This is the first TV spot from netroots favorite and Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq author Darcy Burner.  Now, Darcy ran in 2006 under the thumb of DC consultants, but this time, she's running a more authentic and progressive campaign.  Comparing her bio spot this time, when she's strong enough to know how to run a campaign, with her bio spot from 2006 shows us everything that's wrong with hack cookie cutter media consultants.  Here's this year's spot:

Here's the same spot, in 2006.

Please consider voting for this story on Digg.

For the last few months, we at OpenLeft have been posting Democratic Senate challenger positions on net neutrality.  Since we started posting, we've been getting in statements and positions, from blogs like Cotton Mouth and the Political Base, from the candidates themselves, and from readers who took the time to ask and send in statements.  I'm happy to report that every single Democratic challenger with more than $500k in cash on hand has announced their support for net neutrality.  This is a milestone for the fight for internet freedom.  I included statements reacting to this news from Senator Byron Dorgan, Speaker Pelosi, FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, Google public policy director Alan Davidson, and Columbia Law Professor Tim Wu.

Obama's K Street Project, The Hill, March, 2007

Other K Street players working to build momentum for Obama are former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), a consultant for Alston & Bird; Broderick Johnson, president of Bryan Cave Strategies LLC; Mark Keam, the lead Democratic lobbyist at Verizon; Jimmy Williams, vice president of government affairs for the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America; Thomas Walls, vice president of federal public affairs at McGuireWoods Consulting; and Francis Grab, senior manager at Washington Council Ernst & Young.

 

There are several articles today on Obama moving to the center.

CONFIDENTIAL/URGENT POLITICAL PROPOSAL

Dear Sir

First we must solicit your confidence in this issue. This is by virtue as being utterly confidential and "top secret".

We are SENATOR HILLARY CLINTON, the wife of the former United States head of state, PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON, and also SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN, friend and associate of current head of state PRESIDENT GEORGE W BUSH. We got your contact through business inquiries as we were searching for contacts of a citizen who can help save our and our family's political careers since our country has been frustrating us.

We are top officials of the United States Senate Government who are interested in importation of oil into our country with funds that are presently trapped in the FEDERAL TRANSPORTATION TRUST FUND dedicated to improving transportation. We wish to send this money to overseas accounts in the MIDDLE EAST but cannot due to restrictions in Congress Transportation Equity Act requiring that this money must be spent to build roads, bridges and high speed trains.  

I grew up in Miami, a region dominated by Cuba politics, so I have some knowledge of how significant Joe Garcia's candidacy is in South Florida.  It is a direct challenge to the pay-to-play foreign policy apparatus of the United States, one where sugar interests and right-wing politics determines that we should have a pointless embargo against the Cuban people.  But today I want to announce that we have another significant nomination for the Blue Majority page: Leslie Byrne for Virginia's 11th district.

Republican Tom Davis is retiring this year, and the district is a good pickup opportunity.  Jim Webb won the district 55%-44% in 2006, Tim Kaine won the district 56%-42% in 2005, while John Kerry lost it by 50-49% in 2004.  It is turning sharply blue; Tom Davis's wife, Jeannemarie Devolites Davis, lost to Democrat Chap Petersen by 11 points in a race for state Senate.  

This piece is written by Laura A. Dickinson, Professor of Law, University of Connecticut School of Law  It is titled 'Regulating Private Military and Security Contractors'.  I'm publishing this here because of the dust-up that occurred a few weeks ago surrounding Senator Obama's refusal to call for a defunding of private military contractors.  I don't agree with Professor Dickinson, but this is a debate we as progressives need to have.

I am a law professor who has studied these issues for some time.  An article I have published on the subject can be found here, my recent Senate testimony on contracting is here, and my forthcoming book, Outsourcing War and Peace (Yale Univ. Press) also addresses these questions.

