Elections

Senator gets rousing reception at convention
By David Callender, http://www.madison.com

LA CROSSE -- Wisconsin Democrats will need to do more than tap popular discontent with President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress if they want to win this fall's elections, U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold told a cheering audience at the state Democratic Party Convention on Friday.

Democrats will not win "if we play it safe," said Feingold, who has staked out some of the boldest positions in the U.S. Senate by voting against the war in Iraq, calling for a deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops there and proposing that lawmakers censure the president for his domestic spying programs.

By Steve Moyer

Republicans believe in good and evil. They know they are doing evil and that's why they refuse to honestly investigate anything. Nancy Pelosi, the presumptive leader of the Democrats, has said that Democrats should NOT pursue impeachment. But she's missing the point. The Republicans KNOW they have been doing evil. The Democrats seem to think good and evil are secondary to polls, popular opinion, and political strategy.

By David Swanson

A new study by Stan Greenberg and James Carville of Democracy Corps reports on polling and makes recommendations to Democratic Congressional candidates, including this:

"As a starting point, challengers must continue to nationalize the elections around Bush and whether to continue Bush’s direction. That is where the desire for change is growing the most: the percentage who strongly support going in a significantly different direction rather than continuing Bush’s has risen to 55 percent, the highest level ever in our polling. Clearly, the public is losing confidence in Bush on every indicator with just 38 percent now viewing him favorably on a personal level and only 21 percent strongly approving of his performance in office, both new lows.

www.democracynow.org

[Tasini and Winograd speak up for impeachment. Lamont uses the fear-of-Cheney excuse to wimp out.]

The 2006 mid-term elections are just five months away. In the Senate, close to three-dozen seats are up for grabs, while all 435 seats are open in the House. Democrats hope growing public discontent with the Bush administration will help them win control of Congress from the Republicans. But some of this year's most heated races won't just come down to Republicans vs. Democrats - or Independents - in November. Rather, in primaries this week and continuing through the summer, some of the country's closely-watched races will pit Democrats - against Democrats. And there's one main issue that's creating the fault line: the war in Iraq.

By David Swanson

Nominal leader of the Democrats in Congress Nancy Pelosi, following talking points produced by the Republican National Committee, recently told her fellow Dems to keep impeachment off the table. This past weekend, the Democratic Parties in Maine, New Hampshire, and (on Memorial Day weekend) Hawaii passed resolutions demanding impeachment. This, of course, raises the question: Whose table is it, Nancy?

BY STEVEN THOMMA, Knight Ridder Newspapers

MANCHESTER, N.H. - Anti-war and anti-Bush fervor is growing among rank and file Democrats, threatening to pull the party to the left and creating a rift between increasingly belligerent activists and the party's leaders in Washington.

Many outside-the-Beltway Democrats want the party to turn forcefully against the war in Iraq and to investigate, censure or even impeach President Bush should the party win control of Congress this fall.