California Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom has amassed a massive money pile since starting his campaign more than three years ago. His total is nearly five times that of Republican John Cox.
Newsom can't lose.
Why isn't that dough being passed along to Democrats in tight congressional races?
Showing posts with label money in politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label money in politics. Show all posts
Down-ticket
"An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought." -- Simon Cameron *
2016: Winning
The Daily News reports that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, moving ahead with his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination -- "It's Jeb's turn!" bumper stickers are already at the printers, is meeting with potential donors and lining up support in the downtown Manhattan financial community. Since Hillary Clinton has also been engaged for many months in regular seances in the offices of Goldman Sachs, it's already clear who is not going to lose the 2016 election: Wall Street.
"Takin' Care Of Business":
What it means depends a whole lot on who says it.
A new organization is needed that will do two things:
1. provide training to ordinary citizens on the ins-and-outs of running for and serving in public office (this would not only identify potential candidates but help to train staff members for campaigns and officeholders); * and,
2. more crucially, grant subsidies to working people so that they can afford to seek office (an income cutoff of $250K would make 98% of the population eligible for some degree of help, depending on circumstances).
It is nearly impossible for a salaried person -- or a person bearing the burden of responsibilities (for children or elderly parents, for example) -- to expend without assistance the time and resources demanded by public service. The result is that we have a system of governance in which most elected officials are remote by reason of economic advantage from the people they purport to represent.
Take Congress. (Please.)
According to Capital Hill's Roll Call, Members of Congress had a collective net worth of more than $2 billion in 2010, quite a different sum than you could put together from 535 Americans chosen at random.
Not to pick on Democrats, but with a median net value of $878,500 in 2010 the self-described defenders of the middle class were worth more than nine times the typical American household (most of these figures are drawn from reporting on CNN). Twenty-one congressional Democrats have average assets of more than $10 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (Barack Obama's average net worth of $7.3 million is nothing to sneeze at either, especially when compared to the median household net worth in America, which in 2009 was $96,000).
Republicans are a little richer, but not by much. Their median net is $957,500 on average and 35 of them have assets totaling more than $10 million. **
That's net worth: congresspersons' $174,000 salary also blows away the median household income of $49,445 for 2010 -- for most people, being elected to Congress would result in a healthy jump in income. And members' net worth has been on the rise since 2004, unlike ordinary Americans, who have seen their wealth decline (the center's figures don't even include a primary home when calculating net worth for politicians, but the Census, in calculating net worth for average Americans, includes all real estate assets, meaning the divide between the people and their representatives is even more pronounced than it appears).
Dishearteningly though not surprisingly, less than 2% of the Congress comes from the working class, a figure that's stayed constant for the last century.
There's no reason not to think that similar disparities exist at every level of government.
This is not to say that it might not be easier for a wealthy person to be an effective advocate for the interests of poor, working and middle class Americans than for a camel, say, to pass through the eye of a needle. But it's pretty clear that in the aggregate, elected officials inhabit a rarified economic environment that at the least makes it more difficult to keep the struggles of ordinary folks in perspective. It seems obvious that politicians from the working and middle classes will be more likely to concentrate on bread-and-butter domestic economic issues than will people whose principal domestic issue is whether the help all have their green cards.
It will take more than training and funding average Americans to make representative government more democratic. We need publicly financed elections, controls on media access, weekend voting, and so on. In the meantime, the suggestion I made many years ago that that the only political reform we really need is to limit the income of every elected official to the level of the average person he or she represents is still a pretty good one.
* Organizations Right and Left already exist that offer assistance and training to people who have decided to run for office. But what's needed is a national network of training centers, possibly operated through existing organizations like churches and labor unions, that broadens its appeal to include people who are just beginning to entertain the idea of service in government.
** You are permitted a moment to savor the irony that the $448 million fortune of the richest rep, Darrell Issa, is built on vehicle anti-theft devices.
A new organization is needed that will do two things:
1. provide training to ordinary citizens on the ins-and-outs of running for and serving in public office (this would not only identify potential candidates but help to train staff members for campaigns and officeholders); * and,
2. more crucially, grant subsidies to working people so that they can afford to seek office (an income cutoff of $250K would make 98% of the population eligible for some degree of help, depending on circumstances).