(From the diaries -- kos)

I'm really happy to announce the next endorsement on the Blue Majority page, Wyoming candidate Gary Trauner.  Like several of Blue Majority's candidates, Trauner nearly won in 2006.  He was up against super-wingnut Barbara Cubin, and lost by only .5%, 47.8% to 48.3%, with the balance going to the libertarian in the race.  Cubin, instead of running for reelection, has chosen retirement.

Cross-posted at OpenLeft - I'm doing a lot of speculating in this diary based on incomplete evidence, but considering that DC insiders want to take Iraq off the table, chime in.  It's not like they have all the answers.

The race is done by a with a roughly 57-43 margin.  After going over the paid media messaging by the two candidates, I have a few thoughts on what happened here.  The first question Democrats should be asking themselves is why Robin Weirauch didn't mention Iraq in her ads, and the second question is whether not mentioning the issue that ranks number one on the list of voter concerns had anything to do with Weirauch's unremarkable loss in OH-05 tonight.  It might also be worth noting that Weirauch didn't mention she was a Democrat in her ads.

We're up to 1,481 donors and $55,657 for Donna.  I saw her yesterday and taped a few answers to questions people had.  Here she is on FISA and retroactive immunity, on the 11% Congress, on running for Congress as a woman, and net neutrality and kittens.  I tried to get a picture of her with her cat Cobwebs for some catblogging, but she texted me last night and said Cobwebs wasn't being cooperative.  Alas.

Here's Donna on the direct mail brouhaha yesterday.  She has laryngitis, hence the scratchy voice.

Congressional approval rating is at historic lows because most Democrats do not like what Congress is doing.  In fact, Republicans approve of Congress more strongly than Democrats do.  The mechanism set up to address a situation like this is a primary campaign for the Democratic nomination.  Democratic leaders represent not only their district or state, but the Democrats in their district or state as well.  This is a formal dual role that Democratic leaders have taken on by winning the party nomination, and it is one that is technically ratified every election cycle during the primary.

The next addition to the Blue Majority page is Dan Seals, who is running in Illinois's 10th district against Republican Mark Kirk.  The district is one of the bluest in the country held by a Republican, going for Kerry over Bush in 2004 by 53-47.  Seals ran a hard race in 2006, and had a heart-breaking and narrow loss.  Running for office is incredibly difficult; you must work 14 hour days for months, with almost no income, no sleep, limited family time, and no exercise.  

You have to beg for money from anyone you've ever met, and you get yelled at by activists on both sides.  Meanwhile, voters are looking to be persuaded that they can trust you, and while your arguments make sense to you and your staff, you can never tell if voters believe you.  It is incredibly difficult, and almost everyone loses their first time out.  A successful political movement helps not just those who win, but those who take risks and lose, because without risk-taking, change cannot happen.  And that's why we're in this.  Seals gave up his career, his family life, and his privacy in 2006, and we're going to make sure that he, like Eric Massa, Darcy Burner, and Charlie Brown, gets to finish the job.

As for Kirk, it's pretty simple why this guy has to go.  He's considered a 'moderate' Republican by many anonymous strategists in insider publications, because apparently in DC, up is down.  Sometimes he breaks with his party when we don't need his vote, but the reality is closer to the video above, where Kirk ran away from an Iraq veteran so he wouldn't have to answer questions about his stance on the war.  The camera man is an AAEI organizer named Josh Lansdale, who also happens to be an Iraq vet.  I wrote this episode up in July.

Kirk likes to portray himself as a moderate Republican, and he even went to the White House earlier this year to talk about Iraq with George Bush.  In fact, The Hill reported that Karl Rove came down on Kirk hard for leaking this 'confrontation' to the press, and Kirk has quieted down.

