How Would You Like Two More Like Elizabeth Warren?

Do conservative voting records by vulnerable Democrats like Mary Landrieu (LA), Mark Pryor (AR), and John Walsh (MT) make it hard for you to get worked up about Democrats whining that they could lose the Senate? Are Steve Israel's reactionary Blue Dog and New Dem recruits, like Jennifer Garrison (OH), John Lewis (MT), Gwen Graham (FL), Pete Aguilar (CA), Jerry Cannon (MI), Ann Callis (IL), James Lee Witt (AR), Bill Hughes (NJ) and Suzanne Patrick (VA), demotivating you from even caring how badly the Democrats will lose the House again in November? Do you miss 2012 when at least we had the inspiration of Elizabeth Warren to focus on?

I have good news-- despite the DSCC, there isn't just one potential Elizabeth Warren to get excited about this cycle; there are two, Shenna Bellows in Maine and Rick Weiland in South Dakota, two races the Beltway Democrats have studiously ignored but who, much to the chagrin of laughable would-be power brokers like Guy Cecil, are breaking through the clutter anyway. Bellows, a civil liberties dynamo and former Executive Director of the Maine ACLU, and Weiland, a folksy; prairie populist inspired by George McGovern, Paul Wellstone and Warren herself, have steep paths to victory. But where you would once hear only, "you're crazy; that's impossible," now you sense people are taking a second look, paying attention. Most of the Democrats in the Senate, including all of the good ones, from Bernie Sanders, Sherrod Brown, Brian Schatz, Mazie Hirono, Tom Harkin and Jeff Merkley to Elizabeth Warren, Barbara Boxer and Ed Markey have already endorsed and donated to Weiland. It is nothing but the pigheadedness of Guy Cecil that is keeping Rick from being endorsed by the DSCC. Cecil already gave up trying to hold back Bellows and allowed the DSCC to endorse her last month. Her problem is that she's running against fake "moderate" Susan Collins, who Democrats count on to help out once in a while, usually when Republican leaders don't really care that much.

Friday, writing for The Nation, John Nichols, moved the narrative along for Bellows, who has yet to be endorsed by even one U.S. Senator, but is piling up an impressive array of national grassroots organizations behind her. His first sentence should get anyone to pay attention: "The woman who could be the future of progressive politics in America is sitting at the back table of an Indian restaurant in Portland, Maine." 

Bellows knows she can’t match the millions her opponent, three-term Senator Susan Collins, has banked-- or the millions that wealthy donors are ready to spend in Maine and other states to make Mitch McConnell the Senate’s next majority leader. The Democrat is satisfied if the Mainers she calls give $5. That’s because Bellows isn’t really dialing for dollars. She’s dialing for activists. “We had over 200 volunteers gathering signatures in Maine to put me on the ballot. They were talking to friends and family members about who I am and what our campaign represents,” she explains. “We then invited the signature-gatherers to speak on my behalf at Democratic caucuses. So we had 100 volunteers speak at 150 different caucuses across the state. This is the movement that we are building: a movement for social justice, environmental justice and economic justice. And it’s working.”

Bellows began her run against Collins-- who despite her “moderate” label has drifted with her party to the right on economic and social issues-- as an off-the-radar challenger. The 39-year-old former head of the Maine ACLU had no money, little name recognition, and a set of principles and positions that sometimes put her at odds with top Democrats. Bellows runs left on healthcare (she’s for single-payer) and climate change (don’t get her started on the Keystone pipeline), yet she makes common cause with libertarians on marijuana legalization and privacy rights. She speaks comfortably of building coalitions with independent-minded Tea Party activists against cronyism and corruption. Bellows believes in pushing political boundaries, and in Maine-- with its history of electing independent governors and senators-- it seems to be working. The challenger turned heads when, with those $5 donations from working-class Mainers, she outraised Collins in the last quarter of 2013. Even skeptics have begun to note the ease with which this first-time candidate-- the daughter of a carpenter and a nurse, whose home had no electricity during much of her childhood-- makes connections with disenfranchised and disengaged voters. Bellows has gained endorsements from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (which calls her “the Elizabeth Warren of civil liberties”), Democracy for America, MoveOn and, belatedly, at the end of March, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

