A Widening Chasm Between Congressional Democrats and Voters on Impeachment

May 21, 2007
A Widening Chasm Between Congressional Democrats and Voters on Impeachment

So far, Democrats in Congress and at the top of the party hierarchy, out of
touch with public sentiment and worried that impeachment could hurt them with
"independents"--whom they mistakenly consider to stand somehow "in between"
Democrats and Republicans--have been following House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's vow
that for the 110th Congress, "impeachment is off the table." They've been doing
more than that: they have been actively working to tamp down, and even to
crush, impeachment campaigns in the states. For example, in the state of
Washington, an effort to get the state to pass a joint legislative resolution
which would have compelled the Congress to initiate impeachment proceedings was
derailed after the Democratic leadership dispatched two of the state's leading
federal elected officials, Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Jay Inslee, to press
legislative leaders to block a floor vote. Similar pressure doomed efforts that
might have passed in the legislatures of New Mexico and Vermont (The Vermont
Senate did pass the resolution).