Florida State Senator Al Lawson is running in a primary race against notorious Blue Dog Allan Boyd in FL-02.

Boyd, as many will recall, was  the only Democrat in Congress to endorse and cosponsor George Bush’s efforts to gut Social Security. He also voted “no” on the stimulus bill, and says he would vote against the House bill H.R. 3200 after it came out of the Energy & Commerce Committee including a public option.

Boyd says he won’t support it because it doesn’t do enough to “control costs.”  He doesn’t mention that 7 of his fellow Blue Dogs held the bill “hostage” in the Energy & Commerce Committee and demanded the removal of key cost control measures (such as tying reimbursement rates to Medicare)  before they would vote for it. Boyd also brags about keeping a health care bill bill from passing before the August recess, which subjected his fellow Democrats to abuse at town halls across the country.

It won’t be an easy race — Rep. Lawson has raised $55,285 through June 30, none of it from PACS.   Boyd on the other hand has raised $570,133 during that same period, with over $420,000 in PAC money from such disinterested parties as Blue Cross Blue Shield, Merck, Pfizer, and my favorite — Koch Industries, which financed a huge chunk of the August teabagger astroturfing.

Unsurprisingly, Boyd favors co-ops.

Senator Lawson favors a public option:

Florida Senator Al Lawson, who has served the people of the Big Bend for more than 25 years in the state legislature, has offered his opinion on the matter – “Real health care reform must include a public option.”

“I was greatly troubled to read recently that 126,000 citizens of Congressional District 2 are lacking basic health care coverage,” said Lawson.

“For months, nothing has been done in Washington. Both sides have bickered over ideology, while at the same time, families in my community continue to live one health crisis away from complete economic devastation,” stated Lawson.

“This is unacceptable.”

According to a recent U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce report, 126,000 citizens, or 18-percent, of Congressional District 2 lack basic health care coverage.

We wanted to invite Senator Lawson on to chat with people about the race and about his views on the health care battle.  You can find out more about his campaign here.

Please welcome Florida State Senator Al Lawson in the comments.

Jane’s in Sweden and I’m in Indonesia but we left Blue America in the best of hands. Digby, John, Jacqui and D-Day have been working non-stop on our campaign of cable TV ads to get one of the few senatorial culprits in the war against health care reform who actually has to confront voters next year–Blanche Lincoln–to reconsider her position. Lincoln, always an opponent of giving working families an equal break, is a member of the Health Care Subcommittee of the Senate Finance Committee. We want her to forget her avaricious campaign donors for once in her miserable political life and think about the average citizens of Arkansas and America for a change. Last week, HHS Secretary Sebelius’s report on the state of the nation’s health care situation is especially bleak for people living in Arkansas–not for Blanche Lincoln, Mark Pryor or the 4 congressmen, all of whom get free platinum health care coverage for themselves and their loved ones paid for by the taxpayers, but for regular working families.

We’re hoping our TV ads will help persuade Lincoln, worrying about her re-election prospects, that with 80% of Americans favoring at least a public option, her career i n politics depends on her championing her constituents, rather than Health Insurance CEOs. Digby wrote three TV ads, produced by Brave New Films and directed by D-Day. Here’s one, but you can view all three here: Campaign For Health Care Choice

We need you to vote on which of the three ads we should use first and we need you to donate what you can to getting the ads on TV in every nook and cranny in Arkansas so that there isn’t one single solitary person in the state who doesn’t know that their senator is playing a crucial role in health care reform. The raw facts about health care in Arkansas speak for themselves. Blanche Lincoln should speak for her constituents, not for Insurance Industry CEOs:

ARKANSANS CAN’T AFFORD THE STATUS QUO

Roughly 1.5 million people in Arkansas get health insurance on the job, where family premiums average $11,486, about the annual earning of a full-time minimum wage job.

Since 2000 alone, average family premiums have increased by 81 percent in Arkansas.

Household budgets are strained by high costs: 27 percent of middle-income Arkansas families spend more than 10 percent of their income on health care.

High costs block access to care: 17 percent of people in Arkansas report not visiting a doctor due to high costs.

