How Big A Let Down Have The Democrats Been?

Well... alas, pretty big. In the new issue of Rolling Stone Tim Dickinson takes on the Democratic Senate leadership. Below I want to talk anecdotally about some Democratic Party letdowns but first take a look at what ex-Democrat/current independent candidate for Congress, Steve Porter has to say and let's look at some of Dickinson's most salient points. He points out what a shill NY reptile Chuck Schumer has been for crooked billionaire Wall Street operators, "championing one of the biggest tax breaks for billionaires in the history of the republic [as] Democrats in the House fought to close a loophole that levies a tax rate of only 15 percent... on hedge-fund managers who make as much as $3.7 billion a year. But when the debate reached the Senate, Schumer broke with his fellow Democrats and sided with Wall Street-- inspiring the hedge-fund industry to hail him as its 'guardian.'"

Another New York member of Congress, seems to be criticizing Schumer and other Insider Democrats who serve the interests of a very generous plutocracy (generous to their career aspirations that is): Rep. Charles Rangel, who led the hedge-fund tax in the House: "America's middle class have been forgotten. It seems that those with the money have the power." And Harry Reid is backing Schumer and the hedge fund crooks up. Why? They are financing the DSCC, the same way other equally corrupt corporate special interests have financed the NRSC and Bush and the GOP. With power-hungry sleazebags like Schumer (or McConnell for that matter, a kind of Schumer doppelganger in many horrifying ways) in charge do you think effective campaign finance regulations-- taking the billions of dollars pumped into our political system by special interests eager for special consideration-- will ever be enacted? There's only one answer and it has two letters and the first is "no."

According to campaign-finance records, seven of the country's 10 richest hedge-fund managers contributed an average of $24,400 to the DSCC last year. "Schumer didn't want to turn the spigot off," says Bob McIntyre, director of the nonpartisan Citizens for Tax Justice. All told, the hedge-fund and private-equity sectors have showered the Democrats with more than $14 million this year-- double what they have given Republicans.

As the hedge-fund fiasco demonstrates, Democrats have turned the Senate into the chamber where good legislation goes to die. Since regaining the majority in 2006, the Democrats have granted the Bush administration and big telephone companies immunity for illegal wiretapping, declared a branch of the Iranian military a terrorist organization and stuffed the recent Foreclosure Prevention Act with far more goodies for big lenders than for struggling homeowners [$25 billion in corporate welfare-- including, outrageously, billions in tax breaks to speculative home builders who helped create the disastrous housing bubble in the first place-- and only $9 billion for struggling homeowners]. They also confirmed Attorney General Michael Mukasey despite his refusal to disavow torture-- a move engineered by Schumer. "You really want to like the Democrats," says Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "Then they go and do shit like this."

...The bitter truth in the Senate is that it's not Republicans who are betraying the Democratic agenda-- it's Democrats themselves. "It's not the Congress that's ineffective," says Rangel. "It's not the promises that Nancy Pelosi made. We have passed the courageous bills — but for what? To be told what's 'acceptable' by the Senate." These days, he adds bitterly, "We don't need no House of Representatives. All we need to do is go over and ask the Senate, 'What have you Democrats and Republicans agreed to?'"

But the problem with the Insider Democrats who think they know better than the grassroots isn't just about Harry Reid and the NY Reptile-- and it isn't even only about Republican-lite Blue Dogs conspiring with the GOP to thwart a progressive agenda. House Democrats are always whining that it's the Blue Dogs who hold them back and there is a modicum of truth in that. But then how do you explain the fact that the House Democrats consistently break their own rules to prevent real Democrats from being nominated by throwing DCCC support behind Blue Dogs? Oh, they stopped doing that when Emanuel moved upstairs, you say? Well, Chris Van Hollen promised they would-- but they haven't.

