Randy Kuhl is on the death list of Republicans against Better Democrat Eric Massa in New York's 29th. Massa is not just in favor of universal health care, he's in favor of straight up single payer health care. NY-29 is also the most Republican district in New York state.
But you know, universal health care isn't popular so whatever.
The amazing organization VoteVets is having a contest to see which candidate gets $5k in PAC. VoteVets endorses military veterans, a group that needs more political representation, and the leader of the organization, Jon Soltz, argues aggressively for smart national security strategy on cable news channels in a way most of wish Democrats would. He takes it to the Republicans every day on Iraq and on smart uses of the military, breaking us out of the stultified national security conversation.
The group was essential in beating George Allen, and ran effective ads on body armor in 2006 that were extremely powerful. They are having an endorsement contest to see which veteran gets a $5k PAC donation.
I've been meaning to sign up for their alerts anyway, so I signed up here and voted for Eric Massa, the only VoteVets guy to endorse the Responsible Plan.
The Iraq debate is going to be heating up for the next eight months. Tom Andrews of Win Without War just sent an open letter to Congress calling for an end to Congressional funding of the war. Significantly, the call is not just to cut off funding for the war effort general, but to cut off funding for permanent military bases, military contractors, and any long term status of force agreements with the Iraqi government that will tie the hands of the next President. Andrews is also calling for the funding of a diplomatic offensive in the region.
It's a turn for the Iraq campaign, and a way to broaden the conversation away from the ridiculous notion that this war can be stopped in one fell swoop. You can co-sign the letter here.
Speaking of Blue Majority, Mark Pera's primary against Dan Lipinski is in just 11 days time (February 5th), and Donna Edwards faces off against Al Wynn only one week later. The time to give to them is now.
Asked to explain what precisely he found problematic, Feingold offered that Edwards had "taken in" voters by switching positions on several key issues.
"You have to consider what the audience is, and obviously these are very popular positions to take when you are in a primary where you are trying to get the progressive vote. But wait a minute -- there were opportunities to vote against the bankruptcy bill, there was an opportunity to vote against the China [trade] deal. Those are the moments where you sort of find out where somebody is. So I think, people are being taken in a little bit that now he is taking these positions."
There is no one in the Senate who I respect more than Senator Feingold. While I disagree with him on this one, I have to admit that Edwards did not engage the big fights he needed to while he was in the Senate.
President Clinton put this country on a fundamentally different path. He changed the fiscal nature of this country, he changed the international relations of this country…He left the country on a totally different trajectory where people felt they were prepared for the 21st century."
Whatever. "Fundamental change" is not something that can be immediately wiped away by the next President. Outside of Kosovo, I can't think of anything that Bill Clinton did, against Republican objections, that Bush has not entirely reversed. Considering that "Clintonian" has come to mean a series of incremental, targeted government programs, I can't see how anyone would think that Bill Clinton fundamentally changed the country.
Now that we are down to just three candidates, primary straw polls become much simpler. So, I have included one in the extended entry. I'm interested to know where Open Left readers stand.
This is an open thread. Tell the world what is on your mind.
Eric is a true netroots favorite, evidenced by the tags NY-29 and Eric Massa being the most common tags for a congressional race and congressional candidate respectively, on MyDD. Eric is extremely energetic and hard working, as I have seen upclose in my visits to the district on several occasions. His energy rubs off on his grassroots supporters, who were able to close off a corporate Democratic primary challenger this past summer through relentless blog pressure, securing the support of virtually every local precinct captain in the district (including two family members of mine who joined the silent revolution in Update New York), and lots of small-donor, in-district fundraising. Now, he is set to take on Randy Kuhl who, separate occasions, has threatened both his ex-wife and his constituents with firearms, even though he claims he was just joking about the later. But he seriously doesn't like his constituents:
This is the "reddest" district in New York, which Bush won with about 56% of the vote in 2004. However, is it turning blue, like the rest of New York state. But Eric Massa is not your typical red-district Democrat who will let you down. As a progressive, he will fight for you, pledging to oppose FISA and watered-down withdrawal from Iraq, something few Democrats from a district this "red" have done. After losing by only 4% in 2006 despite no help from national committees, Massa is well poised to take the seat in 2008.
As the campaign to reform "Bush Dogs" led by Matt Stoller and the Open Left team moves forward, I wanted to pause a moment to point out something that, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I couldn't help but notice: Of the 40 Bush Dogs, fully half of them are southern white Democrats. (The "South" defined here as the 11 Confederate states.)
Presently, Speaker Nancy Pelosi leads a 230-member Democratic House majority. Of those 230, just 32 are white southerners. That leaves 198 non-southern or minority (black, Hispanic) southern Democrats. And that means the splits for Bush Dog coalition are as follows: About 10% (20 of 198) of the non-southern or minority southern Democrats are Bush Dogs, but a striking 63% (20 of 32) of southern white Democrats made the list. (See chart.)
As I argued in Whistling Past Dixie, this is one of the painful tradeoffs of trying to be a "national" party. Liberals should keep that in mind the next time somebody spews feels-nice, but strategically empty phrases like "Democrats need to compete everywhere"-a "strategy" that is, in fact, the very absence of strategy. Not all Democrats vote the same way- and there are often very clear voting patterns by region. The South/non-South disparity should also be kept in mind when the inevitable arguments arise as to whether 2008 dollars and other resources should be directed toward trying to defeat or replace Republicans like, say, Randy Kuhl or Ray LaHood, or keeping the seats of Democrats Jim Marshall or Gene Taylor. Though Democrats may prefer to do both, politics is often about economics-the need to make decisions about scarce resources-and every seat is clearly not qualitatively the same when it comes time for floor votes in Congress.
Right now, Pelosi has those 198 non-southern and minority southern seats in her delegation; on the Senate side, Harry Reid already has 46 non-southern Senators in his, with upcoming opportunities in CO, MN, NH, OR and elsewhere outside the South. Say what you want about what Freedom's Watch is doing to moderate Republicans on behalf of the White House and the war, but as Eve Fairbanks compellingly argues in The New Republic, it is exactly this sort of clamping down on Republicans that has kept the Democrats from achieving much in the 110th Congress thus far. There's a lesson in that, as there is in the geography of the "Bush Dog" coalition.
There has been a decent amount of buzz online over the past two months about the Democratic primary in New York's 29th congressional district, much of which came to a head today over at Rochester Turning. In case you are not familiar with the past events, and you need to be in order for this post to make sense, let me provide a quick summary in the extended entry.
STATE BLOGS
