Marcy Winograd, Co-founder of Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles, is establishing an exploratory committee to challenge incumbent Jane Harman (CA-36) following explosive new revelations about Harman's involvement in potentially illegal obsctruction of justice, which the Bush Department of Justice overlooked because of her political support. Winograd won almost 38% of the vote in a 2006 primary challenge.
Following Jeff Stein's initial revelation of the the Jane-Harman/Alberto-Gonzales/AIPAC scandal last weekend, Harman whipped herself into a frenzy of denial, whilst simultaneously transforming herself into the least believable champion of civil liberties outside the Republican Party.
And speaking of the Republican Party, what may have been the most significant news of the week was the revelation that--totally fulfilling Fredo's expectations--Harman was such a staunch defender of Bush lawlessness that she weighed in to help stop the NY Times from publishing the NSA wiretap story before the 2004 election.
It was known before that Harman had offered to interfere with an investigation into alleged spying by two AIPAC staffers. What wasn't known was the real reason the Bush Justice Department dropped the investigation into what she did: they needed her political support. And now it seems that they got it, too.
On April 21, NYT spokesperson Catherine Mathis emailed a statement from NYT executive editor Bill Keller to Greg Sarget, stating, in part:
Congresswoman Harman spoke to Washington Bureau Chief Phil Taubman in late October or early November, 2004, apparently at the request of General Hayden. She urged that The Times not publish the story.
It doesn't appear that Harman played a major role--such as talking directly to Keller--but she clearly did weigh in. And that could be just one step too far to keep her in the good graces of her party brethren and sistren.
"I think her credibility with fellow Democrats is going to be strained at best," said grassroots activist Marcy Winograd, co-founder of Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles--who ran a strong campaign against Harman in 2006--just before confirming that she was forming an exploratory committee for another primary challenge in 2010.
Right-wing ethnic lobbies have taken a total beating this cycle. In South Florida, all three right-wing Republicans who based their politics on a hardline against Castro are being challenged for the first time by Democrats who have changed the subject to the economy. Al Wynn got crunched by progressive Donna Edwards, and many entrenched corporate CBC members got primary challengers. But the biggest loser of the cycle is AIPAC and its orbit of right-wing allies (like Abe Foxman's Anti-Defamation League). These groups largely supported Bush in 2004 and Lieberman in 2006, using charges of antisemitism against the progressive organizations like Moveon and the blogs. This fierce conservative offensive was finally stopped in intellectual circles by the acknowledgement of a powerful and reactionary existence of an 'Israel lobby', whose interests in starting another conflict with Iran ran directly counter to the interests of most Jews.
A counter-organization, J Street, emerged, and it looks like 37 of their candidates are going to be sitting in Congress next year. Right-wing older Jews went after Obama with a vengeance, both in the primary and the general, and used every trick in the book, going so far as to argue that Obama would somehow bring forth another holocaust. Other organizations, like JewsVote, used celebrities like Sarah Silverman to reach out to younger Jews, and none of the standard propagandizing from McCain worked. Finally, the mystique of AIPAC as an unstoppable force has been punctured.
Well we smashed our goal, something I think all of us can get used to around here. Part of what we're going to do with our site is build a culture around Better Democrats, with things like a Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq and net neutrality.
Earlier today, Karl (who you are sponsoring) put up a page on the Democratic Senate candidates who are out on net neutrality. Subsequent to putting up the page, the Tom Udall and Jeff Merkley campaigns contacted us to let us know they are for net neutrality. We have some work to do with Kay Hagan, Al Franken, Ronnie Musgrove, Scott Kleeb, Rick Noriega and Mark Udall.
We're also going to have a chart up for House candidates. It is far easier to establish positions for these candidates now before they come into the House, so this is money well-spent. It's not often that we get to outsmart AT&T lobbyists who spend about $2M a cycle on their PAC (which is just one of many telecom PACs), but this is one place we can do it.
On Friday, I was on the phone with Darcy Burner, who told me that she got a call from people affiliated with the conservative Jewish political group AIPAC. They told her to distance herself from the new pro-peace group J Street, which they said is full of radical leftists who believe in capitulation to the forces of the Arab world who would overrun and destroy Israel. Like most conservative arguments, it is utter nonsense backed up by a political threat designed to suppress alternative legitimate political views.
J Street is engaging in such controversial anti-Israel stances as praising the Israeli government for negotiating a Gaza ceasefire and using diplomacy to achieve security. AIPAC is silent on the negotiations, focusing on supporting the use of force and sanctions against Iran. Rather than a pro-Israel group designed to back the policies of the Israeli government, they are, to be blunt, acting as warmongers and using the shield of a Jewish ethnicity to push their own far right views. This has provoked a reaction in the form of J Street, which thousands of Jews support, including me (I am an advisor).
