When the Dems take over the Congress in November

First and foremost, KUDOS to Ned Lamont.  He will be a grrrrrreat! replacement for a faux Democrat.  (What was Gore thinking back in 2000, though?)

But my point here is to suggest that impeachment may be more of a possibility than I myself had been thinking.

(more below the fold)

When Bill Clinton was being charged and impeached, I kept saying out LOUD, "Why are they going through this?  They KNOW they don't have the votes in the Senate to convict him."  I later concluded that they did it to USE UP HIS PRESIDENCY.  Every day spent on Monika was a day Clinton wasn't doing something else.  In spite of that, Clinton was by far the most effective President in my lifetime (that goes back as far as Truman).  

So, on to 2007-2008 and assuming a Deomocratic House and Senate - but just barely:

I had been thinking that Bush couldn't be convicted by the Senate (as I thought about Clinton), because no matter if the House impeaches him, there won't be enough votes to convict him.  

But then it occurred to me that with the chairmanships in Dem hands, the likelihood of REAL dirt coming out is exponentially greater than I had considered.  So much stuff came out about Nixon in the Watergate hearings that Republicans simply could not stick by him.  In the end, Nixon had very few who were going to vote Nay.

While there are the Rightwingnut Senators in the GOP, there are also some - including the 7 on the Gang of 14 - who would not be so difficult to sway, should enough nasty sheit  come out on Bush.  Ditto on Cheney, BTW.

With all the nastiness that BushCo has perpetrated, a real investigation - hell, ANY investigation - by the House (think John Conyers, who I DO remember from the Watergate hearings) will be able to do more than the stonewalling chairmen at present.  When the facts start coming out - and they will - support for his Dubyaness will fail at an alarming rate.  Small majority be damned - Bush will go down if the Dems take the Hill.  I have swung from the doubtful to the pretty convinced.

Bush should be worrying after Ned Lamont's victory tonight.  The people are pissed, and they may soon all be yelling, "Take No Prisoners!"

. . . . TD

(My politics: I am sympathetic to many Democratic positions, but not all, and consider myself more an Anarchist or a Populist, with Progressive overtones.  I agree with 2% of the old GOP, and -100% of the new GOP.  My main beef with the Demoratic Party is that they are a bunch of wusses.  it would be nice to have some with balls in there, women included.)

•  Two of the 7 Republican gang members will

  be gone if we manage to take back the Senate, though.

  by DemocraticLuntz on Tue Aug 08, 2006 at 09:39:56 PM PDT

•  'Get the rope, fellas.' n/t

  by gabbardd on Tue Aug 08, 2006 at 09:41:41 PM PDT

•  Suppose Lieberman were to win...

  ...as an independent, and we were just one seat short of a majority in the senate.

  Joe needs to tell us now, would he change his party affiliation back to D to give the Democratic party the majority whip?

  Moreover, when Joe tells us, it needs to be in full view of Republican voters in the state of Connecticut and potential Republican party funders.

  Just sayin.  Personally I think Lamont will take it, but -- just sayin.

  by skids on Tue Aug 08, 2006 at 09:56:54 PM PDT

•  You're Right

  I do believe he would be impeached since all of the really extremely dirty stuff that has gone on has been swept under the carpet. Once it finally reaches the light of day, and the public's radar, he'll be gone since even the GOP won't be able to defend him. The problem we have now is that the public does NOT know what's happened since the press won't cover it. You have to be someone like myself and I'm sure most of the people here who read liberal blogs, and the newspapers nation wide, and alternative news sources, and heaven forbid read BOOKS, and who get mailings from people like Conyers with their findings to even know what has happened.

  The main stream news would be forced to cover impeachment hearings by the House, and then the truth would finally come out, and pressure on the Senate in all parties would be too great to be ignored. When all that's gone on during the Bush presidency finally makes the light of day the public is going to be asking what the hell happened. I have the answer to that, and it's the press being allowed to be controlled by corporations that wanted to keep the public in the dark, and owned by six or so people who do not have the public's interest at heart. Fairness Doctrine. Needs to be priority ONE for the Democrats if they get back in power. The lies in the press need to stop, and C-SPAN and blogs need to not be a better reliable news service than the so called "news" in this country.

  If they get overwhelmed to the point where they can't cheat all of the elections, and there is a blood-letting in November, things are going to change, and for the better. We've got to get past that voter fraud first and I hope there are people are acting on that. I just voted in our primary here in MO today, and before I voted on the touch screen machine, I made sure we had a paper ballot back up, which there was, and ended up educating the older election workers at the polling place about voter fraud, and how it's happened when there was no paper back up, which they weren't aware of, and how I'd refuse to let it happen in our state and with my vote. I told them if we didn't have paper behind the touch screens, I'd be voting on paper, or absentee from now on. I had one of the old guys say they needed more like me who was working the polls here. These people are active enough to want to participate, and had no idea Ohio and Florida were stolen, and that they cheated the machines with no paper trail. They know now, and know that Kennedy wrote an article about it in Rolling Stone. I hope they weren't all to old to figure out how to go find it and read it, or have someone do it for them.

  Anyway, let's take it back one state at a time and one vote at a time with fighting fraud, and voting absentee where it's needed if the system can't be trusted, and get this SOB impeached, and it will happen if we don't allow another election to be stolen from the party. I think the public will be there if they're allowed to know just what this man has done to us.

  by uniongal on Tue Aug 08, 2006 at 10:09:20 PM PDT

  •  Exactly my point . . .

