We understand that David Lindorff is a ardently pro-impeachment writer and activist. And that he does not reflect the "CONVENTIONAL WISDOM" held by Democratic Party leadership in general, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi in particular.
But all across the country, Democratic voters have NO REASON to shout and dance and trumpet their support for the Democratic Party.
Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, and their pooh-bah Senate colleagues have MUZZELED John Conyers, they have turned Henry Waxman's investigations into a circus freak show, and the Democratic Senators practically fall in line to kiss the emperor's ring on issues from Tax Cuts to Iraq war to spying on Americans to huge war contracts and NO OVERSIGHT of US torture prisons and Iraq war mercenaries.
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Pelosi's Stand Blocking Impeachment in the House is Killing the Democratic Party
by Dave Lindorff
Aug 20 2007
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/9446
It's just the Constitution that's suffering because of House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi's nutty and unprincipled "impeachment-off-the-table" position
blocking any effort to impeach President Bush or Vice President Cheney for
their many crimes and abuses of power.
Her position on impeachment is killing the Democratic Party too, by driving
away not just progressived members of the party, but independents who voted
for Democrats last November expecting some action in defense of the
Constitution.
I see this anger welling up among progressives and independents everywhere I
travel, as people say they've simply had it with the Democrats. The support
of the party for a bill continuing funding for the war through September was
terrible. The Democrats' rush to pass a bill granting Bush the authority to
spy without a warrant on Americans, and to expand the power to spy
domestically well beyond phones and internet to even include break-ins was a
last straw.
My own little call for people so sign an "I Quit This Party" petition has
seen a jump from 300 to now 400 signers. (Sign up on the column to the
right.) When it gets to 500 I'll be sending the list off to Pelosi, as well
as to the offices of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Democratic
National Committee Chair Howard Dean.
Four or five hundred party defectors may seem like small loss, but it
reflects a larger trend across the country.
Here's a letter I got from the head of a group of active Democrats in
central Pennsylvania--the very kind of heartland area that Democrats will
need if they are going to win the presidency and hang on to or make gains in
Congress next year.
Writes Kathy Ember, a Democratic Committee member in Pennsylvania, and
president of the Kutztown Democratic Club:
I am the president of a very active grassroots Democratic club just outside
Philadelphia in PA. Recently, I got an email from Nancy Pelosi, asking all
of us to help build the grassroots.
EXCUSE ME Nancy, but we have been working our butts off out here for years
trying to do just that. WE are the ones that put that Democrats back in
power in Congress. We've been there for you, but you have let us down by not
holding the current administration responsible for their crimes.
Not only are you losing us...you are making it impossible for us to "build
the grassroots". Do you know how people look at you now when you ask them to
join the Democrats? They laugh in your face. Why, they want to know, should
we join or support a party that has done nothing toward getting out of Iraq
or impeaching this president?
I am in contact with other Democratic clubs across PA. Some have recently
changed the word "Democrats" in their name to a lower case "d". Others have
abandoned their association with the Democrats altogether and have formed
instead "citizen action groups."
When will the Democrats in Washington wake up and realize that it's not
impeachment that will hurt the party...it is the lack of it.
I believe that the aptly named Ember is just one spark in a prairie fire
that is going to sweep away the conservative Democratic establishment in
2008. Whether it is by turning to third party candidates, or just sitting
out the next election, these angry and frustrated Democrats are showing that
they've been betrayed one too many times by the Democratic Party.
Either Pelosi--who is facing an election challenge by Cindy Sheehan in her
own San Francisco district--better do an about face and open the path to
impeachment of Bush and/or Cheney. Otherwise, she and her fellow party
leaders are going to find themselves either ousted in primaries, or back in
the position of minority "leaders" in 2009.
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