AP is Glad Impeachment Debate Derailed

This story is surprisingly refreshing. It may be the fact that this AP writer is as relieved as congressional Democrats that they won't have to register votes on impeaching Vice President Cheney.

House Democrats on Tuesday narrowly managed to avert a bruising debate on a proposal to impeach Dick Cheney after Republicans, in a surprise maneuver, voted in favor of taking up the measure [which Democrat Dennis Kucinich introduced with privileged status so as to avoid Democratic attempts to block it].

The article doesn't go into why it would have been a "bruising debate" for Democrats. Here are a few reasons off the top of my head:

(1) Impeaching a sitting Vice President is not all that popular with the public.

(2) Impeachment is pretty popular with the Lefty fringe which has been driving the party for the last few years. However, it's likely poison for moderates that Democrats would like to attract in the general.

(3) Congress is already sitting at super-low approval rates, in part, because it's gotten no work done.

(4) The premise of the impeachment relies on losing the Iraq War; Democrats appear to have missed their opportunity (knock on wood).

(5) Related to (4), this would make foreign policy the dominant issue for the 2008 elections, as it was in 2004 and 2006. Democrats have examined public sentiment and found that things look more like 2004 than they do 2006.

What else am I missing?

posted by Gabriel Malor at 10:12 PM

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