In 2006, Democrats took back control of Congress because of public outrage at George Bush and the War in Iraq. But we should remember it almost didn't happen - until August, when Ned Lamont proved that Democrats can galvanize that energy to beat an incumbent Senator in a primary. Tomorrow, Pennsylvania Democrats will be asked to dump ex-Republican Arlen Specter - and in Arkansas, conservative Senator Blanche Lincoln also faces a primary challenge. And just like Joe Lieberman, the Party establishment is circling the wagons in both states - with President Obama shooting a radio ad that claims Lincoln "took on big insurance companies" to pass health care. A new poll shows that voters prefer Democrats over Republicans, which suggests that 2010 may not be the nightmare everyone fears. But it also showed that voters hate incumbents. If Democrats want to avoid a bloodbath in November, Specter and Lincoln must be defeated.
Reid also declares that Olympia Snowe was negotiating in bad faith, that she was never going to support a health care bill, and that talking to her was a waste of time.
Given that both Lieberman and Snowe were negotiating in bad faith, we should have been pushing for reconciliation as hard as we were pushing for the public option.
Then again, Kissell only leads a potential primary challenger 49-15, and only 28% of Democrats know he voted against the bill. For an incumbent, those are pretty weak primary numbers-someone could actually knock him off. However, the North Carolina primary is on May 4th, so it is unlikely that a strong primary campaign would be able to gear up in such a short time.
Ned Lamont's main opponent in the Democratic primary for Governor in Connecticut has dropped out. Current polling on the campaign indicates that Ned is now the strong favorite in both the primary and the general election. Get ready for Governor Lamont!
It turns out that if I delete content from a website that I--quite literally--own, then I am engaging in censorship. I don't remember the part of the first amendment that declares everyone is allowed to use everyone else's printing press.
This is the last day to submit your comments to the FCC in support of Net Neutrality. Go do it, now.
The FDIC is trying to limit risky bank behavior by linking it to limits on executive pay. The good news not just the ruling, but that the ruling is causing blowback from the conservative members of the FDIC. This is a perfect example of the type of fights Democrats have to pick with financial institutions in 2010. As I wrote yesterday, banks must be portrayed as the culprit, and Democrats have to come across as fighting the banks father than colluding with them.
Keep picking fights like these, and pick them as publicly as possible.
This just in--Ned Lamont is looking to run for Governor in Connecticut:
NED LAMONT ANNOUNCES FORMATION OF EXPLORATORY COMMITTEE
Norwalk, CT - Ned Lamont, successful businessman, co-founder of the state policy center at Central Connecticut State University, and Democratic nominee for US Senate in 2006, announced that he will be filing papers today with the State Elections Enforcement Commission establishing an Exploratory Committee for statewide office:
"As I have continued to meet with citizens across our state over the last three years, as co-chairman of President Obama's Connecticut campaign and on behalf of health care reform, I have been constantly reminded that Connecticut is not living up to its potential and that too many of our families are being left behind," said Lamont.
"Like businesses, states thrive with strong executive leadership, and they fall behind with weak leadership. As measured by the loss of jobs, young people leaving our state, and the never-ending budget crisis, Connecticut's Chief Executive is simply not getting the job done."
There is no polling on Lamont in this campaign. Republian Governor Jodi Rell is able to run for another term, and was popular as of February. However, that could easily change in the current, anti-incumbent climate.
A couple other Democrats have announced they are running, as well.
There are not many progressive Democratic Governors. Lamont's entry into this campaign could change that.
A wave of new polling has come out this week, and the Pollster.com trendline tells the story. Sestak is gaining on Specter:
Currently at 44.1%--26.5%, the trendlines show each of the campaigns moving in only one direction: Sestak is up, while Specter is down. Other important takeaways:
Specter well under 50%. Specter has not reached 50% since before Sestak officially entered the campaign. All five of the polling organizations to survey the primary since July show Specter under 50% among Pennsylvania Democrats. A majority of Pennsylvania Democrats have not embraced him, and about 12% have actually stopped supporting Specter since his party switch.
Sestak will continue to gain. The only reason Specter is even ahead at all is because of his higher name recognition. Among Pennsylvania Democrats who know both major candidates, Sestak already has a narrow lead (see here and here). As such, the longer the campaign continues, and the higher Sestak's name recognition becomes, the more Specter's lead will erode.
