Two years ago, a post-Bush Republican Party that couldn't find itself on Google Maps was thoroughly thrashed for the second time in as many elections. The GOP had lost over 50 House seats over two election cycles, scores of state legislative chambers, governorships, US Senate seats, and the presidency to a guy named Barack Hussein Obama.
The latter, something most observers thought wouldn't happen in the United States until some time between the next arrival of Haley's Comet and when Kevin Costner evolves into a fish-humanoid hybrid to live on an Earth covered by H20.
It's amazing what can happen, however, when you have a Democratic president who doesn't live up to many of his core progressive promises, who blames his base for asking him to, and whose communications people, to quote Democratic National Committeeman and CNN Contributor Robert Zimmerman, "... couldn't sell cocaine to Charlie Sheen."
The results were on display this past Tuesday, when an American public tired of being unemployed, scared about their future, and looking for some kind of leadership, handed over the US House - in stunning fashion - to a coterie of cranks who have to put corks on the end of their forks not to jab their own eyes while eating. Think Steve Martin's Ruprecht from Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and you get the basic picture of some of the Tea Party proxies we elected to Congress last week.
The Republicans gained ground in last night's midterm elections, recapturing the House and gaining seats in the Senate. The future House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) wasted no time in affirming that the GOP will try to repeal health care reform.
A full-scale repeal is unlikely in the next two years because the Democrats have retained control of the White House and the Senate. However, Republicans are already making noises about shutting down the government to force the issue. The House controls the nation's purse strings, which confers significant leverage if the majority is willing to bring the government to a screeching halt to make a point.
Don't assume they'll blink. The GOP shut down government in 1995, albeit to its own political detriment. Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and his allies have sworn a "blood oath" to shut down the government, regardless of the consequences. The Republicans may actually succeed in modifying minor aspects of the Affordable Care Act, such as the controversial 1099 reporting requirement for small business.
The most significant threat to the implementation of health care reform may be at the state level. Republicans picked up several governorships, and the Affordable Care Act requires the cooperation of states to set up their own insurance exchanges. Hostile governors could seriously impede things.
Mixed results for radical, anti-choice senate candidates
As a group, the eight ultra-radical, anti-choice Republican Senate candidates had mixed results last night. Three wins, two sure losses, and three likely losses that haven't been definitively called. Voters didn't seem thrilled about electing senators who oppose a woman's right to abortion, even in cases of rape and incest.
Two cruised to victory: Rand Paul easily defeated Democrat Jack Conway in Kentucky. Paul is one of the most extreme the of a radical cohort. As Amie Newman reported in RH Reality Check, Paul doesn't even believe in a woman's right to abort to save her own life. In Florida, anti-choice standard bearer Marco Rubio defeated Independent Charlie Christ.
Another radical anti-choicer, Pat Toomey, who favors jailing abortion providers, narrowly edged out Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania.
Two were soundly defeated. Evangelical code-talker Sharron Angle lost to Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), and anti-masturbation crusader Christine O'Donnell lost to Chris Coons in Delaware.
The last three radical anti-choice senate candidates were down, but not, out as of this morning. Democrat Sen. Michael Bennett leads Republican Ken Buck by just 15,000 votes out of over 1.5 million ballots cast, according to TPMDC. Planned Parenthood launched an 11th hour offensive against Buck because of his retrograde stances on abortion, sexual assault, and other women's issues, as Joseph Boven reports for the Colorado Independent.
This morning, Tea Party Republican Joe Miller was trailing behind incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who challenged him as an Independent, but no winner had been declared. In Washington State, Democrat Sen. Patti Murray maintains a 1% lead over radical anti-choicer Republican Dino Rossi.
Are fertilized eggs people in Colorado?
Coloradans won a decisive victory for reproductive rights last night. Fertilized eggs are still not people in Colorado, as Jodi Jacobson reports for RH Reality Check.
Amendment 62, which would have conferred full person status from the moment of conception, thereby outlawing abortion and in vitro fertilization. It also called into question the legality of many forms of birth control, including an array of medical procedures for pregnant women that might harm their fetuses. The proposed amendment was resoundingly defeated: 72% against to 28% in favor. This is the second time Colorado voters have rejected an egg-as-person amendment.