It is nearly impossible for a salaried person -- or a person bearing the burden of responsibilities (for children or elderly parents, for example) -- to expend without assistance the time and resources demanded by public service. The result is that we have a system of governance in which most elected officials are remote by reason of economic advantage from the people they purport to represent.
Take Congress. (Please.)
According to Capital Hill's Roll Call, Members of Congress had a collective net worth of more than $2 billion in 2010, quite a different sum than you could put together from 535 Americans chosen at random.
Not to pick on Democrats, but with a median net value of $878,500 in 2010 the self-described defenders of the middle class were worth more than nine times the typical American household (most of these figures are drawn from reporting on CNN). Twenty-one congressional Democrats have average assets of more than $10 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (Barack Obama's average net worth of $7.3 million is nothing to sneeze at either, especially when compared to the median household net worth in America, which in 2009 was $96,000).
Republicans are a little richer, but not by much. Their median net is $957,500 on average and 35 of them have assets totaling more than $10 million. **
That's net worth: congresspersons' $174,000 salary also blows away the median household income of $49,445 for 2010 -- for most people, being elected to Congress would result in a healthy jump in income. And members' net worth has been on the rise since 2004, unlike ordinary Americans, who have seen their wealth decline (the center's figures don't even include a primary home when calculating net worth for politicians, but the Census, in calculating net worth for average Americans, includes all real estate assets, meaning the divide between the people and their representatives is even more pronounced than it appears).
Dishearteningly though not surprisingly, less than 2% of the Congress comes from the working class, a figure that's stayed constant for the last century.
There's no reason not to think that similar disparities exist at every level of government.
This is not to say that it might not be easier for a wealthy person to be an effective advocate for the interests of poor, working and middle class Americans than for a camel, say, to pass through the eye of a needle. But it's pretty clear that in the aggregate, elected officials inhabit a rarified economic environment that at the least makes it more difficult to keep the struggles of ordinary folks in perspective. It seems obvious that politicians from the working and middle classes will be more likely to concentrate on bread-and-butter domestic economic issues than will people whose principal domestic issue is whether the help all have their green cards.
It will take more than training and funding average Americans to make representative government more democratic. We need publicly financed elections, controls on media access, weekend voting, and so on. In the meantime, the suggestion I made many years ago that that the only political reform we really need is to limit the income of every elected official to the level of the average person he or she represents is still a pretty good one.
* Organizations Right and Left already exist that offer assistance and training to people who have decided to run for office. But what's needed is a national network of training centers, possibly operated through existing organizations like churches and labor unions, that broadens its appeal to include people who are just beginning to entertain the idea of service in government.
** You are permitted a moment to savor the irony that the $448 million fortune of the richest rep, Darrell Issa, is built on vehicle anti-theft devices.
Maybe you can still buy love, though
As we predicted, Richard Bloom is the legatee of Torie Osborn's inane and opportunistic run against Betsy Butler.
Turns out you can't buy an assembly seat after all.
Turns out you can't buy an assembly seat after all.
Resource: Who Gets PAC Money ... and How Much?
Where the Money Goes, using politicians' biographical information from Sunlight Labs and data about PACs and their campaign contributions from OpenSecrets.org, makes it easier to visualize the contributions that political action committees make to your members of Congress and to each other. You can also view contributions received by a congressmember directly and by that member's PAC, making it clear exactly how much each legislator costs. The application allows you to see how the process works, such as how the Freedom Fund PAC receives donations from hundreds of lesser PACs and passes the swag along only to Republican candidates. You can choose either a PAC from an economic sector, to see where the money goes -- which politicians receive money from that PAC in each election cycle 1998-2008, or a legislator from any state, to see how much money he/she gets in each election cycle 1998-2008 and from whom, at Where the Money Goes.
Clip File: Why is the Democrat Party so worthless?
"...The Democratic Party is not us. The Democratic Party is a billion-dollar hierarchical bureaucracy made up of careerists with axes to grind. For them we're just a resource. It's our job to learn to deal with them; they've already figured out how they're going to deal with us." -- Why is the Democratic Party so worthless? by John Emerson (OpenLeft 2009-09-05).
Corporatism: We can't say Ike didn't warn us
Dwight D. Eisenhower's exit speech on Jan.17,1961 warning us of the military industrial complex.
