At Netroots Nation, those of us interested and active in NYS politics had a great caucus, and this was one of the ideas that came out of it. A number of very smart online folks from some national and lots of NYS-based orgs and blogs will be there. $10 registration, can't beat that. Myself and a colleague will be doing a session on LGBT organizing, too.
If you're interested in New York State politics, you should come. Hope to see you there.
Update: We broke through $50,000. Amazing. THANK YOU! Can you help get to $70K?
So I'm back on the ground in Maine helping the online team. Things are a little intense, so a few quick bullet points:
The latest polling from Public Policy Polling came out at midnight, showing us down 51-47%. Their methodology has a few problems with it, but they've consistently shown our opponents trending upward.
The field team is firing on all cylinders. Biggest concern is youth turnout in off-year. In 2005, an anti-discrimination ballot initiative went our way and we had one campus field organizer for the whole state. This year we have nine. But the numbers are tight as hell, and if turnout is like a normal election year, we'll lose. Everyone is saying we have to execute a flawless program.
A fun chunk of the progressive and LGBT blogosphere has come to Maine for the final push. John and Joe from AMERICABlog are both here, Julia Rosen from Courage/Calitics/C&L, Jeremy Hooper from Good As You, a number of others. We're all spread out in field, online, video.
Our opponents just pushed out a $25,000 fundraising push yesterday and used it to buy this radio ad that just came out:
They also jumped their online ad buy (it's really fun being here in Maine and now ads are geo-targeted to me, so I see them a lot more).
The campaign needs to increase its own buy to respond, but we need to raise to do it- we've put a lot of money into field. We put up a red alert this morning. $15,000 has come in the last hour. The campaign is calling it a "red alert" because we literally could be swamped on radio, online, and TV today and tomorrow- and as I wrote here, their last two ads are the most effective of the cycle. $25,000 buys a LOT of time in Maine.
If you could give just one more time for the campaign, it would go a very, very long way. Tomorrow is the big day. Thanks for this one last bit of help.
Matt Blizek, of Democracy for America (DFA), was kind enough to allow Sum of Change to bring a camera to the recent DFA Campaign Academy in Gettysburg, PA. The Campaign Academy was founded in 2004, and serves to "focus, network, and train grassroots activists in the skills and strategies to take back our country," We will be bringing you highlights from different panels for the next several Tuesdays, but for this first Training Tuesday we have something special. This is the only training session that we will be airing in full. We will still bring you highlights from many other trainings, but if you would like to see more of them in full, you will have to attend a DFA Campaign Academy.
Last night I wrote about the Yes On 1 Campaign's stupid ad trying to push the debunked line that a change in Maine law would force children to learn about marriage equality (the horror).
The ad says to voters "go ahead. We've got nothing to hide. Decide for yourself whether the book teaches Maine values", which is straightforward and honest. Excellent idea.
You just broke through $1,000 in contributions for the No On 1 campaign on our OpenLeft/Better Dems page. Now, we've got a larger goal to help keep ads like these on the air. I'll be heading up to Maine Oct. 14th, and early in-person voting starts the 15th. This thing is winding down to the finish line. The last poll showed us up 51-40. Let's put the nail in the coffin. We're close to $1 million for the campaign all across the netroots. If we can hit $1 million by the day voters start going to the polls on Oct. 15th, that'll help give the campaign the resources to finish the job.
And remember, as Maine goes, so goes the nation. This'll impact marriage contests all across our country. Please chip in below, and thanks for helping out.
I'm very pleased to let you know that Democratic Congressman Joe Sestak, candidate for U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania, will join us at Senate Guru tomorrow, Thursday September 10, at 5pm Eastern Time for a live blog session. I'm sure he will update us on how his campaign is going, discuss a variety of issues, offer his thoughts in response to tonight's Presidential address on health care reform, and, of course, field your questions.
I hope you will be able to join us for the first candidate liveblog session of the 2010 cycle at Senate Guru. Bring your questions for Congressman Sestak and invite your political junkie friends to join us. (And, if you're really excited for the conversation, support Congressman Sestak with a contribution via the Expand the Map! ActBlue page.)
Right now, 14,000 people are losing their health care coverage every day because our costs are skyrocketing. Meanwhile, too many politicians in Washington, who seem to be ignoring the lessons from Wall Street, would rather leave our health insurance reform up to the insurance companies. No matter what the final bill looks like, we deserve to know how our Representatives and Senators will vote on a public option - up or down!
