More And Better Democrats

Joe Trippi came out and endorsed Jay Buckey yesterday for the US Senate in New Hampshire. We all know that the Republican brand is trashed and that 2008 offers a unique opportunity to get elected not just Democrats, but progressive Democrats who aren't wedded to the power structure in Washington. I like anyone's website that has a solar panel on the masthead, and Buckey seems like an intelligent problem-solver who has some good ideas, especially when it comes to technology and energy.

Democrats are not ever going to have the message discipline of the Republicans, nor should we strive for it. A big tent airs their differences in public, and then after the primary process comes together, while still holding the elected officials accountable. Jeanne Shaheen is the prohibitive favorite in New Hampshire (though not yet a candidate, she polls 28 points ahead of incumbent John Sununu), but she supported the war and the Bush tax cuts in 2002. Now, 2002 is a world away from 2008, but it shouldn't be enough just to elect a Democrat. Values and policies should come into play. Otherwise, this moment will have passed with a bunch of Democrats in office who are cautious, nervous, and end up reverting back to the mushy middle. I agree with Chris Bowers that it's hard to know what you're getting into:

One problem progressive, grassroots activists face is that we simply do not always know how the people we help elect will act once in office. In fact, there might not be a way to know that for certain. Campaign rhetoric is often intentionally vague, and policy positions laid out on candidate websites are virtually never exactly like laws that end up being enacted once people are in office. The truth is that it is easy to see what you want in a candidate, and that candidates have a vested interest in trying to look appealing to a wide range of activists and voters with whom they may have actual disagreements. This makes it very easy to think you are, to use unfortunately economic language for a moment, "purchasing" something very different than you actually are with your precious activist time and money. And that goes for a lot of candidates beyond Clinton or McNerney. It often feels difficult to know what you are going to get from anyone you help elect to Congress.

The point I want to make is that this peaks more to the difficulty of figuring out where anyone's "core" is during a campaign than of Democratic candidates flip-flopping. Maybe this is simply what McNerney was like all along, and we just didn't notice (although he did say that he was a Barbara Boxer Democrat during the campaign). Even though I am definitely disappointed, I'm still glad to have helped him, in my own small way, be elected to Congress. I am still trying to both figure out the key signs to know how someone will be "on your side" once s/he takes office and how to blog about elections from a progressive Democratic perspective, and not just a partisan Democratic perspective. I hope to improve on this front, because I believe that choosing progressive candidates in primaries is one key to electing a more progressive governing majority.

This is difficult, but when someone comes out and undermines progressive principles with their rhetoric, you know that they're not likely to do an about-face after the primary. In other words, it's easier to know who your friends AREN'T than who they are. I don't think electability comes into play in this time when Republicans are dead in the water and the progressive movement has the money, energy and ground troops any Democrat would need to help get elected. I think candidates need to be looked at on the merits, and when those like Jerry McNerney stray from those values after getting to Washington, they need to hear about it.