I've met some incredible people at this convention so far. This photo is from a party for Jared Polis and the Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq. I gave a little speech at the party and emphasized how significant it is that members of Congress are running on a specific mandate to end the war in Iraq. So far, Jared Polis, Chellie Pingree, and Donna Edwards are the three incoming members of Congress who have endorsed the plan.
In the middle is Jared, soon to be Congressman from Colorado's second district, with Doug Tudor on the right and Hal Bidlack on the left. Tudor is running in FL-12 against pasty faced corrupt conservative Adam Putnam, and Bidlack is running against Doug Lamborn in Colorado's 5th. I was impressed with both Tudor and Bidlack, who have also endorsed the plan. Polis is going to dedicate his Congressional campaign committee to helping other Responsible Plan candidates, so this group is already building power.
Polis defeated an EMILY's List liberal to win his seat in the primary, and what he's doing is building power from a safe blue seat to enlarge progressive power in Congress. Already. Before he's even been sworn in. That's a vision for change backed up by will and organizing muscle.
Jared Polis has taken the lead over Joan Fitz-Gerald in the Colorado 2nd primary. With 16% reporting, Polis is up 43.2% to 39.1%. Polis is openly gay, and if he is elected, he'll be the first openly gay challenger to be elected to Congress (other out members came out after they were elected). As many in the comments note, Tammy Baldwin was out when she was elected. So Polis is the first openly gay male challenger elected.
This was a weird primary, with the immensely wealthy Polis putting $5 million of his own money into the race to defeat Fitz-Gerald, a state legislator and darling of EMILY's List. Fitz-Gerald has deep ties to the mining industry and is quite favorable to the oil industry, but has been a reliably liberal vote on most social issues. Polis would be the first Congressman elected as an openly gay man, so this is a big deal from a national perspective.
Polis is also one of the four major funders of the Colorado progressive infrastructure that has revolutionized the state's politics over the last four years. You'd think that this would give him a large advantage in the race, but Tim Gill, another gay billionaire who has also funded Colorado's progressive infrastructure, has been putting money into a 527 against Polis.
It's a very strange primary. I'm a fan of Polis, because he endorsed the Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq while Fitz-Gerald ignorantly bashed it. I also think Polis is innovative, young, and web 2.0-embracing (he comments on flickr pictures), while Fitz-Gerald strikes me as someone cut in a more traditional political mold.
Stay tuned. This one could be ground-breaking.
UPDATE: A savvy friend tells me that the high turnout is very good for Polis.
UPDATE AGAIN: A source just told me that Polis has won and that the other candidates have conceded. This is a major first, the first openly gay challenger elected to Congress.
In the last couple days, there have been several posts across the blogosphere citing what various candidates running for Congress have said on FISA and retroactive immunity for the telecoms. But so far, it's been all over the map. I'll try to corral all their statements into this diary, so you can see who the "good guys" are.
First, let's start off with the current House and Senate members who voted against this bill. They do deserve credit, as it's their jobs on the line.
Follow me below the fold to see the dozens of Democratic challengers who are standing up for the Constitution, and are against this FISA bill and retroactive immunity.
I'm curious about the release of McCain's medical records. He's a 71 year old guy with three bouts of cancer, and yet the AP is saying he has a clean bill of health. Maybe that's true. But isn't the story really as follows?
The campaign is allowing a small pool of reporters (including NBC) access to McCain's medical records from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm ET in a conference room at the Copper Wind Resort in Phoenix. The reporters are allowed to take notes but not remove or photocopy the records.
Halliburton contacted Congressional candidate Jared Polis in CO-02. Polis has been sharply critical of the company, and the company's letter calls Halliburton 'an American success story'.
In yet another sign of his pivoting toward the general election, Senator John McCain said at a roundtable with business leaders here today that comprehensive immigration reform should be a top priority for the next president.
In other news, SEIU is blasting McCain's recent health care proposal and McCain's health checks out, if you believe a cloistered set of reporters who got to review 1000 pages of medical records for a few hours.
Leslie Byrne and Gerald Connolly are neck and neck in VA-11, with the latest polling showing Connolly leading Byrne 37-34.
Democrats Work and Wes Clark are teaming up with the program 'Serve with a General'. They will go to one Congressional district and jointly do a community service event. You can help pick the district here.
Comcast and Cox filtering the internet and blocking file sharing traffic might be a felony.
Michigan Liberal criticizes the DNC and the Michigan Democratic Party for violating their charter and refusing to hear complaints about seating the Michigan delegation. Michigan Liberal is the blog not given credentials to the convention, because of this legacy of holding the party accountable.
