President Obama has nominated Republican Representative John McHugh to be Secretary of the Army. It is not exactly thrilling that yet another major national security position in the Obama administration has gone to a Republican. McHugh scores pretty low on military matters according to progressive punch, and his DW-nominate score hovers around a not-moderate 0.3. After Democrats retook Congress in 2006 largely because of Iraq, and after President Obama won the Democratic nomination significantly because of his early opposition to the war, it gives me a warm feeling for Republicans to still be occupying so many key national security positions.
Anyway, my complaining about Obama's appointments never seems to get anywhere. I'm sure that by appointing McHugh, Obama has somehow made a super-progressive move.
One ray of hope is that the NY-23, which covers much of the "hump" in northern New York State, will now have a special election. With a PVI of R+1, it was won by President Obama, and is actually slightly more favorable for Democrats than the NY-20, where Democrat Scott Murphy won a special election two months ago. McHugh himself proved unassailable, even during two consecutive wave elections for Democrats (he won by a little over 20% in both 2006 and 2008), but the seat is now clearly winnable.
However, I also worry that many of the same problems that appeared in NY-20 will be repeated in NY-23. Four months ago, Scott Murphy was selected by local party leaders as the Democratic nominee without a primary election. Murphy then immediately promised to apply for membership in the Blue Dogs once he entered Congress. Progressives were thus completely shut out from the process right at the start. Will the same thing happen in NY-23?
In the NY-23, as with other special elections taking place right now, as many progressive grassroots organizations as possible need to make it clear that they are not going to give money to any Democratic candidate who refuses to rule out joining the Blue Dogs when entering Congress. All progressive criticisms of the Blue Dogs are cancelled out and rendered utterly ineffective if we continue to funnel hundreds of thousands of small donor dollars to Blue Dog candidates. In fact, if the progressive grassroots are donating to Blue Dog candidates, it makes no sense for any Democratic candidate not to attempt to join the Blue Dogs. If Blue Dog membership can open small donor doors, and corporate PAC doors for you, then why would any Democratic candidate not just promise to try and join the Blue Dogs?
Further, we need to start making noise about the need for a primary election, and fight back against the plutocratic meme that such elections are too expensive right now. The day when our elected officials declare that we can't afford to hold new elections is the day that the American experiment in democracy ends once and for all. It is an offensive, terrible argument to make. There needs to be a primary in NY-23, and we need to be loud about the need for one.
We--participants in blog and email list small donor fundraising efforts--have to completely stop raising money for Blue Dogs. We should not give a single cent to any current member of the Blue Dog coalition. We should not give any money at all to any candidate who refuses to rule out joining the Blue Dogs once in Congress. If we hope to improve Democratic behavior in Congress, this break has to be as public and as thorough as possible.
In politics, money speaks a lot louder than either voting or public criticism. We can criticize Blue Dog behavior all we want, but as long as we keep funneling their members millions of dollars every two years in small, online donations, then we will actually be ratifying, not criticizing their behavior. We will be supporting their efforts to push the party to the right, not working to push the party to the left. We will be sending a clear signal of support for their votes, not working to hold them accountable for those votes.
Let's take a quick review of the Blue Dog behavior we are ratifying. The Blue Dog coalition has made it clear that they believe they have veto power over the entire agenda of the Obama administration and the Democratic congressional leadership. After a meeting with President Obama three weeks before the election, the Blue Dogs declared:
"He also recognized that we had the numbers to block or clear" legislation coming from the White House if he is elected.
If they are coasting that they can block or clear whatever legislation they want, the Blue Dogs consider themselves to be in charge of D.C., not Speaker Pelosi or President Obama. Some highlight of their past behavior include being the driving force in the Democratic Party behind the 2005 bankruptcy bill (they voted 32-4 in favor), the 2006 ending of habeus corpus, the 2007 Iraq War blank check, and the 2008 FISA re-write (see here for both). So far in 2009, they only allowed the stimulus package to go through after extracting a pay-go promise from the Obama administration. Last month, they joined with the New Democrats to block foreclosure relief legislation, which Evan Bayh's Blue Dogs in the Senate seem to have killed. And most of them will vote against the budget, too.
