After Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was run out of Washington on a rail, he was replaced by Michael Mukasey, a reform-minded senior judge who was put in place to clean up the DOJ and restore its sullied honor.
Things aren't looking so clean right now.
For weeks now, Republicans have been hyperventilating over trumped allegations against ACORN, a group which registers poor people to vote. At the debate on Wednesday night, that hyperventillation became apoplexy when McCain claimed ACORN could destroy democracy. Now, the whole sordid mess may have become criminal, because high-ranking officials at the Department of Justice appear to have coordinated with the Republicans in leaking news of an FBI investigation of ACORN.
Obama's campaign is demanding a special prosecutor and good for them. McCain is coordinating a desperate, predictable, and largely expected assault on democracy with unexpectedly criminal dimensions. Justice must be served.
Everyone know what's going on. John McCain has effectively lost the election, he's done it to himself. He's made horrendous choices from Sarah Palin to his fake campaign suspension gambit to his frenzied debate performances, erratic messaging, and filthy sleaze-filled endgame. Meanwhile, Obama has stayed on target, fought a clean principled campaign, and built a formidable ground game to close the deal.
In the face of reality on the ground, the McCain Campaign's only hope of "competing" is to to severely narrow the electorate by whatever means necessary. That means reducing turnout in the face of a sea-change election with expected floodwater voting levels. That means frightening students, purging voter rolls, intimidating minority voters. Essentially, Republicans and John McCain are now willing to do anything they can do to drive down turnout.
That's all baseline sleaze and part of the traditional, semi-annual, Republican war on democracy. What takes this to a new level, a level of possible crime and corruption, is the apparent coordination with the Department of Justice.
Remember Alberto Gonzales?
Alberto Gonzales was the cheese-eating moron Attorney General of the United States who undermined the credibility of the Department of Justice so badly that he was publicly dressed down by congress, embarrassed, and finally resigned in disgrace. Do you remember what Alberto Gonzales did that allowed congressional democrats a rare, underused opportunity to show some backbone?
Well, at the heart of all of those hysterically funny "I don't remember" and "I couldn't say", and "what's my name again" hearings with Alberto Gonzales, was a profoundly despicable scandal. Gonzales had brought politics into the DOJ. He had allowed politics to guide hiring decisions, and he had fired US Attorneys, who are supposed to be as free-of-bias as any judge, for political reasons. Do you remember what those reasons were?
Well, in many cases, the reason that Gonzales fired the US Attorneys was that some few wouldn't play ball. Some few refused to ardently prosecute spurious claims of voter fraud made by heavily partisan Republicans.
Sound familiar? It should, because that's precisely what's going on right now. Republicans across the country are holding conference calls, and press conferences decrying alleged widespread voter fraud that John McCain himself on national television proclaimed could undermine the very foundations of American democracy. Then, less than 24 hours later, unnamed, high-ranking officials at the Department of Justice leaked news that the FBI is conducting investigations of ACORN, a community organization which registers low-income voters.
At the heart of it, these ACORN attacks, the press conferences with Republican grey hairs, the FOX News all-ACORN-all-the-time news cycles and this apparent criminal re-politicization of the DOJ amount to what the Obama campaign has called an "unholy alliance", but what is in fact a cold-hearted tactic based on the electoral reality.
Nothing could be more clear or clumsier than their obvious messaging. When John McCain hyperventilates on national television that the threat of poor people voting is the core threat to democracy, not the suspension of Habeus Corpus, not "extraordinary rendition", not a war based on lies, not worldwide economic collapse, but poor people voting, you're only watching the same desperate, pathetic and insulting campaign John McCain has run all year.
When the DOJ leaks information to support McCain's hysterical rantings, it deserves a Special Prosecutor.
Now, the Obama Campaign is smart enough, and tough enough to demand that this entire issue be referred to the Special Prosecutor who was put in place to investigate the crimes of Alberto Gonzales.
This is a clear continuation of the way things ran under Gonzales, and indicates that this Attorney General may not have done as good a job cleaning up the mess as we might have hoped.
What we're seeing is a coordinated attempt to suppress votes. It may be a page out of the Republican play book, but if the DOJ is coordinating it, it's also criminal. There's a real danger in this that the McCain Campaign will get away with a grotesque attack on the electoral process and could have an immediate impact on voter turnout.
Mukasey has a small window to save his legacy and reputation. If he fails to refer this issue to the Special Prosecutor, he will go down in history as just another failed, incompetent, and corrupt Bush flack who helped undermine the foundations of democracy in the name of bending his knee to conservative aristocracy and Bush.
This won't change the outcome of the election, only Mukasey's place in history.
If you don't care about this you should. It won't change the outcome of the election, but there are two key dangers. One, it could significantly drive down voter turnout this election. Two, it could undermine the acceptance of the election outcome. Conservative aristocrats stoke feelings of victimization among less-educated, lower-income voters. It comes out as bigotry and hate, but what you see at the Palin rallies, is more akin to the violent behavior of neglected and abused children. Palin and McCain and, until he acts, Mukasey, are guilty of stoking fear, hate and division at precisely the moment in our nation's history when we can afford it least. The guy who yells "kill him" at a Palin rally is just responding to the dog whistle.
Democrats must quash this whole narrative convincingly, as the story has legs.