A Brief Election Roundup

Here's a few things I saw in some of the downballot races that interest me in this election:

• CA-04: Charlie Brown, a patriot in the strictest sense of the term, has been running his campaign for Congress based on some simple directives - to help those in need, to work in their own community, and to lead before ever getting to Washington. This week, in the wake of the California wildfires, he has provided supplies and relief to evacuees in Butte County, one of the hardest-hit areas.

• VA-05: This kind of volunteerism and early leadership is something we're also seeing in the campaign of Tom Perriello, who's facing Rep. Virgil Goode in the general election. This is about service, but it's also about raising the bar for activism as an outgrowth of a political campaign.

Early on, Perriello set aside 10 percent of the time and resources of his campaign staff to work on local projects. Larry Campbell, assistant pastor at Bible Way Cathedral in Danville, Va., says he was surprised that Perriello's campaign wanted more than a photo op when they visited his food bank.

"I've had many political candidates come through, but I've never had any work along with us in the area of social-action changes," he says, citing ongoing help from Perriello volunteers. "Most candidates who are running for national office have more programs just getting people out voting for them, but to give back to the community is a heavy statement for social change."

• TX-Sen: The DSCC is hammering John Cornyn for only changing his vote to halt Medicare cuts after the bill was assured of passage. He already lost the Texas branch of the AMA's support over this vote. His opponent, Rick Noriega, is going to need a lot of cash to catch up to Cornyn, but he has raised $1M online, making him the "largest (non-presidential) online fundraiser with ActBlue since its inception." Unfortunately, Texas is such a big state that you probably need LOTS more than Noriega has been able to raise to run a solid challenge.

• CO-Sen: Bob Schaffer, the Republican vying for this open seat, can't stop stepping in scandal. The latest is that he helped negotiate a lucrative oil deal in Iraqi Kurdistan, against the wishes of the State Department, and it's causing major problems for Iraqi efforts to negotiate a hydrocarbon law. Tied to Big Oil and putting personal benefit over country; quite a feat! Mark Udall is the Democrat here.

• MN-Sen: I thought Al Franken's latest ad was pretty good, and represented some outside-the-box thinking:

"In Washington, they debate whether former members of Congress should wait one year or two years before they become registered lobbyists. How about never? I'm Al Franken, in Washington I'll fight for a new law to prevent members of Congress from ever becoming lobbyists."

It's a sharp message, picking up on anti-Washington sentiment. What's more, it's not off the typical shelf of "Democratic issues" we hear over and over again.

• AK-Sen: In other ad news, Mark Begich's latest uses the culture of corruption which has consumed Alaska politics and contrasts it with his personal integrity.

Begich says how he's made all his finances public, so the people can know what he's up to. "But it's not that way in Washington, DC," Begich says. "It's time to end the secret deals for special interests, and the special favors for elected officials."

There's nowhere that will work better than Alaska.

• GA-12: The primary between John Barrow and Regina Thomas is this Tuesday. Blue America has been running ads in the district, and Barrow is peeved.

Howie Klein of Los Angeles, a retired music industry executive and one of Blue America's founders, said the PAC got behind Thomas because of Barrow's votes supporting the war in Iraq, President Bush's signature tax cuts and a recent bill to protect telecommunications companies that help the government eavesdrop on American phone and computer lines.

"He's in a Democratic district and he's still voting worse than anyone else," Klein said. "If we can somehow harm to his chances of being elected, there is a state senator who seems very progressive and intelligent who could do the job." [...]

Barrow responded with a statement saying his support for an increase in the minimum wage and opposition to cutting veterans benefits and privatizing Social Security, among other issues, have put him at odds with Bush plenty.

"Apparently the only way to persuade some people that I'm not a rubber stamp for George Bush is to become a rubber stamp for Nancy Pelosi," the Democratic House speaker, Barrow said. "And I refuse to be a rubber stamp for anyone."

Attacking liberals and dismissing Democrats seems to be an awkward strategy for a primary, but he is the incumbent and Thomas hasn't raised much of her own money. Frankly if we can make this competitive it'll be a win.

GA-12: Thomas Cleans Up In Debates

Next week is not going to be that fun. We're going to see a total capitulation from Democrats on FISA and telecom immunity, and the unitary executive, its theories legally discredited, will remain pre-eminent. The way that we're going to restore accountability is by defeating the Democratic enablers who are fundamentally conservative and reactionary, and who team up with Republicans to undermine progress and subvert the rule of law. July 15 is our first test, as Georgia Rep. John Barrow faces State Senator Regina Thomas in a district where African-American primary turnout could top 60%. Barrow is a conservative who voted to fund endless war and to eliminate our privacy on FISA, the Patriot Act and a host of other issues. Howie Klein has been following this race with interests and notes that Thomas gave it to Barrow at a recent debate:

The Democratic primary challenger to U.S. Rep. John Barrow accused him of dragging his feet on reducing gas prices and supporting illegal wiretapping of Americans during a televised debate Tuesday.

State Sen. Regina Thomas of Savannah called herself the "true Democrat" in her race against Barrow, a two-term incumbent in the 12th Congressional District.

"The incumbent has always voted with Bush and the Republicans, and look at where we are," Thomas said in a dig at Barrow's support for President Bush's signature tax cuts and his votes against setting timetables for withdrawal from Iraq [...]

Thomas also attacked Barrow for his recent vote favoring passage on an update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, intended to balance privacy rights while protecting the U.S. against attacks.

Thomas said the legislation gave telecommunications companies immunity from prosecution for illegal wiretapping of American citizens. Barrow denied that's what the act does.