Change Watch: White House's secret deal with Big Pharma
Until this week, the most tellingly cynical moment in Washington's two millennium struggle to deny Americans access to adequate health care came in 2003 when the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act was adopted with a provision that prohibited the government from negotiating on behalf of seniors for lower drug prices (the final bill passed the upper body with 76 votes, so you can stop blaming the Republicans).
That was then. This week came the news that the Obama White House worked out a deal -- in secret -- that accepts at face value the pharmaceutical industry’s celebrated pledge not to charge us for $80 billion worth of drugs over the next 10 years and promises not to bother the drug companies with any further threats to profits.
“Eighty billion is the max — no more or less,” said Billy Tauzin, the chief lobbyist for the drug makers," writes Gail Collins in the Times.
The usual reaction to an episode like this is to assume that the offending pol is talking down, that he thinks the people he represents are idiots who need to be treated like third graders. That Grassley is one of the Senate's leaders makes it harder (and scarier) to accept what is more likely the truth: that he's an idiot.
Update: Internal Memo Confirms Big Giveaways In White House Deal With Big Pharma (Ryan Grim; Huffington Post 2009-08-13)are
That was then. This week came the news that the Obama White House worked out a deal -- in secret -- that accepts at face value the pharmaceutical industry’s celebrated pledge not to charge us for $80 billion worth of drugs over the next 10 years and promises not to bother the drug companies with any further threats to profits.
“Eighty billion is the max — no more or less,” said Billy Tauzin, the chief lobbyist for the drug makers," writes Gail Collins in the Times.
In a past incarnation, he was the congressman who shepherded the Bush plan for Medicare coverage of prescription drugs through the House, in a form that was very, very kind to his future employers. He was also — is this a world of coincidences or what? — a co-founder of the Blue Dog Democrats.Part of our problem, yours and mine, is that we are far too generous in our assessment of our leaders. Senators, representatives, justices, cabinet members, presidents -- after all we've been through since Nixon was driven from office, we still imagine we are led by other than political hacks and petty thieves. And third rate crooks and hacks, at that. If you think I'm overstating, take a look at this performance on the floor of the U.S. Senate by the aforementioned distinguished senator from Iowa, the Honorable Charles Grassley:
The drug deal, although blessed by the White House, actually emerged from the black hole which is otherwise known as the Senate Finance Committee. The chairman is Max Baucus of Montana, whose powers and responsibilities on health care are so great that they require the political genius and moral fiber of a Rocky Mountain Lincoln. Unfortunately, nobody has ever once described Baucus in anything remotely close to those terms.
Baucus has set up a special bipartisan negotiating committee on health care with his pal Chuck Grassley, the Iowa Republican. He is hoping that if Grassley signs off on a bill, other members of his party will follow. Grassley has said he will not sign off on anything unless a whole lot of other Republicans accept it first.
You will notice that these two plans are not really the same.
The senators on this special committee hail from Montana, North Dakota, New Mexico, Iowa, Maine and Wyoming. This was quite a coup on Baucus’s part, since you have to work really hard to put together six states that represent only 2.77 percent of the population.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Chuck Grassley's Debt and Deficit Dragon | ||||
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Update: Internal Memo Confirms Big Giveaways In White House Deal With Big Pharma (Ryan Grim; Huffington Post 2009-08-13)are
Health Care: Who pays the piper calls the tunes
Last night on Countdown, Keith Olbermann explored some of the ways greed and ideology have distorted the effort to reform health care insurance:
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Health Care Reform: Bill Moyers interviews health insurance industry whistle blower Wendell Potter
As chief propagandist for Cigna, the nation's fourth-largest health insurer, Wendell Potter helped the for-profit insurance industry hijack our health care system and put profits before patients. Now -- the scales having fallen from his eyes -- he 
reveals to Bill Moyers how the health care insurance companies are undermining health care reform. Here, for example, is what he has to say about the industry's campaign to discredit Michael Moore's Sicko.
Go. Watch the interview. Listen to the podcast. Read the transcript. Download the vodcast.
reveals to Bill Moyers how the health care insurance companies are undermining health care reform. Here, for example, is what he has to say about the industry's campaign to discredit Michael Moore's Sicko.Go. Watch the interview. Listen to the podcast. Read the transcript. Download the vodcast.
Why isn't John Edwards standing higher in the polls?
