First of all, I want to say thank you to everyone here at Daily Kos and the Orange to Blue program. Your support means a lot and made a significant difference in getting me the needed resources and exposure to win my primary last month. I look forward to continuing to work with all of you to assure we elect a new breed of leaders in Congress who are not afraid to fight for what they believe in.
I also am proud to say that I am now also a member of the DCCC’s Red to Blue program - continuing to show national recognition of how winnable this seat is and the strong local campaign we are building.
Lastly, I am excited to announce that I will be attending the Netroots Nation annual conference next month. I hope to finally meet a lot of you in person and learn from many of the intriguing panel sessions that are being put on there.
I wanted use this entry in my diary to begin a discussion of some of the things that I think need to change in Washington and provide an insight into how I will make my policy decisions.
Almost immediately after winning the Democratic nomination for Congress in PA’s 6th District, my opponent for the fall, Republican Jim Gerlach fired off a missive saying that my “ideology” was wrong for this district. He went on to try and associate with me Nancy Pelosi, big government and San Francisco. Though this unconstructive press release was dismaying, it was far from unexpected. Jim Gerlach, for years, has run campaigns heavy on rhetoric and light on substance. However, in my opinion, the most unfortunate part of this tirade is not his use of baseless, tired talking points but the fact that Jim Gerlach thinks that ideology should be the deciding factor for determining who to vote for.
As a physician, I use evidence-based medicine to determine what treatments and remedies to offer my patients. This concept allows me to look at the studies, evaluate the evidence and determine what has worked and what hasn’t worked and then apply those best practices. I plan to use the same approach when making policy decisions. I will not be controlled by some overriding ideological guide but rather will make my choices based on sound data and proven results. Though simple sounding, it is evident that Jim Gerlach and many other politicians do not abide by these principles. Instead they put the blinders on and vote according to their own and their party’s ideological mandates. To get real progress in Washington, ideologically driven voting needs stop. Moreover, we now have databases and tools in government that allow us to make evidenced-based decisions with much greater confidence. With readily available open government data and advances in information technology, we have the ability to see what has worked and what hasn’t worked in much more quantifiable terms.
The truth is that evidence-based policy-making is something that would allow us to cut though a lot of the partisanship in Washington and finally get some real action. Bills such as healthcare and the economic stimulus would have not been so contentious because the data was overwhelming of why they were necessary. Unfortunately, politicians like Jim Gerlach continue to assure that Washington remains an evidence-free zone. And, until him and others like him are unseated we will fail to climb out of the partisan-based bickering and get real, sustainable results.
In the coming diary entries I hope to discuss this idea in more detail as well as provide some more insight into my philosophies of what we need in Congress.
I will stick around for a bit while I eat my lunch to take questions. If I miss your question today, hopefully we'll get a chance to speak at NN.
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Manan Trivedi, MD, MPP
Candidate for Congress, PA-06