I'm wondering whether the Netroots have any leverage at all through all the money we gave to the Blue Dogs and all the phone calls we made. I understand that conservative districts will elect more conservative Democrats and that's fine with me. If they want to break on guns and abortion because that's their district and their conscience I have no problem. But it angers me that they're risking taking down real health care reform, when it would benefit so many of their constituents. And though it helped install Pelosi as Speaker, still a good thing on balance, I feel angry that I gave them money and made phone calls for them. Maybe there's some way the Netroots can levy some financial or political pressure to counter the health industry.
To be honest, I'm no sure what that pressure would be now that they're in. I'm certainly not going to be contributing to John Barrow or Baron Hill again, and won't be calling on their behalf, but they probably don't need me as much. I have called their offices to indicate that I made phone calls and donated and am angry, and I think that's a good thing for any of us to do who were involved in electing them.
Beyond this, I'm not sure if the netroots deciding to back a primary challenge makes any sense, or put money in escrow or...well I'm not sure what.
But we did elect some of these people, for perfectly good reasons. And maybe there's a creative way to have some leverage.
One other thought: Suppose the Netroots tried to get people to pledge not to give to the DCCC if the Blue Dogs kept trying to undermine health care, And instead we'd only give to selected races. Most of us, myself included, are probably on the DCCC list, and probably donated at some point--I know I did, under the reasonable assumptions that they had an overview of which races were critical so where the resources could be used.
But suppose the Netroots went on strike in terms of donating to the DCCC and said that unless the Blue Dogs stopped undermining health care reform, we'd only give to races we chose.
Maybe the impact would be enough to get them to levy some more serious pressure, and that might make a difference.
I know impossible for our dollars to match the health insurance and pharma lobbiests, but our contributions taken together aren't negligible, and this might be a way to multiply their impact.
Or put differently, I'd rather split the Democratic party before these key votes while we still have a chance of changing their outcome than see it split afterwards with disgruntled backlash as happened in 1994.
Again, this is very different from trying to impose a monolithic line on all votes--just saying that this is a key defining issue.
Paul Loeb
Author Soul of a Citizen
www.paulloeb.org