| Scott Murphy (NY-20) | Chet Edwards (TX-17) | Harry Teague (NM-2) |
| Frank Kratovil Jr. (MD-1) | Travis Childers (MS-1) | Betsy Markey (CO-4) |
| Eric Massa (NY-29) | John Boccieri (OH-16) | Jim Marshall (GA-8) |
| Bobby Bright (AL-2) | Larry Kissell (NC-8) | Suzanne Kosmas (FL-24) |
| John Adler (NJ-3) | Jason Altmire (PA-4) | Ike Skelton (MT-4) |
| Walt Minnick (ID-1) | Tim Holden (PA-17) | John Barrow (GA-12) |
| Dennis J. Kucinich (OH-10) | Michael E. McMahon (NY-13) | Bart Gordon (TN-6) |
| Lincoln Davis (TN-4) | Brian Baird (WA-3) | Mike McIntyre (NC-7) |
| Allen Boyd (FL-2) | Jim Matheson (UT-2) | Dan Boren (OK-2) |
| Heath Shuler (NC-11) | Ben Chandler (KY-6) | Glenn Nye (VA-2) |
| Collin C. Peterson (MN-7) | Artur Davis (AL-7) | Parker Griffith (AL-5) |
| Gene Taylor (MS-4) | Charlie Melancon (LA-3) |
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|
| Mike Ross (AR-4) | John Tanner (TN-8) | Martha Coakley (D-MA) |
| Rick Boucher (VA-9) | Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (SD) |
—
|
Martha Coakley is a one term Attorney General from Massachusetts and not a member of US Congress but as part of her campaign for US Senate, Martha has taken a firm stand to vote against health care reform in the US House of Representatives because of the Stupak Amendment.
While the PCCC has not added Martha Coakley to their list of Democrats that voted against health care reform in the house, she clearly meets their qualifications.
What is the Progressive Change Campaign Committee call to action?
We can no longer elect people just because they have a ‘D’ next to their name.
Let’s start by electing Mike Capuano and not Martha Coakley. Join the PCCC cause. Join the Mike Capuano for US Senate cause.
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I support Capuano, I want health care reform, but this is ridiculous. Deciding to prioritize a key health issue (abortion) over getting some sort of bill passed is a tough decision, but it’s absurd to say that one is “betraying” progressive values by putting one over the other. I am far less inclined to give Coakley any heat over this.
are they factoring in pro-life pro-choice positions or is that immaterial from their perspective?
To me prioritizing abortion rights over health care reform is clearly a betrayal of progressive values. Especially when the facts demonstrate that the abortion provision could not have passed anyway, so its really choosing between funding healthcare for 36 million and not funding 13% of abortions or funding no one and still not funding 13% of abortions. To me the stance is pretty clear. Help the greatest number of people that you can-thats what a public servant should strive to do. Coakley would have thrown 36 million people under the bus to make a symbolic statement-one some of us may agree with, but a symbolic one none the less while practically killing hope for those 36 million for at least another decade. We can go back and write Stupak out, we can’t go back and try health care reform once again. Thats the political reality. Capuano gets that-Coakley doesn’t. The reality based community should support the reality based candidate.
… and target those Democrats who voted against (or, in the case of Coakley, oppose) health care in Districts where the electorate support the bill.
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p>In the absence of any real national grassroots action (with the exception of AARP – which is taking heat from the elderly on the issue), the polling on this is all over the place, both geographically and demographically.
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p>Is that what PCCC is doing or have they gone beyond that to inlude Ds whose districts oppose the bill?
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p>Regardless, your qualified position on the issue is pitch perfect imo.
is a good example of someone going Coakley: sacrificing the interests of the 10th Ohio District on the alter of ego. Folks like Boren (OK-2) have little choice in the absence of on-the-ground allies in his District.
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p>My sense of both the Bold Progressives and FireDogLake posts is that both are more wish-fulfillment vanity politics than anything of substance.
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p>Show me District-by-District polling for every “no” voting Democrat to the contrary, and I’ll readjust that assessment.
I’m a little torn by what he did. On the one hand it looked awfully petty for him to vote against last Saturday on the grounds that it didn’t go all the way for him. On the other hand it would have been nice to see him lead a coalition of single-payer advocates throughout the process to counteract those seeking to water down the public option.
I don’t have the time to go through a year of polling links right now. Suffice it to say that single-payer has never had broad support. In particular, it’s never had broad support among likely voters.
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p>Kucinich has never been more than a grandstander, with little support (and less respect) in Congress.
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p>For an intellectually honest overview of public opinion on the issue, check PollingReport.com, Pollster.com, Gallup.com,
or FiveThirtyEight.com.
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p>FiveThirtyEight and Pollster in particular are sites run by professional pollsters friendly to Democrats in their personal beliefs, who nevertheless never let that get in the way of their professionalism.
