"Who won today's '08 campaign poll?" -- A Howling Rant

I hate this money-grubbing "primary" campaign.  It has done absolutely nothing for the country but strangle a quickly maturing consensus on impeachment among Democrats, Independents and awakening Republicans.  In 15 months, George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney will STILL be our sitting president and vice president, in possession of all the unitary executive authority left unchallenged by our Majority of the Meek.  Today's nauseating New York Times confirmation of our ongoing legalized torture policies dumps -- yet again -- a big steaming pile of reality right on the nation's doorstep.

It is my strong opinion that this site's constituency -- and the progressive blogosphere as a whole -- needs to regroup around the idea of demanding impeachment trials for Cheney and Bush.  Trials don't mean convictions, as we learned in '98, but they do provide a measure of accountability, of which we have had none to date on literally dozens of crimes and misdemeanors going all they way back to the Florida recount and the Cheney energy meetings.

We are beside ourselves with anticipation of "The Dynamic Do-Over."  I regularly read commenters and hear pundits making the common thought mistake of declaring things will change "in January".  They mean January 2009, even though January 2008 is still three months away.  Our political understanding of time warped the day a still-at-large Osama Bin Laden crippled the WTC and filled Manhattan's canyons with billowing debris.  Our clocks have since been melting and dripping on the battlefields of an endless, misrepresented retaliation in Iraq, endless threat calibrations, and endless campaigning.

The presidential primary process meanwhile has been transmogrified into a permanent telethon, with a months-long "debate calendar" installed 6-9 months prematurely to cover-up an unprecedented, multi-billion-dollar auction of access for vested interests.  In an astonishing act of media jujutsu -- from which I do not exclude the progressive blogs -- our urgent desire for change is being turned against us to prevent remedies that are available to us NOW, if we work to seize them.

When Nancy Pelosi declared impeachment would be unavailable to the nation for two whole years, she locked up THE MAIN constitutional instrument bequeathed to us by the Founders to prevent an elected president's assumption of dictatorial power.  The Speaker may only have intended to say, "Ladies and Gentlemen, open your wallets; the help you seek will arrive in only two more years on the heels of your generous donations."  But she herself, in fact, has performed a dictatorial act by declaring, on national television, that OUR Constitutional right to hold impeachment trials is unavailable to us.  She is, essentially, holding us hostage for election money in an act of representational suzerainty.

We have now seen more than enough of this idea in action.  A Democratic Congress swirls down the drain in popularity -- what was it? eleven-percent approval last month? -- while the Bush-Cheney Constitution-grab and Great War saunter along an artificially extended victory lap.  They wave to us, and the world, in derision as they circle round the stadium.

Basta!  Suspend the goddamned campaign.  Suspend the debates.  Suspend the fundraisers.  Suspend the donations.  Suspend the fucking polls.  We need to tell our erstwhile representatives, "We'll vote for you and give you your precious money when we're good and goddamned ready to.  Right now, you need to get your asses back to Washington (Clinton, Obama, Dodd, Kucinich), or your think-tanks (Edwards), or your governorships (Richardson), or your fantasy life (Mike Gravel), and do what you can to block every single stinking initiative of this miscreant Bush/Cheney tandem, pending House hearings and Senate trials on their suitability to hold office for another 15 months.  If running for president is the best way for you to do this, then speak up, as Dennis Kucinich had the temerity to.

Today's newborns will be walking before Bush/Cheney and their unitary usurpation theory slither out of office.  Children conceived next Spring will emerge to the valedictory days of a Bush/Cheney America.  Yet, with what does the Democratic Party appear ready to replace their craven agenda??  More endless fundraising?  More endless war?  More melting ice caps?  More reality TV debates?  Recession?  Debt?  Poverty?  That's what's on the menu at this point, and we all know it.  Furthermore, the GOP poses almost no viable threat to a Democratic electoral sweep in fifteen months, if for no other reason than it's bad for big business, and big business continues to own both the meta-narrative and the electoral process.  When Hillary achieved The Full Ginsburg two Sundays ago, we witnessed both a coronation consensus and industry-wide determination that a campaign with her in the middle would reap the greatest possible revenue for industrialized media.  These "queen-makers" will now leverage our airwaves and cable systems to tear her down and build her up, so as to squeeze every possible dime out of the campaign coffers of the New York Senator and her challengers.

The Democratic Party must take back both the Constitution and the electoral process.  To do this, it must first work to expose and expel the current administration from office through hearings and trial, immediately.  The zeal with which they do this will correlate directly to their appetite to end the Iraq War, prevent an Iran War, reassert separation of powers and habeas corpus, install a 21st century energy and environmental policy, decouple electioneering from multinational largesse, and assure that when it comes to elections and public debate that our media better serve the public interest on the public's airwaves, cable and satellite systems.  It ain't the grand unified theory, but it's close.  Hearings and trials on Cheney and Bush will aggregate the public mind on the big things America needs to do for itself and the planet in the 21st century.  Bush and Cheney -- proclaiming themselves "history's actors" -- have violated the law repeatedly to prevent this very thing from happening.  The British once called this "divide and conquer."

We inherit the Bush/Cheney legacy to the extent we fail, and we restore Constitutional government and democratic representation to the extent we succeed.

We must not be satisfied to assume a soiled throne.  Indeed, we must not be satisfied to assume a throne of any kind.