100 % in agreement with you. Thank you for posting this. It may not get a lot of support from some of us who are rightfully enraged and  understandably unable to think clearly, but at the end of the day, you are 100 % correct.

I am extremely angry at those who would forego a very real opportunity to have real, positive effect on ending the Iraq Debacle to instead pursue an impossible, harmful, vainglorious drive for what everyone knows can not happen and  which will be as harmful to Democratic and progressive issues as one can imagine.

It is very very wrong.

But I agree with you 100%.

Under the circumstances, I think it's possible that the drive for impeachment from the netroots might actually force the Democratic leadership to throw out some other form of red meat. Perhaps even something along the lines of what you suggest for getting out of Iraq.  

Just one quibble.  When you write, "Bush's approval ratings are likely to increase slightly as a result of his actions yesterday - as his wingnut base will rally to support him," well, that can't be true.  Approval Ratings polls are binary choices -- they don't measure intensity of preference.  If a wingnut supports him anyway, it doesn't boost Bush's numbers to have the wingnut happier about his support.

This comment from Meteor Baldes is outrageous:

It's up to us to create a groundswell ... (0 / 0)

...of support. And up to us who believe impeachment is the right move to persuade people who can actually vote to begin impeachment proceedings. When the proceedings started against Richard Nixon in October 1973, only 39% of Americans supported impeachment or resignation, even though only 27% approved of the job he was doing.

You may be right that impeachment proceedings will not happen. Without proceedings, no impeachment. They certainly won't happen without the Democratic votes on the Judiciary Committee. Discussing impeachment will continue whether you like it or not. Personally, I don't think we need to have any more philosophical discussion about whether it's a good idea or not, or whether it's possible. We're split on that and we've all pretty much had our say.  No need for further flamewars.

So now, it's up to those of us who believe impeachment is possible, and the right thing, to see if we can make it happen. If we can't, then you can tell us all to shut up.

Can we hold out this long?

by Meteor Blades on Tue Jul 03, 2007 at 07:13:19 AM PDT

Meteor Blades has used the Front Page of Daily Kos to forward as harmful a proposal as one could imagine at this time and he does not want to discuss the outrageousness of his actions.

His irresponsibility will forward and harmful discussion instead of moving forward on ending the Iraq Debacle. And he thinks we should not discuss his harmful actions.

Excuse me Meteor Blades. What you are doing is extremely wrong and extremely irresponsible. You have abused your trust as a FPer at daily kso by not considering these issues and instead have assuaged your vainglorious wishes.

Leaders do not behave in this way. Leaders weigh the consequences of their actions. You should be ashamed.

I hate to see some progressives driving over the cliff again and again and again. There simply seems to be no sense of reality.

Impeachment is a pipe dream. Stupid, wasteful, meaningless.

Hopefully when Keith Olbermann gives his Liberal State Of The Union Speech aka "Special Comment" tonight calling for both Cheney and Bush to resign, it will be enough to appease our anger and calm us down. It always works for me. He's my anger outlet. OTOH, I hope it doesn't do the opposite and further galvanize a call for Impeachment. This is going to be tricky. We'll see what happens.

I completely agree that impeachment would be a very bad idea. As much as I would like to see Bush and Cheney pay for their crimes I am certain that an impeachment hearing would be a huge distraction from what needs to occur, namely getting out of Iraq. And I also agree that although Bush might be impeached by the House he would not be found guilty by the Senate.

Let's work on getting out of Iraq and passing an energy bill that leads us toward energy independence and lessens global warming. Then let's concentrate on gaining huge majorities in both houses and a Democratic president. After all that I am all for impeachment, roughly between November 6th 2007 and January 21st 2008. It would be a nice send off party.

Anyone who's sickened by this current administrations blatant disregard for morality and the laws of the land favor impeachment as a remedy.
It doesn't make it any less a pipe dream.

I'd like to see the Dems win on ANY issue. Outsmart Rove and Cheney at least once.
They do what they want,there's a lot of noise,but no accountability. I.E Libby,Gonzalez,war in Iraq etc.

All this talk making a choice about leaving Iraq or impeaching the criminals is pure bunk. We won't be leaving Iraq under any conditions until the Bush team has gone; impeachment would speed up that process.

It would also send a message that needs to be sent; criminals and traitors face justice. Otherwise all we'll see is this gang laughing all the way to the bank. But bets are that they'll figure out a way to do that anyway.

Hey Big Tent, Brattlerouser here.

Dude, disagree all you want with impeachment. It's great! But please, show some respect fom people who disagree with you.

> I really can't stand even discussing this with folks who argue nonsense like you just did.

