My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.
Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule...
Those words were spoken by Gerald Ford after he was sworn in as President. He entered office after the resignation of Richard Nixon, a resignation that only happened after it became clear to President Nixon that he was going to be impeached, and would most likely lose.
The nation was in pain, then, and impeachment proved to be the painkiller.
I've stayed out of the pro/anti-impeachment wars thus far, wavering back and forth between the bold (pro) and cautious (anti). And yet, when I see the mushy middle in DC asserting itself into walking lock-step with Mr. 28% again, it's finally become enough to push me over the bloody edge!
The way I see it, it's going to take a massive amount of pressure, bludgeoning, and just plain bitching to get the mushy middle of congress (which consists of a lot of Democrats who were in office pre-2006) to swing the correct way on issues. It seems that these guys are just too tuned into the DC cocktail-circuit chatter to hear the anguished cries of citizens all over the country. They're so afraid of being accused of "not accomplishing enough" that they're willing to accomplish the wrong things!!!
Now, I've been a political geek since the 80's, and I understand the concept of "political capital". We, as the netroots, have garnered a certain amount of such capital through our advocacy, fund-raising, and issue awareness-raising in ways that benefit Democrats. Our ability to communicate has made us a force to be delt with.
And yet, our capital is limited. If we want an issue, a big issue, to go our way, we'd better be sure it's important, because once we blow our wad, we'll have to spend time building our capital back up. Between now and the 2008 elections, I figure we have one big blow-out's worth of capital to spend.
We need to spend it wisely.
The only single issue that fixes all of our woes at once is impeachment...I realize that now. Anything less, and Bush loses one only to win a hundred more before he leaves office. I really don't think that Progressives have enough votes to force the mushy middle to the left issue after issue.
I know, many would fault my thinking, saying that since Progressives don't have enough votes to force the correct votes on issues, we'll never have enough votes to force the impeachment issue. And yet, all we have to do is force the beginning of impeachment investigations, and the snowball effect takes care of the rest. Mushy middle politicians are basically whores to the polling process, and as investigations bring up dirt, the polls will tilt bit-by-bit towards favouring full impeachment, and then conviction. Start with Cheney, end with Bush (forget Gonzo...if impeachment starts against the top 2 crime lords, they'll put Fredo in the boat to see if that'll mollify the masses).
We can push progressives to impeach for the right reasons. We can harass the mushy middle until they assent to investigations just to "make us go away". And the crimes of the top two do the P.R. work for us.
Really, this administration is a brain tumour on the consitiution, and that kind of pain requires surgery to make it stop. That surgery is impeachment.
So to the pro-impeachment crowd: you got me. I'm in.