Just yesterday the DCCC violated it's own rules by following John Boehner, Tom Cole and the NRCC down an old Stalinist model for candidate selection, backing a clueless Insider stooge, Ann Kirkpatrick in AZ-01 over a grassroots progressive, Howard Shanker. This thoroughly anti-democratic, old Communist regime way of doing things is working out really badly, even catastrophically, for the Republicans... so why would Van Hollen blunder into it, just when everything has been going so well?

A disgruntled Democrat from Flagstaff, on the DCCC's own website wants to know too:

Why does the DCCC pick before the people of the democratic party?

First you quietly pad Ann Kirkpatrick’s coffers, and then you call her the candidate to beat and offer public support. And all this before the primary. If you @$$holes would stop trying to force a candidate down our throats then we would have turned CD1 blue years ago.

Your “anointed” candidate (which you always seem to choose before the primaries) has lost in the last four elections.

Ever thought of playing fair with your own people before? It might work. Either wait till after the primary to back someone, or give a little bit to everyone who brings in enough petition signatures when qualifying.
And personally, I would set the bar higher than the measly 2500 signatures Ann K. brought in.

In fact all the comments on the DCCC site oppose Van Hollen's decision to morph into an unpleasant combination of Rahm Emanuel, John Boehner and Stalin. Another Arizona commenter: "This is pretty simple: Kirkpatrick is not the strongest democrat in the race. I wish folks at the DCCC had seen a debate or two between Kirkpatrick and Howard Shanker-- there’s no contest here. People on the ground in CD1 know that, but people out in DC don’t. This race is Shanker’s to lose, and all the top-down pressure from the Governor and the DCCC isn’t going to change much. Except maybe increase democrats’ frustration with the party." And another: "Yet another lame election year where the party decides who we should vote for even before we vote. Rick Renzi must have enjoyed having the DCCC in his corner for all those years. He would have faced some stiff competition if you actually took the time to see what the Democrat voters of DC1 wanted. Nobody likes being told who to vote for. Ann Kirkpatrick would make a T-shirt illegal if she does not like what it says. I guess she fits well in the DCC’s 'we’ll think for you' approach to politics."

Please think about that the next time the DCCC send you an e-mail begging for money to elect more Democrats-- never BETTER Democrats, always more Democrats, more Democrats to vote exactly how their Republican opponents would have voted on the issues that matter most.

And it isn't only the Inside the Beltway insiders who are systematically betraying the grassroots. A couple weeks ago former grassroots hero-- though never someone him trusted for 2 seconds-- Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia endorsed a corrupt reactionary, Gerry Connolly, for Congress, over Leslie Byrne, the grassroots progressive. Only 18% of Kaine's own base, Raising Kaine, agreed with his decision; 65% disapproved. (Fortunately, Jim Webb endorsed Leslie-- as did Blue America.

But I'm not just complaining because Leslie is a Blue America candidate. Out in southern New Mexico's sprawling second CD, Blue America hasn't endorsed any candidate, although we have noted that nearly 800 people have gone to ActBlue to donate to the progressive grassroots candidate, Bill McCamley, while only 2 people have donated to Harry Teague. It doesn't matter to Teague, a multimillionaire oilman, who is self-funding. Teague was just endorsed by Governor Bill Richardson, who everyone loves because he endorsed Obama. Predictably Teague is a huge Hillary supporter and has donated tens of thousands of dollars to politicians-- from both parties-- and immense amounts to... Bill Richardson. In fact, Richardson for President, Inc. owes Harry Teague's company-- Lea King LLC-- $203,850.70 for the use of Harry's private jet during the campaign. This currently comprises 64% of his campaign debt. Since the end of February Governor Richardson's Campaign has paid off $103,354.41 or 24.5% of his debt. Not a single penny had been paid to Lea King. (Under FEC regulations a vendor like Lea King may forgive debts owed by a committee if the debt was incurred in the normal course of business, the committee “undertook all reasonable efforts” to raise the funds, and the vendor made “the same efforts to collect the debt as those made to a non-political debtor." It doesn't mention endorsements.) On top of that, Teague's company, Teaco Energy, and its employees have bundled over $30,000 in campaign contributions for Richardson and some of that money may have been provided to the "donors" from Teague himself like a $4,600 contribution from an office assistant; that's illegal.

