I was honored today to join folks from DC for Democracy, the local Democracy for America affiliate, to personally deliver over 23,000 thank you notes to Senator Russ Feingold. Shortly after the the 2010 election, Jim Dean asked DFA members from all across the country to send the Senator messages of appreciation. In an email to all members, he wrote:
In this hellishly challenging election year, progressives have to defend our own everywhere they are in trouble. Helping great progressive challengers is always key to any smart electoral strategy, as they bring in new energy, ideas, and idealism to a broken system, but if we let our progressive champions go down in the face of a tough challenge, we are making a huge mistake. It is incredibly hard to get progressives elected in the first place, so to let them go down has a terrible impact.
Russ Feingold is a progressive champion of the first caliber. He is the ultimate anti-establishment Senator, always voting what he thinks is right no matter the political cost, and always willing to tick off anyone- including the Democratic establishment- if he thinks people are doing the wrong thing. Chris Bowers has called him his favorite Senator. He is in the toughest race of his life, fighting off a mega-millionaire businessman who is right-wing enough to think Charles Murray (the racist author of The Bell Curve) is a good guy, but savvy enough politically to be running some of the most effective campaign ads I've seen this cycle.
Feingold is doing a "cheddar bomb" today, trying to bring in 15,000 netroots donors on the same day to help fight off his opponent's $15 million in personal money he pledged to spend on this race. Please help him out, and spread the word.
Update (Adam): I've endeavored of late to learn more about the past history of some of our stronger progressives, as noted by my comments here re then-Rep. Barbara Boxer. As Joe Sudbay rightly notes, Feingold was also one of just 16 Senators to oppose the Defense of Marriage Act back on September 10, 1996. Bold progressive stuff many of us forget, but worth remembering. Please chip in.
The short-term, 24-hour political news cycle is focusing on tax day and tea parties. However, no matter the focus on conservative protests, the big news today is that Democrats will control the White House until at least January 3rd, 2013.
This news came today when Tommy Thompson announced he would not challenge Russ Feingold for Senate in Wisconsin. Some polling, mainly conducted by right-wing source, had shown that Thompson would have made the race extremely competitive. He might have even started out with a lead, in fact. However, now that Thompson is not running, it will be extremely difficult for the little-known Republicans, who trail Feingold by huge margins, to pull off the upset.
For Republicans to win control of the Senate before 2013 now, they would have to not only sweep all currently competitive races, but also pick off a victory in a seat where they currently trail by double-digits and will be massively outspent. Not only is winning every single competitive campaign extremely difficult, but the polling for those campaigns is currently dominated by Rasmussen, which is flooding the zone with polls. In reality, the current polling outlook for competitive Senate campaigns is probably more favorable to Democrats than my forecast suggests.
And, as I noted, they still need at least one extreme longshot on top of every single one of those competitive campaigns to take control. That just isn't going to happen.
Democrats will not be in control forever, and will likely lose the Senate in either 2012 or, at the latest, 2014. But they will stay in control for a while. They have a decent shot at holding the House in 2010, too. With an improving economic picture, they might actually fare pretty well in the 2012 elections.
Former Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, who served four terms as Wisconsin governor, is securing financial pledges and ramping up his outreach to longtime political aides in preparation for a possible campaign against Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold.
Thompson has alerted his Washington-based law firm of his moves and is contacting key clients about the prospect of challenging Feingold, the most tangible signals yet that he's seriously exploring a 2010 campaign.
"The governor has taken additional steps in the past week and will continue to do so over the next several weeks. If the meetings go well, you can expect to see an exploratory committee set up near the end of March," former state commerce secretary and Thompson campaign manager Bill McCoshen told POLITICO.
The thought of losing Feingold is just... scary. In addition to his well known fight against the Patriot Act, and being the first Senator to introduce legislation to withdraw troops from Iraq, Feingold was one of only two members of the Senate to vote against the 1999 financial services deregulation, the Iraq war authorization, and the 2008 bailout (Bernie Sanders was the other, and he voted against the de-regulation act while in the House). Even beyond his votes, he is a public leader for his causes, and manages organize other Senators behind them.
Russ Feingold is worth about five Senators, or more. It might be time to organize some sort of huge, $3 million + money bomb for him to ward off Thompson's entry into the campaign.
Via commenter "the new" in quick hits, we learn (surprise) that long time foe of democracy George Will opposes mandating special elections for senators. Will's column is amusing because he can't constrain his rage against the proponent of this Constitutional amendment, Senator Feingold (D-WI) for his past work on the McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation. Let's take a look at what the brightest light of the conservative intellectual movement has to say this Sunday.
Sen. Feingold's Constitution By George F. Will
Sunday, February 22, 2009; Page
A simple apology would have sufficed. Instead, Sen. Russ Feingold has decided to follow his McCain-Feingold evisceration of the First Amendment with Feingold-McCain, more vandalism against the Constitution.
You'd think a guy who was just proven a liar over his column denying global warming would be shy about demanding that other people apologize for things, but that's the utterly shameless true conservative, George F. Will for you.
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