The silent majority

As The Spovangelist wondered in her excellent post on last night's Council Meeting: Where, oh where, where were the Democrats?

For over a month now, Republican John Ahern and local Republican Central Committee chair Cindy Zapotocky have been making complete asses of themselves in trying to paint the Sustainability Action Plan as this nefarious United Nations plot to make us shower less and build bike lanes. Zapotocky has been issuing memos and encouraging her base to contact council members to voice their opposition to the plan.

And, for pretty much this entire time, the local Democrats have been silent. What that silence cost them, in my opinion, was the opportunity to kick the Republican while they are down. This was a golden opportunity to tie the Republicans to the extremist views that have alienated them from most independent voters.

Here we have the Republicans saying that a) global warming is a myth and b) the United Nations is trying to unduly influence local politics. Both of these positions are laughable and the Democrats missed the opportunity to get in on the joke.

They also missed the opportunity to rake "Republican" council member Nancy McLaughlin over the coals on this issue and soften her up for November. She was reading from the same, ahem, script as Ahern and Zapotocky and should have been called out on it.

Let's not forget that the City of Spokane definitely leans leftward. It's certainly not the bastion of liberalism that Seattle is, but the lean is apparent. That means that in this city, the Democrats have the upper hand. So why the hell don't they use it? Why didn't they issue press releases ridiculing the Republicans? Why didn't they ask Democrats to contact the City Council?

I think we all know the answer to that question. It appears that the local Democrats, much like their counterparts in Olympia and Washington are suffering from the debilitating political impairment: spinelessness. It's the spinelessness that says we can't vote to end an unpopular war or we'll be cast as weak and lose our majority. It's the spinelessness that says that, even though we have a supermajority in Olympia, we can't pass any legislation that is too progressive, lest we lose our majority. It's the spinelessness that says that we don't want to support the Sustainability Action Plan, lest we be cast as "treehuggers" or "green Nazis."

The politics of pragmatism will only take you so far. It may keep an extra seat or two safe for you and it may earn you a few extra votes, but what it will cost you is your identity. And that will kill you in the long run.

For crying out loud, the issues around the Sustainability Action Plan are directly addressed in the local party platform:

We believe that our environment and our energy supply are the most important issues of our times. The economy is certainly of critical immediate concern, but we view the environment as a generational issue.

For the sake of our children, we must address the crisis of global warming and become responsible stewards of our environment.

"The most important issues of our times"??? Ha! The Democrats' non-existent response to the Sustainability Action Plan debate would suggest otherwise.