The exposure of the dishonest manipulation of videos first released on Andrew Breitbart’s websites has been widely and properly applauded as a major setback for the hard-right. In the future it is extremely unlikely that the mainstream media will again blindly publicize heavily edited video clips without demanding to see the complete video behind them. Even conservative commentators – who were deeply humiliated by having to publically apologize for having committed legally actionable defamation of character on national TV – will hesitate before trusting Breitbart’s propaganda materials again.

But Democrats should have absolutely no illusions that this setback will lead to any overall moderation of the fierce and bitter attacks that have been directed at Obama and the Democratic Party since last spring. Quite the contrary, Dems should seriously prepare for the possibility that even more intense and dangerous tactics will now be employed.

The reason is that the deliberate editing of video to create a false impression is actually just one specific tactic in a larger arsenal of methods that political extremists believe to be entirely justified. As an April, 2009 TDS strategy memo noted, the defining feature of modern political extremism is the vision of politics as literally a form of “warfare” and political opponents as actual “enemies” who must be crushed. Although many political commentators routinely use these terms as metaphors in writing about political affairs, for political extremists they are seen as entirely literal statements of fact.

From this point of view many tactics that most Americans consider utterly unacceptable and indeed essentially criminal come to be seen as entirely logical measures that are required by the urgent demands of the bitter political “war”. The exposure of any one particular tactic does not challenge this underlying perspective. On the contrary it simply increases the urgency for developing alternative tactics that the evil “enemy” does not yet anticipate.

As a result, Democrats should be seriously prepared for the possibility that they will soon encounter tactics such as the following:

1. Staged events — there is a disturbingly thin line that separates wildly exaggerating the influence of tiny fringe groups like the New Black Panthers – as the conservative media has done in recent weeks – and directly encouraging or financially rewarding fringe groups to engage in offensive or illegal acts that can then be filmed and presented as spontaneous. Covert subsidies to radical fringe groups were employed in the 1960’s to disrupt and discredit Civil Rights demonstrations and in the 1930’s specialized anti-union firms commonly employed undercover agents to masquerade as union supporters and then create violence during strikes in order to provide the justification for sending in state troopers or the National Guard. A chilling echo of this tactic was recently hinted by a professional conservative activist in a Playboy magazine article when he noted that “creating mayhem is not limited to dealing with the press. We’ve quietly acquired Service Employees International Union shirts to wear at tea party rallies…” The potential threat is obvious.

2. Burglary or criminal trespass to obtain documents or other information –this tactic also has a long history, including the famous 1972 Watergate burglary of Democratic Party headquarters by Nixon’s “dirty tricks” squad and the recent abortive attempt of Breitbart’s protégé James McKeefe to install wiretapping devices in the office of La. Sen. Mary Landrieu. Most major foundations and non-profit organizations as well as political candidates and organizations have substantial amounts of information whose privacy they are legally and morally obligated to protect and whose disclosure can substantially cripple their operations. Any such information presents an extremely tempting target.

3. The sabotage, destruction, misuse or theft of valuable political files such as voter contact lists and contributor lists –– there are actually three different varieties of this tactic (1) the complete destruction of files (2) the misuse of files (for example, by mailing false messages that provoke discord between political allies) and (3) the subtle corruption of files to render them useless or largely ineffective.

4. Physical intimidation – there is an important distinction between protests that use civil disobedience based on the principles of non-violence and actions that are aimed at physically threatening and intimidating political opponents. In the 1980’s, for example, many anti-abortion protests carefully confined themselves to non-violent methods while other groups clearly planned their protests to physically threaten and terrify both clients and health care workers in the clinics they targeted.
 

Read more…

Anyone paying attention to the antics of two well-known Democratic pollsters-turned-strategists, Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen, during the last year or so could see it coming. Both strongly opposed health care reform. Both started getting published and quoted a lot in conservative newspapers. Both joined Fox News as regulars. Both offered conservatives the delightful opportunity to claim a largely imaginary split among Democrats.
And now, in a joint column for the Wall Street Journal, the duo has made it official–they have become reliable members of the right-wing noise machine. I say that not because they are critical of Obama, but because their “case” for Obama’s “divisiveness” relies largely on some of the hoariest and least credible of conservative attack lines.
There’s a lot of nonsense in this column, particularly on Obama’s alleged refusal to pursue border enforcment (prosecutions for illegal border crossings have in fact gone up steadily since Obama was elected president). Attributing the atmosphere of partisanship primarily to the president is also absurd, as even fair-minded Republicans would admit. But the real smoking gun in terms of the Caddell-Schoen defection is the use of the entirely bogus New Black Panther Party “threat” to show Obama’s racial “divisiveness.”
The NBPP “scandal,” revolving around an isolated fool who yelled about “crackers” at an almost all-black polling place in Philadelphia (and who has been rewarded with regular Fox appearances to spout his inanities) has been entirely contrived by right-wing media who are always on the hunt for any evidence, however meager, of African-American voter fraud or intimidation.
Now Caddell and Schoen have every right to change their political allegiances and support the conservative line. It’s a free country. I wouldn’t have a problem if they chose to emulate Schoen’s old buddy Dick Morris, who finally just went ahead and became a familiar right-wing pundit after a brief period of playing the aggrieved-Democrat role. But if they are going to simply ape what their friends at Fox are saying, they need to stop calling themselves Democrats and trotting out their connection to the increasingly distant Democratic candidacies of the past. There’s nothing principled or honorable about posing as paper donkeys representing no one but themselves.

We’ve done our share of MSM-bashing hereabouts, and probably not enough shout-outs to the traditional media reporters and columnists who do a good job of covering politics. But MSM groveling at the behest of FoxTV and the wingnuts does seem to be on the upswing, and it requires a lot of effort just to hold them accountable.
For those who think this may be overstating the case, we refer you to Charles Kaiser’s Hillman Foundation article, published in The Nation, which does a solid job of chronicling some of the recent atrocities. Kaiser’s “The Shame of the Fourth Estate.” presents a thorough account of “the perversion of journalism” by “a band of vicious charlatans,” including in his words:

* Time magazine’s decision to ask Glenn Beck to assess Rush Limbaugh’s importance in America for the 2009 Time 100: “His consistency, insight and honesty have earned him a level of trust with his listeners that politicians can only dream of.”
* A decision by the editors of washingtonpost.com to allow Beck to host a chat there to promote one of his books.
* This hard-hitting assessment of Beck by Time magazine TV critic James Poniewozik, who gurgled on, “Sure, he may be selling a sensationalistic message of paranoia and social breakdown. But politics, or basic responsibility, aside, he has an entertainer’s sense of play with the medium of TV that O’Reilly, or perpetual sourpuss Neil Cavuto, don’t.” And why would anybody care about a basic sense of responsibility, anyway?
* A worshipful 1,943-word profile of Fox News founder and president Roger Ailes by David Carr and Tim Arango on the front page of the New York Times–which included this perfectly amoral quote from David Gergen, a perfectly amoral man:
“Regardless of whether you like what he is doing, Roger Ailes is one of the most creative talents of his generation. He has built a media empire that is capable of driving the conversation, and, at times, the political process.” And what a wonderful conversation it is.
* And finally, the most sickening piece of all in this splendid cohort: David von Drehele’s obscenely sycophantic cover story of Beck for Time magazine, which told us that Beck is a “man with his ear uniquely tuned to the precise frequency at which anger, suspicion and the fear that no one’s listening all converge;” that he is “tireless, funny, [and]self-deprecating…a gifted storyteller with a knack for stitching seemingly unrelated data points into possible conspiracies–if he believed in conspiracies, which he doesn’t, necessarily; he’s just asking.”

Here’s Kaiser on the MSM handling of the Sherrod and ACORN smears and Breitbart’s role.

But far worse than the kid-gloves treatment of Fox and its friends was the inexplicably benign approach the MSM took toward Andrew Brietbart, the original source of the doctored video of Sherrod’s speech before the NAACP that started this whole sorry saga.
In the Washington Post, he was a “conservative activist and blogger”; in Sheryl Gay Stolberg’s story in the Times, he was “a blogger” who “similarly…used edited videos to go after ACORN, the community organizing group;” in the Wall Street Journal he was “a conservative Internet activist” who “argued that the Obama administration is insufficiently sensitive to bias against white people”; in the Los Angeles Times, “a conservative media entrepreneur” and to Associated Press television writer David Bauder a “conservative activist” whose website “attracted attention last year for airing video of workers at the community group ACORN counseling actors posing as a prostitute and her boyfriend.”
But to find out who Breitbart really is, you would have had to read (h/t Joe Stouter) Joe Conason in Salon, who, “recalling Breitbart from his days as eager lackey to Matt Drudge…warned from the beginning that nothing he produced would resemble journalism.”

Regarding Glenn Beck’s splenetic smearing of the President, WaPo‘s Dana Milbank, quoted in Kaiser’s article, has this:

…Consider these tallies from Glenn Beck’s show on Fox News since Obama’s inauguration: 202 mentions of Nazis or Nazism, according to transcripts, 147 mentions of Hitler, 193 mentions of fascism or fascist, and another 24 bonus mentions of Joseph Goebbels. Most of these were directed in some form at Obama–as were the majority of the 802 mentions of socialist or socialism on Beck’s nightly “report.”

Kaiser has more to say about the Sherrod smear and the press being hustled and intimidated by right-wing ideologues, and it all adds up to a very disturbing picture of one of America’s most important nongovernmental institutions. The time has come for America’s most influential print and electronic reporters and editors to do some soul-searching about their fearful compliance with neo-McCarthyism and reaffirm their commitment to social justice and journalism that serves the people.

It’s not going to get much national attention, but there was one notable surprise in yesterday’s Oklahoma primary: Lt. Gov. Jari Askins narrowly defeated Attorney General Drew Edmondson for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination.
It appears Askins won by winning big in her southwest Oklahoma base, overcoming Edmondson’s big lead in the Tulsa area. She also ran virtually even with the Muscogee native in southeast Oklahoma’s Little Dixie area.
This wasn’t an outcome with big ideological implications, best as I can tell; both candidates fit the state’s longstanding tradition of moderate-to-conservative Democrats (like term-limited incumbent Brad Henry) doing well. It was notable that Edmondson conceded even before AP called the race for his opponent; this accords with the unusually civil tone of the primary.
Askins’ win does set up an all-female general election contest with Rep. Mary Fallin, who didn’t exactly light up the boards in putting away Tea Party favorite Randy Brodgon 55-39. Fallin enjoyed a 4-1 financial advantage, along with endorsements from a constellation of conservative national figures, including Sarah Palin (who gets another “Mama Grizzly” win on her primary record), Jeb Bush, Tim Pawlenty and Jan Brewer. Fallin’s election-night victory statement showed which way the wind was blowing in the GOP these days; it was full of right-wing rhetoric about protecting the Constitution from the evil designs of the federal government, and could have been delivered in, say, 1959.
The latest general election polling shows Fallin with a spare 46-40 lead over Askins. It’s also an encouraging sign that Democratic turnout in the gubernatorial primary exceeded Republican turnout (yes, this is a closed primary state with Democrats holding a registration advantage, but it wouldn’t have been surprising to see GOP turnout running higher given the national political mood and the fireworks associated with Brodgon’s attacks on Fallin).
In the other nationally-significant Democratic primary in Oklahoma, Blue Dog congressman Dan Boren demolished underfunded progressive challenger Jim Wilson by a 3-1 margin, and will face the winner of a runoff between two obscure Republican challengers who will be looking for national GOP backing.

This weekend the annual gathering of the progressive cyber-tribes, Netroots Nation, convened in Las Vegas, and for the occasion, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research conducted a straw poll of attendees on various topics.
Since this is probably the single largest gathering of intensely progressive political activists in the country (91% of them self-identify as either “liberal” or “progressive,” with 9% as “moderates”), the results of the straw poll are pretty interesting, and don’t necessarily conform to the conventional wisdom.
For one thing, despite all the talk of progressive unhappiness with Barack Obama and his record, the president receives an 84% approval rating from this group. Yes, the percentage “strongly approving” (32%) is lower than it would have been at the beginning of the Obama presidency, but all in all, there are no signs of some imminent progressive revolt against his leadership.
Second, the poll shows a stable overall level of enthusiasm about voting in the upcoming midterm elections, as compared to the last midterm in 2006 (which was, as you might recall, a very uptempo election year for progressives). 27% of respondents say they are more enthusiastic now than in 2006 to march to the polls; 33% are less enthusiastic; 40% report no change in their level of enthusiasm. The numbers might have been different if 2008 had been the benchmark, but it’s never really right to compare presidential and midterm elections, and again, 2006 was a pretty big deal on its own.
Third, GQRR asked these hyper-political folk whom they’d like to see Republicans nominate for president in 2012. It was not even remotely close: Sarah Palin led the field of desired opponents at 48%, trailed by Ron Paul at 11%; Rick Santorum at 10%; Mitt Romney at 9%; and Newt Gingrich at 8%. Remember this next time you hear a conservative say that progressives dislike Palin because they fear her political power. Looks like they’d love the chance to take her on.
The poll also discusses issue priorities (jobs, overwhelmingly), midterm races of particular interest (Senate races in Nevada, Pennsylvania and Kentucky; House races involving Republican Michelle Bachman and Democrat Tom Perriello); and bipartisanship (been there, done that). Check it out before you nod your head at the next media or blogger characterization of progressive opinion.

TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira, and Hart Research analysts Guy Molyneux and John Whaley have a new 100-page report, “Better, Not Smaller,” (PDF here) that shatters one of the most treasured conservative myths — that shrinking the size of government is what most voters want. The report, based on a survey completed in May by Hart Research Associates for the Center for American Progress and its Doing What Works project, is one of the most thorough investigations of public attitudes and perceptions about the size and quality of government yet conducted.
The report is being released in conjunction with the ‘Doing What Works Conference’ now being streamed, live via webcast as we go to press, on the Center for American Progress Web pages. From the authors’ introduction to the report:

Public confidence in government is at an all-time low, according to a major new survey commissioned by the Center for American Progress. And yet clear majorities of Americans of all ages want and expect more federal involvement in priority areas such as energy, poverty, and education, the poll found.
The key lesson embedded in these seemingly paradoxical results: Americans want a federal government that is better, not smaller. CAP’s new research shows people would rather improve government performance than reduce its size. And they are extremely receptive to reform efforts that would eliminate inefficient government programs, implement performance-based policy decisions, and adopt modern management methods and information technologies.
The May survey of 2,523 adults conducted by Hart Research Associates found that public lack of confidence in government’s ability to solve problems is more closely related to perceptions of government performance than it is a function of partisan affiliation or political ideology. A majority of respondents indicated they would be more likely to support political candidates who embrace a reform agenda of improving government performance, effectiveness, and efficiency.

The survey noted “substantial support” among the younger respondents, as well as people of color, self-identified independents, political moderates and even some Republicans and Tea Party supporters, for reforms keyed to cutting inefficient programs, while redirecting support to cost-efficient programs, publishing evaluations of individual programs/agencies and modernizing management methods and information technologies. Further,

Americans have not significantly changed their opinion of government’s role. Indeed, clear majorities want more federal government involvement in priority areas, and they expect government’s role in improving people’s lives to grow rather than shrink in importance in the years ahead.
Rather than a rejection of big government, the survey reveals a rejection of incompetent government….

The authors caution, however:

The government receives mediocre to poor performance ratings from the public both in terms of how effective it is and how well it is managed. There is a widespread belief that government spends their tax dollars inefficiently, and the survey explores these perceptions of “wasteful spending” in significant depth. Improving these perceptions, we find, is a central challenge for reform efforts.
The message to politicians and policymakers is clear. Government will not regain the public trust unless it earns it. And earning it means spending taxpayer money more carefully–and doing what works.

Yet, overall, the study found “a surprisingly high level of confidence that government effectiveness can be improved” and “poor performance in the public sector is not inevitable.” The authors cite “a powerful commitment to realizing that potential for better government.” It appears that conservatives parroting the ‘big government’ as demon meme may be preaching to the choir. Democrats, on the other hand, just may be able to reach a more thoughtful constituency by talking about what it takes to create smart government.

If it’s Tuesday, there must be another primary election, and today’s is in Oklahoma, where both parties are holding gubernatorial primaries, and there are a couple of congressional contests of interest.
I’ve got a preview up at FiveThirtyEight for those who want a serious run-down. The bottom line is that Attorney General Drew Edmondson is favored to defeat Lt. Gov. Jari Askins for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, in what’s been a very civil contest; while Rep. Mary Fallin is almost certain to defeat Tea Party advocate Randy Brogdon for the GOP nod. Meanwhile, Blue Dog Dan Boren will turn back an underfunded progressive primary challenge, and Republicans will go to runoffs in his district and in Fallin’s.
Oklahoma’s one of those states with a pretty hardy Democratic tradition (registered Dems still outnumber registered Republicans) that’s been trending Red for some time. Hanging onto the governor’s office and a congressional seat, particularly in this kind of year, would be quite an accomplishment. Today’s primary will help determine whether that happens.

`

In his WaPo op-ed, “Enough right-wing propaganda,”E. J. Dionne, Jr. does a good job of distilling one of the most salient points regarding the Sherrod smear into one sentence:

The traditional media are so petrified of being called “liberal” that they are prepared to allow the Breitbarts of the world to become their assignment editors.

But Dionne points out at some length that it’s not only the wimpy MSM that’s at issue here. He and many progressives rightfully feel that the Obama Administration caved awfully easy on this one:

The administration’s response to the doctored video pushed by right-wing hit man Andrew Breitbart was shameful. The obsession with “protecting” the president turned out to be the least protective approach of all.
The first reaction of the Obama team was not to question, let alone challenge, the video. Instead, it assumed that whatever narrative Fox News might create mattered more than anything else, including the possible innocence of a human being outside the president’s inner circle. She could be sacrificed without a thought.
Obama complained on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack “jumped the gun, partly because we now live in this media culture where something goes up on YouTube or a blog and everybody scrambles.” But it’s his own apparatus that turned “this media culture” into a false god.

After giving the Administration a fair share of the blame for being so easily hustled by prevaricating conservatives, however, it’s hard to overlook the shameless laziness/dishonesty of the MSM’s complicity. The headline for the Post article didn’t really get it. Call it wishful thinking, but I liked Truthdig‘s headline for Dionne’s article better: “The End of the Fox News Era.” Hey, we can dream, can’t we?
Dionne goes on to cite other examples of MSM wimptitude, including the sliming of Al Gore for saying he invented the internet (never mind that he never said it), the GOP’s “death panels” fear-mongering getting huge play, and the trumped up coverage of the “New Black Panthers” voter intimidation case.
The coverage of the Sherrod smear has been so extensive, that whatever fair-minded, persuadable voters were mulling over whether Breitbart and the tea party crowd could be trusted are now leaning toward a healthy skepticism regarding them. Breitbart and his defenders have lost some ground on this one. In that sense, the Sherrod smear did some good in terms of unintended consequences.
Some of the better thinkers have pinpointed a more lofty opportunity in the Sherrod affair that merits consideration. Here’s Charles J. Ogletree Jr., executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice and Johanna Wald, the Institute’s director of strategic planning, also writing in The Washington Post:

…In some ways, Sherrod’s tale is a metaphor for this country’s aborted efforts to address race. In its entirety, her deeply moving story was about transformation and reconciliation between blacks and whites. It contained the seeds of progress and healing. She spoke of blacks and whites working together to save farms and to end poverty and suffering. But Sherrod, and those listening to her story, could get to her hopeful conclusion only by first wading through painful admissions of racial bias and struggle.
Racial inequality is perpetuated less by individuals than by structural racism and implicit bias….Implicit bias is a reality we must confront far more openly. A growing mass of compelling research reveals the unconscious racial stereotypes many of us harbor that affect our decisions. Such attitudes do not make us prejudiced; they make us human….
The good news is that structures can be dismantled and replaced and unconscious biases can be transformed, as happened to Shirley Sherrod and the family she helped, the Spooners. First, though, they must be acknowledged. We and others researching race and justice are committed to untangling the web of structures, conditions and policies that lead to unequal opportunities. Our nation has to stop denying the complexity of our racial attitudes, history and progress. Let’s tone down the rhetoric on all sides, slow down and commit to listening with less judgment and more compassion. If Americans did so, we might find that we share more common ground than we could have imagined.

Of course, politicians, as well as the media, can be excruciatingly slow learners. But the Sherrod smear ought to sound the knell for the age of MSM gullibility and general gutlessness. Surely, the time has come to put the childish things away and behave like grown-ups. As Dionne concludes

The Sherrod case should be the end of the line. If Obama hates the current media climate, he should stop overreacting to it. And the mainstream media should stop being afraid of insisting upon the difference between news and propaganda.

The one good thing about embarrassing lessons is that they are usually learned well. If it’s too much to ask of the MSM, it ought to be the only alternative for an Administration that hopes to win a second term.

Colorado is without question a key target for the GOP this year. It’s a traditionally “purple” state where Democrats captured the governorship and legislature in 2006, and then carried the state for Barack Obama in 2008. With incumbent Gov. Bill Ritter stepping down voluntarily, and with a competitive Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate between appointed Sen. Michael Bennet and former House speaker Andrew Romanoff, GOPers have definitely been seeing an opening. Polls have been showing close general election races for both the governorship and the Senate.
But somebody up there must not like Colorado Republicans, because they are in the midst of a plague-of-frogs series of misfortunes. As I noted here recently, the campaign of the front-running GOP gubernatorial candidate, Scott McInnis, imploded upon allegations that he plagiarized big chunks of a report he supposedly wrote to justify a very lucrative think-tank contract just a few years back.
As Colorado GOPers tried to figure out what to do, the wingiest nut of them all, former Rep. Tom Tancredo (last seen calling for the President’s impeachment on grounds that he is a “dedicated Marxist”) publicly demanded that the two Republicans officially in the race advance to drop out after the August 10 primary (enabling the party to name someone else), or he’d run for governor himself on the Constitution Party ticket. Presumably the answer didn’t come fast enough, and Tancredo duly announced his third-party candidacy, following that up with a public shouting match with the state Republican chairman.
But the weirdness has not been confined to the gubernatorial race. In the Senate primary, district attorney Ken Buck, a big Tea Party favorite who’s recently moved ahead of “establishment” candidate Jane Norton in the polls, got caught saying this into a live microphone:

[W]ill you tell those dumbasses at the Tea Party to stop asking questions about birth certificates while I’m on the camera?

Boy, what a quandry for Buck: he now has to eat a big plate of crow to avoid offending his own base, but in doing so he will appear intimidated by a Birther contingent that he obviously considers stupid. And he’s already in some hot water for earlier blurting out that he was a better candidate than Norton because “I don’t wear high heels.”
All in all, it would have been a good week for Colorado Republican officials–and their various candidates–to have taken a vacation.

This item by TDS contributor Robert Creamer, author of Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, is cross-posted from The Huffington Post.
The first rule for Democratic success this November is the immutable iron law of politics: if you’re on the defense you’re losing. Who ever is on the offensive almost always wins elections.
That’s why Democratic victory requires that this election cannot simply be a referendum on the speed with which Democrats have been cleaning up the economic mess created by the Republicans and their allies on Wall Street. It must be a choice between Democrats who are charting a new path forward out of the economic ditch and the failed economic policies of the Republicans that drove us into that ditch in the first place. Democrats must make it clear that if the Republicans once again get their hands on the keys to the economy, those same, reckless failed policies will result in yet another economic catastrophe.
It’s fine, for instance, for Democratic office holders to explain the details of the Health Care bill. After all, the more that people know about it, the more they like it. But that explanation should not constitute the be all and end all of the Democratic health care message. We have to challenge the Republicans — who have been bought and paid for by the insurance companies — to justify their vote against preventing those companies from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions. We have to challenge them to explain their proposals to eliminate Medicare and replace it with vouchers for private insurance.
The same goes in every arena. And it is doubly important because voters vote for people — not policy positions. Voters want leaders who are strong and self confident — not leaders who spend their days in a defensive crouch. They want leaders who stand up straight and defend their deeply held values — not leaders who bob and weave.
The thing we have to remember most is that Democratic positions on the issues – and the values that underlie them — are very popular. Voters generally respond very favorable to candidates who stand up for those values — for average Americans not the wealthy and special interests.
This all seems obvious to normal people who size up candidates. Unfortunately it is often less obvious to the sometimes risk averse consultant class that has so much to say about the way political campaigns are organized.
But all they need to do is take a careful look at the polling that makes the importance of staying on the offensive ever so clear.
Here for instance are some of the questions that have scored well in raising serious concerns about Republican swing district candidates in polling I’ve seen over the last month. The first two are particularly powerful among senior citizens that make up a big chunk of swing voters in many key districts.
* Candidate A took hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from the insurance companies and now he supports abolishing Medicare and replacing it with vouchers for private insurance.
* Candidate D took tens of thousands from Wall Street Banks and now he supports privatizing Social Security and replacing a guaranteed benefit with investments in the stock market.
* Candidate E takes thousands of dollars in contributions from defense contractors and refuses to vote against wasteful and ineffective defense projects.
* Candidate F receives hundreds of thousands in donations from wealthy supporters. He is all in favor of spending hundreds of billions on tax cuts for the rich, but he refuses to support money for unemployment benefits to laid off workers or preventing states and local government from laying off teachers, firemen, and police.
* Candidate Y took $500,000 from the health insurance companies and then voted against banning discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions.
* Candidate J took $250,000 from the health insurance companies and then voted against stopping insurance companies from imposing lifetime or annual caps on coverage and dropping people when they get too expensive to insure.
* Candidate F took $50,000 from the health insurance companies and then voted against stopping insurance companies from charging women more than men and denying coverage to pregnant women because it was considered a pre-existing condition.
* Candidate U used every excuse to vote against requiring that Members of Congress like him are covered under the health care reform law just like everybody else.
* Candidate Z took $100,000 from the oil industry and refuses to support legislation that would break the stranglehold of foreign oil that leaves us more and more vulnerable to our enemies that control our oil supplies.
These are the kinds of questions that Democrats need to force onto the agenda this fall. They apply to almost every incumbent Republican, and most challengers. These statements symbolize the fundamental differences between Democrats and the Republican candidates who want to return to the failed economic policies of the Bush era that favored the interests of Wall Street, big Oil and the insurance industry — not the interests of everyday Americans.
If we take the offensive, Democrats may lose some seats this fall, but we definitely do not need to lose control of sizable majorities in either House of Congress. If we take the offensive, Conventional Wisdom will spend the evening of November 2 scratching his head and wondering how he could have been so wrong. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.