Easy marks

In the world of the Big Con, often the easiest marks are Democratic elected officials.

Supposed liberals, like my own senator, Illinois's Dick Durbin, pronounce themselves inclined [1] to support the President's $197 billion supplemental request for Iraq funding—the one in which he tacked on an extra $50 billion at the last minute, perhaps just to prove that he could. Durbin said he would be for it in the same breath as he noted, as the Chicago Tribune paraphrased him, that the request "seems likely to prolong troop levels at their current elevated number into the spring of 2008."

In other words, he's objectively pro-surge, and this even before the made-up report that's supposed to prove "progress."

I can't believe what suckers these senators are. How hard was it to spot that the "surge" was a put-up job from the start? How hard was it to imagine the White House marketing meetings in which it was concocted? It's not even sophisticated hustling. "Hey, we'll just apply concentrated efforts to a tiny, tiny part of the country. Then, anything bad that happens anywhere in that whole big country outside Baghdad will be ignored as irrelevant to judging the surge. At the same time, we can pump up any good news from outsize the surge-zone as surge-a-riffic nonetheless! Anyone complains? We'll say: 'Support the troops!'"

Did bad stuff happen in the whole big country outside Baghdad? Sure enough. A stunning bombing with a death toll of over 500 [2], but that happened up in Kurdistan, so it wasn't counted on the "surge" ledger. Check.

Did good stuff happen in the whole big country outside Baghdad? Sure enough. In the province of Anbar, tribal leaders declared war on al-Qaida. How un-surge-o-riffic was that? Entirely un-surge-o-riffic, in actual fact (it happened before the surge began); but the President and Defense Secretary Gates managed to call it surge-o-riffic nonetheless, and get their claim reported straight [3]—check!

Come on, Durbin! Come on, Democratic lawmakers! You think this heads-we-win-tails-you-lose scheme wasn't all gameplanned in advance?

Now we're getting a salutary barrage of coverage about how fundamentally false the Republican Iraq narrative is: yes, even our suppliant press is beginning to call the liars what they are. The Washington Post [4] reports that the market through which they troop visiting dignitaries is a "Potemkin village"—a handy synecdoche of the fundamental "surge" hustle: as Kevin Drum [5] puts it, "With enough time, money, and manpower you can secure any single neighborhood." The AP and New York Times [6] have handily debunked the implications that civilian casualties are down, and the L.A. Times [7] apprises us of precisely how the crooked death-merchants in the White House have put their thumbs on the statistical scales: "According to U.S. military figures, an average of 1,000 Iraqis have died each month since March in sectarian violence. That compares with about 1,200 a month at the start of the security plan, the military said in an e-mailed response to queries. This does not include deaths from car bombings, which the military said have numbered more than 2,600 this year."

Brilliant bloggers, as per usual, have kicked in their mite, including this handy How is the Surge a Lie? Let Me Count the Ways [8] masterpiece from Hilzoy. Which pretty much is the message that, for politicians not inclined to trust the malodorous effusions of mere bloggers, the Government Accounting Office is delivering, too. [9]

There's just no excuse at this late date for any sentient observer to trust the White House to do anything but, as Glenn W. Smith [10] puts it, "holding our troops hostage and threatening them with death."

But the one thing you won't hear from leading Democratic lawmakers: Bush is holding our troops hostage, threatening them with death.

Instead, they do something remarkable: they treat what the White House says as credible. Worse: they act as if the public treats what the White House says as credible. They act as if the Republican Party was strong.

Even now, in the days after Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales and Tony Snow resign.

Even now, after literally a scandal a week [11] has broken ever since the new Congress convened.

Even now, after John Warner becomes just the latest in a string of Republican lawmakers choosing retirement over one more term.

Even now, after the nation's most respected pollsters report that on issue after issue after issue [12] the public sides with them over the Republicans, that half the electorate leans Democrat and only a third leans Republican.

Even now, when the public trusts both parties equally [13] to keep them safe—a statistic which surely derives from the dwindling belief that more Republicans than Democrats want to keep us in a war that makes us less safe.

Even now, when the lies Bush tells to obstruct the will of the people are so transparent a fifth grader with a pocket calculator can figure it out: for God's sake, the guy is claiming the twenty billion difference between Congress's domestic spending and his own will cost "$1300 in higher spending every second of every minute of every hour" [14]— which means that his Iraq request will cost '$13,000 in higher spending every second of every minute of every hour. Bush can't even win an argument with himself. And yet he still runs circles around his legislative "opponents."

It's all connected. Democratic legislators don't know how to win. They're mired in learned helplessness. They're not "Bush Dogs," as Matt Stoller has termed Democrats who vote with the White House on the most crucial issues even in defiance of the clearest statistics that doing so doesn't help them politically. They're Vick Dogs. You know, like pit bulls owned by Michael Vick, dominated and whipped so long they don't know how to run away even when they get the chance.

I used to taunt my conservative friends, citing ads on conservative web sites like this [15], that if I was a con man, conservatives would be my favorite marks. Maybe the more obliging suckers, though, are Democratic lawmen. Their suckerdom is being reborn every minute. The surge hasn't worked in Iraq; it's just worked on them.