Grayson: I would win Republican primary
The Democratic congressman whom the Republican Party loves to paint as a far-left pinko is bragging about his popularity among his Republican constituents.
Today, Alan Grayson touted the results of a poll commissioned by his campaign that he said shows he has more support among Republican voters than all seven of his Republican opponents.
Here’s what Grayson’s campaign said in a news release: “In the poll, Grayson won the support of 26.5 percent of registered Republicans, virtually the same figure as three months ago. None of Grayson’s seven Republican opponents scored higher than 11.2 percent. 41.8 percent of registered Republicans remain undecided.”
If Grayson has the support of 26.5% of registered Republicans – seriously red Republicans – then one can only imagine that he also has the backing of most independents (and almost all Democrats).
Ladies and gentlemen, this is what we need more of if we want to win big and take back our country. If we run real Democrats, we’re unstoppable.
A Real Democrat!
Jim would be a home run!
Amen to that! I confess to being deeply disappointed when McGovern didn’t jump into the Senate race last fall.
it’s not about the party, it’s about the message and the actions.
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p>It’s that word that’s hissed at by the Wall Street power players and some pundits in the media.
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p>Populists! Damned Populists! They try desperately to make it sound like a dirty word. They try to tie it to socialism. It means no such thing. It’s not the belief that wealth should be redistributed from the wealthy to the poor. It’s the belief that exhorbitant billion dollar profits should not be acquired by picking the pockets of the working/middle class.
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p>Tax cuts for the non-wealthy:
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p>Waste in Defense Contracts:
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p>Medicare for All:
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p>You are so right Manny. Not only is this the winning message, this action is what our country needs.
Alan Grayson – Medicare for All
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would make the Democratic Party as popular today as it was when FDR was in office and the Democrats ruled the roost, and the country loved it.
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p>Not only that, but our country would be a better place. We’d create real jobs for real Americans. We’d stop fighting wars on three or four fronts at a time. We’d make sure the worst off amongst us had opportunities to improve our lives, thereby improving everyone’s lives. People would have health care. Schools would improve — and our country would actually save money.
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p>Then again, corporations wouldn’t get everything they want and people like Obama would have to be mean to Republicans. So we can’t have that.
I’d love for the Dems to pick up another few like him. By that, I mean with his politics. A dozen with his demeanor? That might be overdoing it.
I think that people viscerally respond to Grayson’s forthrightness and humor. Grayson’s views are similar to those of a few others (e.g. Kucinich), but I can’t imagine Kucinich connecting with Republicans.
Massachusetts Democrats don’t WANT to nominate real Democrats.
Sad to say, appearance counts, and a height disadvantaged Robert Reich didn’t have a chance, even though Deval Patrick is not NBA forward material, heightwise. The candidate has to have some charisma, and a way to move voters viscerally. I didn’t support Martha Coakley in the Democratic Sen primary, but once she won the nomination, she was getting my vote. However, compared to the energetic, personable campaign Brown ran, she was a poor choice. The skill that she had as a ADA, won her the position of DA, then that translated to AG, all in the legal, courtroom venue. It did not, however, translate to a good candidate for Senator, and the results proved it when she wasn’t running against another legal wonk. Running a strong, involved candidacy for Senator probably would have prevented Brown from getting off the mark, and gaining traction in his race. After that happened, the rest was history.
I agree with you, but your choice of Alan Grayson as a “real Democrat” isn’t ideal. To paraphrase a certain recent Alabama candidate for office, I don’t give a rip about Democrats who have proven only that they’re able to say nice things on MSNBC and in special order speeches on the House floor. I want a “real Democrat” to say the right things AND get good results — i.e. legislation — enacted. Grayson’s good at the former but he hasn’t yet proven he’s effective at achieving the latter. I’m sure he’s a great guy, but he’ll have to do a heck of a lot more than shoot out some pleasant rhetoric before I’m a believer (not to mention prove that he can win re-election!).
