For all his faults, John Conyers is a decent man. There was discussion here in another thread about trust in public officials; John Conyers can be trusted, in the sense that on balance he does have the best interests of the country as a whole in his heart.

He’s on record, and I think is earnestly honest about it, in favor of impeaching Bush and Cheney but has also said he won’t move to do so until he has the votes to make it work. Meantime, he’s pressed ahead with a myriad of investigations, smoothly, deliberately and inexorably driving towards gathering the kind of information that can potentially force impeachment and also lay out the basis for criminal prosecutions down the road. All good work, not as fast as we all might wish but as fast as can reasonably occur. Net net, John Conyers is a good man trying to do good things.

So why was there a protest at his office by Cindy Sheehan and a couple hundred supporters arguing for impeaching Bush and Cheney? Why, when they’d finished presenting their case to Conyers and he had responded by telling them he agreed that impeachment was warranted but that he also didn’t have the votes to move it forward, did Sheehan and others stage a sitdown and refuse to move so they would be arrested?

And most puzzling of all, why did John Conyers appear nonplussed, if not actually pleased, by the whole process?

Because John Conyers knows that the only way to move forward on impeachment is if there is an open, undeniable groundswell of demand by the American people. He could have declined to meet at all with Sheehan’s delegation. That would have generated one paragraph of newsprint for one day. He could have arranged a private meeting, with the usual ineffective press releases and photo ops and followup interviews, gotten a couple of mentions on CNN and maybe a laugh or two from FauxNews.

Instead, he allowed the protesters to enter his office knowing that they intended to force arrests, knowing that it would make headlines on the national news. He allowed his office to be used for political theater, a demonstration project, to show other members of Congress, especially Republicans up for re-election in 2008, what might happen to them. He did it as a recruitment effort, in hopes that other protestors would be inspired to do the same thing in other offices.

Nothing would please John Conyers more at this point in his public career, in his life, than to lead an impeachment inquiry, to be the Sam Irvin of his time, to make a mark in history as one of the good guys. But he can't, because he doesn’t have enough votes.

Nothing would please Harry Reid more than stringing up this bunch of slick-talking fancy pants criminals, sweet revenge for all of the mockery he’s had to endure for his genuine down-home decent country ways. But he can't, because he doesn’t have enough votes.

Nothing would please Nancy Pelosi more than to impeach both of these bastards and become the first American woman President, by whatever means. But she can't, because she doesn’t have enough votes.

John Conyers wasn't the impotent victim of Cindy Sheehan’s protest. Rather, he employed her as a marketing tool. Whether other Americans will buy into the process, march on their representatives, lie down in the aisles of power and use their bodies as monkey wrenches to bring the machine to a halt remains to be seen.

If enough citizens demand impeachment, really demand it, not by endlessly typing IMPEACH NOW!!! into comment threads but rather by putting their personal safety and individual freedom on the line, this Congress will impeach. If, on the other hand, most citizens don’t care enough to bother, then John Conyers and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid will be unable to do anything more than what they are already doing - because they don’t have enough votes.

Revolution does not occur from the top down, but from the bottom up. Removing an administration from power by impeachment is an act of political force, a guerilla movement that needs the support of the general populace in a real and tangible way. Cindy Sheehan and a couple of hundred protestors are not enough. Ten thousand protestors marching in to every congressional office and demanding arrest might just do it. A million protestors filling the streets of DC and shutting down government surely would.

Maybe this latest chess move will be enough to make things happen, force the gambit, clear the board, entice the people to step up from being pawns, to cease merely talking a good game and go on the attack.

Less than that is just so much hot air, sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Thanks Dana B. Some things are clear and one of them is the need for physicality in effecting rapid political upheaval. I don't mean to denigrate in any way those who write or speak out for change, far from it. Naming your enemy is the first step to defeating them, and we need more people speaking out for change along with you and the good folks here at Corrente and elsewhere.

It's the people who, by the thousands, think that simply saying the words will make it so, like Dorothy with her ruby slippers, that have gotten on my nerves. Any blog post that contains the words "Bush" "Cheney or "Gonzales" is immediately followed by hundreds of comments combining the words "impeach" and "now" in more ways than I could have imagined, usually in all caps and surrounded by run-on sentences. If 10% of those people could be mobilized to get away from the keyboard and out into the streets we would bring this atrocity to a screeching halt. Until then, no matter how much they want it Democrats in Congress cannot undo decades of damage in 24 months all on their own.

To pursue Lambert’s Macbeth analogy, the great hulking Evil of our time will continue to squat in his castle and shed the blood of innocents until Burnham Wood doth come to Dunsinane.

Regarding poor Cindy Sheehan, Peace be upon her and the soul of her son, she has unfortunately fallen victim to a cabal of dysfunctional radicals who are using her for their own petty ends. Chasing after our friends and allies makes no sense when there are so many Republicans who need driving out of the public arena. Some local favorites as a target for Sheehan if she really wants to be in elected office:

In a district near Sheehan’s home, John Doolittle (R-CA4) is tied to Abramoff by campaign donations and his wife’s office was raided by the FBI in connection to an ongoing investigation into her being paid over $200K for fundraising by his campaign PAC.

David Dreier (R-CA26), classic authoritarian schizoid, is simultaneously an overt homophobic AND a closeted gay. His lover is also (can’t make these things up) his Chief of Staff (snicker) and is paid $150+K/year of taxpayer money to keep him company.

Jerry Lewis (R-CA41), former chairman of the House Appropriations committee, is under an ongoing FBI investigation for campaign donation kickbacks and perks that rumor has it far exceed the crimes of Duke Cunningham.

Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA46), is an early and strong supporter of the Taliban in Afghanistan, who according to the US Department of State was continuing to hold unauthorized back-channel negotiations with Taliban representatives as late as April 2001 and has never revealed the topics of those illegal discussions.

Darrell Issa (R-CA49), who has been widely quoted in the Arab press for supporting Hamas as a legitimate, praiseworthy organization and has publically claimed credit for enabling the ousting of US Attorney Carol Lam, made his millions from selling car alarms (which by itself should be enough of a reason to never hold public office)

Poor Cindy, she has lost her way and can use all our prayers to find it again.