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ATTENTION; THIS DIARY DOES NOT CONSTITUTE AN EXPLICIT ENDORSEMENT OF CINDY SHEEHAN, AND SHOULD NOT BE INTERPRETED AS SUCH. THANK YOU.
The sole purpose of this diary is to provoke a thoughtful unfettered discussion about the options for dealing with Nancy Pelosi.
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I want to see the entire progressive netroots formally target Pelosi for defeat, not in 2010, but NOW in 2008, to demonstrate a clear & swift linkage/consequence for the sham FISA "compromise" bill that Pelosi is extremely responsible for.
We can't go after and defeat every single Vichy Dem who betrayed our Constitution and who subverted our legal system with their FISA compromise, but we CAN focus all of our considerable resources on and reach out & touch one big fish like Pelosi, and make a dramatic political power statement that will be heard by the Dem party establishment who played us and then betrayed us on FISA Telecom immunity.
Yes, Pelosi once was a progressive-liberal who back in 2002 voted against authorizing the Iraq war, but since 2006, Pelosi has been consistently working against the progressive netroots on a variety of issues (FISA immunity, impeachment, defunding Iraq, etc.) by her consistently behaving like a moderate-right repub House Speaker, in extreme contrast to the ultra-liberal district of San Francisco (CA-8) which she is supposed to represent in Congress.
A united drive against Pelosi by the entire progressive netroots can turn Pelosi's ultra-liberal district of San Francisco against her.
Since 2006, Pelosi has consistently been a protector and an enabler of Bush, and her ultra-liberal district needs to hear that about her, repeatedly.
Pelosi CAN be picked off by us. We just haven't seriously tried to do such yet.
Having Pelosi as our Dem Speaker of the House is like each one of us having one of our own hands voluntarily tied behind our backs unnecessarily, when we need both of our hands free & strong, to rescue our battered Constitution, end the war in Iraq, prevent new neocon wars, restrain the corporatists, etc.
Pelosi is now a Lieberman without the big mouth,
and she has to go.
Pelosi and the Dem establishment gamed us
It seems that Pelosi and the Dem establishment strategically waited until after Pelosi's own 2008 primary (and after Obama's primary) was over to drop their FISA compromise bomb on us; the Dem FISA compromise sham was in the cards all along, the Dems were just waiting for the best window of opportunity to do it, to avoid any blowback retribution from us, blowback such as the Dem primaries becoming a referendum on FISA immunity.
What really gets me is people like Pat Leahy lying down like a lamb on this matter now. That tells me that the Dem FISA fix was in, that this FISA compromise sham was planned months ago by the Dems, and we were strung along and played for saps by Pelosi and the Dem establishment, and that is why we now have to have a direct political confrontation with the current Dem leadership,
or we have nothing.
And that is what targeting Pelosi for defeat in 2008 is, a direct political confrontation with the current Dem leadership.
Not pro-Cindy, but anti-Pelosi
By delaying the FISA compromise until now, Pelosi cleverly gamed us into not supporting her 2008 Dem primary challenger Shirley Golub (a nice lady who had no money and no name recognition), and thus we are now left with what we are left with, which means the Cindy Sheehan option, since Cindy Sheehan intends to run against Pelosi in the general election this year as an independent.
Before I go on any further, I want to say that I have no burning desire to bang any drums for Cindy Sheehan here. My main goal here is to get rid of Pelosi in 2008, and communicate a message to the Dem party establishment who have been playing games with us. However, if Cindy Sheehan wins as a consequence of us taking down Pelosi, that is fine with me, because Cindy Sheehan would support the mission and goals of the progressive netroots a heck of a lot better than Pelosi would.
I realize that this is not an easy call to make for some people here, but do we let Pelosi and the Dem party establishment just get away with their gaming of us re FISA?
Do we continue to allow a vichy Dem like Pelosi to be our House Speaker, a vichy Dem House Speaker who day one took impeachment off the table, a vichy Dem House Speaker who gives Bush everything Bush wants re Iraq, a vichy Dem House Speaker who consistently works against the mission and goals of the progressive netroots?
If we don't have a direct political confrontation now with the Dem party establishment, how will things ever really change?
At first blush, it would seem that Cindy Sheehan has no chance at all against Pelosi, but consider this:
1.) Cindy Sheehan has name recognition. She is already a well-known celebrity, a heroine, an ultra-liberal Jessie Ventura if you will;
2.) Pelosi has really created quite an anti-liberal, Bush-enabling, Bush-protecting record for herself since 2006 (on FISA immunity, on a failure to defund the Iraq war, on a failure to impeach Bush etc.);
3.) Pelosi's district is ultra-liberal and activist, just like Cindy Sheehan is;
4.) Pelosi's repub opposition is a very weak candidate;
5.) There is a growing pot of anti-FISA money out there (currently at $304,513) now being collected, to be used against any vichy Dem FISA Bush enablers; this money could make Sheehan a serious contender, help Sheehan jumpstart her campaign, get some staff, get signatures, run ads, etc.
Keep in mind that this is not a Senate seat that we are talking about here, but a House seat, where $300K can be enough to get a serious, viable, rip-roaring challenge to Pelosi going, especially in an ultra-liberal district like San Francisco, which is a made-to-order perfect match for the now media-famous anti-war anti-Bush ultra-liberal that Cindy Sheehan is.
What if Pelosi loses to her repub opponent because of our involvement in this race?
I am told that Pelosi's repub opposition is a very weak candidate and thus this is not a likely outcome, but let's consider the theoretical possibility of a 3-way race, where Pelosi and Sheehan split the Lib-Dem San Francisco vote and the repub wins.
In this theoretical worst-case scenario, what have we actually lost and what have we actually gained?
Well, we will have lost a vichy Dem (no big whoop there), but more importantly, we will have reached out & touched Pelosi, a member of the Dem party establishment, a big fish, someone who was absolutely worthless to the progressive netroots anyway, and, we will have sent a message to the Dem party establishment that we will muck things up for them if they continue to pay us lip service and take the progressive netroots for granted.
What if Pelosi still beats Cindy Sheehan?
Well, if we can at least make this a horse race with our involvement, we will have still scared the stuffing outta Pelosi, and we will have still imbued Pelosi with a sense that we are not just about angry phone calls & letters & petitions anymore that she can simply ignore, and that from now on, Pelosi ignores the progressive netroots at her peril.
Let's just get rid of Pelosi
In conclusion, I am not pro-Cindy here, as much as I am anti-Pelosi here, and I am anti-Pelosi because Pelosi has now conclusively demonstrated to me that she has zero value for the progressive netroots, and that she is actively working against the progressive netroots.
Electing Cindy Sheehan is not my main goal here, defeating Pelosi is my main goal here, that and giving a nice poke in the eye to the Dem party establishment, who have been jerking us around on FISA, on impeachment, on Iraq, etc.
As lisastar said, it is really quite a pretty simple idea here,
Let's just get rid of Pelosi.
And, kestrel9000 may have come up with a great way for reluctant kossacks here to deal with the independent nature of a Cindy Sheehan candidacy:
What if an indie ran against a Dem in the GE and made the pledge, "If elected, I will join the Democratic Party"?
*** UPDATE ***
As kestrel9000 implies, let me be clear that I would consider it a necessity for Cindy Sheehan to pledge in advance that she would join the Democratic Party if elected.