I'd like to drop a thought about Pelosi, Conyers and impeachment... [View All]

...without having to move to Fiji, live in a tree and change my name to Palm Frond. :)

Posted this in my (wince) other Conyers thread, but it got long, and this is something I think everyone needs to either remember or understand. It was in response to a comment from a DUer who was dissapointed by...

"his apparent lack of enthusiasm for impeachment"

I can give you two reasons.

1. He can do math, and we're not there yet. I can see the wisdom of doing it anyway but doing it so well that by the time we reach the Senate, we'll get 67 like handing out candy. But that's uphill as hell, and that alone doesn't make everyone do handsprings, and...

2. He's not as spry as he was when Nixon went, and he remembers what that was like, and if I was his age, even if Bush is slaughtering babies on the Truman balcony, and I was the Judiciary chairman, I'd still be like, "Oh fucking great. I already need a nap." It'll be his bag. For a year. He has his staff to consider, his other legislative prioprities (he might have them, ya know :) ) and basically the kind of shitpile that neither you nor I nor keyboard jockeys of any stripe knows about.

Also, the House isn't like the Senate with it's 100 people and one or two standing together can move the moon. The House is 435, you need 217 to take a leak, plus the committees.

These House people are absolutely required to operate like very polite, well-dressed street gangs, which is what you have to do if you're going to be effective for your constituency, which is pretty much the reason you're there. Think Feingold. He mostly runs alone and throws weight. That is more rare than Halley's Comet in the House. The one who runs alone in that moveable feast will be going home in two years broke and sure of defeat because he passed nothing to help his district.

You become a bloc, six people or 20 or even three, and when someone approaches you to do some legislation, she gets your help on your bill and you get hers, and she gets your six and you get her five, and your bill passes and her bill passes, and two Democratic Reps just helped their people at home and kept the majority strong. This is key to my point:

If he has made deals with other House members on serious legislation (jobs, pay, health, environment, jobs, he's from Detroit, jobs), they're going to be looking at him like, "Um, hey, are you going to be on the planet? Are you going to nuke the House for a year? Cuz if you are, I might as well retire now, because if I don't get my jobs bill passed for my district where the base closed and the plant went south, I will get beat, and you will take out lots of people like me, all the guys in my crew won't pass anything and we'll be gone, and you and every other chair and the party will be back having hearings in the broom closet."

(I had to cover a bunch of those broom closet hearings, sitting on a bucket with no light bulbs in the ceiling and blogging from a phone, and the witnesses were amazing and nobody in America saw it because the room had no outlets and no room for cameras, and never again, folks)

His six guys lose their bills, the deals they made with others fall apart, and this stuff isn't as simple as pushing a button, hell, or even being right. Wish it was, but it ain't.

*koff* Pelosi *koff* ... if she has people in a crew and they have bills, she has to consider them and all that, because she's responsible for keeping the majority, and if her ten guys go down because nothing happened but impeachment, she will never get guys again and never pass anything to help anyone, and we'll collectively lose ten, plus anyone who had deals with those ten, and we're back to GOPers passing bills against gay men with penises and all Muslims and the color blue. Did I say never again? One more time. Never again.

This is the thing about majority. You can kind of wing it when you're in the broom closet, because you won't get passed a bill declaring America to be awesome. When you're in the majority, all of a sudden you have 271+ from 271+ districts, and they all need different stuff for those districts, and *gasp* not all or even most of them want a piece of impeachment. That other stuff might actually matter.

They may agree in theory, but they have thousands at home who need a new plant or roads project or hospital, and when you go back and start talking about the principle of the thing, you'll be right but they'll be broke and out of work without insurance, and they'll hit you with a brick and never look at you again.

Oh, and you'll lose, your guys will lose, their guys will lose, they'll all come beat you up, and we're back to denouncing the color blue and guys like the Hammer running the show and me in the broom closet, and I'll have to jump into Dupont Circle traffic if that happens, and it'll be on you. :P

Just because we want something doesn't mean we can get it. I don't envy Pelosi or Conyers. They've got us roaring at her and copping squats in their offices and running against them (which is our role), and their bloc roaring at them because one needs a hospital for sick babies and the other needs a base and the other wants to increase high-tech industry near the airport...

(Illinois 6, where pretty much everyone works at the airport, and the airport needs expansion, but the money isn't there unless the high-tech comes in, and that's a long two years work, and impeachment wha? and that's what I mean. You have the Illinois 6 in your crew, and you're suddenly an air-traffic controller because she needs you and you need her and her people need jobs and so do yours...and there are districts like that all over, and they have to be accounted for)

...and if you nuke the House with impeachment, you could kill your guys and their guys, all those collective constituents, the majority control, and some Hammer-like person snatches your gavel and goes off on the color blue, again. I'm solid for impeachment, but it'll be a long slog, and I'll be surprised if it leaves the conference room, because see up there.

To be considered. I find this reasonable and I always try to keep it in mind, but I might be a DINO sellout or something, was it DNC or DLC...have to check my messages and bank account.

:)

P.S. I don't want to live in a tree in Fiji, and Palm Frond is a really dumb name. Have mercy on this poor fool.