Image of Tony Sutton courtesy of Tildology.com

Trying to decide what to talk about this fine morning, preferably something that hasn’t already been covered here on this website. Should it be Jerry Brown’s advocacy for high-speed rail, which may be a big part of what saves the state and the nation?

Should it be the looming scandal hinted at by the Rick Perry sex ad?

Or should it be the ridiculous “libertarian islands” being planned by a tech billionaire with more money than common sense? (Who gets sued if the structural supports on these tropical Galt’s Gulches fail?)

But then I decided that I’d stick closer to my home state of Minnesota, and talk about this:

Leave it to failed burrito baron Tony Sutton to blame someone else for the $170,000 fine his debt-ridden party was just handed by the Federal Election Commission.

Not that he is. Oh no. Of course not.

In Minnesota Republican Party to pay $170K fine for federal campaign finance violations, Rachel Stassen-Berger reports:

“I could say something here about excessive government regulation but we’re taking our lumps and moving forward,” Sutton said.

Sutton’s got the Minnesota Nice passive-aggressive voice down pat these days. It wasn’t his and Cupcake’s fault the Baja Sol chain shrank until it was yanked away from them by TCB and former party boss Bill Cooper. Nope, that was the business climate. And if he wasn’t the big man that he is, he’d blame the government for this fine stemming from his own violation of the rules.

Stassen-Berger has posted the party’s agreement with the FEC here. Read it.

This is the same guy who’s been constantly attacking local Democrats over money issues. It is to laugh.

by Stijn Vogels

The 2006 midterms were a disaster of biblical proportions for the Bush administration and the Republican Party. They lost the House, the Senate, and a raft of governors’ mansions and state legislatures. It was much worse than the “shellacking” the Democrats took last November.

And how did George W. Bush respond to the American people’s complete rejection of the Republican agenda? He doubled down on it.

Some in this chamber are new to the House and the Senate — and I congratulate the Democrat [sic] majority. Congress has changed, but not our responsibilities. Each of us is guided by our own convictions — and to these we must stay faithful.

Translation: yeah, you guys won — but, sorry — I’m not budging an inch on my “convictions.” (And note the “Democrat” slur — nice touch, that.)

A future of hope and opportunity begins with a growing economy — and that is what we have. We’re now in the 41st month of uninterrupted job growth, in a recovery that has created 7.2 million new jobs — so far. Unemployment is low, inflation is low, and wages are rising. This economy is on the move, and our job is to keep it that way, not with more government, but with more enterprise.

Yeah, the economy was on the move — off a cliff. The Great Recession began in 2007, but to W., all was well. And PS, Democrats — your job is to keep gubmint outta the way of business.

First, we must balance the federal budget. We can do so without raising taxes.

Translation: we didn’t need a balanced budget when the Republicans controlled the entire federal government, but since I pissed away the surplus Clinton/Gore by cutting taxes for millionaires while launching two wars, now you’re going to clean up my mess, on my terms. Very bipartisany so far!

Next, there is the matter of earmarks. These special interest items are often slipped into bills at the last hour — when not even C-SPAN is watching.

Now that Democrats are back in power, we’re changing the rules. Fiscal responsibility, bitchez!

And, finally, to keep this economy strong we must take on the challenge of entitlements.

So to review: Bush calls for small government, banning earmarks and entitlement reform. What a nod to the new Democratic majority.

But best of all — he announces a surge in Iraq.

We’re carrying out a new strategy in Iraq — a plan that demands more from Iraq’s elected government, and gives our forces in Iraq the reinforcements they need to complete their mission. Our goal is a democratic Iraq that upholds the rule of law, respects the rights of its people, provides them security, and is an ally in the war on terror.

In order to make progress toward this goal, the Iraqi government must stop the sectarian violence in its capital. But the Iraqis are not yet ready to do this on their own. So we’re deploying reinforcements of more than 20,000 additional soldiers and Marines to Iraq.

Remember: the Republicans lost the 2006 midterms because of the public’s overwhelming disapproval on Iraq, and here Bush basically says, “So?”

This would be like Obama announcing a new, even larger stimulus, adding a public option to the Affordable [sic] Care Act, and reestablishing ACORN — while grabbing his crotch and telling the GOP they had to shut up and take it.

Probably not going to happen that way tonight, I’m guessing.

You’ve been my Congressional Representative since I moved to San Francisco in 1992, and a swell one you’ve been, no doubt about it. From your first House floor speech about HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment funding to your efforts as a member of the Progressive Caucus to fight the war, torture and wiretapping machine of the Bush/Cheney era, you’ve done San Francisco proud. As a transplant to your wonderful City, I’ve been satisfied with your representation of our wacky, lefty views — as a Congresswoman.