"It gives the intelligence community the tools they need to follow up and track the bad guys while protecting the civil rights we're all about in the first place," he said.

Thomas called Barrow's answer "smoke and mirrors" and insisted the legislation "will still allow the government to violate the right to privacy of American citizens."

This was followed by another debate where Thomas explained plainly and simply that Barrow was a Bush Dog who favored endless war. Barrow is being helped by corporate PAC money and his Establishment buddies. This is not going to be an easy race - Barrow has a ton of built-in advantages - but it's a beginning in the fight to have a voice for ordinary people in the Congress.

Want To Fight Back On FISA? Meet Regina Thomas.

It's pretty clear to me that the fix is in on FISA, and it's likely to become law by the end of the week. That's genuinely shocking and depressing.

But we have long memories. And the road to a Congress and political class which pays a modicum of attention to civil liberties begins in a primary in the area surrounding Savannah, Georgia. John Barrow deserves to go down.

John Barrow's voting record in Congress "is the worst of all the Democrats," state Sen. Regina Thomas said Saturday.

Thomas, challenging fellow Savannah Democrat Barrow in the July 15 primary election, talked with reporters following a candidates forum.

"Did we send a Democrat to Congress four years ago, or did we send a Republican?" she said after the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials event. "When we send people to Congress, if people tell us they are a Democrat or a Republican, we expect them to act that way."

Barrow has, in just the last week, voted with George Bush on FISA and funding for endless war in Iraq. The Republicans, through the Club for Growth and other groups, force discipline on their caucus by providing more fear for them than their Democratic counterparts. Right now there is nothing complementary on the left - we run the occasional ankle-biter, and very rarely we win (see Rep. Donna Edwards). Since the FISA betrayal there has been a sustained effort to hold Bush Dogs accountable, with over $300,000 contributed to The Strange Bedfellows campaign. Regina Thomas will be the beneficiary of that energy for the next few weeks until her primary on July 15. To me she doesn't seem like a leader in the style of a Donna Edwards (I could be wrong, however, and she does appear to me to be a reliable vote), but it's important to send a message to Washington and those like John Barrow, who claim to be Democrats and then sell out the Democratic Party and our civil liberties.

Keep Those Obama Phone Calls Coming

The FISA debacle could happen as early as Friday. Nobody has seen the final bill except the cretins who are moving it forward, including the lobbyists who wrote it. Because the scared bunnies at the DCCC are so worried about keeping power and saving their blessed freshman Dems from criticism (even though it won't), this bill has to be fast-tracked and pushed through under the dead of night.

And if you think that we only have to wait for Obama's election to end this kind of backroom dealing and lobbyist-written legislation, consider that he is trying to protect an incumbent who is one of the worst reactionaries in the Democratic caucus, who supports the FISA bill completely, who defines himself by total resistance to Democratic values, and who will not be an asset to anything resembling a progressive agenda:

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has taped a radio commercial on behalf of U.S. Rep. John Barrow of Savannah, who faces a July 15 primary challenge.

It's the first case of Obama involving himself in a local race in Georgia.

Details of when the ad will start airing and where it will be broadcast - the 12th District covers much of east Georgia, including portions of Augusta and Savannah - were not immediately available Wednesday.

But the Obama campaign made clear to my colleague Aaron Sheinin that it sees Barrow, a two-term Democrat, as an important ally. We've got calls into the Barrow campaign, but haven't heard from them yet.

As Matt Stoller notes, this is part and parcel with Obama consolidating the party. He wants to do a favor for a conservative Democrat who might be in a position to return the favor for him. Regina Thomas, the progressive challenging Barrow, will support progressive values and doesn't need any favors, the logic goes.

As Glenn Greenwald notes:

This is everything Obama claims so vehemently to oppose, claims he wants to end. And yet the Congress under the control of his party is about to enact a radical bill to legalize vast new warrantless eavesdropping powers and immunize telecoms who broke our country's laws for years. And not only is Obama doing nothing about any of that, but far more, he's actively intervening in a Democratic primary to help one of the worst enablers of all of this stay in power, while helping to defeat an insurgent, community-based challenger.

None of that is enjoyable to write or accept, but those are just facts. There is a disturbing tendency on all sides to view Obama through a reductive Manichean lens -- either he's the embodiment of pure transformative Good who is going magically to cleanse our polity the minute he takes office, or he's nothing other than a mindless, passive tool of the establishment whose pretty rhetoric masks a barren ambition for power and who is no better than McCain. Neither of those caricatures is remotely accurate, and a John McCain presidency would be an unmitigated disaster on every level.

But it's critical to keep in mind that Obama is a politician and, like all people, is plagued by significant imperfections. He has largely entrenched himself in, and is dependent upon, the power structure he says he wants to undermine. Uncritical devotion to political leaders, including him, is destructive. Obama needs pressure, criticism, checks, and real scrutiny just like anyone else in power in order to keep him accountable, responsive, and faithful to the principles he claims are the ones driving him.

That's absolutely right. I called on Obama from the moment he clinched the nomination to shut down this FISA bill. It undermined his national security argument, trashed the Constitution, and delivered immunity to lawbreaking. Now he's not only indifferent to such calls, he's actively enabling those "Democrats" who would do the deed.

I guess you could become disillusioned and turn away from politics entirely, smugly tell everyone you know (and some you don't) that you were right all along and Obama's no saint (though I certainly never said he was). Or you can hold him accountable. The Strange Bedfellows coalition is building, having raised nearly $200,000 in a day, with more to come. We will stand up and demand our civil liberties and our Constitutional rights, and attack those politicians, from either political party, who seek to undermine them.