Here's Donna. Notice the Republicans cheering loudly when she talks about not having time to waste to deal with gas prices - they believe in pushing this drill drill drill message.
This is Adrienne Christian, her new chief of staff.
I spent much of the morning at meetings, and I ended up talking to a former corporate insider who told me how boards vote on decisions. All corporate power flows through a small group of people on Wall Street. Fascinating.
Donna Edwards gets elected today, and will be sworn in on Friday.
Moveon is running this ad, the pundits pan it.
Inflation is kicking up, officially. To put it another way, inflation is now so bad that the official numbers are showing it.
I was at an EMILY's list luncheon today at the Omni Shoreham hotel near Cleveland Park. The Omni Shoreham is one of those giant hotels that could be the hotel from the Shining - bad carpeting, hyper-cooled air conditioning, excessive ornamentation combined with 1970s porn interior - except it's a popular destination for DC conferences and luncheons. I'd have taken pictures, but my camera is finally dead (that fundraising is paying for a new camera, among other things). Every DC organization, and EMILY's List is nothing if not a very successful DC organization, has one of these annual luncheons where they present awards, laud each other's accomplishments, and talk about how important and critical they are to some set of values or pieces of policy decisions. It's not that it's untrue, it is very often the truth, but it's still very boring, a bit painful, and it takes a lot of time to set small injustices right. It's a lot like orthodontist work.
Roll Call reported today that House Speaker Dennis Hastert is, like all good retired Republican officials, becoming a lobbyist. He's joining a senior staffer in his office and Al Wynn at Dickstein Shapiro, one of the largest law firms in DC and one with over 100 of the Fortune 500 as clients.
Donna Edwards will be seated in Congress, and her special election in on June 17. She does have a Republican opponent, Peter James, and he has been endorsed by Ron Paul:
Peter James is our Republican candidate in Maryland's 4th Congressional District. Peter faces a special election on June 17, which provides a unique opportunity for us to pick up this seat. There will likely be low voter turn out, so it is absolutely essential that Republicans, and liberty-loving independents and Democrats, go out to vote for Peter. Time is short and this election is rapidly approaching, please do what you can to help Peter today.
James is a crazy man who passes out monopoly money and talks about an international banking cartel, hint hint. Still, Paul's rationale makes sense, low turnout elections are opportunities for a small dedicated group to make an impact. I guess we'll see what kind of impact Ron Paul's movement will have. I'm not expecting much, but if you're in Maryland's fourth district, make sure to vote for Donna on June 17.
Over the next week and a half, we're going to be holding a fundraiser and asking for contributions to help us expand with the general election. We're looking specifically for 400 donors, whcih is aggressive, but we think we can get there. If you see value in what we do, you can give here. Otherwise, read on.
Our costs are going up, but our product quality will go up as well. We will be traveling this summer to several conventions, including a Media Reform Convention in Minneapolis, Netroots Nation, and the Democratic National Convention. To make the site run smoother, we are hiring an administrator. And to make our commentary more effective, we are hiring a researcher (hopefully soon, several) to look more deeply into some of the themes Chris has come up with and hold influentials - Democrats, pundits, conservatives, surrogates - accountable for what they say. The total of these costs is around $14,000.
Here's why it's worth it to chip in your $35. Very few groups self-identify as 'left', and there are many reasons for that, including a residual fear of ideology and partisanship. What we on this blog believe, though, is that in reorganizing the country around progressive principles we can't pretend we don't have left-wing values. We can't pretend we aren't liberal. At the same time, this is not a game for 'lefty purists'. It isn't solely about winning every election, but winning elections is important. And we are working, smartly and without litmus tests, to promote liberal values in the political system.
The Bush Dog campaign, the No Residual Troop campaign, and the Responsible Plan concepts have all borne real fruit. Earlier this year, I embedded myself in the campaign of Donna Edwards in Maryland's fourth, the first movement candidate who beat an incumbent in a primary and who will be seated in Congress. So far, 60 Democratic candidates have signed on to the Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq, whose signature messaging of 'no residual troops' came from Chris's series of posts comparing the different Presidential Iraq plans. What Chris did, and it sounds so simple, but no one else had done it, was to read each plan and compare them. And now there are 60 candidates running on that principle, several of whom are going to be in Congress next year (or even this year). That's a real shift in conversation around foreign policy.
