Steve Driehaus Is Suing A GOP Front Group For Defamation But If He Wants To Know Why Democrats Didn't Bother Voting, He Should Examine His Own Record

The misleading Susan B. Anthony List billboard

Last we caught up with Cincinnati Congressman Steve Driehaus, a middle of the road Democrat on his way to a thumping 52-45% defeat, he was denouncing the DCCC for abandoning his race. They spent exactly $59,778.01 in his district, while he was being inundated with third party ads tearing him apart, much of it, $77,698.00, from GOP front group the Susan B. Anthony List.

Driehaus announced Friday that he's bringing a defamation suit against the anti-Choice group for lying about him in public statements.

The group claims Driehaus, who has campaigned as an anti-abortion candidate, supports taxpayer-funded abortions because he voted for the national health care law. Driehaus said the claim is false and that the law bars any federal funding of abortion.

"A lie is a lie," Driehaus' lawyers wrote in his federal defamation lawsuit. "The First Amendment is not and never has been an invitation to concoct falsehoods aimed at depriving a person of his livelihood."

In fact, Driehaus lost a great deal of support from Democrats because he followed the Susan B. Anthony List position on abortion by voting for the Stupak Amendment on November 7, 2009, one of only 64 Democrats to cross the aisle and vote against Choice. In fact, it's been my contention that that was one of the votes that cost Driehaus his reelection bid in the rematch with former Congressman Steve Chabot, a Boehner crony he had decisively beaten in 2008.

Driehaus' 51.18 ProgressivePunch score shows that on the contentious substantive issues that divided the Congress along partisan lines he voted with the Democrats a tiny bit more than he voted with the Republicans. There were an awful lot of disappointed Cincinnati voters who turned out for him-- and Obama-- in 2008. Back then Obama took OH-01 by beating McCain 55-44% (this after two consecutive Bush wins against Gore and Kerry). Cincinnati voters were ready for Hope and ready for Change. Neither Obama nor Driehaus lived up to voter expectations and two years later, Democrats and left-leaning independents stayed home on election day.

Before we look at how Driehaus beat Chabot in 2008, let's go back to 2006, the last midterm before the one that we just went through. That was a wave year for Democrats but Chabot had managed to beat City Councilman John Cranley 101,838 (53%) to 90,963 (47%), taking both OH-01 counties, the sliver of suburban Butler plus Hamilton (Cincinnati itself). In the hard fought Senate race going on simultaneously-- in which Sherrod Brown ousted incumbent Republican Mike DeWine-- DeWine eked out a narrow victory in OH-01.

Two years later the story changed. Obama won Ohio 52-47% and he managed to win Hamilton County with a slightly larger margin of victory, 53-46%. That helped sweep Driehaus to victory as well and he beat Chabot 155,089 (52%) to 140,469 (48%), strictly based on a great Democratic turnout in Cincinnati, where Driehaus pulled 151,547 votes (54%) to Chabot's 131,012 (46%), while getting creamed in the Butler County suburbs (Driehaus 27% to Chabot 73%, about 13,000 voters participating in total). If that wasn't a message to cater to the Democratic base, there has never been one. But instead Chabot's voting record indicates he was trying to placate implacable conservative voters in the suburbs. And look what happened. Over 50,000 Democrats who had propelled Driehaus to victory in 2008 just stayed away this year. Chabot beat him in both counties-- 76-21% in the white flight suburbs of Butler County and 94,502 (51%) to 85,450 (46%) in Cincinnati itself.

It wasn't the Susan B. Anthony List's lies about Chabot that ended his congressional career-- although they certainly helped keep the GOP turnout high. He lost because he failed to inspire Democrats and they just did not bother to come vote for the lesser of two evils. Obama should be looking at results like this around the country because he's falling into the exact same trap Driehaus did, a trap poignantly laid out by Frank Rich yesterday, that will guarantee him the same one term that Driehaus got. Here's a news report on Driehaus' problem and after that, Rich's explanation of Obama's dilemma.

