Leave it to the corporate media to COMPLETELY ignore Dennis Kucinich's Articles of Impeachment against George Bush this Sunday. Sure, I don't think Kucinich will get the support of most of Congress (with the exception of Robert Wexler), but isn't it even worth discussing?

The Seminal

I disagree with Ian's post this morning on impeachment, and specifically the first reason against going through with it:

When the House of Representatives voted to send Dennis Kucinich's Articles of Impeachment against George W. Bush to the Judiciary Committee yesterday, it was understood that the vote in reality killed the bill. And it is understandable why the House will not actually take up the Articles no matter how legitimate the case against Bush may be. First, they do not want to distract from the presidential election and redefine the debate when it already favors the Democrats. Second, if successful, then Cheney is President. If you impeached both Bush and Cheney and made Pelosi President, then it would look like a powergrab by the Democrats. However, having the Judiciary Committee hold the hearings might at least document the criminality of the Bush Administration in a coherent manner.

I'm actually pretty convinced impeaching George Bush is a great electoral strategy for the Democrats.

There are two basic reasons Democratic leadership puts forward against impeaching George Bush and/or Dick Cheney. Speaker Pelosi's public reasoning is that she would rather focus on other issues more important to average Americans:

"The question of impeachment is something that would divide the country," Pelosi said this morning during a wide-ranging discussion in the ornate Speaker's office. Her top priorities are ending the war in Iraq, expanding health care, creating jobs and preserving the environment. "I know what our success can be on those issues. I don't know what our success can be on impeaching the president."

The implicit reason is that Bush has been a huge electoral aid for Democrats. Largely running against Bush, they were able to capture both houses of Congress in 2006 and they hope to repeat the feat with the White House in 2008 - not to mention pick up a great many House and Senate seats in the process. Eliminating Bush, or doing anything that could cause citizens to rally around him, would take out that advantage.

She's wrong.

Never mind my belief that holding those in power accountable is just about the most important issue there is. Impeaching President Bush will actually help Democrats accomplish their electoral goals.

It's no secret that the Democrat's top strategy to win the White House this year is to label John McCain as 4 more years of Bush. Outside groups like MoveOn.org are going all out with their Bush-McCain challenge, spending millions on organizing and ads. Barack Obama himself is touting how often McCain votes with Bush. (95% of the time last year!) This is the attack, and it looks like it's starting to stick.