Tag: Blue Majority

(From the diaries – promoted by DavidNYC)

The next addition to the Blue Majority page is Dan Seals, who is running in Illinois’s 10th district against Republican Mark Kirk.  The district is one of the bluest in the country held by a Republican, going for Kerry over Bush in 2004 by 53-47.  Seals ran a hard race in 2006, and had a heart-breaking and narrow loss.  Running for office is incredibly difficult; you must work 14 hour days for months, with almost no income, no sleep, limited family time, and no exercise.  You have to beg for money from anyone you’ve ever met, and you get yelled at by activists on both sides.  Meanwhile, voters are looking to be persuaded that they can trust you, and while your arguments make sense to you and your staff, you can never tell if voters believe you.  It is incredibly difficult, and almost everyone loses their first time out.  A successful political movement helps not just those who win, but those who take risks and lose, because without risk-taking, change cannot happen.  And that’s why we’re in this.  Seals gave up his career, his family life, and his privacy in 2006, and we’re going to make sure that he, like Eric Massa, Darcy Burner, and Charlie Brown, gets to finish the job.

As for Kirk, it’s pretty simple why this guy has to go.  He’s considered a ‘moderate’ Republican by many anonymous strategists in insider publications, because apparently in DC, up is down.  Sometimes he breaks with his party when we don’t need his vote, but the reality is closer to the video above, where Kirk ran away from an Iraq veteran so he wouldn’t have to answer questions about his stance on the war.  The camera man is an AAEI organizer named Josh Lansdale, who also happens to be an Iraq vet.  I wrote this episode up in July.

Kirk likes to portray himself as a moderate Republican, and he even went to the White House earlier this year to talk about Iraq with George Bush.  In fact, The Hill reported that Karl Rove came down on Kirk hard for leaking this ‘confrontation’ to the press, and Kirk has quieted down.

Josh is an organizer for AAEI, and his goal is to stop the war by getting members of Congress to come out on Iraq.  In this case, he went to the event trying to get Kirk to go on the record with what he said in the White House and what his current position is on Iraq.  Does he support a withdrawal?  Does he support timelines?  Where is he on the surge?  People who attended the event said that Kirk was wishy washy, but Josh couldn’t get a direct report.  This episode took place at an event where Kirk keynoted eight local Chambers of Commerce coming together.  Josh had bought a ticket online, but was not allowed to attend, with organizers claiming the event had been sold out as they were selling tickets nearby.  So Josh eventually had to find Kirk out back, with this video camera.

The district, blue and getting bluer, is going to eat Kirk alive on Iraq, and he’s pushing extremely hard to be perceived of as moderate.  He’s even going so far as to propose ‘bipartisan’ solutions with Bush Dog Democrat Dan Lipinski, as Kos noted earlier this month.

The Lipinski-Kirk plan calls for a phased withdrawal similar to the one that U.S. Gen. David Petraeus outlined on Monday. Under the plan, one troop brigade would return to the U.S. in December and three more would be removed in the spring, without replacement. It would provide for troop levels in July 2008 of about 130,000, which is equal to “pre-surge” troop levels.

Got that? We’d simply hit the “reset” button, taking 10 months to get us back to the pre-surge status quo. And somehow, this “bipartisan” bill (which Bush will announce this week anyway) is supposed to be a solution to anything?

Nope, it’s two endangered congressmen — one a Republican, the other a Lieberdem — clinging together for dear life in the face of an unpopular war that they in reality support. Their actions don’t change the facts on the ground (the surge was always unsustainable for the long haul). It does nothing to end a conflict in which a solution is far beyond our grasp.

We’ve already got Lipinski in our cross-hairs, and it’s going to be tough to take down the Chicago Democratic machine.  But wouldn’t it be sweet if our response to Kirk and Lipinski’s bipartisan shill plan to keep troops in Iraq indefinitely was a bipartisan response of getting rid of both of them?

Yes, it would.  Please throw a few coins to Dan Seals for Congress on Blue Majority.

(From the diaries – promoted by James L.)

The next addition to the Blue Majority page is a candidate returning from 2006: Eric Massa, who is running against Shotgun Randy Kuhl in the NY-29.. Please, give to Eric Massa today.

