Cindy Sheehan's Sad Swan Dive

Via Dave Weigel: Cindy Sheehan announces she is a 911 Truther. What has happened to this woman?

Sheehan Vs Pelosi?

I mentioned before that I wished Cindy Sheehan would stop imploding and just get on with her life. Sheehan is now openly challenging Nancy Pelosi for her seat.

CRAWFORD, Texas - Cindy Sheehan, the soldier's mother who galvanized the anti-war movement, said Sunday that she plans to seek House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's congressional seat unless she introduces articles of impeachment against President Bush in the next two weeks.

Sheehan said she will run against the San Francisco Democrat in 2008 as an independent if Pelosi does not seek by July 23 to impeach Bush. That's when Sheehan and her supporters are to arrive in Washington, D.C., after a 13-day caravan and walking tour starting next week from the group's war protest site near Bush's Crawford ranch.

"Democrats and Americans feel betrayed by the Democratic leadership," Sheehan told The Associated Press. "We hired them to bring an end to the war. I'm not too far from San Francisco, so it wouldn't be too big of a move for me. I would give her a run for her money."

Sheehan will get killed running against Pelosi. Challenging the most powerful member of Congress without the backing of a major political party or fundraisers is foolhardy. It is typical Sheehan. She has turned political suicide into an art form. Who could have imagined the valiant mother would become Ralph Nader?

Another question: what happened to Sheehan resigning from the anti-war movement.

This is my resignation letter as the "face" of the American anti-war movement. This is not my "Checkers" moment, because I will never give up trying to help people in the world who are harmed by the empire of the good old US of A, but I am finished working in, or outside of this system. This system forcefully resists being helped and eats up the people who try to help it. I am getting out before it totally consumes me or anymore people that I love and the rest of my resources.

Good-bye America ...you are not the country that I love and I finally realized no matter how much I sacrifice, I can’t make you be that country unless you want it.

It wasn't the "Checkers moment." It was another Nixon moment.

You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.

Sigh.

Cindy Sheehan's Farewell Letter

I stopped paying attention to Cindy Sheehan after her photo-op with Hugo Chavez. Sheehan went fom a woman powerfully holding President Bush's disregard for the lives of soldiers to a character on a reality show. Sheehan alieniated herself so badly that the Left and the Right both hated her. It's a sad story for a woman who lost her son.

Sheehan officially resigned from the anti-war movement.

The first conclusion is that I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a "tool" of the Democratic Party. This label was to marginalize me and my message. How could a woman have an original thought, or be working outside of our "two-party" system?

However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the "left" started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of "right or left", but "right and wrong."

There is truth to that. The Democratic Congress buckling on the Iraq spending bill is a claasic example of rhetoric and action are two distinctly different things. Like Nader, what Sheehan failed to understand that there are consequences to attacking one's own side. John McCaincan pander to the Christian Right all he wants. They will never forget his comments about Jerry Falwell in 2000.

Garance Franke-Ruta explains how Sheehan changed American's perceptions of President Bush.

I hope some day she will realize that she did as much as she, one woman, could. She helped break the bond between the American people and the president in August of 2005, according to a Bush strategist I heard speak last fall. The turn in public opinion against the president began that summer with high gas prices and the questions she raised, and then was solidified by the horrors of Katrina.

Bush could have limited the political fallout, or even turned the situation in his favor, if he met with Sheehan. A deep character flaw he has is avoiding people who tells him things he doesn't want to hear. Bush is like Reagan. He doesn't have friends. He has cronies. His inabilitity to step out of his cocoon cost him his second term.

I hope that Sheehan will finally begin healing. Being a media celebrity and having supporters lavish praise on her may have hindered her dealing with the loss of her son Casey. I wondered if anyone questioned her inner-circle her on public statements.

Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives. It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most.

It's an oversimplification to say that all lefties and conservatives enjoy the bloodshed going on in Iraq. There certainly are callous people in America (and elsewhere.) Statements like this is why many turned against Sheehan. I hope that time and clarity will wash the anger from Sheehan.