On Wednesday, Chris wrote a quick hit on Representative DeFazio's statement that there was "growing consensus" among Congressional liberals that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner should step down. He went on to say that Summers should go as well. Folks in the blogosphere have been saying as much for a long time now, but this seemed like something new, coming from a veteran Representative. The piece Chris linked to ended with DeFazio saying, ""We may have to sacrifice just two more jobs to get millions back for Americans," underscoring that it was not just a general criticism of Geithner and Summers, but one closely tied to the need for shifting from a Wall Street-centered economic policy to a Main Street-centered one. So I followed up by talking with Darcy Burner, Executive Director of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, to see what it might mean.
Open Left:On MSNBC Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) said Wednesday that he and other liberal House members are becoming increasingly tired of the Obama administration economic policies that are too focused on maintaining the stability and health of Wall Street firms and largely ignore Main Street. There's been significant criticism of Geithner and Summers in the blogosphere since their appointments were first announced, and significant criticism of their policies as well. There's been scattered and occasional congressional criticism before, but this sounds like it's a good deal more serious. Is it? And if so, why is it different and why now? Let's take those one at a time.
Is it different?
Darcy Burner: My best guess is that it is more serious. Now the Progressive Caucus has not taken an official position. Congressman DeFazio was speaking on his own behalf, quite eloquently, I thought. I particularly liked the line about "losing two jobs to save millions." But I think that the indications are that there is growing dissatisfaction among the members of Congress who very much want to see a set of economic policies that are going to help main street, rather than just Wall Street. And a jobless recovering isn't particularly progressive approach to how we solve the economic crisis that we're in.
Now, it is the case, obviously, that we have some progressives who've been very active, particularly in the financial reform aspect, if you look at Alan Grayson, for instance. He is a member of the Progressive Caucus, he's been extraordinarily involved in asking the tough questions, and encouraging his fellow members on the Financial Services Committee to ask some really tough questions at the hearings they've held, about the Federal Reserve, about the banking system, about the banks, about some of the Wall Street shenanigans.
So there has been growing pressure from members of Congress. And, you know, we're seeing some traction around the idea of auditing the Fed, and finding out what's really going on there.
So I don't think it's particularly surprising that there would be an expression of real dissatisfaction with the Administration's economic policies and the economic advisors from progressives in Congress.
The folks who read my blog posts might be surprised to learn that there is an alternative to the public option I could live with (besides single-payer, of course, that being my preferred option from the beginning). I have been an advocate for a very hard line on the public option, as I discussed here yesterday. But there is one other alternative I would feel okay about, and Bob Creamer outlines it today in his great post, Three Reasons Why a Strong Public Option is Likely to Be Part of Health Insurance Reform.
More on Bob's post, the alternative I could live with, and an action to take, in the extended entry.
Netroots Nation '09 is over. Of course, we are still up until 5:30am (again) working on footage. Today we filmed Valerie Jarrett's conversation with Netroots Nation attendees, a keynote panel with Governor Jon Corzine, Anna Burger, Kevin Drumm, and Dean Baker, the closing keynote with Senator Jim Ferlo, Richard Tumka of the AFL-CIO, and Darcy Burner of the American Proggressive Caucus PolicyFoundation, and four more panels.
We'll start off with a real quick video on an issue that means a lot to me...
David Sirota mentioned some Democrats' (ahem, Harry Reid) plentiful lack of backbone when it comes to empowering workers to organize.
Last Friday night, I was in Colorado and attended a House party for recently-appointed Colorado Senator Mike Bennet. Joining me was Darcy Burner, the legendary people-powered congressional candidate from Seattle, who spoke on a panel with me the next day.
I was very much looking forward to taking inventory of this new senator. Was he smart? Was he authentic? Did he connect with regular people? The answer to all of these things was yes. Indeed, in 30 minutes of Q&A, he quickly rose on the list of politicians I respect.