AIPAC's people are backing Darcy's opponent, Dave Reichert, so if they are calling her up and arguing with her, it shows just how confident they are politically at intimidating the opposition. A J Street endorsement is clearly a very risky and scary thing to take, because you'll bring down the wrath of a powerful and well-organized group. I know of several candidates who have refused J Street's endorsements because they don't want to become targets for AIPAC. Darcy Burner, Steve Cohen, Dennis Schulman, Debbie Halvorson, and Mary Jo Kilroy are all showing incredible bravery in doing so; they are not just running as Democrats, they are running as leaders.
And this is how change happens. What's important to understand in calculating where we should direct our resources is how much candidates are willing to lead as candidates, so that we know what kind of risk profiles they will take as office-holders. Every House candidate was offered the opportunity to endorse a Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq, despite substantial institutional opposition. Every House candidate could seek the endorsement of J Street. Every House candidate could come out for net neutrality. Every candidate could associate themselves heavily with the internet left.
And yet, very few of them actually do this. It's far easier to take PAC money and AIPAC money and telecom money and say 'change' and 'Obama' and fill out some questionnaires. It's easy to go through existing power centers, existing networks, rather than support new ones that are competitive to the ones dominating the status quo. Of course, the cost to the politician of using existing networks is that they have to pretend like attacking Iran is the right thing to do, that the lies the telecom companies tell us have merit, and that liberals are crazy. They have to, in other words, sell their soul and become part of an incredibly corroded establishment process.
I'd be remiss if I didn't push our Actblue page of 'Better Democrats' as changing this dynamic. Merkley, Massa, Burner, Perriello and Donna Edwards have all come out for a Responsible Plan to End the war in Iraq. All of them are out on net neutrality. And Darcy Burner and Donna Edwards are also endorsed by J Street. This is a powerful group of candidates who reinforce each other and new centers of power through their campaigns, explicitly and overtly. So supporting them with donations strengthens the whole network and weakens the conservative side, whereas just giving to random Democrats, the Presidential ticket, or establishment parties like the DSCC or DCCC may not do so.
If you follow me on to the flip, I'll discuss how this relates to our project on mapping Congress.
Speaking before the annual AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington on Wednesday, Barack Obama made a significant break from moderate Israeli MKs and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. At issue: Arab neighborhoods in east Jerusalem that the opposition Likud refuses to concede to a Palestinian state.
Abbas sees east Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state, but hardliners have been pressuring Prime Minister Olmert and Secretary Rice for months to take the city limits off the table. Outlining his vision of Middle East policy to the pro-Israel lobby, Obama aligned himself with the more extreme elements (emphasis mine):
The Palestinians need a state that is contiguous and cohesive, and that allows them to prosper - but any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel's identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognized and defensible borders. Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.
Abbas reacted with frustration. At its lowest point in months, the energy for an "undivided Jerusalem" may have been renewed by a powerful endorsement.
Barack Obama will put his Foreign Policy vision front and center tomorrow in an address to the annual AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, D.C. A long way from being the fresh-faced upstart too green to compete on national security, Obama is now charged with presenting the Conference with a reasoned alternative to the neanderthal worldview endorsed on Monday by John McCain.
What follows Obama to AIPAC is the consistent effort among Republicans and the similarly afflicted to tie the change agent's campaign staff (or failing that, anyone he has met) to anti-Semitic nonsense. The lame effort hasn't yet forced Obama to dissociate himself from notorious terrorist-sympathizers like former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski or Columbia University cultural scholar Rashid Khalidi.
Sean Hannity is left clamoring in the meantime for a repudiation of Louis Farrakhan, having missed the last three.
I'm on the advisory board of a new pro-Israel PAC launching today called 'J Street'. It's a significant moment for progressive Jews who have previously not had our voices represented in the foreign policy realm, drowned out by right-wingers intent on the most hawkish policies out there. I am pro-Israel, I believe that respect for the Palestinians is the only way to build a sustainable living space for the Israeli populace to live in peace. The more extreme AIPAC adherents are quite different and have a more eliminationist bent. Aside from the immoral human rights violations, the Likudnick strategy is a failure both here in the US and in Israel.
AIPAC pushes the war with Iraq and it is pushing a war with Iran. It is long past time there is a different voice for American Jews, and I am proud J Street is here.
UPDATE: Here's an Op-ed by Jeremy Ben-Ami on the new initiative.
This is one of the most sane and concise statements about how this country should be thinking about its policy towards Israel that I have ever seen from any Presidential candidate from any party. And boy was I thrilled to hear it from Obama, that candidate whom I already favored.
"I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud ap-proach to Israel, then you're anti-Israel, and that can't be the measure of our friendship with Israel," leading Democratic presidential contender Illinois Senator Barack Obama said Sunday.
"If we cannot have an honest dialogue about how do we achieve these goals, then we're not going to make progress," he said.
He also criticized the notion that anyone who asks tough questions about advancing the peace process or tries to secure Israel by anyway other than "just crushing the opposition" is being "soft or anti-Israel."
Wow. That was an incredibly refreshing statement on Israel especially to hear coming from a major Presidential contender. This also appears to be another area within foreign policy where Obama differs from Hillary in a real/serious/substansive/whatever sorta way.
Update: this unhelpful/gotcha politics/irrelevant exchange happened during last night's debate in relation to something or another about Louis Farrakahn:
Referring to Farrakhan as "Minister Farrakhan," Obama hedged about whether he would reject his support. Finally, after Clinton interjected that she would reject any such support, Obama conceded: "If the word 'reject' Sen. Clinton feels is stronger than the word 'denounce,' then I'm happy to concede the point, and I would reject and denounce."
On the eve of U.S.-convened Middle East talks, a battle is erupting over whether the American Jewish community should be supporting or obstructing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's efforts to negotiate with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Olmert's opponents are pushing their case at the two main community-wide pro-Israel groups - the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby in Washington, is facing criticism from one of its main donors, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, over its support for a congressional letter that urges the Bush administration to increase assistance to the PA. An active Republican and supporter of Jewish philanthropic causes, Adelson likened AIPAC to a friend assisting Israel's suicide.
"If someone is going to jump off a bridge, it is incumbent upon their friends to dissuade them," said Adelson. He added, "I love and admire the concept of AIPAC."
Any sense of what's going on here? Adelson is a major Giuliani backer.
Tom Lantos, who is one of the worst and most dangerous members of Congress with regards to Iran and Israel and one of AIPAC's top allies, is facing a primary challenge.
Looks like former Peninsula state Sen. Jackie Speier is indeed gearing up for what promises to be a big-money and highly charged Democratic primary run next June against 13-term Rep. Tom Lantos.
"It's Time!" declares an e-mail circulated by supporters to "friends" and "fans" this past week, announcing the first organizing meeting of the Jackie Speier for Congress Exploratory Committee on Tuesday at a home in Hillsborough.
Speier has been consulting with friends and supporters about a run since a poll conducted by allies in January showed her a 2-1 favorite among voters in the 12th Congressional District, which covers northern San Mateo County and parts of San Francisco.
Speier has since hired at least one staffer to start gearing up. Nonetheless, she told us late Friday that she hasn't made a final decision - and that when she does, we'll be among the first to know.
"The good news is Congressman Lantos has finally come back to the district," she said, a digging reference to his trip home this week for the holidays and to attend a congressional subcommittee hearing on the Coast Guard's role in the big bay oil spill.
Challenge or not, Lantos, who will turn 80 in February, said through his spokeswoman: "I fully expect to win the primary in June and the general election next November.
Lantos is the only holocaust survivor in Congress, and has been outspoken on issues of genocide. He's also the Chair of the House International Relations Committee, and the author of the Iran Counter-Proliferation Act. Lantos is a member of the progressive caucus, and has a progressive record on domestic policies. On foreign policy, he is extremely right-wing, though he has distanced himself from the Iraq war after pushing aggressively for authority for Bush.
It's a fascinating and welcome development. I don't know Speier, and I don't know if Lantos has been taking care of business in his district, but the generational argument might work. You can expect AIPAC to dump money into this race, and for the antisemitism card to be used aggressively and repeatedly by older right-wingers rich and insecure Jewish men and defense contractors. Younger progressive Jews like me are willing to step up and organize on behalf of less insane representation for our community, as we did against Lieberman in 2006. I did enjoy being called a Hezbocrat during the Lebanon invasion, which took place during the Lamont-Lieberman race, as well as seeing Moveon and its mostly Jewish staff attacked by the American Defamation League's Abe Foxman because someone on an open forum they run made an antisemitic comment.
This might be one opportunity to organize again, this time more explicitly against AIPAC, though I'd need to learn more about the district and the race before doing so.
I tend to offer criticism of a politicians based on policy disagreements or issues of integrity. Over the past few days, the object of my criticism has been Barack Obama and his pugilistic language towards Iran. Obama is pushing a bill that would make it easier for American entities to divest from companies doing business with Iran, a bill with wide support in Congress as well as being a top AIPAC priority. An Obama supporter in the comments, horizonr, angrily pointed out that I was unfair to Obama because I hadn't linked to this Op-Ed he had written titled ' Hit Iran where it hurts', and that this piece gave his comments more context.
With Jewish campaign money more critical than ever and Jewish votes potentially important in a handful of key states, most of the 2008 presidential candidates are trying to carve out pro-Israel positions they can call their own.