As I travel about the country, I ask nearly everyone I meet whom they support for president. Nearly universally, the answer is John Edwards. Admittedly, though it includes cab drivers and baggage handlers and bank tellers and real estate agents and baristas and people in queues of every kind, this sample is small and unscientific. Still, as you look at the polls, you have to wonder why the former U.S. Senator and vice-presidential candidate isn't the favorite. I think there are at least eight reasons.
1) His narrative doesn't suit the needs of the media: "John Edwards To Be 44th White Male President" can't match the "Hillary Clinton To Be First Woman President" and "Barack Obama To Be First Black President" story lines.
2) Barack Obama's presence has altered the dynamics of the campaign in Clinton's favor. His vaporous politics has offered Clinton cloud cover. If the Illinois senator weren't in the race, the contrasting visions of America's future being offered -- New Deal populism vs corporations über Alles -- would stand in clearer contrast; the media narrative would be "can idealism and bold ideas beat money;" the romantics in the party would have to make some hard choices, instead of patting themselves on the back for backing the black guy; and Clinton would be unable to position herself above the fray -- she must feel as lucky as Mary Chapin Carpenter: "Hey, Lyle. Hey, Dwight. C'mon, boys, you don't have to fight" -- and would be subjected to tougher scrutiny.
3) And partly as a corollary to 2), Edwards has a fraction of the money available to his two rivals, reducing his ability to present his case and making it harder to compete everywhere.
4) The front-loading of the primaries has given the moneyed candidates an even bigger edge than they already had (a similar dynamic on the GOP side hurts Mike Huckabee's dark-horse strategy).
5) As the only liberal with a chance of being president, when Edwards does get attention from the corporate media, he is frequently treated negatively.
6) Edwards has run a solid, issues-oriented campaign, but he hasn't played sufficiently to his strengths, especially "the only real Democrat" and "the Happy Warrior." Also, and this is ironic, with enough money, he could have made his "log cabin" narrative as compelling as the "first woman" and "first black" fairy tales.
7) Hillary Clinton has run a disciplined campaign, so far, undistracted by boldness or originality.
8) Most important: the fix is in. In 1992, the corporations wanted Bill Clinton. The big money poured into his campaign, and the media helped him ignore or mitigate a series of scandals and embarrassments, while they diminished his Democratic opponents in the primaries and ridiculed and belittled George the First in the general election. The same is happening now: it is clear from the pattern of contributions that the corporate interests see Hillary Clinton as the most reliable aspirant for the job, and from her speeches and policy proposals it is evident that she is happy to be their champion.
The odds are pretty long on an Edwards victory today, but politics is a volatile game. There is a lot of good will towards him in the party; party activists vote in the primaries out of all proportion to their numbers; Clinton could stumble; the peace movement could wake up to the fact that the New York senator is another run-of-the-mill politician in service to the empire; the unions could decide that another Democratic retainer on the payroll of capital might not be the best advocate for the interests of labor; and the demand for change could overwhelm the battlements of the status quo, at last.
It ain't over 'til the fat lady votes.
[For comments on this post, visit John Edwards Blog.]
1) His narrative doesn't suit the needs of the media: "John Edwards To Be 44th White Male President" can't match the "Hillary Clinton To Be First Woman President" and "Barack Obama To Be First Black President" story lines.
2) Barack Obama's presence has altered the dynamics of the campaign in Clinton's favor. His vaporous politics has offered Clinton cloud cover. If the Illinois senator weren't in the race, the contrasting visions of America's future being offered -- New Deal populism vs corporations über Alles -- would stand in clearer contrast; the media narrative would be "can idealism and bold ideas beat money;" the romantics in the party would have to make some hard choices, instead of patting themselves on the back for backing the black guy; and Clinton would be unable to position herself above the fray -- she must feel as lucky as Mary Chapin Carpenter: "Hey, Lyle. Hey, Dwight. C'mon, boys, you don't have to fight" -- and would be subjected to tougher scrutiny.
3) And partly as a corollary to 2), Edwards has a fraction of the money available to his two rivals, reducing his ability to present his case and making it harder to compete everywhere.
4) The front-loading of the primaries has given the moneyed candidates an even bigger edge than they already had (a similar dynamic on the GOP side hurts Mike Huckabee's dark-horse strategy).