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p>Instead of Grayson, why not look closer to home and give a shout-out to Jim McGovern? He’s proven that he can get things done in Congress and hold firmly onto a swing district (“swing” for Massachusetts, anyway) despite being one of the more legitimately liberal members of Congress. He (along with Barney Frank) is one of my favorite Reps, in part because he’s poven to be a hard worker. I’ll be among the first to sign on to his volunteer list if he takes on Scott Brown in 2012.
I think Grayson has shown some ability to get things done in the short time he’s been in office. The audit the Fed provision wouldn’t have been in the House financial reform bill without Grayson’s efforts. I also think that while we definitely want more than just MSNBC interviews, what politicians say in those interviews is important and it’s refreshing to have someone like Grayson, who isn’t afraid to express a clear progressive viewpoint in the media, unless many Washington Dems who go on TV.
And perhaps Grayson will be a excellent Rep. for years to come.
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p>However, one of the things that has long annoyed me about some on the progressive side is how they’re quick to lavish praise on those who talk the talk but then don’t give the credit to Democrats who prove that they can also walk the walk.
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p>I’d much rather have a Democrat who gets good legislation passed (even if the resulting policy is only 70% of ideal progressive policy) than one who says 100% great stuff but does little of actual substance. Grayson gets the love from the netroots, but there are many Democrats that have taken a lower-profile media-wise but have gotten far more done than Grayson has in his short time in office — and yet don’t get the credit. Those members are the best examples of “real Democrats.”
Somebody’s got to be willing to take a risk and throw a big idea out there. Somebody’s got to be willing to call a pig a pig. Somebody’s got to be able to get the media to pay attention. Somebody’s got to move the Overton Window.
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p>That’s Grayson.
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p>A (likely different group of) somebody’s got to make the compromises. To gladhand the other side. To find otherwise unusual alliances. To figure out how to get 70% and let the GOPer go home looking like he got 50%.
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p>That’s not Grayson.
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p>Both groups are important to overall success.
Maybe Grayson would so so well in a Republican primary because he is a Republican. Grayson’s liberal score from National Journal is at the 62nd percentile overall, which puts him firmly in the more conservative half of the Democratic caucus. About 5 points worse than Lynch.
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p>McGovern doesn’t do too well either. He gets an 85.7, which is liberal by national standards but solidly in the more conservative half for the MA delegation.
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p>If you want a real Democrat from our Congressional delegation, beg John Olver to run for Senate in 2012. He’s tied for most liberal member of the House. He looks like he’s retiring, so it’s not like he’d be risking anything by going for Senate instead. But he’s old and may be ready to be done with politics. Which is unfortunate, because his most likely replacement simultaneously “served” in the State Senate, as Financial Services Chair and worked as an attorney for insurance companies. Can you say “conflict of interest”?
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p>Runner up would be Barney Frank, the only other member of the MA delegation to even break the 90th percentile. Those are the two you should be looking at if you want real Democrats. Or maybe people outside the Congfressional delegation.
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p>http://www.nationaljournal.com…
If Grayson and McGovern are considered relatively “conservative” by the National Journal, that’s less a reflection on these members’ ideologies than it is on the National Journal’s flawed ranking system.
More than I trust the instincts of the average party activist. Care to tell me why I should trust your judgment more than NJ’s? Unless you have an objective ranking methodology to offer, it’s not happening. Judgments made without objective criteria are just too easily swayed by rhetoric, even among the well-informed.
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p>Also note that this is a relative thing. Grayson is conservative compared to the Democratic caucus as a whole, but 538 ranks him one of the most valuable House Dems as defined by liberalness of his votes compared to what could be expected from the average Congressman his district would elect if he were replaced. It’s possible that this indicates liberal instincts constrained by political reality and that if his district moves left he will too. It’s also possible he’s all talk. Which really disappoints me because I believed in him enough to apply for a job on his campaign in 2008.
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p>McGovern is liberal by national standards. All I’m saying is that, in spite of that, Massachusetts has much better Congressmen to offer.