Arkansas businesses and families shoulder a hidden health tax of roughly $1500 per year on premiums as a direct result of subsidizing the costs of the uninsured.

AFFORDABLE HEALTH COVERAGE IS INCREASINGLY OUT OF REACH IN ARKANSAS

18 percent of people in Arkansas are uninsured, and 69.5 percent of them are in families with at least one full-time worker.

The percent of Arkansans with employer coverage is declining: from 57 to 53 percent between 2000 and 2007.

Much of the decline is among workers in small businesses. While small businesses make up 75 percent of Arkansas businesses, only 29 percent of them offered health coverage benefits in 2006–down 3 percent since 2000.

Choice of health insurance is limited in Arkansas. Blue Cross Blue Shield AR alone constitutes 75 percent of the health insurance market share in Arkansas, with the top two insurance providers accounting for 81 percent.

Choice is even more limited for people with pre-existing conditions. In Arkansas, premiums can vary based on demographic factors and health status, and coverage can exclude pre-existing conditions or even be denied completely.

ARKANSANS NEED HIGHER QUALITY, GREATER VALUE, AND MORE PREVENTIVE CARE

The overall quality of care in Arkansas is rated as “Weak.”

Preventive measures that could keep Arkansans healthier and out of the hospital are deficient, leading to problems across the age spectrum:

20 percent of children in Arkansas are obese.

26 percent of women over the age of 50 in Arkansas have not received a mammogram in the past two years.

45 percent of men over the age of 50 in Arkansas have never had a colorectal cancer screening.

70 percent of adults over the age of 65 in Arkansas have received a flu vaccine in the past year.

You can see the three ads here; you can vote for which one we should start with here and you can donate here–and they’re all the same here.

John Amato explains what we’re trying to do really well at C&L and Digby did the same, with less words, at her blog. I don’t know if this is going to work or not but is it worth $5 or $10 to give it a try? Sooner or later we absolutely have to make these elected officials understand that, even if they have delusions of serving in an American House of Lords, they work for us. And if Blanche Lincoln loses, what do progressives lose? She’s already declared that she’s not just opposed to Employee Free Choice, but that she’ll support the threatened Republican filibuster. According to Progressive Punch only two Democrats–Ben Nelson and Evan Bayh–have voted more frequently with the GOP on substantive matters since Obama was elected than Lincoln. Would the Democratic caucus be better off without her? You bet; she consistently pulls it to the right and is worthless more often than not. And last year a Green Party candidate racked up 20% of the vote against Mark Pryor without anyone noticing. This year, the Greens hope to build on that and teach the Democrats–at the very least–to stop taking progressive values and working families for granted.

He is excited that because the economic crisis is offering us a once-in-a-lifetime chance to profoundly change the country for future generations. "But, while we have a great majority in Congress," he told me, "the values and principles of that majority are very important. Jonathan Tasini isn’t going to be Blanche Lincoln or Ben Nelson or Mary Landrieu. Nor, if he manages to get into the Senate, is he going to morph into a slick corporate shill like New York’s senior senator. There are a small– very small– handful of senators who don’t look at their place of work like an American House of Lords: Bernie Sanders, Dick Durbin, Jeff Merkley, Sherrod Brown, Sheldon Whitehouse… a couple others. Jonathan wants to join them.

In some way, I’m reminded of the time when Howard Dean challenged our party, asking why we were not standing up to George W. Bush and the obscenity of the Iraq War. Now, we have a president who truly stands for something. And I am running both to support our president and push him to move our country in an even more progressive direction. To some extent, the vision, then, is much broader than the issue of who I’m running against. I want our party to stand:

• for single-payer health care,
• for a different foreign policy
• for the right to belong to a union,
• for marriage equality

And these are values and principles I’ve stood for my entire life, not values and principles recently discovered in order to run for Senator. These values and principles are who I am.

Needless to say, Jonathan is appalled that anyone calling himself or herself a progressive would even contemplate shutting down the democratic process by discouraging primaries the way Biden, Rendell, Schumer and Emanuel are in Pennsylvania and New York. He wants to see the primary as a contest of ideas that will help define what the Democratic Party will look like in the state and nationally. He points out that Kirsten Gillibrand has never stood before the voters and has the seat because of the vote of one person, an accidental governor. "This should not be a coronation or a selection like a monarchy. Voters should have the choice to pick who they want to represent them."

