The Dems are like permissive parents who don't know how to deal with an ill-tempered, willful child. So unless the Dems behave completely counter to type, they'll just give in again do what the petulant Bush tells them to do. With palms turned upward pleadingly look around to the rest of us who, eyes glaring say with barely controlled rage, "Can you please control your child?" But the Dems with hunched shoulders shuffle off muttering, "What can we do--he's just uncontrollable?"
And the rest of us shout: "So Chuck and Dianne. Just say No. For once. Why? Because you're the parents, and you 'say so'. Be real grownups. Assert your constitutional authority. Maybe the Nanny Party has to hire one of TV nannies to do the job it seems too weak and muddleheaded to do.
This one is easy: Saying No to Mukasey is saying No to Bush's policy on torture. It's not about Mukasey personally; it's about making a statement about what Americans affirm as morally acceptable policy. Good parents set limits.
UPDATE I: As I thought, looks like Chuck and Dianne need a tough-love parenting class. Either that or to call in the Nanny Squad to do wht they cannot. It's nauseating.
UPDATE II: Greenwald addresses the culture of permissiveness to which I allude above. His point is that even if the Dems were to say No this time, they have let things get so out of hand with their permissive codependency, it hardly matters:
If Mukasey's nomination were rejected (and the likelihood that Democrats will actually take this or any other stand seems very low), it seems as though the most significant impact would be to allow Senate Democrats to claim that they took a stand for critical principles -- principles that they have permitted to be eroded and assaulted for years, when they weren't doing the eroding and assaulting themselves. And while a late defense of these principles is certainly better than none at all, it is far from clear that rejecting Mukasey's nomination would really amount to a restoration of any of these principles.
Anyone selected by Bush to replace him, or a decision to leave in place the current Acting Attorney General, would mean that DOJ is run by someone who shares most if not all of Mukasey's extremist views. That's because those views have become normalized over the last six years. Congress had all sorts of remedies which it chose not to invoke in order to ensure that the administration's lawlessness and torture regimen ceased and that there were real consequences for that conduct -- from lawmaking to investigations and even impeachment. They chose instead to allow it all to proceed.
Nevertheless, their saying No would be a start, a sign to the rest of us that they are at least capable of taking a stand on this relatively unambiguous issue. It starts with taking baby steps. That they are unable even to do that is unspeakably pathetic. It may not have made that much of a difference if the Dems said No, but it seems to be hugely significant that in a rare black and white issue like this they were not able to.
UPDATE III: Here's Sullivan's take:
Every time the Democrats fold on these matters, Cheney tucks a precedent under his belt. Every time they cave into their cowardice and fear, another critical part of our liberty disappears. These precedents are designed to destroy the rule of law and replace it with the rule of a Decider. And they will last for ever, as will the right to torture, because this war is for ever. This is how democracies perish. The rule of law no longer has any party to defend it. The Republicans want no check on the powers of our de facto protectorate. And the Democrats have no spine. We live under the lawless protectorate we deserve. And such lawlessness is always the result when cowards refuse to confront bullies.
When even someone as moderate as Sullivan gets it, how is it possible that it's being allowed to happen.
UPDATE IV: Publius at Obsidian Wings:
But turning back to Schumer, the more troubling issue is that he let himself get backed into this corner at all. In fact, his excuse -- “this is the best we can hope for” -- completely vindicates the administration’s extreme tactics. Essentially, the administration’s lawbreaking and DOJ-politicization have been so extreme that a candidate who refuses to call waterboarding torture is transformed into a “compromise” nomination. After all, says Feinstein, “he’s no Alberto Gonzales.” Boy, that’s a ringing endorsement. And sound logic too. Here’s a warm plate of tuberculosis for ya. Say what you will, it ain’t the bubonic plague.
Given our low expectations and mangled baselines, refusing to call Spanish Inquisition-era torture “torture” is now something a “compromise” candidate can do and still get through a Democratically-controlled Senate committee. But that’s the point. The Bush administration -- and the GOP more generally -- goes long. They push hard so that yesterday’s “extreme” becomes tomorrow’s “compromise.” And in this case (like so many others), the tactics have proven successful.
And as Sullivan rightly says above, "This is how democracies perish." Still any doubters out there?