I talk to candidates all day, 7 days a week. I'm so sick of hearing from "progressives" who back Medicare-for-All but are afraid to say the words... or of Democrats who believe in the Green New Deal as much as I do but have been counseled to not use the term or to speak out about it too much. One candidate who I've known for years and I know is a progressive told me he's running a moderate campaign-- in a deep, deep blue district, because a Blue Dog piece of shit in a red district told him that is the only way to win. Do you want more Democrats like Ted Lieu, Rashida Tlaib, Alan Grayson, Jamie Raskin, Barbara Lee, Ilhan Omar, Ro Khanna, Maxine Waters and AOC who speak out and speak loudly and plainly? I do... and that's why I'm part of Blue America and work to raise money for progressive courageous candidates.Last cycle the DCCC sold voters on the proposition that a bunch of veterans were brave and bold and would make great members of Congress. What a tragic joke that turned out to be. They may have been heroic on the battlefield but they sure are a pack of cowardly careerists afraid of their own shadows in Congress. The military freshman are nearly all among the worst, tepid, wishy-washy Democrats in the House-- Chrissy Houlahan (who never saw any combat), Jason Crow, Max Rose, Jared Golden, Conor Lamb (no combat duty), Gil Cisneros (no combat duty), Mikey Sherrill (no combat duty), Elaine Luria (no combat duty) all have something in common-- F ratings from ProgressivePunch. They served their country but that hasn't made them good members of Congress, not even a little.I'm looking for men and women candidates who are not so scared shitless of losing that they buckle under to corporate interests and give a shit about what careerist garbage like Chuck Schumer and Steny Hoyer have to say. And, I'm happy to say that this cycle there are plenty of them-- from Rebecca Parson (WA) on the most northwesterly piece of the continental United States to Brianna Wu (MA) in one of the districts furthest east. And in between: Jessica Ventura (IL), Kim Williams (CA), Nate McMurray (NY), Michael Owens (GA), Eva Putzova (AZ), Mike Siegel (TX), Morgan Harper (OH), Jason Butler (NC), Mark Gamba (OR)...How do I know they're going to be courageous? That's a good question and it has a lot to do with my gut-- which is not infallible. Blue America doesn't ask candidates to fill out questionnaires. We try to get to know them. Even then, we sometimes get played. Last year we called it right with AOC but I couldn't have been more wrong with Jared Golden. This cycle we're being extra-careful. Do you think there's any chance Rebecca Parson will ever sell out? Look at that twitter page: "Queer democratic socialist running for Congress in WA-06. No corporate or lobbyist money. Fighting for a home for us all-- not just the wealthiest few." I guarantee you she's not joining the Blue Dogs or New Dems. In fact, the mealy-mouthed conservative she'd be replacing is Derek Kilmer, the head of the New Dems. And speaking of Twitter... do you follow Nate McMurray? If not, you should. He's running in one of the reddest districts in the whole northwest and instead of running as the Republican-lite Blue Dog that the DCCC wants, he's on Twitter every day extolling progressive policies and beating up on Trump and his congressional enablers. And look at this brief inter-change in the comments section between an anonymous commenter and Rachel Ventura, another kick-ass progressive taking on another mealy-mouthed New Dem (Bill Foster):
Anonymous said...Rachel may sound nice, but she can in no way ever be better than the house tyrant that she shall endorse -- Pelosi -- who is pure unadulterated corrupt fascist shit.vote for Rachel if you feel the need. But do it with open eyes. The best you can hope for is that Pelosi and the democrap party won't be much worse than they've/she's been for the past 2 generations.6:10 PM  Unknown said...Why are you assuming I would endorse Pelosi? I would like to see a progressive run for leadership and would support that person.
Brianna Wu knows how to stand up to the alt-right-- and she's already shown us how it's done. She was targeted by Steve Bannon and his cronies during the Gamergate controversy, which later became the Trump playbook. She suffered through numerous death and rape threats, stalking, brick being thrown through her window, threats against her family... you name it. Instead of backing down, she spoke out about the misogynistic treatment of women in the tech industry. And now she's running for Congress, against a conservative New Dem, in part to hold tech companies accountable for facilitating cyberbullying and to create cybersecurity standards to protect consumer and voter information online. All that takes courage-- and Brianna personifies it.To Arizona progressive Eva Putzova the seemingly impossible is just another challenge. And it makes sense if you consider that she is part of the generation that knocked down the walls and overthrew the totalitarian regime in 1989 in former Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution. She ran for and was elected to the Flagstaff City Council in 2014 as an avowed progressive when even many so-called "liberals" doubted she could win that way. When informed initially by some attorneys that Arizona state law prohibited cities from establishing their own minimum wage, she researched the law herself, discovered they were wrong, and initiated a lawsuit that was victorious. She had the guts to take on the State of Arizona and challenge the legislative overreach. She led a successful initiative campaign to raise the minimum wage in Flagstaff to $15 per hour with virtually no support from the established electeds who were unsure of the outcome and unwilling to stick their necks out. Then when the Chamber of Commerce and its allied dark-money groups, including the Koch Brothers, sought to repeal the initiative, she defeated that effort as well by mobilizing the community to defend what they had just voted to approve. During these struggles, she was subjected to verbal and written abuse, xenophobic attacks on her accent, desecration of her campaign materials, and other threats. Some of this has continued since she announced she was running for Congress in AZ-01, daring to challenge a Blue Dog incumbent-- a corporate 'Democrat' who votes with Trump 40% of the time. Her opponents have included some privileged Democrats as well as Republican defenders of the status quo. She has faced this adversity by working harder, winning over voters, increasing her public profile, building a truly grassroots campaign operation and affirming her values of peace, justice, inclusion, and equality for all. Here at DWT and anyone watching in AZ-01, her courage is there for all to see.Mark Gamba, is the progressive mayor of Milwaukie, Oregon and he's facing off against reactionary Blue Dog Kurt Schrader. "It's hard, he told me yesterday, "to run against an incumbent who is a millionaire and who takes stacks of cash from every evil corporation there is. It's doubly hard to continue working as an unpaid mayor, while running a full time congressional campaign and having to raise money the hard way: $27 at a time, from the people. Also imagine being a freshman congressman with no power, realizing that you have 10 years to stop climate change. The only way a freshman Congressman can have much effect is to break the rules, to be loud, to expose the lies and the hypocrisy. In other words to buck the status quo and to piss off the most powerful people in the world. Even the Democratic Party is an obstacle, the DCCC issuing an edict to keep campaign workers away. The difficulty and expense of simply getting the voter files. The myriad of campaign rules designed to tilt the playing field towards the incumbents and the wealthy. The very real likelihood that when I start showing well in the polls they will attack me personally and attempt to smear my character. But what choice do we have? If we continue in the current system, the people that will almost always end up in Congress are the ones that will never solve the problems, because they, or someone very much like them are the ones that caused the problems in the 1st place. The system is broken, if we hope to save our democracy and our planet's very ability to support life, we will have to break the current system."Kim Williams, a professor and former Obama era diplomat, is running against an entrenched Blue Dog the DCCC back, Jim Costa. "If Democrats are working on healthcare, jobs creation, and anti-corruption, you wouldn’t know it here," she told me today. "They take the same money from the same corporations as Republicans and this all leads to the same outcome. Billionaire growers get tax breaks and subsidies while working families struggle to survive. Jim Costa continues to cater to the wishes of the few over the needs of the many. Even in this solid blue district, he did not want to ruffle wealthy, conservative feathers. It took two-thirds of his peers to sign on for impeachment before he would join in, and even then he left mention of this vote out of his newsletter. When challenged, he always referenced the polling data. Not once did he speak to whether this was simply the right thing to do. These talking points point to a party that is more concerned with promises that keep them in power than real results to help their base. Now, more than ever, we need representatives with the political courage to speak truth to power and stand up for what’s right. These talking points don’t match reality, and voters can see right through it." Wake County pastor, Jason Butler is running in a rural red district that Democrats usually give a pass to; that's brave in itself. But that's hardly the beginning. When we first met he told me how, when he was living in Milwaukee, he was part of a community organizing effort that stood up to 5 major banks for their role in the foreclosure crisis. He stood before 1,000 people and elected officials and bank executives and demanded they put an end to their practices that were destroying under-resourced neighborhoods and make a $20 million commitment to re-invest in those neighborhoods. I doubt he learned that in pastor-school. And, a pastor, he publicly stood up to the UMC for their decision to exclude LGBTQ individuals from full access and organized a rally to fight for full inclusion, organizing a group-- Sacred Witness-- to continue the fight for full inclusion. He's probably even better known as the white pastor who openly talks about the affects of racism and systematic oppression and exclusion of communities of color in rural North Carolina-- especially how the industrial prison complex has functioned as a new Jim Crow to intentionally disrupt and destabilize the African-American community. When I first interviewed him for an endorsement he told me he'll "strive to always stand for justice for the marginalized and pushed aside. Society has handed me great privilege as a white male and I am committed to using that to fight for equality, justice, and the common good-- not just to gain more power for myself."