Question 2 for the "Impeach Bush Now!" folks

[BootinUp]

Yesterday I posted the first poll in this series:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2948216

I would like to understand more about the DU'ers that are hollerin for Impeachment hearings/investigations to begin immediately.

Tonights question:

Did you contribute a significant(relative to what you could have done) amount of time and or money to the cause of electing Democrats in the last 2 election cycles?

[Vincardog]

1. So do I have the right to expect my Representative to give a fuck about my opinion?

[pnwmom]

6. Of course you do. But you're not the only opinion he's representing.

[acmejack]

2. Must one purchase a place at the table?

Ok folks, did you buy a voice in this debate? C'mon, the pollster wants to know if you have a legitimate opinion or not. Are you just a loudmouth poor person? Or did you pay for impeachment, cause that makes things different. Rahm is interested in what you have to say...

[BootinUp]

4. Made no such statement.

I'll make the opposite case just for arguments sake...

Activist "loonies" that buy a place at the table do not represent mainstream America. Poor "loudmouths" would better represent a large segment.

[nam78_two]

3. Hell yeah...contrary to what many people think

and state, those far-left loonies or whatever we supposedly are contribute large chunks of our time and money to Democratic political causes....Haven't even been on DU till 2 days back...

Its been exhausting, but it was worth it and I am not going to shut up about what I believe is important here....

[pat_k]

5. BTW, we don't need no stinkin' hearings. . .

Every time Bush and Cheney invoke the fascist fig leaf of Bush as unitary authoritarian executive they confess to nullifying the Constitution.

We know all we need to know right now.

I am not hollering for "hearing/investigations."

I am hollering for members of Congress to fulfill their oath.

The Congressional oath to uphold the Constitution is not an oath to win; it is an oath to fight -- to "support and defend."

To fulfill their oath they must be "on the look out" for threats (turning a "blind eye" is not an option). When they identify a threat, their First Duty is to notify us and tell us what they believe we must do to defend against it. (Not what they think we will do; not what they think they can do; not what they think other members of Congress might do. They have a duty to tell us what they personally believe the nation must do.)

Any member of Congress who sees the threat but won't speak up is enabling and empowering the attackers. No rationalization, whether it's the edict from their peers that "talk of impeachment is off limits," their fear of being snubbed at the next cocktail party, their fear of losing votes, or pronouncements that they "can win," excuses their dereliction.

The process doesn't start with Articles of Impeachment. It doesn't end with judgment in the Senate.

The process starts in the court of public opinion. The process ends with removal from office by resignation or by force through impeachment. Between those two points things can play out in an infinite number of ways. There is no way of knowing.

Their oath is an individual oath. Even if No Other member recognizes the threat, each member has a Personal Duty to act on their own judgment.

[pnwmom]

8. We don't have the 67 votes in the Senate that are needed

to convict. If we impeach him (indict him) in the House, but he is found NOT GUILTY in the Senate, what have we gained?

I'll tell you what HE will have gained: the right to say he was found not guilty, and vindication for him and his supporters.

[pat_k]

9. Don't worry about "vindicating" -- Pelosi exonerated when she took . . .

. . .impeachment off the table. She bent over backwards to give the Fascists an unassailable argument -- i.e., "If we were destroying the Constitution, members of Congress, who are sworn to defend it, would be calling for our impeachment and removal. Not only are they NOT calling for impeachment, they are pledging NOT to impeach. With their pledge, we are exonerated of the charges coming from the "looney left."

As I said in my post:

. . .The process doesn't start with Articles of Impeachment. It doesn't end with judgment in the Senate.

The process starts in the court of public opinion. The process ends with removal from office by resignation or by force through impeachment. Between those two points things can play out in an infinite number of ways. There is no way of knowing.

Their oath is an individual oath. Even if No Other member recognizes the threat, each member has a Personal Duty to act on their own judgment.

What do we get? Those who speak out get to be in the right side of history:

The Choice

We all have a choice: the right side of history or the wrong side. Win or lose.

History is a harsh judge. When we look back at the times that evil has won, the "winners" disgust us and we hold the ones who stood on the sidelines because they believed "We can't win this one so we'd better shut up" in contempt.

At our founding, some who claimed to "hate" slavery were nonetheless complicit in the morally indefensible "compromise" that allowed our fellow human beings to be enslaved in the United States. Undoubtedly many believed they "couldn't win" if they drew a line in the sand and so did not draw the line.

We may never stop paying the price for that horrible compromise.

We face another such defining turning point.

There is No Downside

For years before Pelosi's "pledge", the beltway establishment (both Democratic and Republican) have been dong everything in their power to make sure all talk of impeachment is "off the table." The Democratic assumption that "something bad" would happen is so firmly entrenched in their insular world that it never gets challenged. A very big problem since the assumption has no basis in reality.

What's so tragic is that there is no upside to following the establishment's "impeachment is off limits" edict.

Reality is what it is. Bush and Cheney are grabbing more and more Un-American and Unconstitutional power and using it to nullify our laws through abuse of signing statements and refusal to execute or enforce them, to steal our treasure to empower their tiny faction, and to blatantly violate national and international law to bully other nations -- nations that have given up on looking to the good will of the American people for help because we have clearly surrendered our sovereignty to Bush by tolerating his Un-American and Un-Constitutional claims to be "unitary authoritarian executive."

It is impossible for Democratic leaders to speak in inspiring terms about who we are as a nation if they refuse to point to the fascists and say "That is the OPPOSITE of who we are, and Americans must prove it by removing the threat they pose to the Constitution; our common contract; the soul of the nation. Bush have put the contract into breach. The ONLY way to reassert the terms is through Impeachment, the sole mechanism we established to defend against such attacks from within."

With the ONE weapon that We the People gave them to defend our government from abuses of power "off the table," Dems are incapable of speaking coherently about anything. They are trapped in a world of doubletalk and euphemism because they are desperately trying to avoid having to say anything about the elephant that's trampling the things we treasure most.

There is nothing LESS inspiring then strategy-driven doublespeak.

Even the folks "out here" defending Nancy's pledge don't feel good about it -- they are making apologies and excuses. If the actions of our leaders make us feel a bit "dirty" how can we expect them to inspire our fellow citizens?

If the Party establishment hadn't sold themselves on the absurd notion that "voters won't like us if we do our duty, " we probably wouldn't be having this discussion because 2004 would have been a landslide big enough to overwhelm the election thieves.

[acmejack]

7. Proportional to my income I donated quite a bit.

It's a damn shame that only one of those State level people will be sworn into office. Such is the joy of living in Texas. Not my Congressman, not my Senator, so was the time wasted? I wonder some times, there are some seriously impaired folks down here. Thank God for our little oasis here in Austin.

[BootinUp]

10. only 19 votes? Where is all the support for Impeachment Now?