It's just the Constitution that's suffering because of House Speaker Nancy

Pelosi's nutty and unprincipled "impeachment-off-the-table" position

blocking any effort to impeach President Bush or Vice President Cheney for

their many crimes and abuses of power.

Her position on impeachment is killing the Democratic Party too, by driving

away not just progressived members of the party, but independents who voted

for Democrats last November expecting some action in defense of the

Constitution.

I see this anger welling up among progressives and independents everywhere I

travel, as people say they've simply had it with the Democrats. The support

of the party for a bill continuing funding for the war through September was

terrible. The Democrats' rush to pass a bill granting Bush the authority to

spy without a warrant on Americans, and to expand the power to spy

domestically well beyond phones and internet to even include break-ins was a

last straw.

My own little call for people so sign an "I Quit This Party" petition has

seen a jump from 300 to now 400 signers. (Sign up on the column to the

right.) When it gets to 500 I'll be sending the list off to Pelosi, as well

as to the offices of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Democratic

National Committee Chair Howard Dean.

Four or five hundred party defectors may seem like small loss, but it

reflects a larger trend across the country.

Here's a letter I got from the head of a group of active Democrats in

central Pennsylvania--the very kind of heartland area that Democrats will

need if they are going to win the presidency and hang on to or make gains in

Congress next year.

Writes Kathy Ember, a Democratic Committee member in Pennsylvania, and

president of the Kutztown Democratic Club:

I am the president of a very active grassroots Democratic club just outside

Philadelphia in PA. Recently, I got an email from Nancy Pelosi, asking all

of us to help build the grassroots.

EXCUSE ME Nancy, but we have been working our butts off out here for years

trying to do just that. WE are the ones that put that Democrats back in

power in Congress. We've been there for you, but you have let us down by not

holding the current administration responsible for their crimes.

Not only are you losing us...you are making it impossible for us to "build

the grassroots". Do you know how people look at you now when you ask them to

join the Democrats? They laugh in your face. Why, they want to know, should

we join or support a party that has done nothing toward getting out of Iraq

or impeaching this president?

I am in contact with other Democratic clubs across PA. Some have recently

changed the word "Democrats" in their name to a lower case "d". Others have

abandoned their association with the Democrats altogether and have formed

instead "citizen action groups."

When will the Democrats in Washington wake up and realize that it's not

impeachment that will hurt the party...it is the lack of it.

I believe that the aptly named Ember is just one spark in a prairie fire

that is going to sweep away the conservative Democratic establishment in

2008. Whether it is by turning to third party candidates, or just sitting

out the next election, these angry and frustrated Democrats are showing that

they've been betrayed one too many times by the Democratic Party.

Either Pelosi--who is facing an election challenge by Cindy Sheehan in her

own San Francisco district--better do an about face and open the path to

impeachment of Bush and/or Cheney. Otherwise, she and her fellow party

leaders are going to find themselves either ousted in primaries, or back in

the position of minority "leaders" in 2009.

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