Sestak does better among likely voters: Even aside from Democrats who know both candidates, the two polling organizations which survey likely voters show Sestak closer to Specter than the ones which survey registered voters. Rasmussen shows Sestak within 4%, and back in August Research 2000 showed Sestak within 15%. This average gap of only 9.5% compares favorably to the average gap of 24.3% across the three polls surveying registered Democratic voters. It is also reminiscent of Ned Lamont performing 10% better among likely primary voters in Connecticut than among registered voters.
Sestak better positioned than other major primary challengers. Sestak is already doing better than other recent, major primary challenges against Senate incumbents. Consider:
In 2004, Specter led Pat Toomey 52%-20% across the three polls taken on the campaign between November 2003 and February 2004. Specter went on to win, but only by 2%.
In 2006, five months ahead of the Republican primary in Rhode Island, Lincoln Chafee led Steve Laffey 56%-28%. Laffey eventually pulled into a dead heat, before narrowly losing the primary by 4,000 votes.
Also in 2006, Ned Lamont trailed Joe Lieberman by 46% only three months before the primary. Lamont went on to win the primary by about 3.5%.
U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak, trying to knock off a veteran Democratic incumbent senator in the primary, will get an endorsement Monday from somebody who succeeded in doing just that: Connecticut's Ned Lamont.
Lamont defeated Sen. Joseph Lieberman in the 2006 Democratic primary, largely by running against the Iraq war and Lieberman's support of the Bush administration's war policy. But Lamont did not win the general election. After losing the nomination, Lieberman ran as an independent in the fall, defeating Lamont and the Republican nominee.
Score!
Sestak outperforms Specter in the general election. Lamont may not have won the general election, but Sestak looks well positioned to do so. According to Pollster.com, Sestak does better against Republican frontrunner Pat Toomey than Arlen Specter:
It is hard to imagine how these numbers improve for Specter, given that he is so well known across the state. Sestak, by contrast, is not only already leading, but has significant room for growth.
I like the way this is going. If you haven't already, join Joe Sestak's campaign!
Thinking back over the six years I have spent full-time in politics, there have been only three occasions when I was a part of a campaign that seemed to legitimately frighten powerful interests. Here is what comes to mind:
That's about it. There have been many other good, creative, insurgent efforts of which I am proud to have played a part--No residual forces, Bush Dogs, Donna Edwards, Use it or Lose It, Freeze Out Fox News--but nothing else that really seemed to get under the collar of powerful people and institutions over a long period of time.
Thinking about all of this, I can't help but wonder--weren't the best efforts, even if they did not directly lead to either electoral victory or immediate legislative action, the ones that really scared the bejeebus out of powerful interests? Aren't the best indications that we are really onto something as progressive activists when Village media, Democratic Party leaders, and moneyed corporate interests all freak out over what we are going? Unless they are scared, how do we know that our actions hold the potential for real change?
In the wake of the AIG bonus scandal, Connecticut Senate Chris Dodd is in serious trouble for re-election. In fact, the odds are now that he will lose, as a new Quinnipiac poll shows him trialing Republican challenger Rob Simmons by a whopping 16%:
This simply must be the result of the AIG scandal. Could anything else have possibly hurt Dodd so badly over the past twenty-five days? It is a painful irony that Dodd is the one taking the fall on this, given that he was the Senator trying to write stronger limits on executive compensation into the stimulus package, and it was other members who stripped it out. The Democrats who were in the room know what happened, and might be able to help Dodd if they fess up on who stripped the language.
Otherwise, not to be bleak or anything, it might not be possible for Dodd to recover from a deficit like this. It is true that a Research 2000 / Daily Kos poll taken just before this Quinnipiac poll showed Dodd ahead of Simmons by 5%, so one of those polls (or both) is very, very wrong. So, it is probably best to wait for a third confirming poll to develop a better sense of the campaign.