Blue Dogs and anti-choice Dems feel the pain
Last night was brutal for corporatist Democrats who fought the more progressive options for health care reform and Democrats who put their anti-choice ideology ahead passing health care. In AlterNet, Sarah Seltzer reports only 12 of the 34 Democrats who voted against health care reform hung on to their seats. The Blue Dog caucus was halved overnight from 56 to 24. Nick Baumann of Mother Jones speculated that the midterms would mark the end of the Stupak bloc, the coalition of anti-choice Democrats whose last-minute brinksmanship could have derailed health care reform.
Did foot-dragging on health care hurt Democrats?
Jamelle Bouie suggests at TAPPED that Democrats shot themselves in the foot by passing a health care reform bill that won't provide tangible benefits to most people for years. The exchanges that are supposed to provide affordable insurance for millions of Americans won't be up and running until 2014.
In Summer 2009, Former DNC chair Howard Dean predicted that the Democrats would be penalized at the polls if they failed to deliver tangible benefits from health care reform before the midterm elections. That's why Dean suggested expanding the public health insurance programs we already have, rather than creating insurance exchanges from scratch.
Sink, sunk by Scott
Andy Kroll of Mother Jones profiles Rick Scott, the billionaire health clinic mogul, corporate fraudster, and enemy of health care reform who spent over $50 million of his own money to eke out a very narrow victory over Democrat Alex Sink in the Florida governor's race.
Apparently, many Floridians were willing to overlook the fact that Scott had to pay a $1.7 billion fine for defrauding Medicare, the largest fine of its kind in history. Scott also spent $5 million of his own money to found Conservatives for Patients' Rights, one of the leading independent groups opposing health care reform.
Pot isn't legalized in California
California defeated Proposition 19, which would have legalized marijuana for personal use. David Borden of DRCnet, a pro-legalization group, writes in AlterNet that the fight over Prop 19 brought legalization into the political mainstream, even if the measure didn't prevail at the polls. The initiative won the backing of the California NAACP, SEIU California, the National Black Police Association, and the National Latino Officers Association and other established groups.
So, what's next for health care reform? The question everyone is asking is whether John Boehner will cave to the extremists in his own party and attempt a full-scale government shutdown, or whether the Republicans will content themselves with extracting piecemeal modifications of the health care law.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Weekly Audit: Your Vote, Your Economy-Why Today's Election Matters to Your Pocketbook
by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Election Day is finally here, and control of the House and the Senate hangs in the balance. The differences between parties could not be more stark. Republicans have promised to repeal health care reform and slash government spending for social programs, all while preserving tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Some of the more radical ideas bandied about this election season-by conservative candidates with a decent shot at winning-include privatizing social security and eliminating the Department of Education.
Today is the first election in American history in which corporations have been allowed to spend their own money to buy political favors. This legalized corruption comes courtesy of the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which injected massive amounts of corporate cash and unprecedented levels of secrecy into American politics.
And all of this crazy corporate spending will not be restricted to elections. That's right. As Jesse Zwick reports for The Washington Independent, two front-groups founded by GOP strategists Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie plan to keep running ads attacking Democrats well after the elections are over.
As Zwick emphasizes, this is actually a way to help keep one of the organizations, known as American Crossroads GPS from breaking the law. Many groups that spend money on elections register as 501(c)(4) organizations, which must devote no more than half of their activity to political operations. In return for limiting their political activity-advocacy or condemnation of specific candidates-they don't have to disclose who their donors are. So groups like American Crossroads GPS plan to run "issue ads" focusing on the budget deficit and immigration reform this fall to balance out the ads directed at specific candidates that they've already run.
Under the Citizens United ruling, so long as corporations or wealthy elites launder their political expenditures through a front-group, they can give as much as they want without ever being held publicly accountable. But the high court's decision also allows these front-groups to keep their actual expenditures secret as well. It's not just that we don't know who is funding them-in many cases, we also don't really know what they're funding.
U.S. Chamber of Commerce's foreign dues
The secrecy surrounding anonymous donors may very well extend to foreign corporations. As Harry Hanbury emphasizes in this video for GRITtv, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce-a lobbying front-group for the largest American corporations-is facing heavy scrutiny over is foreign contributions. Nearly $900,000 in annual dues to the Chamber come from foreign firms, and the Chamber aggressively courts foreign donors who might benefit from weak U.S. laws-particularly environmental laws. The Chamber insists that it's playing by the rules, but Hanbury catches them lying twice about the nature of the group's foreign funding.