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p>Olver, Frank, Delahunt, Capuano, and Markey are all more progressive than McGovern, but not all as good at showing off to their constituents.
Lot’s say there’s exactly two kinds of votes:
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p>1. Votes on gay rights
2. Votes on unions
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p>Scenario A:
9 votes on gay rights issues
1 vote on unions
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p>Rep Lynch comes in at 10%, awfully conservative. Rep Joe Schmoe supports gay rights but votes against the 1 union bill because he hates organized labor. He comes in at 90%.
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p>Is Schmoe 9 times more liberal than Lynch?
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p>Scenario B:
1 vote on gay rights issues
9 votes on unions
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p>Rep Lynch comes in at 90%, Rep Schmoe comes in at 10%. Is Lunch 9 times more liberal than Schmoe?
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p>When you rank actual votes, the problem is that the number of votes for the different issue can heavily skew the rankings. If there happen to be a larger number of votes on a particular issue, than that issue skews the rankings.
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p>There’s another problem too:
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p>1. Vote on gay rights which provides a single federal entitlement to partners that married couples have: the federal requirement that allows partner 1 to pick up partner 2’s child up from public K-12 school.
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p>2. Vote to get out of Afghanistan and Iraq, pronto.
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p>Now, I’m not arguing that (1) isn’t important, but clearly it’s far less important than (2). Yet each of these votes is weighed the same by the NR system.
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p>Oh, here’s a third problem. They aggregate the individual rankings. So, a libertarian would be expected to be conservative on economic issues but liberal on social issues. A populist would be expected to be liberal on conservative issues but more conservative on populist issues. They’d thus both get a 50th percentile ranking, and yet neither label makes much sense.
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p>At the end of the day, tread lightly with ranking systems, particularly those which are only ranking a single two-year period. There simply aren’t enough votes (problem 1). Many votes helps to overcome problem 2 as well because the distribution of votes evens things out a bit. Problem 3 can’t be overcome if you’re only going to use a 1 dimensional Lib v. Con axis.
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p>None of this is to suggest that Rep Grayson is or isn’t liberal or mo’better liberal. However, check out where Bernie Sanders shows up on the Senate side, and ask yourself if you believe it.
But it’s not just one number. You can sort the rankings by economic, social, and foreign policy votes to address 3. In 2009, 4-way tie for first with economic votes, but McGovern is distinctly more hawkish than his colleagues, and worse on social issues. For 2008 there are 5-way ties for first on social and economic issues, but the hawkishness shows up again. Grayson consistently does poorly, no matter what issue you look at.
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p>Or go back to previous years to address 1 and 2. We can’t rank Grayson that way since 2009 was his first year. But for the Massachusetts delegation, John Olver is consistently the most liberal over six years. Markey is usually in second place, occasionally being beaten by Frank or Tierney.
But there are consistently several Reps from MA who are more liberal than McGovern. He doesn’t always fare as badly as in 2009, but he’s middle of the pack at best.
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p>We already have a middle of the pack Senator in John Kerry. We don’t need another one.
Your first paragraph does nothing to refute my critique. Just substitute “choice issues” for “labor issues” and now you’ve got two social issues where the number of votes or the importance of the votes doesn’t align with the rankings.
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p>There’s a 4th critique which I forgot: the “it’s not left (right) enough so despite the fact that it’s liberal (conservative) I’m not going to vote for it anyway. Kucinich and Paul occasionally take positions like these, as do others. It’s not clear how they’d vote if the whips showed the vote to be very close, and so it’s not at all clear how to rank these kinds of recorded votes.
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p>There’s a 5th critique which I forgot, more common in the Senate than the House: the opposing colleagues abstention deal. If Senator Joe Republican really wants to miss a vote to attend his daughter’s wedding, Senator Sally Democrat agrees to abstain from the vote so that the majority calculus isn’t effected. Now, Sally’s woulda-been-vote doesn’t show up in the ranking, despite the reality that she’d have voted in the article but didn’t as a courtesy to a colleague because it wouldn’t impact the calculus.