Now that Democrats have retaken Congress and the White House, one of the problems I have struggled with the most over the past five months is "how can the grassroots make a difference in passing good legislation?" It is a difficult question to answer.
Over the past several years, we have developed a lot of good ways to make a difference in winning elections. We have donated money, made phone calls, registered voters, and knocked on doors. We have pushed favorable media narratives, and worked against unfavorable ones. We have even run our own ads, conducted our own search engine optimization campaigns, and urged Democrats in safe districts to send more of their money to swing districts. However, when it comes to influencing legislation, it feels like we have comparatively few tools at our disposal.
Sure, we can make phone calls, sign petitions and send emails to our members of congress either in support of good legislation or in opposition to bad legislation. But how much of a difference do these "contact your member of Congress" campaigns really make? Maybe a little, but the truth is, not much. The same goes for protests, too.
Sure, we can run ads against, and support primary challenges to, wayward Democrats. This strategy has proven effective in flipping votes, but it is cost intensive and can't be used in every instance. (For example, will we really be able to run primary challenges against Democrats who are strong on virtually every issue, except one or two? Probably not.) Also, it usually only has a long-term payoff (namely, after the 2010 elections). This is a good strategy, and one that I support. However, in the short term it doesn't really open any doors to the sausage making factory.
At least for the ongoing health care fight, I think I have an idea that might just change this dynamic and allow us to have more influence. What if, through repeated emails from constituents, we were to ask Senators to respond to a short survey asking them to outline what sort of public option they would, and would not, support?
Such information would be invaluable as it would let us know the range of possibilities on what sort of public option can be passed, and also let us know where "contact your member of Congress" efforts would be most needed. Further, while a few dozen constituent emails probably won't convince a Senator to support a more robust public option, it probably would be enough to convince a Senator's office to complete a short survey outlining what type of public option the Senator supports.
Yesterday I argued that the netroots were funneling millions to the Blue Dogs every cycle, and needed to completely turn off the spigot. Today, I spent some time trying to figure out just how much money the netroots were donating to the Blue Dogs every cycle. As it turns out, the totals are not very high.
First, 9.15% of all donations to the 35 House Democrats who were first elected in 2008, and who are still in Congress, came from Act Blue. For eighteen of those House newbies, Act Blue was the top donor overall. For another eight, Act Blue was the second largest donor. Overall, the totals are $5,820,075 was raised for these 35 Democratic Representatives on Act Blue, out of a total $63,583,306 in donations from a source other than self-financing.
Among the six Blue Dogs first elected in 2008 and still in Congress (Bright, Childers, Griffith, Kratovil, Minnick, Nye), $188,374 of the $9,422,494 they raised from a source other than self-financing came from Act Blue. Overall, this represents only 2.0% of their total fundraising.
Among the seven Progressives first elected in 2008 and still in Congress (Carson, Edwards, Fudge, Grayson, Lujan, Pingree, Richardson), $1,348,659 of the $8,800,177 they raised from a source other than self-financing came from Act Blue. Overall, this represents 15.33% of their overall fundraising. This is a far higher percentage than Blue Dog Act Blue fundraising, even if it is heavily concentrated in Pingree and Edwards.
There are at least 15 freshmen members of the New Democrat coalition. However, the only name I can confirm at this time is Andre Carson, who is also a member of the Progressive caucus. Removing both the Blue Dogs and the Progressives from the overall list, but keeping Carson, the remaining Democrats raised $4,374,144 of their $47,012,948 non-self financing from Act Blue. It is likely that this 9.30% is close to the overall percentage of New Democrat freshmen money raised on Act Blue, given that more than half of the 23 freshmen included in these totals are now in the New Democratic caucus.
So, this analysis suggests that the netroots aren't really funding the Blue Dogs much at all, but are instead pumping millions of dollars into New Democrat coffers (they use the term New Democrat, not New Democratic). While the netroots are a higher percentage of Progressive fundraising, overall we give more money to New Democrats.
This situation is not ideal, but it is better than funneling millions into Blue Dog coffers. Although I don't have updated numbers, previous analysis has suggested that the New Democrats are almost precisely equidistant from the Blue Dogs and Progressives in terms of voting patterns, and very slightly to the right of the Democratic caucus overall. Given the disproportionate Act Blue donations to Progressive frosh compared to Blue Dogs frosh, overall this probably means that netroots money is being spent on keeping the ideological balance of the caucus roughly at the status quo. As such, it is not the disastrous situation I made it out to be yesterday, but it is still something that must be improved upon in 2010. Our money needs to be going to push the caucus to the left, not keep it where it currently is.