However, if the Q-poll is correct, than this is better than the advantage Bob Casey started out with against Rick Santorum in 2005, and akin to the advantage Tom Udall started with in New Mexico in 2007. Those campaigns ended up in 17.36% and 22.66% blowouts respectively, as the incumbent and incumbent party never recovered. I'd be hard pressed to find any incumbent Senator that has ever recovered from a 16% deficit. While the so-called "incumbent rule," where challengers gain the overwhelming percentage of undecideds in campaigns with incumbents, does not hold up as well as it used to, it is still safe to say that trailing by 16% with a name ID over 90% is a bad position. What is worse for Dodd in the poll is that he is also losing by 4% to a lesser known Republican State Senator, meaning that much of his deficit is specific to Simmons, who many Connecticut voters seems to consider an acceptable Republican, rather than just to an anti-Dodd sentiment. As such, retaining this seat will probably require either Dodd not seeking re-election, or Simmons being defeated in a Club for Growth fueled primary.
If Dodd were to step aside, it is a lock that Attorney General Richard Blumenthal would be able to retain the seat for Democrats. A February Q-poll recent poll showed Blumenthal defeating Lieberman by 28% in the general election, and with a 79%-12% approval rating. While it would be unfortunate to lose such a rock-solid chance to defeat Lieberman, recent polling from Research 2000 has shown that Ned Lamont is still primed to defeat Lieberman in 2012 if he decides to run again. Of course, while Lamont and Blumenthal remain solid bench candidates for Democrats in the state, Republicans have their own in Governor Jodi Rell. The same poll showing Dodd down 16% shows Rell with a 72% approval rating. All of this guarantees that Connecticut will be a big state, possibly the top state, to watch on the Senate front for the next four years.
Raising Kaine first reported that Wes Clark won't be at the Democratic National Convention. Steve Clemons is now reporting that Clark was actually actually disinvited.
Clark was informed by Barack Obama's people that there was "no reason to come."
General Clark has been given no role of any kind at the convention.
Rubbing salt in the wound even more, the "theme" of Wednesday's Democratic convention agenda is "Securing America."
And there we go. I heard this situation went down slightly differently than how Steve reports, though the outcome was the same.
Meanwhile, here's Clark making sense of the Georgia-Russia situation. Clearly, we'd rather hear about how to handle this delicate military tussle from Evan Bayh and Ken Salazar. I do want to point out how deeply we respect John McCain's service to his country, though of course, Wes Clark's 34 years in the military and near fatal wounds in Vietnam are kind of yawners.
Incidentally, I could see this situation with Clark changing, as the Georgia-Russia conflict does change the political dynamics.
... There's some discussion as to whether this was some sort official 'disinvitation'. In general, such things do not exist, disinvitations happen when high level officials are told they have no role in an event. The message is pretty clear. Nevertheless if you want to believe that this is simply a veto of Clark having a role at the convention and him then choosing not to come, that's an accurate characterization as well.
HUNTINGDON VALLEY, PA - I write to you this morning from my parents house in Pennsylvania, after being up late last night appearing on CNN to discuss the role of the Internet and the Netroots in THE UPRISING (you can watch it here). It's been a terrific first week of the book tour - the crowds have been fantastic. After the kickoff in Burlington, Vermont with uprising leader Bernie Sanders, I headed to Madison, Connecticut for a reunion event with my other old boss - Ned Lamont (event photo at right, video here). With an overflow crowd in Madison, Ned and I joined Connecticut Citizen Action Group (CCAG) in a discussion about the state of the antiwar uprising - a topic that is the subject of my latest syndicated column, and a major excerpt of THE UPRISING just published in In These Times magazine.
The antiwar chapter of my book is probably the most controversial - and was also the toughest to write. The basic thesis is that the campaign to end the Iraq War is split between what Matt Stoller has astutely called "The Protest Industry" and what I call "The Players" - and that both the split and The Players' specific strategy has weakened the antiwar uprising.
For years now, polls have shown the majority of Americans oppose the Iraq War. In 2006, that antiwar consensus in the mass public first propelled Ned Lamont to his shocking primary victory over Joe Lieberman, and then antiwar Democratic challenger candidates across the country to victory in the general election. Those candidates, as I say in my latest column, learned the Lamont Lesson - namely, that ignoring Washington's pro-war Democratic Party "strategists" and ignoring what THE UPRISING calls "The McGovern Fable" actually wins national elections.
But after the election, The Players - ie. the group of professional antiwar organizations in Washington - focused huge amounts of resources on an antiwar lobbying strategy that aimed all the pressure on Republicans. This, even though Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and therefore had the power to stop bills to fund the war. The Players, in short, put their partisan affinity and cocktail party friendships ahead of the antiwar cause.