You make a mistake similar to Harry Reid in the Senate when he counts votes first, then figures out what to do. I’ve seen different evidence from different polls on this, but to the extent it doesn’t poll well I blame that on it not being talked about. I am confident that if “Medicare for All” is hammered into the public consciousness day in and day out the numbers will improve. It’s also easier to make the moral argument with single-payer and businesses could get on board if they are off the hook entirely. We shouldn’t contemplate surrender before we have really fought. Here is one essay regarding support (or lack thereof) for single-payer.
I wasn’t just regurgitating marginals and crosstabs. My reference was to the fact that a huge majority of respondents have serious reservations about single-payer, and the closer the GOP frames health care of any sort to single payer, the greater the opposition.
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p>In fact using single-payer as context frame is what the GOP is doing, with a fair amount of success.
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p>Field of Dreams activism (“If I Talk About It, They Will Come”) is nice but ultimately unproductive.
Your link did not appear to include information specifically about single-payer. The article DID seem to blame media framing and being outspent, but again our voices aren’t being heard. On Sunday morning shows even the most progressive guest seems to hold fast for the public option. Nobody on those panels is pointing out that the public option IS a compromise vis-a-vis single payer. We already have these systems in this country. If we want to go the Canadian route all we have to do is eliminate the age threshhold for Medicare, which is a popular program. If we want to go the British route we could just open up the VA system to everyone, which also generally gets high marks from those who use it. Frankly its OUR side that’s making this debate more complicated than it needs to be. Someone, maybe who doesn’t have to think about getting elected, needs to be the prophetic moral voice on this as well.
You will note the graph in the Gallup Poll.
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p>There are more reasons for this than Republican spin in isolation.
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p>Traditionally progressives tend to forget that the dynamic in this country is populist, and as a class, progressives don’t do populism well. The Right doesn’t create the environment, but it’s good at exploiting it by using progressives as their outreach mechanisms.
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p>Most Americans are not conservative (honestly defined), but they are profoundly anti-progressive in The Nation sense of the term.
It seems to me health care for everyone, no ifs, ands, buts, or insurance companies is a VERY populist idea. To paraphrase the civil rights anthem, “Gonna let no insurer turn me ’round!, gonna keep on talkin, keep on marchin’ to freedom land!” It won’t happen over night, but we MUST seize the high ground in the framing war. We need to do a better job making insurance providers the enemy as than the other side does making government the enemy. I don’t accept that we are just inately hardwired to have different attitudes than our counterparts in every other western advanced democracy.
Is PCCC actively recruiting people to primary these targets? Also, are they paying attention to which districts would flip parties if we nominated a progressive?
This also gives me the chance to address your other comment.
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p>As much as we like to cite it, Democrats tend to ignore the Tip O’Neill Rule: all politics is local. What may be liberal or progressive in one jurisdiction is conservative in another. It’s less framing (which more often than not backfires) than intelligent bottom-up organizing in the context of the local civic culture.
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p>Bernie Saunders, for example, is the only self-professed Socialist in the U.S. Senate, but he was first elected to Statewide office (Vermont’s House Seat), based on Second Amendment absolutism, with the help of the NRA, against a pro-gun control Republican.
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p>We tend to forget that electing conservative Democrats was an integral part of the 50-State Strategy to retook Congress in the first place.
Who is this [http://sanders.senate.gov/ Bernie Saunders?
Who is this Bernie Saunders?
I think Stephane Herseth Sandlin of South Dakota is such an example of the importance of local realities. She’s in the House despite being a Democrat, not because of it. Her entire family is political — her grandfather was governor of SD and her father fan for the office from the state legislature. She got in during a low turn-out special election in the wake of the former (Republican) office-holder’s conviction of manslaughter. The subsequent regular election allowed her to fly under the radar as all the guns were trained on her Senate colleague Tom Daschle. Since then, Sandlin has won re-election thanks in large part due to the advantages of incumbency. All this in a state that has voted Republican in presidential elections since the 60s (even going against native son McGovern) and whose legislature holds a 67-38 GOP tilt.
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p>We have a Democrat in office as Congressperson from South Dakota through an extraordinary set of circumstances that are almost irreplicable. To presume that we can just “get a better Democrat” in office to replace her in South Dakota is risible.
Ditto for Heath Schuyler and a host of red-state Dems. It would make a lot more sense to target blue state GOPers who voted against health care reform despite this being a centrist bill and despite their claim to being bi partisan centrists, they all voted, with the exception of Anh in LA, for the teabaggers position. I say put a Democrat in all those suburban Chicago districts, Kirks, Biggerts, Roskams. Put more Democrats in NY. More in PA and MD. More in MI and DE. Get these so called ‘moderates’ to either support a moderate bill or get out of Congress.