While there are people who can't argue succintly, comments like that aren't necessary. Now let me begin why fighting for the Constitution is the better route.

***

Ending the war is a task that could best be accomplished by inaction, by Congress refusing to provide any more funding. Or it could be accomplished by a bill created by one committee. It is not a fulltime task for the entire Congress.

But as I've said before, there is just no way that Bush & Cheney are going to bring the troops home on their watch, not to mention Nancy Pelosi has also sworn that funding is also "off the table." If you want proof she said that, I'll get it.

What could help move Congress would be the same thing that the 93rd U.S. Congress end the Vietnam War and convinced Nixon not to veto the cut-off in funding: impeachment. Just like back then, impeachment could likely drive the war debate in the right direction, because impeachment would be for offenses either directly connected to the war or offenses that have been justified by "war on terror" propaganda. Granted there are other issues to investigate for impeachment, this focuses exclusively on the Iraq war delimna (sp.?)

In the event that Congress actually cuts off the funding and end the war, it is very likely that Bush and Cheney would misappropriate funds from the Pentagon to keep the occupation going. Keep in mind, they already did this in order to secretly begin the war, and to this day, they still have never been held accountable for it. So, removing them from office is not only needed in order to give Congress the backbone to end the war, but it is also needed if the war is ever to actually end.

I hope this has been helpful and much clearer than the argument I made last time we discussed. If not, fine. But again, please, show the necessary respect from people you disagree with.

A great MyDD diary by croweb on why elections aren't the answer to solving the Bush/Cheney delimna (sp.?)

Hope this helps.

http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/6/21/2118 16/721

the fact that we have soldiers dying in the field everyday.  If we can shorten the Bush/Cheney tenure one day, we could save lives.  As one who served his country, that matters to me.  We need to do the right thing and that is to formally impeach Cheney for lying and covering up the intelligence gathered by Joe Wilson's trip for the CIA.  I believe it can be proven that Cheney advised the CIA to NOT put the information he received verbally (i.e. the Iraqi-Niger yellowcake story was false) in writing.  This gave Cheney's office plausible deniability (the Sergeant Schulz defense, "I know nuttink") and allowed him to sell the case for war to the American people.  He was not faithful to his oath of office.  I seriously doubt that any Republican senator up for reelection in 2008 would vote to save his sorry ass.

I think you're exactly right BTD (though incidentally, I didn't think defunding the Iraq War would work for similar reasons).

If you can show me how Democrats can solve the Iraq problem before Bush/Cheney are out of office then I'll give your position more consideration.

You seem to imply there is something that can be done between now and Jan '09 but I don't see anything getting fixed before Bush/Cheney are gone.

Big Tent writes: (1) It will NEVER happen and, ironically, yesterday's event reinforces this. Bush's approval ratings are likely to increase slightly as a result of his actions yesterday - as his wingnut base will rally to support him. This makes the chances of garnering GOP support an even longer shot than it was before - when it was impossible.

As long as Nancy Pelosi and other like-minded individuals keep saying what they're saying then it won't happen. As I tried saying before, when the first bill to impeach Nixon was filed, ONLY 25 MEMBERS OF CONGRESS SUPPORTED THE IDEA AT ALL. He was after all, onlt to years prior electe by a landslide, unlike George W., and was very popular back then. Despite it all, hearing were still held, the crimes were exposed (on TV no less), without all the spin, and the public and Congress turned. Bush and Cheney deserve the same attention and would get the same result, especially given their current approval ratings. I also think their crimes are much much worse then Nixon's. After all, if John Dean of Watergate fame write a book called, Worse Than Watergate, shouldn't our bells and whistles being going off ny now? I mean the guy LIVED Watergate!

Big Tent writes: Remember, to remove Bush from office requires a 2/3 vote from the Senate, which means 17 Republicans (I count Lieberman as a Republican) must vote to remove from office. It simply will never happen. No realistic person can think it will. So let's be clear, impeachment here is nothing but a symbolic gesture.

Impeachment is in the House. Removal is after a trial in the Senate. There is NO REQUIREMENT that there even be a trial after impeachment. It is its own punishment, and while it may not remove the president or Veep, it WILL send a message to future presidents that you cannot behave as Bush and Cheney have done.

and one other tibit, BIg Tent, there were only 58 Democrats in the Senate in 1974 --NOWHERE NEAR ENOUGH TO EVICT NIXON--and the House went ahead with impeachment. They weren't uptight and worried about how this as going to make them look like in the end, in fact, it made them stronger, not weaker. And Carter was elected president too!