Many progressive ideas come from the conversations started in the blogs or in activist circles. And all of us on this site - commenters and bloggers alike - have worked to start our fair share. Ultimately, if we want progressive media to work we have to pay for it. Traditional corporate media works by selling you - the audience - to the soap makers and defense contractors who pay to propagandize. We don't follow this model, either within the Democratic Party or within the culture at large. We have a different model, in which we work both with political institutions and for you. We make no bones about our affiliations and our agenda, and we work on campaigns that are directly in line with them.
We think we've done good work, work that is worth expanding, work that will get this country out of Iraq a bit faster and set us onto a more sustainable course as a country. Throw a few bucks if you can, even if it's not much. Obviously, please don't give if it's a choice between this and gas money or rent money, but do recognize that there are lots of places to get media for free. But ultimately, as we've seen, if you are the product being sold to Honeywell and Monsanto so they can lie about our country, free is actually quite expensive.
So it looks like Maryland will hold a special election to seat the next Congresswoman for the fourth district. There was a lot of confusion around Wynn's retirement, but the Governor is making a change to the law to allow the 4th to skip a special primary and move straight to seating the next Congressperson. Donna might even be in office in time to be a superdelegate for Obama, though I'm not sure right now.
I was on a call this morning with George Soros organized by Steve Clemons of the New American Foundation. Soros is coming out with a new book called The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means discussing what he calls the deflation of the 'super-bubble'. In terms of political news, Soros made it clear he will not be spending as much money on the 2008 election. He believes, as do I, that 2004 was a special decision, and the consequences of 2008 are far less significant. He doesn't like partisan politics, and now seems focused on financial regulation and energy and climate problems.
The call was organized around Soros's ideas on the current financial crisis, which he thinks is the worst since the 1930s. There are many elements to what is going on, but the gist of the macro-economic shift is that the dollar is losing its status as the world reserve currency and the 'mortar' of the world economy will no longer be the American consumer. This crisis is different from previous busts, because the shift in global power constrains the ability of the Federal reserve to lower interest rates.
Soroes believes that the financial market's fall was acute, but is basically over. The problem now is the fall-out, which is going to cascade throughout the economy. People are going to feel it in a nasty recession and further drops in the price of housing, as the market overcorrects to the downside. The crisis was driven in the short-term by a failure of the regulators to exercise the powers they have, to allow a totally unregulated market in financial instruments to develop. The scariest market, he says, is the Credit Default Swaps market, which equals half the entire US household wealth and five times the national debt, and the biggest player there is JP Morgan.
In the past week, I have had the opportunity to ask both Paul Krugman and George Soros what the worst case scenario will look like. Krugman suggested a slightly less bad Argentine style collapse, followed by a pretty good resurgence of growth. In the end, everyone will just move 'one house to the left' as legal wrangling gets fierce. Soros believes that authorities are pretty qualified and won't let the financial system collapse, so he sees the problem as crushing the dreams of the poor and upwardly mobile African-American Latinos buying their first homes. He specifically cited Prince George's County, a wealthy African-American county hit harder by the foreclosure crisis than anywhere in the country. The county incidentally will soon be represented by Donna Edwards.
Soros was clear that this is not a natural cycle, it is an entirely man-made crisis, and it will ripple through the economy and slow down or reverse wealth creation because of a credit crunch. What we need to do, he believes, is establish a clearing house or exchange where all these trades needs to be registered and settled according to well-established rules, until that is cleared up there's uncertainty as to the value of the various unregulated instruments out there, which is why there is a credit squeeze. No one wants to lend because no one knows what anything is worth, and no one knows who the counterparties are on many of these transactions.
In terms of further prescriptions, he thinks we need to minimize the downturn by seeking to limit foreclosures in the short-term. In the longer term, he believes that the American consumer will no longer be acting as the key driver of the global economy (the 'mortar'). The next driver of demand, or the next 'mortar' of the global economy, should be infrastructure investments necessary to reduce and reverse global warming. There's trillions of legacy infrastructure that needs to be overhauled, and that's the only way we're going to find a new global equilibrium.
I believe this is what is called an 'inflection point'.
Governor Martin O'Malley says he's exploring the possibility of holding an election to replace Congressman Albert Wynn, who's stepping down in June.
To make that possible, O'Malley says he's considering trying to change state law before the General Assembly adjourns next week.
He says current law requires him to order that a special primary take place before a special general election. By the time that process unfolded, O'Malley says whoever won would only have about three months in office.
The governor says that's why he's looking at the possibility of holding a special general election -- without an additional primary.