California's environmental laws for sale
Corporations aren't just targeting federal elections to influence public policy. As Tara Lohan explains for AlterNet, big oil companies have financed a campaign to repeal California's carbon emission reduction law. Two major polluters-Valero and Tesoro-have spent a combined $7 million boosting the repeal, while Koch Industries-a major Tea Party funder-has kicked in about $1 million as well. A full 70 percent of the $10.7 million that has been spent to bolster the anti-environment ballot initiative has come from out-of-state sources.
Even the Tea Party's worried
When the Tea Party Patriots received an anonymous $1 million donation for get-out-the-vote efforts, left-wing bloggers weren't the only people upset about it. As Stephanie Mencimer reports for Mother Jones, some of the Tea Party Patriots' own members were nervous: Who was funding this operation, and where was the money going?
We'll probably never know, because the Tea Party Patriots aren't legally obligated report their donors or expenses. The group has only disclosed $15,000 worth of expenditures of the $1 million donation, $10,000 of which was re-granted to another organization run by the father of Tea Party Patriots leader Mark Meckler. The remainder is anybody's guess.
But wait, there's more!
Writing for In These Times, Sam Ross-Brown highlights a potential legislative solution to some of these campaign finance shenanigans. The Fair Elections Now Act would limit individual campaign contributions to $100, and match them by a factor of four-to-one, increasing the spending power of ordinary citizens and helping to level the distorted playing field created by Citizens United.
Kate Sheppard of Mother Jones details who got hit the hardest this election season in the final push leading up to Election Day: Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) got some of the biggest expenditures. This year also smashed previous campaign expenditures, coming in at $443 million.
Suzy Khimm reports on voter intimidation tactics for Mother Jones from a McDonald's fast food franchise in Ohio's 16th district. Employees were told to vote for Republicans or their wages would go down. McDonald's may have been emboldened by Citizens United even though such tactics are still clearly illegal.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the mid-term elections and campaign financing by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit The Media Consortium for more articles on these issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Sometime after Tuesday we'll be reevaluating our Government and a new area of conflict will likely be established...
I am curious as to what the results of the Election 2010 will leave us with. It seems likely now that the Republicans will take control of the House, likely putting John Boehner (R-OH) into the Speaker's chair. As to the Senate, the majority of pollsters have the Democrats keeping control by at least 1 seat... but there are odds that Harry Reid (D - NV) won't be in one of them. This makes the Majority Leader position a "what if" situation... and it looks like Charles Schumer (D - NY) might get it.
Dan Hamburg, LeAlan Jones, and Jill Stein are running three races that are very important to the Green Party this year. In California, Hamburg is a former Democratic Congressman hoping to be elected as a Green to Mendocino County Supervisor. In Illinois, Jones is the only African American in the Senate race and has polled as high as 14%, in a state where the Green candidate for governor got over 10% in 2006. In Massachusetts, Stein is less than $1,000 away from qualifying for the rest of the debates, and about $38,000 away from qualifying for matching funds.
I'll make this as simple as possible. Here's what each one needs from you:
Here's a real shocker for you: the same people who deliberately misread climate science are now offering a phony explanation for the Alaska primary loss of incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who conceded the race yesterday.
If you listen to the wing nut brigade, they will tell you clean energy/climate legislation did in Murkowski. Phil Karpen -- who, as the policy director of Americans for Prosperity, is as good as on the payroll of Dirty Energy -- said this even before Murkowski bowed out, in an op-ed on FoxNews.com:
"Joe Miller has a narrow lead over Sen. Lisa Murkowski in a surprising Alaska Senate primary. If the absentee ballots break hard for Murkowski she may narrowly escape, but at the moment it looks at least as likely that Miller will pull the upset. If he does, Murkowski's support for energy taxes may be one of the major reasons."
In a sad commentary on modern journalism, this unfounded, inaccurate notion was echoed by Reuters who said, "Murkowski, the most senior Republican on the Senate Energy Committee, has been considered a moderate on several issues and a potential compromise vote on national climate legislation. Miller is on record as denying that human-caused emissions are responsible for climate change."
