Never mind what the pundit class thinks about censuring the President for being a criminal. What do the American people think? Well, according to a new poll from the American Survey Group they are down with it.
Forty-six to forty-four, people support censuring the President. And when you just ask people that vote, the numbers are 48% to 43%.
So, despite the best efforts of the Republicans to call Feingold a traitorous terrorist coddling out-of the-mainstream loon, and despite the best efforts of CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, the Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal to characterize Feingold’s move as a stunt, he is actually representing a strong plurality of the American public.
And it gets more interesting. By a margin of 47%-40% independent voters favor impeaching the President. In the race for the swing voter, Russ may not be going far enough.
Keep writing and calling your Senators and asking them to investigate the real targets of the NSA spying program. We know they weren’t just spying on terrorists. And tell them to support censuring the President, too, while you’re at it.
I’ve called every day this week.
Ya think by now they might have started to get the message, wouldn’t you?
you know what? We should send a link to this poll to all the cable news flunkies to boost the possibility they might talk about the results (however dismissively).
True dat.
i knew this country couldn’t be that stupid!
can claim a mandate for a slim “victory” in 2004 and cause a whole slew of hell, then I say we do the same and trumpet these numbers to everyone we know, either by email, phone, or in person.
I like your idea about sending the poll results to media peeps, BooMan.
70% of Democrats in favor.
11% of Democratic Senators in favor.
Quite a few politicians are seriously out of touch with the people they have to rely on to get re-elected.
I wonder: if we bought the Senate Democrats a microscope, do you think they could find their balls?
I’m sorry to be crude, but this is just ridiculous. I’m tired of emailing my Senators, both of them high-profile Dems, and begging them to stand up for the people of their state and country.
I think they might change their stance if we call with these poll numbers and their advisers realize that they are out of step with most democrats. Most of them think we on the internet are a lunatic fringe, so it’s nice to have a poll showing 70% of democrats agree with us. You don’t win elections by ignoring that many of your core supporters on an issue they feel strongly about.
coverage of this at Columbia Journalism Review:
It’s written by Paul McLeary and is worth a look.
I think I found a new phrase to enter into the Man-Eegeean Dictionary.
If the journalists dig into it they’ll run into the bribery scandals in the defense appropriations, intel agency members and private business contractors wrongdoing. These are some of the folks that have been conducting surveillance illegally on us.
Anybody have an explanation as to why a majority of independents would oppose censure but a larger majority of them favor impeachment? I assume these are the same respondents. Maybe some think censure isn’t enough and so voted to oppose?
I think these numbers suggest that it will be hard for the pols to just let this issue die quietly as they clearly hope will happen. I’m going to call my senators again with these numbers. They show that there’s no political downside for Dem members of Congress pressing hard for censure AND impeachment. All they’ll lose is most Republicans, which are lost already and so irrelevant. It’s really interesting, though, that 18% of Republicans favor impeachment. So Republican pols who stand against impeachment have more to lose then Dems who work for it.
It should be the same 1,100 people. So, the explanation is that independents prefer impeachment to censuring.
In which case what we got here is a failure to communicate. Feingold made it clear that censure might be a first step toward impeachment. Censure is the most that the Senate can do — the rest is up to the House. We need to make it clear that this is not an either/or.
Sounds to me like they needed to word the polls a bit better. Being an Indy myself, I sure as hell prefer impeachment to censure. But if like Feingold has already mentioned, this is only a step and I am ok with that. 😉
today via Yahoo:
“Bush battered by US pessimism, leadership doubts”
Censure? Hell, yes!
Impeachment? Even better.
Interesting.
While that divide is about the same as you’d get if you asked “Is W too short to be President?”, (The nation splits on almost everything along partisan lines), it is indeed surprising in the face of fairly tepid protest against the Patriot Act and other assaults on civil liberties. People seem beyond resignation that our privacy and civil liberties are gone. Mary Matlin can actually go on Imus and say with a straight face “If you’re not talking to terrorist you have nothing to worry about” and no one bats an eye.
Perhaps people were paying attention in their civics classes and remember the importance of separation of powers and constitutional law.
Maybe not.
Dubya isn’t to short to be President, he’s too corrupt, too bloodthirsty, too focused on his computer golf game, too detached, too beholden to the worst of the worst in the corporate world, too lacking in compassion, too demented with some bizarre version of Christianity, too just about everything, except too short.
Now Gary Coleman? He’s too short to be President.
Our elected officials are accountable to the folks who vote and participate in these opinion polls. The pundits and media are employees of corporate America. The blogosphere is more in touch with the former. I’m not sure how to get the attention of the latter. I’m getting tired of calling, writing and emailing, too. On the other hand, I am reluctant to vote for the “progressive” candidate for the Democratic nominatee in the US Senate race here in Washington state who is challenging Maria Cantwell. I think this called a “dilemma.”