In a diary comment yesterday, I stated that the MoveOn & PCCC ads were a good start toward trying to exert influence on the government. It got me to thinking "what else can we do?" Since one of the things that bugs me the most is when people complain without offering solutions, I spent some time coming up with a proposal.
There seem to be a couple of things we are trying to accomplish. One is to get strong proud progressives in office. The second is to be able to tell if the "progressive" on the campaign trail is going to still be a progressive when it's time to count the votes (or wield the veto pen, or whatever).
One thing that I hear from time to time is people wondering how the right wing can be so effective in getting their ideology promoted. Is it Fox? Maybe, but in the big picture, Fox doesn't reach that many people. The right wing was successfully pushing the "center" rightward well before Fox was around. Looking back, I can remember one tool that seemed to serve the purpose of a) rallying the right-wing base to the most right-wing candidates, and b) force the candidates to take a stand on ideology in a easily accessible and comparable fashion. The good ol' litmus test!
What
What I propose is that we create a candidate questionnaire based on progressive principles. Since this is my proposal, I'll venture that the questions should be based on the positions and principles of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. I'm not saying that they are all-encompassing, but they are a solid starting place.
How
I think this questionnaire should be sent to every candidate that any of us would consider voting for, whether congressional, presidential or county clerk. We should be very vocal that if a candidate doesn't complete the questionnaire, or their answer shows an insufficient willingness to publicly commit to progressive ideology, said candidate will not receive our time and money (I'm not asking that people commit to withholding their votes because I think that voting is a duty).
When the DNC calls, tell them "no donations, not volunteering for candidates that don't have a progressive rating of x%, based on our questionnaire (or they haven't responded to the questionnaire)." We could call it the DFH rating :)
It's certainly true that candidates can get funded exclusively by corporate cash and win elections, but all we need is a few victories to get their attention. Having an easily-told story of how progressives shunned candidate A, who lost, while publicly supporting candidate B, who won. will get candidate attention.
Folks may rightly point out that there are existing progressive scorecards and that previous efforts to do something similar have not had great results. I think the missing ingredient is unity. Not lockstep blind "follow the leader", but enough unity to make our numbers work to our advantage. There is pride on the progressive side in our diversity, as a contrast to the groupthink on the right. But, if we can't agree on the critical few (or not so few) that we all agree on, we will not be as effective as we could be. Additionally, it helps us to avoid spending our resources on candidates that are perfectly happy to be completely funded by corporate interests.
If there are better ideas, let's get them out there. We need to do something different, 'cause what we're doing now is not getting us the results we want.
Update
Well, that sank without a ripple :) I guess what we really want is more of "as the Obama meta turns".