(Notes: Numbers taken from Open Secrets. Freshman fundraising totals can be seen here. ActBlue contribution totals can be seen here. Candidate self-financing not included in overall contribution totals. Current server troubles have prevented me from uploading the chart I made with all these numbers.)
We--participants in blog and email list small donor fundraising efforts--have to completely stop raising money for Blue Dogs. We should not give a single cent to any current member of the Blue Dog coalition. We should not give any money at all to any candidate who refuses to rule out joining the Blue Dogs once in Congress. If we hope to improve Democratic behavior in Congress, this break has to be as public and as thorough as possible.
In politics, money speaks a lot louder than either voting or public criticism. We can criticize Blue Dog behavior all we want, but as long as we keep funneling their members millions of dollars every two years in small, online donations, then we will actually be ratifying, not criticizing their behavior. We will be supporting their efforts to push the party to the right, not working to push the party to the left. We will be sending a clear signal of support for their votes, not working to hold them accountable for those votes.
Let's take a quick review of the Blue Dog behavior we are ratifying. The Blue Dog coalition has made it clear that they believe they have veto power over the entire agenda of the Obama administration and the Democratic congressional leadership. After a meeting with President Obama three weeks before the election, the Blue Dogs declared:
"He also recognized that we had the numbers to block or clear" legislation coming from the White House if he is elected.
If they are coasting that they can block or clear whatever legislation they want, the Blue Dogs consider themselves to be in charge of D.C., not Speaker Pelosi or President Obama. Some highlight of their past behavior include being the driving force in the Democratic Party behind the 2005 bankruptcy bill (they voted 32-4 in favor), the 2006 ending of habeus corpus, the 2007 Iraq War blank check, and the 2008 FISA re-write (see here for both). So far in 2009, they only allowed the stimulus package to go through after extracting a pay-go promise from the Obama administration. Last month, they joined with the New Democrats to block foreclosure relief legislation, which Evan Bayh's Blue Dogs in the Senate seem to have killed. And most of them will vote against the budget, too.
The Blue Dogs are an overt obstacle to progressive governance. For crying out loud, their entire name comes from feeling "choked blue by the left-wing of the party." In the recent past, they have refused to send money to the DCCC because another member of Congress criticized them on Iraq. They are overtly anti-progressive and anti-left wing. They don't even work to help other members of the party. So, why are we working to help them?
We simply must stop funneling money to the Blue Dog coalition. Given how much we complain about Blue Dogs, this may seem self-evident, but it is not. In the past, I, personally, have helped raise a decent amount of money for Blue Dogs. Two of the fundraising pages that I helped build, Netroots Candidates and Blue Majority, took in about $150,000 for Patrick Murphy, Larry Kissell and Bill Foster, three members of Congress who are either Blue Dogs already, or who will be likely announced as such when the new Blue Dog membership list is made public. So, I am as implicated in sending Blue Dogs money in the past as anyone.
If we keep sending the Blue Dogs millions of dollars in small, online donations every year, then there is no incentive for Blue Dogs to ever change their behavior, or for Democratic candidates to not seek out membership in the Blue Dog coalition. Currently, being a member, or prospective member, of the Blue Dog coalition provides you access to a network of Hill staff, corproate lobbyists and their PACs, large donor fundraisers, and press releases back home to talk about how you aren't like those other, dirty liberal Democrats. If we want to change Democratic behavior in Congress, we have stop adding even more incentives for Democrats to become Blue Dogs. Instead, we must offer strong disincentives for them to become Blue Dogs, such as a significantly reduced access to online, small donor fundraising.
Unfortunately, in Scott Murphy's case, small online donors raised over $300,000 for him even after Murphy had stated he was applying to join the Blue Dogs. That has to stop. Before we raise money for other congressional candidates in 2009-2010, we have to extract promises from those candidates that they won't join either the Blue Dogs (for House candidates) or Evan Bayh's groups (for Senate candidates).
No more money for the Blue Dogs. We can't continue to ratify their efforts to push the Democratic Party to the right. There are plenty of candidates and organizations working to push the party in the opposite direction to whom we small online donors should give our money.
As David already discussed earlier today, President Obama has not yet met with the Congressional Progressive Caucus, even though he has met with every other group in Congress (Blue Dogs, New Dems, House Republicans, etc). Some Progressive (capitalized because it signifies a member of the caucus, rather than just anyone who calls him or herself a progressive) are feeling slighted by this. I am going to chime in and agree with the general sentiment in the comments to David's post: rather than feeling slighted, Progressives need to start throwing more weight around so that such a meeting is required, rather than an act of politeness.