But I’m moving away now, and I have a piece of advice I’d like you to consider. Please.

No one will ever forget your efforts as Minority Leader to stop the Social Security “reform” juggernaut of the second Bush term in its tracks — simply by not talking about it, just by refusing to offer an alternative, primarily by disengaging on the topic of “reform,” you humbled a President determined to steal even more money for his cronies than they managed to thieve from us in eight years. Thank you so very much for that.

And when you became Speaker, no one was prouder than I. Seeing you on the dais, with your giant gavel, surrounded by all the children of House members: all of San Francisco was bursting with pride, knowing that you would show America what San Francisco values were. Many of us did not realize then that your installation as Speaker would perhaps be the day we were proudest of you. Like a bride who tells everyone as she gets hitched, “This is the happiest day of my life!” we could have been warned: be careful what you wish for. Because the days since you took the gavel? Some I’m not so proud of.

Here’s a tip for America: when your Congressional Representative becomes Speaker, even more than when he or she enters the House leadership, even more than being selected Minority Leader, something happens. You lose your Congressperson. Suddenly, the person you’ve elected to Congress is second in line to the Presidency and a Constitutional officer with responsibilities to the whole country and not simply to your wacky parochial views. While I am sure Denny Hastert’s constituents, and Newt Gingrich’s, gave up something in a representative for the honor of having their congressman become Speaker, I am not so sure it was the same for us in San Francisco.

We lost a lot.

Suddenly, Mrs Pelosi, you had a table to set, and something to take off it. In the phrase that will echo down history’s halls long after your groundbreaking Speakership is no longer the only but simply the first of many non-male, non-WASP, and probably non-white wielders of that gavel, you declared about the warmongers who had barely been elected to twice lead America that “impeachment is off the table.” I’m still not sure why you did that — was there really so much else to accomplish in the two years you led the House, only to see those accomplishments either die in the Senate or be vetoed by The Dauphin? The record of your first two years in the House is sparse, in terms of actual legislative accomplishments. The president got all the war funding he asked for, and then some. The wiretapping of Americans didn’t stop. No big moments we look back on and say, “That’s where we got our country back.” Perhaps that was simply the deal presented by The Dark Side: impeach, or live. Your choice. Who knows?

And, horrifically, the table you set without impeachment, when you knew better than any of us the war crimes and illegalities that riddled The Dark Side, has morphed into an awful precedent: “looking forward not backward” is the mantra of our new Democratic president. It seems that no one will be held accountable for anything done in our name — and you know best how heinous much of that was — except for those who made sure we knew about it. The only Bush era criminals to be prosecuted will be the whistle-blowers about Bush era crimes.

This is probably your fault, actually. How could a new Democratic president encourage his Justice Department to seek out wrongdoers in our midst when the entire branch of government you headed had already decided two years prior that the constitutional remedy for wrongdoing was null and void?

It didn’t matter that your constituents had voted overwhelmingly to impeach Bush and Cheney.

It also didn’t matter that your constituents were hugely in favor of single-payer health care. It didn’t matter that your constituents — knowing as we do that the wiretap evidence is right here in our midst on Folsom Street! — wanted to see phone company executives held responsible for their lawbreaking. It didn’t matter that your constituents, in vast numbers, oppose the wars you continue to fund through special supplemental appropriations, a practice you promised to end in partnership with our new Democratic President.

And, apparently, it doesn’t matter that America, along with San Francisco, wants to eliminate discrimination in employment against non-straight peoples, whether in military or civilian life. You’ve set the table the way your majority-makers let you set it — Blue Doggie converts from Republicanism recruited by corporatist hedge fund executive Rahm Emanuel to prevail over progressive and populist Democrats who might have supported your agenda and not simply the Democratic Party’s new funders’.

If it is your agenda anymore; I’m just not sure. I know the Nancy Pelosi San Francisco sent to Congress twenty-three years ago had a proud liberal agenda. But when Speaker Nancy Pelosi stands up now for the values of the Democratic party’s Big Pharma, Big Hedge, and Big Insurance funders, I’m not sure you are our representative anymore. When Speaker Nancy Pelosi directs the rule-making to prevent floor action or amendment on any progressive issues, I’m not sure who you represent any more. San Francisco has essentially lost our voice in Congress; our representative should be among the farthest left, pulling the Democratic caucus to the progressive side, bending the arc of justice to the people. I expect our Congresswoman to work alongside Barbara Lee, Dennis Kucinich, John Lewis, and Maxine Waters to make America better for people, not corporations. San Francisco doesn’t want our representative, once in a position of power, to be able to shut down investigations into impeachable offenses by the House Judiciary Committee.