Big Tent writes: But since they can not be removed, then it simply is not.

the ramification of Pelosi's "impeachment is off the table"  do-nothingism in defesne of the Constitution, along with Congress' failure to stop the war, has led to a plummeting in support for the  Democratic Congress and the Democratic Party, no?  If they continue to do so, I predict they are well on their way to blowing the coveted 2008 election (which man hold so dearly to).  If onlt they'd stand up for the Constitution and conduct investigations, and do it proudly, using their congressional standing to explain the importance of their actions, I guarantee it would be their best chance of winning in '08. With all due respect, but don't you think you have it backwards? IMHO, the Dems won in 06 because they portrayed themselves as fighters and sold themselves to be an effective opposition. Now they stand exposed as wimps, cowards, and lack of principle because they're willing to kowtow to a president and veep who may well be the least respected leaders in our nation's history. IN OUR NATION'S HISTORY! If the Dems continue on the path they are leading, history will not treat them well. Kinda like the "good Germans" of WWII.  

Big Tent says: (3) Impeachment would preclude discussion of of all other issues, most notably Iraq. Indeed, impeachment would be the worst possible development for ending the war in Iraq. It supplants getting out of Iraq as the centerpiece issue for progressive activism.

As far as I what I learned, impeachment would in large part be about the war, and contribute to ending it once and for all.  I've said it before and I'll say it again, the Dems can walk and chew gum at the same time. They did it back in '73-'74 and they can do it again. During the Nixon impeachment, we got OSHA, the EPA, the Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, and more.  The Clinton impeachment process ONLY TOOK FOUR MONTHS!  With all the available evidence now, I'm confident it won't take as long as that.

The important hearings are in the Judiciary Committee. What else does it have to do? Not much with the war, as far as I know.

Big Tent writes....: Last, and probably least, the progressive base and the Netroots would be utterly defanged and treated as completely irrelevant if it chooses to waste its time on pushing for impeachment. No more than a handful of Democrats will vote for it. The Media will portray as on par with 9/11 conspiracies. It is to throw away the progressive base and Netroots' power as a Left flank in the political discourse. It relegates it to crazy Larouche status.

Dude, are you looking for blood libel or what? Just because that nut job is for impeachment doesn't mean the Founding Fathers and those who follow them aren't! There are a lot of psychos in the world today who don't think impeachment's a good idea either, ya know?

So are you saying that it's wacko to say the Constitution is in danger and that impeachment, as defined in the Constitution, is the appropriate remedy? You once said impeachment is a radical tool in the arsenal. I don't. I see it as a conservative toll in the arsenal. You're preserving and maintaining the status quo from change, regardless of the good or bad intentions. If you think that's crazy, then whatever.  

Impeachment expert Dave Lindorff lives in a town where Republicans rule. I can't tell you how many times he's gotte a thumbs up when he goes out in public and weara an "Impeach Bush" t-shirt. I've heard tons of stories of people wearing them in airports (actor Tim Robbins for one) and also get more praise than jeers. I think that says something.

Big Tent says: In short, I can not imagine a more harmful cause for the progressive base and the Netroots to embrace. It will make the day of Republicans across the country IF Democrats followed such a lead.

I can: How about caving in to the Pelosi/Emanuel/Schumer idea that doing nothing is the best way to win in '08?

I've said it again and again, the Dems are NOT going to end this war from here on out passing all the bills they want. Seriously, who thinkg the Dems are going to end this war, ESPECIALLY since they just bought it two months ago. It's their war now, and we know which Dems are on the receipt.

And finally, Big Tent writes: Fortunately, Democrats will not. But they will nonetheless suffer because the progressive base and the Netroots will feel betrayed that Democrats will choose to not follow them over the cliff. Thus, there will be negative ramification for Democrats anyway.

But my ultimate bottom line is that the essential role the progressive base and the Netroots can and should play on ending the war in Iraq will be completely squandered. That is the part that I will find hard to forgive. Truthfully, I find it difficult to not be enraged at Netroots leaders like Meteor Blades who should know better. Knowing him, I must say I am pretty shocked by his irresponsible behavior. I hope for him coming to his senses soon and ending this harmful campaign.

The only harmful campign I know of is Pelosi's and the Democrtic leadership's disgraceful effort to crush an organic, bottom-up, and diverse grassroots movement of all people, from all walks of life (don't believe me, come to Vermont!) -- I can only imagine what Thomas Jefferson would think if he read this diary. He'd be going apeshit over ALL OF OUR timidity in stopping this insanity.

I was for impeachment before I was against it.

BTD to a point, then what digby said pushed me off the fence:

Impeachment
by digby

I don't buy it.

