I just got off a phone call from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee asking for money. My current policy — even before I was laid off last week — is only to give money to targeted candidates. I don’t have to agree with everything the candidate says or does, but they have to at least be willing to deal with the war in a rational and consistent manner and not knuckle under to either the administration or the Democratic leadership.
When I explained my stance and rationale to the woman on the phone, she brought up the Iraq war supplemental and told me that “we” couldn’t leave our troops over there without supplies, which was why some sort of funding bill had to be passed. I responded that she shouldn’t be using Republican talking points and from there the conversation got a little bit heated, with her telling me that the troops in Iraq would “starve” without the money from the supplemental. Really. That’s what she told me. The troops would “starve”.
I said that any any President who would leave the troops to starve rather than bring them home sounded like someone who ought to be impeached, and she said that there weren’t enough votes to impeach him. I thought that there probably would be if there were actually 150,000 troops starving in Iraq, but said instead that the House — with a 30-vote Democratic margin — could conceivably pass impeachment articles at any time. She responded that the Senate would bottle up the conviction. Again, I thought of the 150,000 starving troops and the various Republicans (or Democrats or Independent Democrats) who would have to get on board to let that happen, but right about then the conversation ended.
I do feel sorry for the woman. I don’t know where she was from, but it sounded like the Midwest. And I can’t help but think that even for a Democratic fundraiser it might not be a particularly great time to be hitting donors up for money, but I might have been suspicious that Democratic fundraisers have picked up the RNC callers laid off last week if I hadn’t already heard the same damn arguments from long-time Democrats.