Three Pictures

by: Matt Stoller

Wed Feb 13, 2008 at 03:30


I'll have a lot more tomorrow on this race, its implications, and why we won.  There was a lot of innovation around independent groups, blogging, and progressive movement building, and hopefully a good amount of it can be documented.  But for now, I must avoid pneumonia (five hours in freezing rain and no sleep will do that to you), so here are some pictures to tide you over.

This is Adrienne Christian, campaign manager for Donna, and deputy campaign manager for Jim Webb in 2006.  She made this shirt after Wynn accused us of a vast left-wing conspiracy.

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And here's a taste of the weather on election day, a mix of freezing rain, regular rain, and clouds coming out the sky to periodically punch me in the face.

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This is Donna just after she took to the podium to give her victory speech.

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On a personal level, I have been working on this for three years.  I spent a lot of time at the campaign volunteering and working with them, pretty much camping out there for stretches of time.  So this is very gratifying.  In this particular race, the money you donated was extremely high leverage, and the time you gave, particularly towards the end, really mattered.  Blogpac actually gave $1000 to Donna's campaign, the first candidate donation we've ever made.  

I'll have more soon on the different progressive groups coming together and what it meant.  This was a huge victory for new labor, environmentalists, bloggers, Moveon, and progressives in general.  Energy and telecom lobbyists got smacked.  Incumbents should take note that Donna has an aggressive and progressive agenda and she's going to pursue it, and that agenda is backed by organized groups and fundamentally, the voters.  
Matt Stoller :: Three Pictures

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Three Pictures | 30 comments
Congratulations (0.00 / 0)
...to the Donna Edwards campaign and you personally Mr. Stoller. Tonight you actually fulfilled the "better" part of "more and better Democrats" and that is the hardest part.

John McCain
What a great night! (0.00 / 0)
Get some sleep -- you deserve it :-)  
I gave $100 to the Edwards campaign ... (0.00 / 0)
...and, obviously, they spent it well. Congratulations to Donna, Adrienne and the rest of us.
Congratulations to all! (4.00 / 1)

Thank you, Donna.
Thank you, Matt.
Thank you, volunteers.
Thank you, voters.

This was a sweet night, at so many levels. It's amazing how Al Wynn got thrown so many life rafts at the end of this campaign, and he still got crunched. It speaks well of Donna's organization.

One less Bush Dog we need to worry about.
 

"We judge ourselves by our ideals; others by their actions. It is a great convenience." -- Howard Zinn

Congratulations... (0.00 / 0)
I've heard from a friend who knows her personally that she is every bit as amazing as we've heard from the blogs.
Thank you! (0.00 / 0)
I was more interested in this race than I was in the presidential primaries.

Good job, Matt!

Gratz! (0.00 / 0)
Great job, Matt! An impressive victory for the grassroots! And this will make establishment Dems think twice about supporting a fellow Congreesman who isn't really listening to his base. So, this may (imho: will) have an important impact on future primaries!
.-)
[ Parent ]
YES YES YES (0.00 / 0)
I donated to her as well via MoveOn.

Guess Wynn didn't winn and he'll have to go Wynne somewhere else.
Heh. Heh. Heh. And now I need coffee.

Congrats Matt (and Donna too).  

We won the Battle. Now the Real Fight for Change Begins. Join MoveOn.org and fight for progressive change.  

congratulations! (0.00 / 0)
enjoy.
Must feel good.... (0.00 / 0)
After Jim Webb, I'm having a hard time trusting blog candidates.  I hope Donna Edwards is a new beginning and that there really are some "better" Democrats out there. I love the T-shirt and the smiles.  

They're asking for another four years -- in a just world, they'd get 10 to 20. ~~ Dennis Kucinich  
Congratulations (0.00 / 0)
Congratulations Matt - truly an historic night. No one has done more for the progressive movement and the netroots than you and Chris Bowers. Makes me proud (and I sure don't say that much!)
Sleep, Eat, and then write the History (0.00 / 0)
Matt, sleep, then eat some healthy normally cooked food, (not cold Pizza on the fly) and then finally organize points and thoughts. It was a great candidate pick, and yea, it took three years, but some things take that long.  

Enough of the story needs telling so that it impresses itself on other incumbants tempted by the gold of K-Street connections and all.  And enough needs telling so that those who have a Wynn like Congresscritter can understand what it actually takes to put together a good campaign and actually win.  

But sleep well.  Eat healthy, and then reconstruct.    

Best $20 I've donated this election cycle (4.00 / 1)
Matt, thanks for all of your help in getting Donna elected.
Basking in the glow for a day (0.00 / 0)
I donated to Donna via ActBlue and I'm delighted at her thumping of Wynn.

This is fantastic news and a nice morale booster for us progressives. Let's keep up the good work.

Who's next? After the FISA vote, I'm tempted to say, "Harry Reid."

Karl in Drexel Hill, PA

Matt: Draft a letter to Pelosi (4.00 / 4)
Send a letter to Pelosi, explaining how happy we all are that the grassroots and netroots won. We could all put our names in an electronic signature.  

We won the Battle. Now the Real Fight for Change Begins. Join MoveOn.org and fight for progressive change.  
that is a great idea (0.00 / 0)

[ Parent ]
I want the Picture... (0.00 / 0)
...of the House incumbents hearing the news about Wynn.  This win would have been bigger if not for the icestorm.
Grand news, grand work (0.00 / 0)
... work by so many people, including the donors, but especially the people of the district.

More and better Democrats!

