Anti-Choice Democrats? Yep... That's A Thing

In the last few days we've been pointing out Democrats who back Wall Street's bid to help the GOP chip away at Dodd Frank protections and DCCC 2016 recruits who are NRA allies. Yesterday The Hill ran an op-ed on Anti-Choice Democrats, although the author, Kristen Day, the executive director of Democrats For Life of America, was savvy enough to not name the Democrats they back. Most of them know being anti-Choice is a disadvantage in Democratic primaries, as slimy Chicagoland Blue Dog Dan Lipinski has been learning in recent months. The only anti-Choice Democrats featured prominently on the anti-Choice Democrats website are reactionary Blue Dogs Lipinski and Colin Peterson and an Arkansas candidate named Paul Spencer who we've already covered and who they crow "has a track record of fighting for ethics in government, for transparency, and fighting for life. Paul has publically [sic] stated that he will decline DNC money rather than change his pro-life stance. This and other stands against influence-buying have led to the slogan "Can't Buy Paul." The DNC doesn't give congressional candidates money.

Anyway, the op-ed says there's an anti-Choice March coming up and claims between a quarter and a third of Democrats are anti-Choice. She puts a Democrats sheen on it: "We are Pro-life Democrats because we are committed to protecting both the lives of unborn children and the lives of those who have already been born-- and not merely through charity. We believe in the dignity and worth of all, especially the poor, the vulnerable, the persecuted, and the abandoned. And we believe in an active government that safeguards that dignity and protects human rights. We are pro-life because we believe in the defense of all innocent human life, and we are Democrats because they are the party that, since the New Deal, has best stood up for the well-being of working-class and middle-class Americans."

[W]e are not going anywhere. Every March for Life, we are there marching-- and that’s not going to change. Every year, people come up to us-- Democrats, Republicans, Independents-- and tell us to keep fighting the good fight and that they, too, believe in both defending life and social justice for all.

And many pro-lifers recognize an obvious fact: The pro-life movement cannot possibly succeed without bipartisan support. A more bipartisan pro-life movement is the key to passing critical pro-life legislation and locking in support for these measures long-term. It is encouraging to see that the current leadership of the March for Life recognizes this need for a bipartisan pro-life movement.

So, yes, pro-life Democrats are different from the many conservatives who populate the pro-life movement and shape its image. And we will continue to be different. We will work together with all other pro-lifers to protect unborn life whenever possible.

But we will also be the ones constantly pushing for more assistance for pregnant women, stronger efforts to reduce poverty, and greater economic security for all Americans. We will push our fellow pro-lifers to be consistently pro-life-- to follow through on the common values we profess.

We will do this because we are pro-life Democrats: pro-life, Democrats, and unwilling to abandon our most cherished principles.

Blue America supports pro-Choice candidates, not anti-Choice candidates. When Tom Perriello first ran for Congress in 2008 he fed me a line of bullshit about how he would never vote to take away the right to choice for any woman and Blue America ignored warnings from others who told me he's a liar-- and we supported him. Were we in for a shockeroo when the issue came up in Congress and he voted anti-Choice. Maybe he thought it would help him with conservatives in his district. It didn't and it turned off enough real Democrats that they didn't turn out for him in the 2010 midterm. So: single termer. Every single candidate you'll find by clicking on the ActBlue thermometer on the right is pro-Choice. None of them are anti-Choice. We learned from our horrible Perriello experience into figuring out who's lying to us to get our endorsement the way he did.

Can Progressives Make The Democratic Party Worthwhile?

From the corrupt, corporate, anti-Bernie wing of the Democratic Party

As I reiterated yesterday, despite Bernie’s backing for Tom Perriello in Virginia, Perriello’s loss was no blow to progressivism. During his single term in Congress, Perriello proved himself to be a careerist hack with just a worthless patina of fake progressivism and, a dishonest and untrustworthy politician. On Friday Shaun King, in an insightful essay on why progressives and liberals continue to feel like unwelcome guests in the Democratic Party, sited Perriello’s loss as a loss for the movement. He’s correct in pointing out that the Virginia victor, conservative, semi-Republican Ralph Northam, has been a crap Democrat, but that doesn’t make Perriello anything but-- if that-- the lesser of two evils. Northam’s values, he wrote “simply don't line up with that of most progressives, including my own” and he’s right. But neither did Perriello’s who is just a faker who managed to take in an awful lot of people, including Bernie… and Shaun, who wrote that he doesn’t “know of any better illustration for the current dilemma of American progressives than this [Virginia] race and its result. The Democratic Party is moving to the right.”

He’s right about the party establishment moving even further to the right. Guys like Perriello are, however, the polar opposite of the answer.

The Democratic Party has shifted to the right. It's not anti-war. It's not strong on the environment. It's not strong on civil and human rights. It's not for universal health care. It's not strong on cracking down on Wall Street and big banks or corporate fraud. Ralph Northam was and is weak on all of those core principles of the progressive left, but we're expected to get behind him, and candidates like him, as if we're just a few small details away from seeing eye to eye with him. We aren't. He's not a progressive. He's not a liberal. He's hardly even a Democrat.

Millions of us who ultimately voted for Hillary Clinton felt the very same way about her. On issues ranging from war, to corporate fraud, to campaign finance, to universal health care, and so much more, her positions were not discernibly different from the most basic Republican talking points.

Was she better than Trump? Of course she was. But I'd literally rather have a Kardashian sister or Curious George be President of the United States over Trump. Someone being better than Trump cannot be our key metric for choosing candidates.

I'm hearing more and more of my progressive friends talk seriously about the need for us to form our own political party. I get it. At the very best we are slightly tolerated guests in the Democratic Party. We are as different from establishment Democrats as those establishment Democrats are from everyday Republicans.

Being begrudgingly tolerated is a terrible feeling. We are an enthusiastic, organized bunch, but I certainly don't feel welcomed.

MSNBC's Joy Reid all but confirmed as much in a widely shared tweet earlier this week in which she said, "Bernie and his followers are like that college friend who stays at your place for weeks, pays $0, eats your food & trashes your aesthetic.”

That Reid, who makes a living as a political commentator, came to this conclusion about Bernie Sanders and his millions of followers was deeply disappointing, but revealing. Bernie Sanders is the most popular politician in America. He has done far more for the Democratic Party than it has for him.

When the new head of the Democratic Party, Tom Perez, went on a speaking tour recently with Bernie, the enthusiastic crowds of thousands didn't show up at every single venue to hear Tom-- they were there for Bernie. Tom didn't do Bernie a favor, Bernie did Tom a favor. Bernie got behind Hillary Clinton and campaigned for her all over the country and asked his supporters to follow his lead.

I was one of those people who did just that. I've been a Democrat all of my life and have campaigned for and donated to so many Democratic candidates across the years. That the millions of us who support Bernie and his values have been reduced to bad guests who don't pay our way, eat up all the food, and trash the place, is a terrible insult rooted in something other than reality.

Democrats lost the House, the Senate, the presidency, the Supreme Court, and the strong majority of state houses and governorships across the country. I agree that it sure does look like somebody trashed the place, but it damn sure wasn't Bernie and his followers. Anybody saying that is delusional.

Shaun shouldn’t take an establishment shill like Joy Reid any more seriously than he would take any other establishment shills on TV, from Chris Matthews to that Greta thing MSNBC hired from Fox. Reid’s just another former Republican elitist who found her way to the party of the establishment Democrats. He shouldn’t waste his time fighting with her on Twitter or writing about her anti-progressive views in his column. She doesn’t have anything constructive to offer and perspective is typical of any Blue Dog or Third Way hack.

