Here is a Sunday treat that I am hoping to turn into a semi-regular feature: an unedited, forty-minute interview I conducted with Congressman Patrick Murphy. This interview is so unedited that you can hear my friend Mike and I setting up the recording equipment during the first twenty seconds of the interview:
Topics include Congressman Murphy's time in Iraq, his new book Taking the Hill: From Philly To Baghdad to the United States Congress, the Blue Dogs, FISA, life as a congressman, his relationship with the netroots, and much more. While I need to brush up on my interview style somewhat, I still it is absolutely worth a listen. And if you like these lengthy interviews, I'll try to set them up for Sunday listening on a regular basis. Perhaps it will be the start of my own Sunday show.
I'll be interviewing Rep. Patrick Murphy in about 45 minutes about his new book, Taking The Hill. I already have a few questions ready, but I wanted to see if Open Left readers had any questions of their own. What would you like to ask Congressman Murphy? Let me know in the comments.
Update: Just finished the interview, and thought it went very well. I'll post the audio file tomorrow. Your questions were great, and I asked almost all of them.
It is easy to get upset and frustrated when we lose important fights in Congress, especially after working so hard in 2006 to win us a Democratic majority in the House and the Senate. We shouldn't forget that some of the people we fought hard for and gave money for have our backs now. The lesson of 2007 is that we need to fight even harder to keep the Representatives who have done good by us get more good people in Congress who share our values who have courage, integrity and honor, who will step up and speak for the American people, our troops and take seriously their oath to defend the Constitution. As kos wrote, "This is it. This is the way to change our party."
Every so often I run across a really egregious example of prowar advocacy and DC gossip couched as journalism. One such example is this article from the Politico on how Democrats want Pelosi and Reid to give up on the war.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, despite their pledges to continue pushing to end the war in Iraq, face growing pressure from their rank-and-file Democrats to focus more attention on domestic, "pocketbook" issues in the upcoming election year.
The article quotes one Democratic House member: Brian Baird. One. That's it. And the context is really remarkable.
My hope would be we start looking at real solutions instead of the dichotomy of cut funding versus stay forever," said Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.), who had a change of heart this fall after visiting Iraq and realizing the military surge was working.
"The entire policy has been dictated by the 'Out of Iraq Caucus' ... What are we going to do, have another 40 withdrawal votes?"
The journalists who wrote this piece, John Bresnahan and Martin Kady, just sort of throw out there the assertion that the surge is working as fact. And they quote only Baird, who apparently represents all Democratic junior members, despite not actually being a junior member. They also quote Senator Mark Pryor discussing his desire to cease talking about Iraq and get on with cutting the estate tax, as if he is a junior Congressional member.
So what do junior members actually think? Here's Patrick Murphy, the recognized Democratic freshman leader on Iraq, in the Courier Times.
Murphy said Democrats should have tried to push through a war funding bill with strings attached before they left Washington, D.C. for the holiday break.
"I would have stayed in Washington through Christmas, through the New Year," he said. "When you're willing to stand up to the president and fight for things that you believe in, we can be successful and I think this is one of the things we should have fought harder on."
"There is frustration about Iraq," Murphy said. "The president and the Bush Republicans stonewalled our efforts. I knew this job wasn't going to be easy and I look forward to going back and fighting again on behalf of the soldiers who hope for a better strategy.
According to Murphy, who is not a member of the Out of Iraq caucus but is a freshman leader on Iraq, it's time for Democrats to fight on the war. But according to the Politico, Democrats have given up, junior Democrats want the leadership to give up, antiwar Democrats are crazy, and the surge is working.
Truthout has an excellent article detailing the struggles faced by progressive and grassroots Democrats in key US House primaries last year: CA-11, FL-13, FL-16, and IL-06. At the time, Republicans held all four seats, but considering the 2006 political environment all four would quickly become competitive for the Democratic nominee. The central argument of the piece is that in "lean Republican" districts, Rahm Emanuel favored conservative and wealthy candidates in Democratic primaries, and assisted them against progressive, grassroots candidates in violation of the DCCC's policy of neutrality. This assistance did not come in the form of direct support, but instead was largely in the form of better connecting preferred candidates to an elite group of fundraisers and media types. For example, in FL-13, Jan Schneider, the 2004 Democratic nominee, was not included in fundraising materials the DCCC published on the district:
Schneider claims that Emanuel broke this policy during the 2006 primary race. "Emanuel caused the Schneider campaign to be removed from the DCCC website and circulated solicitations for contributions to Democratic candidates indicating that there was no [Democratic] primary in the Florida 13th," according to a memorandum Schneider prepared.
Schneider blames the DCCC for misleading Senator John Kerry (D- Massachusetts) into thinking that Jennings was running in the primary without any competition from within the party. Kerry gave a $1,000 donation to the Jennings campaign, which was publicized by Jennings as an endorsement. When Schneider confronted Kerry about this donation, Kerry apologized and said that he donated based on assertions by Emanuel that the race was "a targeted race with no primary," and that he never meant to interfere with an intra-party contest, according to Schneider. Congresswoman Shelly Berkley (D- Nevada) says that the DCCC sent her a letter asking her to contribute to races where there was no primary. The letter listed the Florida 13th as a race with only one Democrat pursuing the party's nomination.
This was a pattern that I saw repeated in other DCCC fundraising materials, including documents that did not list Christine Cegelis as a Democratic candidate for the primary in IL-06. Apparently, the problem was widespread for the Cegelis campaign:
Tim Bagwell, a grassroots activist and Cegelis campaigner, said that Duckworth was "hot-wired" into the national media and fund-raising circuit by the DCCC. George Stephanopoulos, who served in the Clinton administration with Emanuel, interviewed Duckworth on his Sunday morning ABC News program, elevating her to national prominence.
