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In politics, if you want to see how old progressives (or really anyone) prioritize, check out what they do when no one's looking. For instance, Chris Smith, a Republican in New Jersey who is the Chair of the Pro-life Caucus in the House, has received money and/or endorsements from the NEA, AFSCME, Teamsters, CWA, IBEW, AFL-CIO, and the League of Conservation Voters. As an example of how the old progressive leadership class preserves the status quo, this is an excellent example, because an endorsement of Smith is a betrayal of the members of these organizations by their leadership.
Though Smith is a good vote on the Employee Free Choice Act and the minimum wage, Smith is, to put it bluntly, a perverted and homophobic mysogenist (and not particularly well-known or well-liked in his district). It's not just the standard conservative stuff, like voting to authorize and fund the Iraq war or the Bankruptcy Bill or FISA. It's more than that, like voting to require underage rape victims to secure the consent of their rapists before terminating the resulting pregnancy, or voting on twenty-two separate occasions criminalize the birth control pill. He also associates quite freely with various viciously homophobic groups, and is well-known as one of the fiercest opponent of abortion in Congress.
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| The rationale for endorsing Smith is solely that he will continue to hold the district forever, and so his votes for the Employee Free Choice Act and the minimum wage are the best we can hope for. He's certainly not known in the district; he doesn't even live there anymore, owning a home in northern Virginia and building a life that is entirely Beltway-centric since his last competitive election in 1982. And the district itself is an R+1 PVI, so in the next few cycles it's likely Smith will be defeated. He could even be defeated this cycle.
You see, Smith has an opponent, Josh Zeitz, a 34 year old history professor. Zeitz is a first time candidate and this is a very uphill election, but it's not impossible. He's a charismatic progressive Democrat, and he has managed to raise about a quarter of a million dollars even though he's been shut out by all the unions (the locals like him, but the national leadership tends to hand down the orders on endorsements). Internal polls show Smith with relatively low name ID for an incumbent and dismal reelect numbers.
When, say, the NEA, decided to endorse Smith, they decided to betray every teacher who is gay, every teacher who uses birth control for personal or medical reasons, and every teacher who has or will ever need an abortion. The NEA betrayed every teacher with credit problems, every teacher who has a family member serving in Iraq, and every teacher that suffers from Republican policies. Zeitz is going to take on the union leadership on directly, as the NEA has been overtly lying in the district about their endorsement of Smith.
The NEA's guidelines give member affiliates the right to endorse any incumbent with an 80%+ rating on their issues, without interviewing the challenger. The NJEA exercised this right and endorsed Smith summarily. The NEA refused to even send Zeitz a questionnaire or interview him, even though he is a teacher. And then the union lied about this to their members, saying they gave Zeitz a chance to compete for their endorsement.
The process is similar for most liberal interest groups that endorsed Smith. He's a reliable vote on very narrow issues, they assume, while of course overlooking every other part of his career and how that fails to build power for progressive values they ostensibly care about (the NEA is apparently a key anchor of the universal health care HCAN coalition that Smith will of course oppose). I don't even think that, should labor pull their endorsement or let Zeitz compete for it, Smith would abandon them on labor issues. He probably can't afford to, politically speaking.
But what kind of credibility loss is it to the old progressives to show someone like Zeitz, and all of us, just how willing they are to value the status quo over the interests of their members? It's pretty damn overt.
It's going to change. |
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