That’s not why we sent you to Washington.

You have let me down, Mrs Pelosi. And many other constituents, too. Yes, I am proud, yes — I had tears in my eyes when you took that gavel. But I would have rather had you fighting for San Francisco values than working to implement Rahm Emanuel’s agenda. I know that’s tough to hear, and it’s kind of tough to say as well. As I leave San Francisco for Portland (look out, David Wu, here I come to Oregon’s First!) I want to leave you with one message, Madame Speaker: please consider this modest proposal.

The Constitution does not require that the Speaker of the House be a Member. I strongly believe that every Congressional District deserves real representation. San Francisco deserves a real fighting liberal, way down on the seniority list though s/he may be. You don’t need to be our Congresswoman anymore. You hardly ever even vote, Madame Speaker. Please consider setting a precedent to ensure real representation for Congressional Districts whose representative becomes Speaker: resign your seat in Congress. Continue your Speakership but let San Francisco elect another representative, who can speak for The City. We need a congressional representative who can speak out on the issues that matter to your current constituents: end the wars, shrink the Pentagon, invest in schools and jobs, build a system to retrain workers, restore America’s manufacturing base, imagine and implement a new green American economy.

Empower all our citizens to build a better America by recognizing their fundamental worth as individuals under the equality guaranteed by our constitution.

While you work hard within the constraints put on any Speaker, to implement the agenda of the president who’s in your own party, please let San Francisco have real representation again.

San Francisco values really matter to America. The City needs a Congressperson again. Let San Franciscans elect someone who needn’t compromise on their every viewpoint for the sake of the Speakership. You can do this, Madame Speaker. Please make it so.

Finally, as I always close my letters and emails to you, more and more futile though they seem because of your dual role nowadays: Thank you for your service to San Francisco, to California, and to the United States of America.

Illinois politicians Rahm Emanuel (left) and Rod Blagojevich (right) (sources: Floyd Brown via Flickr and Wikimedia)

Rahm Emanuel is a transactional politician who comes out of a transactional political culture in Illinois. He operates on favors and horse trading and putting numbers on the board rather than principle and idealism. This has been known for a long time. Therefore, his horse trading with the Governor of Illinois while he was a Congressman should come as no surprise. The only problem with this is that said Governor was Rod Blagojevich.

President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, then a congressman in Illinois, apparently attempted to trade favors with embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich while he was in office, according to newly disclosed e-mails obtained by The Associated Press.

Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, agreed to sign a letter to the Chicago Tribune supporting Blagojevich in the face of a scathing editorial by the newspaper that ridiculed the governor for self-promotion. Within hours, Emanuel’s own staff asked for a favor of its own: The release of a delayed $2 million grant to a school in his district.

The 2006 discussion with Blagojevich’s top aide, Deputy Gov. Bradley Tusk, doesn’t appear to cross legal lines, and Emanuel couldn’t speed up the distribution of the funds. But it offers a peek at ties between two high-profile Illinois politicians — one now the president’s right-hand man, the other facing years in prison if convicted of political corruption.

Yes, Congressmen and Governors, especially those of the same party, talk to each other. And yes, they ask for favors and they deliver favors. And Congressmen try to get Governors to shovel money to their districts. That’s basic politics. I don’t see the issue here.

Except that this will all come out at a trial. And as chief of staff Emanuel sits closely to the President, where the contagion of something actually untoward could spread. There’s definitely some danger in that. My problem with Emanuel is not this transactional view of politics, much of which is just a fact of life. It’s that you’d expect someone so driven in this manner to actually be good at delivering. And I basically see the opposite being true. Even in this case, Emanuel couldn’t get the money released from the Governor.

Accountability Now grew out of the backlash over the 2008 FISA vote.  That summer AT&T basically bought off Congress, which passed a bill that resulted in the dismissal of suits against them for warrantless wiretapping.  People were outraged that members of Congress felt so little responsibility to the voters that they could do something this flagrantly unethical just because their corporate donors wanted them to.  Glenn Greenwald and I formed Accountability Now with the intention of holding them accountable to their constituents, and did a fundraiser to raise the initial startup funds for the organization.

The best way to impact an incumbent’s responsiveness to their constituents is in the form of primary challenges, whether they are successful or unsuccessful. Nothing else we have ever done has had as much impact.  Coming from within their own party, they don’t let incumbents resort to tribalism in order to draw attention away from their record, which they are thus forced to defend.  Primary challenges have never been wasted effort, so that is what we decided to pursue.  We launched the 2010 Primary Project in October of 2008.

