Byron Dorgan is my favorite Senator. He is one of the only senators who is willing to directly oppose powerful financial interests in order to advocate for Main Street Americans, and he does this across multiple issues, despite being elected in a very Republican state. When the bulk of our party is selling out to big corporate interests, as they all too frequently do, usually only a few senators will publicly try to stop them, and Dorgan is very often that man. He's a truly important Senator and we need him in DC fighting the sellouts that Schumer or Emanuel are so often tempted towards. Not to mention that we need his seat if we hope to hold our 60 votes, and right now he looks like the only one who can hold it in November.
He may be under pressure to reconsider already. Even the business wing of the party can do math, and passing Democratic legislation is awfully tough when you have less than 60 Democrats anymore. We saw the steep price that Nelson and Lieberman demanded for their votes; the price that Snowe and Collins would extract from Democrats is even higher. Obama will want Dorgan back, and will probably try to get him.
We can help his cause and our own by being the other side of the pincer. A netroots effort to raise commitments to donate to his campaign, contingent on his agreement to run again, could attract attention and be an important and useful form of public pressure. North Dakota is a cheap state for political ads, so raising even $200,000 or $300,000 would be noticed and talked about. We have seen the virtuous cycle of earned media that draft campaigns have had in the past: Senator Webb can tall you all about them if you need a refresher. News reports of a grassroots swell, followed by news reports of a reconsidering Dorgan, followed by news reports of a greater grassroots swell and appeals from fellow Democrats, could all create the conditions needed for Dorgan to run again having once announced his retirement. Some key ingredients are needed: mostly, some private queries around Dorgan's office to see if he is at all willing to reconsider, and leadership on the internet to get a contingent-donation mechanism set up to receive pledges. (These have been done before, including to an unspecified future opponent of Lieberman, but I don't believe they're part of the standard ActBlue toolkit.)
But if these can be arranged, and if Dorgan is at all prepared to reconsider, then the netroots can help bring him back, through a high-profile effort to buy him back. The RoI would be incredible; dollar-for-dollar, it could be some of the best-spent money since Webb was drafted. Retaining Dorgan's vote would pay off in a multitude of ways down the road.
I really do hope that we can Buy Back Byron. We need him in the Senate, we need him in Democratic caucus meetings challenging the pro-corporate wing of the party, and we need his vote on the floor badly. I think we should do everything we can now to try to buy him back!
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