The Nation urges Cindy Sheehan not to run for Congress against Nancy Pelosi

[leftchick]

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/au...shee-a23.shtml

The Nation magazine, a leading voice of left-liberalism, has come out in opposition to antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan’s decision to run for Congress as an independent against Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in 2004 in Iraq and who set up a protest camp outside George W. Bush’s Crawford, Texas ranch in 2005, announced earlier this month that she would contest Pelosi’s seat in San Francisco’s 8th Congressional District.

In a piece headlined “Dear Cindy: Please Don’t Run,” posted August 11 on the Nation’s web site, columnist Katha Pollitt advises Sheehan not to contest the seat on three spurious grounds.

First, Pollitt implies that Sheehan’s only complaint against Pelosi is that the latter has failed to push for Bush’s removal from office, and asks, “should impeachment really be a litmus test?”

The failure of the Democratic leadership in Congress to press the issue of impeachment may have triggered Sheehan’s decision to oppose Pelosi, but it is by no means the only reason for her break with the Democrats, and Pollitt knows this perfectly well. As early as Sheehan’s May 26, 2007 open letter to the Democrats in Congress, she explained she was leaving the Democratic Party because of its capitulation over the Bush administration’s request for an additional $100 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is worth recalling that the Nation, along with most of the “left” and the mass media, kept silent about Sheehan’s letter explaining her rupture with the Democrats. In two comments about Sheehan at the time, the Nation’s John Nichols referred only to her May 28 statement in which she expressed weariness and some bitterness over her experiences in the antiwar movement, and declared that she was temporarily stepping back from her activities.

Pollitt maintains this policy. She refers to Sheehan’s “somewhat murky blog post she wrote in May, announcing her resignation from the antiwar movement,” but says nothing about Sheehan’s more important letter of resignation from the Democrats.

[Tinoire]

When Sheehan resigned, I noticed a concerted effort by the Dem Party gatekeepers to distort her rupture with the Democratic Party as "Cindy is tired, Cindy is stepping out to take a break. Dear Cindy, rest well." (in other words, we're going to paint you as having a nervous breakdown and Dear Cindy shut up).

It was amazing how many of them did it. Writer like Pitt were all over the net talking about how Cindy is a "dear" friend but she's been working herself too hard and is tired.

Haha. Thanks Cindy for forcing the Nation to come out and exposing yet another layer of the charade.

[Code_Name_D]

Just the mention of Nader’s name is enough to get Democrats to breathing fire. For almost a decade now, he has been the whipping boy for all of the failures of the Democratic Party, as well as a covert way to take pressure off the Bush administration, which the DLC secretly defends.

There is no better example of this than the current DLC posed mythology of how Al Gore lost Florida in 2000. It had nothing to do with hanging chads, for the fact that that SCOTUS took extraordinary means to intercede in the election on Bush’s behalf, but because Nader voters should have voted for All Gore instead, completely ignoring the fact that far more “Ragan Democrats” voted for Bush outright.

Because the fall of Florida was Nader’s fault, every thing that transpired sense then, is Nader’s fault. There is nothing short of a grand crusade to shot out not just all independent voters, but any one who would dare challenge the established the current DLC leadership.

In steps Cindy Sheehan. Last year she attempted to challenge Pelosi from the Democrats own party. But the party machinery simply would not allow it. Not because they didn’t like who she was or what her message was. If she had moved to another district, the DLC would have fallen over them selves to support her in the general election. But as fate would have it, Sheehan lives in a district that is already owned by Pelosi. How dare a mere pawn upstage the queen.

Now that Sheehan is enraged by Palosi’s example of leadership, she has chosen to challenge Palosi in the general election as an independent. This move has got to have the DLC running in total panic.

I have predicted for some time that it’s not the Republican Party that will vanish from the political landscape, but the Democratic Party, and a Sheehan victory could very well signal the start of its down fall. (I humbly propose such a party be called the Casey Party, after Casey Sheehan. I can think of no better way to honor his sacrifice.)

The question is how will the DLC respond? We are already into the pleading faze, the attacks will very soon follow. Cindy Sheehan will soon become a Nader Like pariah, in fact, she will become the new Ralph Nader (as Nader himself seems to have fallen off the radar.) It will not take very long for the Democratic Party itself to open fire with all cannons on the anti-war movement itself, in an effort to get at Sheehan.

I suspect that the DLC may even encourage this, setting up the rational for their own defeat in 08. If they fail to take back the White House, or lose either house of congress, Sheehan will get the blame. But will it work this time?

There are a lot of people out there who are beginning to challenge the Democratic Party’s capacity or intention to challenge the growing trend of fascism in America. Already, they often only vote Democrat because they are the lesser of two evils. But what will happen if you have a genuine option? Currently, the law of zero supply, zero demand has set in. As there are no outside voices in the system, the DLC can argue that there is no demand for such an outside voice.

This is an argument that is getting hard to justify. After all, Lieberman lost his primary, which sounds like a cry for change to me.

As the attacks against Sheehan pick up, this will start to expose the true face of the party, their only intention is to hold on to power. To be in the majority will be fine, but being in the minority is just as good.