NH-01: Liberal USA Tour Part 3

On Tuesday, October 10, my Liberal USA Tour stopped by a house party in New Hampshire for Carole Shea-Porter who is running against Jeb Bradley in district NH-01.  I was surprised that morning when we headed to the New Hampshire coast because my foggy recollection of geography was incorrectly telling me that New Hampshire is a land locked state west of Vermont.  Wrong!  New Hampshire has about 18 miles of coast line, and I've now seen it all.

Tuesday was another beautiful day in New Hampshire as we headed to breakfast with Congressman John Murtha and candidate Carol Shea-Porter at the beautiful home of Jane and Curtis Hoffman.  I was surprised to see what seemed like forty people inside and despite the crowd John Murtha towered over everyone there.  I was looking forward to hearing Murtha speak and was curious about the gossip that maybe he is going to be running for President since he's made more than one trip to New Hampshire.

More gossip and impressions below the fold.

Should I go with the gossip or the description of what happened first?  An experienced writer would know the right answer to that question.  I'll go with the event first and then let you know what gossip I've heard about the primary and upcoming general election.

One of the first conversation that I entered with another attendee ended up being about working together across partisan lines.  I start out my conversations with my feeling that the country is headed in the wrong direction and that we need a change.  At some point we started talking about election integrity and I like to throw in that I feel the Supreme Court justices who voted Bush into office should be impeached.

What a hornets nest that impeachment word opened up!  My co-conversationalist said that she felt when the Democrats get into power that it was important for us to work together with Republicans because the country is too divided.  I responded that with an honorable opponent that would be reasonable, but that these radical Republicans have no interest in compromise and cannot be trusted.  They will tell you one thing and then stab you in the back.

We ended up amicably disagreeing, but I couldn't help but feel that the reason for our differing viewpoint on partisanship is that one of us was thinking that the other side is reasonable in their thought processes just like us.  I'm not convinced of that, but am I in the minority?  Do most Kossacks think that bi-partisanship is possible?  Maybe I'll do a poll below if I can figure out how to do it.

Murtha spoke for quite a while and I was surprised at some of the things he said about his own record which I'll get to in a bit.  Murtha had good things to say about how Carol Shea-Porter is the real deal. One example he gave of how Shea-Porter's actions back up her words is how she went to volunteer down south post-Katrina.   Murtha also praised Shea-Porter's statements on how the Iraq war is affecting military families.  He said we need more people like Shea-Porter in Congress who will oppose the Bush administration.

Murtha also addressed the cost of the war, saying that we have spent $962 billion in the last 9 months for no improvement.  He also talked about how Baghdad gets just 2 and 1/2 hours of electricity every day and and that's where 40% of the Iraqi population lives.  He asked how would our lives be if we had only 2 1/2 hours of electricity every day.

About Murtha's own positions, I was surprised that he had a strong interest in preventative medicine which included funding for fighting obesity and diabetes.  He also made an out-of-the-blue statement on how he has always been against public campaign financing.  That's unfortunate because I think the single biggest impact on American politics would be American Dream Campaign Financing where anyone can be elected to office no matter how much money they and their friends have.

Carol Shea-Porter was a breath of fresh air compared to these DCCC sponsored primary candidates.  She started out by saying that she may be a long shot, but she has dead on aim.  She said her opponent, Jeb Bradley, can only remember one name and it's not New Hampshire he's remembering, but George Bush.  She-Porter called us to action saying that we can't say we'll work harder next time, now is the time to work hard.  

Shea-Porter talked about how poorly our economy is doing with the example that we are asking foreign countries to build roads in our country and collect tolls to pay for it.  That's not the actions of a wealthy country.  She also talked about how Americans pay 2 and 1/2 times the cost of healthcare in other countries and called for a single payer plan.  To critics who ask how we will pay for it she responds that we already are paying for it but it isn't being delivered.   Carol Shea-Porter is also concerned about the future of our children.  She asks if it is alright to tell our children that they can't go to college, but will have to instead serve hamburgers?

As for opening up your pockets, Carol Shea-Porter's ask is one that she says she borrowed from another politician.  She says there is plenty of money for her campaign but it is in your pockets.  That said, she has an impressive grassroots organization but to get her message out to everyone she will need to be able to put some advertisements on television and radio.  Kossacks can help with this by contributing to her campaign to help insure a progressive Congressional candidate in Congress who will be a leader, not a follower.  Shea-Porter for first woman speaker of the house? :-)

Now for the gossip!
I'm fascinated by the poor candidates that the DCCC picks to run against our grassroots Democratic candidates in the primary.  Shea-Porter's opponent couldn't even answer questions or state a position on the most important issues facing our country when interviewed by one of the papers up here.  We really need to have a policy from the DNC that national Democratically affiliated campaign funds cannot interfere in primaries, only in the general election.

I think Carol Shea-Porter does have a shot at winning this race based on her performance in the primary.  She was able to beat the DCCC opponent who raised hundreds of thousands of dollars with her cash-poor but volunteer-rich grassroots  campaign.  What's sad is that now that she's won I'm getting the impression that New Hampshire and national Democratic organizations would cut of their noses to spite their faces rather than have a grassroots Democratic candidate win.

The above may be an inaccurate impression I'm getting based on the small sample of people I've talked to.  When I asked Carol Shea-Porter what support she is getting from the New Hampshire party and the DCCC she said that the New Hampshire state party was being supportive and that they had just held a joint press conference earlier this week.  Shea-Porter said she has not asked the DCCC for support.  And with our support I think she can prove that it's not necessary to be DCCC backed to win.  

You can check out a couple of advertisements and several of Carol Shea-Porter's speeches on her web site, http://www.carolforcongress.com/...
 and also make a contribution to her campaign, http://www.carolforcongress.com/....    

Liberal USA Tour Part 1 http://www.dailykos.com/...
Liberal USA Tour Part 2 http://www.dailykos.com/...