But because the parties are essentially incumbency protection rackets, when you’re supporting a primary challengers you’re running against the party and its ability to wield power.  You’re also running against the corporate cash that probably triggered the accountability issue in the first place.  Those factors present a very powerful set of obstacles.

Ned Lamont – 1.0

In 2006 we joined together with other blogs to support the candidacy of Ned Lamont.  Ned was recruited to run by local Connecticut activists who were sick of Joe Lieberman.  Matt Stoller went up to Connecticut and met with Ned, and liked him.  He also thought there was a good operation set up to support his race.  Eventually MoveOn and SEIU joined.  But Lieberman was able to pull a lot of strings once he thought Ned could become a serious threat, and Planned Parenthood, NARAL and the AFL-CIO wound up backing Lieberman.  That was problematic, because it allowed him to have validation on the left he didn’t deserve. (cont’d.)

We didn’t really know how much it would cost to run a Senate race in Connecticut, or that Ned would wind up writing a $17 million check to fund it.  Lieberman was able to raise a ton of money.  He did the corporate shakedown that all incumbents can perform, but also had his pal Steve Rattner fundraising for independent expenditure efforts from his Wall Street buddies.  The DSCC, Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid denied Ned the support of the party, even when he won the primary (someone should remind Robert Gibbs, who now thinks it’s everyone’s obligation to “support the Democratic nominee”).

After Lieberman declared as an independent candidate, Bill Clinton torpedoed Ned by going on Larry King and saying it was a “win-win” for Democrats and it didn’t matter who won. Obama promised to help Ned, but stopped returning calls and wound up taking a train through Connecticut on his book tour and wouldn’t stop to support him.

Because Lieberman was successful at getting the word out that Ned was wealthy, it dried up his fundraising. Which, as Rob Johnson pointed out to me the other day, may have meant that his supporters didn’t have the buy-in that they might have with a campaign that they had donated to.  Hard to say, people were pretty enthusiastic about Ned, and about defeating the insufferable Lieberman. ActBlue was just taking off, and I think FDL raised about $90,000 for him before things dried up.

A lot of energy and great ideas went into the Lamont race, but in the end there was also a lot of chaos and inexperience.  We learned a lot and made mistakes that we would correct in the future.

Donna Edwards – 2.0

Donna Edwards was a candidate the blogosphere supported through two cycles.  Al Wynn had been a key player in passing the bankruptcy bill, which was one of the most regressive pieces of legislation to come out of the Bush years.  Donna did well against him in 2006, and took him on again in 2008.  ActBlue was becoming an important vehicle in funding such challenges. I remember taking on Emily’s List for not supporting Donna in 2006, and they subsequently did in the next cycle.  But it was hard to rally groups to take on the party leadership.  When the Democratic establishment came out for Al Wynn and Nancy Pelosi turned her back on Matt Stoller at a 2007 fundraiser, the blogosphere used it to raise about $140,000 in hard money for Donna in one weekend.  It kept the campaign alive with cash it badly needed at the time to sustain itself.

Early in 2008, polling indicated that Donna had a good chance of beating Wynn.  About five weeks before the primary, SEIU, 1199, Planned Parenthood and other groups decided to drop about $1.4 million into the race in the form of an independent expenditure.  Edwards wound up crushing Wynn, 60-36.  But Donna was a special case.  She lived in Maryland and had strong ties to the DC groups, vendors and resources she could call upon for help.  Most other places in the country, those kinds of ties don’t exist for primary challengers.  Had Donna not been able to keep a campaign running for years, the opportunity to drop a million dollars in the race at the end and push her over the top would not have existed.

Bill Halter -  3.0

Accountability Now was set up expressly to overcome many of the problems we’d experienced in the Ned Lamont and Donna Edwards races.  It is primarily a service organization for other organizations. We don’t actually do campaign work, and once a candidate declares, AN’s work is largely over.

One of the biggest problems in finding good primary challengers, as the Grim/Stein article notes, is that those who are capable of running credible races and already have promising political futures don’t want to risk them by pissing off powerful incumbents who dominate party infrastructure.

If you shoot the king, you better kill the king.

So it becomes a chicken-and-the-egg syndrome.  If groups are waiting for good primary challengers to declare themselves before they offer the support that could counter the heavy corporate cash incumbents can raise, many of the established community leaders who could actually take them on and win won’t take the plunge.

