The theme music in the halls these days should be the Simon and Garfunkel lament about “People talking without speaking/People hearing without listening/People writing songs that voices never share/And no one dared/Disturb the sound of silence.”
The post-Petraeus mood in both Houses is restless despair with Senate Democrats losing interest in the bill to “de-authorize” the war and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi poignantly asking centrists to propose some new plan to break the stalemate over getting us out of Iraq.
Meanwhile, Democrat Presidential candidates are talking about health care, immigration, anything but the war on the campaign trail.
It’s been a long, long time from May to September, and the party that took control of Congress with promises to get us out of the Middle East mess is well on the way toward owning it in the public’s eyes.
They may want to recall another line from the old song: “Silence like a cancer grows.”
As I see the gulf widening within the democratic party, this coming election is going to be about who can tag those centrist moderate voters. Both parties have their left and right bases.
ReplyDeleteThe democrats have won the day based upon a two pronged attack. Antiwar and Republicans are corrupt. Now the shoe is on the other foot, they are within sight of victory in 08 and as a result they have realized that the entire right and the center are opposed to this balls to the wall run fleeing from IRAQ mantra that got them elected.
Thus the "sounds of silence" is the leaders of the democratic party who have been remarkably silent lately are trying desperately to come up with a new strategy to keep them in power.
They with 2/3 rds of the country opposed to just fleeing IRAQ willy nilly they must somehow appear to be not ANTIWAR which is EXACTLY what got them elected.
This is going to actually be very interesting as we watch the democrats reposition themselves for the 08 elections.