The Blue Dogs are an overt obstacle to progressive governance. For crying out loud, their entire name comes from feeling "choked blue by the left-wing of the party." In the recent past, they have refused to send money to the DCCC because another member of Congress criticized them on Iraq. They are overtly anti-progressive and anti-left wing. They don't even work to help other members of the party. So, why are we working to help them?
We simply must stop funneling money to the Blue Dog coalition. Given how much we complain about Blue Dogs, this may seem self-evident, but it is not. In the past, I, personally, have helped raise a decent amount of money for Blue Dogs. Two of the fundraising pages that I helped build, Netroots Candidates and Blue Majority, took in about $150,000 for Patrick Murphy, Larry Kissell and Bill Foster, three members of Congress who are either Blue Dogs already, or who will be likely announced as such when the new Blue Dog membership list is made public. So, I am as implicated in sending Blue Dogs money in the past as anyone.
If we keep sending the Blue Dogs millions of dollars in small, online donations every year, then there is no incentive for Blue Dogs to ever change their behavior, or for Democratic candidates to not seek out membership in the Blue Dog coalition. Currently, being a member, or prospective member, of the Blue Dog coalition provides you access to a network of Hill staff, corproate lobbyists and their PACs, large donor fundraisers, and press releases back home to talk about how you aren't like those other, dirty liberal Democrats. If we want to change Democratic behavior in Congress, we have stop adding even more incentives for Democrats to become Blue Dogs. Instead, we must offer strong disincentives for them to become Blue Dogs, such as a significantly reduced access to online, small donor fundraising.
Unfortunately, in Scott Murphy's case, small online donors raised over $300,000 for him even after Murphy had stated he was applying to join the Blue Dogs. That has to stop. Before we raise money for other congressional candidates in 2009-2010, we have to extract promises from those candidates that they won't join either the Blue Dogs (for House candidates) or Evan Bayh's groups (for Senate candidates).
No more money for the Blue Dogs. We can't continue to ratify their efforts to push the Democratic Party to the right. There are plenty of candidates and organizations working to push the party in the opposite direction to whom we small online donors should give our money.
Tomorrow I go to the local fire house to vote in the special election in New York's 20th Congressional district.
The main bit of my preparations is my talking points, just in case a TV newsie shows up to interview me. Not that this is likely -- I have a real face for radio, but it's in the same spirit of planning what I might buy if I win a lottery. And since I look like what they probably imagine a Republican to look like -- fat, white, middle-aged and suburban -- it might be useful to have something to say that would jolt 'em a bit.
One of the great pleasures of my book tour is getting to spend some quality time with great organizers and activists outside of DC that I haven't known well. One of those people is Deb Kozikowski, who I have been hanging out with while in the Amherst/NoHo area.
Deb is a longtime Democratic Party organizer who has been on the DNC representing Massachusetts for many years, and who in 2007, with her longtime friend and fellow rural activist Matt Barron, cofounded an organization called RuralVotes. RuralVotes is one of those really important niche organizations that works on issues that matter to rural and small-town people, but does it from a progressive perspective. One of their most important strategies is to focus on doing small-town radio ads, which are incredibly cheap but reach a lot of voters in rural areas because people spend a lot of time on the road in small-town America. These ads also get a lot of buzz in small-town newspapers.
Right now, they are doing an advertising campaign in the special election for Kirsten Gilibrand's old seat, NY-20. The Albany Project did a nice piece on it here. As I have written before, Democrats don't have to win a majority of voters in rural America to win most elections, but they sure do have to win a higher percentage than Al Gore and John Kerry did. RuralVotes is making a strong contribution to making that happen.
On March 31st, there will be a special election to fill Senator Kirsten Gillibrand's vacated seat in the House of Representatives. Her old district, the New York 20th, encompasses much of the Hudson Valley, centering near Albany. President Obama won the district 50.70%--47.70%, which is 4.25% below his national average but still provides the district a light-blue hue.
Glens Falls venture capitalist Scott Murphy is the Democrats' choice to take on Republican James Tedisco for the 20th Congressional District seat.
Democratic committee chairmen from 10 counties on Sunday chose Murphy from the narrowed-down list of four hopefuls at a meeting at the Gateway Diner in Colonie.
I am going to take a pass on this election, and take it pretty loudly (if this blog post counts as "loudly.") Best of luck Mr. Murphy, but you will get no resource assistance from this website. In the extended entry, I explain why.