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p>The ranking systems are kind of like Wikipedia — a good place to start, but not to be used to make actual decisions. You’ve got to look more closely to get a true and honest understanding.
I don’t buy critique 4. The best way to rank fringe no votes is the same way as opposite party no votes. It’s possible that a Kucinich type does compromise on a close vote. It’s also possible he defeats good legislation because it’s imperfect. If we’re talking about outcomes here, and not how liberal/conservative someone is in their heart of hearts, a no is a no. Or perhaps we can come up with an expected value calculation based on the individual’s probability of such a defection. But as long as the probability of defection is nonzero, a point deduction is called for, and I’ll take an Olver over a Kucinich because I can trust Olver to do the right thing all the time.
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p>5. Look at the methodology. Absences aren’t counted for or against their scores. Someone who votes 100% liberal when they do vote will be rated as 100% liberal even if they miss a few votes. Unless someone is consistently missing votes that would move their score in the same direction, it’s not going to affect their score much. And if they are missing those votes, maybe it’s a strategic thing, and it does actually change the way the chamber votes. If Scott Brown’s too scared to vote 25% of the time on issues where he’s a diehard conservative, final outcomes in the Senate become more liberal than if he always voted.
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p>I’m actually inclined to criticize this approach from the opposite direction. Breaking a filibuster takes 60% of the Senate, period. Not 60% of the Senators who show up. So abstention deals actually do affect the calculus.
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p>Your other critique makes sense in theories but is not supported by the facts. Yes, having too many votes on one issue could skew the numbers to an extent. But the reality is that it hasn’t worked that way. Go look at the votes they’ve actually used. Even the theory doesn’t change anything for Olver v. McGovern and everyone else. Maybe the relative result for Grayson v. Lynch is off. But if Olver votes the liberal position every time, on every issue, and McGovern doesn’t, then Olver is more liberal than McGovern, no matter what specific issues we choose or how we weight them.
Maybe there is some issue that has not come up in the last six years where McGovern would do better. But going by the outcome-based standard, the fact that it hasn’t come up even once in six years tells me that it’s irrelevant.
4: your critique again demonstrates the need to look more closely. If a House vote isn’t particularly close (say a nearly perfect party-line vote in 2009) than a Kucinich vote isn’t a threat. More to the point, the parties have whips and if a “not-liberal-enough” defector checks with the whip first to ensure it’s safe, then that defection isn’t a risky one. You can’t know for sure, but a closer look can give a clue.
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p>5: Absences do impact the score. 4/5 is not the same as 5/6, so even if they remove it from numerator and denominator, it still results in a score change. Furthermore, some scoreboards treat an absence as the same as a “no” vote (I believe MLEV does this, for example). In both cases, the absence results in a different score than a “yea” vote. Again, a closer look may provide a clue.
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p>I have, and it does — both NR’s, MLEV’s, heck, all of ’em. They can only score the votes which are taken, and those are integers. You’ll never have a distribution of votes which matches the distribution of the issues, and that ignores the very legitimate reality that the total impact/importance of each vote varies widely depending on the language. You can hand wave these as theoretical, but they’re not. The NR method is more complex (though not necessarily better) in that they use covariance to determine liberal/conservative and how much to weigh each vote, minimizing the relative impact of outliers. Hell, look at the very first two votes listed here:
http://www.nationaljournal.com…
The first is an “economic” vote to designate more than 2 million acres as national wilderness protection areas. The second is an “economic” vote to block the second half of the TARP funds. Both are weighed 2 on the 1-3 scale. Are you telling me that those two votes are equally important? I don’t think they are — as much as I care about environmental votes, the 2 mil acre “economic” vote is far less important than the $350B of TARP. Yet NR weighs them equally in the “economic” component.
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p>That’s not a theoretical critique — that’s a reality critique. NR really equated those two votes, and in stomv world, those two aren’t anywhere near equally important when measuring senators.
