What Digby Said!

3 progressive winners folks in DC don't know about...yet: David Gill, Beto O'Rourke, Patsy Keever

This afternoon, Digby did an important post, a must-read for progressives who are being bombarded by imbeciles who have big perches from which to spew their ignorance, ignorance that plays right into the hands of the status quo and society's most powerful. I'm hearing almost every single day, from Members of Congress and from candidates that even Rahm Emanuel was a better DCCC chair than "ex"-Blue Dog Steve Israel. Emanuel is a corporate whore like Israel, but Emanuel wanted to win, even if he had to hold his nose and allow progressives to take seats. Israel on the other hand-- or at least I'm told-- only wants to restock the caucus with Blue Dogs and New Dems, even if the Democrats don't take back Congress. "He would much rather see a Republican win than a progressive," someone who knows him well told me over the weekend.

Before I republish Digby's post (below), I want to point out that I called Rachel Weiner at the Washington Post and had an excellent talk with her about conflating the losses of the PCCC with the losses of the progressive movement. She understood and as you can see, Digby linked the new version first and then the original version.

So the big storyline of the morning is that progressives are losers. Stop the presses. It's based on this article over the week-end in the Washington Post about the alleged fact that progressives are all losing their primaries to moderates and conservatives. And once again, those of us who are working in this arena are all treated to solemn lectures about how we should get real and figure out that nobody likes us because we're too liberal and that we need to... well, I'm not sure. Give up, I suppose.

The only problem is the facts are wrong. Of course some progressives have lost this season. Some tea partiers have as well. Also moderates. It's the nature of primaries. But the article in question takes the example of the PCCC's big three losing races-- Sheyman, Griego and Saldana-- as if they represent the whole country. It's just not true. There have been winners as well, they just didn't happen to be the ones the PCCC were involved in. (This is not to say the PCCC's candidates were bad. They weren't. Blue America endorsed them too. They just happened to have lost in this cycle.)

Despite the fact that people seem to think they don't matter, a couple of the progressive winners were shockers, taking out establishment incumbents. The first was Matt Cartwright in Pennsylvania who defeated Blue Dog Tim Holden and more recently Beto O'Rourke in Texas who defeated the longtime head of the House Intelligence Committee Silvestre Reyes. These were outsider races that anyone would have expected to be huge losses for the progressive challengers... and they weren't. In both cases, the Party (unofficially) brought out the big guns to support their friends and big contributors kicked in large sums as well. But the progressives won. What does that mean nationally? You tell me. But it can't mean less than the Griego and Sheyman losses, can it?

Meanwhile, Patsy Keever in North Carolina won her race against a handpicked DCCC anti-choice conservadem and Dr David Gill won his in Illinois running against Dick Durbin's machine. And we still don't know if Norman Solomon might have made it to the general, they're still counting votes. (And even if he has lost it, he didn't lose to a moderate or a conservative-- he will have lost to a standard issue Northern California liberal .)

The fact is that we don't have the 40 years of well-funded conservative infrastructure the Tea Party had to build on so the fact that we win at all is a miracle. The Republican party happily brands itself as far to the right as it can get, while the Democratic Party reflexively rejects the progressive and liberal labels and prefers to be seen as a moderate/center party, embracing all views under its big tent. The default is to move to the center, not move the party to the left, and primaries are, therefore, much more ideologically diverse and contentious.

And of course it is true that more voters identify as conservative than liberal. But I don't know that people agree on what those labels mean, much less are able to place themselves within them ideologically. Many older Democrats like me tend to identify as liberal. Younger people call themselves Progressives. Some use both. There are even left libertarians. But a vast number of Democrats call themselves moderates. Why? Because the party goes to great lengths to brand itself as that. So, I'm not all that sure just how useful the designations really are in explaining primary wins and losses.

One thing that cannot be overstated is how really, really difficult it is for progressives to raise money, which in this environment is even more problematic than it has been in the past. They are at a serious disadvantage because their principles preclude them from going where the money is-- corporate America while, sadly, wealthy liberals listen to the Party establishment and so spend their money protecting incumbents. And believe me, raising money online isn't the cash cow some people may imagine. It takes much more effort on the ground, fundraising one dollar at a time, and perhaps a few losing races before progressive movement candidates can gain the name recognition and experience to win. It's not like you can grow talented people who are willing to do all that on trees.

None of this is easy. The progressive movement, or what's left of it after the whole thing pretty much dissolved in a fit of presidential ecstasy in 2008 (and 2010 absorbed what was left of the corpse) is very young and very poor and the only infrastructure it has are local grassroots and a few Netroots groups like Blue America, the PCCC, Moveon, DFA and PDA who are continuing to do this work. Under those circumstances, I think we've done pretty well.

I'm sorry that the progressive victories don't get the hot headlines that every tea partier who wins a city council race gets, but then we're not Real Americans so I wouldn't expect that. But just because nobody has noticed doesn't mean it isn't happening. Slowly, but surely, progressives are learning how to do this. And if we don't get sidetracked by another charismatic leader who's supposed to save us from everything, we might be able to build a progressive congressional bloc. It's not sexy, but it's necessary.

If anyone would like to lend a hand, we've still got some primaries coming up, notably Darcy Burner in Washington, if you'd like to lend a hand. Here she is talking about not giving up:

Outspoken progressive champions Chris Donovan (CT), Nick Ruiz (FL), Trevor Thomas (MI) still have primaries against heinous corporate Democrats. Nick is running against an actual teabagger and Trevor's opponent, when he was in the state legislature, joined the Republicans to defund Planned Parenthood! And after primary season, we have our winners who have made it through going into general election fights. What Digby didn't mention is that when progressives beat Steve Israel's handpicked corporate shills in primaries, Israel abandons the district and refuses to give any help. You won't find David Gill or Patsy Keever or Beto O'Rourke or Matt Cartwright on any of the Red-to-Blue lists. Ken Aden? Not a chance. Lee Rogers? Wayne Powell? Rob Zerban? Of course not; they're running against Eric Cantor, Buck McKeon and Paul Ryan... why help them win?

If you know the answer to that, and if you can afford it, even $5 and $10 contributions are more than welcome-- and everyone's on the same page.