Shaun is part of the effort the progressive grassroots has been making to take over the Democratic Party and return it to its traditional role-- at least since the 1930s-- as a legitimate vehicle for the aspirations of America’s working families. That’s what Bernie is as well, of course. It’s an on-going, never-ending effort-- and one that will always be opposed by the entrenched forces of Big Money, which can-- and does-- buy people like Reid.

More Anti-Choice Democrats Sneaking Under The Flaps Of The Big Tent

Svaty and Perriello-- women aren't safe

Many progressives were upset the Tom Perriello lost the Virginia gubernatorial nomination— and pretty handily-- to Lt. Governor Ralph Northam, 276,734 (55.5%) to 221,777 (44.5%). During the primary campaign, Northam raised $6,465,581.36 and Perriello raised $4,089,566.22. Northam is a pretty standard conservative Southern Democrat but claims too have moved left in recent years. I can’t vouch for that; never met the guy and his record is not the record of anyone I’d ever vote for. Perriello I know better. He played the role of progressive during the primary-- and even had support from Bernie and from a gaggle of progressive groups. But not from Blue America. We learned out lesson long ago. We were one of the first organizations to endorse him when he ran for Congress in 2008. It didn’t take long before we were very sorry we did.

It turned out to be pretty weak in the knees and often buckled to vote for conservative positions that were at odds with what he had told us during the endorsement process. He ran up a mediocre voting record and proven himself to be a shady politician with an insupportable character. The breaking point came when he went back on a very specific pledge he made to us about never voting to restrict a women’s right to choice. He voted with the Republicans to do just that.

When Perriello first solicited an endorsement from Blue America, we were very wary because it had been pointed out that he opposed women's right to Choice. He insisted his position had been misrepresented. He kept calling and calling and then visited my house. On February 27, 2008, Tom did a guest post here at DWT and he addressed concerns about Choice head-on:

Confusion ...[about] my position on abortion may stem either from my public association with Catholicism as co-founder of the progressive Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good or from being badly misquoted in a New York Times article following the 2004 election. I firmly believe that abortion should not be criminalized, nor can we allow any action that seeks to coerce women by reducing access to care or making the process less safe.

The emphasis is mine. But that is exactly what the Stupak-Pitts amendment he voted for did, and quite intentionally, and Perriello was well aware of that. So we didn’t endorse him for the gubernatorial race and none of his weeped when he lost to Northam. Honesty, integrity and character are important-- more important than a label claiming “progressivism,” especially when Perriello’s actual voting record is at odds with superficial reporters claiming he’s a progressive without digging around at all. It would have been hard to imagine getting behind Perriello, not because Northam is any better on the issues-- they’re probably about the same-- but because he doesn’t smell trustworthy to me. As for Bernie, he should have known better.

And that brings us to Josh Svaty, an overtly anti-choice Democrat in Kansas is running for governor in another contested primary. Erin Heger filed a report for Rewire this week. “Former Kansas legislator Josh Svaty,” she wrote, “supported the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which defines life beginning at fertilization. He made ten anti-choice votes during his time in the Kansas house from 2003 to 2009, including voting for a bill allowing an abortion patient’s family member or partner to sue a doctor or support staff to prevent the patient from having an abortion. That measure passed but was vetoed by then-Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D).”

“Kansas is the wrong place for any candidate like Svaty who has consistently voted against one of the loudest majorities PPGPV has seen in its fight for sexual and reproductive health care,” Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes (PPGPV) President and CEO Laura McQuade said in a blog post.

This is the second time this year an anti-choice Kansas Democrat has sought the party’s nomination. Dennis McKinney, a Democrat who has long opposed abortion rights and drawn support from the anti-choice group Kansans for Life, sought the Democratic nomination for the Fourth Congressional District special election in April. After outcry from activists, pro-choice Democrat James Thompson secured the nomination. While Thompson ended up losing to Republican Ron Estes, the narrow seven point margin of victory in an overwhelmingly red district demonstrates the progress reproductive rights activists have made in Kansas.

“Planned Parenthood has more than 44,000 highly engaged supporters in Kansas,” McQuade said in an email statement. “Access to safe, legal abortion is the will of the majority and a movement that represents a future our country desires. A candidate’s open embrace of abortion rights and support of Planned Parenthood is an asset, not a detriment in the state of Kansas.”

Kansas’ GOP-dominated legislature has enacted 30 abortion restrictions since 2010, when anti-choice Gov. Sam Brownback (R) took office. Kansans for Life in 2012 helped oust many rank-and-file Republicans in primary elections with aggressive campaign tactics, ensuring the legislature would be stocked with virulently anti-choice GOP legislators.

“You find more pro-life Democratic candidates in Kansas than you would perhaps other places,” said Alesha Doan, associate professor in the School of Public Affairs and Administration at the University of Kansas. “It’s not completely unique; there are pro-life Democrats elsewhere and there always have been. But in Kansas, running away from openly supporting reproductive rights is in part political strategy and survival.”

Anti-choice campaign and lobbying tactics, including flyers with vivid imagery and inflammatory language, along with the power and influence of Kansans for Life in the statehouse, have had an impact on how abortion rights are framed in Kansas. Even progressive candidates are sometimes unwilling to support reproductive rights because of this framing, Doan said.

“There’s a tremendous amount of fear because the tactics are really aggressive, and they are more so in Kansas than in other places. As a politician, it’s embarrassing and scary to deal with neighbors receiving awful flyers and your kids being asked questions at school. That kind of harassment has a really big impact on people,” Doan said. “The access anti-choice interest groups have to the governor and legislators also emboldens those groups. But an interest group is only as influential as politicians allow it to be.”

To combat this level of fear, Doan said people should talk more openly about abortion care and reproductive health and separate the stigma and shame associated with these issues.

“Women used to talk about abortion and reproductive health in the 70s and 80s much more openly than they do now, and a big part of that is connecting abortion to shame.” Doan said. “There’s a tremendous amount of silence that has fallen over this issue and as a result you hear one particular narrative.”

Although the Kansas Democratic Party platform includes support for reproductive rights, Svaty told the Kansas City Star in May that he believes he is “like many Kansans” in being “right down the middle on this issue.” However, a majority of Kansans support keeping abortion safe and legal, according to a poll conducted last fall by Public Policy Polling.

For Democrats in Kansas who hold reproductive rights as core values, the primary election is an opportunity to demonstrate what kind of candidate they want, said Burdett Loomis a political science professor at the University of Kansas.

“Svaty’s position is a very difficult one to sell among Democratic voters,” Loomis told Rewire. “Some people might look at this and say the fact that we’re talking about abortion as an election issue for Democrats is kind of unusual. That’s why you have primary elections. Kansas Democrats can express themselves and I think that primary is very much worth having.”

Two-term Democratic Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer is also running for governor, and while he hasn’t officially filed, Kansas House Minority Leader Jim Ward has also expressed interest in running. Ward has a pro-choice voting record. Brewer has not publicly stated his position on abortion rights.

“Reproductive rights are fundamental to the progress of women in Kansas... To treat the issue as anything less is to tell women they aren’t important to the [Democratic] party,” McQuade said. “Moreover, race, gender, and economic status are tied together. We would never dream of sidelining racial justice nor economic justice in our progressive movement, and neither should we marginalize reproductive rights.”