Democrats want our political leaders to act like Democrats, not like Republicans-- whether it's Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid, Chris Van Hollen, Rahm Emanuel, Bill Richardson or Tim Kaine. Grassroots Democrats should stop funding the DSCC and DCCC and donate directly to the candidates who they know they can trust. You can count on the Blue America candidates to support the people's interests, not the special interests and party bosses. Should you decide to donate to Leslie Byrne or Howard Shanker or any other of our progressive, grassroots canddiates today, please remember to add one cent to your donation so it counts as a vote in the Air America contest, which ends Monday morning at 6am, PT.

BILL McCAMLEY (D-NM)-- A PROGRESSIVE APPROACH TO RURAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

There are two Democrats running to replace rubber stamp wingnut Steve Pearce in New Mexico's gigantic, sprawling 2nd congressional district. One is a right-of-center, Republican-lite oil man who contributes to GOP politicians. The other, Bill McCamley, is the progressive, grassroots candidate. Bill is an on-the-ground, sleeves rolled up expert on rural economic development. I called him yesterday and asked him if he could help DWT readers who don't live in rural settings understand some of the problems that beset people and understand what can be done to ameliorate them. Below is Bill's report. Please consider making a contribution to his campaign after you read it:

Last September I had the chance to sit down with Steve Jarding, who was Mark Warner’s Campaign Manager and who co-wrote Foxes in the Henhouse: How the Republicans Stole the South and the Heartland and What the Democrats Must Do to Run ’em Out. Jarding is a real dynamic guy who had lots of great ideas to share. If you haven’t read his book, its premise is simple: Democrats have failed to reach out to rural America… and as a result, rural America has stopped paying attention to Democrats. 

For me, this message really hit home. As the Executive Director of the New Mexico Rural Development Response Council, I spent two and a half years traveling to small communities throughout our state and assisting them with issues like affordable housing, economic development, infrastructure, and education. I saw how often rural New Mexico was ignored by politicians from both sides of the aisle-- but especially by Steve Pearce, the incumbent I started running against last April but who’s now running for Senate. As a result, rural New Mexico is in trouble. In the Second Congressional District (where I’m running), every single one of the small rural counties lost population between 2000 and 2006-- including two that shrunk by over 10%. 

Now that I am running for Congress, I want to make sure that I visit rural communities as much as I can, and that I talk about the issues that matter to rural New Mexico. In particular, there are two critical policy issues that need to be addressed to assure that small towns can stay viable places for people to live: economic development and health care.

Regarding economic development, the biggest problem that I saw was the divide between the workforce development/education sectors and those trying to recruit and/or incubate businesses in small towns. When these two groups of people do not communicate, sustainable economic development is not possible. Let’s say a local workforce board or community college decides to set up a specific educational service; for example, training for work in a cheese plant. However, there is no cheese plant located in the town, so educated workers will take their taxpayer-funded training and leave to another area where there is a cheese plant and they can get a job.

On the flip side, what if an economic group in the same community tries to recruit a metal goods company to the area? There aren’t any trained workers for this industry because all the available people are being trained to work in a cheese plant. The business will choose not to come because they will not be able to find employees. This scenario may seem silly, but I saw it happening in communities of different sizes all across the state.

One of the things I want to encourage in Congress through federal agencies is project-based development. It means that all resources in an area from workforce training/education, infrastructure development, transportation, and economic incentives need to be focused on a single project (or very small number of projects) that will allow resources to be used as effectively as possible.