Beyond the process, though, people want to know what precisely Jonathan stands for that differentiates him from Kristen. Since being appointed to the Senate, she’s virtually disowned the Blue Dog persona that she had adopted in the House. Her Senate voting record is very progressive, among the top 20.

We have a very dramatic different set of values and principles. If you look at my life and history over the last 25 years I’ve done nothing but work for economic justice– for the labor movement, for the rights of workers. At the same time, my opponent was a corporate lawyer who represented the tobacco industry and has been very closely allied with the National Rifle Association. She had very different positions when she ran in 2006 for her House seat on immigration. I’m a long time advocate of single payer health care and that isn’t something Kristen Gillibrand supports…

As for the Supplemental, Jonathan might as well be a front page FDL blogger. Aside from being adamantly and unswervingly against wars of foreign occupation– "I will vote No on every procedural vote to advance unnecessary wars and occupations"– he’s also against (to put it mildly) "money that has been pouring into the banks to bail out the bond holders and the share holders and, essentially, the people who have mismanaged the financial system. And I have been a long time critics of the IMF, mainly because of the kinds of structural adjustment policies it has forced upon Third World countries, policies that I believe increase poverty by forcing already poor countries to privatize and curtail services."

In the middle of the primary season, Jonathan happens to have a book coming out, The Audacity of Greed– Free Markets, Corporate Thieves And The Looting Of America. I think we can look forward to an exciting campaign. And now let’s go meet Jonathan down in the comments section.

Similarly we are watching with dismay as Democratic Beltway Insiders are attempting to anoint favored candidates and cut out grassroots voters in the states. Pennsylvania Democrats are displeased that Joe Biden and Ed Rendell, who is rumored to want a sick, elderly seat-warmer like semi-Democrat Arlen Specter to keep the seat open for himself eventually, are trying to shove someone they don’t trust down their throats.

In New York state, you have a similar situation. Biden who’s made a career of being a corporatist shill isn’t only trying to make sure Republican Arlen Specter has no Democratic primary to contend with, but is also trying to clear the field for Blue Dog Kirsten Gillibrand. The Insiders were able to bribe Long Island moderate Steve Israel into dropping out (and something or someone changed implacable Gillibrand foe Carolyn McCarthy’s mind) and now Biden is working on progressive icon Carolyn Maloney.

Hank Sheinkopf, a New York-based Democratic strategist, warns that Maloney "has been a good fundraiser over the course of her career, but the institutional powers who want to keep her from running are going to try to block that money." He’s talking about Biden and Schumer. The other Democrat in the race– progressive activist Jonathan Tasini– is beyond the reach of the Beltway creatures because he’s all about progressive values and policies, not their partisan games. "Progressives," he told me on the phone yesterday, "should be 100 percent in favor of primaries and against attempts to shut down the democratic process and the ability of voters to have choices."

The most establishment and conservative forces within the Democratic Party are working for the most establishment and conservative candidates. And it isn’t only in Pennsylvania and New York. They already managed to clear the field for a disastrous loser in Florida, a corrupt and untested backbencher, Kendrick Meek, who couldn’t beat Charlie Crist if Crist campaigned in the latest Jason Wu gown, high heels and a diamond tiara. We can think corporatist fundraiser William Jefferson Clinton for that. And Meek isn’t the only less progressive Democrat for whom Clinton is doing fundraisers. Wherever a Democratic primary pits a progressive against a corporate shill, you can be sure Bill Clinton will show up to help the shill raise money against the progressive.

A few weeks ago we talked with Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, the progressive candidate for the open Senate seat. She’s a much stronger candidate against the Big Business candidate the GOP is putting up, George Bush’s Rob Portman, but the Establishment prefers Lee Fischer– and yesterday we found this item in the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

Clinton will host a private fund-raiser June 20th at a Cleveland-area home for Fisher, who is trying to knock out Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, who trails Fisher in fund-raising and insists she is not getting out of the Democratic primary. The event will likely give Fisher a boost in the second quarter of fund-raising, which closes June 30th. Fisher is hoping to keep financial pressure on Brunner by widening his money lead. At the close of the first quarter, Fisher reported raising just over $1 million, though not all the money can be used in the primary. (The figure also was propped up a bit by loans Fisher made to the campaign. Cash on hand looked good because he left some bills unpaid.) Still, it was far more than Brunner, who reported raising just a bit more than $200,000.

