We had a pretty good night on election night in the Northeast. We cleaned house. We nailed 1 GOP Senator, 6 House of Reps Districts, 1 State Senate and held on to all of the State Senates, State Houses, US House Reps and US Senators we had coming into this cycle.
That the Northeast is rapidly realigning towards team Blue is undeniable!
But the work my friends has merely begun. Forget the bunkum about us being irretrievably on defense in 2010 come below the fold to see who should be in our sights in 2010 as we stay on offense in the Northeast........
Rep. Christopher Smith, a Republican who has represented central New Jersey since 1980, probably didn't realize he was walking into a political minefield when his family requested a break on his daughter's huge college bill.
Smith's daughter, who until recently lived with him in the family's Herndon, Va., home, obtained in-state tuition privileges at a prestigious Virginia university - saving the Smiths $20,000 per year off the $29,000 tuition charged to out-of-state students.
Smith's campaign is trying to explain this by claiming that his wife is domiciled in Virginia, not him. Unfortunately, his wife voted in New Jersey and ran as a McCain delegate in New Jersey. In other words, this New Jersey Congressman is reaping an illegal savings of $80,000 from Virginia.
The Republican Party is basically an amoral criminal conspiracy. Republican leaders really just don't care about law or property when it gets in the way of something they want. I keep coming back to Democrat Josh Zeitz, the progressive running in this district. The race is just such a great example of how politics works, from the cobweb-like Democratic infrastructure to the banal racism and criminality of the Republican incumbent structure.
Obviously conservatives and Republicans in Congress are throwing tantrums about how any additional provisions to the $700 billion blank check are partisan maneuvers to take advantage of a crisis. They say this as if Hank Paulson isn't a conservative Republican asking for $700 billion for his conservative friends on Wall Street. This is an ideological war and they are assaulting America. I'd call it treason but it's legal.
On the flip side, this crisis is our chance to thrash the conservative movement and it's one Democrats should jump on. I've had anti-corruption fighter David Donnolly note that this is a good moment to get public financing through, since it's obvious that our political system is totally corrupt and needs systemic reform. This is a good moment to reform the Bankruptcy code. And it's also a good moment to really shift the rules and help labor (where the hell is labor, by the way); here's a note from Joshua Zeitz, candidate for Congress in NJ-04.
No one is even broaching the topic of unions. Ironicaly, given my trouble with labor, this is the point I'm going to hammer home this week. Thanks to the Bush visit, I'll have a microphone.
During WWII, the U.S. government offered industry a deal: cost-plus war production contracts and expansion capital in return for closed shops. Ford, GM, &c. refused to switch to war production until they were offered these cost-plus contracts, and ultimately, Congress and the Roosevelt administration were able to use both the carrot (massive investment of pulic funds in the construction of privately held plants) and stick (the threat of nationalization) to force the unionization of heretofore non-union shops.
The $700 billion bailout plan is comparable insomuch as it will create a massive infusion of public funds into private firms. Unions are dying, and this is a chance to extend them a life saver. There should be a mandate that any firm accepting the federal funds/buyout of securities unionize its support and clerical staff, sign agreements to use only unionized workers when building new facilities, use unionized (domestic) call centers , &c. This is a once-in-a-generation chance to use government leverage to open the door for unions. Democrats need to hammer that point home. It's how we began raising the prevailing wage and benefits in service industries. This is important.
But all of this starts with a total rejection of Hank Paulson as a bad faith actor. This deal is bullshit. Progressives should pick a new number at random to start negotiations, say, $400 billion or $1.2 trillion, and start there with an entirely different framework. It doesn't matter. This is a political game of chicken, and the administration is acting like this is 9/11 and they have another opportunity to rob everyone blind and then run an election on law and order.
The Northeast (Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island & Vermont) has been sharply trending towards the Democratic party for some years now. Increasingly at a State and Federal level Republicans are finding it harder to get elected in the Northeast, be they conservatives or moderates, particularly in statewide races. And this years election seems certain to thin out their ranks even further.
We now have 7/9 Governors, 14/18 Senators and 51/65 House Districts!
Below the line for a look at the 14 GOP held House Races in the Northeast in 2008.
In politics, if you want to see how old progressives (or really anyone) prioritize, check out what they do when no one's looking. For instance, Chris Smith, a Republican in New Jersey who is the Chair of the Pro-life Caucus in the House, has received money and/or endorsements from the NEA, AFSCME, Teamsters, CWA, IBEW, AFL-CIO, and the League of Conservation Voters. As an example of how the old progressive leadership class preserves the status quo, this is an excellent example, because an endorsement of Smith is a betrayal of the members of these organizations by their leadership.
Though Smith is a good vote on the Employee Free Choice Act and the minimum wage, Smith is, to put it bluntly, a perverted and homophobic mysogenist (and not particularly well-known or well-liked in his district). It's not just the standard conservative stuff, like voting to authorize and fund the Iraq war or the Bankruptcy Bill or FISA. It's more than that, like voting to require underage rape victims to secure the consent of their rapists before terminating the resulting pregnancy, or voting on twenty-two separate occasions criminalize the birth control pill. He also associates quite freely with various viciously homophobic groups, and is well-known as one of the fiercest opponent of abortion in Congress.
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