Eric is a true netroots favorite, evidenced by the tags NY-29 and Eric Massa being the most common tags for a congressional race and congressional candidate respectively, on MyDD.  Eric is extremely energetic and hard working, as I have seen upclose in my visits to the district on several occasions. His energy rubs off on his grassroots supporters, who were able to close off a corporate Democratic primary challenger this past summer through relentless blog pressure, securing the support of virtually every local precinct captain in the district (including two family members of mine who joined the silent revolution in Update New York), and lots of small-donor, in-district fundraising. Now, he is set to take on Randy Kuhl who, separate occasions, has threatened both his ex-wife and his constituents with firearms, even though he claims he was just joking about the later.  But he seriously doesn’t like his constituents:





That is, he doesn’t like his constituents unless they are Republican donors trying to build new bowling alleys  in the district.


This is the “reddest” district in New York, which Bush won with about 56% of the vote in 2004. However, is it turning blue, like the rest of New York state. But Eric Massa is not your typical red-district Democrat who will let you down. As a progressive, he will fight for you, pledging to oppose FISA and watered-down withdrawal from Iraq, something few Democrats from a district this “red” have done. After losing by only 4% in 2006 despite no help from national committees, Massa is well poised to take the seat in 2008.


Support Eric Massa for Congress on Blue Majority. He is another example of more and better Democrats. 

(From the diaries – promoted by Trent Thompson)

It is with great pleasure that I am able to announce the next Blue Majority endorsed candidate: Dan Maffei, from New York’s 25th Congressional District.

I am particularly excited about this endorsement for several reasons. First, I am from the district, and ever since Jim Walsh originally won the seat by a few hundred votes back when I was a freshman in high school, I have been itching for someone to defeat him. Second, Dan Maffei epitomizes one of my longest-running arguments about the need to run in every district. In 2004, no Democrat ran against Walsh, but in 2006 Dan came within 1% of defeating him. Third, having met Dan Maffei, I can honestly say that there is no member of Congress, or candidate for Congress, with whom I was more personally impressed and within whom I felt more personally comfortable (there are two or three who I feel roughly the same about). When we talked for over two hours over coffee and pizza, it felt like every idea we exchanged about strategy, policy, and life really clicked (like me, he went to local public schools, and hasn’t exactly made a fortune working in progressive politics). Dan is a serious, brilliant progressive, who absolutely means more and better Democrats. Please, contribute to Dan today.


Here is a video Dan put together to introduce himself and the district to the readers of Dailykos, MyDD, Open Left and Swing State Project a few days ago:

Now, some of you might ask something to the effect of “wait-he is running against Jim Walsh, the Republican who just said he was now opposed to the Iraq War? Isn’t that the sort of Republican behavior we should be encouraging, rather than immediately punishing with a major counter-endorsement?” If you are asking this question, I am glad you did, because even though the Maffei endorsement was decided upon several days before Walsh’s announcement, since that time it has revealed the true danger Democrats face in offering up weak, meaningless, “compromise” bills on Iraq. The NY-25 is the first case study of how Democratic weakness in the House on Iraq can allow Republican to potentially blur the difference between the two parties on Iraq, and thus wipe out virtually our entire advantage heading into the 2008 elections.


Here is the situation. Over the past nine months, Jim Walsh has said he was in favor of withdrawal, and then voted a timeline that would actually mandate withdrawal. Even in discussions with local media yesterday, and in calls I made to his staff, he refused to come out in favor of a timetable. Walsh has said that he is in favor of oversight on Iraq, and then voted against oversight. He said he was opposed to the escalation, and then refused to vote against the escalation. In May, he said he was opposed to a blank check for Bush on Iraq, and then voted to give Bush a blank check on Iraq in the capitulation bill. Everything Walsh is saying now, he ha already said before. The key difference is not hat Walsh has changed his opinion, but that Democats in Congress are changing the legislation they are trying to pass through Congress.

Back in the spring, House Democrats forced votes on stiffer legislation that required real oversight and mandated withdrawal. It only received two votes form Republicans, because the many so-called moderate Republicans who are supposedly against Bush’s policy in Iraq are not willing to pass binding legislation opposing Bush’s policy in Iraq. They are, however, willing to pass meaningless legislation that suggests Bush should change course, but does not actually require him to do so. For example, Walsh is a co-sponsor of the Kirk-Lipinski bill that does not mandate any troop withdrawal whatsoever, but sets it as a “goal.” Compromise bills of this sort are in abundance nowadays, and I imagine Walsh will vote for all of them. However, if a bill comes up that actually mandates troops withdrawal, there is still no indication that he would vote for such a bill. Given everything he has said on the matter, I bet he won’t vote for mandated troop withdrawal.

