As David already discussed earlier today, President Obama has not yet met with the Congressional Progressive Caucus, even though he has met with every other group in Congress (Blue Dogs, New Dems, House Republicans, etc). Some Progressive (capitalized because it signifies a member of the caucus, rather than just anyone who calls him or herself a progressive) are feeling slighted by this. I am going to chime in and agree with the general sentiment in the comments to David's post: rather than feeling slighted, Progressives need to start throwing more weight around so that such a meeting is required, rather than an act of politeness.
There are lots of ways that Progressives could be throwing their weight around, but are not. The most obvious current misuse of Progressive strength is the inability to maximize their, and our, strength among small donors. Progressives have enormous potential fundraising ability that can match the large donor and corporate PAC money other ideological caucuses and networks can provide to their members. This fundraising is a major reason why candidates join these groups, and progressives can do the same thing. Unfortunately, we don't use our networks as well as we should.
The blogosphere gets pretty angry at Blue Dogs and New Democrats on a regular basis. This isn't surprising since, according to the best information I have seen (some of which is not public) about 80% of the people who read progressive blogs and / or who are members of progressive email list organizations self-identify as either "liberal" or "progressive." However, from 2004-2008, and even in the excitement over the NY-20 special election next Tuesday where the Democrat has already declared himself to be a Blue Dog, I'd wager that a similar proportion of netroots congressional donations have gone to electing Blue Dogs and New Democrats (specific numbers are not available right now because the current caucus membership lists are not available). It is kind of a perverse cycle: we give huge amounts of money to Blue Dog and New Democratic candidates, and then we spend a huge amount of our time complaining about Blue Dog and New Democratic members of the House. We are funding our own complaints.
By this point, with huge Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate, the largest progressive blogs and emails list organizations should, at the very least, stop raising any money for Democratic candidates who refuse to rule out joining the Blue Dog or New Democratic caucus. Further, we should be giving special consideration to Democratic candidates who promise to join the Progressive caucus. We need to offer both a disincentive for candidates and members of the House to join the New Democrats and / or Blue Dogs. Just as importantly, we need to offer an incentive for candidates to join the Progressives, and for more progressive candidates to run in the first place. Unfortunately, right now, as a Democratic member of the House, it simply makes more financial sense to join the Blue Dogs or New Democrats. Not only does it tie them into corporate PAC and large donor networks (which it does), but it doesn't hurt them when they come asking for money from progressive grassroots donors.
If being a Blue Dog or a New Democrat means that you can, and do, get money from everyone willing to donate to Democrats, why wouldn't members in competitive districts join the Blue Dogs and New Democrats en masse? The answer is that there is no good reason. As such, this year, the New Democrats captured 15 freshman members, the Blue Dogs netted 9 new members (from 47 to 56), and the Progressive only netted 6 new members (from <71 to 77). That the netroots keeps raising money for Blue Dogs and New Democrats en masse is a key factor in this disparity. If the largest progressive donor networks in the country offer no disincentive for Democrats to join the Blue Dogs or the New Democrats, and also offer no incentive for people to join the Progressive caucus, should there be any surprise that the Blue Dogs and New Democrats again netted more members?
Membership in the New Democratic or Blue Dog caucus should become an automatic disqualifier for large, small donor grassroots fundraising networks. This is just one of the ways in which progressives need to start building more power for themselves. No one is just going to give us more power because we are good soldiers for the Democratic Party as a whole. We need our networks to be valuable, and we need clear requirements in order to partake in the benefits of those networks. That is how we start building actual power.
Tomorrow, I will discuss a second avenue: voting against, or at least publicly threatening to vote again, Democratic legislation.
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