Vermont's Congressional Delegation Disses Voters and State Legislators

[babylonsister]

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/21593

Vermont's Congressional Delegation Disses Voters and State Legislators
Submitted by dlindorff on Fri, 2007-04-20 21:30. Impeachment

Update:

In a joint statement issued in Washington, DC, Vermont's Congressional delegation, Sen. Patrick Leahy, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Peter Welch, responded to the state senate resolution by saying that "before we talk about impeachment," current investigations in the Congress need to be "allowed to run their course."

Ignoring the fact that 39 towns in the state, including some it Vermont's larger municipalities, have voted out impeachment resolutions, the three, all Democrats, go on to say, "In our view, the people of Vermont want us to focus our attention on such issues as ending the war in Iraq, protecting the needs of our veterans, raising the minimum wage, addressing the crisis of global warming and providing health care to all of our citizens.”

Never mind that the Democrats' narrow majorities in Congress mean that they cannot hope to deliver on any of those issues in the next two years. More importanbtly, if ever there was a case of elected officials ignoring the clearly expressed will of their constituents, this is it. Not even content to claim that they "know better" than the popular will and are acting on their own best impulses, but rather, claiming to somehow "know" what the people of the state want, Leahy, Sanders and Welch are demonstrating graphically just how divorced the Democratic Party in Congress and the DNC has become from the party's own rank-and-file.

If a vote for the impeachment resolution passes in Vermont's House of Representatives next week, too, and that doesn't sway these three pompous solons into action, Vermonters will have their task cut out for them come November 2008. Welch in particular should be sent packing if he turns his back on his own state's legislature and voters.

[rinsd]

1. Ummm.......

"Never mind that the Democrats' narrow majorities in Congress mean that they cannot hope to deliver on any of those issues in the next two years."

But they will be able to get impeachment through?

That author seems to be completely illogical.

[babylonsister]

2. This happened earlier today, thus the disappointment:

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/21567

Huge Win for Impeachment in Vermont!
Submitted by dlindorff on Fri, 2007-04-20 16:48. Impeachment

The impeachment movement, which has been building steam since the November election, got a big boost this morning when the Vermont Senate overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling for the US Congress to initiate impeachment proceedings against President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

The 16-9 vote, which saw the Senate’s six Republicans joined by only three Democrats, will make it difficult for Vermont House Speaker Gaye Symington, a Democrat who has opposed the impeachment resolution drive, to keep the measure from being voted on the House floor. Symington has been arguing against such a resolution, claiming it would be “divisive.”

The vote in the state senate was a huge victory for grassroots Democratic activists, who had been forced over recent months to overcome opposition to impeachment from the national Democratic Party leadership, and from their own state’s Democratic Congressional Delegation. Leading Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), have been arguing that impeachment could hurt Democratic prospects among independent voters in the November 2008 elections. But impeachment activists have countered that the president and vice president have violated the law and undermined the Constitution, and that it is inappropriate to let strategic and tactical interests of the Democratic Party enter into the decision on whether to impeach.

To get around opposition from leading Democrats, Vermont’s impeachment activists organized a statewide grassroots campaign to have as many towns as possible endorse impeachment in resolutions introduced at the annual town meetings that are the primary form of governance in most of the state’s municipalities. In the end, 39 towns voted for impeachment resolutions in their annual meetings in February. This sent a strong message to state legislators about the mood of the voters in the state. In the end, that message trumped pressure from Washington.