Glenn Greenwald is reporting that Comcast is refusing to run an ad critical of Representative Chris Carney, an ad which features Comcast itself as a major donor to and beneficiary of Carney's policy choices. The network told him that they would "face potential liability for any defamation contained in the spot."
Blue America PAC has traditionally helped progressive Democrats get elected, but today, they launched a serious campaign aimed at hurting a freshman conservative Blue Dog Democrat, Chris Carney. It is a very significant development.
A major new ad campaign aimed at freshman Democratic Rep. Chris Carney of Pennsylvania will begin this week. The campaign -- funded by donations fromreadersofseveralblogs -- will swamp Carney's Northeastern Pennsylvania district with a coordinated series of ads on television stations and top-rated radio programs, full-page ads in six out of seven of the largest newspapers in Carney's district, and strategically placed billboards on major roads...
Carney is a so-called "Blue Dog" Democrat who continuously sides with the Bush administration and supports its most radical policies. In addition to his leading role in demanding warrantless eavesdropping and telecom amnesty, he has repeatedly voted against timetables to end the war in Iraq. He is a close associate of Douglas Feith, with whom he worked on pre-war "intelligence" at the Rumsfeld Pentagon, and Carney still claims that "there were links between Iraq and Al Qaeda." Unsurprisingly, then, Carney has spoken out against Congressional investigations into those responsible for pre-war intelligence "failures" (which would include himself and Feith), calling such investigations a "major distraction."
It is an extremely vicious and effective series of ads, accusing Carney of helping Bush and his campaign contributors to institute a Communist Russia and China-like warrantless wiretapping program.
Carney is a reprehensible politician and he will lose in 2010. He voted against a hate crimes bill he had promised to support in his 2006 campaign, so he is a bad faith operator. Eventually, his district is going to decide that they'd rather have the real thing, and put a Republican in his place. The question here is whether an aggressive critique of a vulnerable freshman Democrat six months before an election, a campaign clearly designed to help Carney lose the seat this year or in 2010, is wise. With FISA being debated and Pelosi pushing aggressively for a 'compromise' with the White House, pressed by Blue Dogs like Carney, there's an open question about how valuable these kinds of Democrats really are.
Carney's been wooed by several of the presidential campaigns, but has no plans to endorse anytime soon.
His personal choice, though, would be a ticket featuring independent-minded Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
"It's kind of where I think government should be. More independent, less partisan-oriented, just wanting to do the right thing," said Carney.
As for the impact of Clinton on his re-election, Carney says he's not worried.
"Certainly we are not Hillary Clinton," he said. "We don't govern like she does."
Wow, we certainly have a turkey on our hands here, as Carney endorses a ticket containing two non-Democrats for President. This passage brings to mind the bylaws of the Pennsylvania State Democratic Party (PDF), where I serve on the state committee:
[Section 2A]: No person shall be eligible to serve as a member or officer of any Democratic committee as provided in Section 1 of this rule who: (…)
[Section 2A (3)] by voice, vote, financial support or otherwise has, within two years, supported a candidate in a general or special election opposed to the duly nominated candidate of the Democratic Party in that election, except as provided in paragraph (c) of this Section.(…)
[Section 2C] Those Democratic candidates who cross-file for an office in which cross filing is permitted by law and Democratic candidates running as write-ins and those persons supporting such candidates are exempt from paragraph (a) of this Section.
Through this statement, Chris Carney has now rendered himself ineligible to hold Democratic Party office in Pennsylvania for the next two years. If he sits on the state committee, which I do not believe he does, I will introduce a motion at the next state committee meeting to have him removed from the committee.
I'm intrigued by the recent appearance of progressive Democrats in states like Alaska, Montana, Virginia, Ohio, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Kentucky and Texas. Texas Senate candidate Rick Noriega's appearance on Firedoglake illustrates that this guy is progressive and forward-looking, but not a coastal liberal. That's true with Sherrod Brown as well, who recently told off the DLC, and to a lesser extent, Jon Tester and Jim Webb. What unifies these states is that they all contain extractive industries, either coal or oil. They are like America's OPEC, with the inherent corruption that such resource intensive regions imply, so it is not an accident that Democrats tend to be elected in these states on anti-corruption platforms like that which sunk Conrad Burns in Montana.
These states all have a direct interest in the current fossil fuel and resource extraction economy, with all the subsidies that implies. They are the natural home of the Blue Dogs and people like Dick Gephardt Democrats. Southern extractive states rely much more on military and aerospace expenditures and as such have become more right-wing in recent years, whereas Western states have ranching and farming and a stronger legacy of environmentalism and libertarianism.
Coal cuts through extractive states, and is enormously powerful. This Grist interview with Senator Clinton on coal should give you a sense of how much of a role it plays.
What role will coal play in your plan?
I think we have got to take a hard look at clean coal. I have advocated carbon sequestration, I have advocated power plants looking for ways to use coal more cleanly and efficiently. I doubt very much that using coal in liquid form for transportation could ever pass the environmental test, but I am willing to do the research to prove one way or another.
The political pressure [to use coal] will remain intense, and I think you have got to admit that coal -- of which we have a great and abundant supply in America -- is not going away.
Freshmen Democrats Charlie Wilson, Zack Space, and Chris Carney are all proposing 'clean coal' expansions. Now, clean coal as a technology doesn't exist, but these people are pushing it for political reasons. That's a very bad thing for a progressive coalition.
As we think through how to get progressive Democrats elected in extractive industry states, we need to figure out how to elect people who will be able to move their states off of the fossil fuel energy basis. I asked Rick Noriega about this, and here's what he said.
Second, you are right. Our state depends a lot on the energy industry to drive our economy. As long as we have to burn things to produce things in Texas, we've got to push clean burning natural gas. We've got to push new technologies and innovations. Texas has to lead the way in this arena or else we will become the next rust belt.
There are models here. Lots of people in these states don't benefit from the fossil fuel economy, and if they can be registered and turned out that's enough. These states also have high union densities, though often in extractive industries. In Texas, it's Latinos, and in Montana, it was young people that put Tester over the top. The temptation is, as it was in Indiana where we picked up three Blue Dogs, to play to the conservative corporate instincts that eventually brings in coal money and shreds our Constitution.
I'm curious if you have any thoughts or comments on the politics of extractive industrial regions. I'm just starting to learn about this area.
STATE BLOGS