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p>Your McGovern v. Olver conclusion based on NR is absolutely not reasonable given concerns 1-5. Now, if you look more closely at the actual votes, you might well come to the same conclusion. Is McGovern more liberal in one (underrepresented) facet of any of the economic/social/foreign policy categories? Did McGovern behave more liberally on the “big” votes but less so on the more frequent “small” votes? Etc. etc.
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p>I stand firm to my claim: ratings have a number of problems which can’t be overcome and are far too easy to game intentionally or unintentionally. The only way to use ratings well is to start with the ratings but then look much more closely at the places where behavior is deviant, on votes which are more important, etc.
Give TARP 99% of the weight and the forestland 1%. Know who’s going to get the more liberal score? The guy who voted the liberal position on both is more liberal than the guy who only voted the liberal position on 1, regardless of how you weight it.
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p>If Olver votes the liberal position on every vote where there is a position that can be defined as liberal, and McGovern doesn’t, there is no possible weighting of votes, and no possible weighting of categories, that can make McGovern more liberal. And that “if” is exactly the situation we see.
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p>Now, perhaps you could argue it based on other criteria, such as their speeches, but on voting record, you can’t.
Grayson, fine. Maybe more liberal than the rankings indicate. And maybe McGovern is more liberal than Frank if you weight the issues right. Although your methodology would create a very subjective definition of liberal, where who is more liberal depends on what issues happen to be more important to you, or to me, or to whoever is rating them, I’ll accept that in some circumstances it has merit. But taking the liberal position or the conservative position 100% of the time makes your weighting scheme irrelevant.
I thought that there was a scoring system that counted progressive votes when they counted. Progressive Something. Forgot the name.
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p>For example, it doesn’t matter so much how one votes if the liberal position carries by 60%. In that case, protest votes can be protest votes and support is unremarkable.
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p>When it squeaks by by 50.1%, that’s when it matters.
Your claim is that in the recent session, there hasn’t been a single “liberal vote” cast by McGovern that wasn’t also cast by Olver. Not a single one.
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p>Because I went up to the top of this thread and re-read, and this is the first time you’ve actually made that claim — and not some refutation of my general critique of using a ratings based system.
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p>P.S. If you have looked at the complete set of votes by Olver and McGovern, you’ve proven my point for me — that you can’t simply take the rating at face value but instead have to look closely to reaffirm or reverse the general and useful-but-not-certain conclusions that a ratings system provides.
In 2008 and 2004 the Senator designated as “most liberal” just happened to be the Democratic presidential nominee. Really? Obama and Kerry both more liberal than Kennedy? or Boxer? or Feingold? Sorry, but I’m not buying it.
What’s fishy is Kerry and Obama both moving to the left of their true positions so they could do better with primary voters.
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p>Dunno about Kerry people because I didn’t pay quite as much attention to that campaign other than some volunteering for Dean, but a lot of Obama peopel definitely fell for it.
Obama, however, never moved to the left on health care, and voted for telecom immunity inter alia while still in a primary fight. I feel like NJ was deliberately trying to hand the GOP a talking point.
I have no problems with ranking systems, but the first thing to realize is that they are not “objective ranking methodologies”. Every ranking system has to decide what a “key” vote is, how to weight certain votes, what the liberal and conservative votes are, and many other similar decisions. I’m not a huge fan of National Journal’s, mainly because they code some of the individual votes differently than I would. But that’s just personal taste.
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p>Secondly, however, even if a perfect ranking system was devised, an ideal “real Democrat” is not just someone who votes the right way (though that’s clearly important). It’s also key to have people who can convince their colleagues to go along with them, do the hard work hearing constituent concerns at home while working on creating and pushing policy in Congress, and so forth. None of that is reflected in these rankings, and those things are very often more important than whether one guy is a couple percentages points higher on the liberalism scale than another.
Seems odd that a guy who tells us that Republicans want us to “die quickly” when we get sick would not be pretty Liberal.
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p>I’d be curious to see which votes the National Journal is counting in which Grayson voted non-Liberally, and find out why he voted that way. It might be that he would not compromise on noxious crap added to the bill. Or, maybe he is just not very Liberal – but it deserves further analysis.