Josh is an organizer for AAEI, and his goal is to stop the war by getting members of Congress to come out on Iraq.  In this case, he went to the event trying to get Kirk to go on the record with what he said in the White House and what his current position is on Iraq.  Does he support a withdrawal?  Does he support timelines?  Where is he on the surge?  People who attended the event said that Kirk was wishy washy, but Josh couldn't get a direct report.  This episode took place at an event where Kirk keynoted eight local Chambers of Commerce coming together.  Josh had bought a ticket online, but was not allowed to attend, with organizers claiming the event had been sold out as they were selling tickets nearby.  So Josh eventually had to find Kirk out back, with this video camera.

The district, blue and getting bluer, is going to eat Kirk alive on Iraq, and he's pushing extremely hard to be perceived of as moderate.  He's even going so far as to propose 'bipartisan' solutions with Bush Dog Democrat Dan Lipinski, as Kos noted earlier this month.

The Lipinski-Kirk plan calls for a phased withdrawal similar to the one that U.S. Gen. David Petraeus outlined on Monday. Under the plan, one troop brigade would return to the U.S. in December and three more would be removed in the spring, without replacement. It would provide for troop levels in July 2008 of about 130,000, which is equal to "pre-surge" troop levels.

Got that? We'd simply hit the "reset" button, taking 10 months to get us back to the pre-surge status quo. And somehow, this "bipartisan" bill (which Bush will announce this week anyway) is supposed to be a solution to anything?

Nope, it's two endangered congressmen -- one a Republican, the other a Lieberdem -- clinging together for dear life in the face of an unpopular war that they in reality support. Their actions don't change the facts on the ground (the surge was always unsustainable for the long haul). It does nothing to end a conflict in which a solution is far beyond our grasp.

We've already got Lipinski in our cross-hairs, and it's going to be tough to take down the Chicago Democratic machine.  But wouldn't it be sweet if our response to Kirk and Lipinski's bipartisan shill plan to keep troops in Iraq indefinitely was a bipartisan response of getting rid of both of them?

Yes, it would.  Please throw a few coins to Dan Seals for Congress on Blue Majority.

UPDATE: I just got off the phone with Baird's press secretary.  She says he's 'probably' going to support the $50B request from Bush.  So much for listening to constituents.

To be a part of the Bush Dog Democrat campaign, sign up here.

First let me say that I live in Brian's district and am active in my county's Democratic Party chapter.  Secondly, let me say that I have commented previously on this matter to the effect that we will have a primary opponent for Mr. Baird next August.

local activist Paul Spencer, commenting on Open Left

 

"It could well cost me the next election," Baird said at the end of the meeting. "That's alright."

cross-posted at OpenLeft.com

Ah, the Bush Dog Democrats, Democrats that just love to enable Bush's wiretapping, warmongering, and torture.  Yesterday, OpenLeft announced a campaign to begin pushing back, and the reception has been overwhelming.  Clearly, there's an immense hungry for a way to tell Democratic leaders and Bush Dogs to stop enabling the Bush administration and do the jobs for which we elected them.  Many of you promised to do research on Bush Dog Democrats, and our list of profiled members is growing nicely.  Of course, the wingnuts are freaking out, it's always a nice bonus to hear them squeal and defend conservative Democrats.  It's probably the only time they do defend Democrats (way to get on message, right-wing bloggers!)

cross-posted on OpenLeft, where we will be running the campaign.

I'm hearing more and more frequently a sense of rage with the Democratic leadership in Congress.  From failing to stop the war to expanding Bush's wiretapping authority, the swing vote of conservative Democrats in the House are forming an effective conservative majority that is enabling Bush to govern as he wishes.  The polls show that this is a very bad political move for Democrats.  Congress has an 18% approval rating, from Democrats, and 60% of all voters strongly disapprove of Bush's new wiretapping authority.  Democrats haven't stopped the war, haven't stopped torture, haven't curbed corporate abuses, and haven't really done anything except raise the minimum wage as part of a package to send $100B of taxpayer into the sands of Iraq.

I would really appreciate if you would recommend this post, because I am responding to a really vicious smear in the recommended diaries.