This year’s fierce competition for control of the Senate is generally framed in terms that make sense to Washington operatives: cash on hand, famous names, carefully crafted talking points. By those measures, Republicans are thought to have the upper hand in most of the thirty-six contests that will be decided in an off-year election where turnout is down and the Koch brothers’ spending is up. If Democrats are going to upset this calculus, they’ll need unexpected wins in unlikely states. That means they’d better start considering contenders who have tossed aside lame messaging memos in favor of grassroots organizing. Like South Dakota Democrat Rick Weiland, who is well on his way to visiting every one of that state’s 311 towns, Bellows is focusing not just on Maine’s Democratic-leaning cities but on rural areas. She’s already identified supporters in 366 small towns, and the numbers are rising.

Bellows is determined to organize her way to the Senate. With the ACLU, she got Maine Democrats and Republicans working together to pass legislation requiring warrants for access to cellphone records. When Maine Republicans eliminated same-day voter registration, she co-chaired the 2011 Protect Maine Votes coalition, which put it on the ballot and secured a landslide vote to restore it. A year later, with Mainers United for Marriage, she helped organize the referendum campaign that overturned a 2009 ban on same-sex marriage. “No one thought we could win. Outside political observers said, ‘It’s too soon-- you just lost in 2009,’” Bellows recalls. “We said, ‘We know we have the right message, we’re on the right side of history, and we have a highly organized field plan to win.’ And we did. This is a very similar campaign. It’s a David and Goliath race, but we know we have the right message. Most Mainers think we should raise the minimum wage. Most Mainers are concerned about climate change. Most Mainers think we should restore civil liberties.”

As she talks through her organizing strategy, Bellows reminds me of a former farm organizer who ran an impossible campaign for a Minnesota Senate seat in 1990. When I mention this, Bellows doesn’t miss a beat. “Yes,” she says. “And Paul Wellstone won.”

Nichols was incorrect about one thing. He described Rick Weiland as "well on his way to visiting every one of that state’s 311 towns." He completed the last town, tiny Hudson (pop. 296) on Tuesday. If you don't live in one of those 311 towns and you want to check out what Weiland is all about, you could go to his campaign website. There, the first thing you will see on the very top of the page is a this statement:

The first bill Rick will introduce in the Senate os a Constitutional Amendment that reads: So that the votes of all, rather than the wealth of the few, shall direct the course of this Republic, Congress shall have the power to limit the raising and spending of money with respect to federal elections.

Rick grounds his populist message in a clear call to get Big Money out of politics. It's a popular message with ordinary voters, if not with the Beltway Establishment.

Elizabeth Warren isn't going to transform America alone. Susan Collins and Mike Rounds are impediments to what she's trying to do to move the ball down the field. There is no doubt which team Rick Weiland and Shenna Bellows will be playing for-- the team that supports the ordinary working families in their states and this country. You can help both win these two uplifting battles here on the Blue America ActBlue Senate page. Taking our country back is a theme that can be used on both sides of the aisle, but among progressives, it means stopping the plutocrats and oligarchs from further eroding American democracy.

Elizabeth Warren has endorsed Rick Weiland-- while the DSCC fiddles

Political Transformationalism

Kyrsten Sinema ran for Congress last year as a progressive. She called me several times asking for money. But something in her story didn't add up. She didn't sound like a progressive; she sounded like a phony careerist who would say anything for a nickel. Even though I was on a board with her and everyone else was giving, I was turned off by her sleazy pitches and didn't contribute or put her up for a Blue America endorsement. She didn't pass the smell test even though the first time she ran for office, in 2002, she ran as a Green-- finishing last among 5 candidates and garnering only 8% of the vote. She soon switched to the Democratic Party and was elected to the Arizona state legislature.