With one big exception. For some odd reason, he seemed to freeze up -- twice -- when asked about his position on the Employee Free Choice Act. He said he didn't have a position.
The next day, Darcy mentioned this during our panel. Local progressive activist Max Tyler raised his hand and said he asked Bennet the same question at another event and got the same answer. Colorado blogger John Erhardt of SquareState.net describes what happened next:
Darcy Burner challenged us in that discussion to call [Colorado] senators and congressmen, to pressure them to support worker's rights. So when the panel ended, an amazing thing happened. Candidate for CO-06, David Canter came to the front of the room and asked if he could be part of that challenge.
On the spot, Canter cut a YouTube video with Darcy and Max Tyler, announcing that he was posting an online petition urging Colorado's congressional delegation to stand with workers and publicly endorse the Employee Free Choice Act. Here's the video:
This was a remarkably bold thing for a first-time congressional candidate to do--challenging a sitting U.S. Senator and others to get off the fence on an important issue. You can add your voice to Canter's call by signing his petition here. (You can also give this bold progressive a buck by donating here.)
And Senator Bennet, if you'd like to do something similarly bold, feel free to announce your position on the Employee Free Choice Act right here at the OpenLeft!
While one might think that, after a great victory that saw the election of a Progressive African-American to the Whitehouse and the triumphant re-election of your party's governor, not to mention pickups in both the legislature and other executive offices, the chair of the state Democrats would be in a pretty safe position. But this is Washington and we are talking about Democrats. For those who need a refresher, Dwight Pelz came to be the chair of the state Democrats when Paul Berendt stepped down from the post in January of 2006 (after leading the effort to ensure all the votes were counted in the first Gregoire-Rossi match-up) and a special election was held to fill the vacancy. While Pelz has presided over the successes listed above, he has also rubbed some of the rank and file a bit sore with an often abrasive personal style and a perceived lack of respect for the grassroots. It is possibly the fact that those successes have been achieved and that there are no real overriding electoral challenges ahead of the party for another two years that might seem to signal an opening for someone to mount a challenge for Pelz's job.
Enter Darcy Burner?
Darcy Burner - New Party Head?
In the past few days I have heard from a few inside sources that, soon after it had become apparent that Burner was not going prevail in her race against Dave Reichert, she was being approached to challenge Pelz for the Chair's position. While I have not gotten any official confirmation from Darcy or anyone in her "inner circle" it is my understanding that she considering the challenge. Obviously Darcy Burner would benefit from great support from the so called netroots community and plenty of name recognition amongst the potential Democratic voting bloc in the King County area and beyond. She certainly would represent a stark contrast to Pelz's macho persona. A potential drawback, of course, would be the perception that Burner might be seeking to use the position as a "place holder" while she determines her next political move. For many there is a distinct line between "party people" and politicians and for them positions of intra-party leadership should be reserved for the former.
It isn't fun to report on bad news, much less on a weekend night after a big victory. However, there are two sad items to report:
Darcy concedes: Darcy Burner has conceded in Washington's 8th congressional district. Darcy writes over email:
"It is likely at this point that Congressman Reichert has won re-election, and while we will certainly ensure that every valid vote is counted, we accept the decision of the voters.
"I would like to thank the thousands of people who put so much time and effort into the campaign, as well as the countless thousands more who went beyond voting to actively participate in our democratic process this year. The election of Barack Obama as our new President will ensure that the change to the direction of our country called for in this campaign is realized in the new year."
This is a victory for local media hit jobs over people power and smart, young leaders. And it is just really, really frakking sad. Darcy's insight, strength and organizing ability will always hold real meaning to me. And she is just a great person, too. It is very rare that I feel a connection with a congressional candidate.
Fifty-state strategy on hold: The DNC organizers who actually form the core of the 50-state strategy at the DNC are being laid off:
A rumor at this point (or rather, someone unwilling to go on record) but what I'm hearing is that the DNC organizers who implement the 50 state strategy are about to be let go. Apparently they will be laid off at the end of the month, and the new DNC chair will decide whether he or she wants to continue the 50 state policy.