So the man who pushed through NAFTA, which devastated Ohio’s economy, who signed the repeal of Glass-Steagall, which was just about as Republican as anything George Bush ever did to the economy, and who made an exception for Rupert Murdoch so he could buy Fox and launch the worst right-wing propaganda network since the launch of the Völkischer Beobachter, is supposed to be a good thing? People have short memories.

But I can understand why a corporate shill like Clinton– look, he was one before he became president; he was one while he was president and now… I wouldn’t be shocked to see him dressed up in a Ronald McDonald outfit someday soon– would prefer a candidate less committed to ordinary working families than Jennifer Brunner. I wouldn’t be surprised if he brings Harold Ford along for the ride. After all, Ford is chairman of the conservative DLC, just like Clinton (as well as Lieberman and super-lobbyist John Breaux used to be). The folks who bankroll Clinton– and the DLC– these days might not like Brunner’s vision:

“Creating regulatory oversight specifically for the benefit of consumers is overdue. Economic recovery measures that strengthen the middle class are the fastest and most enduring method to return our country to prosperity; financial institutions that have contributed to middle class turbulence, yet benefited from tax dollars and government support, must be made to account for their future actions to ensure a lasting economic recovery and real change… The truth is consumer protections have not been pursued or adequately monitored by the government agencies that are in place now. It is time to rethink old practices and move in a direction that helps Americans who are trying to act responsibly, to change old spending habits and to take care of their families."

That’s the kind of stuff corporatists– whether Republicans or Democrats (like Bill Clinton) just hate. And Brunner goes much further. After passage of the very tepid Credit Cardholder Bill of Rights a couple weeks ago Brunner was urging Congress to pass an anti-usury law: "[W]e need to quickly impose a cap on [credit card] interest rates so that the bill has some teeth and actually protects everyday Americans when it finally becomes law.

“As middle-class Americans have been trying to pay down their credit balances and spend responsibly, financial institutions are pushing off on consumers the effects of poor decisions and the excesses of executives whose extravagances are not enjoyed by everyday Americans. Now, instead of doing what ordinary consumers are forced to do– tighten their belts and make it on what they have– it is expected that some of these institutions will be leveraging their superior financial position to gouge the very lifeblood of their businesses until the law takes effect and they are forced to treat their customers with respect. All of us, citizens and corporate citizens alike, should share in the sacrifices needed for economic recovery… Any corporation that receives the benefit from the government of shielding its shareholders, officers and directors from personal liability for their actions should step up and be responsible to the customers they serve, and they should do it now. For those corporate citizens unable or unwilling to make the sacrifices, Congress should quickly stop them from the anticipatory moves they can make to shield themselves from the impact of the law when it takes effect."

It must have freaked Clinton out to hear her say that she plans to seek passage of a rate cap, like the one Bernie Sanders introduced, if elected to the Senate. Just one Republican joined 32 Democrats in voting for a credit card interest rate cap, an anti-usury bill. Brunner would have been #34.

I’ve been trying to persuade her to run again in 2010 and asked her to come by and meet our community today. Before asking you to join us in the Firedoglake comments section, let me share with you a helpful bio her brother had some fun with:

- at age 8, she sent a petition with 300 signatures to President Eisenhower asking that girls and African Americans be allowed to play Little League baseball.

– age 8 also found Linda showing other early signs of activism. She uniformly drank from water fountains marked “colored” instead of the ones marked “white” and made sure to ride in the back of the bus (for which she was “thrown off” the bus more than once).