If people who are anti-Choice (or anti-gay or anti-Semitic or racist or whatever) feel for some crazy reason they’d rather be in the Democratic Party than the Republican Party, that doesn’t bother me all that much-- as long as they’re not put forward as party leaders and wind up in a position too further muddy the very muddied Democratic Party brand.

Women's Choice Is Not A Cultural Issue Democrats Are Allowed To Compromise Away

The less bad anti-Choice candidate in Omaha?

Activist Jodi Jacobson, founder of Rewire, was one of the people who rang the alarm bell on many elements within the Democratic Party for seemingly giving anti-Choicers a wink and a nod recently. There's a lot of misinformation floating around about the Democratic candidate for Omaha mayor, Heath Mello, and the circumstances of the hubbub around his relationship to the party. Yesterday Jodi endeavored to straighten it out and make it all clear and understandably. Let me just reiterate what I've already said: Blue America doesn't endorse anti-Choice candidates and we didn't endorse Mello. "Mayoral candidates also don’t normally draw national headlines," wrote Jodi, "but Mello did, because the endorsements also shed a glaring light on his past anti-choice record. Although he is running as a Democrat and lauded for progressive positions on numerous issues, as a Nebraska state senator, Mello co-sponsored and helped pass some of the worst state-level restrictions on abortion care in the country."

Those laws remain in place, and Mello has neither denounced them nor made clear whether he now understands why they are so damaging. His elevation to a national stage has opened old and new wounds, once again raising the issue of whether the Democratic Party, and progressives writ large, truly understands the intrinsic connections between the most fundamental rights of women and the ostensible goals of a progressive agenda. It underscores the persistent but erroneous idea that abortion rights are just a “cultural issue” that can be subject to “beliefs,” rather than facts, medical evidence, and public health goals. It promotes the notion that you can restrict women’s rights and still be a progressive. It has also posed the question of whether the future leaders of the party will not only protect, but promote women’s health and rights by taking responsibility for repealing existing barriers, some of which they themselves have put in place. The initial answer to the last question seems to be no.

...Criticisms of the party’s embrace of Mello by leaders such as NARAL Pro-Choice America President Ilyse Hogue led to a cycle of mansplaining (“You’re blocking our agenda with your wedge issues!”), misinformation (“Mello’s record isn’t that bad!”), and defensiveness (“But Bernie is pro-choice!”). And Democratic Party leaders demonstrated that after all this time, they can’t seem to grasp that there is no justice without reproductive justice; that women can’t enjoy full citizenship if they can’t decide whether, when, and with whom to have children; that access to abortion is a public health imperative; and that childbearing and childrearing are fundamentally economic activities no matter what tent you are pitching or where you pitch it.

When women’s rights leaders protested, party leaders very quickly trotted out the most common Democratic Party shibboleths-- with the least basis in fact-- to quell the firestorm. Women were schooled about what it takes to win races in “red” states, never mind that time after time, poll after poll, ballot initiative after ballot initiative shows that no matter how they self-identify, voters in states controlled by right-wing legislatures do not desire to rob people of their fundamental rights and routinely vote against abortion restrictions when given the chance (take Colorado, Mississippi, or South Dakota for example). Never mind, either, that throughout the country women are literally running the resistance and fueling the resurgence of grassroots electoral power at the state level.

The first people to effectively tell women to sit down were Sanders and DNC chair Tom Perez-- both of whom should have known better and who later reversed course to publicly support reproductive rights, because, let’s face it, a great deal of PAC money and organizing power is involved. But some of the loudest pushback to women’s rights advocates came from other self-proclaimed progressives, such as D.D. Guttenplan at The Nation, who, though he is not known as an abortion rights expert, decided that we were all complaining too much and that, by the way, we had our facts wrong.

We do not.

Here are the facts.

Mello’s record on abortion rights is very bad. Full stop. As a state senator in 2010, for example, Mello co-sponsored a 20-week abortion ban, one of the first in the nation and the first to rely on the false claims of “fetal pain” cooked up by anti-choice groups to shop this kind of model legislation. In 2011, Mello voted for LB 22, which prohibited insurance coverage of abortion in the state by using a false claim that federal funds in state exchanges were being used to fund abortion. Before passage of the Affordable Care Act, the majority of women with private insurance were covered for abortion care. Thanks in large part to the machinations of former Democratic Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson (for whom Mello previously worked) and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, millions of women lost insurance coverage of abortion care as the states used Nelson’s amendment to justify eliminating it. Mello helped finish his one-time boss’ work.

In 2011, Mello also voted to effectively kill telemedicine abortion in Nebraska via LB 521, which required the physical presence of a doctor for any abortion. This is another tool in the arsenal of the anti-choice playbook to make abortion so difficult to access that patients are faced with forced pregnancy. Such legislation raises the costs of abortion (by requiring office visits and the presence of a doctor even when not necessary and even for a medication abortion), makes it harder for rural women to access abortion (because they have to travel to clinics, of which there are only three in that very large state), and, ironically, results in many abortions taking place later than they might otherwise. This would seem to defeat the purpose of the bills-- but then, the purpose really is to shame women.

In running for mayor, Mello has said he would “never do anything to restrict reproductive health care.”

We'll get back to Jody in a second. I just want to point out, though, that when I interviewed another fake progressive, anti-Choice Democrat, Tom Perriello in 2008, he used the exact same words to lie to me and manipulate me into recommending him for a Blue America endorsement. He took our donors' money, got elected, showed his true colors by running up a ProgressivePunch "F" and then breaking his specific pledge to "never do anything to restrict reproductive health care." He is now the "progressive" choice for the Democratic nomination for governor of Virginia (against an even more conservative Democrat). Jodi handled that pledge from Mello by pointing out two problems: "As mayor, he will need to actively promote access to abortion care by enforcing the FACE Act, ensuring clinics are respected, and taking other steps. More to the point, however, he participated in the substantial and irreparable damage done to abortion rights in his state, and those votes can’t just be excused by votes for child care, Medicaid expansion, education, or other progressive goals. The reason is simple, and it bears repeating: Access to abortion is a public health imperative. It is a medical and individual health imperative. It is a fundamental human right, without which women can’t control their futures or fully participate in societies and communities. Denial of abortion care makes women poorer and less able to achieve their own goals. Access to abortion care improves maternal survival and health and increases infant and child survival."

This is not about “beliefs,” it’s about decades of medical and public health evidence and basic, profound questions of human rights. We’ve all become conditioned to treat abortion as some thing subject to religious dictates at the social level in ways that are not at all dissimilar and only matters of degree different from excuses used to promote female genital mutilation, child marriage, and the sequestering of women as “religious” dictates. We’ve come to treat lies and misinformation about abortion as somehow different than lies and misinformation about climate change. They are no different.

It is true that Mello is running against a Republican who is as bad on abortion rights and far worse on many other issues of concern. It is true that some in Omaha defend Mello based on his broader record and that they are the ones who vote for their representatives. But that does not obviate broader questions. Because it is simultaneously true that others in the state, and throughout the country, are in fact deeply and legitimately concerned about the failure of the party and various leaders to grapple openly and honestly with the implications of sidelining fundamental rights going forward. It is also true that Mello has not, at least publicly, actually come to grips with what his past record suggests and has not, at least publicly, disavowed his actions. Finally, it’s not enough to say that as mayor he won’t do any more bad things, because in a state in which there are three clinics and one-third of the population lives in rural areas, his past actions continue to affect people who need care.

