Impeach Bush, or win Congress?
Josh Marshall on why we need focus on elections, not impeachment:
With Bush's current approval ratings and the results of polls for generic Democratic slates, we're in decent shape. But it all comes down to the hard work of getting out the votes, voter by voter in all the key precincts around the country. And for that, something like a censure really might grab some attention.
- people who care about politics should care about it because they care about actual politics, what actually happens, who gets votes and who doesn’t, who has the power for awesome decisions like going to war.
Critics of the president who care about those things should do the one concrete and meaningful thing they can do at the moment to have an effect on those key issues, and that is to create a counterweight in the Congress, specifically by putting Democrats in control of at least one chamber.
Once that happens, and if the Congress does its job of oversight, impeachment will still be there if the president continues his lawless ways.
Until then it’s just an indulgence.
With Bush's current approval ratings and the results of polls for generic Democratic slates, we're in decent shape. But it all comes down to the hard work of getting out the votes, voter by voter in all the key precincts around the country. And for that, something like a censure really might grab some attention.
posted by $!# at 3/16/2006 12:41:00 PM
2 Comments:
Right. The other thing, as I've seen pointed out at various progressive blogs, is that impeachment proceedings against Clinton really hurt the Republicans. Why, there are still one or two senators who vote against them!
Bring it on, motherfuckers. Bush's approval ratings now are far lower than Clinton's at the height of the impeachment brouhaha. The real risk is in not doing anything, and leading the Democratic party base to (correctly?) conclude that our representatives in Congress are totally removed from the desires and beliefs of ordinary Americans -- who are starting to overwhelmingly dislike this President.
If we feel dis-empowered now, we're sure not going to bust our asses to win new seats. Pandering to the base has worked extraordinarily well for the Republicans, even when their base has been bat-shit crazy and out of touch with most of the country. Pandering to the right has been disastrous for the Democrats -- and I can assure everyone that I won't repeat the mistake of donating money to another gay-bashing wishy-washy candidate like Kerry, whose people can't tell me any way to help the campaign other than to give more and more money for less and less. It's far past time for the Dems to start imitating the Republicans in the process of winning, rather than in how they vote. That involves talking shit about the opposition at every opportunity -- and this administration sure gives us lots of opportunity.
Nicely stated.
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