BTD argues that "the votes aren't there" is a good reason against pursuing impeachment, but not a good reason against pursuing defunding of the war.  His distinction is unpersuasive.  Either we're allowed to take into account what's politically possible or we're not.

BTD contends that defunding is achievable because it only requires Democrats.  That's true in theory, but in practice we have only the Democrats who are in office and no other.  Perhaps Dick Lugar will never vote to defund the war, but neither will Carl Levin.  We have no mystical power to control Levin's mind because he has a D next to his name; he is unreachable.

You can proclaim until you're blue in the face that all the Democrats have to do is refuse to pass a war funding bill.  But not enough of the Democrats currently in office are on board with this approach, and it's not realistic to think that all the holdouts can be persuaded.  BTD's logic is that a bad Dem can be successfully pressured, but a bad R is simply a fact of life that we can never do anything about.  In reality, there's very little difference.

Either we can take political feasibility into account or we can't.  Whatever the issue may be.

How very Bush-like to insult someone and then refuse to post the answer. I think most people here agree that impeachment will probably not happen; however it's imperative that something be done to keep these crooks under control. The only alternative right now is impeachment proceedings which at least give the semblance of somebody doing something. Hot air won't do it and as for the argument that it's too time -consuming, I think Clinton's travesty took only about 45 days. Conyers and Waxman have a truckload of documents, etc.; it's time to put them to use.

Well- Obama goes further but saying Bush's actions don't even WARRANT impeachment!

What a joke of a blog. Any dissenting opinions will be deleted, removed, or blocked. This one is called, what? MY DIRECT DEMOCRACY? Even the name's quite ludicrous. Ciao!  

A formal impeachment process will expand the Dems invetigatory powers while putting Bush/Cheney's crimes front and center in the media spotlight. If serious crimes are exposed, why would not the voters punish the Senate Republicans who vote to acquit rather than the Democrats? How is this a loser for Dems?

And how does it prevent them from withholding funding for the war?

[I posted this up above, forgetting that it would be squeezed like a long trail of toothpaste into the right column.  So I'm posting it again down here.  If this is a bannable offense, let me know.]

In my experience there's usually little point in arguing with Armando once he gets wound up tightly enough.  Someone alerted me to Armando's antics here and it led me to go retrieve my MyDD password.

Armando (BTD) called me out in a diary last Saturday, which I encourage everyone to read -- http://big_tent_democrat.mydd.com/story/ 2007/6/30/142248/428#readmore -- after my diary on impeachment was (to my surprise) promoted to FP.

Please, if you will, read his diary before you proceed.

[...waits...]

Now: did you get the sense in reading his diary and cutting through the thickets of invective that I was promoting impeachment on the sole ground of Bush's refusal to honor Congressional subpoenas into the many investigations -- including that of AG Gonzales, whom Armando  evidently would also like to be impeached -- should that behavior persist?

Did you get the sense that I was not yet advocating impeachment on any of the substantive grounds that impeachment advocates -- thoughtful ones, who argue that even a failed impeachment can have a positive effect, because they are not as cocksure about their ability to predict the future as is Armando -- propose?  Did you get the sense that I remain a skeptic on those, and would return to a "wait-and-see" position if Bush did relent on this issue?

If not, then there was something critical missing from Armando's diary.

Armando calls me "dishonest" here -- it would probably be impossible to pin him down as to precisely why, beyond totalizing and unsupported invective, but I'll venture that it comes down to my rejecting some putative "fact" that boils down to his opinion -- and says in his June 30 missive that he knows why I wrote the diary(!)  Evidently, he thinks it was to suck up -- to someone, I'm not sure whom.

Having the advantage of living inside my own brain, I am well-aware of why I wrote that diary: because I think that Bush's move to neutralize Congressional investigations (ones based on the suspicion of actual underlying crimes) when he doesn't like where they are going is an awful precedent, a nuclear bomb of a move, and that Congress must be ready to pull out the heavy munitions to oppose it, as a matter of maintaining its institutional relevance.

That's why I wrote it.  That's why I'd be willing to support impeaching Bush over it if he does not back down.

Now, as to Iraq defunding, my opposition to it was mostly prudential.  It's true that a united Democratic caucus could refuse to fund the war, and I don't like they way they played their hand.  But we don't have a united Democratic caucus; we have a caucus that -- for understandable if not admirable reasons -- is not willing to stand by waiting for Bush to pull out what they fear could be a deadly successful PR campaign about Democrats defunding the troops.  That's why I concentrated my energy on other approaches to stopping the war.

