tmpphpttl20r.jpgSince the recorded calls to the five Democrats still voting with the Bush Administration on SCHIP drew such a response, we’re keeping the pressure on as promised.

The attached full page ad is set to run on Tuesday of next week in Marshall’s home town paper. And Digby makes her maiden voyage over at Kos blogging about it:

It’s hard to believe that any Democrat would vote against health care for kids, but there those five were, standing with the most unpopular president in modern memory (maybe ever) whose own caucus is beside itself at having to vote against a program that everyone agrees is necessary and politically popular.

Readers here at Daily Kos and across the Netroots were appalled. We expect this kind of cruel behavior from Republicans. And we have been harshly schooled in the facts of life in the Big tent Democratic Party. But on this issue, uninsured kids, we don’t think it’s too much to ask that Democrats act like Democrats. Even Orrin Hatch voted for it, for crying out loud.

So we mobilized a telephone campaign into their districts, featuring a working mom with two kids from North Carolina(whose name I’m not going to mention for reasons which I’m sure are obvious after the events of this week)asking their constituents to tell these alleged Democrats to vote to override President Bush’s veto. And lo and behold, the North Carolina reps are now saying they’ve moved to “undecided” and Baron Hill in Indiana has switched his vote. (In the last example, we don’t know if it was the calls or the newspaper ad we were set to run in his district this week-end, but something made him realize he needed to do the right thing.)

So we are going to keep whipping it good and see if we can at least persuade the rest of these Bush Dogs to be Democrats. We are going to run a newspaper ad next week in the district of Georgia Democrat Jim Marshall, the fellow who stood before the state legislature and said that Washington was coming up with:

“…all kinds of initiatives to expand the State Childrens Health Insurance Program and I think Georgia needs to be in sync with that. It’s not the fault of the kid that the kid doesn’t have health insurance. It’s penny wise and pound foolish for us to be short on this program. This program saves us dollars in the long run and does a lot of good for kids. It’s a great program. That’s why it has bipartisan support in congress.”

That was last spring. Today, Jim Marshall seems to think that “bipartisan” means voting against 220 Democrats and 45 Republicans to sustain a presidential veto that will be handily overridden in the Senate by such left wing hippies as Dick Lugar and Charles Grassley. Why even Joe Lieberman is on board with this one!

Yes, we must acknowledge it. There are members of the Democratic Party just as creepy as Holy Joe, and one of them is named Jim Marshall.

Marshall is vulnerable, he’s got two primary challengers and I’m sure he never expected this. Nor did Baron Hill, who changed his vote yesterday. Hotline called us “the new whips” of the Democratic Party. But we need your help to keep going.

Please consider contributing whatever you can to Blue America’s Marshall Plan to help us keep the pressure on Democrats to act like Democrats.

(many thanks to J-Ro at The Seminal for his fine ad design)

Update — Howie sez:

Last time I looked we already had over 100 donors today! Thanks for coming through! I bet Jim Marshall is wishing he never climbed out on this shaky limb with George Bush and Dick Cheney! Digby did an incredible piece about it today at DailyKos and John did two at Crooks and Liars: here and again here. Jason, the guy who designed the ads writes about what’s behind them at his own blog, The Seminal … and Mike Lux over at OpenLeft takes a look at today’s campaign tactics and how what we’re trying to accomplish fits in.

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  3. Democratic “Infighting” or Keeping Blue Dogs from Selling Out Health Care?
  4. Rachel Maddow Redux: Dangers of Keeping Lieberman in Caucus (from November 2008)
  5. FDIC’s Strategy for Keeping its Head Above Water