David Michael Green: Regressive Antidote / In the Last Throes, Judiciously

[Demeter]

http://www.regressiveantidote.net/Articles/In_The_Last_Throes,_Judiciously.html

I CUT THE GOP DERISION TO GET TO THE MEAT OF THE ARTICLE:

Looking across to the other side of the aisle, one could certainly be equally amazed at the ‘leaders’ of the majority party in Congress, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. If anyone could possibly be more ineffective at the job of opposing a reckless, dangerous and now publicly despised president, it is hard to figure how. Perhaps if they were to send Dick Cheney a dozen roses and asked him please to end the war he might feel more pressure than he has since January, when the Democrats gained control of Congress. It’s hard to know which would be more intense...The most astonishing thing to know about Harry Reid is that he was reputedly once a boxer. Does that mean someone threw a punch at him on the schoolyard grounds in seventh grade and broke his horn-rim glasses? Is that what they mean when they say this guy was a boxer? I only ask because I desperately want the leader of the Democratic Party in the Senate to be a fighter. But, today, everything about what Harry Reid says, does and even looks like to me telegraphs punching bag, not fighter. Or wet noodle. Under a doormat. You know – the one leading into the servants’ quarters....I am therefore at least slightly pleased to see that Reid is apparently nearing the end of his rope on Iraq. Gee, could that be because Congress now has job approval ratings even lower than George Bush, and without having done anything to anger anybody except those who expected it to actually do something, especially on Iraq? Having utterly and unnecessarily capitulated a month ago on the supplemental appropriations bill for the war, Reid is supposedly now already gearing up for action rather than waiting for September as the White House wants. Whatever else the majority leader is, it would seem doubtful that he is so stupid that he’d aggravate his base to the point of frenzy by raising this issue again only to cave once more, so maybe we’ll actually see some action this time... But then, that’s what I expected last month, too.

If he wants to know how much is at stake, he can just ask his pal Nancy Pelosi next door. The most astonishing thing to know about her is that she represents one of the most liberal districts in America. So she becomes Speaker following an election, the clear message of which was ‘end this nightmare’, and the first thing she does is take impeachment off the table! What is it with these people? Do they go native in Washington and just lose all sense, including any sense of themselves and their own backgrounds? If Congress met on the moon, would they start acting like rocks?
Life just got a lot uglier for Nancy, and deservedly so, in what is undoubtedly the political highlight of the week, if not the decade. In the most clever and thrilling application of progressive politics we’ve seen since Larry Flynt brilliantly offered a million bucks to any mistress who would out her Republican hypocrite paramour during the Clinton impeachment, Cindy Sheehan has threatened to run against Nancy Pelosi for her San Francisco congressional seat unless Pelosi proceeds on impeachment against Bush within two weeks time....I wish we progressives could do more of this sort of clever infighting, but here the circumstances are rather unique. Nevertheless, this maneuver by Sheehan is brilliant. Much like the campaign to embarrass China during their Olympics if they don’t put pressure on Sudan over the Darfur issue, it is a case of leverage on leverage. Sheehan is leaning on Pelosi to lean on Bush. If Pelosi isn’t crapping in her panties right now, she’s a bigger fool than would be the test-tube offspring of George W. Bush and Dan Quayle, carried to term by Paris Hilton. Pelosi’s district is perhaps the most progressive in the country. If angry sentiment against Bush and against his Iraq war doesn’t run at least 90-10 there, I’d be shocked. Pelosi’s already an enormous source of disappointment for anyone to the left of Joe Lieberman, and Cindy Sheehan – backed by an army of motivated volunteers and donations literally from across the world – would have an excellent chance of dethroning the New Queen of the House, only two years into her reign.

Sheehan has, with this single bold stroke, completely reshuffled the deck for Pelosi, Congress, Bush, America, Iraq and the world. A coldly dispassionate look at the new lay of the land suggests that Nancy Pelosi now has two options ahead of her. She can either become (the first female) president of the United States following the impeachment of Bush and Cheney (and perhaps even keep the job after the 2008 election), or she will likely lose both her Speakership and her seat in Congress. There probably is no in-between. That doesn’t seem like such a tough choice to me, especially because the only ones who pay in this scenario are Bush and Cheney. But it does require a certain boldness – even if its boldness driven by terror – which is a quality not exactly in abundance among Democrats in Congress these last, well, decades...There are two other beautiful aspects to impeachment that should be kept in mind. One is that the public is ready for it – as Dick Cheney might say, “big time”. Half of those polled – an astonishingly high number – believe that Bush should be impeached, and probably most of them don’t even quite know why they feel that way. For Darth Cheney the numbers are 54 percent in favor versus 40 percent against. In short, there is little political risk here for Pelosi to proceed. That is especially true given that ample evidence of the administration’s lies on Iraq is already in the public record, and that Bush has already admitted to both breaking statutory law and violating the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution with his illegal domestic spying program. He couldn’t be more guilty than he already is if he gave his next press conference in handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit.

But the juiciest joy of impeachment, besides of course conviction and removal (or better yet, conviction and removal of a disastrous president who also happens to be the leader of a party that wrongly impeached a Democratic president), is that the White House could no longer continue hiding evidence by invoking its bogus executive privilege or national security doctrines. Or, more precisely, they could, but only if they wanted to stand by watching themselves lose the trial in the Senate. Their position would be tantamount to an accused murderer refusing to present exonerating evidence at his trial because of devotion to some relatively obscure constitutional principle (I mean, how many Americans understand the doctrine of executive privilege?). You can do it if you want, but there will be a price to pay. You’ll lose badly. Of course, if the evidence you’re supposedly protecting on principle doesn’t actually exonerate you but in fact proves your guilt, well then that’s a whole ‘nother kettle of fish, isn’t it? Once the impeachment process begins, I see little hope for Bush and Cheney other than that enough Republicans and perhaps even a few Democrats would prevent the two-thirds vote necessary to convict. But given public sentiment right now, let alone later, and given the evidence (or unanswered accusations) that would be brought out via an effective prosecution combined with the mounting electoral vulnerability of Republicans generally and anyone supporting this White House specifically, even thirty-four votes in defense of the indefensible in the Senate might be hard to muster. Cindy Sheehan has started a pebble rolling down a mountainside. There is every possibility this could turn into a landslide of international proportions.

THE ARTICLE CONCLUDES WITH A RIGHTEOUS SLAMMING OF THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA--HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

And the empire has gone the way of every other empire before it. Only a lot faster.