It was towards the end of the campaign in 2006 and we were running well back in the polls. Bill Clinton and Karl Rove, the leaders of the Connecticut AFL-CIO and U.S. Chamber of Commerce - they had all lined up behind incumbent Senator Joe Lieberman. Then we received a call that Senator Ted Kennedy wanted us to join him at a rally at a senior center in Bridgeport.
Coal Is Dirty from DeSmogBlog launches to take on the myth of 'clean coal'.
Lots of rumors about Hillary as VP, nothing credible. One of the annoying parts of dealing with the VP game is that it's basically a choice by one man, Barack Obama, and yet he has hundreds of people around his campaign who play themselves off as 'senior' and pass rumors to each other and the press. And this isn't just about feeling important, it's about running a campaign for their preferred VP pick. I've heard a lot of rumors about Chuck Hagel, for instance, but there are a good number of Hagel boosters in the Democratic foreign policy establishment for a lot of (good and bad) reasons.
We've documented a variety of problems caused by the EMILY's List model of politics, including the execrable 11% victory rate for EMILY's List endorsed Democratic House candidates in 2006. I've heard some grumblings from donors who are frustrated at the fairly conservative leanings of many of their candidates and the general lack of accountability in the process. It's getting a bit worse. At the end of the last quarter, EMILY's List sent out a fundraising pitch for Joan Fitzgerald, a Democrat running in a contested primary against Jared Polis, a progressive and wealthy businessman in Colorado, for the second Congressional district. It's a safe seat.
EMILY's List has been sending out materials angering their local donors calling Polis a conservative and making pitches like this: "Will you help Fitz-Gerald keep this critical seat in Democratic hands". The seat is safe, so this argument is dishonest. Furthermore, Polis is not a conservative; he was in fact on the EMILY's List Majority Council and was endorsed by former EMILY's List candidates Peggy Lamm, Pat Schroeder, Angie Paccione and Josie Heath.
There are a variety of other dishonest claims that EMILY's List is making about Polis on behalf of Fitzgerald, and it makes sense for them to work for her election. That's their mandate. But the way it's happening is rubbing a number of their donors the wrong way. EMILY's List is making claims similar to their dishonest arguments in Massachusetts 5th around choice on behalf of Nikki Tsongas, only this time, they have attacked one of their own supporters quite viciously, and this is inadvertently reducing the organization's credibility. People give to EMILY's List to promote female candidates, to promote progressive candidates, and because they believe their money isn't being wasted. By lying about the Republican threat to the seat (there isn't one, it's a PVI D+8 seat), they are reducing their own credibility that they are using resources wisely elsewhere. And by misleading people about Polis's record, the group is muddling the brand that they are progressive.
Some of their donors are quite shocked, and are beginning to wonder if EMILY's List is making false claims in its pitch for resources elsewhere. I have seen up close how helpful the group can be, but there seem to be serious structural flaws that Ellen Malcolm has not yet seen fit to address. You can't simply lie about your friends anymore and expect to escape accountability.
It's an interesting list, candidates from red states like Kentucky, Idaho, and North Carolina to swing states like Florida and Oregon to blue states like Maryland, Washington, and New York.
There will be more sign-ons, and Republicans are having a tough time dealing with the framing, veering from attacking the plan as too liberal to having their moderates basically agree with it (while voting against the specifics in the plan, of course).
Meanwhile, 50 military leaders led by Anthony Zinni just called for a strong investment in nonmilitary tools to reorganize our national security. The framing works quite well, because changing the conversation around national security makes a lot of sense at this moment in history.
Both Chellie Pingree (ME-01) and Jared Polis (CO-02) are being criticized by primary opponents for signing on to the Responsible Plan. Pingree is being attacked for signing on to this plan because it doesn't include timelines or defunding. War supporter Adam Cote is accusing her of inconsistency, and the long-shot Ethan Strimling is proudly saying he refused to sign on to the plan because it is "inconsistent with my belief that we need to leave Iraq now." I invited Strimling to sign on, and his campaign chose to respond through the press.
It's important to understand that the critiques from both the long-shot candidates like Strimling and the war supporters like Cote are essentially the same, and the consequence will be to prolong the war. If Congress were to successfully impose a timeline, the war would continue, it would just continue by increasing the use of mercenary soldiers and covert operations. Only by doing a comprehensive approach - diplomacy, ending the funding of Blackwater, ending torture, restoring checks and balances - can we actually end this war. And only by doing so with a band of other challengers, so there will be a strong group coming into Congress as a group, can these policies be implemented.
In a lot of ways, it is the institutional momentum from both the traditional liberal messaging and the conservative establishment that is keeping the war going. Jared Polis in Colorado's 2nd is also facing a criticism from establishment Democrat Joan Fitz-Gerald on the lack of timelines in the plan. Of course, like Pingree, Polis supports timelines, and there's nothing in the plan inconsistent with that. The disingenuous messaging from Strimling, Fitz-gerald, Cote, and others is to be expected, as these are elections and they are trying to win against a very powerful argument.