If a law like this gets passed and signed, it will save a lot of money for the state and it could put Donna in office in around 36-46 days or so from the date the law takes effect. If Wynn can be encouraged to step down earlier, Donna could be an Obama superdelegate at the convention.
Roll Call just reported that Al Wynn resigned his seat to join a DC law firm. I'm trying to find out more about what this means in terms of a special election.
... Here's Donna's statement.
First and foremost, I salute Congressman Wynn for his many years of public service on behalf of the people of Prince George's County and in the United States Congress representing the people of the 4th Congressional District," said Donna Edwards. "In the spirit of a dedicated public servant, Congressman Wynn is looking out for the interests of his constituents and I commend him for that. I wish Congressman Wynn all the best in his upcoming endeavors, and I deeply appreciate his willingness to work together to ensure a seamless, smooth transition of representation and constituency services for Maryland's 4th District."
Wasserman Schultz and Meek told the Miami Herald March 8 they would take a hands-off approach to these races because of their working political and personal relationships with the Republican incumbents being challenged: brothers Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart in the 21st and 25th Districts, respectively, and 18th District Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen . All three are Cuban-Americans. Wasserman Schultz, Meek and the Republican lawmakers all represent areas in Southern Florida with sizable numbers of Cuban-American voters and Mario Diaz-Balart , Wasserman Schultz and Meek have a history of serving together in the state legislature.
The incumbents have crossed party lines to join forces on certain issues, especially when it comes to Cuba. In July, Wasserman Schultz and Meek voted against a majority of their party to side with the three Republicans against an amendment that would have eased banking restrictions on Cuba purchasing U.S. agriculture goods.
This is about a foreign policy decision that is a toxic combination of sugar interests and right-wing politics.
By and large, the DCCC has been very good this cycle; I'm particularly impressed by Chris Van Hollen's choice to stay out of the Maryland fourth primary. But what Debbie Wasserman Schultz is doing in not supporting Democrats against three extreme right-wing Florida Republicans is not just bad politics and disloyal to the Democratic Party, it is also enabling the worst instincts of the hardline conservative movement within both parties. Wasserman Schultz is purely doing this to sustain the embargo against Cuba, and she's reaping donations from sugar interests as a result.
Now obviously she believes in the embargo as well, but the corrosive effect of generating campaign donations from bad policy choices regardless of the intent damages trust in our institutions and makes them less powerful. The Cuba embargo is an easy question, and Congress is getting it wrong because of people like Wasserman Schultz and the Diaz-Balart brothers.
Just for the record, I'm not in favor of knocking out all Republicans either -- so perhaps I have a bit of the Wasserman Schultz sin in my own file. I was for instance supportive of Maryland Eastern Shore anti-Iraq war Republican Wayne Gilchrest who lost his primary battle recently.
But the Diaz-Balart brothers and Ros-Lehtinen are not moderate in any sense of the word, are embracers of Bush's wars, and have been responsible for sustaining a counter-productive embargo of Cuba by the United States that 183 nations of the world voted against us on this past year in the United Nations.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz is helping to defend the political turf of not the best in the Republican Party -- but the worst.
If you want to join the effort today, feel free to call these numbers and express your own point of view.
DCCC Chair Chris Van Hollen (campaign office):
E-mail: chris@vanhollen.org
Phone: 301-942-3768
DCCC Headquarters:
Contact form
Phone: 202-863-1500
Wasserman Schultz's actions regarding her position at the DCCC flow directly from her desire to sustain one of the most obviously counterproductive measures in American foreign policy history, the embargo against Cuba. Please be polite, and ask the DCCC why her policy choice is more of a priority than her position at the DCCC.
... Adding a fun fact about Wasserman Schultz: Did you know that she is the only Democrat to give money to both Al Wynn and Dan Lipinski this election cycle?
Well that didn't take long. Here's Donna Edwards on Hardball (via Crooks and Liars) going after the embargo and making a coherent case that a different approach is important. Cuba policy happens to be one of Donna's passions, so she knows a good deal about it.
One constant argument I hear about elections is that a voting record is enough to justify not challenging someone. I feel this misses one of the essential characteristics of how politics works. Voting records are important, but there is a huge difference between a good voting record and taking leadership with energy and vigor to get something done. Al Wynn actually had a great record on the embargo, but he was not a leader on the issue. You can already see that Donna Edwards is pushing the ball down the field.
In other words, it's good to have progressives in Congress, but it's much better to have progressive leaders in Congress.
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