Even the usually very sharp team at ClimateWire took the bait: "Republican Joe Miller, a former judge with a Yale law degree, showcased Sen. Lisa Murkowski's past support for climate legislation, among other things, before slipping by her at the voting stations Tuesday to capture a 1,900 vote lead with several thousand absentee ballots still being counted."
Well, if there was even a shred of evidence that it was true, this would qualify as an interesting bit of political analysis. Given the lack of evidence, it is just another lie that has filtered in from the crackpot world of climate science deniers to mainstream political reporting.
I've been gone all summer - traveling, gardening, volunteering a bit, and doing some other things - and as much as I had a lot of fun, it is nice to be back. In all that time, some interesting things have happened with what I consider to be one of the better Green campaigns in the nation this year, and one that I'm very involved with, Hugh Giordano's campaign for state legislature as a Green.
In case you don't know who Hugh is, he's a 25 year old union organizer running as a Green in PA's 194th district, which is mostly in Philadelphia and also a bit in Montgomery County (for locals, it encompasses Roxborough, Manayunk, parts of Lower Merion, and some surrounding areas). He's been running a great campaign, knocking on doors, holding fun fundraisers, getting in the newspaper, and raising as much money as a typical Green congressional candidate.
Anyway, below the fold is some news from the campaign, including an endorsement from a fairly prominent local Democrat.
The polling business is far more of an art than a science, is easily manipulated, and is open to as many interpretations as there are people looking at the polls. I have never known a pollster who didn't walk in the door with a set of assumptions and biases in how to interpret the data. And everyone in the business knows that the way you phrase the questions, the way you sequence the questions, the way you draw the sample of who you are asking, and a bunch of other little tricks those of us in the political biz know can dramatically impact outcomes.
The other huge factor in the polling business is who the client is, and what the purpose of the poll is. If the poll is designed for internal analysis, you get one kind of results (and generally more honest data). If the poll is designed to be released to the public to prove a point (our candidate is winning, our issue is popular, our spin is best being the usual things clients use these kinds of polls for), you want to be really careful about accepting the analysis on its face, because that is where the little (and big) things that can be done to manipulate the findings really come into play.
I say this by way of introduction to my central discussion: the internal debate within the Democratic party for what the central narrative of our party ought to be. Over the short term, that fight centers on how to save us from getting crushed in the 2010 elections, but it is of course a very long term fight that has been going on in our party since the New Deal coalition came unraveled in the late 1960s.
As I said, everyone comes to this debate with certain biases, and I will admit mine upfront. Just in case you haven't read my stuff much, I am - by history, sentiment, ideology, and instinct - naturally drawn to progressive populism: fighting for the "little guy", standing up to wealthy corporate interests. My political role models in history are people like FDR, Truman, and Bobby Kennedy, people who figured out how to appeal to a multi-racial coalition and the idealism of the young while still winning over working class white folks. In the modern era, my favorite political leaders are people like Paul Wellstone, Sherrod Brown, Dave Obey, Tom Perriello, and Brian Schweitzer, candidates who have won in purple or even red states/districts not by becoming more like Republicans but by raising the populist progressive flag unapologetically.
Now, having admitting my biases, I will also say that progressive populism (like every other messaging frame) has some limits as a political strategy. There are some districts it doesn't work in. There have been elections where it hasn't been as salient, or runs into a moment where it is overwhelmed by a certain mood in the electorate or a particular candidate's magic touch (Reagan's Morning in America theme in 1984, combined with Reagan's charm and a surging economy, was a classic example, although Mondale's kind of populism wasn't exactly stirring). Certain candidates can't pull populism off credibly, and probably shouldn't try (John Kerry comes to mind).
I also firmly believe that an angry populism all by itself isn't convincing to a majority of voters, that you have to combine the justifiable anger at the abuses of corporate power with compelling positive policy ideas on how you will deliver jobs and other benefits to voters. I don't think a purely anti-business populism usually works, for example: I think candidates need to show how they support small business and manufacturers and companies that are really contributing jobs and useful products to our country and communities. Finally, I would say this: I would never recommend a purely pro-government kind of populism to candidates. Voters, for very good reasons, are deeply cynical that government is really on their side, and will really deliver for them. Progressives have to make clear that part of our mission is to clean up the corporate corruption of government, and that we understand that government in recent years (outside of old stand-bys like Social Security and Medicare and Head Start and the minimum wage) has not always done a good job in making most people's lives better. We also have to be clear that we do want to cut wasteful government spending, and that most of that wastefulness comes from corporate subsidies and sweetheart deals: contracting practices that overwhelmingly favor the contractors rather than the taxpayers, agribusiness subsidies that have no merit, sweetheart deals in health care reform that don't allow for negotiations with drug manufacturers or public sector competition with insurance companies, tax loopholes that have no rational basis for existing besides a really good lobbying operation.