Instead of inventing separate efforts, a community should come up with a plan that the majority of residents wishes to pursue, and then federal agencies should come in and fund programs that support the overall project concept. So, if a community wants to make cheese, the Department of Transportation could provide small grants that assist with the ability to get dairy trucks in and out of the town, educational institutions should train people to make cheese, the USDA should help with marketing the cheese, etc. If we don’t pursue this concept, and limited resources in small communities continue to be divided, these towns will keep having problems, and their populations will remain stagnant or decreasing.

Health care is another large issue nationwide, but rural communities face health care challenges that go beyond the ones that are facing the nation as a whole (i.e., the uninsured, the underinsured, the cost of prescription drugs, etc.). They have had massive problems recruiting health care providers of all varieties (primary care doctors, specialists, and nurses) to their areas, meaning that even if everyone has the ability to obtain health insurance, as both Democratic presidential candidates have proposed, they will not have regular access to the providers that give this care.

Any major health care reforms need to take this into account. Provisions should be made to award more funding to rural community hospitals, health clinics, and programs that will incentivize doctors and nurses choosing to live and work in rural towns. If this is not done, no health insurance program, no matter how well-designed, will provide the access to care that rural citizens desperately need.   

New Mexico’s Second Congressional District is large-- about the size of Pennsylvania. There are a lot of small communities that need help. Paying attention to them and their issues is good politics, but even more importantly, it’s good policy.

Over the past few days the frustration of average Americans has become a hot-button issue in the Presidential race. Many rural Americans are just as frustrated as their urban and suburban counterparts, if not more so.

How does this frustration affect people in rural New Mexico? In a recent poll of Democratic primary voters in the 2nd Congressional District, 90% of those who answered thought that Washington was broken. Nine out of ten. Think about that.

I spent an hour pumping gas for voters at a gas station in Los Lunas, New Mexico on Saturday, and I heard over and over how frustrated people were about the inability of Washington to do anything to help with all the rising costs that they are facing (without any comparable rises in what they're
earning).

We here in southern New Mexico see what everyone else does... the bailouts of Bear Stearns without the help for the middle-class family whose home is being foreclosed, the trickle-down tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans without the same help for the middle class, the best health care in the world available for those that can afford it, while one in five New Mexicans has no health insurance and many more are underinsured.

But in rural New Mexico, because of the lack of good jobs, health care provision, and many other services, these frustrations are magnified. This is why I am running; to make sure that Washington enacts policies that help out the normal person instead of special interests, and in doing so helps to keep rural communities as viable and sustainable places to live.

-Bill McCamley
candidate for Congress- (NM-02)

TRUE BLUE NEW MEXICO

We're very lucky to be able to welcome a guest blogger to DWT this evening, Barbara Wold, one of the most effective and sensible voices in New Mexico progressive politics. Like so many of us, she came to be reinvolved with politics via the Howard Dean campaign. Now she blogs at Democracy for New Mexico and helps coordinate a monthly progressive Meetup in Albuquerque that's been active for about four years. She's also participates in local Dem Party politics, having been part of a successful "take our party back" effort that's resulted in dozens of progressives winning party offices including ward and precinct slots and seats on the County and State governing bodies.

It's an amazing situation this year in New Mexico politics. We have a chance to gain a U.S. Senate seat and two U.S. House seats, which would make our entire Congressional delegation blue. It's been a case of musical chairs ever since Sen. Pete Domenici announced his retirement late last year due to a brain disease, putting all three of our House seats and one of our Senate seats up for grabs in open contests.

With all of our state offices except Land Commissioner held by Dems, both houses of our legislature dominated by Dems and Bill Richardson as our Governor, we think a true blue New Mexico is a real possibility, which is why the local netroots has started an Act Blue fundraising page called just that:
True Blue New Mexico.


