In a recent diary imploring Cindy Sheehan not to run against Speaker Pelosi, the fundamental issue involved was spectacularly missed:
Let's face a cold hard fact: should you decide to run for Congress, based on the reasoning that Speaker Pelosi has taken impeachment off the table, were you to be elected, it would not affect the issue of impeachment one iota. For the simple reason that when you take office in 2009, the crooks will be gone.
This is a reality-based community, which compels me to refute this "simple reason" by pointing out a glaring reality: THE CROOKS WILL NOT BE GONE. Corrupt right wing fanatics will still be entrenched throughout the federal government bureaucracy, the judicial system, and the corporate media. K-Street lobbyists will still have overwhelming influence. The Department of Homeland Security and the entire defense industry will still be infested with crime and corruption.
Cindy Sheehan is not and never has been a one-issue activist. Her potential candidacy is not just about Impeachment, it's not just about ending this criminal occupation of Iraq, it's about challenging the entire corrupt, broken, fucked up beyond all recognition political system we have in this country.
It's about CRASHING THE GATES.
Who has crashed the gates more often than Cindy Sheehan has the last two years?
No one.
This 110th Congress sure as hell hasn't. They haven't crashed anything except their own approval ratings.
Cindy's critics say she has lost effectiveness. Let's get this clear right now. Cindy has not been ineffective, the millions of progressives who just sat on their asses and watched her get arrested again and again are the ones who have been ineffective. I've been one of them. We've all been guilty of it. We've all probably rolled our eyes when we've heard about Cindy getting arrested again somewhere.
It was easy to do that, it's much harder to admit that we bear most of the blame for Cindy's "ineffectiveness". Cindy's been fighting her heart out for the causes we all share. If every one of us had done even just a fraction of what she's done, this nightmare would be over. So think about THAT, those of you here on Kos who mocked and ridiculed her and cackeled ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha and called her pathetic during your feeding frenzy at the trough of self-indulgent hypocrisy.
It can be argued that Cindy meeting with Chavez and criticizing Israel were mistakes. Well if they were, they sure as hell didn't cost half a million lives and five-hundred billion dollars. Progressives who howl about Cindy's mistakes need to compare them to the lethal mistakes the political establishment keeps making. They've turned the whole world against us, they've bankrupted our treasury, and have blundered into a hellish mess in the Middle East that may erupt into a regional war that could cost several million lives and decimate the global economy.
So maybe it's time for you Cindy mockers to STFU about her mistakes. Not one human life has been lost because of them, not one dollar has been wasted. If you want to talk about mistakes, talk about MISTAKE D.C. where all the deadly mistake makers parade around fucking everything up for everyone and then collect pay raises for it.
Cindy's fought alone, or with just a handful of other heroes, while millions of us have just been sitting at our keyboards bitching about no one doing anything. She's fought for the progressive causes we all believe in and has paid a heavy personal price for it. She's been viciously smeared, threatened, mocked and ridiculed day after day for telling the truth about this criminal government, complicit media, and war profiteering bloodbath in Iraq.
There comes a point when a human being, no matter how much courage they have, just can't take that anymore. Cindy reached that point 6 weeks ago. After being subjected to two years of right wing hate and abuse, it must have been devastating to be subjected to the smears, mockery, and ridicule of progressives too. For fighting her heart out for progressive causes all across America, she got rewarded by being slandered as an "attention whore."
When she told the damn truth about Bush and his right wing cult, progressives praised her as a hero. But when she told the damn truth about too many enabling, excuse-making, spineless Democrats, she got stabbed in the back for it by many of the same progressives.
Over the last seven years, how many of us have reached the point where we said to hell with it, this is useless, we can't win this fight? I bet most of us have done that more than once, and most of us have rejoined the fight a few days or a few weeks later because we knew we had to.
Cindy just went through that process, as most of us have, yet many progressives attacked her for doing the very same thing most of us have done. More importantly, she's back because she understands that this fight for a progressive America is only BEGINNING.
THE CROOKS ARE NOT GONE. We need progressives in Congress who have the courage to confront them and tell America the damn truth about them. This year, next year, and every year until we rid our government of these criminals. Cindy is considering running for Congress because we have too many incumbents who are satisfied with just trotting out excuses, orchestrating meaningless votes, and insulting our intelligence with patronizing form letters.
Are we going to crash the gates or not? It's very clear we need to do that, and what better way to crash the gates than to challenge one of the head honcho gatekeepers in her own district? Why does that horrify so many people here?
It's called DEMOCRACY. It's called running for office. Progressives like Cindy running for Congress would give the voters a real choice instead of a choice between two politicians who don't give a damn what we think because they're too busy answering K-Street phone calls.
Nancy Pelosi has been in Congress for 20 years, she's one of these establishment politicians who needs a damn wake up call. If a challenge to her own seat in Congress doesn't wake her up, what will?
Pelosi sure as hell hasn't been effective. If she would rip Bush a new asshole like Michael Moore ripped one for Blitzer, she'd be amazed how this effectiveness thing works when you tell the damn truth, speak out with righteous anger, and don't back down.
Pelosi won't do that though. It wouldn't be polite. She seems to think we're all at a garden party instead of fighting for the survival of American democracy. We are deep in multiple crises and they are getting worse by the day, but all Pelosi does is plead with Mr. 26 Percent to cooperate while hoping Republicans will start voting for withdrawal.
I'll believe that when I see it. Until then, if anyone ever needed a wake up call, it's Nancy Pelosi. She's going to get one because she isn't going to wake up by July 23rd. Cindy's got her number and she's going to dial it.
WAKE HER UP, Cindy. Someone has to.
Can Cindy win? I don't know, but I know that America wins whenever a progressive candidate actually fights for what they believe in instead of just talking about it.