Vettin' The Candidates

What a rotten hand to be dealt!

DWT readers always ask me to check out whichever Democrat washes up on the beach of their district and see if they're any good. I mean, chances are they'll always be better than whatever godforsaken Republican already holds the seat, but my job is to see if they're better enough to warrant really getting behind them. The vetting process usually takes a couple months. But I just got off the phone with a woman running for Congress, her first bid at any kind of electoral office. And, without prejudicing the process, I couldn't help myself from sharing some of my thoughts on our first conversation with a new congressional candidate.

And she has no money. The district is blood red. And she's disabled. But she has high hopes, a ton of enthusiasm and optimism, a dreadful opponent-- who's actually one of the couple dozen worst Republicans in Congress-- and she had some kind of a job working for the Obama campaign. She likes Obama a lot... and trusts him.

We got the social issues out of the way first. Like all Democratic women I've ever gone though this process with, she's 100% pro-Choice. In other words, there is no circumstance when government should make the decision about an abortion rather than the pregnant woman. And she's 100% for marriage equality. To her-- and to an increasing majority of Democrats even in the reddest states-- this is not an issue for government to interfere in. "If two people want to get married," she told me flatly, "that's up to them, regardless of what color they are or what nationality they are or what gender they are. It's not an issue government should butt into." Guns were a little tougher. She doesn't have a good understanding of the issue and has been exposed to too much NRA propaganda about the Second Amendment. Her heart is in the right place but at this point I couldn't tell Blue America contributors that she would, for example, be a 100% sure vote for banning assault weapons. She might be-- or she might not be. She needs to be educated. Who's going to do that?

I asked her about drones. Clueless. No idea except she doesn't back killing Americans on American soil and she's uncomfortable with warrantless spying on American citizens but... she thinks protecting us from terrorists is important and overrides everything else. I decided to go on with the vetting process anyway.

And that led us to a brief discussion of drones being used against civilians in Pakistan, Afghanistan and other countries. She doesn't know much about it but her instinctual answer was excellent. "Our troops shouldn't be in those countries. Bush and Cheney lied us into wars in the Middle East and we should bring the troops back immediately." She sounded convincing. But I poked a little and she crumbled immediately. "What," I asked her, "if President Obama said, 'You helped reelect me and now I need you to stand with me on this. Those radicals are trying to force my hand. We're not ready to abandon Afghanistan yet. I need another year or so. Will you stick with me?" You bet she will! "On matters of national security, I'll always defer to the president," she assured me. It was a slow peaceful day and I had finished my blogging already so I didn't need to get the interview over with so quickly... so I decided to play it out, even though that's an... well, an unacceptable answer for a Blue America candidate for Congress.

So I steered the conversation towards economic justice. Since she's such a big Obamabot and trusts him with everything, I asked her what she's going to tell Obama when he comes to her to back the Grand Bargain he has to make with Boehner for the good of the country and besides, he will tell her, Chained CPI doesn't mean anything much anyway. Suddenly she turned into a tiger. OMG... what happened? She was ready to tear Obama's head off and throw Steve Israel and Debbie Wasserman Schultz into the pit of fiery hell Paul Broun comes from. She may be willing to trust Obama with the fate of Afghanistan civilians and even the fate of the 4th Amendment but Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid... THIRD RAIL ALERT. This is about her own life, her family's life, her neighbors' lives. This is what she was running for Congress to protect-- and she was ready to run over Obama in the process. She wants to sign the Grayson-Takano No Cuts letter now! She insists.

I told her she sounded so old fashioned-- more like old relics like Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt than like shiny modern Democrats like Obama and Wasserman Schultz. She was still spitting nails, still ready to rip heads off to protect... a principle? A value? A lifestyle? Or something more akin to Rob Portman's standing up for LGBT equality when he found out his beloved middle son, William Dudley Portman, is a sword swallower? I have to think more about that because I'm really not sure where she was coming from or where she's likely to go if she ever, improbably, winds up in Congress.