On the other side of the populist argument are Democrats who argue that it is bad political strategy to be too aggressive in taking on corporate America. Since we're all admitting our biases here, I would urge the pollsters and groups who generally make this argument to admit their own: almost all of them get most of their client or contributor list from the ranks of corporate America. The leading pollster who has been making this argument for the last couple of decades is Mark Penn, who heads a firm that does far, far more work in corporate PR and lobbying than it does for candidates. The leading politicians making this argument have been the Blue Dog and New Democrat caucuses, whose members receive far more corporate money than the rest of the Democratic party. And the leading groups making these arguments are the DLC and Third Way, both of which have as a (probably the, but I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt) leading source of contributions big corporations and their executives.
The latest example is a poll recently released by Third Way. Before I get to criticizing it, let me stop for a minute and say that I thought it had some useful insights for Democrats. The idea of tying Republican policies in congress closer to Bush, for example, is certainly a solid idea (although I fear that it is harder said than done.) The idea that Democrats should speak to the future and be aspirational in their language is something that makes sense to me. I even like the fiscal discipline thing, though I would redirect it to where the real waste in the budget is (corporate sweetheart deals, see above).
Having said that, though, it was really clear that this poll's questions, and the interpretation in the memo they wrote about the poll, were designed to try and talk Democrats out of using populist rhetoric. Let me take you through a couple of examples:
If there is a checklist for Election Day preparations, policy makers, candidates, and voter registration advocates have covered many bases for 2010: state legislation has moved to improve (or sometimes impede) voting rights; voter registration drives are technologically advancing; and campaign spending is reaching record heights. But, a major component of elections-voter outreach and voter turnout-remains to be seen. If 2008 turnout is an indicator for voter participation in the upcoming major elections, would this be an opportunity for the electorate to finally close its representational gaps?
The election is Tuesday, November 2. Here are some newspaper headlines from November 3.
No One Could Have Predicted Voters Concerned With Jobs!
The stunning results from yesterday's election reflected an electorate angry with Congress for ignoring the jobs crisis and instead focusing on spending cuts. At a time of great need, safety net programs like unemployment benefits, COBRA subsidies, medical assistance and other crucial public services were cut, while large companies and the wealthy received tax cuts and other special treatment.
Some angry unemployed voters took out their frustrations at the polls, while the vast majority stayed home.
Voter Anger Over Jobs Reflected At Polls
Voters, upset with the lack of job-creation programs, overwhelmingly expressed their disapproval.
However, it is unclear whether the near-unanimous Republican majority will set aside their impeachment plans to focus on making job-creation a priority.
However, a bill to remove all regulations on any company, safety inspections, consumer protections, minimum wage laws, and rules against child labor was expected to pass handily. President Obama pledged to sign the bill, in an effort to win Republican approval.
Democrat Voter Turnout Near Zero
Democratic voters stayed away from the polls, while "Tea Party" Republicans turned out in force. Even Nevada Senator Harry Reid was defeated by a 75% Republican majority. Senator-elect Sharron Angle said today, "I call on all patriotic Americans to take up arms and take care of the socialist-Communist elements of our state once and for all!" Republicans across the country were said to be heeding her call.
Defeated Democratic "Blue Dog" members of Congress responded to Angle's call-to-arms, "Perhaps this is the best way to solve our country's budget problem."
No one could predict that out-of-work Democrats will be demoralized and hesitant to vote.
Right now, the conventional wisdom is that Democrats will lose a significant number of Congressional seats this November and that the Republicans might even take control of the Senate or House. This disheartening meme has been promoted as vigorously as other right-wing memes by the corporate media. This meme has been bolstered by the self-destructive actions of ConservaDems and President Obama -- actions that have just barely helped Americans in this difficult time and has discouraged progressives. The meme has also been reinforced by the frustration and burnout of progressive Democrats. The wide acceptance of this meme has resulted in discouraged progressives and emboldened Republicans, especially the Tea Party crowd. It has also helped the Republicans in Congress stay united in obstructing every progressive effort Democrats try to undertake -- why be flexible when obstructionism works so well?
