An exciting new piece of progressive infrastructure is emerging to help progressive candidates in federal campaigns: The Progressive Change Campaign Committee. Rather than focusing on large, independent expenditures, ala the Club for Growth, it seeks to help progressive federal candidates, such as Tom Geoghegan, by providing them with expert staff, advice, strategy and connection to the netroots. The focus will be on open seat primaries, and progressives who face competitive general elections, but primaries against conservative Democrats might also come into play. From a Huffington Post story today:
A group of progressive operatives from MoveOn and labor circles have teamed with a prominent Internet pioneer to try to give the Sam Bennetts of the world the final push they need -- and send even more Perriellos to Congress. The organization will be the first of its kind exclusively to focus on electing progressive Democrats in congressional elections.
It won't focus its energy on unseating conservative Democrats, but Green, a cofounder, didn't rule out the possibility. Instead, it will prioritize competitive open-seat primaries and help general election candidates like Bennett and Perriello run effective campaigns.
The group's first forays are likely to be in the Illinois district vacated by Rahm Emanuel, who left to become Obama's chief of staff. Green says the group is in talks with a progressive labor lawyer, Tom Geoghegan, in that district. Another potential target: the California district emptied by Hilda Solis, who's been tapped to be labor secretary.(...)
The PCCC aims to be something of a guiding resource for first-time candidates like Bennett. By helping candidates find good campaign staff and make more effective use of the Internet, the group thinks candidates could save tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in consultant fees. Whereas consultants might charge thousands to record and pump out robo-calls, for instance, the PCCC could show a candidate how to do it in-house, online, for a fraction of the cost.
The organization is for real, composed of former campaign staff, MoveOn.org staff, and labor organizers. It is also on track to raise $650,000 this year, and has MoveOn.org backing. It should hit its fundraising targets no sweat, and it's experienced team knows what it is doing in a campaign setting. This is an exciting new piece of progressive infrastructure that should combine nicely with other emerging efforts, such as the primary project that I mentioned last month.
Organizing energy is clearly with progressives right now. Since noon Wednesday, 47 members of the Open Left community have raised over $2,200 $2,600 for Tom Geoghagen and BlogPac. Now, the PCCC has been added to Better Democrats 2010 as well. While it may seem shocking early to start a 2010 campaign page, the early bird gets to govern.
In my book, The Uprising, I wrote an entire chapter about the state of the antiwar movement, and the chapter included a look at Moveon.org. The chapter examined an organization that had - at the time - become a reflexive appendage of the Democratic Party (as opposed to a more movement-based organization focused on progressivism). I experienced a bit of backlash from Moveon partisans for the book, but that was to be expected. Talk about a taboo subject - in this case, the problem of movement-branded organizations becoming megaphones for anyone with a D behind their name - and you are bound to get people pissed.
I consider a lot of the Moveon.org leadership friends, I think they are solid progressives, and my book's chapter was meant as an honest look at both the success and failure of the organization. And I didn't enjoy writing the part about the book that explored Moveon's behavior in early 2007 - specifically, when the organization backed off pressuring congressional Democrats to take a strong position on ending the war. That's why I was thrilled to read this dispatch in the Huffington Post today - it suggests a positive shift:
Two days, ago, I compared the average rate of error from final predictions to final election results for Pollster.com, fivethirtyeight.com, and my own predictions. Looking at 65 elections on November 4th, 2008, where all three sites made public final predictions / estimates, it turned out that Pollster.com and fivethirtyeight.com were equally accurate, and that I lagged about 8-10% behind.
While I was a bit further behind, I still wanted to see where I was less accurate. It turns out that when blowouts (final margin over 20%) and rarely polled elections (only one poll in the final eight days) are removed, my simple, rudimentary methodology was actually the equal of Pollster and 538. As long as there were at least two polls in the final eight days, simple poll averaging was just as good at predicting election outcomes as any other methodology around. Data in the extended entry.
Take a look through it yourself: House and Senate. You will find a lot of, um, interesting stuff there. In my summary, I will remove the legislation introduced by Republicans, because it isn't going anywhere, and also the "resolution recognizing" legislation, because it is essentially meaningless. Then, we will look at what is left, summarize it, and decide which are the most important pieces of legislation to track in committee.
What a crazy year so far. And I might have surgery tomorrow, too. Oy.
In case you have not heard by now, Open Left's service provider, Soapblox, is currently in serious trouble. Given that Open Left is the largest website on Soapblox, and that BlogPac has given more money to Soapblox than any other organization (for the past two years, we have paid the hosting fees for almost all of the fifty-state blogs, and also invested money to improve server security), this had me in a near state of panic for a while. Fortunately, the crisis seems to be temporarily receding--for now.
This is a reminder of how much progressive infrastructure is operated on a shoestring. Soapblox was run by a single person as a part-time job even though, collectively, Soapblox websites--including most local blogs, Open Left, Pam's House Blend, Swing State Project, My Left Wing--had more than 100,000 readers a day. As Matt Glazer writes at Burnt Orange Report, another Soapblox dependant site:
Our site, along with nearly 100 others, are run on the SoapBlox platform. That is hundreds of thousands of eyes across the nation who use SoapBlox and never knew it.(...)
