Over the last couple of days, there has been a firestorm of criticism regarding Cindy Sheehan's entry in the race against Nancy Pelosi, and about whether or not this should even be discussed on dKos, since Sheehan would be running as an independent against a Democrat.
But I think all the diaries are missing a crucial point:
Cindy Sheehan never said that she was running!
If Cindy Sheehan had announced that she wanted to become Congressperson, and wanted to displace Nancy Pelosi, I'd probably be just as upset as everybody else. It's not the thing to do.
But Cindy Sheehan was quite explicit that she doesn't want to run, and uses a possible entry in the race as a means to pressure Pelosi to do the right thing. Of course I can't actually speak for Cindy Sheehan, just rely on what she said and wrote.
I was going to announce on July 10th (my 50th birthday) before our Journey for Humanity that I would run against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca) if she didn’t put impeachment back on the table before our tour reached DC on July 23rd.
Whether or not this is the appropriate way to get it done may be debatable. I think it is great, but I can see why others might disagree. Whether her platform is good or bad is a moot point because nobody, including her, hopes that she will run.
But we should not try and backstab somebody who is doing exactly what many others have been demanding: taking action on impeachment.
Daily Kos used to be about crashing the gates. That's why I joined, that's why I liked it. But in the last couple of days, it seemed to have morphed into an "inside the beltway" blog of people more concerned about their jobs than about what's good for the country. Some diaries came off as if they were written by the Carville-type DLC consultants that in the past have been rightfully denigrated as being "out of touch".
What happened to crashing the gates? Has Daily Kos already morphed into an establishment site?
Cindy Sheehan is trying to crash the gates. We should support her, and make her candidacy unnecessary. That's what she says she wants.