Those desperate to decipher the baffling Obama presidency could do worse than consult an article titled “Understanding Stockholm Syndrome” in the online archive of The F.B.I. Law Enforcement Bulletin. It explains that hostage takers are most successful at winning a victim’s loyalty if they temper their brutality with a bogus show of kindness. Soon enough, the hostage will start concentrating on his captors’ “good side” and develop psychological characteristics to please them-- “dependency; lack of initiative; and an inability to act, decide or think.”

This dynamic was acted out-- yet again-- in President Obama’s latest and perhaps most humiliating attempt to placate his Republican captors in Washington. No sooner did he invite the G.O.P.’s Congressional leaders to a post-election White House summit meeting than they countered his hospitality with a slap-- postponing the date for two weeks because of “scheduling conflicts.” But they were kind enough to reschedule, and that was enough to get Obama to concentrate once more on his captors’ “good side.”

And so, as the big bipartisan event finally arrived last week, he handed them an unexpected gift, a freeze on federal salaries. Then he made a hostage video hailing the White House meeting as “a sincere effort on the part of everybody involved to actually commit to work together.” Hardly had this staged effusion of happy talk been disseminated than we learned of Mitch McConnell’s letter vowing to hold not just the president but the entire government hostage by blocking all legislation until the Bush-era tax cuts were extended for the top 2 percent of American households.

The captors will win this battle, if they haven’t already by the time you read this, because Obama has seemingly surrendered his once-considerable abilities to act, decide or think. That pay freeze made as little sense intellectually as it did politically. It will save the government a scant $5 billion over two years and will actually cost the recovery at least as much, since much of that $5 billion would have been spent on goods and services by federal workers with an average yearly income of $75,000. By contrast, the extension of the Bush tax cuts to the $250,000-plus income bracket will add $80 billion to the deficit in two years, much of which will just be banked by the wealthier beneficiaries.

The cliché criticisms of Obama are (from the left) that he is a naïve centrist, not the audacious liberal that Democrats thought they were getting, and (from the right) that he is a socialist out to impose government on every corner of American life. But the real problem is that he’s so indistinct no one across the entire political spectrum knows who he is. A chief executive who repeatedly presents himself as a conciliator, forever searching for the “good side” of all adversaries and convening summits, in the end comes across as weightless, if not AWOL. A Rorschach test may make for a fine presidential candidate — when everyone projects their hopes on the guy. But it doesn’t work in the Oval Office: These days everyone is projecting their fears on Obama instead.

...In the summer before the election, the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll (of June 21) found that only 15 percent of respondents thought the deficit should be the government’s top priority (behind jobs and economic growth, at 33 percent); the Washington Post/ABC News survey just a week before Election Day found that only 7 percent chose the deficit as the most important issue influencing their vote (again well behind the economy, at 37 percent). After constant G.O.P. fear-mongering about the budget-- some of it echoed, rather than countered, by Obama-- deficit reduction did jump to first place in Nov. 2 exit polls as voters’ highest priority for the next Congress. The disciplined Republican message had turned the deficit into a catchall synonym for America’s entire economic health. But at 40 percent, deficit reduction still was neck and neck with “spending to create jobs” (37 percent). Cutting taxes was chosen by only 18 percent.

We’re now at the brink of a new economic disaster that will eventually yank a chicken out of every pot. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities calculates that the extended Bush-era tax cuts will contribute by far the largest share to the next decade’s deficits-- ahead of the recession’s drain on tax revenues, Iraq and Afghanistan war spending, TARP and Obama’s stimulus. The new Congress’s plan to block any governmental intervention on behalf of 15 million-plus jobless Americans guarantees that the unemployment rate, back up to 9.8 percent as of Friday, will remain intractable too.

Obama should have pounded home the case against profligate tax cuts for the wealthiest before the Democrats lost the Senate. Even now Warren Buffett-- not a socialist, by the way-- is making the case with a Christie-esque directness that usually eludes the president. “The rich are always going to say that, you know, just give us more money and we’ll all go out and spend more, and then it will trickle down to the rest of you,” he told Christiane Amanpour on This Week last Sunday. “But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on.”

Everyone will have caught on by 2012, but that will be too late for many jobless Americans, let alone for Obama.