That helped marginalize The Protest Industry - ie. the grassroots marchers and protesters against the war - even more than it has marginalized itself through its own tactics. And now it is 2008 - a deja vu moment whereby the country opposes the Iraq War and Congress continues to nonetheless fund it.
Luckily, as my column this week notes, the antiwar uprising is changing its tactics as the Fall election nears.
In January, I wrote the following about Ned Lamont's endorsement of Obama in which I expressed mild dissatisfaction with the decision. The gist of the post was organized around the idea that the endorsement made sense only if Lamont could persuade Obama to take on the FISA fight strongly because Obama had not been particularly helpful (to put it mildly) during the Lamont campaign.
And while it's not exactly what we're talking about today, I suppose it's worth noting that Lamont endorsed Obama, and then we did win the FISA fight. So my mild concern is now obviated. Lamont made a decision to endorse Obama. I had my reservations, but I was wrong, and the decision paid off.
So thanks, Ned, for what you did. It is possible to work from the inside and make change.
The donors threatening Nancy Pelosi are listed below. I bolded the ones who contributed to Joe Lieberman's campaign for Senate in 2006, when he won reelection as an independent.
Marc Aronchick Clarence Avant
Susie Tompkins Buell
Sim Farar
Robert L. Johnson
Chris Korge
Marc and Cathy Lasry Hassan Nemazee
Alan and Susan Patricof JB Pritzker Amy Rao
Lynn de Rothschild
Haim Saban Bernard Schwartz Stanley S. Shuman
Jay Snyder
Maureen White and Steven Rattner
... Adding that Haim Saban is the fiscal sponsor of extreme right-wing hawk Michael O'Hanlon at the Brookings Institution and Lasry was a Bush donor.
... Aravosis notices that 30% of these donors slept in the White House when Bill was President. I don't have any problem with that, actually, I just think it's funny how transparently transactional they are.
Here's the first bit of evidence I've seen on how race will matter from the primary to the general.
The vast majority of Democratic voters say they would support either Obama or Clinton over McCain. But in an Obama-McCain matchup, 14% of Democratic voters say they would support McCain, compared with 8% who would do so if Clinton is the nominee.
One-in-five white Democrats (20%) say that they will vote for McCain over Obama, double the percentage who say they would switch sides in a Clinton-McCain matchup (10%). Roughly the same number of Democrats age 65 and older say they will vote for McCain if Obama is the party's choice (22%). Obama also suffers more defections among lower income and less educated Democratic voters than does Clinton.
In addition, female Democrats look at the race differently depending on the matchup. While 93% of women in the party say they would vote for Clinton over McCain, just 79% say they would support Obama over McCain.
A quarter of Democrats (25%) who back Clinton for the nomination say they would favor McCain in a general election test against Obama. The "defection" rate among Obama's supporters if Clinton wins the nomination is far lower; just 10% say they would vote for McCain in November, while 86% say they would back Clinton.
While race is often considered the most important factor, I do not actually think that is the case here. The most obvious parallel, where a sizeable chunk of Democrats chose to vote for an incredibly hawkish maverick style politician with an undeserved reputation for liberal politics, was the 2006 Lieberman-Lamont race. I in fact said that the 2006 Senate race at the time was a test run for John McCain's campaign, and all campaign strategists working on the Presidential race noticed exactly what the limits were of the liberal coalition at that time.
In the primary, Lamont took 52% of the vote to Lieberman's 48%, but in the general Lieberman got 33% of the Democratic vote. And the primary determinant of that chunk was age. That is true right now as well. And frankly, why shouldn't it be? Old people get that that having an old President will mean that their views are better represented. Young people believe that having a young President will mean that their views are better represented. This isn't and shouldn't be a surprise.
As a progressive partisan, it's disappointing that so many older white people are willing to abandon the Democratic Party to send young people into wars just because they don't want a younger African-American male to run the country. And indeed, if you look further at the poll, McCain picks up most of his 'McCain Democrats' among the 26% of the Democratic population who want to keep some troops in Iraq. Most Clinton supporters aren't like that, only a quarter at this point are even considering voting for McCain, I have talked to a few, and the unspoken identity problems are both age and race.