There are lots of ways that Progressives could be throwing their weight around, but are not. The most obvious current misuse of Progressive strength is the inability to maximize their, and our, strength among small donors. Progressives have enormous potential fundraising ability that can match the large donor and corporate PAC money other ideological caucuses and networks can provide to their members. This fundraising is a major reason why candidates join these groups, and progressives can do the same thing. Unfortunately, we don't use our networks as well as we should.
The blogosphere gets pretty angry at Blue Dogs and New Democrats on a regular basis. This isn't surprising since, according to the best information I have seen (some of which is not public) about 80% of the people who read progressive blogs and / or who are members of progressive email list organizations self-identify as either "liberal" or "progressive." However, from 2004-2008, and even in the excitement over the NY-20 special election next Tuesday where the Democrat has already declared himself to be a Blue Dog, I'd wager that a similar proportion of netroots congressional donations have gone to electing Blue Dogs and New Democrats (specific numbers are not available right now because the current caucus membership lists are not available). It is kind of a perverse cycle: we give huge amounts of money to Blue Dog and New Democratic candidates, and then we spend a huge amount of our time complaining about Blue Dog and New Democratic members of the House. We are funding our own complaints.
President Obama held a reception for the leaders of large progressive organizations, plus the Chamber of Commerce, last night. This is both exciting, and a relief, given all the face time that Republicans and Blue Dogs were getting at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
One of the main messages from the meeting appears to be using progressive organizations as a "echo chamber" or megaphone to help drive the Democratic message around the country:
At a private White House cocktail reception last night for leaders of major progressive groups, Barack Obama and his wife Michelle appealed to these leaders and signaled that their groups would play a key role in driving the big progressive changes at the heart of the White House's legislative agenda, an attendee tells me.
The message was that these groups would be valuable as a kind of progressive outside "echo chamber," as the attendee puts it.
If you are in the Philadelphia area, you should attend two great netroots focused events, which take place tonight and tomorrow.
Mike Lux in Philly!: First, tonight at the Center City chapter of Drinking Liberally, Mike Lux will be around to discuss his new book, The Progressive Revolution. The event is at 6 p.m., Triumph Brewing Company, 117 Chestnut Street, upstairs bar.
Blogger ethics panel! Second, tomorrow night at 5:30 p.m., the American Constitution Society's Philadelphia Lawyers and UPenn Law School chapters will be cosponsoring a panel discussion at The University of Pennsylvania Law School on the role of bloggers as watchdogs / advocates under the Obama administration. Panelists will be John Aravosis, Christy Hardin Smith, Baratunde Thurston and Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg, with Adam Bonin moderating. The law school is at 3400 Chestnut Street.
I will be attending both events. Hope to see you there, too!
(Here's a provocative idea about how we might substantially change online organizing. In the wake of the Soapblox meltdown a couple of weeks ago, I had some ideas of my own I'll be writing about this weekend. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
Chris and Natasha announced a new project recently in which the netroots would organize to systematically track, influence, push, and block legislation introduced into the new Congress this year. Their larger motivation for this project, at least as they communicated it that day, was that they were tired of being in a reactive position, constantly fighting against bad Republican or Bush Dog legislation, against anti-progressive or just plain wrong media narratives, and against a political system in which the two main centers of gravity are a pro-elite "center" and a reactionary Right. They expressed a desire to act proactively, with initiative, pushing for positive progressive change.
Even more recently Matt announced that he is leaving the blogosphere for a job in the House. The centerpiece of his announcement was a problem he called the "rootsgap": a disconnect between what activists want and want to help deliver, and what the party representing them believes is possible and cares to achieve. He argued that much recent political history can be explained by the fact that conservative activists took control of their party in the 70s, while progressive activists have had very little control over their party since then. Thus we have one right-wing party, and one mainstream party, with progressives trying to influence what the mainstream party does.
Both these moves share in common the realization that a progressive force is missing on the national stage....
Al Kamen of the Washington Post becomes the latest reporter to be used by people in the 'intelligence community', reporting falsely about torture supporter and Obama advisor John Brennan who withdrew his name from consideration for a high level intelligence appointment, citing criticisms from bloggers as the rationale.