It gets better more painful, and you can read the rest of it here

DCCC Abandoning Weak Members Who Followed Their Awful Advice For Two Years

No one-- except, of course, a deranged right-winger-- ever accused Ohio freshman Steve Driehaus of being a progressive or a liberal. He's a middle-of-the-pack moderate, probably more driven towards conservatism by political cowardice and bad advice from the DCCC than by ideology. His ProgressivePunch score is a less than stellar 50.41, which means he votes with the Republicans and Democrats on the tough, contentious issues about equally. In fact, lots of Blue Dogs have better scores than he does, although he's better than fellow Ohio freshmen John Boccieri and Zack Space, each with a 44 score. No one's going to mix him up with Dennis Kucinich or Mary Jo Kilroy or Betty Sutton. So I had to snicker a little today when he reacted angrily-- as he should-- to the DCCC's abandoning him to the tender mercies of a massive wave of Republican funding sweeping over OH-1, basically Cincinnati and most of its suburbs.

In 2008 Driehaus ousted reactionary incumbent Steve Chabot 52-48% (around 15,000 votes). At the same time Obama was beating McCain 55-44% among the same voters (which followed two consecutive close wins by Bush). The GOP had this one targeted from the day after the election and Chabot, a close ally of Boehner's, wants his old seat back. As of June 20, Chabot and Driehaus had raised around the same amount of money. The difference is the huge amount of outside money Boehner is directing towards the district in the form of attack ads paid for by corporations and foreign powers eager to see Boehner take the Speaker's chair from Nancy Pelosi. Driehaus is being swamped. He had been counting on the DCCC riding to the rescue. They're not going to.

Yesterday Driehaus cut the video above for an ActBlue page he put up. He sounds good, like a real populist, in fact-- but, alas, his voting record hardly backs up his message. The DCCC also cut loose worthless corporate shill Suzanne Kosmas (FL) and anti-choice fanatic Kathy Dahlkemper (PA). Incredibly, Kosmas, who spent her first two years in Congress getting to know every lobbyist in town, has the exact same miserable ProgressivePunch score as Driehaus (50.41), just a tad better than Dahlkemper (47.97), the difference being her consistent anti-choice votes. More incredible yet is that these chumps were guided to vote conservatively by Steny Hoyer and the DCCC who told each of them to not worry about the Democratic base but to reach out to conservatives. Well, conservatives are voting for Republicans and teabaggers and the base is fed up with these three shills.

It's a little late for Driehaus to go all populist now after following the Hoyer game plan for his entire-- albeit short and stunted-- congressional career. His whining that the DCCC is putting all their money into much worse conservatives than he is, is perfectly true. "The DCCC," he complains, "recently pulled millions of dollars in advertising from members who stood for our Democratic principles and are re-investing that money in the races of Democrats who didn't have the guts to take the tough votes.” Driehaus is dead-meat. I hope other Democrats learn from his sad tale and take a very different approach to the one he took. Steny Hoyer backs Steny Hoyer. He doesn't give a rat's ass about anyone else's career.

One ray of good tidings. The DCCC also pulled out of the conservative Tennessee district held by Blue Dog John Tanner, who's retiring. Tanner's equally conservative political heir, Roy Herron, got the bad news that the DCCC had given up on his race as well. He flipped out and told West Tennessee voters that they had bailed on him because he had vowed not to vote for Pelosi as Speaker. I'm guessing most people who would have been happy about that vow are in the other party. His opponent, Stephen Fincher is leading him by double digits and whatever there is of a Democratic base is repulsed by Herron.

"The people of my district are independent-minded folks who put patriotism above partisanship and are not looking to hire a yes-man for either party,” Herron said in a statement on Tuesday that confirmed neither Pelosi nor Boehner would get his support.
 
When asked if Herron had an alternative in mind for speaker, his campaign spokesman Brandon Puttbrese said that “hasn’t been a topic for conversation.”

The move could be construed as a Hail Mary attempt to woo independent and undecided voters in a campaign that seems all but lost to Democrats. The Hotline reported today that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee cut a significant chunk of its ads on Herron’s behalf in the district.