I'm kind of stunned at the vicious reaction to my post on John Edwards and why he's not gaining traction with African-Americans and women in the Democratic primary.  The post, Edwards Would Be Great If He Weren't Racist??, criticized a post I wrote about John Edwards and his rhetorical style in which I quoted an African-American blogger rikyrah at Jack and Jill politics.

Most of the diary focused on the comments Elizabeth Edwards made in which Edwards said:

"We can't make John black, we can't make him a woman," said Edwards, referring to Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton during an interview with Ziff Davis Media about the Internet's role in the 2008 presidential election. "Those things get you a certain amount of fundraising dollars."

Speechwriter Ted Sorensen, known as the rhetoritician and thinker behind JFK, just wrote his dream speech for the next Democratic nominee, and published it in the Washington Monthly.  It's located here.  It's a useful speech to read, because it lets us kind of go back in time and see how Democrats we revere - JFK in particular - might have handled today's political crisis.  The speech has highs and lows, and Sorensen certainly doesn't shrink from using the word liberal of saying that old weapons systems need to be eliminated.  Still, much of it is consumed with the same rhetoric we're hearing from all our candidates, notions about fairness, justice, and international relations.  I do want to focus on piece, which we are likely to have to wrestle with.

I've been deeply uncomfortable with the Democratic Presidential primary so far, and I think I'm beginning to understand why.  I think it has to do not so much with the candidates, but with the way that we discuss ideas as a party and as a movement.

Simon Rosenberg at NDN and the New Politics Institute is a brilliant guy who introduced me into politics, and I'll always be grateful to him for that.  He framed a lot of my thinking about the party, and one point he made is that Democrats have traditionally been tremendously uncomfortable with disagreement whereas Republicans have traditionally loved to argue and debate.  He was of course right, and you can tell by watching the Republican primary and the Democratic primary.  

Here's Sam Brownback challenging Mitt Romney.

(From the diaries. Among other things, it's great seeing grassroots Nevada Democrats speaking out against their "leadership's" brain-dead actions -- kos.)

Over the past week and a half, many of us have been engaged in a very public conversation with the Nevada Democratic Party leadership on their choice to have Fox News host a Presidential forum in August in Nevada.  3500 of you sent emails to Nevada State Party Chair Tom Collins through Blogpac.  Moveon has a petition, and Robert Greenwald has created a video at FoxAttacks where the petition is hosted to demonstrate the partisan nature of Fox News as an information source.

The argument that we've made is not that the Fox News audience is bad in and of itself.  It's important to talk to the whole public; the election of Howard Dean to DNC Chair was about the 50 state strategy, and no one has pushed that strategy harder than the progressive wing of the party.  And it worked, in 2006, as we elected a whole host of members of Congress that seemed unlikely to win when insiders in DC were drawing up their prognostications for yet another swing state strategy.   No, the problem that we have is that allowing Fox News to singlehandedly host the debate gives that channel the legitimacy of claiming to be a real news source.  If the Democratic Party places its highest and most valuable political debate - that over our nominee to the Presidency - on Fox News, we are giving a Republican partisan news outlet the ability to argue that they are not biased.  We force thousands of diehard Democrats to watch a Republican propaganda outlet, and allow Fox News to spin and impute meaning to the debate.  This is a serious problem.

The reaction to our reasonable request has unfortunately not been what we had hoped.  Harry Reid has basically stayed silent, and as one of the most powerful Democrats in the country, and certainly the most powerful in Nevada, he has a part in this decision.  It's hard to believe that he would not take some interest in a Presidential forum in his state.  After a few days, several Nevada union leaders, including Danny Thompson of the Nevada AFL-CIO, D. Taylor of the Culinary Union, and Rusty McAllister of the Firefighters, backed the choice of Fox News by Tom Collins of the Nevada State Democratic Party, arguing that Democrats need to reach out to a diverse audience segment.  Of course, Fox News makes regular and dishonest arguments against the minimum wage, for corporate abuses, and for privatizing Social Security.  Prominent Fox News figures use misleading statistics to bolster the case for right-wing economics, and we can be sure that Fox News is very willing to spread lies about stronger labor law protections.