According to Spidel, the Cegelis campaign was prevented from accessing Democratic fund-raising and Political Action Committee lists held by the DCCC. Cegelis said that many of the potential donors she contacted had been instructed by the DCCC not to give her campaign money. She felt that she was locked out.
The key point here is that it is not necessarily the DCCC that directly makes decisions on who becomes the Democratic nominee in key US House districts, but rather a small group of fundraisers and media types that can propel one candidate to the nomination by providing them with superior monetary, media, and advocacy organization resources. By providing one candidate with greater access to this network of PACs, wealthy individual donors, elected officials, established media pundits, and advocacy organization leaders, that candidate is essentially crowned the nominee by an elite group of decision makers who collectively have a tremendous amount of influence over the process. This elite network can effectively determine the outcome of primaries before votes are cast, and key Democratic figures like Emanuel can provide candidates with favorable access to that network.
The reason I bring this up is that over the past month, in at least two circumstances the progressive blogosphere, grassroots and netroots has demonstrated that it can actually function in the same manner as this established group of elite decision makers. In WA-08, through a large, nationwide blogosphere fundraiser, the blogosphere effectively chose Darcy Burner as the Democratic nominee for the district. Although it was accomplished through thousands of small donations and earned, straight talking independent media instead of through a top-down group of elite donors and advocacy organizations, the result was the same: Darcy Burner was able to leverage her support from this network into an early end to the primary campaign. In June and July, much the same took place in NY-29, where for a while Eric Massa was facing a competitive primary David Nabchar. However, Massa also won the primary before it began by locking down the support of the local blogosphere and netroots, every local Democratic committee, and a sizable amount of small donor, grassroots fundraising. Again, a network of grassroots progressives effectively played the same decision-making role to force an early end to a primary that PACs, wealthy donors, established media types, elected officials, and advocacy organization leaders have played in many other Democratic primaries. The grassroots network of small donors, blogs, and local precinct captains leveraged such an enormous amount of support for Eric Massa that there was no way for other, more elite networks to overcome it.
Both Steve Kagen and Patrick Murphy are in difficult districts and they will face tough reelection fights. And while neither has a perfect voting record, both of them voted against the FISA bill and for the McGovern amendment. Kagen's WI-08 district has a Republican PVI of 3.7, so he deserves a special amount of praise for withstanding the pressure to vote all right-wing all the time. Here's a good run down of his voting record. Also, this is pretty cool.
Shortly after being sworn into office, Kagen said he would not accept congressional health insurance. He said he will remain uninsured and pay medical costs out of his pocket until affordable health care is available for all.
I'm disappointed with Democratic leadership right now, but we did get some good people elected in 2006. Most of them aren't Bush Dogs, that's just the swing block.
Ever since the Democratic Congress capitulated over the bill passed to enable Bush and the 'unitary executive' to continue domestic spying on Americans, there has been deserved outcry over the Democrats that supported the measure. This has occurred in large part due to Bush's ability to peel off Democrats who belong to the Blue Dog coalition. Chris Bowers and Matt Stoller over at Open Left have now started a project to hold these 'Bush Dogs' accountable for enabling a working conservative majority on the most important issues of the day despite their official allegiance to the Democratic Party. I believe this is an important project; that being said, I'd like to remind everyone that not all Blue Dogs are bad Democrats.
In fact, I want to highlight one Blue Dog in particular who has been on the right side of national security issues each time a vote has come up. He won one of the closest races in the country in 2006, and he's going to need the continued support of the netroots community to hold the seat in 2008. I'm talking about Rep. Patrick Murphy of Pennsylvania's 8th District.
The Right to Respond in this case relates to a post I made on Saturday evening about the IL-14 primary, IL-14: Differentiating Between Blue Dogs and Bush Dogs. In that post, I openly wondered if Bill Foster was positioning himself to become a Bush Dog by announcing his planned affiliation with the Blue Dogs. This is the campaign's response. Judge for yourself if you feel it is adequate--Chris
First, thanks to Chris for the opportunity to tell folks here at OL a little more about myself and about this campaign and to answer some of the concerns raised.
On the campaign trail, I tell voters most often about my background as a scientist and businessman, but I realize that probably doesn't signal as much about my politics and values as some folks in the netroots would appreciate, so before I talk issues, let me talk about my family.
My mom and dad met on Capitol Hill while my mom was working for Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois and my dad was working for Senator Myers of Pennsylvania. Mom came from a family of inventors and dad was a chemist before taking up what would be one of his many achievements: his work on the civil rights movement.
The following is a memo regarding the real political story in IL-14. The mainstream media has decided that the spin coming from the NRCC that this seat is red should be reported as fact.
The truth is, this seat is very vulnerable to a Democrat with Bill Foster's background and experience.
Full memo after the jump. Learn more about Foster here
Hello, I'm Bill Foster. Actually, my legal name is George William Foster, but running for office as George W. anything isn't a very good idea these days. I'm a scientist and businessman who is very concerned about where our country is heading. I want to tell the netroots a little about myself, what I plan to do in Congress and that I'm proud to be attending Yearly Kos where I hope to get a chance to meet some of you. I also encourage you to check out my campaign website, www.foster08.com.
When I was younger, my little brother and I started a business from scratch in our basement. With $500 from our parents and a lot of help from our friends we built a company that now manufactures about 70% of all the theatre lighting equipment in the United States. Our company provides hundreds of good jobs here in the Midwest.
I'm also a scientist with a PhD in particle physics from Harvard University. I've spent the past 22 years at Fermilab doing advanced research and leading teams of people building Fermilab's giant accelerators. I loved it. Along the way I built electronics, superconducting magnets, and helped discover the Top Quark - plus a whole lot of other things that would probably bore you to tears.