This is the crux of the problem progressives face in the 2008 elections. Bad, Bush Dog Democrats are coming up with cover your ass legislation that won’t do anything to drawdown our military involvement in Iraq. Instead, the actual impact of these bills will be to allow Bush Dogs and endangered Republicans alike to appear as though they oppose Bush’s policies, and thus strengthen all of their hands for re-election. In short, weak Iraq legislation in Congress will help empower Bush Dogs, and help prevent progressives like Maffei from taking over Republican seats. This is the exact opposite of the more and better Democrats refrain that has been traveling around the blogosphere. Weak Iraq legislation will allow Republicans like Walsh to blur their differences on Iraq all over the country, and the result will be fewer, and worse Democrats.


In the first major case study of this kind for the 2008 elections, we can’t let this stand. Supporting Dan Maffei means opposing weak, toothless Iraq legislation in Congress. It means taking a stand against a self-defeating Democratic strategy that will not only do nothing to drawdown the Iraq war, but will also go a long way toward wiping out any chance of a second Democratic wave election. It means supporting more and better Democrats, instead of reverting to the pro-war, minority status Democratic Party of 2002-2003.


Contribute to Dan Maffei on Blue Majority. Fight Bush dogs and Republican blurring alike. This lean-Kerry district is going to be a very big race down the road, and a place where a true progressive like Maffei can hold a seat for a long time to come.

(From the diaries. Please welcome Darcy Burner to the Blue Majority page. – promoted by James L.)

As already seen on places like Atrios and Dailykos, there is a major blogosphere fundraiser taking place now for Darcy Burner. The Republican incumbent in Darcy Burner’s district, Dave Reichert, is hosting a fundraiser with George W. Bush. As such, the blogosphere is countering by raising funds for Darcy Burner, who epitomizes the phrase, “more and better Democrats.” Darcy Burner has also been added to the Blue Majority page.


Darcy Burner is the anti-Bush Dog. Here she is on FISA:

And here is her Bush indebted opponent, Dave Reichert:





So, chip in some cash to Darcy. Already, more than 450 people have done so, to the tune of more than $18,000. Let’s put more and better Democrats in Congress!

(From the diaries – promoted by James L.)

Today, it is with great excitement that I am able to announce that Al Franken has been added to the Blue Majority Act Blue page that is collectively maintained by Dailykos, MyDD, Swing State Project and Open Left.

Last month, in a post on Open Left, I wondered if Al Franken was the best example of a progressive movement candidate we had seen to date, given that his campaign is overwhelmingly people powered (over 45,000 donors so far), he passed the “bar fight primary” with flying colors (more than willing to take the fight to Republicans), he comfortably and repeatedly self-identifies as a progressive, and that he came into politics as an outsider, specifically from progressive media. The response I received to that post was almost universally positive, and while I don’t know if he is the very best example, he clearly is an excellent case, and so I urge you to contribute to Al Franken on the Blue Majority Page. Let’s build the progressive movement together by supporting a first-rate movement candidate.

Today is a particularly appropriate time for us to make this endorsement because, as Jonathan Singer has noted, George Bush is in Minnesota raising money for endangered Republican incumbent Norm Coleman.  Tying himself further to George Bush will only push Coleman’s already low approval ratings in the state even lower, and make him more vulnerable than he already is. Progressives in the state are countering Bush’s visit through a variety of actions, including protests coordinated by Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, and by the Franken campaign itself looking to counter Coleman’s big money fundraiser with small donor, people-powered energy:

Let’s be a part of this effort. With his connections to George Bush, there is an opportunity to knock Coleman all but out of the race in 2007, the way Rick Santorum was all but defeated by a progressive swarm against him in 2005.


As a final note, I want to mention that while Al Franken is involved in a competitive primary in Minneosta, this endorsement comes entirely because Al is so fantastic, not because his primary opponents are clearly defective in any way. Al is a Democrat who I believe will never let us down, and always make us proud. He comes from the progressive movement, and will take the fight to Republicans. He is exactly the sort of candidate many of us have looked for these past few, and we are happy to reward that with our support in and of itself, not just relative to other candidates in the campaign. It certainly is great to make an endorsement for someone, rather than against someone else.

• Contribute to Al Franken on Blue Majority
• Al Franken for Senate official page
• Minnesota Senate race tracker wiki