Armando suffers from a malady common among academics, which is that, having come up with an idea and convinced a few friends about it, he's convinced that it's brilliant and anyone who doesn't see that must be blind and/or daft.  The problem with this approach to life is that sometimes one's ideas aren't actually all that perfect.  Most intellectuals learn, in time, to let go of the ones that go splat.  Others continue howling at the moon forever.  I would have wished a better fate for Armando.

Now, why the personal attacks from Armando?  He'd probably say it's because I kept hounding him in comments.  You can read his last month or so of comments in DKos and see whose deportment you prefer.  In my opinion, it's actually because of our disagreements over policy towards Cuba, which I generally tried to soft-pedal around him while we were cavorting the same pasture.  One day I didn't quite so much, and right after that things went sour.  Coincidence?  Maybe.

Speaking of which, I don't spend much time here on MyDD -- just because I spend so much time elsewhere -- so if anything amusing happens that suggests I really have to return soon, drop me a line at senecadoane@lycos.com.

aravia-cockfights are illegal in the US.

I agree that an actual impeachment would be better for the bad guys than it would be for the good guys but the movement to impeach is very valuable since it moves the window, which is something that the good guys couldn't possibly be worse at doing and which the bad guys have perfected.    

After this exchange about me:

Armando: Major Danby, a newly minted impeachment proponent, OPPOSES my proposal as "unrealistic."

MB is just wrong.

Danby is dishonest.

andgarden: yes, Danby is incoherent on this issue too.

I challenged andgarden as to my "incoherence" and he said:

According to you, defunding is impossible because the Democratic caucus isn't united behind it. If that's true, then how could it ever unite behind impeachment? And given that an impeachment conviction requires many Republicans in the Senate, why on earth would you focus on it?

Andgarden's two hidden assumptions here worth bringing to the light:

(1) If the Democratic caucus won't unite behind defunding, it could not unite behind impeachment.

(2) There is no reason to proceed with impeachment unless it leads to a conviction.

One problem is that andgarden (like Armando) lumps together all flavors of possible impeachment as having the same probability and value.  They aren't all the same.  That's why I have proposed impeachment on a narrow ground, as well as favoring further investigations, rather than broadly.  But let's take these one by one:

(1) The Democratic caucus won't unite behind defunding because it expects the sort of Republican response that Garry Trudeau laid out in a wonderful week of Doonesbury in mid-May:  that refusing to provide any funding for the war would be taken as "insulting and abandoning the troops" rather than "forcing Bush's hand to withdraw them."  Some of them further look towards the day when Republicans will claim that it was the Democrats, rather than the Republicans, who "lost Iraq," by giving hope to the enemy.

Both of these GOP positions are wrong.  But Democratic fear about how they will play with the public is quite valid.  This is one of the "lessons of Vietnam" -- or, more properly, "post-Vietnam" -- politically.

I thought, and think, that there were ways around these problems.  Democrats should have pushed Bush until he folded, and either accepted timelines or the quite reasonable "Murtha II" positions.  That they didn't even do that is good evidence that they were not prepared to let the public see them -- even if wrongly -- as "owning" the loss of the war.  The right wing of the Democratic caucus would never let go of their fear of being stomped over this, without much better reason to believe that they and their party would not be punished for it, and many of the moderate votes for anti-war measures were, I believe, for show.

Now, compare that with a situation in which there is reason to believe that Bush has been committing crimes -- not ones about which one can (however speciously) argue, like violating FISA, but real crimes like obstruction of Justice -- and has been blocking Congressional investigation into those crimes.  Do I think that the Dem caucus can unite behind saying that "yes, the President must comply with Congressional investigations into these underlying crimes, and if impeachment is the only way to force that, that is what we'll do"?  Yes, I do think that the Dem caucus is more likely to unite over that, largely because it is defending an institutional as well as partisan prerogative.

As for whether one can impeach and fail to convict but still come away with a political victory -- sure.  Let's say that President Bush invited Nancy Pelosi into his office and then without provocation tortured her to death while simulcasting it on Fox.  The DC police, under the guidance of the Executive Branch, are prevented from arresting him.  And let's say that 34 Republican Senators bought his view that this was an act of self-defense in some way, as defined by a signing statement.  We would fail to remove him for that.  And yet, I suggest that the Democratic Party would still win by impeaching him over that rather than by -- just imagine this for a moment -- sitting by and simply censuring the President or something after he had tortured the Speaker of the House to death on national TV.  It would help cement the GOP as the party of sick twisted wackos and knaves who must be stopped.

The question, then, should not be "is there any reason to impeach if you don't think you can win," but "is this a political action that, even if unsuccessful, still brings credit and honor and support to the party"?  Let's talk about that.

By the way, andgarden, I don't think you established with your response why I was "incoherent" on this issue, so we can talk about that instead or as well.