– In 1961, her widely known pit-bull stubbornness was evidenced at a piano recital. After having blown the heck out of Moonlight Sonata in 1960, she announced to her mom and dad she would not be playing in the recital of ’61. Her mother announced back– and louder– that indeed she would play in the recital… end of subject. So, Linda found a poison ivy field, bathed her hands up to her elbows in the stuff and spent the next 6 weeks wrapped in bandages. She, however, did NOT play in the recital of ’61 or any thereafter!

-In ’69 she started college and was elected President of the Freshman Class. She neglected her studies woefully and spent all of her time marching in the Civil Rights movement and plotting with her friends as to how to save the world. They had almost accomplished it (saving the world) when they graduated and were dispersed. Linda’s mom blames the 60’s for almost everything she doesn’t understand about Linda.

I asked her if she thought being upfront about being gay, even campaigning with her partner of 9 years, Beth Huntley, impacted the race. "When you lose by such a tight margin, anything could have played a role." In focus groups she found that people didn’t care about her personal sexual preference but respected her honesty. "We have more gay people serving in South Carolina than probably in anyplace in the United States; they’re just not out of the closet. We have an awful lot of people in the closet– Lindsey Graham, Glenn McConnell who’s our Senate president pro tem, our Lt Governor… I obviously lost the conservative, religious crazy vote, but I would have anyway because I’m pro-choice… It got more national attention than it did local attention; it was no secret to anybody around here." She actually won in Charleston County.

Speaking with Linda on the phone this week she reminded me a lot– in her attitudes towards taxpayers’ money, towards corruption, towards the abuses of incumbency– of Alan Grayson. Somehow she has the idea that her impetus towards reform gives her something in common with Blue Dogs. I almost fell out of my chair. She promised to do some research about Grayson. She’ll be blogging live for 2 hours at FDL today starting at 2pm (ET).

Today we’re going to start looking at the contest by meeting the more progressive of the two candidates, Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner. Her opponent is Lt. Governor Lee Fisher, more a garden variety, middle-of-the-road Democrat. When Blue Dog Zack Space withdrew from consideration he endorsed Fisher. Jennifer is the first woman to have ever served as Ohio’s Secretary of State and if her winning streak continues– she’s won all three races she has contested– she’ll be the first woman to ever be elected to the Senate from Ohio. Interestingly, 58% of the voters in the 2010 primary will be women. People in Ohio know she doesn’t back down on the toughest issues, from marriage equality to Choice to prison reform, access to health care and fair labor practices– the reason in fact why she was awarded the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award.

Most people from outside Ohio who have heard of Jennifer know her primarily because her state’s voters tasked her with going in and cleaning up the horrendous mess Ken Blackwell had made of Ohio democracy through his shameful stint as Secretary of State. Needless to say the first thing I asked her on the phone the other day was whether or not Blackwell had actually stolen the election for Bush. I guess it’s how you define "stolen," but she isn’t as conspiratorial as I am. She won’t characterize his behavior as cheating. "I don’t think," she countered, "that he was making sufficient effort to make sure everyone was enfranchised."

This is a funny race. I get the feeling that Ohio Democrats have been on the outside looking in for so long that they automatically tend to see what’s best in each other and support each other. Jennifer seems perfectly happy to talk about her own qualifications and her own vision but has no interest whatsoever in disparaging Fisher. In fact when he ran for governor in 1998 she was his campaign’s legal counsel and she has been a supporter of his, as have many of her own current supporters. On the other hand, she does feel that she’s best equipped to handle the challenges whomever is elected to the Senate will be facing.

There’s a need to make sure Ohio is a full participant in the economic recovery. We have at least one county in the state, Huron, where the unemployment rate is almost 20%. The recession has hit Ohio harder than most of the states. We’ve lost a lot of manufacturing jobs through outsourcing and our state tax structure has changed so that it benefits business more. We’re coming from a deeper hole than other states and it’s going to take more of a fighter. I sustained 15 lawsuits in an 8-week period, mostly emanating from the GOP trying to set Ohio up so that the results of what they thought would be a close election could be litigated. I fought very hard and held my ground; I didn’t back down… and in the end it was the people of Ohio who won.

