I'm posting this on behalf of Doug Kahn, a former 3-time candidate for Congress and a former heavy hitting DCCC donor who now works on the Blue America Bad Dogs project. He stopped donating to the DCCC entirely and is devoting his energies to helping rebuild a more progressive Democratic Party. He posted this comment/suggestion at DownWithTyranny today. At DWT there's no polling function. Here there is.
Oh, c’mon folks. If we’ve learned anything about Congress and health care reform, it’s that you can’t really believe anything they say in public. I just hope you’re convinced now that you can do amazing things. I don’t mean the impersonal ‘you’, as in ‘one can do anything’. You, I mean.
I really think you have the Senate on the run. You rattled Harry Reid, and enabled Chuck Schumer. Chuck doesn’t say much. When you hear he’s made a statement, that means he wants you to know something about the reality of the situation. He said that a bill without a public option wasn’t worth a damn, and that was a public challenge to the other Democratic Senators. If they go up against a public option, they’re going up against Chuck Schumer, who’s going to be the next Majority Leader in the Senate. In effect, that’s what he is now. You heard him praising Harry Reid as a great vote-counter and an all-around jolly good fellow. This is someone asserting that’s he’s in a superior position, and it must be the way he’s acting in the private meetings. Result: Harry Reid has to prove to his herd of cats that he’s still in charge, so he’s acting in a way that shocks everyone. I believe they’ll end up passing a bill with some form of public option; didn’t Schumer say he could accept the opt-out version? That’s what it’ll be, then.
As to why this is possible all of a sudden, the answer is: you. It’s actually helpful that Chris Bowers and Open Left people have a strategy that differs from Mike Lux or Digby or McJoan or Jane Hamsher. Markos. Josh Marshall. HCAN, Governor Dean’s group, everyone else whose name I can’t remember, and the even larger number of people I’m too dull to have noticed.
I don’t know 1% of what the aforementioned have done over the past 5 or however many years, It’s a few of the people I pay attention to, in no particular order. I have a weakness for Hullabaloo and Crooks and Liars. Hell, I’ve been known to read Howie Klein’s stuff.
Whatever you’re doing, it’s working. They’re showing weakness, something they avoid at all costs. I claim to know more about politics than I really do, but I’m pretty certain of this: now is the right time to stomp. Do not let them get up off the floor. It’s not the time to thank anyone, not yet. Don’t try to analyze exactly what worked, just do more of it as soon as you possibly can. More ads, more petitions, more opinions, more threats, more demonstrations, more hyperbole, more.
Don’t you think the House is the place to pressure now? Repeatedly counting votes seems to be good, it’s helping. The so-called moderates are trapped by circumstances beyond their control, forced to actually do something that will significantly change society. Some of the Blue Dogs weeks ago made it publicly clear they’re going with Pelosi wherever she goes, but most of them are twisting and turning in an effort to save face, claim they can still say no, without actually saying so. They definitely want to avoid your personal attention, I’m convinced of that. Otherwise, they’d just say no, because it puts them in a better bargaining position.
For god’s sake, even the village idiot Mike Ross has been trying to say nice things about reform and Medicare without actually committing himself to anything in particular. They see what you’ve done to Blanche Lincoln, Olympia Snowe, Ben Nelson, Landrieu and others. If you can lay waste to Senators, even temporarily, what happens when you focus on a member of the House? I wonder if it wouldn’t be a good idea just to pick a Blue Dog and start running ads, just hammer one in particular, and see what the rest of them do. I suggest picking someone who isn’t a solid no vote, because it’d stop every single Bad Dog from thinking he/she is safe just because there are worse or more vulnerable colleagues. You think that’s harsh, I guess. It helps to imagine them as the worst kind of non-thinking humans yelling This is Sparta! and kicking Nancy Pelosi into the pit of doom.