5) As the only liberal with a chance of being president, when Edwards does get attention from the corporate media, he is frequently treated negatively.
6) Edwards has run a solid, issues-oriented campaign, but he hasn't played sufficiently to his strengths, especially "the only real Democrat" and "the Happy Warrior." Also, and this is ironic, with enough money, he could have made his "log cabin" narrative as compelling as the "first woman" and "first black" fairy tales.
7) Hillary Clinton has run a disciplined campaign, so far, undistracted by boldness or originality.
8) Most important: the fix is in. In 1992, the corporations wanted Bill Clinton. The big money poured into his campaign, and the media helped him ignore or mitigate a series of scandals and embarrassments, while they diminished his Democratic opponents in the primaries and ridiculed and belittled George the First in the general election. The same is happening now: it is clear from the pattern of contributions that the corporate interests see Hillary Clinton as the most reliable aspirant for the job, and from her speeches and policy proposals it is evident that she is happy to be their champion.
The odds are pretty long on an Edwards victory today, but politics is a volatile game. There is a lot of good will towards him in the party; party activists vote in the primaries out of all proportion to their numbers; Clinton could stumble; the peace movement could wake up to the fact that the New York senator is another run-of-the-mill politician in service to the empire; the unions could decide that another Democratic retainer on the payroll of capital might not be the best advocate for the interests of labor; and the demand for change could overwhelm the battlements of the status quo, at last.
It ain't over 'til the fat lady votes.
[For comments on this post, visit John Edwards Blog.]
Republican and Democratic Political Machines: undemocratic and unfair
The romance of the Obama campaign has muddied the waters somewhat, but finally the primaries come down to this: the cult of personality vs issues politics, "winning" vs governing, business as usual vs progressive policy, the corporatist "centrism" of the DNC vs Democratic (and democratic) values, the status quo vs a "new deal" for the American people: Hillary Clinton vs John Edwards. -- JG
John Edwards, Standing up to corruption, cronyism and modern day money changers.
by Karita Hummer
Among the most inspiring elements in the John Edwards campaign is his insistence on the reigning in of Lobbyist influence and putting the brakes on corruption, cronyism and insider influence and unfair bottom line practices by some corporations to the detriment of the common good (such as outsourcing, tax shelters, unfair loans. bankruptcy, pollution, etc.)
When I heard him speak last December in Santa Clara, before he declared his candidacy, John Edwards rightly said that it wouldn't due to trade unfair Republican election practices with Democratic election practices that kept the status quo. In other words, in all things, be as principled in our own matters as we expect of the Republicans in theirs.
The corruption, cronyism and rampant favoritism to certain corporations in the Bush Administration is almost without parallel in the history of our national politics. The Bush/Cheney/Rovian political machine has been incomparably efficient in only two areas, putting cronies in place and keeping Republican criticism and nay defection to a bare minimum, and they have been mean-spirited and ruthless. It's as if the ghost of old Tammany Hall (New York City) descended in the White House and took hold throughout government on a national level.
But, if we really want reform, if we really want the common good to be the new bottom line for America, like John Edwards says, we can not trade their corrupt machine for ours. We must rid the Democratic Party of its own tendencies toward machine politics, corruption, cronyism, and the money changers in our government - including no nights in the Lincoln Bedroom for high rollers orchestrated by Republican or Democratic machines.
Enough is enough - of the lobbyists and campaign finance high rollers/money changers in our government. Squeaky clean, fair and transparent is the way to go.
This is how Wikipedia describes a political machine:
"A political machine is an unofficial system of a political organization based on patronage, the spoils system, "behind-the-scenes" control, and longstanding political ties within the structure of a representative democracy. Machines sometimes have a boss, and always have a long-term corps of dedicated workers who depend on the patronage generated by government contracts and jobs. Machine politics has existed in many United States cities, especially between about 1875 and 1950, but continuing in some cases down to the present day. It is also common (under the name clientelism or political clientelism) in Latin America, especially in rural areas, and also in some African states and other emerging democracies, like postcommunist Eastern European countries. Japan's Liberal Democratic Party is often cited as another political machine, maintaining power in suburban and rural areas through its control of farm bureaus and road construction agencies. (American Journey, 2005)
The key to a political machine is patronage: holding public office implies the ability to do favors (and also the ability to profit from graft). Political machines generally steer away from issue-based politics, favoring a quid pro quo (something for something) with certain aspects of a barter economy or gift economy: the patron or "boss" does favors for the constituents, who then vote as they are told to. Sometimes this system of favors is supplemented by threats of violence or harassment toward those who attempt to step outside of it." <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_m achine>
While political machine approaches do have their admirers (it gets work done efficiently, so some say), by and large, the systems are stifling, reduce creativity and increase a sense of dis-empowerment in the governed. Such systems are usually antithetical to participatory democracy.
