Senator Chris Dodd's Make or Break Moment

Sen. Chris Dodd's Make or Break Moment

By Dave Lindorff

Created Oct 23 2007 - 9:31am

President Bush is no chump. He has figured out how to emasculate the

Democrats (those that aren't already eunuchs). Instead of making a decent

estimate of the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and asking for it

up front for the 2008 fiscal year, he is asking for it piecemeal, giving

Democrats opportunity after opportunity to turn him down and end it all,

knowing all the while that they'll cave and give him his war money.

Each time he does this, and each time House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's and

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's minions deliver, the Democrats sink in

public esteem, to the point that they're now approaching single-digit

approval ratings.

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), a veteran legislator and son of a senator, and a

contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, has shown, however,

how to fight back. Not on the war funding, although he claims to want the

war ended immediately, but on the issue of the Constitution, and

specifically the warrantless spying on Americans by the National Security

Agency.

Dodd, last week, announced that he was placing a "hold" on new permanent

legislation developed by the Democrats, in coordination with some Senate

Republicans, saying he would not let it pass unless a provision granting

immunity to telecom companies that had been aiding the NSA in their spying

activities was removed. He vowed to filibuster the bill if his colleagues

tried to move it to a vote.

In so doing, he gave the lie to the fraud that has been perpetrated by

Pelosi and Reid that they and the Democrats are "powerless" to stop the war

unless they have "60 votes" in the Senate. (That canard has been spouted so

many times, and repeated so often uncritically in the media, that many

Americans now actually think it takes 60 votes, not a simple majority of 51,

to pass legislation in the US Senate!)

What Pelosi and Reid are alluding to actually is the 60 votes needed to

override a veto. They are claiming that efforts to end the war cannot

succeed because any bill calling for withdrawal would be filibustered by

Republicans and that the Democrats, with a 51-majority caucus in the Senate,

could not stop a filibuster. Dodd, however, is showing that they can prevent

bad legislation by being the ones doing the filibustering, and that they

then only need 41 votes--something they clearly could muster if the party's

leadership were behind it.

So Dodd is testing out this theory on the stinking betrayal of a bill the

Democrats have come up with for the NSA. If he succeeds in blocking that

bill, he will finally have to put his money where his mouth is, and anti-war

bonifides by placing a similar hold on Bush's new request for $46 billion

more for the Iraq War.

That in turn would put the Democrats to the test. If, after running a

campaign last fall promising they would end Bush's war, and after failing

miserably to do so for the past 10 months in power in Congress, they did not

support a filibuster against further funding, they would stand exposed as

the worst kind of charlatans and fraudsters.

Dodd, meanwhile, just two and a half months ahead of the start of the

primary season, has a golden chance to vault himself to the head of the

Democratic pack by making a genuine, concrete effort to end the war.

It wouldn't matter if he failed. If Sen. Dodd were to put a hold on funding

for the war, and were then to stand in the well of the Senate and filibuster

any effort to pass such a bill, forcing his Democratic colleagues to expose

themselves finally as being either for ending the war or continuing it, he

would be an instant star of the anti-war movement. The 80-90 percent of

Democrats who are opposed to the war would stampede to his support. Obama

and Clinton, who are in the Senate with Dodd, would be forced to decide

whether they wanted to continue to play to the party's right wing and its

corporate funders, or whether they would cast their lot with the peace wing.

So Sen. Dodd, this is it. Blocking the NSA from spying on us without

probable cause is a good thing, and we thank you for that. But there is an

even more urgent matter: Americans and innocent Iraqis are dying every day

in a criminal and pointless war. If you can use Senate privilege to block

the NSA bill, you can use it to block further funding for the Iraq War. And

if you really want to end that war, as you keep saying you do, you have

proven that you have the power to do it.

Are you just another big talker, or are you going to do it?

_______

About author Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation

into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal [1]. His new book of columns

titled "This Can't be Happening! [2]" is published by Common Courage Press.

Lindorff's new book is "The Case for Impeachment [3]," co-authored by

Barbara Olshansky. He can be reached at: dlindorff@yahoo.com [4]

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their

spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their

government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are

suffering deeply in spirit,

and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public

debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have

patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning

back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at

stake."

-Thomas Jefferson