But what if progressives worked as hard this year to defeat Republicans and elect progressive Democrats as we did in 2008? If we worked this hard again, then it is possible that Democrats could actually gain seats in the House and Senate and that the number of progressives in Congress would increase. If such a scenario came to pass, Republican intransigence would probably break down and Tea Party energy would likely wane. Progressives would be greatly emboldened.
With solid Democratic majorities in both House and Senate and Republicans in disarray, progressive Democrats could take the lead and push for measures that would actually solve our real problems and actually help most Americans. This would then usher in the long period of progressive dominance that seemed possible a year ago and constitute another wave of progressive reform comparable to historical progressive periods - the Progressive era, the New Deal, and the 60s (as described in Mike Lux's book). In short, we might be able to win big and win big for a long time.
Expectations Drive Reality
But one of our biggest obstacles to winning this year is the expectation that this will not happen, that progressives will, instead, sit at home cynically dispirited while Tea Partiers are out in force. This is what the corporate media tells us should happen and will happen.
Instead of listening to this propaganda, believing it, and acting accordingly, we should do the opposite: ignore the propaganda, tell the truth that there is potential for winning big this November, use that truth to rally flagging progressives to action, and then do the hard work to make it happen. This won't be easy -- progressives are tired from working hard in 2006 and 2008, and many are hurting for money in this time of severe recession. All of us are disheartened by President Obama dismantling the grassroots organizing infrastructure that enabled him to win election, his appointment of corporate hacks to positions of power, his continual hippie punching, his promotion of nuclear energy, off-shore oil drilling, charter schools, and other right-wing/corporate policies, and his feeble efforts (at best) promoting progressive policy.
We are the Leaders We've Been Waiting For
But we are not dependent on President Obama for leadership, we can take leadership ourselves. For the next 6 months, we can lobby hard for progressive policies that will actually help most Americans. If we can get Democrats to push for these policies, even if the policies are not enacted, the attempt should help Democrats win election. Also, just as before, we can identify progressive candidates for the November election (like Jennifer Brunner (OH-Sen) whom I'm volunteering for), we can raise money for them and steer volunteer efforts towards their campaigns, and our blogs can promote them. Together, we can do what we did in 2006 and 2008, and therefore we should be able to bring about the same results: more and better Democrats elected to office with a strong mandate to enact progressive policies that will actually help Americans and make the world a better place.
If we can rally progressives to work for big change this year, then we might actually be able to bring it about. Expectations drive reality, so let's set positive expectations (instead of listening to the negative ones promoted by our opponents) and then do our best to make them reality.
So I was sitting around my house today, putting off doing my Latin homework, when it hit me - instead of just opening the fridge a dozen times and checking my facebook a hundred times, I could be putting this time to good use! And I did. I started doing some online phonebanking for Marcy Winograd's campaign for Congress in California's 36th district.
If you're bored, feeling helpless and alone amidst a sea of political currents fighting against you, excited about the upcoming primaries and election, overcome with energy you need to spend on something, or feeling any other emotion, this is for you! Marcy has been a member of the Netroots for years and is a firebrand progressive. Since she's running against a corrupt Blue Dog (Jane Harman), this is one of the best races in the country for progressives to get involved in.
I live in Pennsylvania, yet I'm still able to help Marcy's campaign, because of a neat online phonebanking tool that has been set up. Follow me below the fold to learn how you can help, too.
Martha Coakley's defeat was largely about the candidate and local issues, but a restless national environment should raise some troubling parallels to Democrats.
For more on pruning back executive power see Pruning Shears.
Thirteen days ago, an invigorating Tuesday night warmed our liberal hearts. Election Night brought the country to cheers and to tears, and as people applauded in the streets and shouted out windows and chanted in the subway in New York, I felt real hope and enthusiasm for our prospects.
Now, how long will that energy last?
Sure, the next day people were still sharing smiles during their morning commute...but in our over-saturated culture, will the emotions of our society really be swayed?
My experience on Saturday at the post office suggests the emotional impact wasn't just a one-day wonder.
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