I saw this during the Lamont race, only very few people were actually on our side. It was a scarring experience, and the youth surge had not yet happened the way that it is helping to offset the 65+ advantage for Clinton and McCain. At any rate, Obama's going to have to make up for his deficit by appealing to independents, something which fortunately he is doing against both McCain and Clinton.
Update: I thought this comment is illustrative of the conversations I've had with older Clinton supporters that won't vote for Obama in the general.
As one of those "older white people willing to send young people into wars," I think you just don't get it. First, I am old according to you, 68 to be exact. I protested the Vietnam War, dragged my children and friends to Washington to demonstrate for a woman's right to choose, made phone calls for Jesse Jackson back in '84, and worked for McGovern when there were lots and lots of young people energized to participate - you're not the first ones to get involved.
I, for one, am not going to shift to McCain, but I am part of the fall-off. I am not going to vote for Obama. I am going to vote LIKE Obama. When I go to the polls in November, if there is not a woman at the top of the ticket, I will simply be noted as "present." Then I'll look downballot and vote for the rest of the candidates.
I don't know now whether I will ever get to vote for a woman if Clinton is not nominated this year, but I do know that in the future I will vote for any woman over any man for president - regardless of her qualifications or her background (there have been a lot of male rogues and roués on the ballot over the years, I'm not expecting a female candidate to be perfect). And after all, this year, you and many others are eager to vote for a thinly qualified male over a more qualified female? Think of your own state senator (a part time job, by the way), put him in the U.S. Senate for a year and tell me if you think he or she is qualified to be president. That's how I see Obama - he may make your heart flutter, but so does Brad Pitt.
And so I wait to see what happens this year and if Clinton is not nominated, I just hope I live long enough for someone else to be able to crack the glass ceiling.
Steve Benen takes former Lieberman communications director Dan Gerstein to task for his error-filled column about the 'decline of the angry left'. I think it's worth noting that there is a direct line between the message of the Dean campaign and that of the Obama campaign. Here's a picture I took in 2004 the night before the Iowa caucuses, at Dean's final rally. What an angry message.
Gerstein is correct to note that Obama and his supporters do not believe in partisanship as a route to social change, and Dean did. And I actually agree that Obama has convinced lots of liberals and bloggers to drop partisanship as a central strategic vehicle. But the hope theme has always been there.
Both Obama and Clinton betrayed Lamont and all of us during the 2006 campaign. Hillary Clinton, while she did do a fundraiser for Lamont, had her husband go onto Larry King after the primary and back Lieberman by saying there was no difference between the candidates. At that moment, all of Lamont's establishment support dried up, and we lost 30% of the Democrats in the general election. At the same time, after promising to endorse the winner of the primary, Obama went through Connecticut by train and refused to stop in the state out of fear of challenging Lieberman. He had earlier in the race spoken out at the Jefferson Jackson dinner for Lieberman, his mentor.
I talked to Ned today, and expressed all of this. And he knows it. And nothing can reverse the outcome of that election, which set the stage for the complete Democratic capitulation on Iraq we saw throughout 2007.
A few weeks ago, Obama refused to help out during the Senate FISA fight, when Chris Dodd bravely filibustered the Bush administration's top priority to expand wiretapping authority and immunize telecom companies who had broken the law. The fight is probably coming around again, and Lamont promised he would advocate internally for Obama to actually stand with Dodd this time. I doubt Obama will filibuster, though it would be really good for his campaign and I would become an excited advocate for Obama were he to do so.
Still, I hope Lamont is able to persuade Obama to actually stand for principle. That would make his endorsement truly meaningful.
When I decided to run for Senate, I did so because I deeply believed that the citizens of Connecticut were yearning to see fundamental changes in our politics - changes that would make government work for them again.
Today, with our Presidential primary in Connecticut less than a month away, I am announcing my support of Barack Obama for President because I am convinced that his forward-looking, progressive vision provides the best chance to enact meaningful reforms in the way Washington works.
We expect to see a great deal of movement to Obama from superdelegates in the coming days, seriously eroding the Clintons' existing advantage in this universe.
I don't think that has happened yet. In fact, to seriously erode or even erase Clinton's 100-vote lead in this category, Obama will need pretty much every day between now and February 5th to be like the last two days. That would be impressive, but I also have to wonder if, at some point, a campaign can have too many endorsements. The more establishment endorsements a campaign gets, the more establishment that campaign appears. Given that Obama is running as an outsider to Clinton's insider, too many endorsements might actually hurt him. Not to mention that endorsements actually take the spotlight off the candidate, and focus them on the person making the endorsement.
