Conceding The Battlefield

My recent post suggesting that progressive bloggers aren't on top of the Iranian issue got me a couple of responses by email of "I have posted about Iran - Look!" It's true that many progressive blogs have posted about the Iran issue once or twice over the last week or two - but the rightwing bloggers are on it every day, as are the GOP and the MSM which appears to be uncrtitically cutting and pasting from White House press releases. That higher volume is what is setting the agenda and setting the rightwing narrative in stone. Meanwhile liberals are more interested in Snoopgate and GOP corruption.

Republicans figure that voters are likely to be more swayed by national security issues and fear than by tales of corruption and incompetence. Given the last Presidential and Senatorial elections, they may well be right. Certainly Karl Rove thinks that Thatcher's magic formula will still hold - nothing wins at the polls like the mixture of fear and nationalism a handy war (or the fear of one) drums up.

Now, there's a well-known adage that you fight on the battlefields of your own choosing, not your enemies. But what if the enemy has chosen better battles? Refusing to mount an effective counterattack is how you lose the entire war. Look at the Alito confirmation hearings and the shameless way some Demlicans have carried water for the extreme right.

The Democratic leadership is, by and large, too afraid of losing votes to go up against the narrative. The only way they will find their courage is if the grassroots mounts the kind of unified outcry against this Iraq-redux that they have mounted against the Iraqi occupation or Bush's social security hatchet job.

Remember, many high-profile Dems were for the war in Iraq before the grassroots made such a united hue and cry about the many incompetencies and lies involved, exposed the quislings like Joe and Joe, and made the issue a vote winner. Then they were against the war. Don't let them spin it - you were there and that's how it was.