    When the Watergate hearings began, most in the country who thought about it were doubtful of Congress' ability to convict Nixon.  Even with a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress, Nixon certainly had the votes to block conviction.  It was only when the esistence of the tapes came out, and when John Dean testified that the bottom fell out for Nixon.  The uproar made even most of his staunchest supporters bail on him.  

    That will happen again.

    Bush's abuses have been far greater than Nixon, and to have ANY of those abuses put right in front of the whole country - all of us at the same time - will wake up a LOT of people who simply don't know yet.  Americans for the most part have been denied clear and free access to the facts.  So many are getting their news filtered.  In the Watergate hearings, the whole country was watching it as it happened.  Spin at the station breaks can only do so much to undo what the people will have just seen happen.  And there weren't that many breaks in the Watergate hearings, so in the Bush hearings people are going to have quite a while to digest the events before the spinners get a shot at distorting things.

    When the hearings begin, it can only move in one direction: toward impeachement and conviction.  The criminality of the administration has been hidden behind the smokescreen/stone wall of the committtee chairmen.  Once that layer of obfuscation and denial has been removed, it will be Katie-bar-the-door.  Once the evidence starts coming out, there will be so many possible charges that the house will have to have spearate teams of prosecutors for each charge.  It may be a good time to be a layer in D.C.

    by TravelerDiogenes on Wed Aug 09, 2006 at 01:47:16 PM PDT

•  Lets not count our chickens before they hatch

  and I don't see the Dems in congress impeaching Bush if they take back the house. Not that I support that I just don't see it.

  by SensibleDemocrat on Tue Aug 08, 2006 at 10:11:33 PM PDT

  •  Impeachment

    I recommended your post since I sure as hell don't have a crystal ball about what will happen, or pretend to know everything, or anything for that matter except for my I know biased view of the world where I'd like to see it finally be a little fair for the good guy for once, but I do think if we get back the House, Conyers is more than set to move forward with impeachment hearings, and he will do it. He'll be head of the Judiciary Committee, and he'll have the say on whether hearings are started. When someone is heading Judiciary that already has hundreds, if not thousands of pages of the Bush crimes listed already, and how to proceed with impeachment, I'd love to know who'd stop him. He's already got his ducks in a row, and well documented, and hard to refute, and once the witnesses start lining up, I think it would be hard to have any other result once everyone starts talking under oath and laying bare to the public just what's been done to our country under Bush.

    by uniongal on Tue Aug 08, 2006 at 10:22:06 PM PDT

    •  LOL . . .

      I intentionally didn't read your somment before writing mine dated Aug 09, 2006 at 02:04:16 PM.

      As soon as I opened yours to read, I started chuckling.  We said the same thing about Conyers - though you covered it better than I did.

      by TravelerDiogenes on Wed Aug 09, 2006 at 02:07:31 PM PDT

  •  Conyers . . .

    Conyers will be heading it all up, and he has collected the facts already (as much as he could get his hands on so far, anyway).  He will be in control of getting things started, and he is not going to be a wuss about it.  He will subpoena up the ying-yang, and there won't be any White House people testifying except under oath.  With prison facing perjurers, a lot will come out that is now "under the carpet", as uniongal puts it.

    Am I getting ahead of things here?  Of course!  I am just stating that I no longer see it as an impossibility, as I did before.

    I was correct prior to the Clinotn impeachment, that the GOP didn't have - nor WOULD they get - the votes.  One of the GOP hopes at the time was the same thing I am talking about here: that SOMETHING would come out and swing Democratic Senators to their column.  But they simply didn't have enough dirt to go on, because it just didn't exist.

    That is not the same with Bush.  Dirt is everywhere.  The list of grievances and illegalities is longer than the list on the Declaration of Independence against King George III.

    Nope.  This one would be - WILL BE - quite different from Clinton's - and more like what Nixon would have faced if it had gone to the Senate for trial.

    Had Nixon's case GONE to trial in the Senate, IMHO, we would not HAVE the neocons today.  They all arose from the belief system withinn their ranks that Nixon didn't really do anything wrong - that he was just the victim of overzealous Liberals.  Had it gone to completion, their arguments would have been a much harder sell to newbies and unsophisticated conservatives.  That is not to say that they wouldn't have still TRIED what they have done.  IMHO, it would have much more likely failed along the way.

    These people are more Nixonians than they are Conservatives or Republicans.  They have stepped forward and extended what they thought Nixon would have done if he'd had the chance to finish out his term.  Had Nixon been fully immpeached, it would have severely set back their efforts and their recruitment.

    BTW, Bush will be subject to criminal prosecution for the rest of his life on War Crimes charges and some other charges, as well as others that would have 7-year statutes of limitation.  Nixon had none of those hanging over his head.

    by TravelerDiogenes on Wed Aug 09, 2006 at 02:04:16 PM PDT

•  How would the Dems in the Senate give Joe Blob

  anything but the back of their mailed fist if he won as an Indy?  Anwer, they would not even give him the job of cleaning up cat shit in the basement.  And I wonder if he would even have any claim to seniority, even if he chose to caucus with the Dems (a la Jeffords).

  The people of CT are not fools.  The Repubs will vote for him, to try to spoil a Democratic Senate opportunity,  but the Independents and the Democrats know that Joe Blob would be a spot on the floor of the Seante and wouldn't get anything for CT.  They will vote for Lamont.

  I sincerely hope.

  by oblomov on Tue Aug 08, 2006 at 10:28:13 PM PDT

  •  if we were one vote short of majority

    and lieberman pushed us over, he would have massive leverage.

    by SensibleDemocrat on Tue Aug 08, 2006 at 10:32:56 PM PDT