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p>To me the solution isn’t to kick the blue dogs and go back to being a minority, the solution is to expand our existing majority by getting around the blue dogs by electing more progressives in swing districts and in moderately republican districts. That way we can out flank the blue dogs AND keep our majority. Win win IMO. NY-23 shows you why ideological purity litmus tests doom the parties that enact them.
…which is part of why I know it won’t happen overnight. I was also sceptical of the claim of him being pro-gun so I checked Project Vote Smart which would indicate by interest group ratings that he has changed quite a bit over the years.
it doesn’t even pass the laugh test.
She is a Democrat who would have voted “no” on health care reform in the house, which is precisely who PCCC is targeting.
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p>What’s your argument? Give me a reason to do as you wish.
…if the PCCC can find somebody who will win in Utah other than Jim Matheson, or someone other than Stephanie Herseht Sandlin who will win in South Dakota, talk to me.
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p>Otherwise it’s a kamikaze Club for Growth strategy. Primary candidates for whom better options are available, but not those rare Democrats who survive in hostile districts.
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p>PS: Conflating Martha Coakley with these Democrats who voted no because of antipathy to the public option — not abortion as Coakley did — is misleading at best.
…when the last time was someone TRIED to win these districts on a progressive message. I’m concerned that the conventional wisdom has been calcified and may be 20 years old. Given what we’ve seen in the past few years we may be pleasantly surprised about the reception a progressive message would get in some places.
…and that’s what the 50-state strategy is all about. I’m all for contested primaries, but primary bucks and effort are zero-sum. Every dollar put against Matheson (PVI R+15) is a dollar not put against Barrow (D+1). There is some room for better Democrats, and not just among those who voted no on this bill. However, targeting everyone on a list, with no thought or quarter given for their districts, is the type of foolishness that has made the Club for Growth a Democrat’s best friend.
Your assessment is good for DCCC, but I think PCCC can work the other side of this coin.
To begin with this so-called health care reform is a lousy bill that could have been, and probably was, written by the health care industry. Secondly, if you think it’s okay to pass a health care bill that basically throws women’s rights under the bus, then you are no progressive–and, frankly, neither is the PCCC. How about a health care bill that denies viagra to all men? Would you think that was so progressive?
because the house is full of them and willing to take two steps backward for one step forward, Webster doesn’t call that “progress.”
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p>the PCCC is smoking too much PCP if they think it’s not progresive to stand up and say “disturbing,” when reproductive rights and choice are put on the table to disproportionally impact poor women who do not have access to private insurance. They are the group most likely to seek affordable options though the public exchange.
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p>Coakley said:
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p>”We can pass meaningful health care reform while also protecting a woman’s right to choose.”
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p>Coakley’s leadership wants to take steps forward and no steps back. Sound a lot more progressive to me.
…because Stupak was included? I hadn’t heard that. Even though jconway is prolife and I’m prochoice I am more and more sympathizing with his(?) argument that this should not be such a litmus test.
We can have an argument about Stupak on its merits, but the question for overall progressive is do we pass progressive health care reform now or wait another ten or twenty years? Think about it. If this fails that is the Waterloo for Obama that Sen. Burr was hankering for. Thats it. It means independents break for the GOP in the 10′ elections, it means smaller majorities in the Senate or House, maybe even risking the House. Losing those majorities would cripple this President. He might get re-elected but he would be another Clinton, working on easy to pass mundane reforms and not actual progressive reforms that change the system. For those who think this bill is not progressive enough either from a protecting choice standpoint or as Amberpaw and others suggested from a public health policy standpoint, it makes more sense to pass this reform now and establish momentum for single payer on the backs of this reform, than it does to kill this because it is imperfect, and hope a better reform will come down the pipeline. It is easier to reform and tweak programs that already exist than it is to continually start from scratch. At least the progressive community should look at this as a positive first step forward, something we can build on down the road. Opposing this bill is ludicrous and not progressive IMO.
Though it is a bit different in that viagra treats something that is wrong with how the body is supposed to work in a way that abortion does not. To hear some people tell it you would think that not only has Roe v. Wade been overturned, but that SCOTUS has defined a fetus as a person per the 14th amendment. Hysteria probably won’t win you many friends.
so that Federal funds could be used for abortion services. If she were to vote against a health care bill like the one on the table because it was status quo re:Hyde Amendment, would you still say that her position was justified and not out of step with the Democrats, Obama, Pelosi, Degette, Keenan (NARAL) and Capuano?
Since you clearly have PhotoShop skills, you could easily have made a red “Would Have” over the caption and made it clear that the graphic was doctored.
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p>I suppose you could argue that the fact that she doesn’t have a vote makes it clear that it’s fake, but this isn’t The Onion.
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