Vermont

[HAnnA MArin County]

I'm surprised nobody has brought up another issue that could probably explain Vermont's rapid shift to the left: war. Remember it was here in 2006 when voters in four cities in Windham County, Vermont passed resolutions calling for the impeachment of George W. Bush (see below). The 2008 Democratic primary in Vermont could reinforce this, as the war in Iraq was really the only major defining policy difference between Hillary and Obama. Hillary voted for the war, Obama didn't, and what resulted was that Obama carried every single county in Vermont in the primary.

Here's a tidbit from a website called WarIsACrime.org:

NEWFANE, Vt. — In a white-clapboard town hall, circa 1832, voters gathered Tuesday to conduct their community's annual business and to call for the impeachment of President Bush.

"In the U.S. presently there are only a few places where citizens can act in this fashion and have a say in our nation," said select board member Dan DeWalt, who drafted the impeachment article that was placed on the warning - or official agenda - for this year's town meeting.

"It absolutely affects us locally," DeWalt said. "It's our sons and daughters, our mothers and fathers, who are dying" in the war in Iraq.

The article, approved by a paper ballot 121-29, calls on Vermont's lone member of the U.S. House, independent Rep. Bernie Sanders, to file articles of impeachment against the president, alleging that Bush misled the nation into the Iraq war and engaged in illegal domestic spying.