Again, Burnt Orange Report and our data seem to be in working order and intact. But if SoapBlox is down and fails to return, nearly 90% of the statewide blog infrastructure must reorganize. Nationally that means state and local sites are no longer able to cover their state legislative sessions or city, state, or statewide races.
In the long run, this outage (temporary or permanent) directly hurts all of us.
Paul developed and maintained SoapBlox for little money and no fame. In fact, SoapBlox is just a part time job for Paul, and like many of us that do this, we are required to have paid full time jobs in order to maintain and run our online projects. Today highlight why this systemic problem must be fixed long term.
While everything is in flux right now, later today BlogPac will start a "Save Soapblox" campaign to make sure that this never happens again, and to generally improving progressive blogosphere infrastructure. I will have more details when they are available, but for right now, BlogPac is on the new Better Democrats 2010 page. I know we are in a recession, but any contribution you can give in this time of crisis will be used to help keep Soapblox operational.
This is our first endorsement of the 2009-2010 election cycle, and the start of our Better Democrats 2010 page--Chris
Look, if you've read my work at all, you know I don't have a lot of good things to say about lots of politicians, and I don't spend my time shilling for anyone simply because they have a D behind their name. So I hope you take that into consideration when you read what I'm about to write:
As the Washington Post reports today, Tom is running in the March 3rd special election primary in Illinois' 5th district to replace Rahm Emanuel - one of the worst influences on Democratic politics in a generation. The idea that a lawmaker as soulless as Emanuel could be replaced with a progressive - any progressive - is an amazing thought. The idea that he could be replaced with one of the greatest living progressives in America is beyond amazing - it should make you contribute whatever you can right now.
As I said to start, I don't use phrases like "one of the greatest living progressives in America" often - if ever. But I mean it when I say it about Tom. I've written two columns about him in the last year (here and here), and if you've read any of his work, you know why I use superlatives to describe him.
Building on the 2006 class that gave Democrats a majority, this freshman class serves to broaden a moderate coalition considered more conservative on social issues, particularly in the House. The Democratic leadership almost certainly will be mindful - as it was in the 2008 election - of the members' individual vulnerabilities, especially since several were elected by extraordinarily narrow margins.
Gary C. Jacobson, an expert on Congress and a professor at the University of California/San Diego, described the cumulative impact of the 2006 and 2008 elections: "I think the effect is to move the Democratic caucus somewhat to the right and if it wants to stay as large as it is now, it has to accommodate these folks.
"You're not going to see any wild, left-wing policymaking," he added. "You're not going to get the Berkeley wish-list out of this crowd."
It has been a consistent refrain here at Open Left that progressives have made substantial gains in the U.S. House, and are now in control of the chamber. However, is the New York Times right, and has the House actually moved to the center rather than the left?
The New York Times is wrong. In the extended entry, I explain why.
Reid stated, "I don't believe in the executive power trumping everything... I believe in our Constitution, three separate but equal branches of government."
"If Obama steps over the bounds, I will tell him. ... I do not work for Barack Obama. I work with him," he said.
Of course, in the same interview Reid says Democrats must be "very, very careful" to avoid overreaching - which implies that Reid's comments about not "stepping over the bounds" is about Obama going too far to the left (signals suggest he has nothing to worry about on that score). So, when you put those two statements together, it may be that Reid is saying that he wants to assert congresional power in stopping Obama from moving left.
All of that said, I agree with the spirit of Reid's comments on executive power and Congress's constitutional responsibilities. We need an active Congress - not a politburo. A vibrant legislative branch is what democracy is all about.
It is has been widely reported that Americans strongly support the job Barack Obama has been doing as President-elect. Honeymoon period. Not surprising except the level of support (exceeding 70 percent in some polls) is very high. My assumption, however, was that the 25-30 percent who don't support him would really dislike him (W loyalists).
According to Rasmussen polling that was the case in the days after the election: 32 percent of those polled strongly disapproved. But that has changed rather dramatically over the last two months:
As you can see, in the most recent poll only 13 percent say they strongly disapprove.What caused this sharp decline? Here are some possibilities:
1. The public likes the job Obama is doing during the transition. The cabinet picks, the press conferences, etc. The "centrist" picks reassure worried Republicans.
2. Some former "haters" have just gotten used to the idea of Obama as President. Some may still disapprove, just not "strongly." Others may be at least tepid supporters at this point.
3. Bandwagon effect. Since so many people seem so happy with him, disapprovers have given up saying they strongly disapprove. I'd be inclined to give this some credence except Ramussen uses robocalls and there's really no peer pressure keeping the respondent from answering honestly.
4 (my favorite). The months of negative attacks on Obama, calling him a terrorist symphathizer or even a secret terrorist leader, the anti-Christ, etc. scared many people into not just opposing Obama but being fearful. Without the constant barage of negative messaging, voters are beginning to see Obama in a different light.
It doesn't seem the Blagojevich story has done much to keep the "strong disapprovers" strongly disapproving. Because no evidence has emerged to refute the widely reported story that Obama would offer Blagojevich nothing but "gratitude" this episode may have helped Obama in many voters' eyes.
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Look, if you've read my work at all, you know I don't have a lot of good things to say about lots of politicians, and I don't spend my time shilling for anyone simply because they have a D behind their name. So I hope you take that into consideration when you read what I'm about to write:
