In Which Daily Kos Gives Me Hope
As most of my readers know, I am so thoroughly disgusted with the Democratic Party that I’m seriously questioning whether I am going to remain a member. Markos Moulitsas just gave me a reason to hang on:
So what does that leave us? Well, we have one tool at our disposal, our only way to influence the behavior of our elected officials:
We can primary them.
Defeating Joe Lieberman sent a shockwave through the political world. If he could go down in a primary, none of them were safe. And after years of taking the party’s base for granted, and as ill equipped as they were (and still are) to listen to us, they had to learn — or else.
Rep. Jane Harman, having faced a spirited primary in 2006, became 100 percent better overnight. She learned her lesson, and it made her a better person and legislator. Ellen Tauscher, threatened with “facing a Lieberman”, headed off a potential primary challenge by suddenly voting her Democratic district, something she had seldom deemed necessary beforehand.
Other Democrats haven’t been so quick to reform, and they face spirited primaries. Key among them are, of course, the incumbents facing spirited challenges by Donna Edwards in MD-04 and Mark Pera in IL-03.
Let me say this is no uncertain terms — our ONLY ability to influence the Democratic caucus in Washington D.C. rests in our ability to defeat them in their primaries next year. No other elections are more important for purposes of our movement (as opposed to the nation as a whole) than these two. If Dan Lipinski and Al Wynn hold on, it will tell other Democrats that they have little to fear from us. If we defeat them, it will put the entire caucus on notice that we can and will target them if they lose touch with who they serve (i.e. the people, not themselves and their lobbyist cocktail party hosts).
That sounds about right. Congressmembers Fattah, Schwartz, Murphy, Sestak: y’all are on notice. No more votes to condemn MoveOn. No more blank checks. No more nonsense, cus we’ll toss you out on your sorry sorry asses.
December 21st, 2007 at 4:38 pm
between that and boomans ‘where do we go from here’ post, I think we’ve got our road map for 2008: primary the Bush Dogs, then push for a 60+ number in the senate.