Accountability Now brought together the groups that had been involved in the Lamont and Edwards races for a meeting in early 2009.  We spoke about incumbents who were in serious need of accountability moments who might be vulnerable, and who were on the radar of individual groups.

Our plan was to send staff into those communities to ascertain if local leaders felt they were being well-served by their representatives, and if not, whether there were people being talked about to take them on.  (Trust me, when someone is doing crappy constituent services, it’s always there.)

We subsequently did that in numerous districts across the country. We couldn’t  write about it publicly for the most part, because we found people quickly got spooked if incumbents found out we were talking to them, and tongues do wag in closed political circles.  Our job was to evaluate the district, estimate how much money it would take to run a successful campaign, put together primary turnout models and do a thorough workup on the incumbent and also profile potential challengers

When we find promising candidates, we present these materials to groups who might be interested in a particular race.  Not every group is right for every race, and what might be right for a choice group, for instance, might not be right for a union.  We calculate how much we think that interested groups could collectively raise.  If there is sufficient interest in a particular candidate, we may do polling, start an oppo website or begin a “draft” campaign.  We may arrange for meetups or phone connections.  Or, groups who already have a presence in the community may take that initiative on their own.  But by the time they do, they have all the background information AN has assembled with which to evaluate their commitment to a race.

They also have the benefit of knowing what other groups are interested, and are able to factor that in when making their decisions.  That was really important to many groups in deciding whether or not to get involved in a high-stakes Senate race.  Then we start working them all towards the finish line (which is not as easy as it might seem — everyone wants their own assurances or conditions to be met, which might be at odds with what the candidate wants). Groups also have to deal with all their own organizational politics.

By the time the candidate declares their candidacy, Accountability Now’s job is over.  I think we may have done some ActBlue fundraising for Halter to coincide with the campaign announcement, but that was pretty much it.  But the support was there such that he had unified backing and didn’t have to face the problems Donna Edwards did, of having to fund her campaign on fumes until she could prove she could beat Al Wynn.  And Blanche wasn’t able to pick off individual organizations because they had already collectively committed their support.

It gets confusing because FDL is one of the “groups” that supported Halter throughout the race. AN fulfilled its mandate and recruited a candidate who was right for Arkansas, and so every time I wrote about him I did so with the caveat that he wasn’t that progressive.  But that wasn’t the point.  Neither Halter nor Lincoln stood a good chance against Republican John Boozman for the fall, who was polling 20-30 points ahead of both of them (though Halter polled better than Lincoln).  The seat will most likely flip to the GOP.  Regardless, it was a strong accountability moment not only for Lincoln who was forced to fight for her own seat, but for all members of Congress who thought that their divine right of incumbency might be challenged if they grew to non-responsive to their communities.

Accountability Now doesn’t do what the PCCC or the unions or Color of Change or DFA or MoveOn do. Those groups deserve the credit for bringing their strong staffs, their political skills and their organizational resources to the race, and Bill Halter deserves credit for running a great campaign.  We first contacted Halter in August of last year and began evaluating what it would take to win and whether he was capable of doing that, and get that information to organizations that could help him in that effort.  Our mission is to identify challengers who fairly represent the voters in their districts, and connect them with the institutions that can help them run successful races.  Many of them won’t even be aware of what we’re doing behind the scenes to coordinate help for them (for the most part, Halter never was).

What we learned from Halter 3.0

Successes:

• The unification of all the groups in advance drew a stronger candidate into the race than would otherwise have entered it.  Blanche was forced to fight for her seat.
• Coordinated support behind the challenger, which used to happen on an ad-hoc basis after candidates had already declared, gave the incumbent less opportunity to exert institutional pressure and fracture it.
• Knowing that other organizations would be there with them gave groups the incentive to take on the party, since they wouldn’t be alone
• Accurate information about what it would take to run the campaign also gave both the candidate and the groups a measure of comfort in knowing that there would be sufficient resources to do so.
• The ability to have a reliable source of hard money to run the campaign (facilitated blogs/Moveon/online groups channeling small dollar donors) gave the candidate the ability to effectively plan and budget.
• The hard money raised by small dollar donors ($3.4 million) effectively counterbalanced the PAC  money Blanche was able to raise ($2.9 million through March 31).  That fact cannot be overemphasized.  It will play a huge role in the future in giving potential primary challengers the comfort level that they will have the resources they need to win.

