"A Party of Geldings"

Democrats today took two more strides toward reaching their goal of being the most cravenly obsequious and cowardly congressional leadership in U.S. history: The Senate Judiciary Committee -- with the help of Dianne Feinstein and Chuck Schumer -- sent the Mukasey nomination to the full Senate, where its approval is assured; and the House leadership killed Dennis Kucinich's proposal to impeach Dick Cheney. The procedural acrobatics Steny Hoyer went through to prevent the resolution from getting anywhere are truly awesome -- and so complicated I had trouble following the written accounts.

AfterDowningStreet.org has the clearest, most comprehensive explanation I have seen of the antics. The gist is that Hoyer first tried to table the resolution; when that failed (86 representatives voted against tabling), he tried to send the resolution back to the House Judiciary Committee. At one point, House Republicans were trying to force a debate on the bill -- to put Democrats on the spot, of course. But in the end, the Democrats (including most of the reps who had voted against tabling) voted to send the measure back to committee.

Here's some blogger reaction:

David Swanson says the results of the initial vote on tabling (with 86 Democrats voting against tabling) "indicates the strength of constituent pressure in opposition to the leadership's position."

Cernig quotes John Conyers: "If the speaker were to let this thing out of the box, considering the number of legislative issues we have pending, it could create a split that could effect our productivity for the rest of the Congress."

My first thought when I read that was: What productivity? "Honestly," Cernig asks, "do any of these spineless clowns think they're going to be allowed to produce anything except rubberstamps for Republican wars while Bush and Cheney are still incumbents?"

On the other hand, Jeralyn Merritt thinks impeachment at this point is an exercise in futility, and a waste of time:

Can we please look forward instead of back? I don't want to waste time trying to impeach Dick Cheney or George Bush.

Let's spend our energy trying to get a better President and Vice President in 2008.
[...]
I know many readers will disagree, but let's be practical. The time to impeach, if there was one, was after we learned Bush and Cheney lied about getting us into war in Iraq. It's too late now and counterproductive.

"What the fuck is the point of controlling both the House and the Senate," mattbastard wants to know, "if the Dems continually roll over for Bush like loyal lap dogs...?" Well, yeah. We all want the answer to that one.

Kevin Hayden thinks "it's a good day to donate to Dennis":

Chris Dodd, for defending the Constitution, got a sudden groundswell of campaign funding support. Ron Paul just got the same for opposing the most unpopular war America launched since the one begun by Eisenhower sending military advisers in half a century ago.

Kucinich has opposed the war from the outset, has fought illegal wiretapping and has been right on every foreign policy issue I’m aware of, throughout the post 9-11 era. Now he’s trying to take out a principal actor who inflicted all those problems on us.

It’s not about whether he can win, but can’t we muster achunk of change for Kucinich to send a message of approval to our Congressional leaders?

We certainly should.

Steve M. has the official Democrat motto. I liked it so much I made it the title of this post.