This is not an abstract issue. Under the ACA and with the permission of Democratic leaders we have seen the greatest erosion in abortion rights in this country in over two decades, and that is not just a problem of Republicans. What is at stake here is the future of the party. What is at stake is whether the largely white, largely male-dominated Democratic Party actually means to promote and protect women’s rights from here on after. What is at stake is what it actually means to be “pro-life,” if you are willing to pass legislation that stigmatizes, criminalizes, and makes inaccessible essential reproductive health care.

The question, now, is not only whether Mello understands the damage he is done and is willing to advocate to undo it, but whether the DNC, DCCC, Sanders, and others understand it. The question is what Mello’s supporters will do to push him on these issues as he seeks higher office in the state, because he will. The question is whether the party and leaders like Sanders will dedicate themselves to addressing the harm done to women’s rights by being complicit with the corporate and religiously fundamentalist Republican Party at the national and at the state level under the guise of a so-called big tent that inevitably undermines women’s health and rights, gives cover to the Catholic Bishops and white males, but leaves more than half the population out in the cold.

It can no longer be OK to substitute anti-choice lies and “religious” beliefs for the fundamental rights and health of women. Moreover, anti-choice positions are not necessary to win elections, though that is the least of the issues right now. If the situation with Heath Mello shows anything, it is that this is a conversation that has only just begun.

If Democratic leaders start making it ok for the party's nominees for office to be anti-Choice, how long before it's OK to be anti-LGBT? Xenophobic? Racist? Anti-working family? A Climate Change denier? Where does it end? Really-- where? With the Democratic Party standing for nothing very solid at all other than the careers of the corrupt assholes in elected office? Is that what it's all about? It is for them. Oh, and one more thing, if Mello wins the mayor's race, isn't is better than the Republican winning? Sure-- except the Republican isn't going to wind up tarnishing the Democratic Party brand or one day becoming a Democratic congressman, senator or governor.

Tom Perriello Is A Progressive? Who Says So? And Why?

Character matters-- more than labels

Nationally at least, I think it was Jonathan Martin who broke the story about Tom Perriello running for the Democratic nomination for governor of Virginia, “disrupting Democrats’ well-laid plans in what promises to be the most-watched election in the country this year.” The Democratic establishment had already picked their candidate, moderate-to-conservative Lt. Governor Ralph Northam. Perriello, according to the media, is the progressive interloper, “hindering McAuliffe’s effort to avert a contentious primary.”

A run by Mr. Perriello will expose the tensions between the moderate and progressive wings of the Democratic Party in Virginia, which is increasingly dominant in a once-conservative state. Much of the state’s Democratic leadership is already lined up for Mr. Northam, and Mr. Perriello’s unexpected move made them to scramble to respond.

…For decades, Virginia Democrats have taken care to distinguish themselves from their more liberal national party and present themselves as prudent centrists. But having carried Virginia in the last three presidential elections and controlling every statewide office, some Democrats are hungry to elevate progressives.

Mr. Perriello, 42, largely fits that bill. Swept into office in the Democratic wave of 2008, he quickly became a favorite of the White House for his willingness to vote for Mr. Obama’s agenda despite representing a right-of-center district. Mr. Obama took a liking to the congressman, a Yale University-trained lawyer and human rights advocate. Mr. Obama even flew to Charlottesville on the Friday before the election in 2010 to campaign for him.

Mr. Perriello lost that race in the Tea Party deluge, but soon became an executive at the Center for American Progress, a liberal research group. Mr. Obama then appointed him to the State Department, where he was a special envoy to the Great Lakes Region of Africa until he left the post at the end of last month.

But that’s not the whole story, not at all. And even The Times had to admit it. Way down in the second to last paragraph, Martin wrote that “Perriello is well liked among some liberal activists and could gain support with the sort of highly engaged voters who show up in low-turnout summer primaries. To do so, though, he will have to fend off questions from the left about some of his stances on cultural issues. He was endorsed by the National Rifle Association in his 2010 campaign and cast some votes against abortion.”

Oh, yes. I’m no fan of Northam’s but there are reason’s why I’m not jumping up and down over Perriello either. I know and mostly like him. But…

The Sad Saga Of Tom Perriello, A Confused And Dishonest Man, Lost In A Political Nightmare He's Spiritually Unprepared To Navigate was a post here at DWT in 2009. “Blue America,” I wrote at the time, “endorsed him in 2008 after he assured us-- several times, in writing and on tape-- that, if elected, we could count on him to be a pro-choice congressman. He was elected, and one week ago he voted for the horrific Stupak-Pitts anti-choice amendment to the health care bill. I wrote him a letter; he didn't respond… When he first solicited an endorsement from Blue America, we were very wary because it had been pointed out that he opposed women's right to Choice. He insisted his position had been misrepresented.

He kept calling and calling and then visited my house. On February 27, 2008, Tom did a guest post here at DWT and he addressed concerns about Choice head-on:

Confusion ...[about] my position on abortion may stem either from my public association with Catholicism as co-founder of the progressive Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good or from being badly misquoted in a New York Times article following the 2004 election. I firmly believe that abortion should not be criminalized, nor can we allow any action that seeks to coerce women by reducing access to care or making the process less safe.

The emphasis is mine. But that is exactly what Stupak-Pitts does, and quite intentionally, as Perriello well knows.

Perriello is in a very tough district, and he beat one the House's most notoriously corrupt incumbents 158,810-158,083, one of the closest congressional races in a decade. Mark Warner's coattails certainly helped drag him into office-- not to mention the tremendous support he had from grassroots and netroots activists taken in by his ability to portray himself as a progressive on key issues. He's turned out to be another political coward with a wretched 39.22 ProgressivePunch score on substantive issues, nestled comfortably between arch-reactionaries Brad Ellsworth and Health Shuler. In fact, many of the worst and most extreme Blue Dogs in the Congress have better voting records than Perriello: Heath Shuler (NC), Chris Carney (PA), Harry Mitchell (AZ), Dan Boren (OK), Gene Taylor (MS), Collin Peterson (MN), Jim Mashall (GA) and even John Barrow (GA). When Perriello gets burned in effigy by the teabaggers he tried to please by throwing women under the bus, he'll have to look elsewhere for sympathy and support.

Maybe he changed? Maybe he’s better? Maybe. But honesty, integrity and character are important— more important than a label claiming “progressivism,” especially when Perriello’s actual voting record is at odds with superficial reporters claiming he’s a progressive without digging around at all. It would be hard to imagine getting behind Perriello, not because Northam is any better on the issues— they’re probably about the same— but because he doesn’t smell trustworthy to me.

Let's Keep An Eye On The Democratic Freshmen and Sophomores

I hope you're following the updated, fast-moving developments at the DWT Tweet site or at our newly installed mini-tweeter on the right (below the bookstore; see it?)

Democrats captured the House from the GOP in 2006 by winning thirty Republican seats. They expanded their majority in 2008 by capturing another 21 seats, boosting them to a 257-178 majority. However, of the 257 Democrats, 40 spent 2009-10 voting more frequently with the GOP on tightly contested, substantive issues, than with their own party, mostly, but certainly not exclusively, Blue Dogs. The dozen worst offenders-- from bad to worse-- are: Zack Space (Blue Dog-OH), Artur Davis (AL, who was soundly rejected when he ran for governor, including by his own constituents), Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog-NC), Jim Marshall (Blue Dog-GA), Charlie Melancon (Blue Dog-LA), Glenn Nye (Blue Dog-VA), Harry Mitchell (Blue Dog-AZ), Walt Minnick (Blue Dog-ID), Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK), Travis Childers (Blue Dog-MS), Gene Taylor (Blue Dog-MS), and, worst of all, Bobby Bright (Blue Dog-AL) who accurately bragged in his own advertising-- at least in the white areas of his district-- that he voted 80% of the time with John Boehner.