Room for improvement:

• We didn’t start pushing back on the “Unions v. Lincoln” meme until it was already too late, it was all over the New York Times and Bill Clinton was successfully exploiting it in Little Rock. If there’s a role for Accountability Now after candidates have declared in the future, it’s in spreading the word that most campaign donations are coming from the mechanics and grocery store clerks and students giving on average $30 apiece, and that this is how citizens can push back against the influence of corporate money in campaigns.  Especially in an anti-union state like Arkansas, that could have had an impact.
• Bringing more groups into the effort.  On the whole, we worked with groups who are pretty risk-tolerant.  We wanted a fair degree of confidence that they wouldn’t cave if the establishment started calling them and telling them to step down.  But in the future, being able to point to the unified coalition in the Halter race may make other groups more comfortable with the model, and it would be good to broaden the effort.
• Establishing a local support committee that national groups will be able to coordinate with, to counter the charge of “outside money in local elections” (as if Exxon Mobil and Goldman Sachs are located smack in the middle of Little Rock).
• Because the groups we worked with were primarily interested in operating in Democratic primaries, that was our focus in this cycle.  But Accountability Now is a trans partisan organization, however, and given the crushing resources the President and the party were able and willing to expend in the race, in the future we will be exploring more opportunities outside of the two-party structure.

No matter what anyone says, the fact that the race was that close when all of the power and money was lined up behind Lincoln cannot accurately be characterized as a “stunning defeat.”  The universal judgment about the banking crisis of 2008 was that shady financial derivatives like credit default swaps were at the heart of the problem.  Blanche Lincoln was forced to offer up strong legislation to rein them in that she never would have done otherwise.  If that money winds up making a pathetically weak financial regulation bill one iota stronger than it would otherwise have been, it will have done more to weaken the corrupting influence of the Wall Street banks than the entire Obama administration.

Having institutional support lined up in advance and unified behind him was an important factor in Halter’s ability to do as well as he did, and a step forward in the evolution of our ability to improve on the Ned Lamont and Donna Edwards efforts.  It’s a model that I think everyone involved is definitely interested in replicating in the future.

crystal ball by seanmcgrath (flickr)

Jeffrey Feldman writes about the divisions underlying the health care debate in this post by Glenn Greenwald (who was writing about this Jake McIntyre post). Ironically, many of the observations he makes about the inside/outside dichotomy in the Democratic party were sketched out in this this prescient piece by Pach on the eve of the 2006 election.

It’s worth revisiting now not only for its insight, but because it points out these fault lines have been visible for a long time. He said at the time that the biggest battle grassroots progressives would have to fight wouldn’t really be with the GOP, but with DC/K Street elitists who operate within both parties:

The wave of Democratic wins expected this Tuesday would not only represent a populist rejection of the ruling coalition of the first two machines, but would also represent a beginning experiment with positive support for a new Grassroots Progressive American politics. However, Grassroots Progressives will still have to struggle against an existing national Democratic power structure DC/K Street Elitists for control of the Democratic Party.

In fact, the battle between the Grassroots Progressives and the DC/K Street Elitists in the Democratic Party has already begun. The DC/K Street Elitist party does not really want to use the Grassroots Progressives as its get out the vote machinery because it knows the Grassroots Progressives don’t really want to keep the gravy train alive for the insiders. Instead, Grassroots Progressives support systemic reforms that promote clean elections, like public campaign financing, which would gut the multibillion dollar American lobbying industry.

Establishment Democrats like the Clintons, Rahm Emanuel and Chuck Schumer don’t want to overturn the established order of the DC/K Street Elites, but want rather to wrest control of the K Street cash machine from their Republican counterparts. This is why they opposed grassroots candidates who opposed the Iraq occupation: the Iraq occupation was bought, paid for and approved of by their constituents in the DC/K Street Elitist party, especially by big oil and the defense contracters. Chuck and Rahm want to do business with (read: profit from) the DC/K Street Elitist party, not overturn it.

Since many of the candidates Chuck, Rahm and the Clintons opposed will win Tuesday, they are already using the establishment media machine to claim these victories as their own “Democratic” victories. In other words, they’re already preemptively lying (see the video above again for an illustration). The Democratic Party now is really two parties engaged in a pitched political war for control. The two sides will remain in opposition within the Democratic Party not only after Tuesday, but throughout and beyond the Democratic primaries leading up to 2008.

Grassroots Progressives will benefit from many protest votes supporting their candidates this election cycle, but their claim to a popular mandate will not yet be secure unless their wins are huge. The country is willing to experiment with this new political movement, but so far this may just represent a courtship.

What we couldn’t foresee then was the impact that libertarian Republicans would have on their own party. As Ron Paul said recently, Obama has neutralized the anti-war left and he thinks if there is an end to the war it will come from the right. And so we’re seeing young anti-war GOP libertarian candidates like Adam Kokesh, who represent a break with the grassroots theocrats on the right.

