House minority leader David Lujan — more concerned with his failed bid in the Democratic primary to replace Goddard as AG — even abandoned his post and avoided voting on 1070. Such cowardice continues in the Democratic camp. Rather than point out how disastrous 1070 has been to the state's economy and image, and bemoan the costly (and ultimately futile) court battle over it, the donkeys have chosen to piggy-back on the state GOP's big lie: that Arizona is under "attack" by a rampaging brown horde from the south and that the menace must be thwarted by onerous, unconstitutional, and racist legislation.
The GOP is quite practiced when it comes to manufacturing fear and scapegoating minorities. Here in Sand Land, 1070 became the functional equivalent of George W. Bush's nowhere-to-be-found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Scare the bejesus out of people and they will follow.
Gubernatorial wanna-be Terry Goddard
Stephen Lemons
Andrew Sherwood, Russell Pearce’s nemesis in LD18
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Sure, crime is dramatically down in Arizona, as is migration across the Arizona border. There were no headless bodies in the desert, as Brewer claimed there were. And the murder of southern Arizona rancher Rob Krentz offers but one anecdotal incident to counter the evidence of the FBI's crime stats for the state, which show violent law-breaking to be at an all-time low.
Moreover, every sociologist and immigration expert worth his or her sheepskin will attest that there is no correlation between immigrants and increased criminal activity. Quite the contrary, study after study shows that immigrants are less likely to do ill deeds than their U.S. citizen counterparts. And yet the Republican lies persist — and people believe them.
Why? Because a shibboleth not crushed becomes a truism. If the Republicans serve, and the Dems do nothing to bat the tennis ball back over the net, the Dems lose by default. It's that simple. Yet the best the Dems can come up with is to mimic the tuskers at their game, without offering any solutions or ideas of their own.
President Obama has not helped. He's caved on immigration, betrayed Hispanics with inaction, and increased militarization of the southwest border by throwing another $600 million down the black hole of border enforcement — when he should have crammed immigration reform down the throats of his elephantine foes.
It's a pattern that the president and the Dems copy and paste on just about every issue of worth to their base. When it came to healthcare reform, they abandoned the public option. And about the historic gains they nevertheless made on the issue, Dems act ashamed, quivering in their penny loafers every time some Tea Party idiot like Sarah Palin rolls through town.
Grok this, dunderheads: In September, an AP poll found that those who want the government to do more on healthcare reform outnumber those who want government out of it altogether by a margin of 2-to-1. Nearly 40 percent of Americans believe Obama's healthcare plan didn't go far enough. This is why I can't help concurring with comedian/commentator Bill Maher when he argues that Democrats are incompetent salesmen of their own political product.
Here's another example — the Obama administration continues to defend "don't ask, don't tell" in federal court, despite polls consistently demonstrating that three-fifths of the American public think gays should be able to openly serve in the military. Obama has committed to ending DADT. The U.S. military is in lockstep with this view. So why are government lawyers arguing otherwise?
Is the administration so lily-livered, so worried about the views of far right kvetchers, whom it'll never win over, that it'll chuck yet another part of the coalition that brought it to power? The answer, of course, is: yes!
The lesson I want Dems to learn, locally and nationally, is that if you stand and fight for what you believe in — and you do so shrewdly and toughly — you will be rewarded. Cave to your opposition and you'll be rightly deemed weak and hypocritical. The losses you suffer will be richly deserved.
Sadly, the Dems' lack of backbone affects us all. So we don't have the luxury of writing them off. There are too many dark plots getting hatched by the far right — like the rape of the 14th Amendment and its guarantee of birthright citizenship — which must be foiled by left-leaning patriots.
FIGHT OR FLIGHT
With the dismal vista of this off-year election before us in this way too red state, there seems little from which to draw courage.
The New York Times recently declared Congressional Democrats in Cactus Country an endangered species. And though I'm hopeful that some of the Democratic congressional seats under attack by far-right extremists will withstand the siege, I'm prepared for a long, bourbon-infused night at the Wyndham Hotel in downtown Phoenix, where many area Dems will await returns.
Barring an act of God, this state will be stuck for four long years with a dumb-as-a-bag-of-bricks governor who is the near-lifeless puppet of High Ground Public Affairs' Chuck Coughlin, otherwise known as Jan Brewer's Karl Rove.
The Legislature will remain solidly Republi-nut, and the state Senate is in real danger of falling under the complete sway of Russell Pearce, the meanest bulldog racist lawmaker in Arizona, if not the nation. Pearce is a man who lusts after the position of Senate president so he may further his one-note agenda of whipping Hispanics with the fury of a plantation overseer.