The DCCC spent most of its money in this cycle on these 40 Democrats, the ones who voted most frequently against the party's agenda. In all, the DCCC deployed $65,103,409.58 on Independent Expenditures in around 80 races this year, some of which was spent on the successful special elections for Mark Critz (PA), Scott Murphy (NY) and Bill Owens (NY). Another chunk was spent on open seats (i.e., no incumbents). But when you look at incumbents only, the bulk of the money was spent in support of Bobby Bright ($1,411,243.95), Ann Kirkpatrick ($1,056,844.12), Harry Mitchell ($1,089,932.74), Bill Foster ($1,303,014.50), Baron Hill ($1,376,746.34), Joe Donnelly ($770,760.74), Frank Kratovil ($1,514,468.48), Travis Childers ($966,806.38), Gene Taylor ($156,326.93). Heath Shuler ($231,112.63), Mike McIntyre ($270,224.62), John Adler ($653,865.44), Harry Teague ($488,497.50), Scott Murphy ($686,418.54), Bill Owens ($946,672.85), Mike Arcuri ($1,008,038.47), John Boccieri ($1,449,104.74), Zack Space ($1,512,696.39), Kathy Dahlkemper ($236,852.45), Chris Carney ($606,070.20), Stephanie Herseth Sandlin ($402,595.77), Lincoln Davis ($402,595.77), Glenn Nye ($788,447.63), and Tom Perriello ($593,713.37), all Democrats who voted more frequently with the GOP on the important issues than with the Democrats.

Now, let's look at the Democrats who won seats from Republicans in 2006 and 2008. The bolded names are Members who voted against the health care reform bill. First the class of 2006:

Harry Mitchell (Blue Dog-AZ)
Gabby Giffords (Blue Dog-AZ)
Jerry McNerney (CA)
Ed Perlmutter (CO)
Joe Courtney (CT)
Chris Murphy (CT)
Tim Mahoney (FL- lost in 2008)
Ron Klein (FL)
Joe Donnelly (Blue Dog-IN)
Brad Ellsworth (Blue Dog-IN)
Baron Hill (Blue Dog-IN)
Bruce Braley (IA)
Dave Loebsack (IA)
Nancy Boyda (KS- lost in 2008)
John Yarmuth (KY)
Tim Walz (MN)
Carol Shea-Porter (NH)
Paul Hodes (NH)
John Hall (NY)
Kirsten Gillibrand (Blue Dog-NY- appointed to the Senate)
Mike Arcuri (Blue Dog-NY)
Heath Shuler (Blue Dog-NC)
Zack Space (Blue Dog-OH)
Jason Altmire (Blue Dog-PA)
Joe Sestak (PA)
Patrick Murphy (Blue Dog-PA)
Chris Carney (Blue Dog-PA)
Nick Lampson (Blue Dog-TC, lost in 2008)
Ciro Rodriguez (TX)
Steve Kagan (WI)

Even the Blue Dogs of the list, except Shuler, a C Street cultist, stuck with the Democrats on healthcare. Now the 2008 pickups:

Bobby Bright (Blue Dog-AL)
Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ)
Betsy Markey (Blue Dog-CO)
Jim Himes (CT)
Alan Grayson (FL)
Suzanne Kosmas (FL)
Walt Minnick (Blue Dog-ID)
Debbie Halvorson (IL)
Frank Kratovil (Blue Dog-MD)
Mark Schauer (MI)
Gary Peters (MI)
Travis Childers (MS)
Larry Kissell (NC)
John Adler (NJ)
Martin Heinrich (NM)
Harry Teague (NM)
Dina Titus (NV)
Michael McMahon (NY)
Dan Maffei (NY)
Eric Massa (NY, since resigned)
Mary Jo Kilroy (OH)
John Boccieri (OH)
Steve Driehaus (OH)
Kathy Dahlkemper (Blue Dog-PA)
Glenn Nye (Blue Dog-VA)
Tom Perriello (VA)
Gerald Connolly (VA)

Neither of these lists accounts for Democrats who won seats held by other Democrats who left them, like Betty Sutton and Charles Wilson, both of Ohio, who replaced, respectively, Senator Sherrod Brown and Governor Ted Strickland. And Democrats have since elected Scott Murphy (NY), Bill Owens (NY) and Mark Critz (PA).

As of now AP has called Blue Dog Brad Ellsworth's hope for a primary-free Senate seat against him and he's out of a job. AP has called the race for progressive John Yarmuth (as well as for moderate Blue Dog Ben Chandler in Kentucky. No changes in Kentucky.) Meanwhile Indiana Blue Dog-- and one of the worst of 'em-- Joe Donnelly, is struggling in early returns, barely ahead of Jackie Walorski with 55% reporting. The first incumbent to lose a House seat was the well-deserved defeat of corporate shill and K Street troll Suzanne Kosmas (FL-24), one of the worst freshmen anywhere. And the fake practitioner of "conviction politics," Tom Perriello, looks like he's losing his seat to GOP nutcase Robert Hurt. I might remind you that Perriello, who's buddy buddy with the Beltway liberal set and blackberry boys swore during his Blue America interview-- on tape-- that he would never harm a woman's right to Choice and then voted for the Stupak Amendment, then begged me to swear I wouldn't release the tape, then ran as "the candidate of conviction politics." And like I've pointed out he's one of 40 conservative Democrats who voted more frequently with the GOP in the past 2 years than with the Democrats on the contested, substantive issues that were voted on in the House. Buh-bye! Maybe he can do some conviction politics for Third Way. Deserving defeat even more than Perriello was Blue Dog and ultra-conservative (except on gay issues) Glenn Nye, who went down to defeat after one miserable aisle-crossing term.

Do The GOP Congressmembers Follow The Teabaggers, Inspire Them Or Lead Them?

Is it fair to hold Republican elected officials responsible for the violence, racism, homophobia and degenerate hysteria of their grassroots supporters? Before you jump to any hasty answers, please take a look at this short clip from our friends at BraveNewFilms:



It's starting to look-- even to the Village dullards Inside the Beltway-- like the American people are sick and tired of the GOP spoiled-child routine and that the teabaggers are likely to hurt the GOP at the polls in November. That may have a lot to do with why Cheney popped up to endorse the moribund McConnell cutout, Trey Grayson, in the Kentucky Senate race yesterday, trying-- probably futilely-- to derail Rand Paul's already sewn-up nomination as the first teabagger Senate nominee (unless you want to count Scott Brown, which I have a feeling teabaggers don't). And teabaggers running as third-party candidates are bound to help a wide array of Democrats, from Alan Grayson (more on that at 10AM), Tom Perriello, Mary Jo Kilroy, Billy Kennedy to Harry Reid and a whole battery of others.

But when normal Americans get wind of what angry, selfish ratings whores like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage and Ann Coulter are saying, they're revolted-- and they blame the Republican Party and the entire political right... as they should.