Once she got to Congress last year, she joined the corrupt, Wall Street-owned New Dems and, more recently, the reactionary Blue Dogs. She managed to amass one of the 3 or 4 worst voting records of any Democratic freshman. Her ProgressivePunch crucial vote score is an abysmal 32.81, worse than moderate Republican Chris Gibson (34.56)! Grassroots progressives in her Tempe district, which also includes parts of Scottsdale, Mesa and Chandler, won't support her again. The district has more registered independents than either Democrats or Republicans and she thinks voting for Wall Street's agenda will endear her to them. That's not what we consider independent-minded around here.

The DCCC selects candidates who Steve Israel feels will not be independent-minded, but who will leave everything to party bosses… like himself and Hoyer. As independent congressional candidate, Marianne Williamson explained Monday when addressing her frustration about the Keystone XL Pipeline, "Legalized corruption makes it almost impossible to truly take on the power of Exxon-Mobil and other oil giants that receive massive tax breaks from the government. Once again, until we deal with the issue of money’s undue influence on our political system, none of this will truly change." Her campaign is premised around several clear ideas that people in a high consciousness district like CA-33 will easily intuit. A lifelong Democrat, she doesn't want to run as a party person-- and in her district it isn't necessary. Anyone who wants the endorsement of either Party-- and the money that comes with that-- shows willingness to becomes part of and beholden to the corrupt system by which both parties maintain their  monopolistic stranglehold on our politics and elections. That's exactly what candidates transformational candidates like Marianne want to avoid. Most people would agree that Bernie Sanders, who never runs as a Democrat but caucuses with them, is better than just about every Democrat beholden to the party Establishment. I suspect that that is exactly what Marianne is striving to achieve in the House.

Last cycle we were enthusiastic about a progressive community activist who won a seat in Congress. That victory turned sour very quickly and when I approached the Member of Congress about the disappointing change from a progressive into a party hack, this was the reply I got:

I am happy to discuss my voting record with you anytime which has been 100 percent with the House Democratic Leadership recommendation for Frontline members.

I have no idea what your "expectations" were or even why you are so "let down." Perhaps you should run for Congress yourself?

Thanks for all your wisdom and guidance. Maybe [the teabagger opponent] will be your kind of guy!

Earlier today, we took a first look at the VA-08 seat Jim Moran is giving up. One of the better of the long and growing list of candidates is Patrick Hope, a founder of the progressive caucus in the Virginia legislature. Keep in mind what he said this morning: "I'm running for Congress because we need more progressives in Congress who are unafraid to stand up to the right wing influences-- even when they are within our own party." Candidates may even think they are progressive-- I mean they decided to be Democrats, not Republicans-- but will pressures (financial, career, political) transform them into what happens to so many, whether Sinema or the one who sent me the personal letter I just quoted from? You can be sure that while Keith Ellison, Alan Grayson, Barbara Lee, Raul Grijalva, Jan Schakowsky and John Conyers are laying out an idealistic policy agenda for new Members, Steny Hoyer, Steve Israel, Joe Crowley and that ilk, will be talking too them about how to raise money and how to get reelected.

Back to AZ-09 for a moment, where a very independent-minded progressive Democrat/Green Party candidate is mulling a challenge to Sinema, who herself started off, ironically enough, as a Green and as a Ralph Nader operative, and has undergone a transformation-- driven by political cowardice and over-weening careerism-- into a complete Wall Street shill and a shameless tool. That's not the kind of transformational political leaders we meant when we thought Obama would be one. I have a strong feeling Marianne Williamson will be. Have you read any of her books? They didn't all become best sellers-- 4 of which #1 best sellers-- because she had a shop-worn template. Cynics wonder if she's a candidate of substance. Her millions of readers don't. She's not a traditional politician-- and people all over CA-33 are rejoicing over that.