We’re also starting to see the rise of the left-right civil liberties coalition of the Swedish Pirate Party, which is sweeping up young people all over Europe and now has 2 seats in the EU. How successful this alliance will be remains to be seen, but as the old fault lines are breaking down it creates intense tribal hostility in some quarters. Perhaps those of us who have worked with civil libertarians of the GOP for years (and watched them pilloried by their own party for doing so) are going to be more comfortable making those “strange bedfellows” alliances, but the inadequacies of the status-quo are quickly opening up many others to them too.

New opportunities, new dialectics, new conversations. I’m probably never going to agree with very much that’s written on Red State, but it’s not enough to say something was on Red State by way of dismissing its validity. Because I look at this post by Dan Perrin and I think it’s really smart and aside from an observation that DeMint’s move cold be easily overcome by Reid, I think it’s spot on.

As Pach said of the DC/K Street elites of 2006 who controlled the GOP at the time:

[I]t also does business with “third way” Democrats like the Clintons and their establishment DC allies operating under the label of the Democratic Party. Rahm Emanuel belongs to this machine, as do Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid, Barack Obama, Heath Shuler and most of the rest of the DC Democrats, especially, but not exclusively, in the Senate.This party brought you Viet Nam and Iraq, because both were good for business and provided lots of room for war profiteering.

We couldn’t have that conversation during the primary battles — there was no context for it within the love/hate him/her prism that politics was exclusively viewed through at the time (and which so many simply cannot extricate themselves from).

It’s time we have it now.

Lieberman gets out the vote in 2006 (photo via Lieberman 2006)

Reconcile the guy who wants to filibuster health care reform if he doesn’t get the bill he likes with the guy running for re-election who said all this:

WASHINGTON — After spending most of his Senate career advocating piecemeal health care reforms, Joseph I. Lieberman said Wednesday he strongly supports universal health care.

Lieberman devoted a conference call with reporters to an issue that his main rival in the U.S. Senate race, Democratic nominee Ned Lamont, has highlighted in recent days.

“I have long supported the goal of universal health care,” Lieberman told reporters. “Ned Lamont can talk about it. I’ve been doing something about it all the time I’ve been here.”

In reality, Lieberman has a long record of killing health care reform, opposing reform bills since the beginning of the Clinton Administration. But when his job security was threatened in 2006, he stepped up as a “strong supporter” of universal health care.

Lieberman has claimed that his rejection of health care reform has nothing to do with the fact that his home state of Connecticut has the highest concentration of insurance jobs in the United States. But he keeps going back to not wanting to add to the federal budget deficit, which is a complete dodge since even the President has vowed not to sign a bill unless it’s deficit-neutral. It’s a way for Lieberman to talk about his opposition without having to say he is protecting powerful interests.

A lot of this is posturing, of course. Lieberman wants to say he’s against the bill “as it stands now” to get some goodie or another out of it in the future. And if he allows the motion to proceed, we’re many weeks away from his ultimate decision. But make no mistake – Joe Lieberman has been an enemy of health care reform practically since his election to the US Senate.

UPDATE: And if the White House really has no quarrel with Reid and is four-square behind his strategy, they can prove it by leaning on Joe Lieberman to allow a final vote on the bill. After all, he owns the bill now, as Sherrod Brown said today.

The campaign of Sen. Joe Lieberman, I/D-Conn., agreed to pay a $50,000 civil penalty after the Federal Election Commission concluded that the campaign repeatedly flouted the law in disbursing cash payments to volunteers during Lieberman’s bruising Democratic primary against businessman Ned Lamont in 2006.

The FEC opened an investigation in late 2006 after Lamont’s campaign lodged a complaint alleging that Lieberman was using a "slush fund" to fuel his campaign in the waning days of the primary. Lamont’s campaign cited more than $387,000 in unexplained expenditures listed only as "petty cash."

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The FEC recently posted on its Web site a conciliation agreement with the Friends of Joe Lieberman showing that the case had been settled with the campaign’s decision to pay the civil penalty.

According to the conciliation agreement, federal campaign law allows a political committee to maintain petty cash fund for disbursements "not in excess of $100 to any person in connection with a single purchase or transaction." The treasurer, the law says, must keep a record of all petty disbursements, the date, purpose and identity of each recipient.

The agreement says that the Lieberman committee made cash payments to 1,003 canvassers totaling $344,496 for get-out-the vote activity. The agreement says: "In making the payments, the committee withdrew very large amounts of cash from its bank account on 14 separate occasions and gave the money to campaign consultants and volunteers who put cash in envelopes that were disbursed to canvassers, frequently in amounts well in excess of $100."