The latest manifestation of Republican Party obstructionism is that they're refusing to work past 2pm in the hopes of slowing everything down and grinding the functions of governance to a halt. That didn't work out too well for them when they tried it under Gingrich. And speaking of old GOP tricks... remember when they were all trying to claim the credit for the incredibly popular and successful projects created by the Stimulus bill they all voted against? Well, the ink wasn't even dry on the healthcare legislation he voted against when Iowa crook Chuck Grassley, petrified of a growing threat to his political longevity from Roxanne Conlin, tried claiming he deserved some of the credit for the bill. This is the memo I got from Conlin's campaign manager Mark Daley yesterday:

I could not make this up if I tried. Senator Grassley voted no on health insurance reform. He famously walked away from negotiations on the bill, declared “war on Obama-Care” and shamefully told Iowans we should fear the government may “pull the plug on grandma” and NOW HE IS TAKING CREDIT FOR THE BILL.

In a memo released to media his staff claims, “The provisions enacted in the new health care law are the result of Grassley's leadership on tax-exempt organizations' accountability and transparency, including hospitals.”

Chuck Grassley has done more to derail this bill than any other person in America. He has flip-flopped on health care. This bill will close the donut hole he created in 2003, cover 32 million Americans including 302,000 Iowans and reduce our debt by $1.2 trillion.

After 50 years in politics, Grassley is a career politician who will even take credit for things he voted against. This is pure hypocrisy. Stay tuned, by this time next week Grassley will have been a part of the moon landing.

Today Media Matters demanded that the Republican Party now tame the monster they created and singles out some especially seditious types among them, although I have no idea why they left out Steve King (R-IA):

Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) said there is “no difference” between House Republicans and the Tea Party activists.
 
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN): “I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back.  Thomas Jefferson told us, having a revolution every now and then is a good thing, and the people-- we the people, are going to have to fight back hard if we’re not going to lose our country.”
 
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN): “And are they going to listen? Oh yeah, oh yeah, they're going to listen. It was Thomas Jefferson who said a revolution every now and then is a good thing. What do you think?”
 
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN): “The number one thing people can do is come, see their member of Congress, look at them in the eyes, especially with other freedom fighters in tow, and let them know that the lessons of August, they should not forget, at their peril.”
 
Rep. Gregg Harper (R-MS): “We hunt liberal, tree-hugging Democrats, although it does seem like a waste of good ammunition.”
 
Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK): “We’re almost reaching a revolution in this country.”
 
The Republican National Committee created an offensive web ad featuring Speaker Pelosi looking down the barrel of a gun.  As the viewers hear a gunshot, blood drips down the screen.
 
The Republican National Committee paid for Tea Party signs. 
 
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN): organized the Tea Party health care “House Call” rally on the National Mall.

UPDATE: Sort This Out Yourself

Here we have a combination of gays, Republican Party officials and demented teabaggers:

Heroes and Villains In Last Night's Healthcare Votes

Out of step with American families: 2 dangerous clowns against healthcare-- Calvert & Ryan

I can't imagine that anyone who reads DWT doesn't already know that the two substantive votes on healthcare reform last night were won by the Democrats-- and the American people-- 219-212 and 220-211. The conservatives and their Republican Party right-roots, brainwashed by Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are predicting the same kind of Armageddon and communism and fascism and every kind of doom under the sky, just as they did when progressives broke free from England, freed the slaves, gave women the vote, made labor unions legal, passed Social Security, passed Medicare, etc. Conservatives, and the foolish people who fall for their selfish bullshit, are all about preserving the status quo and preventing progress.

Interestingly, as soon as the bill passed the DCCC sent out a press release to the media in southeast Wisconsin entitled "Representative Paul Ryan Puts Big Health Insurance Companies Before Affordable Health Care for Americans." They made a lot of sense pointing out that Ryan, "rather than vote to help middle class families, seniors, and small businesses finally afford coverage while reducing the deficit by more than a trillion dollars over 20 years, Representative Paul Ryan sided with the big health insurance companies instead." DCCC spokesperson, Jennifer Crider:

“For decades, big health insurance companies have profited off discrimination and denials and pricing middle class families out of the care they need but that didn’t stop Representative Paul Ryan from continuing to side with insurance companies. Ryan refused to give folks back home access to the same health care that he gets as a Member of Congress.
 
“After taking $534,071 in contributions from insurance companies, it’s outrageous that Ryan would put insurance company profits before helping middle class families and small businesses afford coverage, closing the Medicare prescription drug donut hole, and reducing the deficit by more than a trillion dollars over the next two decades.”  

...For Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District, Ryan’s vote against health insurance reform was a vote against:
 
o   Improving coverage for 506,000 residents.
 
o   Providing tax credits and assistance for 153,000 families and 14,000 small businesses to purchase affordable coverage.
 
o   Improving Medicare for 112,000 seniors, including closing the prescription drug donut hole.
 
o   Guaranteeing that 8,000 residents with pre-existing medical conditions can obtain coverage.
 
o   Protecting 1,600 families from bankruptcy due to unaffordable health care costs.
 
o   Allowing 51,000 young adults to stay on their parents’ insurance plans.
 
o   Reducing the cost of uncompensated care for hospitals and other health care providers by $23 Million annually.

Nothing wrong with that. But do you know what John Adler (NJ), Mike Arcuri (Blue Dog-NY), Bobby Bright (Blue Dog-AL), Travis Childers (Blue Dog-MS), Larry Kissell (NC), Frank Kratovil (Blue Dog-MD), Michael McMahon (NY), Walt Minnick (Blue Dog-ID), Glenn Nye (Blue Dog-VA), Zack Space (Blue Dog-OH), and Harry Teague (NM) have in common with each other and with Paul Ryan. They all voted "no" both times last night. What they also have in common with each other-- though not with Ryan-- is that each and every one of them is on the DCCC's Front Line list. This is the absolutely #1 priority list for DCCC money. If you donate to the DCCC you will be paying for the re-election campaigns of these treacherous anti-family putative Democrats. Everything the DCCC had to say about Paul Ryan is just as true about the 34 Democrats who opposed the healthcare reform last night.

Regina Thomas is running against John Barrow, the only Democrat to vote "no" in a blue district. This morning she told us that Barrow "voted with the health care industry and corporations. He received more than $80,000 this year alone from health care lobbyists.  His vote was for them and not the voters of the 12th. His actions prove just what kind of politician he is-- whomever gives him the most money determines how he will vote. July 20th will be here before we know it-- then we will have an opportunity to vote him out." We added Regina to the Blue America endorsement page yesterday and urge you to consider helping her campaign.

Another progressive Democrat endorsed by Blue America had a strong message about the vote last night as well. Connie Saltonstall's opponent, Bart Stupak, after nearly derailing the bill, took stock of his career mortality and pulled back from the ledge, though not before doing his worst to weaken women's choice. "First, let me say ‘thank-you’ to Congressman Stupak for his vote on this historic reform bill," she wrote in a statement to north Michigan media.  "Healthcare reform will create a real difference in Michigan’s First District with provisions that extend healthcare coverage to 44,000 uninsured residents, protect 1,100 families from bankruptcy due to unaffordable health care costs, grow jobs by extending tax credits to small businesses, and improve Medicare for 141,000 beneficiaries, including closing the donut hole. And let’s not forget, healthcare reform is also about jobs-- about saving auto plants in Michigan from having to move jobs to Canada to save $7.25 an hour in healthcare costs." But what about Stupak; don't worry; she addressed that too:

Representative Stupak’s support has come at a very high cost. Mr. Stupak’s dogmatic insistence on inserting his own religious views into the legislative debate and threatening to deprive his constituents of needed healthcare reform has eroded people’s trust in him. Throughout this debate there is the sense that our Congressman has let us down. It appears he has been more interested in promoting his own personal agenda than in representing the people of Michigan’s First District. 

