Peace Activist Sheehan Launches Assault on Speaker Pelosi

Cindy Sheehan announced her candidacy against Speaker Pelosi. Sheehan first attracted the attention of the national media when she began her crusade to meet with President Bush at his ranch while he was on his annual working vacation. Sheehan's son Casey was killed in Iraq in 2004.

Sheehan could easily be portrayed as a catalyst, if not embodiment, of the public sentiment against the Iraq war. This also shows the fundamental problem of the modern Democratic Party, it simply cannot do well enough to keep its "base" content. It is never enough.

The Democrats don't have a great answer on Iraq. Hillary Clinton has speculated that troops will be in Iraq well into her second term. It is unclear just where most of the other candidates stand on the issue, although safely and quickly seem to be the adverbs of the week for speech writers.

I do not believe that a quick withdrawal is the best thing for anyone currently involved in Iraq. Iraq desperately needs stability. People need to feel secure in their future before they can focus on anything else. We owe it to the "Iraqi people" to at least give them some semblance of stability and order, or hand it off to someone who can, before we head off to our next big adventure.

Pelosi should survive this challenge easily, some of the more cynical have suggested that it makes her less susceptible to attacks that she is too liberal. I doubt that this means that they are going to stop calling her liberal because Sheehan is running against her. There is no way that this helps the Democrats in anyway. Pelosi needs to be campaigning for other candidates who need to be saved or who can give her another seat.