Will Obama Be Able To Turn Out Democratic Voters In The 2010 Midterms?

Last year Georgia state Senator Regina Thomas had every reason to be optimistic about being elected to Congress. She was a popular, accomplished and well-liked legislator from Savannah in a district where African-Americans and progressives make up the majority of the Democratic Party. She is both. Her opponent, incumbent Rep. John Barrow, is neither. He's not quite an hysterical Zell Miller fanatic but his voting record is solidly reactionary and if Thomas' career in politics has been all about representing ordinary working families, Barrow's is all about special interests, lobbyists, shady anti-union PACs and... well, even by Blue Dog standards his voting record is very right-wing, far too right-wing for a Democratic congressional district. Of the 20 members of Congress who vote most frequently with the Republicans on important core issues that impact the lives of ordinary working families only Barrow and Henry Cuellar, "Bush's favorite Democrat," are in strongly Democratic districts. He looked like a reasonable target for Thomas' homespun populism.

And then along came Barack. For a variety of extraneous reasons, he endorsed Barrow. And that was the end of any chance Regina Thomas had in GA-12. He took 76% of the primary vote.

This morning's CQPolitics speculated about Obama's ability to turn out his base in the congressional midterms next year. We've been worried that he could held quasi-Democrat Arlen Specter in the Pennsylvania primary against a real Democrat-- did you vote in the straw poll yet?-- but there are at least a dozen Democratic incumbents who are counting on the president's coattails as well-- even though he won't be on the ticket. Some of them, like Barrow and fellow Blue Dogs Glenn Nye (VA), Bobby Bright (AL), Parker Griffith (AL) and Frank Kratovil (MD), have been opposing his agenda.

Steve Driehaus defeated GOP right-wing rubber stamp incumbent Steve Chabot last year and Chabot blames African-Americans. How dare those people vote! He's running against Driehaus again and hoping Blacks and other minorities stay away from the polls next year.

“It was a key factor in our loss, probably the most substantial factor,” said Chabot, who answered the phone at his 2010 campaign headquarters. “With the turnout model you saw this past election cycle in a district like mine, it was just impossible to overcome.”

Banking on a different electorate in Obama’s first midterm-- one with less energy among African Americans and first-time voters-- Chabot is confident that he can oust freshman Democratic Rep. Steve Driehaus in a district in which 27 percent of residents are black.

Not so fast, says Driehaus, one of a handful of Democratic victors in competitive districts influenced by African American voters-- call them the Oboomers-- whose first re-election bids will be watched closely by political strategists in both parties.

“We actually thought there would be a greater turnout in 2008,” Driehaus said. “While the African-American vote made a difference, it was all of it together.”

Many observers think that African-American voters and young voters will be turning out in large numbers again, just the way they did in 2008. A lot may depend on how hard Obama campaigns for them but a lot will also depend on how hard the representatives have worked for their constituents. The two Alabama freshmen have been tools for special interests and haven't done anything at all for ordinary working families-- white or black. Other than some kind of misplaced partisan fervor, there's no reason for progressive-minded voters to come out and vote for either. On the other hand, freshmen like Donna Edwards (D-MD), Gary Peters (D-MI), Larry Kissell (D-NC), Eric Massa (D-NY), Mark Schauer (D-MI), Jared Polis (D-CO), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Ben Luján (D-NM), and, most of all, Alan Grayson (D-FL) have been intrepid and indefatigable fighters for working families and fully expect to win on their own merits.

This morning, Roll Call asserts that Grayson's dogged and effective assault on the special interests and the banksters has made him the Republicans' #1 target. They fear him the way they fear few other Democrats on Capitol Hill. They know he can't be bought off by the special interests and they have watched him use his expertise as a prosecutor of war profiteers to go after corrupt banksters and those who look at the taxpayers are turkeys to be plucked. Veteran Democratic leader, DCCC Chair Chris Van Hollen points to what has made Grayson well known for a freshman congressman: "As a member of the Financial Services Committee, he’s been a real watchdog for public dollars, and that’s been a big part of his focus since he’s been a Member of Congress... he has gotten off to a very good start in sort of cementing this image that he’s the guy who’s out there as a watchdog for taxpayer dollars."