Of course, Ned Lamont is neither a super delegate nor much of an insider. This is a targeted endorsement that could help Obama with the progressive, activist base.
So now, if you're a Hillary supporter, you're not a real Democrat?
Fuck that noise. There are passionate, hard-working progressive Democrats who support every single one of our candidates, Hillary included.
And I'm sick of diaries that insinuate to the contrary.
Oh, I know, it's primary season. That's just how things are.
Bullshit. We're adults. Let's act like adults.
We're allies. Let's act like allies.
I don't in any way mean to pick on this diarist from Daily Kos that wrote these words. Also, I would state that of course it is possible to be a real Democrat and support Hillary Clinton, and it is also possible to be a "real" progressive and support Clinton. Instead, what I want to take issue with is the notion that all self-identified Democrats are "allies."
The simple fact is that not all self-identified Democrats, including all Democrats in Congress, are our allies. This was made repeatedly clear to me back in 2006, and I am tired of variations on the circular firing squad line being used to defend criticism of Democrats. For starters, the following five Senators are absolutely not our allies, and should not be considered such:
Carper (D-DE)
Pryor (D-AR)
Salazar (D-CO)
Nelson (D-NE)
Landrieu (D-LA)
In no uncertain terms, these five Senators made it clear that they are not allies of the Democratic Party. This is because all five of them endorsed a candidate who was running against the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Connecticut in 2006. If they were our allies, if we were all on the same team, then they would have endorsed the Democratic nominee in Connecticut. Period. End of story. Since they did not, it is clear that whatever relationship they have with "us" is one of convenience that will be broken whenever it suits their personal interests. And the ten Senators who failed to endorse one way or the other in the primary general, including President Bill Clinton himself, are not much better:
Baucus (D-MT)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Conrad (D-ND)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Johnson (D-SD)
Levin (D-MI)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Nelson (D-FL)
Sabarnes (D-MD)
This is very simple: if you don't endorse some Democratic nominees, you don't get to say that you are on the same team with those endorse all Democratic nominees. People who undertake those different actions are on different teams. Or, more accurately, those who endorse all Democratic nominees are on a team, while those who selectively endorse are on a team of one.
And it doesn't stop there, either. Even before the 2006 election, I was told by some Democrats that I had already lost:
Representative Ellen O. Tauscher of California, a co-chairwoman of the 47-member New Democrat Coalition, said that 27 of the top 40 contested House seats were being pursued by Democrats who have pledged to become members of the group, which says its chief issues are national security and fiscal responsibility.
"I think there's tremendous agreement and awareness that getting the majority and running over the left cliff is what our Republican opponents would dearly love," Ms. Tauscher said, adding that this was something "we've got to fight."
In this election, both the Religious Right and the secular Left were defeated, and the voice of the moral center was heard.
Don't tell me that I lost the election, and then try and tell me that we are all on the same team. Don't tell me that people who endorsed Lieberman are on the same team with me. We are not all on the same team. That much has been made clear.
Are most Democrats on the same team? Sure. In fact, I would estimate that about two-thirds of Democrats are on the same team (which is about the percentage of Democrats at both the leadership and rank and file level who supported Lamont by the end). But for the rest, it is simply a marriage of convenience. They will break off and form their own team if and when it becomes more politically convenient for them to do so.
And sure, there are people on the left who aren't on the team either. Many people consider themselves progressives before they consider themselves Democrats, and as such will sometimes endorse non-Democratic third-party candidates. However, what I am arguing here isn't a left-right division, but rather simply pointing out many of us do not consider ourselves to be on the "same team." We operate in a broad coalition, that for many people is an arrangement of convenience. That is fine. That is politics. Unless you live in an ideological one-party state, there is no way to successfully operate outside of a coalition. All I am asking is that before people start decrying the circular firing squad or internal debate, don't use the lame defense that we are all on the same team. We are not all on the same team, we are just all in the same coalition, which are two different things. This is especially the case in a primary, which is essentially a fight to lead the coalition. It is important we all keep that in mind, because I believe it helps put internal debate in a more accurate perspective.
STATE BLOGS
This is an ongoing blog series from the national book tour of The Uprising. You can order The Uprising at 