More significant is the debate that we have to have about changing the conversation on national security and moving it away from simple tools like timelines and towards more comprehensive approaches that actually restore our constitutional checks and balances. For instance, if the next President rejects a timeline and moves money from other parts of the military to support the war, what then?
And indeed this is a very real danger. Politically, the easiest scenario for the next President to take is to withdraw most of the troops and substitute in a dirty war using firms like Blackwater. Tom Hayden has warned about this possibility. Only a responsible approach, which looks at all our institutional problems, can avoid this scenario. That is why this plan makes sense, and why timelines aren't and cannot be enough to end the torture, use of armed contractors, and incentives for an irresponsible national security state.
Republicans, meanwhile, were quick to pounce on the Democrats' plan.
"This so-called plan is nothing more than the same liberal talking points we have been hearing for the last year," said National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Ken Spain. "Clearly, their plan is to be nothing more than a rubber stamp for Nancy Pelosi and the Democrat-led Congress."
Reichert aide Mike Shields said, "I think both sides would agree we have the same plan: We want our troops home as soon as possible."
But Reichert "wants them to withdraw based on the situation on the ground," Shields said. "This plan wants them to withdraw based on the domestic political situation in the United States."
Reichert opposes committing to an immediate drawdown of U.S. troops, Shields said. And Reichert also is against massive U.S. spending in Iraq, an oil-rich country that has plenty of resources of its own, he said.
But Reichert agrees that diplomacy should be explored more widely, Shields said. Not only that, Reichert has actively supported many of the legislative measures touted in the plan and favored a bill to adopt all of the recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton commission, Shields said.
Reichert has supported George Bush on Iraq every single time he was given the opportunity, so this is a straight up lie. And lying is a good strategy for Republicans and people running on this plan. Jared Polis, who is running against 2003 war supporter and establishment Democrat Joan Fitz-gerald, faced this criticism.
"This plan has no timelines for withdrawal from the war in Iraq. On this the 5th anniversary of this war, the soldiers, their families and the American people deserve a straight answer on this most important issue," the Fitz-gerald campaign said in a release. "This plan clearly contradicts everything Jared has previously stated about his stance on funding for the war without a firm timeline for withdrawal."
As the establishment choice, Fitz-gerald supported the war in 2003, and she's now lying about Polis and the plan. Timelines and defunding are obviously on the table, and their use heavily depends on the next President. Fitz-gerald's statement is irresponsible, but it is characteristic of establishment candidates. In 2003, she supported the war, now she's attacking a responsible antiwar candidate from the left, and if she wins, I'm sure she'll start discussing the success of the surge. That's what anti-leaders do.
Meanwhile, the DCCC is fairly neutral about the endeavor.
"Iraq will continue to be an issue this cycle with John McCain running for a third Bush term," said Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesman Doug Thornell. "As Gen. David Petraeus said, Iraqi leaders are not making sufficient progress. Voters are looking for a new direction in Iraq and Democrats will continue to work to bring our troops home responsibly."
I'll have a lot more on this soon, for the rest of the day I'll be at Take Back America doing meetings. The reception of the plan has been overwhelming. Candidates are jumping on board, and opponents are having to resort to lies to deal with the political strength of the argument. That is a bad position to be in. It is much better to be on the trail and make the argument, 'I have a responsible plan to get us out of Iraq'.
Darcy Burner (WA-8), Chellie Pingree (ME-1), Donna Edwards (MD-4), Jared Polis (CO-2), Tom Perriello (VA-5) and Sam Bennett (PA-15) will be in attendance at the unveiling of a detailed strategy document at the Take Back America Conference in Washington, DC. The release of the document will take place at:
Palladian Room
Omni Shoreham Hotel
2500 Calvert St. NW Washington, DC
5:30 pm EST
Other challengers .participating in the effort but unable to attend include Eric Massa (NY-29), Larry Byrnes (FL-14), George Fearing (WA-4), and Steve Harrison (NY-13).
Originating outside the Beltway and based on consultations with retired generals and other national security experts on a path forward to end the war, the challengers' document lays out a series of actions for Congress to take to end United States military involvement in Iraq, strengthen America and improve our standing around the world, restore accountability and checks and balances to our government and work toward energy independence.
"I wholeheartedly endorse this plan as a responsible and forward looking plan for ending the war in Iraq. As Burner and her colleagues correctly note, bringing our troops home is the first, but not the only step that must be taken to ensure a debacle like Iraq never happens again," said Dr. Lawrence Korb, former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration. "This plan addresses the root causes that allowed the Bush Administration to lead this country into this mess, and sets us in the right direction. I applaud their efforts on this ambitious and sound strategy. This is progressive strength on national security in action."