Meanwhile, the incoming administration is still looking hard for someone to be CIA director. Everyone's apparent first choice, John Brennan, a former deputy director, ran into a firestorm of Internet criticism when word circulated of his near-pending nomination. Liberal bloggers argued that Brennan had tolerated aggressive interrogation techniques or even torture while at the agency. Brennan withdrew.
"No one went to bat for him," a source said. Insiders call this the first example of a "blogocide."
The episode bothered a lot of Brennan fans in the Obama operation, where he still heads the CIA transition team. "If we're afraid of bloggers," one transition observer quipped, "how can we take on al-Qaeda?" Various names have popped up since for the job, including Washington lawyer and former agency general counsel Jeff Smith.
Our institution has partnered with Third Way on a number of important projects - including a homeland security transition project - and have a great deal of respect for their critical thinking and excellent work product. They are key leaders in the progressive movement and we look forward to working with them in the future.
They are key leaders in the progressive movement? Really? What is this 'movement' of which she speaks? Third Way's 'honorary' Senate Chairs are Blanche Lincoln, Evan Bayh, Tom Carper, Mark Pryor, Ken Salazar, Claire McCaskill. The group's 'honorary' House Chairs are Jane Harman, Ellen Tauscher, Joseph Crowley, Artur Davis, Melissa Bean, and Gabrielle Giffords.
This is not, to put it mildly, a 'progressive' group of politicians. Blanche Lincoln is the only Democrat publicly wavering on the Employee Free Choice Act, Evan Bayh is starting a Blue Dog caucus in the Senate, Mark Pryor and Ken Salazar were in the 'Gang of 14', and all of these Senators voted for cloture for Alito, with the exception of Even Bayh who was running for President at the time and Clair McCaskill, who wasn't in the Senate yet. Every single one voted to immunize telecom companies against against unlawful behavior in warrantless wiretapping Americans. Every single one voted for the Iraq supplemental bill to fund the war in April, 2007. In other words, this is a group of conservative Democrats that have consistently voted for war funding, illegal wiretapping of Americans, a hyper-conservative Supreme Court, and broadly, a reactionary and extreme political agenda.
You could quibble with the details of this story but it is essentially correct that the moderate to conservative wing of the Democratic party is ascendant.
Consider the scorecard: The centrist Democratic Leadership Council claims ties with half the group. Movement progressives count a single one, California Rep. Hilda L. Solis, a union favorite, at the Labor Department.
There's an argument that Obama has promised a raft of progressive policies, and that's not wrong. And he's got a great team to deal with climate policies, broadband and media reform, and a bunch of other important areas. Still, the significant element in his first two years is the trillion dollar stimulus, and there were no promises around that during the campaign. It's just spend wherever there's a shovel in the ground, or if you're a company, stick your hand out. Liberals are going to get rolled on this. The progressive caucus released a request that Obama spend one trillion dollars, while literally saying they would follow up with "specific policy proposals" later on. Meanwhile, the right is making noises that they will simply fight a stimulus; they certainly have been doing so over the last year or so. Isn't the logical scenario that the left screams for spending, the right screams for no spending, and the DLC types split the middle by accepting spending, but mostly along the lines of corporate support a la the financial bailout? I think so. Already Pelosi is putting out signals she's worried Rahm is going to triangulate her among Blue Dogs, and Rahm is making plans to return to the House to be on track for Speaker in a few years.
None of these should be controversial positions. Really, they should be nearly as straightforward as arguing that the federal government has three branches. However, all three have faced significant, though admittedly minority, dissent on Open Left. The reason for the controversy over such straightforward claims is that all three help create space for justifiable, left-wing criticism of Obama's transition. However, such criticism will not share the majority opinion of the Democratic Party not only on Obama's position, but really on anything, for a while. As such, even websites like will face such dissent.
Right now, whatever Obama comes out in favor of will become the majority position within the Democratic Party. If, over the next year, Obama says that we need to tear down the health care system and start from scratch with single-payer, then a majority of Democrats will quickly come to share that position. If, over the next year, Obama argues that it is time to invade Pakistan, then a majority of Democrats will come to favor that position. If he decides that Dick Cheney needs to be Secretary of the Interior, or Noam Chomsky needs to be Secretary of Education, a majority of Democrats will come to agree with him. Right now, whenever Obama makes his support clear on anything, that position will either remain, or become, the majority position for Democrats nationwide.
As I explain in the extended entry, having a majority of Democrats always agree with the leadership of the Democratic Party is a major change from the 2002-2008 era.
So I'm back on the ground in Maine helping the online team. Things are a little intense, so a few quick bullet points:
