This public option fight has been a loooong fight. We've all been hit with numerous requests to sign petitions, make phone calls, attend rallies, give money, etc.
In our money-laden, lobbyist-laden political system, it's easy to wonder if grassroots pressure makes a difference. And as MLK said, "sometimes we get discouraged and sometimes disappointed with the slow pace of things."
The fight is not over. But today's New York Times had some very encouraging news for activists:
Senate Leader Takes Risk Pushing Public Insurance Plan
...lawmakers said Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) was increasingly leaning toward the idea of including a version of a public insurance option, albeit one that would allow states to opt out of such a system, in the chamber's bill.
...Mr. Reid's outlook was shaped, in part, by opinion polls showing public support for a government insurance plan, which would compete with private insurers.
..."There is a growing sense that we need to lead on this issue and not wait for it to be offered on the Senate floor," a senior Democratic aide said. "The idea is that it's better to show some fight."
Hmmm...polls are fueling a "growing sense" among Reid's crew that "its better to show some fight" than to cave quietly?
Progressive Change Campaign Committee co-founder Stephanie Taylor immediately put out this response:
"The growing sense that it is time for Majority Leader Reid to be strong and lead comes after an intense week of grassroots activism -- and the release of our new poll showing that Reid's political survival in Nevada requires strong leadership on the public option.
Thousands of people donated this week at BoldProgressives.org to launch a TV ad in Nevada that asks 'if Harry Reid is strong and effective enough as a leader to pass a public health insurance option into law.'
Grassroots pressure is working, and we will continue to keep the pressure on until the insurance companies are defeated and a strong public option is passed into law."
A lot of other groups have also been keeping the pressure on Democrats for months and months: Democracy for America, MoveOn, Blue America, FDL, Credo, OpenLeft, and others. National and state bloggers -- and progressive media voices like The Young Turks -- have pushed politicians and gotten facts out there that the mass media consistently missed. And many local activists have started their own grassroots efforts to pressure their senators.
Sometimes we get discouraged. This fight has been long. It's not over yet. But it's important to take note of progress along the way and recognize that grassroots pressure works.
More and more former interrogators and counterinsurgency experts are using Dick Cheney's recent ubiquity to expose his iniquity regarding the torture and abuse of detainees. Earlier this week, I wrote about Major Matthew Alexander, the former Senior Interrogator who conducted over 300 interrogations in Iraq and supervised 1,000 more. Alexander relied upon conventional means of interrogation, and his efforts led to the capture and killing of al-Qaeda leader Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi. Yet Alexander also witnessed the perilous consequences of Cheney's torture policy.
In an exclusive interview with Brave New Foundation, Alexander said, "At the prison where I conducted interrogations, we heard day in and day out foreign fighters who had been captured state that the number one reason they had come to fight in Iraq was because of torture and abuse, what had happened at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib."
Today, MoveOn.org and VoteVets.org joined the growing movement to amplify the testimonies of former interrogators and reveal the repercussions of treating prisoners inhumanely. Their joint campaign features a video with Jay Bagwell, an Afghanistan veteran and counterintelligence agent, who reaffirmed Alexander's assessment of Cheney's torture policy. According to Bagwell, "Torture puts our troops in danger, torture makes our troops less safe, torture creates terrorists. It's used so widely as a propaganda tool now in Afghanistan. All too often, detainees have pamphlets on them, depicting what happened at Guantanamo."
While General David "Betray Us" Petraeus must be thrilled with his conversion from traitor to saint in the eyes of the pseudo-left and amazed that such things can be accomplished simply by changing the political party of the president, the group that formerly bashed him with an ad in the New York Times and now supports whatever Obama does is not as new to supporting wars as this simple story suggests.
I'm on a flight so there will be little blogging today, but I did read this piece on Moveon member priorities.
What they chose: universal health care; economic recovery and job creation; building a green economy; stopping climate change; and end the war in Iraq.
What they didn't: holding the Bush administration accountable; fighting for gay rights and LGBT equality; and reforming campaigns and elections.
MoveOn Executive Director Eli Pariser says that this happy alignment with Barack Obama's agenda - and fortuitous absence of conflict with same - comes in part because "the people he's listening to and the people we're listening to are the same people."
This is a very interesting problem. Moveon has never been a particularly left-wing organization, it's mostly a collection of base Democrats with moderately liberal sympathies. It collected people angry about Clinton's impeachment, 9/11, the war in Iraq, PBS, Bush, and now Obama supporters. This is a mainstream group, and it's going to continue to act like a mainstream group.
When San Francisco blogger Sasha McGee noticed that Gavin Newsom was being feted by PG&E and AT&T at the Denver convention, it wasn't much of a surprise to see a DLC candidate running for governor of the largest state. What was a surprise, was that Moveon was also listed as a sponsor.Moveon is Not Greenwashing Gavin Newsom's Corporate Party
I'll be on the Kojo Nnamdi Show at 1pm to discuss the emergence of the netroots and what it means for the political system. I'll be on with Patrick Ruffini of the Next Right, a very smart thinker on the other side of the divide. The Kojo Nnamdi Show is local to DC, and it was a very important part of the Donna Edwards versus Al Wynn race.
It's one of those 'where is the political system going' kind of discussions, which is something I blogged about last week at TPMCafe to 'celebrate' Moveon's ten year anniversary. The discussion was kicked off by Nation Editor Chris Hayes, and the interesting stuff (to me) was Justin Ruben and Ben Brandzel opened up the hood of the organization. It turns out that most Moveon activists were never activated before in any capacity and that the group has an elaborate volunteer structure. Meanwhile, organizing legend Marshall Ganz said it's not real organizing because it doesn't generate leadership (which he says the Obama campaign does). Labor lawyer Nathan Newman said Moveon leaders don't care about poor people, and John Stauber argues it is an anti-democratic marketing machine for the Democratic establishment. I tried to lay out a framework for understanding Moveon in the context of the rest of the professional advocacy groups that work on a national level.
Finally, I signed this letter put together by The Nation on Obama's move away from the core values that won him the primary. It's not just a group of lefties that signed it - so called 'radical centrist' Steve Clemons praised it effusively after adding his name. The aggressive turn of these left-wing organizations on the web towards a form of advocacy journalism and activism is part of the overall shift I'll be discussing on the show.
Part of Living Liberally's mission has been to promote engagement and collaboration among progressive organizations. To fulfill this goal we at Living Liberally have decided to feature interviews with people involved in different parts of the progressive movement. Hopefully, through these interviews, we can learn about what progressives are working on today, and get a little more in depth about what its like to be a part of the progressive movement.
Our first interviewee, Daniel Mintz, is in Research and Development at progressive powerhouse MoveOn.org Political Action. He currently lives in Brooklyn and every once in a while shows up at the Original Drinking Liberally. Enjoy!
Seth Pearce: So, what did your parents say when your organization was condemned by the US congress? Daniel Mintz: I think, they, like a lot of people, were just blown away that with so many huge problems to tackle, the US Congress decided to spend so much time talking about a newspaper ad. Just like, whether you agreed or disagreed with the ad, what a manufactured controversy.
SP: What exactly do you do at MoveOn? DM: Officially, I'm in charge of Research and Development, which is to say that I'm the R&D dept. (we're a pretty tiny shop). What that means in practice is that I get to have my hands in lots of cool stuff that we're trying out.
SP: Stuff John McCain would know how to use? DM: Not so much.
SP: People think of MoveOn as this big shadowy progressive organization, running some kind of secret progressive world order- what are some specific things that MoveOn is working on right now? DM: Ha. What are we working on right now?...Let's see...We're getting ready to run a massive get out the vote operation in the fall, hundreds of paid organizers working with tens of thousands of volunteers. We'll be essentially combining our 2004 program, Leave No Voter Behind, where people in swing states canvassed their neighbors, with our 2006 program, Call for Change, where MoveOn members across the country made more than 7 million calls to voters in key House and Senate races.
We're also working on FISA: Right now, we're asking thousands of MoveOn members to call their senators every day to tell them not to cave on the FISA "compromise".
And we're running a National Day of Action for an Oil-Free President at gas stations across the country in a few weeks. McCain is pretty darn tight with Big Oil. Many of the more than 100 lobbyists associated with his campaign are lobbyists for Big Oil. We wanted to highlight those ties and push for our next president to free himself and us of our dependence on foreign oil. So we're holding hundreds of gas station rallies where thousands of MoveOn members will show up at local gas stations to rally and call for a real, progressive solutions to the energy crisis.
I got an email today from Moveon asking me to sign this petition against various media outlets for distorting Wes Clark's words. The subtext here is that Moveon is standing by Clark while Obama disavowed him, an implicit statement from Moveon leaders that they've had enough triangulating nonsense from Obama. And Obama gets it, fortunately. Conservatives have been using Clark to attack Obama, and Obama responded by wisely bringing Clark in from the cold. This is very good on all counts. I'm impressed with Obama's reversal, I'm pleased that Clark stood up for himself, and of course, the subtext here was Moveon's savvy counterpunch against Obama for his patriotism dig yesterday at Moveon.
They couldn't respond directly, even if they wanted to. Obama's speech attacking Moveon for their Petraeus ad left the group vulnerable, because their members would probably prize loyalty to Obama over loyalty to a questionable campaign tactic. With FISA and Clark, Moveon is on more solid ground. It's good leadership on Moveon's part, and a nice tacit reversal from Obama.
A terrific surrogate in Wes Clark and a great possible cabinet appointee has been rescued from dumb media oblivion.
On a day in which Obama disavowed both Moveon and Wes Clark, it's worth making a few points. One, Barack Obama did not support Ned Lamont's campaign against Joe Lieberman, Wes Clark did. Two, Barack Obama did not bother to vote up or down on the resolution censuring Moveon for their Petraeus ad, which is part of a pattern of non-votes (Kyl-Lieberman anyone?). Three, in Obama's smear of Wes Clark, Obama actively took Clark's words out of context and then used them to disavow a military veteran who had served his country with great distinction, returning home from Vietnam after being riddled with bullets, and going on to stop a genocide in the Balkans as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO. Apparently going after a veteran is ok, as long it's a Democrat.
Obama's disavowal of Wes Clark is not a surprise if you were paying attention to his endorsement of Joe Lieberman in 2006, his wan opposition to the Military Commissions Act in 2006, and his vacillating conduct around Moveon and Petraeus. It doesn't make any sense, either. Despite Obama's handling of Lieberman with kid gloves, Lieberman is an implacable foe and will be speaking at the Republican National Convention.
Part of Obama's consolidation of the party is his consolidation of message. Today, he took two more steps towards his goal of centralizing all power through his internet-infused post-partisan machine. First, he's just gone after one of the top surrogate for Congressional Democrats in 2006 in the country, Wes Clark. Clark made an honest observation, that John McCain has no executive experience in national security, and though his heroism in Vietnam deserves respect, it is not a substitute for experience. Obama's spokesperson denounced the comments as impugning McCain's patriotism.
Meanwhile, Republicans tied Clark's comments to Obama anyway, alleging that Obama put him up to it. In addition, Obama rebuked Moveon in his speech on patriotism, bringing up the Betray Us ad and saying how everyone should respect military service under all circumstances. Moveon was not in the news, Petraeus was not in the news, Obama simply chose to bring this up today in his speech on patriotism.
Obama's consolidation of the party amounts to a desire to eliminate all vulnerable competing power centers, and this includes Moveon and Clark. Obama can't tell the big donors behind Moveon to close the spigot, because there are no big donors behind Moveon. Obama can try to sideswipe the group by communicating directly with Moveon members through the media and through his own internet operations. I wouldn't be surprised to see Moveon take a hit in donations and activism for this, but then, it's possible that the membership is frustrated over FISA and the opposite will occur. He can undermine Clark by damaging his reputation, taking Clark's comments out of context and then using a straw man to pretend like Clark had attacked McCain's service. Media Matters documents that this is not what Clark said, but Obama's imperative is not to the truth but to increase his own range of action within the party.
Obama has done so, hurting one of the top Democratic PACs and outside groups, and one of the top Democratic surrogates. He has also reduced his own range of actions in the general election and shouldered more of the burden on to his own campaign.
Chuck Todd calls Moveon's latest ad, featuring a mother asking McCain not to kill her child with irresponsible warmongering in Iraq, 'shameless'.
I didn't notice any outcry from NBC when Progress for America aired this ad - one of the largest political TV ad purchases in 2004 - exploiting American deaths on 9/11 to promote Bush's reelection.
I get why discussing McCain's Iraq-related policy ideas and acknowledging that they will lots of people is impolite. But not discussing them, and worse still, a journalist on a TV channel that has access to the public airwaves in return for looking out for the public good actually suggesting that others should not discuss them, is, well shameless.
Glenn Greenwald is reporting that Comcast is refusing to run an ad critical of Representative Chris Carney, an ad which features Comcast itself as a major donor to and beneficiary of Carney's policy choices. The network told him that they would "face potential liability for any defamation contained in the spot."
Adam Green of Moveon hit back at Obama on the Huffington Post with his blog post 'Obama Got Outfoxed' and Markos hit back with his blog post 'Obama and Fox News'.
All of us have endorsed Obama, and have criticized him over this, but the reality is that there was no communications with anyone about the decision-making or process that led to him being on Fox News. There is also no messaging around Wright or any other bubbling stories. There is basically no blogger communications going on as far as I can tell, the kind so critical to a good blog strategy like Tim Tagaris ran with the Lamont campaign. The Clinton campaign does a much better job, down to little details such as inviting bloggers on press calls. Even the McCain operation, with a much less significant blogosphere on the right, is having McCain out on blogger conference calls. I find it odd that John McCain is doing a better job than either Democrat in handling his allies, but that's the case.
Anyway, it's clear that Obama's campaign has not fixed its relationship with the blogs and the liberal internet space. That is most likely because their new media director, Joe Rospars, is a remarkably skilled logistics operator with limited bandwidth for communications. The Obama campaign could sure use a Peter Daou type.
As the general election approaches, it would helpful it this logistical problem was fixed.
Journalist Martin Kady II wrote a story today in the Politico that I criticized here. Here's the specific problematic passage.
Leaders of the anti-war movement are also accepting that their best hope is a symbolic vote.
We're advocating putting as many of the provisions in the first round" of the legislation, said John Isaacs, executive director of Council for a Livable World, which is part of a larger anti-war coalition led by MoveOn.org. "We recognize that ultimately the wars are going to be funded, ... that some type of supplemental will be passed.
John Isaacs denied saying that this would be a symbolic vote, and it's quite obvious that a war funding could have conditions - a timeline for withdrawal for instance - attached, obviating the point of Kady's paragraph. Furthermore, I have confirmed with Moveon that neither Eli Pariser, Nita Chaudhary, or Ilyse Hogue spoke with the Politico for this article.
I am emailing Martin Kady II to ask him which leaders of the anti-war movement he means, why he quoted a member of a different group to represent Moveon, and whether he will provide the full context of Isaacs's quote.
UPDATE: I have gone back and forth with Kady numerous times, and he will not provide me with information on which anti-war leaders he or other Politico reporters talked to, nor would he provide evidence to back up his claim about anti-war groups. Furthermore, when pressed, he changed the wording from 'leaders' to 'members' when characterizing the anti-war proponents he apparently is citing.
Ryan Grim, who helped Kady write the story, instantly sent me the full quote by John Isaacs, which, as you can see, undercuts Kady's article.
We're saying, to put it in simple terms, to put as many good provisions related to Iraq-Well, let me just step back. We recognize that ultimately the wars are going to be funded, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that some type of supplemental bill will be passed. We also recognize that a lot of grassroots activists are going to yell at Democrats and say, 'Hey, you're funding the war. In 2006 we elected you to stop the war.' So we're advocating putting as many good provisions in the supplemental, at least the first version. For example, not only setting a deadline to bring the troops home but a ban on torture, a requirement that this upcoming U.S. Iraqi long-term security agreement goes to Congress, or so-called dwell time between deployments and so on. Plus, we don't deal with domestics-the economic stimulus package-but that's probably going to be another element."
"We're recognizing that if a bill goes to the president with a lot of provisions that we'd like to see in it, the president's going to veto the bill. Then we're saying, 'Well, okay, you take out the provisions the administration absolutely can't live with, such as a deadline for troops, but see if we can get some of the other provisions adopted, even in the second bill that the president ultimately signs.'"
Me: So leave in, like, ban on torture and long-term security?
Isaacs: Exactly.
In our correspondence, Kady marked his notes 'off the record' despite proffering no useful information and without soliciting my agreement. I found that odd to say the least. Originally I began writing about this because I was confused that anti-war groups were openly giving up on the supplemental. It turns out that they weren't, or at least that Kady did not find evidence to that effect. Now it appears that Isaacs gave a more comprehensive view of the situation, and that Kady just put Isaacs's snipped quote to tell the story he wanted to tell. I say 'appears' because I am still waiting to hear from Kady what evidence he has about the anti-war groups.
This kind of misinformation is a serious problem, and the pervasive use of conventional wisdom or the regurgitation of things that everyone just 'knows' will happen creates a situation that incentivizes infighting and disempowerment from citizens. It's no wonder the Politico loves engaging in it.
UPDATE AGAIN: Kady sent me this statement.
First, I'll concede that we could have been more clear in referring to the "symbolic" vote as relating specifically to a troop withdrawal timetable. There will likely be a vote on this, yet it will probably die on the Senate floor, and most anti-war lawmakers I spoke to admit that is the likely course this legislation will take - they simply want a vote on a supplemental with a timetable, but they realize this will not make it to the president's desk, thus making the vote symbolic. We spoke to four lawmakers from the Out of Iraq Caucus about this, as well as people involved in the anti war movement. Then I wrote the story.
As to your set of questions about who we did and did not talk to - I can't on any story provide a complete list of every person I speak to on a story - that part of the deliberative process of reporting is between a reporter and his or her sources. Like all stories, we spoke to more people than were quoted in the story, and I don't believe the story suggests we talked to MoveOn.
Hey folks - this is Adam Green with MoveOn. Chris and Matt have graciously opened up the front page of OpenLeft this Sunday morning from 10am to 11am EST for me to liveblog ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos.
I wanted to invite you to join me here for active discussion, and to suggest in the comments below any thoughts you have on things to look for. Be they big issues or small nuances...or questions you think should be asked to McCain...I'm all ears.
As many of you probably know, MoveOn launched a petition this week to ABC and other networks in reaction to this week's travesty of a debate. If you haven't seen it yet, it says:
"Debate moderators abuse the public trust every time they ask trivial questions about gaffes and 'gotchas' that only political insiders care about. Enough with the distractions--ABC and other networks must focus on issues that affect people's daily lives."
There was a ton of energy behind this media critique. A quarter-million people signed MoveOn's petition within 3 days -- thousands of them not prior MoveOn members. (If you haven't signed yet, click here.) And the sentiment was equally strong on many blogs, and even on the pages of the Washington Post, Editor & Publisherr, and other places.
When it comes to what questions should be asked to McCain tomorrow, I have to admit, I'm a little torn--and I'd really value other people's thoughts. (More below...)
"Moveon.org endorsed [Sen. Barack Obama] -- which is like a gusher of money that never seems to slow down," Clinton said to a meeting of donors. "We have been less successful in caucuses because it brings out the activist base of the Democratic Party. MoveOn didn't even want us to go into Afghanistan. I mean, that's what we're dealing with. And you know they turn out in great numbers. And they are very driven by their view of our positions, and it's primarily national security and foreign policy that drives them. I don't agree with them. They know I don't agree with them. So they flood into these caucuses and dominate them and really intimidate people who actually show up to support me."
I love that Clinton is granting so much credit to Moveon and the activist base, explicitly saying that we are why she is losing. That's a concession towards our political power that I wouldn't expect, and it's welcome. Here's Moveon's response.
"Senator Clinton has her facts wrong again. MoveOn never opposed the war in Afghanistan, and we set the record straight years ago when Karl Rove made the same claim. Senator Clinton's attack on our members is divisive at a time when Democrats will soon need to unify to beat Senator McCain. MoveOn is 3.2 million reliable voters and volunteers who are an important part of any winning Democratic coalition in November. They deserve better than to be dismissed using Republican talking points."
What I find interesting is how Clinton insists that she does not agree with Moveon with regards to foreign policy. What exactly she mean by that? I know she hasn't apologized for her Iraq war vote, and that her surrogates seem to think that is purely tactical. This seems to belie that analysis; Clinton really doesn't think her vote was wrong and does not see the importance of a political consensus for a different foreign policy apparatus. And that's why she thinks Moveon is such a problem.
The biggest unknown in Congressional races this season is Freedom's Watch, the shadowy right-wing group that claims it is going to spend $250M on Congressional campaigns. Shadowy is actually an overstatement, since it is well-known that it is right-wing billionaires like casino magnate Sheldon Adelson who are putting up the money.
Money tends to be a statement of priorities. And while the Democrats might look divided, the fundraising cycle is just horrible for the GOP. It's not just John McCain's poor numbers. The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) is in even worse shape than previously understood.
As the National Republican Congressional Committee last week released the first details of the accounting scandal involving former Treasurer Christopher Ward, the committee's top official also asserted for the first time that the debt left over from the 2006 elections was actually in the range of $19 million.
NRCC Chairman Tom Cole (Okla.) had previously said that the committee's debt from last cycle was about $16 million, even though the highest amount reported to the Federal Election Commission was $14.5 million.
That's outright fraud, which cuts at the trust large donors have in the committee. And frankly, this could be more widespread in the GOP than it appears, as Ward was the treasurer for multiple committees.
The commitments from participating organizations, who have banded together to "Take Back America" --
AFL-CIO - $50M program, targeting labor households, of course
Women's Voices Women's Vote Action Fund - $30M, targeting single women
National Council of La Raza - Democracia USA -- $4M - $6M
ACORN - $35M, targeting households in communities of color
Rock the Vote - $10M
Move On - $30M
The groups' effort will be supplemented by related PAC activity -- to the tune of $200M
And Change To Win - $100M
Todd Beeton explores this with this excellent post. I expect that McCain's favorables among union members - which right now are quite high - will decline as members hear from their union that McCain voted against overtime pay, against the minimum wage, and for the far right-wing economic agenda. The AFL-CIO and Change to Win budgets will see to that.
Rock the Vote and Women's Voices Women's Vote are both substantially ramped up. WVWV is a remarkable organization with a proven model tackling an immense civic challenge: the large number of unregistered single women. I would expect districts that have lots of them to shift their voter universe and makeup quite substantially, so any budding demographers that want to figure out where the single unregistered women are located will have a leg up in understand which districts and states will be better pickup opportunities. I don't yet understand Rock the Vote's strategy, but the youth space is exploding with innovation.
Moveon's budget is not substantially larger than it was in 2006, but they have become more effective at using their members for phone banking and GOTV. It's a pretty impressive set of outside actors, frankly, and one that has gotten better and better at working together over the last six years.
In my last post on Common Cause, I didn't bring up the newer better groups that have emerged to make corruption and good government voting issues. CREW and Public Campaign, while both are explicitly nonpartisan and do not do work on behalf of candidates, are extremely aggressive about putting the question of good government and corruption to voters. Public Campaign, for instance, has worked on McCain's flouting of FEC law, and the group did push for the FEC to step in on petty cash. CREW is unafraid to go after Republicans, and though corruption is nonpartisan, takes the fight to where it tends to be.
Ultimately these groups are pushing for nonpartisan solutions, public financing of elections and stronger ethics enforcement in Congress, but they are asking the voters to make that choice. And that's the right way to deal with corruption in a democracy.
Public Citizen, the government watchdog group, is offering itself as a character witness for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in his defense against recent reports questioning his close ties to lobbyists.
"Regardless of how many lobbyists are working on his campaign or raising money for him, John McCain has fought for 14 long, hard years for reforms that seriously limit lobbyists' power," Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen, said in a statement....
Claybrook said McCain has a record of standing up to powerful interests in Washington. "He has fought for campaign finance reform, limits on gifts and travel from lobbyists, and extensive public disclosure of lobbyists' activities - all of which limit the influence of lobbyists and the companies that hire lobbyists in Washington, D.C.," she said.
People at Public Citizen hate the branding associated with their founder, Ralph Nader. But I suppose it's just in their DNA.
Talking Liberally Progressive Parley