The people of Ohio will be facing a great many challenges as the economy turns around. I’m sure debating Bush’s Trade Representative and OMB Director in a state with tremendous job losses and unemployment is something to be looked forward to with relish. Jennifer identifies jobs and health care as the two overriding issues of the campaign. "So many people’s health insurance is tied to their jobs and for every one percent increase in unemployment, nationally, a million more people go without health insurance." Please join us below for a live discussion with Jennifer in the comments section and let’s find out how she intends to approach health care and the other issues foremost in our minds.

Marcy, who is a kind of West Coast Donna Edwards, founded the Los Angeles chapter of Progressive Democrats of America and built a good solid base from which to start her race against Harman. Three years and one week ago I urged Down With Tyranny readers to support her bid against the aloof, imperious Harman. Yesterday I asked her what will be different this year than in 2006.

"The critical factor will be time; I have more time now. We have over a year to organize on the ground. And that’s what it’s going to take– a lot of on the ground organizing, particularly in the two opposite ends of the district: the harbor area, where you have a very strong working class base, and in the West L.A./Mar Vista/Venice area where lots of liberal Democrats… You’re looking at 40-45,000 high frequency primary voters. Last time I jumped into the race very late– with only three months, barely enough time to even reach the absentee voters. Another important factor is Jane Harman herself getting caught with her hands in the cookie jar… [It appears that she was] taking favors, agreeing to backroom deals, to work on behalf of a foreign government to drop charges against 2 people accused of spying and then colluding with Alberto Gonzales to support warrantless wiretaps and be their posterchild! Even though I did not win last time, the fact that I came close– with almost 40% of the primary vote– sends a message that she is not invincible and the Machine is not invincible. This can be done.

Marcy can’t talk about the urgent priorities facing the country in terms of health care, education cuts, and the rest of the catastrophic consequences of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy– the veritable impoverishment of the country and hollowing out of our government’s ability to do its job– without talking about the billions, if not trillions, of dollars wasted on pointless wars. "We really do have to connect the dots between war, education and health care. A lot of guns leaves you with very little butter. We can’t have this bloated military budget– larger than the military budgets of all the countries in the world combined– while committing ourselves to a trillion dollar war and occupation in Afghanistan, and still provide our people with health care. We have 45 million Americans with no health care… Jane Harman is not going to challenge any administration, be it Republican or Democratic, on war, whether the war be in Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan. I think it’s terrific that President Obama is the leader of our country; I think it’s unfortunate that those who served under George Bush, who led us to war, have Obama’s ear. It’s really crucial that people who want to see peace in the world speak out for diplomacy and engagement and step up and support challenges to Blue Dogs and Democrats who really are uncritical about war and, worse than that, who are pandering to the military-industrial complex. When I ran, Jane Harman wore a pin of a B-2 bomber; we know who she is hoping to appeal to."

Marcy teaches English at Crenshaw High School and public education is certainly one of her top priorities. "If we continue on the path of perpetual war and economic privatization," she told me, "public education will become a mere memory." Since 2006 she’s been a tireless activist in L.A., an Obama campaigner, A co-founder of LA Jews for Peace, an Executive Board member of the California Democratic Party, who successfully introduced resolutions to protect our vote, bring our troops home, and implement parole and sentencing reform. She also helped organized a Progressive Caucus within the California Democratic Party. When I asked her, as I do all candidates now, if she would pledge not to join the Blue Dog caucus or any other group or reactionary Democrats in Congress she laughed. She’ll be joining the congressional Progressive Caucus on day one.

She’s already been endorsed by Mitch Ward, Mayor Pro Tem of Manhattan Beach; Carl Clark, Vice-President of the Redondo Beach School Board; David Greene, President of the San Pedro Democratic Club; Julian Burger, President of Progressive Democrats- Wilmington/Harbor Area; Mickey Oskey, Pres of Westside Progressives; and Nativo Lopez, President of the Mexican American Political Association (MAPA), which has thousands of members in the harbor area. She is adamant about voters in CA-36 being represented by someone with their best interests first and foremost, rather than unbridled personal ambition, and she is certain that residents of this west Los Angeles district– which Obama took with 64%– deserve a member of Congress who the ability to think through Big issues and do more than run with the herd.