Two things.
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p>First, it’s quite possible to be liberal on some issues and not others. See, e.g. Lynch, who has traditionally been very liberal on issues relating to unions, but conservative on social issues.
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p>Second, Lynch again. Lynch claims he voted against HCR from the left. Do you believe him? If not, why does Grayson get leeway? If we’re more interested in saying pretty things, Grayson’s great. But if we’re more interested in passing legislation that makes Americans better off, I’d rather have the person who’s going to suck it up and vote for the compromise bill when it comes around.
See the videos above for details. He sponsored the “Medicare you can buy into” act, for example.
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p>As to compromise – it has its place, but we can see where 17 years of compromise has taken the country. I think we need a little less compromise!
I’m sure the guy is smart and votes the right way, as well as use his Appropriations assignmen to benefit MA. However, I heard him speak once in support of a state house candidate and I couldn’t help but think how did he ever get elected to anything.
I think his BIG citizenship campaign will look even better after Citizens United. real citizens united against corporate citizens united
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p>maybe I am just dreaming, but i think someone outside the congressional delegation has the best shot.
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p>and to be clear, i don’t work for khazei, city year, etc., but would love to volunteer w him should he decide to run.
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p>26% in a seven (eight?) way primary is indicative of a very messy primary and little else. There’s still 74% who’ll vote for someone else, “seriously red” or otherwise… And, once the numbers dwindle Grayson will have 26% of a two way race and then what… ?
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p>My gut feeling is that some significant portion of that 26% is responding to name recognition only.
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would vote for Rep Frank or Rep Pelosi in a 2, 3, 5, or 25 person race?
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p>I’m willing to bet far less than 26%. What do you think?
If I may be allowed to reduce the current state of politics to crude simplicities:
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p>The Republicans campaign boldly, stating any damn thing they want and then govern fecklessly, often in direct opposition to campaign statements… with the only aim of consolidating power. It’s not like they have an actual agenda they believe in to govern upon… We’ve all seen, time and time again the utter recklessness in which Republicans play with the truth. The Tea-Party candidates are only more blatant (if that were possible) practitioners of this…
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p>The Democrats campaign timidly and govern even more shyly… as though a constant walk upon eggshells. They compromise too quickly and take too too careful a view of the oppositions position.
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p>So, what you are asking for, when you say “run a real Democrat” is for someone who campaigns like a Republican but who governs according to Democratic principles.
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p>There is no such creature.
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p>It is antithetical to the Democratic mindset to run so ruthless and venal a style of campaigning… Anybody who would want to run such a campaign couldn’t possibly be asked to concern themselves with how they will govern and will, thus, naturally gravitate to the Republican party.
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p>But why should, you ask, the Democrats campaign and govern so meekly? Good question. Here’s the answer: because Republicans continue to get elected. Their tactics and strategies work. Funny that… So how to get elected in such a melange of vicious and uncouth when you are, at heart, not so vicious or mean a person? How do you govern in such an environment? How do you express the better angels of your nature when a significant portion of representatives got there for other reasons?
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p>Here’s your choice if you’re a Democrat… to run a ruthless and venal campaign that works to get you elected but tears your soul into little tiny shred and shards or to play it safe… close to the vest, taking what victories you can get, but keeping to a campaign that becomes bland. Most Democrats start off strong but, under the considered and withering assault of a classic Republican campaign are forced to go to safe mode… or fight back just as ruthless. I contend that Democrats don’t do ruthless all that well and so safe mode becomes the default Democratic stance.
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p>If you ask me, and you sorta did, I’ll take the Democrats over the Republicans. I’ll take bland and cautious before I’ll go with vicious and low-down mean. It’s not just that I detest some of the Republicans personally, but also that I detest their methods.
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You don’t have to be a Karl Rove or Lee Atwater to stand up and fight for what you believe to be right. Howard Dean wasn’t vicious or mean to anyone but stood by his principles, just as an example.