The GOP is trying to recruit some divisive right-wing cut out to run against him. They're worried because an extremist lunatic, Todd Long, is in the race and has a lot of appeal to teabaggers and dittoheads but no chance to win over moderate voters. They're encouraging what they think could be a less polarizing-- if more hackish-- candidate, either pay-to-play poster boy Richard Crotty, state Speaker Larry Cretul, ex-state Sen. Daniel Webster or state Sen. Andy Gardiner.

Florida's 8th CD is a very changed district from when Ric Keller first won in 2000. Then the Republicans had a solid voter registration advantage. That's flip-flopped and now the registration advantage is with the Democrats. Bush's 55% win in 2004 turned into a 53% win for Obama last year. But most important, Grayson's agenda-- like that of the other progressive incumbents mentioned above-- is the agenda that hardpressed American working families want to see their representatives addressing. The voters want action of health care, unemployment, runaway foreclosures, banksters out of control, basic infrastructure... all the issues where Republicans are not only not part of the solution but are actually the problem. You can contribute to Grayson's re-election efforts at the Blue America ActBlue page.

So Far Three Extreme Right Republicans Want Rematches In 2010

Corrupt Republican lobbyist Mitchell Wade is in prison but Virgil Goode still isn't-- and he wants his old job back

Bill Sali (R-ID) can certainly make the case in he western Idaho district he used to represent that the Democrat who beat him in November, Walt Minnick, votes like a Republican on all the key issues but hampers the GOP's ability to govern on a national basis by supporting a Democratic organization of the House (and the boogie-man... err... woman: Nancy Pelosi). ID-01 is one of the most backward and reactionary districts in the country and includes the Nazi and KKK redoubts around Lake Hayden and Coeur D'Alene. Obama only scored 36% in the district at the same time Sali lost his seat to Minnick, 175,567 (51%) to 171,324 (49%). That represented a lot of serious ticket-splitting, indicating that anyone who wasn't a card-carrying member of Aryan Nations probably had had it with Sali. But he's going to try again. He sure can't accuse Minnick of supporting Obama. Well... he can and, no doubt he will. But it isn't true. In fact, Idaho Democrats have more reasons to stay home than Republican voters have to turn on Minnick and bring back the intensely disliked Sali.

Steve Chabot (OH-01) was also defeated in November-- by moderate Democrat Steve Driehaus, 143,743 (51%) to 135,376 (49%) in the Cincinnati-based district where Obama beat McCain 55-44% (a huge turn around from Bush victories in 2000 and 2004). Unlike Minnick's reactionary Republican voting record, Driehaus has consistently stood up for the Ohio working families who elected him. Cincinnati voters who wanted change have no reason to be disappointed. Chabot will have no leg to stand on except that he wants his career back.

This morning a third defeated wingnut-- this one also a crook-- Virgil Goode, has announced he wants a rematch. VA-05 is the heart of Virginia and it leans Republican but Obama did far better (48%) than Gore (41%) or Kerry (43%) and voters ousted Goode after a dozen unsatisfactory corruption-filled years of right-wing extremism. It was one of the closest, down-to-the-wire races in the country, Tom Perriello beating him 158,712 to 157,967. Perriello has been one of the most conscientious of this year's freshmen, extremely careful to balance his own progressive inclinations with the sensitivities of his district. His voting record has been moderate and tends to reflect opinion in southern Virginia. Goode is still screaming for the rejected far right ideology that devastated the region's economy. And he is also claiming credit for earmarks in the Omnibus Appropriations Bill that will bring around $10 million to VA-05. Perriello voted for the bill-- and for most of the legislation needed to implement President Obama's rescue plan for the nation. Goode insists he opposes everything and there is no doubt that if voters in central Virginia want a pointless obstructionist representing them, Goode is their man. Others might want to consider making an early donation to Tom Perriello's re-election campaign.

Dick Gregory explains what the policies rubber stamped by Goode, Sali and Chabot have wrought. If these guys-- and others like them-- somehow get back into Congress, we could wind up with lots more like this: