More from The Democrat Deal and Huffington Post on Russ.

The Deal with Russ Feingold's new advocacy arm of Progressives United (Run, Russ, Run)

Our favorite potential candidate to run against the President in the 2012 Democratic Presidential Primary continues to do the peoples' work. And do so very effectively. What we like most about this new advocacy group is the way the former Senator from Wisconsin is going to run the reporting. This type of organization, a 501(c)(4), can spend and raise an unlimited amounts of money and do so without disclosing the identities of the individuals and/or organizations who donate. This is not the Russ way. He will walk the talk. The tight disclosure standards he has put in place will set contribution limits and allow for public access to the identities of all funds raised and spent.

Transparency of money in politics. There's a concept.

The following article comes to us c/o The Huffington Post. It closes by stating Feingold and his people will be deciding on whether to run for the open WI Senate seat left by Sen. Herb Kohl by the end of the Labor Day weekend holiday.

The Democrat Deal was made aware earlier this month that this is not precisely case. The former Senator was a great Senator and would undoubtedly serve with equal distinction if re-elected. However, there are different dynamics afoot.

Democrats are increasingly vocal about their displeasure with the President's performance. The recent debt ceiling sell-out deal to the Tea Party controlled Congress is a palpable case in point. It is no longer just the progressives and party activist who are clamoring for an alternative to the President in the 2012 Democratic Primary. Presently, the majority of all Democrats want a primary challenger. Among the field of men and women who could step into history and reclaim the Democrat Party and reclaim America for working families and the middle class, - one name has been gathering the most buzz: Russ Feingold.

To the people of Wisconsin, we agree, Russ would be a stellar choice for the Senate. But we ask you, for the sake of our country, help us send your prodigal son to the White House. It is time for a democrat in the White House, it is time for Russ Feingold for President.

for the original Democrat Deal post go here.

for the original Huffington Post article go here.

Russ Feingold Expands Progressives United, Launches Advocacy Operation
by Amanda Terkel
WASHINGTON -- Former Wisconsin senator Russ Feingold is expanding his Progressives United operation, launching a 501(c)(4) and a new website on Monday morning. The organization will now consist of a political action committee for political work and a nonprofit for advocacy efforts. And although a 501(c)(4) is allowed to spend and raise unlimited amounts of undisclosed money, Feingold is promising to practice what he preaches by setting up strict disclosure requirements and contribution limits for his group.

Feingold launched Progressives United in February. Since then, it has raised more than $2 million. The organization was designed to support progressive candidates at the local, state and national levels, as well as hold the media and elected officials accountable on combating corporate influence in politics.

The PAC has raised more than $200,000 for the Democratic candidates in the Wisconsin state senate recall elections, and it organized a campaign calling on President Obama to fire General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt as the head of his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.

The new nonprofit arm will allow the group to do more advocacy work, allowing the PAC to concentrate on political work. The PAC will be posting new endorsement criteria for candidates and asking supporters to nominate possible individuals they would like to see Progressives United endorse.

"It's clear people are fed up with the way corporations are running our politics and our government. Progressives United is taking the next step to fight back," said Progressives United Executive Director Cole Leystra.

Feingold has been one of the Democratic Party's most vocal critics on the issue of whether to accept corporate contributions.

Speaking at the annual Netroots Nation conference for progressive bloggers and activists in June, Feingold said the Democratic Party was "in danger of losing its soul" if it did not adopt stricter regulations on campaign contributions. He singled out Priorities USA, a new Democratic independent expenditure group, or super PAC, that is allowed to raise and spend unlimited amounts of corporate cash for political purposes.
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The nonprofit that Feingold is forming, known as a 501(c)(4) in the U.S. tax code, is allowed to raise and spend unlimited amounts of undisclosed money as long as its primary focus is not politics.

But Feingold is placing extra restrictions on his new organization. It will disclose 100 percent of its income and will not knowingly accept any money from corporations, national banks, labor unions, federal contractors or federal or state lobbyists. It is also swearing off independent expenditures, electioneering and the "issue ads" that are popular with outside groups. No contributions above $10,000 per individual per year will be accepted.

The group says it is also putting up firewalls between Progressives United Inc., the nonprofit, and the Progressives United PAC. While they will share resources and staff, they will be financed and fundraised for separately, and they will engage in distinct activities. On Aug. 1 of congressional and presidential election years, all non-administrative operations will be conducted and financed through the PAC.

On Monday, Progressives United supporters will receive an email announcing the launch of the new website.

"With elections coming up in Wisconsin next week and around the country soon -- and with corporate money already flowing into politics through shadowy front groups like Karl Rove's Crossroads -- we had to launch our new website right now to get these important grassroots tools into activists' hands as soon as possible," reads the message.

Feingold has said that he will decide by Labor Day whether he will run for retiring Sen. Herb Kohl's (D-Wis.) open U.S. Senate seat in the 2012 elections. Progressives United staff insisted that the new announcement is an extension of the senator's long fight for campaign finance reform, not any indication about his political future.

Can Obama and the Republicans Both Claim Victory in Debt-Ceiling Crisis?

 Duh. Yes. Because Obama is a Republican.

The Republicans won this one a while ago. Drastic cuts to social security, medicare and programs that have long been at the heart of the Democratic Party and the American people while allowing the wealthiest Americans to skate away tax-free and keeping corporate welfare alive and well for wall street and big oil - that's Obama's answer to the crisis. It's no surprise that it's the republican answer as well. 

Chalk up a win for the Tea Party, Republicans and Obama. Add a loss to Democrats, seniors, the middle-class, small business, and the American Dream.

Come on, people. Why is Obama getting away with this? Because he thinks he can. 

We're here to say: No, you Can't!

Russ Feingold for President. Because it's time for a Democrat in the White House.

c/o New York Times

Rightward Tilt Leaves Obama With Party Rift

By JACKIE CALMES 

WASHINGTON — However the debt limit showdown ends, one thing is clear: under pressure from Congressional Republicans, President Obama has moved rightward on budget policy, deepening a rift within his party heading into the next election. 

Entering a campaign that is shaping up as an epic clash over the parties’ divergent views on the size and role of the federal government, Republicans have changed the terms of the national debate. Mr. Obama, seeking to appeal to the broad swath of independent voters, has adopted the Republicans’ language and in some cases their policies, while signaling a willingness to break with liberals on some issues. 

the best Republican President in a generation? nope. (c/o Jason Reed/Reuters)

That has some progressive members of Congress and liberal groups arguing that by not fighting for more stimulus spending, Mr. Obama could be left with an economy still producing so few jobs by Election Day that his re-election could be threatened. Besides turning off independents, Mr. Obama risks alienating Democratic voters already disappointed by his escalation of the war in Afghanistan and his failure to close the Guantánamo Bay prison, end the Bush-era tax cuts and enact a government-run health insurance system.

“The activist liberal base will support Obama because they’re terrified of the right wing,” said Robert L. Borosage, co-director of the liberal group Campaign for America’s Future.
But he said, “I believe that the voting base of the Democratic Party — young people, single women, African-Americans, Latinos — are going to be so discouraged by this economy and so dismayed unless the president starts to champion a jobs program and take on the Republican Congress that the ability of labor to turn out its vote, the ability of activists to mobilize that vote, is going to be dramatically reduced.”

While Mr. Obama and Republicans have been unable to agree on a debt reduction plan for spending cuts and revenue increases to cut $4 trillion in the first decade, on Saturday they were negotiating a deal with fewer spending cuts that would ensure the government’s debt ceiling would be increased into 2013 to avoid another deadlock in the heat of campaign season.

No matter how the immediate issue is resolved, Mr. Obama, in his failed effort for greater deficit reduction, has put on the table far more in reductions for future years’ spending, including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, than he did in new revenue from the wealthy and corporations. He proposed fewer cuts in military spending and more in health care than a bipartisan Senate group that includes one of the chamber’s most conservative Republicans.

To win approval of the essential increase in the nation’s $14.3 trillion borrowing ceiling, Mr. Obama sought more in deficit reduction than Republicans did, and with fewer changes to the entitlement programs, because he was willing to raise additional revenue starting in 2013 and they were not. And despite unemployment lingering at its highest level in decades, Mr. Obama has not fought this year for a big jobs program with billions of dollars for public-works projects, which liberals in his party have clamored for. Instead, he wants to extend a temporary payroll tax cut for everyone, since Republicans will support tax cuts, despite studies showing that spending programs are generally the more effective stimulus.

Even before last November’s election gave the Republicans control of the House, Mr. Obama had said he would pivot to deficit reduction after two years of stimulus measures intended first to rescue the economy and then to spur a recovery from the near collapse of the financial system. With Republicans’ gains in the midterm elections, that pivot became a lurch. Yet Congressional Republicans say Mr. Obama seeks a debt limit increase as “a blank check” to keep spending.

“The Republicans won, and they don’t know how to accept victory,” said Robert D. Reischauer, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office.

In his budget proposal in January, Mr. Obama declined to suggest a plan along the lines proposed by a majority of his bipartisan fiscal commission, which in December recommended $4 trillion in savings over 10 years through cuts in military and domestic programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, and a tax code overhaul to lower rates while also raising more revenue.

Even though Mr. Obama was widely criticized, administration officials said at the time that to have embraced that approach then would have put him too far to the right — where he ultimately wanted to end up in any compromise with Republicans, not where he wanted to start.

But by this month, in ultimately unsuccessful talks with Speaker John A. Boehner, Mr. Obama tentatively agreed to a plan that was farther to the right than that of the majority of the fiscal commission and a bipartisan group of senators, the so-called Gang of Six. It also included a slow rise in the Medicare eligibility age to 67 from 65, and, after 2015, a change in the formula for Social Security cost-of-living adjustments long sought by economists.

“He’s accommodated himself to the new reality in Washington,” said Tom Davis, a former House Republican leader from Virginia. “That’s what leaders do.”

But Congressional Democrats and liberal groups objected.

“The president’s proposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare has the potential to sap the energy of the Democratic base — among older voters because of Medicare and Medicaid and younger voters because of the lack of jobs,” said Damon A. Silvers, policy director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. “And second, all these fiscal austerity proposals on the table will make the economy worse.”

Mr. Obama’s situation has parallels with the mid-1990s, when President Bill Clinton shifted to the center after Republicans took Congress and battled them on deficit reduction and a welfare overhaul. Many Democrats were angered by his concessions, by a sense of being left out of negotiations and by a fear of alienating Democratic voters. Mr. Clinton was re-elected in 1996.

But Mr. Obama is likely to face the voters with a weaker economy and higher unemployment than during Mr. Clinton’s era. Still, his advisers express confidence that voters will reward Mr. Obama either for winning a bipartisan deal, if that were to happen, or for at least having a more balanced approach that does not remake Medicare and Medicaid and asks for more revenue from the wealthy. And they suggest another potential parallel with the Clinton years of divided government: that Republicans risk a voter backlash with their uncompromising stands.

“Democrats created Social Security and Medicare, and we have fought for decades against Republican attempts to end these programs,” said Dan Pfeiffer, Mr. Obama’s communications director. “And President Obama believes that now is the time for Democrats to be the ones to step up and save Social Security and Medicare.”

Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster, said polling data showed that at this point in his term, Mr. Obama, compared with past Democratic presidents, was doing as well or better with Democratic voters. “Whatever qualms or questions they may have about this policy or that policy, at the end of the day the one thing they’re absolutely certain of — they’re going to hate these Republican candidates,” Mr. Mellman said. “So I’m not honestly all that worried about a solid or enthusiastic base.”

Binyamin Appelbaum contributed reporting.

Obama Needs a Primary Challenge in 2012

c/o BeyondChron.org
by Randy Shaw

Run, Russ, Run

After last week’s budget deal, it is clear that Barack Obama, the Democratic Party, and progressives would all benefit from the President facing a primary challenge in 2012. When centrist media like the New York Times and Chris Matthews’ Hardball join progressives in concluding that Obama lacks vision, fails to fight for principles, and has given little reason for wanting a second term, then it is time for team Obama to reboot. This rebooting requires a primary challenge. A challenge forces Obama to explain why he now prioritizes budget cutting over job creation, and at least moves Obama leftward during 2012. The question is whether there is a credible challenger. Dennis Kucinich would not be taken seriously, and has done poorly in past primaries. Russ Feingold has the stature and grassroots support to force Obama into primary debates, and is the best candidate that currently comes to mind; there are no doubt others. A primary challenge would reenergize the Democrats’ demoralized activist base, helping to inspire the increased voter turnout necessary for Obama and Senate and House Democrats to win.

President Obama’s praise of last week’s budget deal (which cut Democratic Party funding priorities), as well as last December’s agreement that extended Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, showed just how far the president has diverged from his 2008 campaign. And given the President’s disdain of criticism from the left, and his desire to be “the adult in the room” rather than an advocate for Democratic Party values, a primary challenge is the best strategy for inspiring the base and at least moving Obama back to Democratic Party values in 2012.

Rather than weaken Obama against those evil Republicans in the fall, a primary challenge forces the President to at least try to reconnect with his base. Otherwise, we could see a voter turnout drop among Democrats that could bring the Republicans the White House and the Senate to go along with the House in 2012.

A Credible Primary Challenger

Activists from what Howard Dean used to call “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,” would back a challenge to Obama, but need a credible candidate. Russ Feingold is an obvious choice, since his reputation is putting principles ahead of personal ambitions.

Feingold would certainly generate activist support, and his Wisconsin base offers a constant reminder of how the Democratic Party’s recent struggles to save collective bargaining proceeded without Obama visiting Madison, or even lifting a finger to help.
Obama could not ignore a Feingold challenge. And the Iowa caucuses have always rewarded a candidate with the type of activist base Feingold could generate.

The downside of Feingold is that he does not like to raise money, and is not a guy who loves the day after day grind of grassroots campaigns. He also might still have statewide political ambitions, which a primary challenge to Obama would not help.

Other than Feingold, former Pennsylvania Congressmember Joe Sestak, who was defeated in the state’s 2010 Senate race, could also mount a credible primary challenge. The problem with attracting Sestak is his apparent interest in running for Pennsylvania Governor in 2014, which could make him reluctant to challenge the Party establishment by taking on Obama.

While Sestak’s running an issue-based campaign against Obama would likely increase his grassroots support in 2014, he may not want to be campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire when his next race is in Pennsylvania. Sestak is among a group of recently defeated or termed-out Democrats whose future ambitions will likely deter a primary challenge to the President.

Howard Dean has got himself trapped between being the conscience of the Democratic Party, and someone who fears that being too critical of Obama will jeopardize his national standing. Dean seems to spend far more time criticizing Republicans---who do not care what he thinks---than he does critiquing the President from the left, which would actually influence others.

Dean’s loyalty to an Obama Administration that has ostracized him is disappointing. Ideally, he would at least help progressives by endorsing a primary challenger like Feingold, but do not expect it.

There are no doubt other credible candidates, including progressive non-politicians who could finance their own campaigns.

Primary Challenge Benefits Obama, Democrats

While many believe that Democratic voter turnout in 2012 will be mobilized by fear of a Palin-Bachmann-Tea Party victory, such confidence may not be warranted. Disaffection among progressives is wide and deep, and the massive Obama voter outreach effort of 2008 will not come close to being matched.

While the AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka brags that he visits the White House "two or three times a week" ---one wonders what he accomplishes there---rank and file union activists are not going to work morning, noon, and night for Obama as they did in 2008. If fear of a Republican takeover were alone sufficient to generate large Democratic turnouts, the sweeping 2010 GOP victories would not have happened.

Mobilizing young people to the polls will be easier if the President returns to addressing their concerns (deficit reduction is not among them). Only a primary challenge can force him to do so, and the resulting increased turnout helps Obama’s re-election chances and Democratic prospects for maintaining the Senate and regaining the House.

The Failure of Progressive Enabling

I criticized Obama’s “progressive enablers” last January, predicting that wooing the president to the progressive camp through deferring criticism would prove a “failed strategy.” The President’s actions over the past months confirm this. Yet some will defend Obama so long as he opposes the Tea Party, and will view a primary challenge as another progressive firing squad (said to be circular).

But more self-destructive is allowing Obama to take the Democratic Party on a path where budget cutting is its chief priority. It’s as if the entire Bush Administration never happened, and that Republicans did not squander the Clinton surplus on tax cuts for the rich.

We’ve played this deficit reduction game before, and know that even if Obama eliminated the deficit entirely by slashing public services and programs to the bone, Republicans would create new deficits through a new round of tax cuts.

It appears that it is not just Democratic and Republican elected officials that approach power differently (the latter plays harder to win), but their respective grassroots bases as well. The GOP base would never tolerate a President who moved left (and even backed Ronald Reagan against incumbent but non-elected Gerald Ford in 1976); progressives will be sending a contrary message if they forego a primary challenge against the right-shifting Obama in 2012.

Randy Shaw’s most recent book is Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century. Shaw is also the author of The Activist’s Handbook.

Dump Obama: a Primary Focus

c/o firedoglake.com
Saturday July 9, 2011
by jeffroby

Here we go again. The headlines blare that Obama is putting Social Security on the table (or chopping block) in his negotiations over raising the debt ceiling. The howls and yowls echo throughout the land. Jane Hamsher, in the Breaking Point, thunders:

What we’re watching is the death of the Democratic Party. Or, at least the Democratic Party as most of us have known it. The one that has taken its identity in the modern era from FDR and the New Deal, from Keynesianism and the social safety net … Any member of any party who participates in this effort does not deserve, and should not get, the support of anyone who values Social Security and cares about its preservation.

Hamsher’s repeated refrain: “call your member of Congress and tell them the romance is over: tell them that if Congress cuts Social Security benefits, you won’t vote for them.”

Adam Green of BoldProgressives.org boldly calls for us to sign the pledge: “I’ll only donate or volunteer for Obama if he firmly opposes Social Security, Medicare, & Medicaid benefit cuts”

MoveOn unleashes a petition: “Say no to a debt deal that sacrifices Social Security or Medicare so the rich and corporations don’t have to pay their fair share,” as mealy-mouthed as you can get.

Diaries abound on all sides shaking with outrage, competing for who can call Obama the nastiest things, who can most scathingly proclaim the corruption of the Democratic Party. But all these hissy fits fail to draw a single drop of blood. To the Democratic Party accountants who engineer their schemes, this is all just part of the cost of doing business. Already factored in.

The cutting edge, at this “breaking point,” is the P word, whether Obama is to be primaried.

Why do I consider this the cutting edge, why are calls to focus on congressional progressives so weak? Because when people talk about cutting donations and working for bold progressives, there is not much reaction from the Obamacrats. When you mention the P word, they start to howl. They see their vulnerability lies there, even if many of us do not.

So yes, there is the usual smattering of calls for Obama to be primaried, along the lines of “I sure hope somebody primaries the [choose 3] corporate reactionary traitor sellout running-dog-lackey Wall-Street-kiss-ass bastard.” And I give credit for that. But a better formulation would be “WE OURSELVES have to primary the etc., etc., etc.” including the dirty ballot access work that makes a primary challenger more than a publicity stunt. Perhaps I’m being harsh here, but at a “breaking point,” nothing less than harsh fills the bill. The passivity of even the Primary Obama forces is of course understandable. But what we require is a whole new understanding of how and why a primary campaign is conducted.

Waiting for Teddy

On a recent comment, some nabob of negativity argued that primarying Obama is off the table, since we don’t have a candidate comparable to Ted Kennedy when he challenged Jimmy Carter for the 1980 nomination. While perhaps extreme, the common attitude towards primaries is embodied in that comment. Allow me to deconstruct.

First of all, a politician is not a regular person. To run or not to run (as Hamlet put it) is not really an individual decision. When a politician decides to throw his or her hat into the ring, they bring along a motley collection of staff, consultants, donors, support organizations, and beneficiaries. (And most importantly, their loving spouses and offspring.) It would be extraordinary for a politician to risk the slings and arrows of a hostile media, sex scandals, and bad chicken dinners without the expectation that a good part of the above hangers-on would come along for the ride. So in 1980, Teddy was not just an ambitious politician, or even heroic politician, but was the representative of the organized constituencies — the old New Deal coalition — that Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party had just begun to throw under the neo-liberal bus.

It’s not just that we have no Ted Kennedy today. It’s that the organized forces he once represented are broken, have been broken for decades, and what was once Ted Kennedy was dead long before his body was laid to rest. The illusion of life was maintained for decades, but the rancid stench of putrefaction was finally revealed to all with noses to smell when the entirety of organized liberalism saw its crusade for health care for all be transformed into a mandate that everyone had to buy coverage from the insurance barons. Whether they could afford it or not. And they proclaimed that a triumph.

Unplanned obsolescence

I said that waiting for another Teddy was extreme. But it actually embodies the way most progressives view a primary challenge (let’s call it the Napoleonic — on a horse — approach). Some politician declares their candidacy, they bring along their own campaign organization with all the staff, consultants, donors, etc., included. Then progressives contemplate whether (or which) candidate is progressive enough, and jump aboard. But that model is hopelessly obsolete.

At least for progressives. So people toss out the names of Kucinich or Feingold, both fine fellows. But neither has that kind of base. Not necessarily due to any failing on their part, but because that kind of organized base does not exist. The very possibility of major liberal reform has died as the American empire enters its death throes, and the Democratic Party has become a tool whose main purpose is to accommodate the middle class to the meager pickings available to a dying empire, and the poor to destruction.

Any plan centered on trying to resurrect that dream is bad enough. Any plan based on waiting for that dream to just come waltzing in, well …

Metrics (no, not the Keanu Reeves movie)

Not as universal as the above, but pervasive enough, there is another paralyzing assumption: any progressive contender has to be a “serious” contender, has to have a reasonable chance of winning the nomination and, beyond that, winning the presidency. A merely symbolic candidate would only be crushed, and that would be disastrous. Disastrous why? Because the passive and demoralized would become more passive and demoralized?

Let’s come at this from a different direction. Let’s attack the state of passivity itself. To repeat two points mentioned above:

(1) the old New Deal coalition is dead. And nothing has emerged to take its place.

(2) the Democratic Party is nothing more than a corporate tool for managing war and austerity.

One obvious response to this is to declare a pox on the Democratic Party and go independent ever more. In fact, I rather support this for the general elections. But we still need to address the millions and millions of decent, progressive, poor and working people who remain within its clutches. Who, if there were an independent force speaking to their felt needs, would be unaware of its existence. Who, if aware of its existence, would not see it as having any impact on their lives. Any effectiveness. Not the traditional ORGANIZED base, but the currently UNORGANIZED base.

How do we reach them without being sucked down into oblivion in the Democratic Party tar pits? The media will certainly try to shut us out. We won’t have the big money needed for a full-scale TV blitz.

Primary

The primary provides the entrée. Get the signatures. Pay the filing fee. Make sure the paperwork is clean. There it is. The media ignores us? That becomes the story. They won’t let us into the debates? Getting into the debates becomes the fight, with our pickets outside the debate hall waving to the cameras. Third parties have fought this way for years. Oh ho! you exclaim. And what has it gotten them? I admit, not much.

But having these fights inside the Democratic Party has a very different dynamic. No cakewalk, to be sure, but different. The progressive challenger will still be “the other,” but also not “the other.” The party needs certain rules to simply manage its own affairs. Certainly, they manipulate them, they cheat like bandits and lie like dogs. But if they discard the rules, they discard too much of their own party. It’s not (yet) like the open warfare waged against third parties.

But, but, but … we’d still be crushed! Yeah? By what measure? How is progress to be defined? By the standards of those we would overthrow? Who define the standards so as to make us losers by definition?

Brass tacks

Let’s try to make this a little less theoretical, and examine a few mechanics.

If we were to run a bare-bones primary operation, what would that entail? According to the Napoleonic method, the big politician rides their horse into the ring accompanied by their own operation (staff, etc.), and we climb aboard.

But if it were OUR operation (let me call it the Independent model)? (I am sidestepping the question of who “we” are today, but it is a much smaller number of people than progressives in the blogosphere everywhere in the universe. Let’s assume some kind of well-intentioned, relatively small but cohesive group.) What would we have to do?

(1) Get a good lawyer.
(2) Set up a bank account for the campaign.
(3) Have a candidate declare.
(4) File the appropriate paperwork with the FEC.
(5) Learn state ballot access requirements, including signatures, filing fees, and paperwork.
(6) Set up a website.
(7) Get a media/video expert.

Note that the above entails either having or gaining some high levels of expertise, and a high level of commitment. But it does not require at this stage a whole lot of people.

… and then …

With the above in place, the ballot access work begins. Let’s assume a state requiring 1,000 signatures and a $1,000 filing fee. (For other states, there is the issue of whether there is a primary or a party caucus, a different matter.) Have our lawyer check out the regulations. Exact wording of petition. Whether signatures have to be from a number of congressional districts (CD’s)? Do petitioners have to be state or CD residents? Petition period. If so, can an in-state witness validate the work of out-of-state petitioners? What paperwork is needed at submission of signatures?

$1,000 filing fee? Setting aside the campaign having any national fundraising capacity, how many could cough that up if they actually believed the future of America depended on it? Again, it’s a matter of commitment.

1,000 signatures? Better gather 1,500 to account for Mickey Mouse signatures, bad handwriting and other challenges. Team of three: 500 apiece, a modest 12 signatures per hour, takes 42 hours. A week off the day-job and the weekend. If national fundraising capacity were adequate, staff could be hired to do this, of course, but with committed volunteers, you get fewer signatures from Mickey and Donald Duck.

Then file! And do it right. You might have 20,000 signatures, but depending on the state and the attitude of the local party, one missing signature or one missing or improper document or one day late and it could all go down the tubes. This is why I listed getting a lawyer as #1. This is why the campaign should also look for lawyers on an ongoing basis, to be ready to handle multiple challenges around the country.

Then the campaign. That’s the fun part, and I won’t dwell on it. It’s there that people’s full creativity can be unleashed, where the blogosphere and Facebook can be flooded. Then the campaign junkies who live from campaign to campaign can do their thing.

[There have been various studies about the blogosphere, it’s effectiveness as a political tool. Many have debunked its most grandiose claims. But there is some consensus that, while the blogosphere is no substitute for “boots on the ground,” it can have a massive multiplier effect once those boots are on the ground, as I have been elaborating above.]

Metrics again

We might want to compare the respective merits of the Napoleonic model versus the Independent model of primary campaigns. The obvious advantage of the Napoleonic model is that an established politician has more of a campaign organization in place, and will probably get more votes, some easy publicity. But when the campaign is over, Napoleon takes their organization and goes home with it.

I should be clear. Our options are limited. Napoleon doesn’t even seem to be riding over the horizon — the fix is in. Napoleon would be crushed by the media and the party apparatus, in any event. All Napoleon would leave us with would be reinforced cynicism about the futility of resistance. And maybe some fond memories. Whether the number of votes is puny or large, no number on today’s horizon would transform the situation. Those at the top of the Democratic Party are committed to a murderous neo-liberalism.

My sole metric is whether we come out of this campaign with our own campaign organization, that can engage both primary and independent runs in the generals.

The strength of the Independent model is that the independents own it. Whether or not it can be held together until the next election is not to be assumed. But doing so is the task. Again, it all comes down to commitment. The blogosphere is filled with people with little commitment, not willing to do much work. One could call them lazy, especially if they don’t do what we want them to do, but that misses the point. People lack commitment because they have been betrayed so many times. They contribute on the basis of their sentiments, and I consider it to their credit that they give as much as they do on the basis of sentiment. But they hold back as well, because they don’t believe any given scheme can work.

So I am saying that the above plan CAN ACTUALLY WORK! As part of the broader inside/outside strategy that I have been trying to develop over the past year.

What is an independent?

Well, to ask the obvious, independent of what? It doesn’t reduce to whether the candidate wears the Democratic or Green or Progressive or union label. The question is whether a candidate or organization is independent of the corporate power elite. After all, there is a long history of independent parties which function as mere satellites of the so-called majors. Take New York’s Working Families Party (please!), which endorsed Andrew Cuomo who is now working to gut the unions and the social service budget there. Or the even-more-independent NY Independence Party which offers itself to whichever party puts in the highest bid.

At the same time, one CAN be an independent within the Democratic Party. Yes, that route is filled with traps. There is a transmission belt that sucks in our major Democrats. So Kucinich may be a great guy, with a truly independent heart. But his supporters? Maybe not so independent. And their followers? So it goes. As you rise within the Democratic machinery, you make more deals, exchanging principle for influence. I’m not naive about this. But if one’s goal is not the Holy Grail of taking over the Democratic Party, but to rip its guts out, then like-minded people can operate on that basis. With registered independents being the largest single voting bloc (and yes, progressive independents being a smaller sub-set of that), the party can no longer smirk, “You have no place to go.”

Inside/outside

Run in the Democratic primaries, then run independent in the generals. That’s the plan. As individuals, they pick us off one-by-one. With organization, we can do it together.

One word on timeline. Some have talked about 2012 as some kind of final showdown. Those who don’t go independent in the generals this time around are to be written off. No. We independents have a lot to prove, to the public if not to ourselves. Here’s my thinking as far as it goes. I’ve outlined a bare-bones level of organization required for a serious primary run. We don’t have it yet. Napoleon may well wait till November before announcing and have enough to make most ballots. We don’t. For independents, yesterday isn’t soon enough to get our asses in gear. My goal would be to come out of the race with the organization I’ve delineated. Now, imagine the position we’d be in right now if that organization — that independent organization — already existed. Possibilities would multiply exponentially.

So by digging in now, we can have that in place for 2014, for the congressionals. And if we can repeat at the state level in 2014, we go into 2016 with boots on the ground in every state. Yeah, some might argue that we’ll all be dead by then. If you think that, make sure your passports are in order. For the rest of us, it’s a working plan.

For original post go here visit jeffroby @: FireDogLake.com

Our Proposal for 2012 Democratic Convention Theme Song:

c/o The democratdeal.com



"It might not sit well with the President's people, but we think there would some foot-tapping and perhaps a cheer or two from the floor. Or three."

-An excellent choice democratdeal.com, we like your style.

Russ Feingold should run against Obama (and Palin)

c/o The First Post

Alexander Cockburn: The US needs a mutiny. And the senator from Wisconsin is the man to lead it

By Alexander Cockburn

So much for 2010 as the year of mutiny, when the American people rose up and said, "Enough! Throw the bums out!" As the dust finally clears after the midterm elections, and the bodies are hauled from the field of battle, guess what? It was all so predictable. The safest thing to be in 2010 was an incumbent. 

Out of 435 seats, 351 incumbents will be returning to the House in January. In the Senate, out of 100 seats, 77 incumbents will return in January. As the libertarian Joel Hirschorn puts it, "Welcome back to the reality of America's delusional democracy where career politicians will continue to foster a corrupt, inefficient and dysfunctional government because that is what the two-party plutocracy and its supporters want for their own selfish reasons."

Now it's on to 2012, through a largely familiar political landscape, right down to Sarah Palin telling ABC TV and the New York Times that yes, she might just go all the way and run for the Republican presidential nomination.

It's the only ray of sunshine currently available to Barack Obama, now seemingly mesmerised by the verdict of the press - that the people have spoken and the President must "move to the centre". Onto the butcher block must go entitlements - Medicare, Social Security. The sky darkens with vultures eager to pick the people's bones.

As Obama reviews his options, which way will he head? He's already supplied the answer. He'll try to broker deals to reach "common ground" with the Republicans, the strategy that destroyed those first two years of opportunity.

What do the next two years hold? Already there are desperate urgings from progressives for Obama to hold the line. Already there are the omens of a steady stream of concessions by Obama to the right.

There's hardly any countervailing pressure for him to do otherwise. The president has no fixed principles of political economy, and who is at his elbow in the White House? Not the Labour Secretary, Hilda Solis. Not that splendid radical Elizabeth Warren, whose Consumer Financial Protection Bureau the Republicans are already scheduling for destruction. Next to Obama is Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, the bankers' lapdog, whom the president holds in high esteem.

In the months ahead, as Obama parleys amiably with the right on budgetary discipline and deficit reduction, the anger of the progressive left will mount. At some point a champion of the left will step forward to challenge him in the primaries. This futile charade will expire at the 2012 Democratic National Convention amid the rallying cry of "unity".

But the White House deserves the menace of a convincing threat now, not some desperate intra-Democratic Party challenge late next year by Michael Moore or, yet again, Dennis Kucinich.
There is a champion of the left with sound appeal to the sane populist right. He was felled on November 2, running for a fourth term as US senator and defeated by a Republican. He should rise again before his reputation fades. His name is Russ Feingold, currently a Democrat and until the present Congress expires in January, the junior senator from Wisconsin.

I counsel him to decline any job proffered by the Obama administration and not to consider running as a challenger inside the Democratic Party. I urge him, not too long after he leaves the Senate, to spread the word that he's considering a presidential run as an independent; then, not too far into 2011, to embark on such a course.

Why would Russell Feingold run? Unlike Teddy Kennedy challenging Jimmy Carter in 1979, Feingold would have a swift answer. To fight against the Republicans and the White House in defence of the causes he has publicly supported across a lifetime.

He has opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His was the single Senate vote against the Patriot Act. His was a consistent vote against the constitutional abuses of both the Bush and Obama administrations.

He opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement and the bank bailouts. He is for economic justice and full employment and thus a champion the labour movement could support, as opposed to Obama, who triumphed in 2008 courtesy of union money and grassroots organising and who has kicked labour in the teeth ever since.

Feingold is the implacable foe of corporate control of the electoral process. The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision in January was aimed in part at his landmark campaign finance reform bill.
A Wisconsin voter wrote to me in the wake of the election, "Feingold likely lost because his opponent's ads, including billboards with pictures of him and Obama, as well as TV and radio ads, and last-minute phone bursts, convinced many voters that he has been a party-line Democratic insider all these years."

What an irony! Feingold has always been of an independent cast of mind, and it surely would not be a trauma for him to bolt the party. Ralph Nader, having rendered his remarkable service to the country, having endured torrents of undeserved abuse from progressives, should hand the torch to Feingold as a worthy heir to that great hero of Wisconsin, Robert La Follette, who ran as an independent for the presidency nearly a century ago.

The left must abandon the doomed ritual of squeaking timid reproaches to Obama, only to have the counselors at Obama's elbow contemptuously dismiss them, as did Rahm Emanuel, who correctly divined their near-zero capacity for effective challenge.

Two more years, then four more years, of the same downward slide, courtesy of bipartisanship and "working together"? No way. Enough of dreary predictability. Let's have a real mutiny. Run, Russ, Run!

The Case for a Primary Challenge Against Obama.

c/o The Atlantic

July 8, 2011
by Conor Friedersdorf

Presidents will continue to break their promises so long as they're assured of their party's nomination come re-election time

 Obama appears to be at Boehner's left. But is he really? Maybe a smidge. (image c/o Reuters)

Ask a typical tea partier when his discontent with the political establishment began. Often as not he'll point to the Bush Administration. The list of grievances is long: the profligate spending, the new entitlement for prescription drugs, the Harriet Miers nomination, the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Most tea partiers now think compassionate conservatism itself was ill-conceived.

So where were all the protest rallies back when Bush was president? It's a question tea party critics love to ask. The implication is that the protest movement is motivated by partisanship and antagonism to Obama more than principle. In fact, discontent on the right during the Bush years was genuine. Tongues were held for reasons including these: a desire to support the president in the war on terror, misguided partisan loyalty, a conservative movement that acted as unprincipled apologists and attack dog enforcers for the president, and perhaps more than anything else, a dearth of options. Circa 2003, when Medicare Part D was enacted, a primary challenge against Bush was unthinkable. What was an upset conservative to do, vote for John Kerry?

By their lights, he'd have been worse.

Liberals should understand that predicament. It's exactly the one in which they now find themselves. President Obama won't face a serious primary challenge prior to Election 2012, but that isn't because he has governed as the left would've wanted. He is trying to keep American troops in Iraq beyond his own withdrawal deadline. His executive power claims are every bit as bad, and sometimes more extreme, than the excesses the left blasted when Bush was responsible for them. The prison at Guantanamo Bay remains open. Warantless surveillance on innocent Americans continues. Whistleblowers are in greater legal jeopardy than they were. The economy is terrible. Health-care reform was more corporatist than progressives would've preferred. We're now waging an illegal war in Libya that'll cost over a billion dollars, even as we prepare deep cuts to social welfare programs. Despite promises to the contrary, the FBI is still raiding medical marijuana dispensaries in jurisdictions where they're legal under state law. Promised advances in government transparency haven't materialized.

The left would be justified in lashing out, given the Grand-Canyon-sized chasm that separates the rhetoric of candidate Obama from the behavior of President Obama. By and large, however, they've kept quiet about the abuses and unlawful behavior of the man who occupies the White House, with a few notable exceptions, compared to their volume and passion during his predecessor's tenure. That's partly because they've focused their attacks on the tea party, and politicians like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. The truth of the matter is that even if a conservative like Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, the soft spoken advocate of a truce on social issues, won the nomination, the vast majority of liberals would support President Obama's reelection anyway.

It is their feeling that they've got nowhere else to go.

Is there any way out of this cycle, whereby every president is virulently hated by the opposition and proceeds to betray his ideological allies, who submit for lack of an alternative? Are we condemned to a political establishment that has failed all of us? If things proceed as before, perhaps Obama will win re-election, continue to betray his base and the ideals he articulated in 2008, and sow the seeds for a left-leaning tea party equivalent. There is, however, one flaw in that plan: isn't the rhetoric of candidate Obama mostly what those people want to hear from a champion?

In a provocative essay, James Poulos lays out another possible future. It's deeply counterintuitive. He argues that the existing tea party can appeal to the whole political spectrum if its leaders and rank-and-file have the will to make it happen:

Democrats have not been so disillusioned with a sitting president of their party since Robert F. Kennedy ran in 1968 to unseat Lyndon Johnson. Liberal confidence in the most basic principles of Democratic rule have been shaken to the core by Barack Obama's intensification of Bush-era policies that even divide the right. The left cannot field a challenge to what increasingly strikes good-faith liberals as the rule of a corporatist police state. The Green Party is a husk. The radicals are a rump. Outside the right, there is now no viable political alternative to Obamaism -- the greatest partisan disappointment in generations.

But until Republicans make some fundamental changes to their party platform, the left is prepared to accept from the Democratic Party many generations of abuse and depression. This is why liberal elites are deep into a crash program to hardwire the public mind with their caricature of Tea Partiers as a virulent, violent fringe peddling moral hatred and social suffering. At the present moment, it sounds farfetched to say that only the Tea Party can address this concern in a way that can attract liberal voters to Republican candidates. But does it sound any less farfetched to say that establishment Republicanism can gain the support of any liberals worthy of the name?

His theory has this going for it: Tea partiers and disaffected liberals have in common a mistrust of the political establishment, a plausible critique of centrists, a desire to hold candidates they elect to their promises, and legitimate grievances with widespread appeal. As a student of partisan media, however, it is unthinkable to me that they'd join forces to elect even a reformed version of a Tea Party Republican. In a better world, ideological movements wouldn't rely on vilifying adversaries as the people who are "destroying America" while advancing their own causes.

But our world is one where there is not only a psychological temptation to do so, but huge financial incentives for people like Rush Limbaugh, Keith Olbermann, Andrew Breitbart, Mark Levin and Michael Moore to stoke the pathology. If the other side is as malicious in their intentions as these entertainers say, it would be folly for the non-establishment right and left to join forces.

Thus failed "centrists" keep hanging around.

What I'd like to see, apart from everything else, is a return to strong primary challenges against sitting presidents. It's easy to understand why they don't happen. But hard to argue that we wouldn't be better off if President Bush had been forced to worry a bit more about fiscal hawks, and President Obama was worried a bit more about anti-corporatists and the anti-war, civil libertarian left.