Get His Back

The Republicans are in all-out hissy fit mode and it doesn't have to make sense. After months of their side talking about death panels, death books, scaring seniors and openly stating that Democratic health care bills "put seniors to death by their government" and "tells seniors to drop dead", they want to collect Alan Grayson's scalp for accurately stating that the Republican health care plan is to "not get sick, and if you do, die quickly."

Republicans have been bullies for so long that they cannot imagine being on the other side of an insult like this. Tough. What they do in this situation is rally around their own. Democrats typically do not, so we have to make sure Alan Grayson knows he has allies in the grassroots.

Here's an ActBlue page raising money for Grayson. It's early yet, but so far it's at around $1,200 bucks. Support the effort if you can.

...There is no chance Grayson will apologize.

Rep. Alan Grayson isn't backing down from his claim that Republicans "want you to die quickly."

"I stand by what I said," Grayson told reporters on Wednesday.

"I didn't violate any House rules. I didn't do anything inappropriate," he said. "I'm not under any pressure at all." [...]

Asked if he was worried about his re-election in an Orlando-based swing district, Grayson said his chances of winning are better.

"It improves them," he said. "People like elected officials with guts who say what they mean."

Damn straight.

...Alan Grayson is truly fantastic:

After speaking extensively to the press, Grayson came to the floor with an apology, but not for the Republican Party.

“I would like to apologize,” he said. “I would like to apologize to the dead.”

Citing a statistic that 44,789 Americans die each year because they don’t have health insurance, Grayson said, “That is more than ten times the number of Americans who died in the war in Iraq, it’s more than ten times the number of Americans who died on 9/11. …It happens every year.”

Grayson added in another apparent dig at the GOP, “We should care about people even after they are born.”

Grayson apologized one last time.

“I apologize to the dead and their families that we haven’t voted sooner,” he said.

...Grayson has a diary up at Daily Kos. He's right in saying that Republicans aren't used to Democrats telling the truth about them.

The Republicans are serious about getting rid of me, because they are scared. They have already set up a site to attack me. And the reason is simple; they don't want my tough attitude to rub off on other Democrats. And the Democrats aren't sure what to think about this new, I don't know what you call it, truthtelling? But you can help make it clear that when I spoke the truth, I was speaking for you. And you can show them that I was speaking for you. Today is the end of the fundraising quarter, which means everyone is going to be watching fundraising totals.

Help me speak truth. You've already set up a bunch of fundraising pages and I can't thank you enough for getting my back. If you haven't already, I hope you'll go to one of these pages and help out today. I'm at $20,956 so far. Let's see where we can go from here.

Final Day Push - Contribute to the Calitics Match

Thanks to everyone who has supported our five candidates in the Calitics Match thus far. We're past halfway to our goal, and Debbie Cook has well surpassed our $500 match (way to go!).

Today is crunch time. It's the final day before the end of the third quarter, which is the reporting deadline for federal candidates. This is the best opportunity to make your donations the most meaningful; the quarterly fundraising announcements are key to gauge support, and money put into field and messaging now will pay bigger dividends in the future than a quick cash infusion at the last minute. Please support these candidates and Calitics will match you dollar for dollar.

The Yacht Party Republicans still think you're stupid. They believe they can hide behind the gated communities they've created through gerrymandering, and that Sarah Palin's presence at the top of the ticket will lift their hopes. No, really:

A statewide poll this week underscored the effect Palin has had on the Republican base. According to the Public Policy Institute of California, GOP satisfaction with their presidential choice has doubled since Palin joined the ticket. Unfortunately for McCain, that has not translated into gains against Democrat Barack Obama in California, which has gone to the Democratic presidential candidate in the last four presidential elections.

Still, state Republicans were rejoicing at the possibilities. Thomas G. Del Beccaro, the state party vice chairman, said new volunteers were streaming in faster than at any time since the 2003 recall election. Republicans, he said, were hopeful that a resulting increase in voters would help the party in legislative and congressional races where they might not have been as competitive otherwise.

This is bravado. The wingnut base wasn't going to stay away from a Presidential election. It's the growing decline-to-state base, along with increased Democratic registration statewide, that has the potential to sink the Yacht Party just as Sarah Palin's favorable ratings have sank as voters face the terrifying prospect of her in a position of power. This is the real shift in the electorate:

Since the two parties largely settled on presidential nominees in April, voter rolls have increased by roughly 19,500 – or 2 percent – in Placer, El Dorado, Sacramento and Yolo counties, according to new figures from the California secretary of state's office. Democrats accounted for 10,500 of those new voters. Just 2,400 were Republicans. Most of the others declined to state an allegiance.

The regional numbers mirror a statewide trend. California's Democratic voter rolls have increased by 181,118 since April while the number of Republicans grew by 6,823. Republicans saw a net loss of registered voters in 25 counties, including a loss of more than 15,000 in conservative Orange County. Similar trends are playing out nationally, in several battleground states.

You can see the data for yourself. Particularly in this financial crisis, Californians are ready for a new direction away from failed conservative policies.

All that stands between our five candidates and victory in November is making sure they have the resources to compete. We can help provide that today. Please visit the Calitics Match Act Blue page and give what you can. We'll double your donation to make it that much more meaningful.

