It's about time someone in the Pennsylvania media, outside of local progressive blogs, finally questions and calls out Allyson Schwartz's horrid non-progressive idea. Like the mission of the Daily Kos, which is to find good progressive candidates, voters in Pennsylvania and members in the "DKos PA" group should heed Will Bunch's advice.
In his article, Will Bunch acknowledges that Allyson Schwartz is an excellent Democrat when it comes to social issues like abortion, gay rights, women's rights and so forth, but he then goes on to compare the candidate to the "uptown/suburban politico -- typified by New York's Michael Bloomberg and his likely successor as mayor, Christine Quinn."
He explains:
They are 100 percent true-blue liberal on social issues like gay marriage and a woman's right to choose, but take pro-business stances that aren't helpful to the struggling middle class, and don't seem much troubled by creeping police-statism to protect what the affluent have in 21st Century America.
And then goes on to talk about yesterday's Ammash/Conyers amendment vote where Schwartz decided to position herself with neo-conservative republicans and establishment partisan Democrats who support the surveillance state.
Bunch then points out Schwartz's pro-business/anti-middle class record (and if you live in her district as I do, you will notice how it is littered with Big Pharma). Bunch writes:
And Schwartz' unprogressive vote on the NSA might be excusable is it were a one-time thing -- but there are other questions. In a time when fracking is ruining the rural environment across Pennsylvania, Schwartz has taken a surprisingly business-friendly (and future campaign-contributor friendly?) stance. Upon taking office in 2005, Schwartz had a choice between the Big Banks or the middle class on a bankruptcy bill -- and she voted with the banks. She's a leader of something called the New Democrat Coalition -- which ProPublica recently described as "a group of 69 lawmakers whose close relationship with several hundred Washington lobbyists makes them one of the most successful money machines since the K Street Project collapsed."
If you want some other references for Schwartz's non-progressive record, you will have to look no further than
her voting record on CISPA (another easy vote where she was the only PA Dem to favor the bill),
her support for dronesCA,
her assualt on the single payer option in the ACA,
her attacks on the current ACA, and
her attacks on her constiutents when she favored with credit card lenders in the run up to the recession.
The best case scenario for those in the 13th is that Schwartz goes down in the primary and that Daylin Leach - a breath of fresh air - fills her seat. To end this diary, lets leave it to Will Bunch:
If progressives are determined to vote for Allyson Y. Schwartz, they should stop and ask themselves... Y.?