The healthcare debate should never have been sidetracked into an abortion debate. For more than 30 years, the Hyde amendment has assured that there is no federal funding for abortion and this bill includes that provision; there will be no federal funding for abortion. 
 
This is not a perfect bill. I believe universal healthcare is a right, not a privilege or a luxury. When I get to Congress, I will continue to fight for a single payer system which I believe is the most efficient and cost effective way to deliver healthcare to all. Quality healthcare also allows women the opportunity to make responsible life decisions for themselves and their families.”

Blue America-backed Bill Hedrick in Riverside County is up against right-wing fanatic Ken Calvert, who cavalierly voted against the interests of his own constituents last night, Bill's press release:

“For 18 years, Ken Calvert has put party politics before the people of this district.  Today he had a chance to redeem himself by voting for the landmark health insurance reform bill that would directly help hundreds of thousands of people in the 44th. But Ken Calvert, once again putting his personal and party interests first, voted against it.

Because of the vote today, 107,000 residents of the 44th who had no access to health care have access. 19,600 residents with pre-existing conditions can obtain coverage. 81,000 young adults can remain on their parents' insurance plan. And 76,000 seniors will have their Medicare improved.  Those are the facts of this bill.

What Calvert fails to see is that these facts are more than just numbers on a page-- these numbers represent real people that will benefit from this reform. Ken Calvert had the chance to do right by them, and he failed. Just as Calvert failed when he repeatedly opposed expanding insurance coverage to children, opposed re-importation of prescription drugs, and opposed low-cost health insurance plans for small businesses.

Two more facts worth mentioning: This bill will reduce the deficit by over $100 billion over the next ten years and by about $1 trillion over the next twenty. This is fiscally responsible legislation.  Putting the party line ahead of the financial future of our children and our country is irresponsible leadership.

Today’s vote was ultimately about responsibility. Fiscal responsibility to bring America forward and the moral responsibility to keep America healthy. Ken Calvert’s record is clear-- he is not the person to lead us forward as we fight to further reform and balance the budget. It is time for new, responsible leadership in Washington-- leadership we can trust to get the job done.”

Washington state Senator and progressive champion Craig Pridemore congratulated the outgoing congressman, Brian Baird for switching, at the last minute, from a no vote to an "aye," right in line with Craig's own attitude about healthcare reform. "I'm grateful that so many regional voices joined me in calling clearly and unequivocally for a straight up or down vote on the issue," said Pridemore, who has made a clear vote on health care reform a top issue in his grass roots driven campaign. "Baird shifted from opposition to equivocation and then support. While I applaud his ultimate vote, it took too long for Congress to reach this day, undermining public confidence and delaying the needed pace of change and reform." His opponent for the Democratic nomination, a multimillionaire conservative corporate shill has also equivocated on and no one has a clear idea of where he stands on it.
 
Ann McLane Kuster (D-NH) is locked in a tough primary battle against a very conservative Democrat, Katrina Swett (the former head of Joe Lieberman's national race for the presidency). Last night Ann issued this statement: "Tonight the U.S. House of Representatives passed historic health care reform that will make a real difference for New Hampshire families and businesses. This bill will cut the deficit by $130 billion in the next decade alone, extend coverage to 31 million Americans without health care, stop insurance companies from denying coverage to people who get sick or have a pre-existing condition, and close the so-called "donut hole" in the Medicare prescription drug benefit that otherwise leaves thousands of New Hampshire seniors without coverage. In Congress I'll continue to work for and support a public insurance option that increases competition and will drive down insurance premiums and health care costs for New Hampshire families. I'm looking forward to President Obama signing this historic bill into law. Health care costs are out of control and are crippling New Hampshire families, small businesses and our national budget. The time for health care reform is now."

The only incumbent to vote with the GOP who Blue America helped to win office was Larry Kissell. We withdrew support for Kissell sometime ago when we saw a pattern of him deciding to vote against the constituents he had promised to support when he ran in 2006 and 2008. He has been a terrible disappointment. All the other Blue America-endorsed incumbents were upbeat about their support for the bill. John Hall (D-NY): "Today we took a huge step forward in our fight for affordable health care for all Americans. I cast my vote in favor of health insurance reform because it was the right thing to do. It was the right thing to do for the woman in Warwick who was dropped by her insurance company in the middle of her breast cancer treatments. It was the right thing to do for the family in Wappinger whose premiums are soaring because of their son's pre-existing condition. It was right thing to do for the Seniors in Somers who are stuck in the Medicare donut hole, paying more than they can afford for the medications they need. When I originally ran for office, I promised I would vote for anything that moved us towards universal health care coverage. Today I feel much closer to delivering on that promise."

We've had a bit of a rocky road with Tom Perriello but he came through for Virginia families last night. This is what he sent out to his constituents after voting for the reform bills:

You sent me to the People's House to do a job. For a century, leaders from both parties have pledged that all Americans deserve access to quality, affordable health care. Tonight we delivered on that promise. After more than a year of substantive debate and vicious smears, I had started to lose hope that we would deliver on the change we promised--that we would solve the problems others had simply kicked down the road. I say tonight that our dream of a better kind of politics stands restored.

A few moments ago, wearing an old suit of my father's, I cast my vote for universal affordable health care. Because you sent me here, I got to be part of this historic moment. Because you sent me here, I voted to make coverage available to 49,000 residents of my district. Because you sent me here, tonight I voted to reduce costs for more than 400,000 of my constituents by over $1,000 every year. Back home, those savings mean something.

Beyond the dollars and cents, tonight I think of those families without insurance who live in fear that they are one illness away from bankruptcy. I think of those with insurance who are one pink slip away from losing their family's coverage. I think of the small business owner who doesn't want to be forced to choose between closing up shop or cutting benefits to his or her workers. I think of the medical student who feels called into pediatrics but sees that our system simply doesn't make that a credible option. And I know tonight that we have made things better.

Some say that this vote seals my political fate, but I didn't come to Congress to do what's easy--I came here to do what's right. I came here to solve problems, to work on legislation that would mean something to families in my district, to be a leader, as you sent me here to do. Thank you for giving me this opportunity tonight.

Jim Himes said he was well aware that "taking a stand against the status quo means that I will be under constant attack from special interests" but he felt that "this was one of the most important votes that I will ever take. Not only will this historic legislation lower costs, improve quality and rein in the insurance industry-- it's also the largest deficit-reduction package in nearly two decades. The bill contains nearly every tested idea for controlling growth in health care costs, including new requirements for insurers to disclose and justify premium increases, new insurance exchanges to promote competition, and historic new incentives for wellness and preventive care."

Paul Hodes (D-NH) is another Blue America alum who fought for reform. He's currently running for the open U.S. Senate seat in his state and sent this to New Hampshire voters last night:

Moments ago, Congress successfully passed health care reform. I proudly cast my vote in favor of this historic reform because it was the right thing to do.

It was the right thing to do for the people of New Hampshire’s second district that I am honored to represent. It was the right thing to do for the 1.3 million people in the Granite State who have fought a broken, backwards health care system for far too long. It was the right thing to do for the thousands of small businesses on Main Streets across New Hampshire that have been forced to downsize, lay off or shut down completely in the face of uncontrollable premium prices.

And it was the right thing to do for every single middle-class family in this country, gathered around their kitchen tables trying to figure out how they can possibly make ends meet.

Above all else, this bill is a jobs bill. It will fundamentally fix a broken system that has let insurance companies jack up premiums and eliminate health care choices, killing jobs across New Hampshire. In this reform proposal, nearly 35,000 small businesses across New Hampshire will be given tax credits to provide the health coverage of their choosing. This bill will help put the Granite State back to work.