"Jane Harman should never have supported the bailout of the banks without at least requiring some accountability. There was absolutely no critical thinking: there was a crisis; give them whatever they want. Meanwhile the banks are hoarding the cash and homeowners are being foreclosed on. I say freeze the foreclosures and set up mediation teams in every city in the 36th district– and beyond– to mediate between the banks and the homeowners so we can modify these loans. Once a homeowner goes into foreclosure, it’s disastrous for everybody. What results is lower revenue from property taxes, blight, rats, neighborhoods that are torn assunder."

Marcy is still getting her website up and going, but there is a place for donations. Please join Marcy in the comments section (below) for a free-flowing discussion.

Since then, however, Joe has been on TV an awful lot–just this morning on CNN and, even more impressively, on Hardball with Tweety a couple nights ago (clip above). This morning, if you follow twitter as well as Tweety, you may have noticed that Andy Stern, the brilliant and forward-thinking head of the SEIU, is meeting with the outspoken Pennsylvania congressman tomorrow, and I have a feeling topic #1 will be to find out if Joe is really serious about primarying non-Democrat Arlen Specter or just trying to pressure him to start behaving like a Democrat. After speaking with Joe on the phone this afternoon, I don’t have a single doubt that he is 100% serious about getting into a primary battle to keep the Pennsylvania Democratic Party Democratic. I fully expect that we’ll be raising money for Joe in a tough battle against Snarlin’ Arlen (and then an easier battle against Toomey or Ridge or whomever the debilitated Pennsylvania GOP decides to run).

Few people understand what Reid, Rendell, Biden, Casey, and Obama think they’re getting by throwing the drowning Specter a political lifeline. Speculation that the one part of the deal Biden negotiated was a guarantee that in return for taking his mangy ass into the party, Specter would support health care reform, turns out to be wishful thinking. He supports exercise and diet, not an opportunity for people to get away from private insurance rip offs–by the very same insurance companies that have donated $1,020,130 to Specter’s political career since 1990, more than to any other Republican in the Senate save presidential candidate John McCain (unless you consider Ben Nelson a Republican).

As Joe’s been saying on TV and telling voters in Pennsylvania, it’s essential that Specter face a vigorous primary challenge. There are no kings and there are no kingmakers in the Democratic Party and this crucial nomination should not be a coronation based on murky backroom deals. If Specter thinks he’s going to be the Democratic Party’s standard bearer in this race he should be forced to earn it–and he has a very long way to go to catch up with a man like Joe Sestak.

A couple months ago Jane called to give me some disturbing news. She warned me that it was heart of darkness time right near where she was living! One of the most reprehensible extremists any of us had ever run across, Barbara Comstock, is trying to get into elected office. Many of us first heard about Comstock when we read David Brock’s book, Blinded By The Right

One night in the winter of 1995, as the scandal over the firings of workers in the White house travel office reached a crescendo on the Hill I received a late night telephone call from one of Ted’s colleagues on an investigative committee, Barbara Comstock. Around the committee, the two Barbaras [Comstock and Olsen] were known as "the Barbarellas," a reference to the 1968 movie starring Jane Fonda as a space-age vixen whose cosmic adventures take her to bizarre planets via rocket ships. Late night calls from Barbara Comstock were not unusual. She often telephoned with the latest tidbit she had dig up in the thousands of pages of administration records she pored through frantically, as if she were looking for a winning lottery ticket she had somehow mislaid. A plain woman with tousled reddish brown hair, she once dropped by my house to watch the rerun of a dreadfully dull Whitewater hearing she had sat through all day. Comstock sat on the edge of her chair shaking, screaming over and over again, "Liars!" As Comstock’s leads failed to pan out and she was unable to catch anyone in a lie, the Republican aide confided that the Clinton scandals were driving her to distraction, to the unfortunate point that she was ignoring the needs of her own family.

A very smart lawyer by training and the main breadwinner for her charismatic, happy-go-lucky husband and kids, Comstock remarked that maybe she couldn’t get Hillary’s sins off her brain "because Hillary reminds me of me. I am Hillary." In this admission a vivid illustration of a much wider "Hillary" phenomenon can be seen. Comstock knew nothing about Hillary Clinton. Comstock’s "Hillary" was imaginary, a construction composed entirely of the negative points in her own life.

