{"id":875,"date":"2005-10-13T04:15:15","date_gmt":"2005-10-13T04:15:15","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:09:25","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:09:25","slug":"the_mainstream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=875","title":{"rendered":"The Mainstream"},"content":{"rendered":"

I get email…this from the owners of the website www.democrats.com <\/a>(note: they are not affiliated with the official Democratic Party)<\/p>\n

Blogcall10 will feature David Swanson of AfterDowningStreet.org discussing the netroots-funded poll that found a virtual majority of Americans – 50% to 44% – want Congress to consider impeaching President Bush if he lied about the war in Iraq. Yet despite these astonishing results, the poll received absolutely no coverage in any mainstream media outlet – just one more example of rightwing media bias.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

AfterDowningStreet.org commissioned the poll (by the non-partisan firm Ipsos Public Affairs) because the major media polls refused to include an impeachment question in their regular polls, citing various non-credible excuses.<\/p>\n

\nAfterDowningStreet.org has a second poll in the works to keep up the pressure on the mainstream media. And Democrats.com \tis increasing its efforts to persuade one or more Members of Congress to introduce Articles of Impeachment. <\/p>\n

\nWhile there is tremendous netroots support for Articles of Impeachment, there is also opposition from unexpected places. On Wednesday, Bob Fertik debated the merits of impeachment with Randi Rhodes during her show. Randi argued that House Democrats should not introduce Articles of Impeachment because they would fail and hurt Democratic candidates in the 2006 election; Bob argued that Articles of Impeachment would rally the Democratic base and help win those elections, even if the Republican majority defeated the Articles.<\/p>\n

\nJoin us for Blogcall10 as we discuss Impeachment Polls and Activism.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So the point of the open conference call is to let the blogging community know – and hopefully jump on and trigger a media push on impeaching the President.<\/p>\n

Now I’m pretty comfy saying that this is a view pretty far out of the mainstream, and one that pretty much nails the basic points that I’ve been making for a few years and that Obama made in the Kos piece that I enthusiastically linked to.<\/p>\n

And when I make the point that lots of serious Democrats hold looney positions like that, reasonable people take me to task and say “No real Democrats hold positions like that; that’s a strawman position; the mainstream of the party is much saner than that.”<\/p>\n

Let’s go the resumes of the guys who launched this site<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Bob Fertik, President<\/p>\n

\nFertik created the Internet consulting firm I-Progress, which specialized in Internet development consulting for non-profits. He is the co-founder of the Pro-choice Resource Center, Eleanor’s List, Political Woman Newsletter, Women Leaders Online, and the Women’s Voting Guide. <\/p>\n

\nDavid Lytel, Co-founder <\/p>\n

\nLytel was the co-developer and managing editor of the award-winning White House Web site, called in 1995 by Hotwired “easily one of the best sites on the Internet.” … Note: in 2003, Lytel left Democrats.com and launched the Committee to Re-Defeat the President (www.redefeatbush.com).<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These guys aren’t running the DLC, but neither are they aggrieved grad school dropouts who work in a tofu factory in Bellingham, far from the levers of Party power.<\/p>\n

Let me make another suggestion as a guy who’s made a buck or more selling a domain name, and who had dealt with issues around domain name vs copyright for a while; if the content of democrats.com was truly reprehensible to the Democratic Party, they’d shut it down. <\/p>\n

They don’t, not because they legally can’t (see PETA v PETA<\/a>), but because they choose not to – because the 400,000 pageviews the site serves up represent people whose loyalty they Democratic Party seeks.<\/p>\n

And the site operator represents one of the political apparachniks who make up the apparatus of – and the substance of – the Party.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I get email…this from the owners of the website www.democrats.com (note: they are not affiliated with the official Democratic Party) Blogcall10 will feature David Swanson of AfterDowningStreet.org discussing the netroots-funded poll that found a virtual majority of Americans – 50% to 44% – want Congress to consider impeaching President Bush if he lied about the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}