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November 21, 2014

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is progressives' runaway favorite for president in 2016, with Sen. Bernie Sanders in second place, a new poll shows.Sanders, I-Vt., who says he's considering a presidential run, edged out former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, 24 percent to 23 percent, according to Democracy for America's first 2016 Presidential Pulse poll of its members.More than 42 percent of respondents wanted Warren to run for president, although she has said she's not running. Warren's strong showing wasn't a surprise, but Sanders' placement ahead of Clinton shows "the race for the Democratic nomination is far from locked" among progressives, according to the group, founded by former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean."If they decide to get in the race, our poll clearly shows that any number of candidates could win Democracy for America members' support, especially if they focus their campaign on combatting income inequality, the driving issue of the 2016 campaign," Charles Chamberlain, DFA's executive director said in a statement.

From Nov. 6-to18, the group's members cast 164,733 votes for potential candidates, with members able to rank their votes for up to three potential candidates. The group released a portion of the poll on Thursday.Behind Clinton came former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich at 3 percent and Vice President Joe Biden at 2 percent.

Exactly 50 years ago today, I was working in the Lyndon Johnson White House, on the domestic side — mostly on education and other aspects of the Great Society, as deputy to Douglass Cater, one of the giants of the trade. I was 24, though with two years of foreign policy under my belt, as a Fulbright Scholar at the London School of Economics. I cite my tyro status only as partial exculpation for not foretelling the tragedy that was about to ensue for the United States as it became more deeply embroiled in a conflict, to borrow from Neville Chamberlain, “in a far-away country between peoples of whom we know nothing.” A half-century ago, I read in my White House office the press release just put out by the White House that spoke of an attack by North Vietnam on two US destroyers, the Maddox and the Turner Joy, in a place called the Tonkin Gulf. From that point on, to use a common but in retrospect bitter phrase, “we were off to the races.” The Tonkin Gulf Resolution — technically the Southeast Asia Resolution — followed, and the US became mired in a conflict the purposes of which are still being debated. But as a White House staff person with top-secret security clearance, I had an advantage over the average American. Rummaging through the files after I joined the staff in July 1964, I came across a draft that had been sitting there for some time which, with emendations, became — you guessed it — the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. Ready to be used, just waiting for an “incident” to set it in motion.

It is now generally understood that the “attack” on the two US destroyers was likely a radar blip and the “fog-of-not-quite-war,” and that, in any event, the US had been engaged in provocative naval actions against North Vietnam.

The U.S. government must get a grip on the massive opening that the CIA, through its misfeasance, nonfeasance and malfeasance, has created. If Tuesday’s WikiLeaks document dump is authentic, as it appears to be, then the agency left open electronic gateways that make all Americans vulnerable to spying, eavesdropping and technological manipulation that could bring genuine harm. That the CIA has reached into the lives of all Americans through its wholesale gathering of the nation’s “haystack” of information has already been reported. It is bad enough that the government spies on its own people. It is equally bad that the CIA, through its incompetence, has opened the cyberdoor to anyone with the technological skills and connections to spy on anyone else. The constant erosion of privacy at the hands of the government and corporations has annihilated the concept of a “right to privacy,” which is embedded in the rationale of the First, Third, Fourth, Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. It is becoming increasingly clear that we are sliding down the slippery slope toward totalitarianism, where private lives do not exist.

We have entered a condition of constitutional crisis that requires a full-throated response from the American people. I have repeatedly warned about the dangers of the Patriot Act and its successive iterations, the execrable national security letters that turn every FBI agent into a star chamberlain, the dangers of fear-based security policies eroding our republic. We have crossed the threshold of a cowardly new world, and it’s time we tell the government and the corporations who have intruded to stop it.