The reaction was not uniformly negative.  Michael Zahara, a Clark County member of the Nevada State Democratic Party’s Executive Board, bravely and publicly argued that this decision was a poor one, and more to the point, was made in a veil of secrecy.  

In the case of the decision to include FOX News in our partisan pre-caucus debate this August, apparently those who made this decision forgot who and what FOX News is and who and what our opponents are. This was not a NV Dems decision, this was a unilateral move without the consultation of the Executive Board of the Democratic Party of the State of Nevada, nor the executive boards of the other sponsor states.

He went on to point out that grassroots Nevada Democrats are unhappy with this decision:

The overwhelming majority of our State Central Committee and our voters have a big problem with this decision. My email box is filled with the opinions of those who elected me to my position on the Board and others. 75% are in favor of my views on this matter.

Despite various leaders backing the decision with lukewarm calls for diversity, it looks like the majority of Nevada Democrats paying attention to this discussion do not like Fox News's role in the Presidential forum.

Now to be clear, many of us who disagreed with the Nevada Democratic Party's choice of Fox News are not averse to having Fox News broadcast the debate.  We simply object to having Fox News legitimized as a neutral news source by being the sole host of the debate.  As such, some of our allies asked the Nevada Democratic Party if they would allow Air America to co-host the debate and have equal panelists to balance Fox News and their partisan approach to politics.  This would have accommodated their desire to reach conservatives while also making it clear that Fox is not a neutral news outlet.  It would further increase the diversity of the viewership of the debate.  I believe that we're open to other arrangements as well, anything that does not legitimize Fox News as a neutral news outlet.

The Nevada State Democratic Party rejected these requests.  Tom Collins, who is the Chair of the Party, apparently does not think that Fox News's partisan agenda is enough to warrant a reexamination of the debate arrangement, or even a real conversation about how the party handles the Presidential contest.  In fact, it's impossible to find out who made the decision to let Fox News host the debate.  As Michael Zahara said:  

Regrettably, no one is owning up to this mistake and by all appearances,it was FOX that came with their Trojan Horse to those who made this decision. We simply don't know what the truth is at this point, and likely never will.

I'm less concerned with who is responsible and more interested in immediately relieving FOXNEWS of their participation in our partisan event and protecting our candidates and Caucus...

As I said before, none of us on the Executive Board of the NSDP, or the other states were in the loop on this. The outgoing Chair may have felt that he had the authority to act unilaterally, but many of us believe he should have consulted us. Trust that this decision very likely wouldn't have passed a vote of our E-Board, and would not have garnered the support of our State Central Committee here in Nevada.

Clearly something is not right in how this decision was made.  Nevada Democrats do not support it, the Executive Board never voted on it, and I doubt that many who mouthed support for this decision were fully briefed on what this decision meant.

What is needed right now in Nevada is the kind of leadership shown by Democrats like Michael Zahara.  Senator Reid, the most powerful official in Nevada and a key leader in the national Democratic Party, is either part of these decisions or could substantively accommodate our legitimate concerns.  At this point, he's simply being silent and evasive, just like the Nevada Democratic Party (this despite Fox News's constant and baseless attacks on his patriotism and character).

Please call Reid's offices and ask him to not legitimize Fox News as a neutral news outlet.  If you are not in Nevada, use this number: 202-224-3542 / Fax: 202-224-7327

If you live in Nevada, use this number, which is restricted to 775 and 702 area codes: 1-866-SEN-REID (736-7343)

It's time to let Senator Reid know that we want him to act like a good Democrat and ensure that the candidate forum in August treats the Democratic Party and our Democratic leaders vying for the Presidency with the respect that they deserve.  Treating Fox News as a neutral news outlet by letting them solely host this debate does not do that.

And feel free to leave an account of your conversation in the comment thread.