So today the Blue Majority sites (dKos, Swing State Project, and Open Left) added Barack Obama to our ActBlue fundraising page. All three sites held votes of their readership. Daily Kos passed the super-majority threshold a few weeks ago, SSP and Open Left did it yesterday.
It's clear our communities have become heavily pro-Obama, especially as Clinton's only path to victory is via coup by super delegate and civil war, and she doesn't give a damn. Bowers gives his four reasons for the move:
First, many people have said that there are few policy differences between Obama and Clinton, but the truth is that their telecom policies could hardly be further apart from each other. Obama proposes exactly the sort of transformative, open telecommunications policy that we need to transform the media landscape in America, while Hillary Clinton's telecom proposals are nothing more than heinous corporate welfare. Without a transformed telecommunications landscape, we are going to have an extremely difficult time building a progressive America or passing any of our other legislation.
Second, in terms of electability, in order to win the general election a candidate must first become the nominee. Simply put, I don't see many ways for Hillary Clinton to pull that off. Further, in order to win the general election, Democrats will need time to define McCain, and time to heal the party once the nomination contest is over. However, Hillary Clinton's only path to the nomination is through convention in late August, and also through a intra-partisan civil war. In other words, Clinton's path to the nomination renders her unelectable in the general. There simply won't be enough time to heal the party and define John McCain.
Third, how a candidate campaigns is a strong reflection on how that candidate governs. For example, we could tell from the 2000 election that George Bush would govern through a series of power grabs, Orwellian language, and with a total disregard for popular opinion. Barack Obama, by contrast, is campaigning through unprecedented national grassroots organizing, speeches that are becoming the stuff of legend, and the manifestation of a new political coalition that moves us away from the political alignment of 1968-2004. Too often, I have heard from the Clinton campaign and its surrogates about states and demographic groups that don't matter. Such statements are a stark reminder of a recent version of the Democratic Party that takes its base for granted, and only campaigns in a select few swing districts. We need a Democratic Party that organizes and governs based on Barack Obama and Howard Dean's campaign styles, rather than one that is based on Hillary Clinton's and Terry McAuliffe's.
Fourth, coattails and movement building matter. In both of Blue Majority's victories so far in 2008, Donna Edwards in MD-04 and Bill Foster in IL-14, the energy and activism brought to bear by Barack Obama were key. The activism in support of Barack Obama has the potential to greatly enhance the political reach of the progressive movement, and also to provide Democrats with sweeping downticket victories. I once called this progressive movement symbiosis, and I still believe it is the most promising path to a truly progressive governing majority that I have seen in my lifetime.
Those are pretty solid reasons. For me, the third and fourth are pretty much 95% of the reason I decided to begin aggressively supporting Obama after spending most of this cycle either uncommitted, pro-Dodd, or soft Obama.
Remember, we're looking for 6,500 donors by the end of the quarter, so we've got 860 to go. And aside from Obama, we've got some great House and Senate candidates on our Blue Majority page.
We didn't notch victories like Donna Edwards and Bill Foster this year by slacking and sitting things out. We change our country one candidate at a time, and we've got great ones. So chip in what you can. Even $10 helps. Two is a start, but we've got lots more to go. So join the 5,640 who have already chipped in for a Bluer majority this cycle.