Hopefully, the new DNC chair will decide to keep the fifty-state strategy alive. However, I'm not optimistic:
It is worth noting, however, that the 50 state strategy's biggest opponent, for years has been Rahm Emanuel. Rahm's new job? Chief of Staff. Wonder if Obama's ok with this?
I'll guess we will find out. If the organizers get re-hired after Obama selects the new DNC chair, then he believes in the fifty state strategy. If they don't get re-hired, then the only fifty state strategy Obama believed in was the one for his own campaign. I'm strongly hoping it is the former, but Emanuel really was the strongest opponent of the fifty-state strategy.
I'm sorry to be the bring of bad news tonight. However, the fifty-state strategy and Darcy Burner were two big netroots campaigns over the past four years, and these reports needed to be made.
Reichert has taken a 5000 vote lead, and is even up in King County, which was supposed to be Darcy's base. There are still votes to count, and we have no idea which votes, so it's possible that there are some very pro-Darcy blocs yet to be tallied. Each batch seems to be getting worse for Burner's totals and better for Reichert.
Darcy is currently down by around 1400 votes, around 1%, with what looks like about a third of the vote counted. It's impossible to tell what's going to happen because the uncounted and counted votes are in clumps with distinct partisan leanings. That is, the counted votes are not representative of what the uncounted votes will look like. David Goldstein has the summary of what's going on.
That said, both camps should be very nervous right now. Later today, and possibly tomorrow, after more early absentees are counted, Darcy will likely regain the lead... and then over the next few days, as the late absentees are added to the tally, that lead will likely slowly ebb away. To what degree either of these predictions hold true, if at all, depends on turnout and the partisan composition of yesterday's electorate, neither of which we know enough about yet from the ballots that have been counted in the district thus far.
There's limited context around the data we have so far, and the elongated vote-counting is very frustrating. But you can read whatever you want into the data, since the poll voters skew for Reichert and they have been counted, and the early absentees skew for Darcy, and some of them have been counted. The big clump of votes in the middle is the question.
Washington's eighth district vote counting is even slower than usual. Right now, Burner is up by 50.39% to Reichert's 49.61%, a very slender 46,068 to 45,347 lead. This one's too close to call, and won't be resolved until Friday at the earliest.
Dino Rossi just came on TV, losing 51-49, and talked about how his campaign will go on throughout the week. Only, King County, Gregoire's base county, hasn't really come in yet. That means that Rossi has a few days of vote counting before he concedes. The trends were good in that race and these results bear that out.
In Washington's eighth, Darcy Burner is ahead by 5100 votes, but the count has not moved for hours and the counting machines are really slow and three hours behind. The trend at the end was against Darcy Burner in this one, and my guess is she'll wind up behind by the end of the night as the more Republican poll voters are counted. Still, with these initial results she's definitely in a good position to take the seat.
... Pierce absentees are coming in, and Darcy lost 1000 votes. That's a really good result.
King County results site is here. Pierce County results site is here. Pierce is far more Republican and has not reported any results. King is Darcy's base and the early votes are her voters.
Dave Reichert
16396
43.15%
Darcy Burner
21594
56.83%
The next drop of voters should be poll-voters, and will probably eliminate her lead entirely.
I think this race is going to be very, very close. Though Obama is running far ahead of McCain in this district, if you've been following this site then you've been aware of the aggressive and effective campaign to delegitimize Darcy as both a creature of the netroots and an untrustworthy liar and pump up Reichert as a 'moderate' good guy. Both concepts are absurd, but they have taken hold in certain parts of the district. Reichert, the NRCC, and centrist activist Emily Heffter of the Seattle Times have been able to plant the seeds of mistrust among voters, and we'll see tonight just how much they are going to reap. What does that mean?