Sen. Barak Obama (D-Ill.) has latched on to the burgeoning effort to increase the economic pressure on Iran through divestment. But Obama's strong effort on behalf of a major divestment bill is being thwarted by an unnamed Republican senator - and Obama forces say the real culprit is the Bush White House.
The controversy involves the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act of 2007, which would require companies with more than $20 million invested in Iran's energy industry to divest those funds. The measure would also make it easier for state and local governments to purge their own portfolios of Iran investments.
Obama introduced the House-passed measure earlier this summer and called for quick Senate passage; with congressional sentiment running strong on the Iran issue, that seemed a good bet.
But the legislation has been stalled - according to Senate staffers, by a secret hold by a single Republican senator, probably Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.). Those same sources say Shelby got the green light for the hold from the Bush White House, which has quietly expressed concerns about various divestment proposals because of objections from the business community and concerns about their impact on U.S. efforts to toughen European Union Iran policy.
This week Obama staffers were spreading the word about the hold, trying to generate pressure on Republican leaders and on Bush. Their strategy: to flush opponents out into the open with a quick vote, possibly using a new congressional ethics bill to deal with the secret hold.
The big question, according to Jewish sources, is whether Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) put the Iran bill at the top of his September to-do list?
Most major pro-Israel groups, including the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), are supporting the Iran divestment measure.
With the neoconservatve elites pushing for war with Iran, moves like this are unbelievably dangerous. If I were an Obama supporter, I'd be quite furious, an I'd give his campaign a piece of my mind.
UPDATE: I'm actually a little surprised that some of you require an explanation why it's a bad thing to ratchet up rhetoric pressure on Iran at this moment. I'll quote Bruce Baugh over at Yglesias's place which will hopefully provide a more full description of the situation than I did in my post.
What we most need right now with Iran is a reduction of tensions: we need to not do more things that heat up the conflicts now underway, or even that sustain them at their current level. Pushing on Iran is inevitably going to play into the hands of those who want war. Whatever the merits of fresh pressure on Iran on any front might be at a time when we aren't governed by warmongering fools and nut cases, this just isn't the moment.
We've been here before, if folks think back to 2002-3. Every expression of interest in pushing on Iraq, on any front, ended up being used as justification for the war effort. It didn't matter much what the advocates of such pressure thought they were doing - it all became grist for the war party.
So it it's really not rocket science to think that people who would prefer there not be a war with Iran ask themselves something like this: Are the rewards on this so important that they warrant giving encouragement and cover to Bush/Cheney's efforts to start a new Middle East war?
(This is a response to my post on the Teamster's divestiture of their pension funds from companies that do business with Iran.
Matt - promoted by Chris Bowers)
The Teamsters do not support attacking Iran. We are not the puppets of Fox News. And we are not a tool of some covert Neo-con conspiracy to take over the world.
What we do stand for is labor rights. We consistently speak out about labor rights violations in Iran, Latin America, Asia and anywhere people are punished, imprisoned and killed for their basic human right to freely associate and form unions.
We are National Guard and Reserve members, parents of active duty service people and veterans who served this country in times of peace and conflict.
To suggest that our effort to put economic pressure on Iran, a country that has repeatedly imprisoned labor organizers, is part of a "PR ploy for military action against Iran" is ludicrous, especially coming from our friends in the progressive community.
This is just lovely (from Neil King Jr at the Wall Street Journal).
Teamster boss James Hoffa is jumping into the Iran-divestment movement, urging the union's pensions funds to shed all shares they own in companies doing business in Iran.
In a letter set to go out on Thursday to more than 170 fund managers, Hoffa cites the recent crackdown in Iran on top labor leaders and widespread allegations that Iran is arming and training insurgents in Iraq as reasons why fund managers should "give consideration to divesting" in Iran-related shares. The Teamsters' pension funds amount to about $110 billion.
In the letter he sent out, Hoffa cites labor violations as one reason for the divestment, but the reality of his words is that this is just one more PR ploy for military action against Iran.
Further, Iran supplies weapons and training to Shia militant groups that attack our troops in Iraq, according to the U.S. State Department...
What I am concerned about, though, is that Teamsters' hard-earned money would support in any way an enemy of the United States of America. No Teamster should ever have to worry that his or her retirement money is used to support terrorism in any way.
I have no special insight on Iran strategy, but it's obvious and it's been obvious for months that there's a PR campaign to gin up war with Iran. John Bolton, Bill Kristol, and Michael Rubin are all pushing for it. Now Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters are in on an expansion of an unethical war to new countries.
I think someone did invent a time machine and put all of us in it.
Update: I put Robert Greenwald's Fox Attacks Iran up top so you can see that this is part of a PR roll-out of a new product.
