We’ve got 21 days. There are no Progressives, there are no blue dogs; primary season is long past. Our job now is to send Speaker Pelosi back to work next January with a majority. The Senate looks to be safe with 52 but we lay on this, too, because it helps every down ticket race.
I’ve been watching and working the social media space for eighteen months and I know what it takes to be effective - persistence, making contacts, and a good bit of luck.
Some of us are disgusted. I stopped working on energy issues and focused on campaigns over a year ago; I knew I wasn’t going to get any forward motion.
I’m sitting in the living room of my friend @DCdebbie. She makes crusty jokes about being Mexican that I can’t repeat but her family has been here for generations so that’s not an issue for them. What is an issue is the pulmonary disease in her family and the small non-profit she works for that advocates in this area. Health care reform? It was insurance reform - a starting place, a BFD and Biden was right to say so, but it’s not done enough for us to pull out the Mission Accomplished banner. She’s still fighting.
I saw @cybil_d earlier this evening. She might want to get married some day. No word on whether they’ll both wear gowns, or both wear tuxes, or if there will be some ironic nod to convention via a combination, but that won’t happen without putting a stop to discrimination against LGBT.
Another, quieter friend also has a girlfriend of her own and a desire to marry. She’s American, girlfriend is English, and her VISA is fast running out. Her family is here, her partner would stay, but there is no path for that. The immigrant girlfriend? A highly skilled person of the sort we’re trying to get to come here.
I’ve spoken to a Mexican American with an impressive resume and the resources to run a Senate race. He doesn’t think a Puerto Rican who comes with citizenship or a Cuban who was instantly blessed on arrival can do the job that is needed by the millions of Mexicans who are here both legally and illegally. If we had 11,000 illegal entrants I’d say round them up and send them home. We have 11,000,000 people who had the sand to get here through the barriers we put up and they work low wage jobs just hoping for a chance to remain. They deserve some justice, both social and economic. This is a big deal for him ... and for me.
My health means, even if they get real reform done for us, I’m liable to end up on social security sooner rather than later. If I get a dime out of that system it’ll come because someone with a Z or a vowel at the end of their name paid into it. We cut our own throats if we even attempt to cut immigration - Japan has showed what might happen and we don’t want that sort of trouble here.
I watch @RL_Miller doggedly line up the climate zombies. It’s long since past the time when a prudent people would have faced this matter on something like a war footing, forcing cuts in emissions and laying a solid foundation for a zero emission economy. And still we linger in false balance with our rotten media digging up one or two crackpots to face down all the rest of the world’s climate scientists.
So we gave the Democrats a solid majority and they gave us ... an OK first step on health care. We didn’t get immigration, discrimination, climate, energy, we got none of that stuff.
And if we flinch for even an instant we’ll see Barack Obama drug through the mud like Clinton was, and two more precious years on climate change remediation will be lost. We’ll stop working on solutions and start seeing every bill in the House with anti-abortion language included. Every form of stupidity we’ve ever seen from the Republicans will come boiling out as they attempt to sink Obama and regain control. They never articulate what they’d do if they’re put back in charge, and they can’t explain why they didn’t do any of these grand things from 2000 to 2006 when they had both chambers and the presidency.
So ... as mad as I am about Democratic inertia I am madder still at the Republicans that put us into this mess. They need a 10:1 cash advantage and a rotten corporate media pushing this fake populist Tea Party nonsense to have the slightest chance of winning and even then it’s not certain. If we break them right here, right now, I think the Republicans might just be finished. I mean finished liked the Whigs, who were broken and slunk away after just a handful of election cycles.
I don’t just want to win. I want to bring ruin on every bastion of corruption that keeps us from making any progress. And the Republican party is target number one, no matter what the sins of the Democrats might be.
Wow, rec list for venting in the dead of night? I'll take it, I'll take it. I'm not gonna push any one candidate, but I will say this - if you've got it, give it. We face a 10:1 disadvantage on advertising dollars - the Republican ad firms can't even digest what is being thrown at them. If we stop them here we will have turned the tide.
If you've got $100 give half of it to some strategic player like PCCC or DFA or Progressive Congress, and then spend 15 minutes looking at diary rescue and see if you can find someone who might win, but who isn't getting much traction here. A final $300 gets district wide Facebook ads the last week and with some wise moves on the part of in district supporters it can make a big difference.