In Hawaii, Today's The Day… Two Moments Of Truth For Progressives

Today is primary day in Hawaii. Iselle hit Friday but had lost some ferocity and came in as a tropic storm. With the exception of the polling sites at Hawaii Paradise Community Center and Keone-opoko Elementray School on the Big Island, all polling sites will be open from 7AM 'til 6 PM. Hurricane Julio is also weakening slightly but may hit the Big Island tomorrow. The rare twin storms shouldn't hold down turnout in the election. And today's contests couldn't be clearer. The Senate race features two well-known politicians, one progressive (Senator Brian Schatz) and one from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party (conservative New Dem Colleen Hanabusa). We have been comparing and contrasting their positions all through the cycle and we have also pointed out a career predicated on corruption in Hanabusa's case. There are three main issues voters should have foremost in their minds when they walk into the polling station: Social Security, health care reform and Climate Change/the environment. Before we look at those again though, let's look again at the difference between the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party and the Republican wing of the party.

Schatz has been endorsed by Howard Dean, Elizabeth Warren, President Obama, virtually every Democrat in the Senate, MoveOn, the Sierra Club, Climate Hawks Vote and, of course, Blue America. Hanabusais the candidate of the corrupt conservative New Dems, a Wall Street owned Beltway operation funded by drug companies, banksters and the Military Industrial Complex. So far this cycle, among the New Dems' biggest donors are predatory Wall Street corporations with big agendas, like CitiBroup, Mortgage Bankers Assn, JP Morgan Chase, UBS, Investment Co Institute, National Venture Capital Assn, Deloitte LLP, US Bancorp, Visa, Prudential Financial, and Goldman Sachs. These are the "people" Hanabusa is indebted to, not the working families of Hawaii. And that explains her record in Congress and why it has been so very different from Senator Schatz's.

Let's start with Social Security. Schatz is a leader in the Senate on expanding Social Security. Hanabusa voted for the Simpson-Bowles plan that would cut Social Security benefits and raise the retirement age to 69. She favors chained CPI which would cut the cost of living allowances for retired people. That makes Wall Street very, very happy-- which explains why the've poured so much money into her shady career. But what about seniors who depend on these cost of living increases when prices rise for food, energy and medicine?

And speaking of medicine, Hanabusa has been a go-to shill for Big Phrama. She repaid companies like Amgen, UnitedHealth, Abbott, Wellpoint, tax cheats AbbVie Pharmaceuticals, and WalMart for financing her career by backing efforts to allow big drug companies to get massive giveaways from Medicare-- and sleazy Hanabusa staffers got caught illegally coordinating activities with drug company cronies. Schatz's record couldn't be more different. He co-sponsored a plan, supported by the AARP, to put Medicare on stronger financial footing and stop powerful drug companies from ripping off federal taxpayers. One works for the drug companies-- and to line her own pockets; one works for for ordinary families in Hawaii.

Not a single environmental group has endorsed Hanabusa. Every one of them-- who rarely agree on anything-- has endorsed Schatz. He's been one of the Senate's most effective champions on environmental issues, supporting the Clean Energy Initiative which tripled Hawai'i's renewable energy production from 6% to 18%, and supporting a bill that could lead to charging oil manufacturers a fee for emitting carbon. That work has earned him the endorsement of Al Gore and many local and national environmental groups. Meanwhile, Hanabusa voted for a coal-industry-backed bill to block enforcement of the Clean Air Act-- and cited it on her campaign website as one of her proudest votes.

Half Hawaii's voters also get to pick a replacement for Hanabusa in the Honolulu-based first CD. This should be day too. There's one progressive in the race: Stanley Chang, fighting off two grotesque conservatives from the Republican wing of the party: Donna Mercado Kim and Mark Takai. Stanley's absentee ballot push was easily the strongest in the race and he was up on TV before anyone else and started a serious field operation before anyone else. Partially due to the storms, but partially due to the especially nasty vitriol from EMILY's List in the Hanabusa race against Schatz, turnout looks depressed. That makes Stanley's aggressive field operation all the more valuable. The depressed vote today could push the share of the absentee ballots from a normal 50% to as high as 60 or even 70%. That bodes very well for Team Chang and much less well for the lazy efforts by his two main competitors. Let's hope we have two big victories to celebrate tomorrow, one for Brian Schatz and one for Stanley Chang.