alternative hippopotamus

progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital

July 19, 2007

Dems Don’t Give Protests. People Give Protests.

by AltHippo @ 11:05 am. Filed under Life in D.C.

Please do go read Hecate’s account of last Tuesday’s rally outside of the Iraq debate/fillibuster:

Before Reid and Pelosi and Shumer and all the other Dems showed up, people were yelling “Impeach!” and “Bring the troops home NOW! Action, not talk.” Reid stepped up to the podium and said, “Friends, give me your attention.” A woman yelled out, “No. You give us your attention. Impeach!” Reid had to pause a moment and reorient himself. For the rest of the night, calls for impeachment continued to ring out.

I’m not sure if Reid, Schumer, Kerry, etc., understand how angry we are at the Bush administration. How injurious it is to our sense of fairness, honesty, and decency to see the White House Gang get off scot-free.

This is not what right-wingers call hard-core leftism, or Bush Derangement Syndrome. This is a mainstream view. This was put so well by John Nichols on Bill Moyer’s show last Friday:

BILL MOYERS: It seems to me the country is ahead of Congress on this. How do you explain all this talk about impeachment today out across the country?

JOHN NICHOLS: People don’t want to let this go. They do not accept Nancy Pelosi’s argument that impeachment is, quote/unquote, off the table. Because I guess maybe they’re glad she didn’t take some other part of the Constitution off the table like freedom of speech. But they also don’t accept the argument that, oh, well, there’s a presidential campaign going on. So let’s just hold our breath till Bush and Cheney get done.

When I go out across America, what I hear is something that’s really very refreshing and very hopeful about this country. An awfully lot of Americans understand what Thomas Jefferson understood. And that is that the election of a president does not make him a king for four years. That if a president sins against the Constitution– and does damage to the republic, the people have a right in an organic process to demand of their House of Representatives, the branch of government closest to the people, that it act to remove that president. And I think that sentiment is afoot in the land.

Part of the problem is that we’re still living in occupied France. Congress still has the mentality of Vichy in 1943. The occupation will end soon, however, and it may serve as a helpful reminder what happened to the Collaborationists after the Liberation.

Update: please also read Thomas Nephew’s account. An excerpt:

So I went, eventually joining roughly 500 or 1000 people on a plaza a block away from the Capitol. And I sincerely applauded each and every speaker of the evening’s lineup — Reid, Schumer, Pelosi, Boxer, Murphy, Durbin, Mikulski, Levin, Waters, Woolsey, and many others — many of whose remarks are captured on a Senate Democrats video.* But each time I was done clapping, I resumed holding aloft one of our local-issue “IMPEACH THEM” signs. I was generally quiet about that, except when a speaker’s remarks seemed to justify my calling out “Impeach them!”

On stage, though, as I mentioned in a comment to the Moyers item below, it seemed to me Democratic leadership showed a remarkable and steely determination not to look at that sign, or refer to the issue. Between that and what seemed like a lack of resonance for pro-impeachment shouts (and yet less for some of the more persistent heckling) I felt a bit marginalized, discouraged — and was starting to regret I was “going off message” on an evening when Democratic leadership was, after all, trying to do the right thing.

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6 Responses to “Dems Don’t Give Protests. People Give Protests.”

  1. troothache Says:
    July 19th, 2007 at 12:43 pm

    Actually, the majority of “protesters” are paid to be there. Look in your local classifieds or go to your local college campus and you’ll find recruiters for “activists”. Basically, they pay you to go and “support” their cause.

    “People” in general are smart enough to ignore everything they hear on comedy central.

  2. Thomas Nephew Says:
    July 19th, 2007 at 2:08 pm

    troothache… actually, you’re full of it.

    That was a great post, and bucked me up considerably. I went with a local issue “IMPEACH THEM” sign, but wound up feeling kind of marginalized and almost regretting going off the “out of Iraq” message of the evening. Thanks for passing it along.

  3. AltHippo Says:
    July 19th, 2007 at 2:27 pm

    Since Thomas and I have been to a couple of protests together here in DC, we’re hip to where the protesters come from. They’re about as mainstream as you can get- and they care about this country and it’s unique position in the world.

  4. KCinDC Says:
    July 19th, 2007 at 5:04 pm

    I was standing in front of Thomas for much of the rally, and I agree with his sign and am glad he was there. I think the guy further in back of us who wouldn’t stop shouting, even during the speech by Maxine Waters, who after all opened the Los Angeles Impeachment Center, was undermining support for impeachment by his presence. And I while I believe Cindy Sheehan deserves respect, I believe she’d be doing more good for the cause if she started promoting the idea of sending Bush and Cheney to the Hague for trial for war crimes, thus making impeachment look like the moderate position. And of course I wish the LaRouchites would shut up about impeachment entirely — unless maybe we can get them to start defending Cheney.

  5. KCinDC Says:
    July 19th, 2007 at 5:13 pm

    Oh, and troothache, I hope you’re getting paid for writing blog comments. Spreading lies in service of a corrupt and immoral administration for money is of course wrong, but at least it’s more understandable than doing it as a volunteer.

  6. Jamelle Says:
    July 19th, 2007 at 10:54 pm

    That’s the infuriating thing about all of this. Impeachment is and has been for sometime a mainstream idea, yet the chattering classes in D.C. treat it as if it is the most radical thing they’ve ever heard of. The Founders put impeachment in the Constitution for a reason, and it seems that now is an ideal time for its use.

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