Tonight was Precinct Caucus night for the Minnesota DFL (Minnesota's weird little incarnation of the Democratic Party). These are essentially neighborhood meetings, where local activists come out to do the business of internal party governance. On tonight's agenda, we did such things as take a straw poll for our statewide offices, elect precinct officers for the next two years, made a donation to the party, voted on delegates for the city, county and Senate District conventions, etc. etc.
At the end of the night, the final party of the meeting is where we vote on "resolutions". This is where any person in the party can introduce essentially a bill at the local level, that is debated and then voted on by the body. These "resolutions" take the form of either party constitutional changes or changes to the party's platform that people would like to see made. It can also take the form of "action items," which are basically things that the party wants to work on for the next year. If passed, these resolutions go up the chain to the next level of conventions and if passed there, then go to the state convention, where they can become a change to the state party's platform or constitution or become something the party promotes as a policy for this year.
I would add that these resolutions are the biggest pain in the ass of anything at the caucuses and take longer than all of the rest of it put together. Each one has to be read, then debated, then amended, then voted on. It can be really cumbersome and is terribly time consuming and is often quite contentious. Some of the resolutions are quite controversial and really get people fired up one way or the other.
At any rate, now to the point of my story. So they call for resolutions and some lady stands up right away and introduces, right off the bat, a resolution that they party should adopt an action item to have Bush impeached. Everyone in the room went wild. The only discussion that there was was that one guy jumped up and said that he didn't like the rational that she had given (re: invading iraq) and said he didn't think that that was enough and that she needed to add torture and wiretapping because those are both illegal and, therefore, would be a valid basis for impeachment. So, I helped her make a couple of changes to it, making it more general (saying based on violations of law and the constitution) and calling not just for impeachment, but also for removal.
So, after all of that was done, we then had to vote on it. It passed not only unanimously, but enthusiastically unanimously. There wasn't one person that said "this might be a bad idea" or "I don't think we have the evidence" or whatever... it was all just "let's drag this guy out" followed by a buch of "here here's".
The whole point of my post here is that if there is that much support for this in my precinct, then this idea is not crazy. Sure, I live in Minneapolis, which is more liberal than probably almost anywhere in the country. But, my little neighborhood is not all that liberal. There are a lot of older folks and quite a few moderates (for instance, someone else put in a resolution about oposing a gay marriage amendment and there were several people who spoke against this). I like to say that I live in an "old school DFL area." These aren't super libs here, like in other parts of the city.
My question is, where are are legislators and our party reps on this issue. There is real and palpabable support for pushing forward with impeachment within the base of the party. However, our reps aren't talking about this issue. Are they out of touch or is the base of the party out of touch? Is there support for this out there, or is my little precinct an annomaly. If there is support, how do we get it through to our own party (not to mention actually pulling it off).
The posts that have been on here regarding what is happening in Vermont tell me that this is an idea that is coming up from the base and the "grassroots" at a local level and is something being pushed, to the limited extent that is is, from the bottom up and is not being talked about (yet) at the top. How do we get this message out? Or, is it even worth worrying about in an election year.
What do people think about this issue?