We've got excellent candidates in former Albuquerque City Councilor Martin Heinrich in NM-01, former Dona Ana Commissioner Bill McCamley down south in NM-03, and current NM-03 Rep. Tom Udall running for Senate. In NM-03 in Northern New Mexico, traditionally a Dem stronghold, we've got a bunch of progressive contenders including green builder Don Wiviott, NM Public Regulation Commission member Ben Ray Lujan and Jemez Pueblo member Benny Shendo -- so many we haven't been able to come to a consensus on who to support.

In NM-01, a Dem winner would replace faux-moderate Repub Heather Wilson. Heather edged out Dem Patricia Madrid last time out by fewer than 700 votes. The Repub contender this round is expected to be current Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White, who chaired the Bush campaign in the county in 2004. He's never had to run a competitive race, and New Mexico's voters have definitely soured on everything Bush. Dem Martin Heinrich was instrumental in passing a minimum wage raise for Albuquerque, and is a conservation and environmental champion. He's known as a top-notch negotiator who uses common sense and honesty to bring people together to solve problems. He's a progressive through and through.

In NM-02, where the Las Cruces City Council was recently repopulated with progressive Dems after a long stretch of Repub rule, McCamley's running a truly grassroots campaign. With a master's in public policy from Harvard, McCamley is smart, informed and infectiously passionate. While on the County Commission, he led the fight to replace down and dirty sprawl development with a common sense planning process -- an issue that's recently turned many a voter Dem in the district. Meanwhile, the Repub Party in those parts is in disarray, with many less than stellar Congressional candidates emerging to fight it out for a chance at the Repub slot. If we have a Dem winner in the district, they'd replace the truly awful hard-right ideologue Steve Pearce, who's abandoned his seat to battle Heather Wilson for the Repub Senate nomination.

In NM-03, we expect to hold onto Udall's seat given the high percentage of progressive Dems in the district that includes Santa Fe, Taos and rural Hispanic Dem strongholds. The only question is which Dem among many candidates will get the nod. That's why we set up True Blue New Mexico to reward whoever wins the Dem nomination there.

As for the Senate seat, Tom Udall's popular all over the state and very well respected by New Mexicans of all political stripes. A true gentleman and a member of the illustrious, conservation-championing Udall family of the West, he was encouraged to get into the Senate race by the grassroots and power Dems alike. In Congress, Udall voted against both the Iraq invasion and the Patriot Act, and he's been instrumental in helping us preserve many of New Mexico's beautiful and pristine landscapes. Nonetheless, a tough race against either Heather Wilson or Steve Pearce is expected this fall.

Why is the New Mexico netroots reaching out now for support?
First of all, we want top-notch, progressive candidates to get a head start on fundraising and garnering support. We want more Dems but we want good Dems, as the saying goes. And the GOP is already active in fundraising for their New Mexico cronies. Just yesterday, Karl Rove was in Artesia, NM raising money for the state Repub Party, the same day Dick Cheney was hosting a fundraiser for Senate candidate Steve Pearce in DC. Cheney previous held a similar event in Washington for Senate candidate Heather Wilson. It's evident that wingnut money machine will be heavily involved in trying to protect their seats here-- despite a big fall in support for all things Repub even in more moderate areas of the state.

Secondly, we wanted to reach out early both locally and within the national netroots community. New Mexico is economically challenged and sparsely populated in many areas of the state. Grassroots donations can be hard to come by given our rising cost of living and low salaries. In other words, we can use all the help we can get.

We hope you'll visit the True Blue New Mexico page at Act Blue and toss a few bucks into the collection basket. Even if you're not so inclined right now, we hope you'll keep the True Blue candidates in mind as election season moves forward, knowing that Blue America already has Martin, Bill and Tom on their radar. Our ActBlue page is an effort by local blogs including New Mexico FBIHOP and Democracy for New Mexico. Please visit our sites, poke around a bit and check out posts yesterday and the day before about this effort, as well as guest blogs by Martin Heinrich and Bill McCamley. We've just begun to fight.

-Barbara Wold