The Latest On Darcy Burner

So Blue America is raising moneyfor Darcy Burner in her time of need. This money will go toward her campaign; it's a FEC nightmare to give her direct donations for her house and possessions, and the campaign contributions will help because it gives her time to stay off the campaign trail and get her life back in shape instead of attending fundraisers and bugging people for money. David Goldstein writes:

We’ve asked a lot of Darcy, and I’ve never known a politician who has worked harder to deliver. It was a grueling race in 2006, and after briefly pausing to digest her narrow loss, she got right back to work. But now she needs to take a few days off to tend to her family and herself… to literally get her house in order. And that’s where we all can help.

Darcy needs to raise about $150,000 this July to keep pace with Dave Reichert and her own 2006 fundraising, and everyday she takes off makes her campaign budget that much harder to hit. That’s about $5,000 a day.

And that’s why I’m joining with bloggers nationwide to ask our readers to contribute what they can today, to help give Darcy the breathing room she needs to tend to her own affairs without worrying about neglecting her campaign. Every $5,000 increment we raise represents a day that Darcy won’t have to dedicate to her own fundraising efforts. It is a gift more precious than money; it is a gift of time.

Donate here to Darcy Burner's campaign. And check out this news report from local Seattle news:



Let's pitch in and help our progressive friends. I just gave her a hundred bucks.

End Of The Quarter Bleg

So the quarter ends in about 5 hours (for the West Coast), and it's a key benchmark for candidates to show strength. I just chipped in $20 a piece to two progressive Democrats running primaries against establishment Dems and Bush Dogs. Donna Edwards in MD-04 and Mark Pera in IL-03 will help a Democratic majority do the work of the people the way they should. I agree with Stoller that primaries are where we can make ourselves heard the best right now. BETTER Democrats has to be the watchword right now. You can find plenty of worthy candidates at my ActBlue page.

What Digby Said

(Bob) Herbert reminds us about the Southern Strategy -- and famed GOP strategist Lee Atwater's candid admission: “You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger. By 1968, you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.”

But what is unusual this time out is that the Republicans are getting more overt rather than less for the first time in 40 years. In recent campaigns the Southern Strategy had developed into a sophisticated code, even more obscure than Atwater's examples, where they would support "Southern heritage" symbols like the confederate flag and run on "law and order" but at the same time make a great show of "outreach" and inclusion to the public at large. This has been the pattern for some years now, perfected by the current president in his "compassionate conservative" campaign in 2000. But as Rick Perlstein points out here, they aren't even doing that anymore.

It actually isn't surprising. If you listen to right-wing talk radio these days you will hear more outright racist rhetoric than I can remember in the last 25 years. The Internet is even worse. Blacks, "illegal aliens," Muslims -- all day long you hear an endless litany of complaints about these illegitimate people who are allegedly trying to ruin the American way of life through whining and scheming, stealing jobs and trying to kill us all in our beds. The other day, even General John Abizaid's statement that the world could live with a nuclear Iran was greeted on rightwing forums with a spew of insults about his "Arab" ancestry.

The racist beast is clamoring to be set free.

That is the through-line connecting the immigration fight, Bill O'Reilly's surprise that black people eat like human beings, Jena, Ahmadinejad's visit and the imperial project in the Middle East. One party is less likely to cloak their racism anymore.

Say, you can MEET Digby tonight, and help us raise money for the Calitics ActBlue list, head down to our end of Q3 blograiser tonight in Santa Monica, in association with Drinking Liberally.

Featuring also Ron Shepston and Russ Warner, two great antiwar congressional candidates, LA City Councilman Bill Rosendahl, members of Iraq Veterans for Progress, and more.

Hanging With Russ Warner In Toluca Lake

Last night I spent a couple hours in the hills above Hollywood with bloggers and supporters at a fundraiser for Russ Warner. Many of you know that Warner's district in CA-26, held by Bush rubber stamp David Dreier, offers the best chance in Southern California to flip a Congressional seat in 2008. Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake was there, and she offers this report:

Russ had a really moving tale to tell about his son Greg who served 17 months in Iraq, and how he was motivated to run as a result of his experiences there. Greg is now in West Point.

Says Russ:

"By the end of 2007, 1.3 billion dollars will have been spent on the war just from my district, CA-26 alone — which is enough to provide medical insurance for 150,000 children. It’s time that we end this war and bring the money home to be used for our children and the future of this country."

Russ indicates that he would not vote for the $50 billion supplemental that Bush is now asking for, and believes that the same thing is happening to the United States that happened to the Soviet Union when it went into Afghanistan — we’re being bled dry by Bush and Dreier’s ill-conceived war.

Blue America is trying to build a surge of support for Warner leading into the end of the third quarter. Warner is within a couple thousand dollars of $100,000 raised on ActBlue.



(pictured from bottom left: Jane Hamsher, Russ Warner, Howie Klein of Down With Tyranny, me, Todd Beeton of MyDD, Lucas Gardner of The Battle School.)

Welcome Back Tim

Let me just say that it was great to see Tim Johnson back in the Senate today, giving a moving speech that even the cable nets managed to take live (who knew they still had cameras in Capitol Hill anymore?)

A bunch of senators are welcoming back Tim Johnson by setting up an ActBlue page. You can contribute to Sen. Johnson at my ActBlue site by using the box near the top of the right column.

ActBlue

Just a meta update. I've updated my ActBlue page, where you can donate to various candidates and causes I like. I've included a passel of California candidates, some PACs, and some House races. But really I wanted to highlight the Courage Campaign's call to stop the Republican dirty trick of stealing up to 20 electoral votes in the next Presidential election. They announced the fundraising effort today, and I linked to their ActBlue page at my page. Over in the right-hand column is a contribution box which will direct you to my page and give you a choice of candidates and causes.