Well, it's going to be tight. Additionally, King County's election processes are unbelievably dysfunctional. The county, which is both Darcy's base and provides the bulk of the vote for the district, will count only around 40% of the ballots by the end of the day. By Friday, only about 70% of the ballots should be counted in King County, with the more conservative Pierce County having tallied up its voting totals much earlier. In both counties, the poll votes will be counted today, but most of the district votes by absentee, and the nature of the voting blocs are different depending on when you vote. Like most Democrats around the country, Darcy will have a lead among early voters, but she will probably lose the poll vote that is the first bit to be counted. So she'll wind up behind tonight, even if she's going to ultimately win the seat.
Ok, so the big dollar donor match I announced earlier happened with the first $5k, and that money is being moved to candidates as we speak. Congrats, you guys unlocked a bunch of money to great Democratic women. But there's still some money left on the table, since we haven't yet hit $15k that the donors promised to match. This money will be useful for the campaigns; there are last minute cable and TV buys happening and field programs, so if you can put something in, your donations will be doubled.
You can give here. Nearly every woman on the list is in a tough fight, a close fight, and your bit of cash could possibly tip the scales.
Reichert just switched up his ad traffic, substituting this ad for his earlier Harvard Hoax ads. His Harvard Hoax ads were a clear attack on Burner's trustworthiness as a candidate, but this ad, titled 'Denise', is entirely different. It's a female union leader named Denise Spencer saying that she's scared of Darcy Burner and only slightly alluding to the Harvard hoax line of criticism. It is, in short, a change of message three days before the election and after a good number of ballots have come in.
As you may have noticed, we busted through our goal of 600 donors on the Better Democrats page. We're amazed and shocked that people here were able and willing to raise this much money on our little ole blog for progressive Democrats in such a short amount of time. I think what it means is that there's a real hunger not just for change, but for progressive change. And that's the key. In 2009, we could be sitting with a Blue Dog swing block or we could be sitting with a progressive swing block. And the difference between the two is immense.
A couple of big donors have stepped up to match donations of up to $3000 apiece for the women on the page. I've moved them all up to the top. Alice Kryzan just got the Working Families party line, which should help her immensely. Darcy Burner, Debbie Cook, Annette Taddeo, and Sam Bennett are all facing tight races, but all of them are winnable. Chris and I have blogged about how the caucuses are divided not just by ideology but by gender, so having more women in Congress will be very important. It shouldn't be a surprise that the Blue Dogs and the Republicans are nearly all men. In 2006, most of the new Democrats were men. This cycle, we need to even out the freshman class.
Now, Chris and I are shocked that 600 of you have thrown some cash towards Better Democrats since we set up the page. But that's still about 1% of the daily readership of this blog. That means that a lot of you haven't given. Well now's a great time, since you can get your donation matched to a great progressive Democratic woman. Even if it's just $5, it matters. So give. And don't be shy about throwing some cash to some of the men, too, they're ok I guess.
Local Glenn Beck ripoff Ken Schram insults breast-feeding mother.
In most of the country, the wave is breaking hard against Republicans, but in Seattle, the local media, which I'm more and more convinced is and has always been nothing more than a conservative interest group (as Upton Sinclair wrote as far back as 1919), is trying its best keep Republican Dave Reichert in Congress. The Seattle PI, the 'liberal' newspaper in town, came out with its puff piece about Reichert, Reichert seasoned by 4 years in office. Obviously, the Seattle Times used its position to issue a partisan attack on Burner by exploiting a bureaucratic oddity of Harvard. Both papers are collapsing in readership and local political reporting has been decimated by a wave of buyouts and layoffs, but they are still quite powerful.
I spent the evening doing some phone-banking. Reichert sends his best.
Musgrove in Mississippi looks out of reach, but Martin in Georgia is still within the margin of error. Like Sirota, I'm in a writing malaise. I have nothing to say. It's about a week until the world changes.
Ok, so we made it through that $50K barrier for Better Democrats. I suppose it's time for a little update on how our candidates are doing.
