1 trillion.

To ensure that our struggle against terrorism is a united front, and therefore easier, I promise to further reduce civil liberties in favor of security. I will push for legislation making it illegal to speak out against the war effort, or anyone with direct ties to the military, including the president. We will bolster our espionage and sedition laws. This noble fight may also require revocation of the First Amendment, so I will propose an amendment which overturns it. We must all remember that our lives, as well as the safety of our nation, are at stake.

I promise to follow in the footsteps of President Bush in strengthening the power of the Executive Branch. I will seek to amend the Constitution so that presidential vetoes cannot be overturned. Another amendment I will push for will allow the president to directly remove Supreme Court justices and appoint new ones, without any Congressional oversight. In appointing cabinet members and other positions in the government that are chosen by the president, I will not consider aptitude or experience, but rather how closely each person agrees with my opinions and my way of thinking. With these changes, I will create a unified and strong Executive Branch, impervious to the shifting winds of Congress and the Supreme Court, and immune to Constitutional considerations.

On social issues such as gay marriage, abortion, and stem-cell research, I will stand strongly Conservative. We cannot allow these sinners to get their way. I will propose yet another amendment to the Constitution, establishing Christianity as the state religion. In this way, all we shall have to do to make something illegal will be to prove that it goes against the Bible - an easy task. We can outlaw gay marriage, abortion, and stem-cell research now and for all time. Special care will have to be taken so that our rivals do not mockingly propose a law such as one that makes it illegal to wear two types of cloth at the same time; but since I will be able to veto anything without any chance of my veto being overturned, this shouldn't be a problem.

I promise to reform the economy. America must adjust to an increasingly global market, and the key to this is a strong stock market. The American stock market must grow steadily, and to this end my first economic proposal is a plan to increase investment. We should do away with all taxes to the top 10%, by income, of Americans. These people will surely invest this extra money into the economy. In order to offset the loss in tax revenue, we will increase taxes to all other Americans. If tax revenues gained from these increases are more than revenues lost from the first part of this plan, the leftover money will be split in two. Half will go to the Defense Department, and the other half will go to reimburse the wealthy for their contributions to the economy. In this way, our stock market can be strengthened.

Outsourcing is also a danger to the American economy, and must be solved. My second proposal for the economy is, therefore, a reinstitution of slavery. This will be possible once Christianity is the state religion, as slavery is sanctioned in the Bible. We will go to overpopulated Third World countries, and take custody of a few thousand people, every few months or so. Then, every American citizen who loses their job to outsourcing will be freely given two of these people as slaves. We will then subsidize plantation farming and manufacturing, and encourage people to either sell their slaves to plantations, or join group plantations with other victims of outsourcing. Those who lose their jobs to outsourcing, therefore, will be reimbursed for their troubles. Any leftover slaves will be sold to the highest bidder, invigorating the American economy. Third World countries will also benefit from the decrease in population.

We can strengthen America. We can make it a beacon of justice and morality. We can solidify our place as the richest nation on Earth. We can win the War on Terror. Stand with me, and I promise you all of these things. Thank you.