It will extend coverage to 60,000 of our uninsured neighbors, reduce the federal deficit by $130 billion in the next decade, improve Medicare coverage for 200,000 New Hampshire seniors, and will rein in some of the most egregious practices of health insurance companies.

Insurance companies and their corporate allies spent billions trying to bully us into giving up. Today, we showed them what we are made of. They fought reform at every step, desperately trying to protect their own profits. But together, you and I stood strong, stayed tough and never gave up fighting because we knew it was the right thing to do.

Today is an historic day for this country. I am proud and humbled to be a part of it.

Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), Chairman of the Congressional Progressive Coalition fought harder than almost anyone to make this bill better for ordinary working families. He voted for the half full glass and correctly called it a work in progress: "The vote we just cast is a beginning, not an end. It establishes once and for all that health care in this country is a basic right, not a privilege. Our system can be improved in the future, and it will be. I will make fighting for those improvements a priority as long as I am in Congress, because as much work as we’ve done over the past year, more remains before us. Major advances in our quality of life are rarely easy. They are not achieved in a single stroke. They are the result of years of persuasion, discussion and sometimes false starts. This bill is a foundation that we will look back on in five years, 10 years and 20 years and thank ourselves for laying now.”

And the president:




UPDATE: Waterloo

Not everyone is celebrating this morning. Republican propagandist David Frum seems depressed today as he reprises Jim DeMint's prediction about President Obama's Waterloo:

Conservatives and Republicans today suffered their most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s.

It’s hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the disaster. Conservatives may cheer themselves that they’ll compensate for today’s expected vote with a big win in the November 2010 elections. But:

(1) It’s a good bet that conservatives are over-optimistic about November – by then the economy will have improved and the immediate goodies in the healthcare bill will be reaching key voting blocs.

(2) So what? Legislative majorities come and go. This healthcare bill is forever. A win in November is very poor compensation for this debacle now.

So far, I think a lot of conservatives will agree with me. Now comes the hard lesson:

A huge part of the blame for today’s disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans ourselves.
At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama’s Waterloo-- just as healthcare was Clinton’s in 1994.

Only, the hardliners overlooked a few key facts: Obama was elected with 53% of the vote, not Clinton’s 42%. The liberal block within the Democratic congressional caucus is bigger and stronger than it was in 1993-94. And of course the Democrats also remember their history, and also remember the consequences of their 1994 failure.

This time, when we went for all the marbles, we ended with none.

Looks like Obama was Wellington.

Glenn Nye-- Few Disappointments, Since There Were Never Any Expectations

This weekend we looked, sadly, at Tom Perriello's failed balancing act between his attempts to do the right thing-- he was one of the only red-district freshmen who voted for cap and trade, and he did vote for the healthcare bill-- and his attempts to curry enough favor with GOP extremists to stay in office. Congressmen who live in fear everyday, though, rarely make inspiring leaders, something many of us thought we saw in Perriello the candidate. That's why so many grassroots and netroots activists supported him, and that's why so many are disappointed and disillusioned by his decision to go back on his word to protect reproductive choice for women and vote for Stupak's disastrous anti-choice amendment, a Trojan Horse the GOP managed to inflict on the House Democratic caucus.

Today's CQPolitics compares Perriello's approach with that of a far more straightforward Virginia conservative, Glenn Nye. Upon election, Nye joined the Blue Dog caucus and never made any pretense about being a progressive. Another red-district Virginia freshman, his voting record is considerably worse than Perriello's. Perriello's dismal 39.22 ProgressivePunch score almost looks reasonable next to Nye's 25.49, barely above Republican Ron Paul's 25.31. Nye is a charter member of the Boehner Boys. The only Democrats in the House who have voted with the Republicans more frequently than Nye are hard-core reactionaries Travis Childers (Blue Dog-MS), Scott Murphy (NY), Bobby Bright (Blue Dog-AL) and Parker Griffith (Blue Dog-AL). Unless teabaggers split the Republican Party in their districts, Childers, Bright and Griffith have virtually no chance to be re-elected next year. Like Nye, they have assiduously followed a Creigh Deeds loser strategy: alienating the Democratic base while courting unimpressed Republicans.

Where Gore and Kerry had badly lost Virginia's 2nd Congressional District, Obama beat McCain 51-49% and helped Nye score a stunning 52-48% upset over reactionary backbencher Thelma Drake. He now represents Virginia's largest city, Virginia Beach. The enthusiastic Democrats who turned out for Obama and Mark Warner are unlikely to bother coming to the polls in 2010, and Nye is on the short list of Democrats most likely to lose his seat.

Perriello and Nye are taking different tacks in their voting behavior and campaign styles as they prepare to seek re-election against vigorous Republican opposition.

Perriello has been more of a populist and risk-taker in his votes and public statements. On closely divided votes, he has sided with his party more frequently than Nye even though Perriello’s district, located in the mostly rural Southside area of the state, backed Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in the 2008 presidential election and Nye’s district, a more geographically compact area in and around Virginia Beach, backed Barack Obama.

Perriello last year won the 5th District seat by 727 votes over Republican Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr. in what was one of the closest House elections of the 2008 cycle, while Nye won in the 2nd District by the more comfortable margin of 5 points over Republican Rep. Thelma Drake.

Nye has been running a more traditionally independent campaign that puts some distance between himself and the national party. He’s bucked Democratic leaders on some high-profile votes. Their House votes diverged most recently-- and most notably-- on the health care bill the House narrowly passed Nov. 7. Perriello voted for the bill, a rare Democratic freshman from a McCain-voting district who backed it, while Nye was among the 39 Democrats-- most of them from politically competitive districts-- who opposed it.

...“Nye is really trying to ensure that his voting record is more consistent with what he considers to be the views of the district than of the national party, and I think he’s setting the framework for an election where he’s going to run as kind of an independent person, not someone beholden to party,” said Robert Holsworth, a Virginia political analyst who runs the Web site Virginia Tomorrow.

Holsworth said Perriello, by contrast, is “really setting up an election strategy based on his constant communication with his constituents.”

“He comes home regularly. He holds town halls, public forums by the dozens. He is really trying to be extraordinarily visible in the district,” Holsworth said.

In an interview over the summer after he voted for the cap-and-trade bill, Perriello said that “when I’ve cast a vote that I think is going to be unpopular, I don’t hide behind it-- I go out and I talk about it and make my case and let the chips fall where they may.”

After he voted for the health care bill, the National Republican Congressional Committee pounced on Perriello, issuing a statement shortly after the vote that his “political career was pronounced dead” because of “political malpractice.” The NRCC has described a vote for the health care bill as a “career-ending vote” for Perriello and other politically vulnerable Democrats.

By being among the Democratic no voters, Nye shielded himself from the tough criticism that GOP leaders leveled at Perriello. Still, Republican businessman Ben Loyola, one of Nye’s two major challengers, criticized the lawmaker’s vote against an anti-abortion amendment to the health care bill that passed with the backing of Perriello and 63 other Democrats.

There's nothing Nye or Perriello could do-- short of joining the GOP-- that will make Republicans happy... and even if they became Republicans, they'd then have to face the ire of teabaggers. This morning CQPolitics also looked at the Nye-like voting record of Blue Dog Frank Kratovil, a Maryland Boehner Boy with little chance at re-election for the same reasons. Alan Grayson should offer classes to Democratic freshmen: Political Backbone 101.