Markos and Crisitunity blog the new Dailykos/Research 2000 poll (these polls are such an awesome concept), which shows the race all tied up at 46-46. It's a random digit dial, which makes this kind of poll more favorable to Reichert since cell phone only and VOIP users aren't sampled. The stats seem to bear that out; Obama's ahead by only 6 points in the poll, and most people think he's up more than that in WA-08. Trendwise, it's very good news that Darcy's gone up by 8 points since the last Kos poll, when she was behind 49-41. Reichert's dropped 3 points and Darcy's gone up 5.
The Mormons are pulling the plug on Prop 8 calls from Utah.
Progressive Democrat Senate candidate Jim Martin is about two points off of Chambliss in a composite of polls, which is far closer than anyone could have imagined a month ago. Al Franken is up by three, Begich leads by two, and Merkley's up by six.
We managed to convince Debbie Wasserman Schultz to back Annette Taddeo, which is not a small feat. Taddeo is in a tight race with Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in the district that encompasses South Beach. South Beach. That's the setting of the Bird Cage movie.
Massa's opponent is on the 'death list' of Republicans, Dennis Schulman and Tom Perriello are closing, and Grayson is up over 10 on his opponent.
When Blue Majority split up earlier this year, it took us some time to figure out the right way to add to the Democratic wave. In retrospect, the Better Democrats concept should have been obvious - with our work on Donna Edwards and Ed Fallon, it was pretty clear the direction this community was headed. I'm really proud of what all of us have been able to do with Better Democrats. In the waning days of a campaign, money becomes less important, because the electorate is basically settled. In this case, though, there are so many seats on the bubble, including many of our best Better Democrats (Merkley, Darcy, Perriello, Martin, etc), that a little more cash to bring them up to the level of Obama actually matters. So to those of you who have given till it hurts, thank you. And for those of you who haven't, what are you waiting for?
Over the past few days, the major event in the ccampaign has been Seattle Times reporter Emily Heffter's hit piece on Darcy about her degree (for more on Heffter's approach to journalism, read this comment). Reichert is up on TV with this ad, and with the illegal contribution from Media Plus, he has substantial rotation on TV behind the allegation. Burner's response from former Harvard Dean Harry Lewis is also up.
I had hoped to talk to voters and find out how the attack was resonating,so I went out canvassing today. Unfortunately, nearly every knock on a door elicited no response. The weather's beautiful so people aren't home, and when someone's not home, you leave some lit squeezed in between their door knob and hope they take a glance at it and remember to vote. This is especially true with transient rental communities, where low probability voters reside. It's not clear how the race is shaping up now, with Darcy narrowly ahead in the polls but this last minute smear up on TV.
In the slideshow above, you'll see pictures from a variety of events, including a local school festival celebrating cultures from around the world (represented by their student body, whose parents immigrated from all over the world), a variety of senior centers, and a sustainability fair at a local community college.
One part of the story in Washington's eighth district I haven't touched on yet was Darcy's role in a major dispute over local media consolidation between the two papers here - the Seattle Times and the Seattle PI. In 2007, she co-chaired something called the Committee for a Two Newspaper town, which ultimately forced the owners of the Seattle Times to pay out $24M and keep the Seattle PI in business. I'll have more on that fight below, because it segues nicely into the overall conflict between the two wings of the Obama power structure - the center right moderates and the populist left progressives.
Buried in the contours of the massive shift in politics we're seeing with the collapse of the conservative movement is a burgeoning fight between center-right establishment, both locally and nationally, and populist progressives. The McCain campaign is falling apart, and the far right is basically playing for 2012, positioning that race as Palin versus Romney and grooming a new generation of right-wing populist Republicans to come at Democrats in 2010. As Sirota shows, right-wing Villagers are freaking out, while the Chris Matthews of the world are mocking McCain/Palin the way they used to call John Edwards gay. It's a stunning reversal. And it's happening on a local level as well, with newspaper endorsements all over the country - even conservative newspapers - going for Obama.
On Wednesday, Chris wrote a 
