Pushing Impeachment, Again

Good news for all the Republicans who fear that the Democratic party is in the ascendancy, Democrats will gain seats in Congress next year, and elect a President: the party is dying.

That's right, according to a contributor at the Daily Kos, the party is withering away -- all because they refuse to impeach the President:

[Pelosi's] position on impeachment is killing the Democratic Party too, by driving away not just progressived members of the party, but independents who voted for Democrats last November expecting some action in defense of the Constitution.

I see this anger welling up among progressives and independents everywhere I travel, as people say they've simply had it with the Democrats. The support of the party for a bill continuing funding for the war through September was terrible. The Democrats' rush to pass a bill granting Bush the authority to spy without a warrant on Americans, and to expand the power to spy domestically well beyond phones and internet to even include break-ins was a last straw.

Does anyone recall the exit polling for the 2006 election showing what percentage of independents voted to send a message for impeachment? CNN's exit poll showed Iraq, corruption, terrorism, and the economy. In the minds of the Left, this all conflated into a message in support of impeachment.

And since Congressional leaders have no interest in impeachment, some are pushing for Democrats to quit the party in protest:

My own little call for people so sign an "I Quit This Party" petition has seen a jump from 300 to now 400 signers. (Sign up on the column to the right.) When it gets to 500 I'll be sending the list off to Pelosi, as well as to the offices of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean.

Four or five hundred party defectors may seem like small loss, but it reflects a larger trend across the country.

The author offers a 'stick' to induce Speaker Pelosi to come along:

Either Pelosi--who is facing an election challenge by Cindy Sheehan in her own San Francisco district--better do an about face and open the path to impeachment of Bush and/or Cheney. Otherwise, she and her fellow party leaders are going to find themselves either ousted in primaries, or back in the position of minority "leaders" in 2009.

How many impeachment crusaders will be prepared to travel to San Francisco and help Mother Sheehan challenge Pelosi? Republicans can only hope that there are enough become a burr in the leadership's side all the way to the 2008 election, complicating efforts to enact an agenda that the American people support and distracting them from fundraising and candidate recruitment.

Democrats Dis the DLC

The Democratic Leadership Council holds its convention and none of the candidates shows -- despite heavy lobbying. Perhaps more than anything else, this is the 'MoveOn Effect.' The Democratic contenders know that there simply is no significant DLC constituency in the primaries -- particularly in comparison to the MoveOn/DailyKos crowd.

Further, Joe Lieberman was the DLC's favorite candidate in 2004, and what do MoveOn and DailyKos think of him? If you're Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, the DLC mantle is only a burden -- at least right now. If you're Richardson, or Dodd, or Biden, you know that being the DLC guy will only set you back with people who volunteer and vote.

This is more worth watching for the 'Double A' prospects on the Democratic side:

Centrist Democratic governors like Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas and Brian Schweitzer of Montana will be attending. Still, for some the gathering feels like a concert without the lead acts.

These are elected Democrats in red states, who hope to be the next Harold Ford, or Jim Webb, or even Bill Clinton. Through shrewd politics and centrist policy, they might be seen as the next big moderate Democrat to attract attention on the national scene. Sure, they'll eventually run afoul of the MoveOn crowd, but it would only be after the DLC helped them rise to prominence. If you're Brian Schweitzer, you take that deal.

Jet Blue's Embarrassment: Shh... Don't Tell Limbaugh

Go read Michelle, HotAir and Ace of Spades. The quick and dirty is this: JetBlue is a corporate sponsor of the Yearly Kos convention. Bill O'Reilly's show cornered CEO David Barger to confront him with some of the vile and hateful things that have come out of that website over the years:



Here's a short quote that typifies the exchange:

BARGER: It’s, I’m really not going to mix politics from the standpoint of running our business.

WATTERS: But aren’t you guys kind of mixing politics by, you know, sponsoring this convention.

BARGER: It’s… I can see where you’re trying to go with it, but I’m just not going to, you know, to respond to that here at this point in time.

Leave aside Barger's backward defense that the company won't talk about Kos because it's trying not to get mixed up in politics. It seems to me that O'Reilly's crew were asking the wrong questions. Or perhaps they merely put the cart before the horse.

It's fine and appropriate to ask whether JetBlue was collectively aware of some of the vile things that have been said on the site. At some level, they must have been. I don't believe any company of the level of JetBlue makes such an endorsement without someone in the chain of command being familiar with the product. I have no doubt that there's someone at JetBlue who's a big fan of Kos, and was thrilled to see the company 'make a statement.'

But there's the thing. I'd first like to know why JetBlue chose to make this statement. Was this purely some low-level staffer authorizing a $1,000 check, or was it the Board approving $100K? I want to know, because I'd prefer to continue flying JetBlue. But as things stand now, I don't think I can. If JetBlue endorses Kos... well, they don't need my money.

Dean Barnett has a good piece on this:

That makes the decision to sponsor the YearlyKos officially a spectacularly stupid one. The Daily Kos is not only political, but a political lightning rod. It doesn’t get more political than the Daily Kos. The fact that someone at JetBlue thought it was a good idea to hitch their wagon to Markos’ star is truly stupefying...

The amazing thing about the JetBlue/YearlyKos thing is that people doing the advertising for JetBlue could be so ignorant regarding either the blogosphere or the nature of business. As far as business is concerned, you don’t attach yourself to an entity that not just alienates but also offends and angers half of your potential customer base.

Dean's right. And I suspect that the problem isn't so much the blogosphere, but talk radio. If O'Reilly is talking about this, can Limbaugh and Hannity be far behind? And while the number of conservative blog readers is merely in the hundreds of thousands, it's in the millions for those guys. Once this story makes that leap, it'll start showing up in ticket sales.

For what it's worth, Barger's political donations don't suggest that he's a Kos fan. A quick review of Political MoneyLine shows that he's given to plenty of Republicans, including a donation of $2,100 to Mitt Romney's Presidential campaign. I don't know how that would go over if he shows up at the Kos-fest.

Update: Over on the Left, ThinkProgress reports that 'voices across the blogosphere' (translation: the most extreme left 5% of the blogosphere) have criticized the O'Reilly report. Whatever.

The post also promises that readers can fly Jet Blue safe in the knowledge that O'Reilly won't be on the plane with them.

Didn't take long for Jet Blue to become a 'Blue' Airline, did it? I don't have an MBA, but I don't think that's a profit-maximizing strategy.

Update II: Noel Sheppard says that the support we're talking about is only a few airline tickets. That clearly puts them closer to the 'low-level staffer approving $1,000' scenario above.