I know that the media keeps insisting that nobody cares about Iraq anymore. But when I talk to voters in my district, they don't seem to have gotten the memo. Instead, they almost always ask as one of their first two or three questions, "How are you going to end the war in Iraq?"
I thought it might be a good idea to give them a real answer.
Democrats Work is launching the first-of-its-kind Coats and Cans Primary in Colorado's 2nd Congressional District. This innovative "straw poll" urges supporters of the three Democratic candidates - Jean Fitz-Gerald, Jared Polis, and Will Shafroth - to demonstrate their support by donating needed items to local charities and serving their communities. Come out and "vote" for your favorite 2nd Congressional District candidate by donating coats and canned goods at upcoming Democrats Work service events. The first "polling place" opens on Sunday in Broomfield. Stuffing the ballot box is encouraged!
One can = one vote; one coat = five votes! Follow the voting here.
Open seats, not primaries are the best places where progressives have the most leverage of the Democratic Party. And right now, there's a vicious one in Colorado's 2nd, the seat cautious liberal Mark Udall is vacating to run for the Senate. The race pits Jared Polis, an openly gay progressive businessman and philanthropist, against Joan Fitz-Gerald, an Emily's List candidate and President of the Colorado State Senate (there's a third and largely irrelevant candidate). It's an interesting microcosm of the larger debate in the party, because While Fitz-Gerald was voting to approve Bush's war in Iraq, Polis was protesting the war. Now Fitz-Gerald is claiming that she was lied to by George Bush, while Polis is ripping her for her support of the war. When pressed, Fitz-Gerald argues that Polis does not support the troops.
As for her 2003 vote in support of removing Hussein, Fitz-Gerald said voters should view it in "historical context."
"We were lied to about Saddam Hussein's capabilities," she said. "I'm the one with the voting record and I suppose that makes me fair game."...
Polis, a Boulder Democrat, called on Fitz-Gerald to "apologize for voting twice to praise the leadership of President Bush on the matter of Iraq." The second resolution, which passed unanimously in 2003, focused on supporting the troops but also "commended" Bush's leadership.
Fitz-Gerald campaign manager Mary Alice Mandarich questioned whether Polis supports the troops and said she was disappointed he was "attempting to divide us on the most critical issue facing the nation."
I couldn't see any clear distinctions in this race until now, as I do have sympathy for someone in Fitz-Gerald's position. I mildly supported the war since I trusted the elites like Ken Pollack and Tom Friedman; the right response to being duped is to learn from the experience and not trust the old arguments that led you to a place of misjudgment. So when a candidate breaks out the old 'supporting the troops' canard against someone who was right on the war, well, that's a problem, because it means that Fitz-Gerald has learned nothing.
Yesterday, I wrote a post both here and on Open Left, in which, during the process of announcing the campaign's logo contest, I sharply, in an unflattering manner, and unnecessarily criticized Will Shafroth, Joan Fitz-Gerald, and both of the Salazar Brothers.
I want it to be absolutely clear that I wrote what I wrote under my own volition. The sentiments expressed in those posts are my own, and no one else's. They absolutely and certainly don't reflect the sentiments or attitudes of the campaign. They are not reflective, at all, of how Jared feels.
As a result, I have submitted my resignation from the campaign, effective immediately. I feel that my continued presence would distract immensely from the hard work of the campaign. I feel that my error of judgment should not reflect on Jared, but rather on myself, and I will now take time to reflect on how I can best repair the breach.
The decisions leading up to this are mine and mine alone. I continue to believe that Jared will be the best representative from the 2nd Congressional District of Colorado
As some of you might know, one of my clients is Jared Polis, who is running to replace Mark Udall in Colorado's 2nd Congressional District (Mark is running for the Senate). Many of you had a chance to meet him this past week at YearlyKos, and, speaking for him, he had a blast meeting !
He's very, very much in favor of net neutrality, whole-heartedly opposes the Iraq War, and if elected, he'd be both the youngest member of the Congressional delegation at 32, and the first openly-gay Congressman ever from Colorado. Jared has been involved with technology (particularly the Internet) and its applications from a very young age-his first company was an ISP in Chicago that he founded at the age of 13, he made his first million selling scrap metal in the former Soviet Union over the 'net while in college, and made even more money with companies such as Blue Mountain Arts (e-greeting cards) and Proflowers.com (flower delivery). In addition, Jared's been highly involved with educational issues-he served six years on the state board of education, and established several public charter schools which serve the Latino community and underserved communities.
Udall's district is very Democratic, so this is one of those cases where the primary will decide who represents the district in Washington. He has two opponents: Will Shafroth, who comes from the Colorado equivalent of a Philly Main Line family or something equally preppy, and the current State Senate President, Joan Fitz-Gerald.
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