- Two hundred years of American democracy could definitively
end November 5, starting in Missouri.
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- No matter what happens in the overall election, the race
for the US Senate seat from Missouri will determine who controls the Congress
on November 6.
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- Should incumbent Democrat Jean Carnahan lose, the Republicans
will immediately take control of the US Senate. They could then use a lame
duck session to destroy the last vestiges of the American system of checks
and balances. They are confident this will happen, and are spending millions
to make sure it does.
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- The upper chamber is now divided between 50 Democrats,
49 Republicans and one brave independent. Elected as a Republican, Vermont's
Jim Jeffords chose independence in the face of the Bush blitzkreig. His
profile in courage is stamped on the last check and balance in American
government.
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- With a ruthless hard-right cabal in charge of the Executive
Branch, the Republicans have moved to complete their definitive conquest
of the judiciary and the media.
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- The US court system is now thoroughly dominated by conservative
Republicans. Their Supreme Court installed Bush in the White House after
the disputed 2000 election, which Bush lost by more than 500,000 votes
nationwide.
-
- Another horde of prospective right wing judges is now
poised to finish transforming the judiciary from the civil liberties safety
net it was just a few decades ago to a hollow rubber stamp for executive
privilege.
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- The national media is a mirror image. Dominated by six
major corporations, the major print, television and radio outlets convey
a ceaseless barrage of right-wing bloviators. What minor balance remains
comes through the internet and a few isolated talk radio shows.
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- There have been times in US history, particularly during
the Civil War and World Wars I & II, when executive power has been
close to absolute. In each case the public understood the problem to be
temporary. And so it was.
-
- But today's GOP has declared as permanent its "anti-terrorist"
assault on individual freedoms. The US PATRIOT Act has extinguished the
Bill of Rights that gave American democracy its birth.
-
- The Administration holds sacred only the Second Amendment,
which guarantees the right of the sniper now terrorizing the nation's capital
to bear arms.
-
- Bush's commitment to other traditional American liberties
is expressed by mass "anti-terror" imprisonments in Cuba and
elsewhere without identifying the victims, charging them or allowing them
legal counsel.
-
- The Administration's relentless attack on traditional
American freedoms has been somewhat slowed by the Democrats' razor-thin
Senate majority. They've controlled the committees, the majority leadership
and thus the Senate's basic agenda.
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- But that could end on election day. If Carnahan loses
to Republican former Rep. James M. Talent, Talent will immediately take
her seat. On November 6, the Senate would be comprised of 50 Republicans
and 49 Democrats, plus Jeffords. The tie-breaking vote would be owned Vice
President Dick Cheney.
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- Republican activists can barely contain themselves. Ironically,
the seat was contested in 2000 by John Ashcroft, the current hard-right
Attorney-General. Ashcroft lost to Mel Carhanan, the Democratic ex-governor
who died in a plane crash shortly before the election. Jean Carnahan was
then appointed to fill the seat on an interim basis.
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- Should she lose November 5, the Republicans will immediately
call a lame duck session. The push for right-wing judiciary appointments
would proceed. So would new tax cuts for the very rich and severe restrictions
on liability lawsuits by victims of corporate negligence. Also on the docket
might be an energy bill including major subsidies for nuclear power and
fossil fuels, drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge and other
anti-planetary assaults.
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- The lame duck agenda would technically be subject to
filibuster. In today's Senate, it takes 60 votes to get cloture and pass
any legislation.
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- But the Republicans could use their regained committee
control to force stalled right-wing appointments onto the floor of the
Senate. Filibustering could block their final approval in the lame duck
session. But holding them back in the future would not be easy. And with
control of the both houses of Congress, even for a relatively brief lame
duck session, the Republicans will hold absolute power over the American
government.
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- Already, the Republican rout of the feeble Daschle-Gephardt
leadership is virtually complete. The Democrats' unwillingness to support
Sen. Robert Byrd's filibuster against Bush's Iraqi war powers sealed that
victory, as did the Dems' failure to investigate Bush-Cheney stock abuses
at Harken and Halliburton. Bush's ruthless mastery of the Iraqi war card
shut the collapse of the American economy out of the 2002 election debate,
protecting the GOP from the usual mid-term gains of the opposition party.
This year, the anemic Democrats will be lucky to hold their own.
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- Whether Bush actually attacks Iraq remains to be seen.
At very least, he's helped re-ignite a global anti-war movement.
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- But the Democrats have already handed him a blank check
to make war on whoever he wants to abroad, and against the Constitution
at home. If Jean Carnahan loses in Missouri November 5, the last vestige
of American democracy will be gone.
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- Harvey Wasserman is author of THE LAST ENERGY WAR: THE
BATTLE OVER UTILITY DEREGULATION (Seven Stories Press).
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- Common Dreams NewsCenter
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views for the progressive community.
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- http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1023-02.htm
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