Most states don't allow independent runs of the sort Lieberman did. They are illegal. Not relevant in the vast majority of cases. Lose the nomination and you're out.

Lamont lost in large part because Bill Clinton stabbed him in the back on national television. There was a significant effort by establishment figures being put together to campaign for him and when Bill Clinton said that Lieberman winning would be as good as Lamont, they almost all pulled out, since he'd given them cover.

The NDP isn't doing that hot, but then I quite carefully said that odds were always bad for them to become the second party, but that while the odds were aginst them, they were at the level that required a play be made on them. If Ignatief had won the liberal leadership, and he came damn close, the NDP would be sitting pretty. When you're a third party you've got to take your chances.

Of course if Bloomberg runs for President it won't effect the Pubs on House and State. But it could hurt the Dems on the presidency, and not a little.

Bottom lin You want prediction - I said pass the supplemental and you violate your mandate and it will cost you.

They passed the supplemental.

The very next week, 10% loss in the polls.

It doesn't get much clearer than that.

People can rail that the base should suck it up, but the base isn't.

In 2000 the anger of the left cost the Dems the presidency. In 2008 it can do the same thing, or cost the margin of control in the House or the Senate.

Maybe someone should figure this out.

Because 10% drops in a week don't happen very often.

I had second thoughts about my comment, and it didn't have a response yet, so i got rid of it, probably at exactly the same time you were writing this.

I'll see if I can retrieve it from cache.
-mole

_{"George Washington did not cross the Delaware for Capitalism," Shmuley Boteach}

(Any replies to this comment will be lost. This action cannot be undone.)

Comment:
so are you commenting as a Canadian?
Where you were a "we" for the NDP? I'm not being sarcastic.

We US progressives who read what you put forward have to look not only at the sound of the argument but also the predictive track record of whoever makes the argument. Are the NDPers where you would have expected now, given the results of the last election? I don't know.

Had I been a Connecticut resident I would have voted for Lamont, but even before the primary, Kos and Co suspected that Lieberman would run as an Independent rather than "play by the rules".

Don't think the "Blue Dogs" haven't learned from him. Have the Democratic base come up with a selection strategy to counter this?

I think you have to go carefully candidate by candidate and pick off the weaker Blue dogs with candidates who can appeal on more than the war issue.

Strong rhetoric against current Congressional leadership inertia is fine, but "we" (US progressives and others who support them) still have to get good, principled,well-funded, and articulate people to win. And that's not easy.

What do you expect to happen if Bloomberg runs as an Independent - the Republicans to win back control of the House, the Senate and the Presidency? Let's take it that step further and do some what if's.

_{"George Washington did not cross the Delaware for Capitalism," Shmuley Boteach}

What do you expect to happen if Bloomberg runs as an Independent - the Republicans to win back control of the House, the Senate and the Presidency?

Could this be his his secret motive for running as an Independent?

...is waiting to see who is likely to get nominated. If he thinks he can beat the likely Dem nominee, he'll probably do it. But Gore may be making the same calculations (though as a Dem).

In Congress, neither party is exactly popular, so races will likely be local.

It's a long way away, though. You can build momentum for months and months, then blow it all on one oops moment.

You are precisely right. The only way a Bloomberg candidacy would have a profound effect is if Hillary and Newt were the nominees - the 2 "leaders" with the highest negatives.

who isn't a terrible mayor for the money (except for stuff like trying to put a sports stadium in the middle of Manhattan without any thought but $$) that no one knows him outside of New York:-).

BTW I heard Nader is going to run again.....love to have a debate between those two:-)

_{"George Washington did not cross the Delaware for Capitalism," Shmuley Boteach}

Ya gotta wonder sometimes. Does AIPAC have pictures of a giant House orgy? (Now there's a picture to make you toss your cookies.)

Most of what you say is right, but the (implied) answer to 'why' is not quite right.

Go back to Carter, who was a personally conservative political Progressive. Sound like a contradiction in terms? Well, it was. Well intentioned, a good and bright man, he was a failure (I'm very sorry to say), even if he was mostly correct. But he was largely ineffective, and suffered for it greatly.

Followed by Reagan. A dimwit, charismatic, political opportunist. For a generation (at least) he has defined (by a combination of media savvy and dumb fucking luck) political excellence.

Bill Clinton was, at one time, genuinely progressive. That changed well before he became President. He became 'expedient', and even more so when he lost Congress in '94.

It wasn't until late Reagan / Bush I era that the media became a sock puppet for the GOP (deregulation, death of equal access, direct ownership by corporate interests). Couple that with 'giving money' being 'free speech' and it's no wonder that most of the people elected are shills. Or that Clinton cut deals that stank.

The netroots are a very recent phenomena. In 2000, the right wing had a much stronger internet presence than the left. In 2004 the balance was beginning to shift. Thus Howard Dean. But momentum (of voters, of who is 'credible') is a big, big factor in politics (it took 40 years for the last of the Dixiecrats to admit they weren't Democrats). In 2006, the netroots were a bigger factor than Rahm Emanuel (just don't ask him to admit it).

My Rep is a Blue Dog, and he has finally come out against the war. Why? Because he reads his email and attaches more importance to that than he does to his big money contributors.

By all means, hold their feet to the fire. But please, please, please, do not claim that Democrats are the same as Republicans. The GOP has been in ascendance for more than a quarter century. Most politicians are not terribly smart to begin with (would you go into politics? I didn't think so.) And I'm not saying a Democrat is necessarily better than a Republican. I'm saying that on average, a Democrat will be more likely to represent their constituency if that constituency lets them know how they feel. No need to attach an all expenses paid 2 week golfing trip to Scotland. But you need to let them know, directly. Really, they're not very bright, and most of the advice they're getting is pure crap. So tell them how to vote. On each damn issue that matters to you. Being polite helps, but doing it matters most.

Letting Democrats "know how they feel" really doesn't have much meaning. You can make ten thousand calls but the real force is in not voting for them. But that points to the problem of what the candidate choices are? Right now the party selects who is going to run. In Connecticut the local party members chose someone other than the incumbent. That was viewed by the national Democratic party on the whole as something of a mutiny. The "people" not going along with someone that doesn't even vaguely represent their values was something the party feared. No matter how you view what happened in Connecticut it was not an example of a party strongly representative of constituents.

Jim Webb, a current favorite of Democrats is a Republican in every sense of the word, at least pre-Reagan era. He's certainly not strong on domestic social programs. He might even be a racist. There are aspects of his opposition to affirmative action that suggest racism. His long nosed Jew ad in a primary also had racial overtones. It was the height of irony that he won his election because he caught his opponent using a racial slur. I've little doubt that the purpose of having someone of South Asian descent tag around Allen was to provoke a response.

Maybe I've extended the meaning of "Republican." The current form of the beast is for all intents and purposes a criminal organization. Tom DeLay even said it. He called it the criminalization of politics. He meant the attempts at prosecution of politicians for criminal activities he deemed standard but it was the standardization of criminal activities in politics that is the characteristic of the current Republican party.

I see someone like Webb as easily a Reagan Republican, and considering Iran Contra and "October surprise" and on and on, that's not even close to an Eisenhower Republican.

I look at some of the brilliant people on the web, insightful, eloquent, dedicated. Sure many are really quality reporters but many are quality advocates. Why aren't these people actually running for office? We've got Al Franken taking the plunge. But Franken is an elitist and I have my doubts how much he actually relates to average people. He loved to shmooze with Richard Cohen but was taken aback by the forthright nature of Greg Palast. We don't need people just because they are "fightin' Dems." We need people that represent the concerns and values of average Americans and America as a whole.

I've got to stick with my original viewpoint. If the Democrats don't represent you and are enablers of Republican policies that are horrific and incredibly damaging, then there really isn't a difference. Nancy Pelosi may be a San Francisco liberal but if by action or inaction she enables those Republican policies then she shouldn't get support. Phone calls don't do it unless they say support is over. And what's the point of saying it if you don't follow through.

I understand Democrats don't have enough of a majority to do much but they're doing less than nothing. They passed a bill that will kill thousands of people and cost billions of dollars and used Republican bullshit rhetoric to justify their actions. Look at the news today about Cheney claiming to be an independent Constitutional entity exempt for oversight by any branch of government. How is that not a basis to immediately begin impeachment proceedings? Sure they don't have the votes to actually remove Cheney from office but they can put a spotlight on him and his malfeasance. A spotlight that would last for months. No guts. Where is the representation of the people against criminal arrogance?

...70% of the GOP vote. Lamont took the Dem vote 2:1. And since you are advocating no compromise, I'm not sure why are bringing up Conn.

Were you out there fighting for Cynthia McKinney when damn near everyone (including AmericanBlog) turned on her?

So can I can conclude that you say not to support Dems who aren't progressive enough, but you don't support Dems who are progressive?

I don't mind at all (in fact I encourage) rants against specific positions on specific issues. Hold their feet to the fire. But this generalized whining about that the Democrats haven't waved their magic wand and made all the boo-boos go away just strengthens the Republicans. And they know it.

No. You have it backwards. We aren't strengthening the Republicans. The Democrats in the House and Senate are.

Many people told the leadership, both on the blogs, and through back channels, that if they let that supplemental go through they would lose support.

Sure enough, a week later, they were down 10%. This is not a question of "margin of error" this is a fucking meltdown.

Likewise the trade bill will cost them support.

And so on.

The base is not helping Republicans, the Democratic party, by betraying the base, is helping Republicans.

Their tactics, their strategy - they're the ones making the decisions and passing bills the base hates.

There is no center in the country any more, the polls on this are very clear. Every election going forward is a base election. You can't afford to lose these massive numbers from the base.

Democrats have a choice. They can go "majority of the majority" or at least quietly kill bills that are unpopular with their own base. If they aren't willing to do that it is entirely appropriate for the base to be angry, and it is entirely necessary that their be consequences. If there are no consequences, there will be no change in behaviour.

that I'm all for holding their feet to the fire on specific issues, on specific votes. While I generally try to be straightforward and polite, I ripped my Rep a new one when he failed to support net neutrality.

For 25 years, progressives and liberals have been in retreat and hiding in this country. In contrast to conservatives, they tend not to be fighters or consumed with political action. The Right could put out the call and get hundreds of thousands of calls / letters generated overnight on any damn issue they wanted - and they've been doing it for decades. Until Bush woke people up, the only people contacting their Dem Congresscritter were either nutcases or people who wanted something (like an earmark). So now that you've been reminded what it is to politically aware, it's time to remind your Congresscritter what it is to be an elected official.

Yeah, they screwed up. Most politicians were C- students - they ain't exactly bright. (OTOH, the ignorance of Congressional rules of order etc. in the blogsphere is fucking astounding.) So tutor them. Tell them how to vote. And by all means, challenge them in the primaries.

What's your alternative? Temper tantrums? Whiny fits? I know, let's all just give up and let the Republicans do what they do best.

And who you callin' "we", Kemo Sabe?

There's no "we" in my comment.

"We aren't strengthening the Republicans."

ah touche. Read too fast.

No matter, the point remains. If Democrats in Congress want to betray, there will be a price for it.

"There will be a price to pay" brings out 2 comments along the lines of "Dems are as bad as Repugs" or "I'll never vote for one". While you've got BobHiggins and stormbear posting whiny "oooh, the Dems took office 6 months ago and things are still soooooo horrid I'm gonna stamp my feet in impotent rage".

If people want change they need to get angry (and direct that anger at least semi-intelligently), not whine and moan.

I guarantee you, Rove claps his hands in glee at every sign of hopelessness and despair on the Left.

rather than election that this point, we (I pay little attention to stuff that addresses this audience as 'they' or 'you') need to get specific about upcoming bill numbers that we oppose and that we support.

Democratic leaders certainly need to expand
weekly nationwide publicity about specific upcoming legislation- not leave it to "Move On" or individual reps who may be in marginal districts.

_{"George Washington did not cross the Delaware for Capitalism," Shmuley Boteach}

Except ... if it's all base and no center, that doesn't explain Hillary's popularity.

The American left are being played for chumps by the Democratic Party which functions as "good cop" to the Republican Party "bad cop". These people don't need to be told that the American people overwhelmingly want a fast track out of Iraq, universal health care, and an end to corporate welfare. I'd wager a majority of Democrats want impeachment proceedings and/or criminal trials against Bush, Cheney, Gonzales, and a few other key crooks.

Will we get these things from the Democrats? Will we get credible attempts at these things? No, not even lip service. The Democrats do not care what their constituents want. They feel entitled to the votes of the political left, but they, like the Republicans, really only come through for the corporate interests to whom they are beholden. Corporate interests are essentially right-wing interests, which is why Republican voters don't get quite as roundly screwed as Democratic voters.

During the runup to the Iraq invasion, my wife worked at Washington NARAL. Folks in that office were in contact with staffers at the offices of Senators Cantwell and Murray. The senators' staffers reported that constituent calls were coming in 20 to 1 against the AUMF. Cantwell voted for it. Murray made a public show of agonizing over her decision before ultimately voting against it. This was with constituents ringing the phone off the wall at a ratio of 20 to 1 against the measure. If they can't take directions that are that blunt and resolute, how can we trust them ever to represent the popular will?

If they never, ever do for us what we elected them to do, why should we keep putting them in office? It seems like a pretty darned simple problem with a pretty darned simple solution: Refuse to vote for those who had a chance to deliver the goods, but didn't. There will be nothing in it for us until Democrats understand that whosoever forsakes the left, permanently loses the support of the left.

I for one am doing my part. I haven't voted for a Democrat in a federal election since sometime in the 20th century-- with the sole exception of "Baghdad Jim" McDermott.

it's a 2 party system. That won't change without constitutional amendments.

Get real. No one is elected because they're good. They're elected because they're less bad. If you can't stomach that, at least fight for clean elections.

then I say let the Repugs break it, as they surely will if left unchecked.

Clean elections are a patch on a fundamentally flawed system. Instant-runoff is better, but it too is designed to make a poorly representative system a bid less odious. Proportional representation is better yet, and the countries that have it are generally more sane politically than the USA is.

Winner-take-all, and not just the legalized bribery of campaign money, is what gives us Hobson's choice between the utterly corrupt and the almost entirely corrupt. 50.1% of those who haven't already given up in disgust is all you need.

If disillusioned voters had a "none of the above" choice alongside the current crop of louts, I bet almost every office in the land would sit empty.

...of the dangers of winner-take-all. That's why they designed the system so it changes very, very slowly. The system is imperfect and has been corrupted. But it is still doing what it was designed to do even though it has been deliberately sabotaged from within. We had an election in 2006. We will almost certainly have one in 2008. It has taken 40 years of intense coordinated effort on the part of the Right to bring the system to where it is now. Maybe, actually, the system is pretty well designed.

Corrupted by a 40 year program? I think the problems run deeper than that.

Genocide of American Indians
Slavery
Disenfranchisement of women
Spanish-American War
Poll taxes
Jim Crow
Nisei internments
Korean War
Vietnam War

These are just a few of the things that likely would have been averted if proportional representation had been built in. Although I'm sure that today's American right would love to return to Jim Crow and to throw American Muslims into concentration camps, the things I listed can't be blamed on today's rightists.

Imagine, for instance, how differently Red Scare/Cold War years would have been if there had been some number of actual American Communists and Socialists in elected office. The earlier Labor movement would have assured that, except for winner-take-all.

There have always been major fundamental problems with the US system of government. Endurance is not in itself a sign of virtue, even though it is true that failure to endure is a flaw. I think political progress will be much easier to achieve if we abandon the myth that our status quo is especially righteous, just as it will be much easier to stay out of needless wars if we stop irrationally glorifying the thugs who carry them out.

The historical record shows that our political system is far from righteous. We were willing to overlook its gravest problems in return for the plausible promise that it could make us all rich and prosperous and free. Now that we have been disabused of that notion, it's time to see our system for what it is, not for what we wish it were.

...that it was righteous. I claimed it was relatively stable and resilient. Find another country 200+ years old still operating under the same basic Constitution (although it has been through at least 3 major reinterpretations, and amended quite a few times).

Genocide of American Indians was operative well before the Constitution, as was slavery and the non-enfranchisment of women (and hey, we let women vote well before Chinese - you got something against them?). Not a nation on earth doesn't have blots on its record. Think Sweden is entirely proud of it's Viking heritage? There's an enormous amount that we've done that just plain sucks. Guess what? We're human, like everybody else.

What you need to understand (very badly) is that in politics, excellence is the enemy of good. If Jill is a creep and Jack is a homicidal sadistic maniac, you better stand with the creep or Jack may get you both. And who knows? Maybe Jill is only a creep because you've never been nice to her, so she assumes you're just like Jack.

Very few revolutions end up with something better than they started with. And most end up with something worse. People would rather live with any kind of order rather than chaos. So when you create chaos, a strongman steps in. And he is welcomed, even if he is hated. Review your Russian history. Or your French history.

So save your moral posturing for when the world population has been ridded of all the greedy and power hungry. Until then, you're refusal to support "better" because it's not "perfect" just makes you part of the problem, not of the solution.

the bad is also the enemy of the good. Even when it's running against the abysmal.

If the Dems were halfway okay, I'd vote for them. But they're not okay; almost all of them suck. Why would I vote for a sucky candidate? Forget "wasting your vote" on Nader or Kucinich-- spending your vote on someone who opposes your beliefs and agenda is the real waste of your vote. The sooner folks wake up and realize that, the sooner we can get down to business.

Did people vote for JFK because he was slightly less horrible than Tricky Dick? I believe they actually sort of liked the guy. We can have it at least that good if only we believe it can be so. The tyranny of the less-bad is an inexorable race to the bottom.

...over Nixon. I'm willing to bet that you would have seen him as a horrid patrician bastard willing to sell you out to further his power hungry ego.

Believing can make it so? There are so many evangelical churches that would welcome you with open arms. Just don't blow it and actually work for what you think is right.

if not an expression of the collective vision of what is plausible? Everyone involved, from naïve idealists volunteering to flog petitions to cynical barons writing seven-figure checks, is making a wish or a wager. It has almost nothing to do with what I believe individually, but it has everything to do with what all the participants believe.

Folks support Obama or Giuliani or Hillary or McCain because they believe that's the best plausible thing they can do. If they arbitrarily chose to support Al Sharpton and Ron Paul and RuPaul and Regis Philbin instead-- if everybody changed their alliances, including big donors and boards of directors-- then those would be our front runners. Just because people changed their minds, not because of mechanistic events.

We get sucky candidates because most folks have bought into the idea that those are the only "electable" options. If you spend just a moment on thinking about who's doing the selling of that idea and what their agendas might be, it's not hard to come to the conclusion that the merchants of conventional wisdom are trying (very successfully) to stack the deck in favor of their class.

The solution is both very simple and very hard. We, the voters and the disaffected potential voters, have to buy into another vision. Folks with 90 IQs who get all their information from other people with 90 IQs and Fox News must begin to mistrust the flawed picture of the world they are being spoonfed. It won't be easy or instantaneous. But if it starts with people who have >130 IQs, and broadband, and consciences, and a latent inclination to read outside the tainted pool of information sources, then it can establish a toehold and spread from there.

The political and electoral process is corrupted, as you observed earlier, but if people go into it with eyes open, they can become resistant to deception. Diebold and dirty tricks only work when people are already blinkered and demoralized. Gore in 2000 becomes Yushchenko in 2004 when the people know in advance to expect trouble and are resolved to reject treachery.

NYT
By DIANE CARDWELL
June 24, 2007

He no longer brags about his dating exploits or shows off his impolitic side. He has largely reined in his temper with reporters and loosened his manner with voters. But Michael R. Bloomberg, New York’s once-improbable mayor, would still be a highly unlikely presidential contender.
More at link

Of course the deck is stacked. FDR was derided as a "traitor to his class" by a lot of people who only wished they were in his class. These days I think cries of "inauthentic" from people with ties on, or "$400 haircut" from people who just spent 30 minutes with a makeup artist serve the same purpose.

Turns out Fox News viewers largely know they're watching biased and inaccurate news. But the style (vehemance, certainty) suits them, and they don't trust people smarter than them. Also, Fox overstates their audience (big surprise).

But the real point is that nobody listens to a pessimist (except other pessimists). As soon as you say "They're all...", you just moved yourself to the dingiest corner of a sleazy bar to drink rotgut with the guys nursing 20 year old grudges.