Comstock invited me to go along on an expedition to the Washington home of senior White House aide David Watkins, the central figure in the travel scandal Olson and Comstock were probing. A short time later, Republican lawyers Comstock, Olson, and other congressional investigators, including David Bossie, and Whitewater investigator Christopher Bartomolucci, pulled up outside my house in an SUV. Though I wasn’t sure what the group hoped to accomplish– they were visibly frustrated with their inability so far to incriminate Watkins– I went along for the ride. Olson explained that Congressman Sonny Bono had cleared us into the private, gated community where both Bono and Watkins lived, in the northwest section of Georgetown. When we arrived at our destination, Olsen giddily leapt from the truck, trespassed onto Watkins’s property, and hopped down a steep cliff that abutted his home. Barbara peered into Watkins’s window where she observed him– watching television. No crime there. (Blinded by The Right by David Brock, p 208, 209.)

But it was Digby who pretty much broke the news that Comstock was acting as the GOP’s #1 oppo character assassin. She’s been in the middle of every Republican dirty trick for 2 decades– from Scooter Libby, Monica Goodling, Dan Burton, the Florida 2000 vote theft, John Ashcroft, and Tom DeLay. And her list of big time right-wing donors reads like a list of all the worst in American politics– from Ted Olson, Eric Cantor, Bill Bennett, Michael Chertoff and Jay Sekulow to Borks and Ledeens, Matalins, Maleks, Toensings, Townsends and even a Scalia! It’s a shame she isn’t running for something in DC, which is where all of her contributors are from and where she has focused 100% of her smarmy political efforts, like her current jihad against Employee Free Choice. She’s certainly never done anything remotely connected to the district she’s trying to capture now.

Fortunately, the seat Barbara Comstock is trying to get her hands on is held by one of the smartest, best-liked and most competent state legislators in Virgina, progressive icon Margi Vanderhye. Watch the brief video interview with her above and you’ll get a feeling for what she’s all about before joining us in the comments section for a live session.

Margi has been active in Virginia community service for over two decades but she’s new to the House of Delegates. In her first term she’s focused on a wide array of issues that are most important for people in Northern Virginia: economic development (especially of the "green" variety), environmental protection, strengthening public education, sensible solutions to the transportation crisis, and improving health care. This year she authored a law to expand the screening and treatment of breast and cervical cancer for Virginia women, which is being used as a model across the country. There’s plenty more about her– plus an opportunity to sign up as a volunteer at her website.

Comstock has one thing going for her: big money from every right-wing donor Inside-the-Beltway. That’s why Blue America has decided to make Margi our first endorsement this year. We started a Blue America ActBlue page for her and we’re giving away cool CD packs to the 20 top donors today.

Darcy isn’t thinking about elective office now and when I called her a few weeks ago I got her in her car as she was driving across the country from Washington to Washington, DC, to start work at a new job heading up the American Progressive Caucus Policy Foundation. And it’s that job, heading up a non-profit foundation under the auspices of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which is why we asked her to come back and talk with us here at FDL today.

A little background before we meet in the comments section below for a chat. First off, the mission of the new foundation is to connect progressives inside and outside of Congress. Specifically, she’ll be focusing on building connections in both directions between the progressive movement and the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

She was looking for a way to make a difference on the things she cares about and has been fighting for, and this seemed like a great opportunity to do so. "I’m passionate," she told me yesterday, "about small-d democracy, and decided I couldn’t pass up this opportunity to work on making it easier for the millions of people in the progressive grassroots to be more connected to the people they send to Congress to work for them." If she succeeds it could revolutionize representative democracy. And if I’ve met anyone with the brains, maturity, energy, strength, and intuition to get something like this off the ground, it’s Darcy.

Because it’s a start-up, she’s going to need all the help she can get– and she told me there will be a bunch of opportunities for people who want to be involved to help the Foundation while learning a lot more about how Congress works. This online community is probably a better place to start looking than anywhere else. Like many of us, Darcy says she "promised that I would never stop fighting for the values we hold dear. This is a downpayment on keeping that promise."