Can it happen here?

well done (0.00 / 0)


New Jersey politics at Blue Jersey.
Tonic for my soul... (4.00 / 2)
After donating $100 to Mark Pera. What can we learn from comparing the Pera and Edwards campaigns, and how can we use it to figure out who to go after in the future?
Corollary questions (0.00 / 0)
Should we expend resources running Mark Pera again in two years?

What could be done between now and two years from now to throw over Lipinski. What have the Republicans done in situations like this?

If we don't run anyone against Lipinski, does he essentially become a kind of Democratic party royalist, unbeholden to anyone or anything?

[ Parent ]
Compare and Contrast (4.00 / 1)
Matt and Chris --

This is an important question -- what went right for Donna Edwards, that didn't go right for Mark Pera?

If you can give some serious thought to this, it will be very useful going forward.

My take -- Edwards won because of her own grassroots organization, built up over three years; Pera lost for lack of the same.

Pera's loss also calls into question the effectiveness of last minute parachute drops of money and influence; lots of big time orgs and donors stepped up for him, but it couldn't overcome his lack of name recognition and local grassroots support. If Mark chooses to run again, he needs to follow the Edwards model, and start running now.

Anyway -- your take on this will have a lot of resonance.

[ Parent ]
Two reasons for Donna's success (0.00 / 0)
One you touched on; her campaign has been going on almost continuously since Wynn barely fought her off in 2006. That sustained effort gave local people time to coalesce around the campaign, and for word-of-mouth to spread the good news about Donna, and the bad news about Al Wynn, throughout the community.  I don't know, but I get the impression that the Pera campaign wasn't the same kind of long-term effort, and in the face of the Chicago political machine, he needed it.

Second, not only is Donna herself a fantastic candidate (smart, charismatic, and a wonderful speaker), but Wynn is a really bad candidate. I've been told that he's charming in person, but in public situations he often looked uncomfortable and over-rehearsed. I don't know how Lipinski stacks up there, but if he's even average as a candidate, that makes him a tougher nut to crack than Wynn. I was just speculating with a friend that it almost seems like Wynn's heart wasn't really in it; it was like he was ready to check out after eight terms in the House and get paid off with a sinecure from one of the corporations that have long been his true constituency.

None of this is to diminish Donna's accomplishment, or that of her campaign. Powerful political and corporate institutions worked hard to elect Wynn, and defeating them is something to be proud of. But the people of her district worked to elect Donna, and they had more leverage than those institutions.

My perspective on this race is that of someone who joined up for the last few weeks of Donna's campaign, including election day, as a result of learning about her from blogs like OpenLeft. (I live just a few blocks outside the 4th district, so I wasn't getting any of the campaign's phone and mail solicitations.) I first participated by donating via ActBlue, then later went to the local HQ and signed up. This was the first political campaign I ever worked on, and I spent nowhere near as much time or energy on it as Matt and many, many others did.

Based on my experience (and I guess it's easy to see how my experience would lead to this conclusion), I think the lesson for the national progressive movement is that we have to identify, grow, and support genuine grass-roots movements to win. Supporters who are far removed from the ground on which the election is being fought, even if they are self-sacrificing and pure of heart, cannot succeed without competent and committed local people working on a campaign.

So to defeat Lipinskiin 2010, we would need to identify the people in that district who want to do the work it will take, gain a commitment from a good candidate (like Pera?) sooner rather than later, and help the campaign develop expertise and knowledge in addition to giving money and moral support from afar. It's certainly possible to imagine a national progressive activist infrastructure designed to promote such local efforts, but I don't know to what extent such an infrstrucure exists. Of course, this should be the Democratic Party's job, but by now we all know better than to rely on the Democratic party to promote progressive politics. So we need to do it ourselves.

That's what it looks like from where I'm sitting, anyway.

[ Parent ]
Kos yesterday (0.00 / 0)
suggested that it is harder to unseat an incumbent in primaries with massive turnout, as the new voters tend to make the safe pick when they don't know anything about the challenger.

The difference might just been running a second time, in that case. It is probably a pretty safe bet to say that Edwards had higher name recognition in her district than Pera did in his.

[ Parent ]
Fantastic news; puts Congress on notice (0.00 / 0)
well done everyone
I am so proud of you all. (0.00 / 0)
Matt etc. sorry I don't have names, but wow. This is what every progressive has to do.

Write blogs, push policy and replace bush dogs in small tight races.

Over the moon.  

Change
"We must break up the banks and never again let them get so big that they distort our politics and take down the economy.

Yes! (0.00 / 0)
Donna's win was a great way to cap an otherwise difficult day.  Well done Matt.  
Well done Donna Edwards.  
Well done Donna's army on the ground.
I was happy to contribute to her campaign. Would do it again.
good work, matt (0.00 / 0)
take a moment and revel in your power. donna rocks, i'm so glad she'll be fighting for us.  
Congrats Matt (0.00 / 0)
You deserve to take a victory lap.  Wynn is one of the worst Democratic members of congress who votes against us again and again even though he has a perfectly liberal district.  He is the quitisential corporate Democrat, with no real reason to support the positions that he does.

And Donna for her part is not just an empty vessal, but a real hard working progressive leader who will bring our voice into the House.  

I hope Nancy Pelosi et al take a hard look at these results and stay with the RESTORE act rather than join Jello Jay and the other craptacular Senators.  

Truth over balance, progress over ideology

VLWC (0.00 / 0)
Donna's Montgomery County campaign HQ had a fun sign on one of the doors; it said "Vast Left Wing Conspiracy" across the top, and below, "Go vast or go home."
Three Pictures | 30 comments
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