UPDATE: Thanks for putting this on the most recc'ed list! Please do keep em coming, so others see.
Hi -- this is Adam Green with the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.
Today, we're launching a new TV ad featuring the actual Chairman of the Connecticut for Lieberman Party "explaining" Senator Joe Lieberman's opposition to the public health insurance option. See it here or below.
It's already making a splash -- covered by the New York Times, Boston Globe, TPM, Huffington Post, and Connecticut's biggest newspaper, The Hartford Courant. Joe will not be happy about this.
TV ads in Connecticut and DC are expensive -- and we need to raise at least $40,000 to air this ad. (In just couple hours, we've already raised $8,000 $10,000 $20,000 $35,000 in small-dollar contributions!)
Can you chip in $5 to help hold Lieberman accountable on TV?
You can also sign the petition accompanying the ad at AllAboutJoe.org.
Senators could finalize a health care bill this week, so pressuring Lieberman couldn't be more urgent.
This ad is successfully getting the media to cover something they have failed to cover so far: The Daily Kos-Research 2000 poll showing that Lieberman is flatly out-of-step with his constituents -- who want a public option 3 to 1.
Check out this New York Times piece today:
A liberal advocacy group is broadcasting a new television ad accusing Senator Joesph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, of ignoring his constituents’ needs by opposing the creation of a new government-run health insurance plan — the so-called public option.
Mr. Lieberman has voiced staunch opposition to the public option...[the] Senate bill will almost certainly be changed before a final vote is taken, in part because of resistance by Mr. Lieberman and others to the public plan.
The new ad, by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, takes a pointed dig at Mr. Lieberman, who lost the Democratic primary in his last campaign for re-election in 2006 and chose to continue running, and ultimately won, as an independent.
The ad features John Mertens, the chairman of the Connecticut for Lieberman Party, a group that was formed to support him as an independent in the 2006 election but has since broken ranks. Mr. Mertens says that he wants to explain Mr. Lieberman’s position on the public plan and notes that according to some polls Connecticut residents support the idea of a government run health-insurance plan by three to one.
...“Joe never forgets who he ran to represent,” Mr. Martens dead-pans in the 30-second spot. “Himself.” He concludes his brief remarks, saying: “It’s not about you. It’s all about Joe.”
This ad is ratcheting up the pressure on Lieberman.
Can you chip in $5 to help put it on TV?
UPDATE: Joe's office responds! Via Greg Sargent, Plumline:
A spokesman for Joe Lieberman, whose talent for annoying liberals seems to have grown exponentially in the heat of the health care fight, is now responding to a liberal group’s new ad hammering the Senator by dismissing the public option as the “agenda of narrow ideological interest groups.”
Lieberman just called 68% of his constituents who support the public option a narrow interest group. Really? What do we say to that?
Can you chip in $5 $10 to help put it on TV?
Thanks, folks.