With signs the Democratic leadership is again caving on war funding, Chris Bowers ponders how to get a change in leadership.

To me, there’s two problems here. The first is that the Dem majority in the Senate is too thin to get anything past the threat of Republican filibuster. The only way to really solve that is to elect more non-Republican Senators. Reid isn’t going to be replaceable in the next year unless millions of Americans resort to direct action beyond emails.

The second problem is that Democratic leaders keep throwing down the gauntlet to Bush. Then pick the gauntlet back up. That not only angers the base but it reinforces the image of Dems as a gutless, spineless party that Bush can beat at every confrontation. That’s an extraordinarily stupid strategy because it tarnishes Democratic voters.

If the elected Democratic leaders choose to continually publicize themselves as chumps, they make all their supporters look like chumps, too. That’s not called angering your base. That’s a direct attack on your base. And the only response that makes sense, since I’m being attacked is to attack back.

So I’ll try to get our GOP Senator here in Oregon defeated. But I’m publicly declaring that I’ll vote against my liberal Democratic Congressman, Peter Defazio. I know some will claim that this advances internecine warfare that can damage our party. I say our party’s already wounded with dysfunctional leadership that repeatedly attacks its base. And it’s up to the base to fight back with our strongest weapon, our vote.

Yes, we’ll lose a few Congressional Representatives this way. But unlike the elected Congressional leaders, we don’t have to back down. We can insist that the leadership refrain from its efforts to make repeated public confrontations that it refuses to hold ground on. And we can insist the current leaders be replaced by House and Senate members.

Today, this is my suggestion. It can only work if enough Democratic voters stand up and demonstrate what backbone is.

Elected leaders claim that our only option is to provide them greater majorities, but that’s not true. If we elect a Democratic president, the only GOP roadblock is in the Senate, where a filibuster can impede. Further, based on what the leadership has done to date, we have no reason to believe they’ll suddenly become effective, strong-spined, and stop taking the liberal base of voters for granted.

I say we fight back by threatening to vote against Democratic House members. And then we’ll see how many of their peers they’re willing to sacriice before they change the leaders and start picking fights they intend to win. If the party can’t fight smarter and display backbone, then the party must be healed or replaced entirely.

Do you have any better ideas?