Our efforts to build a strong Democratic majority in Congress didn’t stop with the highly successful Netroots Candidates Actblue page of the last cycle. Building quality Democratic caucuses in the House and Senate is the continuing mission of the Swing State Project, just as it should be of larger progressive blogosphere. In that vein, DailyKos, MyDD, and SSP have joined forces once again to promote candidates that Democrats can be proud of in 2008 with our Blue Majority fundraising page.
So far, we’ve endorsed Fightin’ Democrat Charlie Brown in his race against the embattled Republican John Doolittle of CA-04, and progressive rising star Donna Edwards in her rematch bid against the bankruptcy bill-loving and Harold Ford-endorsed Al Wynn of MD-04. To read more about Brown and Edwards, check out their excellent introductions by Markos and Matt Stoller here and here.
As David said below, now is our chance to make a mark and help give these challengers an early boost before the media cycle is utterly dominated by the Presidential election campaign. Our goal is to amass 100 new contributions for Edwards and Brown before the end of the second fundraising quarter (Saturday, June 30th). Can you afford to give $10 today to the Blue Majority candidates? Let’s make sure that Republicans and weak Democrats like Wynn alike know that we won’t back down.
I was apprehensive about the Lamont (along with the Donna Edwards, Winograd, etc.) campaigns last year because I felt that the money, time, and energy would better be spent defeating Republicans. However, the recent weakness of the Democratic Congress, from the secret trade deals of Charlie Rangel (let’s find a challenger for him, please?) to John Dingell’s attempt to gut state carbon dioxide regulations has convinced me that we also need to clean our own house, so to speak. In my opinion, the corporate, elitist, legally corrupt “moderates” are a major drag on our party whether it comes from vacillitating on Iraq when the majority of Americans want out or the failure to do more on corruption. So, I fully support efforts to replace the yellow streak Democrats with true Democrats.
But there seems to be a chink in the netroots fundraising logic. Money for progressive Democrats to take out status quo Democrats. Like I said, great. Money for Democrats to take out Republicans. Needless to say, that’s wonderful, too. But what about money for Democrats already in office who stay true to (or adopt, we’re always glad to have converts) progressive ideals? Perhaps having a source for money outside of elitist sources (especially from corporate PACs and individuals whose requests go against Democratic/Progressive ideals such as labor rights and environmentalism) would keep and bring more Democrats to the fold.
After all, most of our gains were in suburban areas (New York City, Denver, Philadelphia, San Francisco, etc) in expensive media markets.