To answer your question. . . yes, I’ve thought of that.

I don’t like "electability" arguments to begin with because they are usually employed to enable the privileged (like Caroline Kennedy, who Reid also supports) and marginalize non-establishment candidates.   But in this case, it was just a complete load of bollocks.

As Nate Silver demonstrates, a Rasmussen poll from December 4 put Jesse Jackson Jr. in essentially a three-way tie with Lisa Madigan and Tammy Duckworth within Illinois. But there’s more to running a race than name recognition, and as Howie Klein notes, Duckworth was a truly terrible candidate:

What makes Tammy Duckworth, who has never won an election to anything, "electable" and Jesse Jackson, Jr., for example, not electable? Nevada voters have never elected an African-American to any statewide offices but Illinois voters certainly have. In November Jackson won re-election with 89% of the vote, the highest percentage of any Illinois incumbent from either party. IL-02 is about 60% African-American so apparently he has some appeal to non-African-American voters as well. As for Duckworth… what is she aside from a creature of Rahm Emanuel who– like Emanuel himself– was used to derail a progressive candidate? (They both won bitter primaries with bundles of cash.)

Unlike Emanuel, though, Duckworth lost her general election race, despite outspending her Republican opponent $4,556,495 to $3,302,702, virtually all of that coming through the good graces of Emanuel, who sacrificed at least 3 viable Democrats around the country so he could funnel DCCC money to Duckworth’s useless campaign. But Harry Reid has decided she is viable? Because she’s white? A pro-war Emanuel puppet? What the hell is this all about? Has Reid lost his marbles?

Matt Renner’s special report for Truthout details what happened in 2006 when Rahm Emanuel, as head of the DCCC, didn’t like anti-war candidate Christine Cegelis running in IL-06 so he recruited Duckworth (who didn’t live in the district) to run against her. I believe the word "unelectable" was used about Cegelis at the time, too.

Rahm poured tons of money into the race and the Democratic establishment did everything they could to sabotage Cegelis. She still held her own against Duckworth, ultimately losing 40-44. (It would take Ned Lamont’s defeat of Joe Lieberman in the CT primary to prove just how wrong Rahm et. al. were about the "unelectability" of anti-war candidates in 2006, thus freeing up Democrats across the country to run successfully against the war and their Republican opponents. But that came too late to help Cegelis.)

As Howie notes, Duckworth ultimately lost the seat to her Republican opponent despite a huge cash advantage (courtesy of the DCCC) largely because people didn’t like the fact that she was from out of the district. As Nate says, "The fact of the matter is that Illinoisans have gotten to see an awful lot of Tammy Duckworth, and they simply don’t like her all that much."

Tammy Duckworth is the very definition of "unelectable" — i.e., she couldn’t get elected, even with Democratic leadership determined to fill her coffers with cash and jam her into office. Well, you can say one thing for them, they never give up.

In light of Reid’s contention that Duckworth was "electable" while Jesse Jackson Jr. wasn’t, blogs like Jack & Jill Politics, JammieWearingFool, Blackfive, Open Left, and Field Negro are raising valid questions.

As Markos says, "It’s not as if Illinois doesn’t have a history of electing African Americans to the Senate."

While our Blue America czar Howie Klein is away, I thought we could surprise him with a thank you post for all he has done over the last few years.

Howie and our other Blue Am folks have organized us to nominate, publicize, and support dozens of progressive candidates. Many of these outstanding candidates are now serving in the U.S. Congress, including some who lost in 2006 but came roaring back in 2008, and others we think can win in 2010.

Look at the landscape a month from now: Rep. Donna Edwards – Rep. Larry Kissell – Labor Secretary Hilda Solis – Senator Jeff Merkley – Rep. Alan Grayson – Rep. John Hall – Rep. Martin Heinrich – Rep. Tom Perriello – a long list of Blue Am candidates who weren’t given much of a chance til a small group of visionary people came along and insisted.

Even the races we lost produced fruit, by showing that we could provide instant national publicity for progressive candidates.  And our support for good folks in unlikely races has helped interest local people get organized to make things better in the future.  

We electrified the Alaska Democratic Party in 2005-2006 by pouring in money and attention when the local folks thought they didn’t have much of a chance, and Senator-elect Begich is the beneficiary this year.

This year’s elections were so dominated by the presidential run that we might not have taken the time to reflect on just how far we’ve come with state and local races.  And this has taken leadership and commitment, so much work behind the scenes.

Join me in thanking Howie and the Blue Am team for all they have done!