I grew up as a child in Pittsburgh,PA. Machine politics was part and parcel of the political fare for the community. It felt oppressive and authoritarian and corrupt. It wasn't until Pete Flaherty was elected Mayor of Pittsburgh, PA, in 1969 did one feel a sense of real citizen empowerment and potential.
And get this, about Pete Flaherty, now deceased, who stood up to the Democratic machine of the city of that era:
"Mr. Flaherty, though outspent by a margin of more than 4 to 1, nonetheless cruised to a landslide victory in the 1969 election, launching an administration that would permanently transform Pittsburgh government." By James O'Toole, "Obituary: Pete Flaherty dies at 80, Former mayor and county commissioner", Tuesday, April 19, 2005 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette <http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05109/490 421.stm>.
So, did you catch that number, outspent by a margin of 4 to 1. (OK, everyone, remember those numbers and take heart!)
So, what am I getting at. I guess it's quite obvious that I am concerned about the seemingly machine like approach to Hillary Clinton's campaign, which would seem to translate in to the type of governance one could expect from her (if she could even get elected which I highly do doubt). The feeling I have about this is based on her attitude toward lobbyist campaign money and other high roller money (even from Murdoch), her seeming inability listen to people and her sense of entitlement to the presidency, based on her insider status.
Altogether, it gives me a feeling of authoritarianism and elitism, that feels antithetical to our best principles in the Party.
We don't need Machine Politics, from either the Republicans or the Democrats. We do need a Democrat who can stand up to the corrupting influences in our government today and say, "No, we aren't going to do business that way anymore. We are going to have a new bottom line, which is the common good - and there is no compromising on that."
That Democrat is John Edwards.
Defense of Lobbyists is old politics and throwing the money changers out is new politics. We need reform for our Country and reform for our Party. The old way doesn't work.
Karita Hummer
San Jose, CA
Reposted from John Edwards Blog:
Republican and Democratic Political Machines: undemocratic and unfair
Politics: Emanuel and Schumer protected the conservative domination of Congress in 2006
Progressive complaints about the failure of the Democratic majority to end the occupation of Iraq are based on a misunderstanding of what happened in the 2006 elections. A majority of Americans did not vote to end the war. As an article on Truthout makes clear, they were never given that choice (Democratic House Officials Recruited Wealthy Conservatives by Matt Renner; 2007-09-06).
But on Iraq, there has been no sellout by anti-war Democrats. In fact, considering the conservative makeup of the Congress, Pelosi, Reid, et al, have done a remarkable job of moving the peace process along. The peace movement needs to keep up the pressure to bring more members of Congress to its side. Charges of "betrayal" and "cowardice" against potential Democratic allies are not only inaccurate, they also make putting together a Congressional majority in favor of getting out of Iraq more difficult.
The rest of the story: Truthout.Org
According to Democratic candidates who ran for House of Representative seats in 2006, Rahm Emanuel, then head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, took sides during the Democratic primary elections, favoring conservative candidates, including former Republicans, and sidelining candidates who were running in favor of withdrawal from Iraq.If the Democrats have a clear mandate, it is to put an end to the corruption that became pervasive in the legislature and the executive under Republican control. And in so far as the expectation of a cleanup in Washington has gone largely unfulfilled, the voters are right to be angry and disillusioned.
Appointed as head of the DCCC by then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Emanuel spearheaded the Democratic Party effort to regain control of the House of Representatives during the 2006 election cycle. Emanuel claimed credit for the Democratic takeover and was promoted to chairman of the Democratic Caucus, the fourth-highest ranking position in the House. But his election tactics have been criticized by progressive activists and former Congressional candidates.
According to his critics, Emanuel played kingmaker by financially supporting his favored candidates during primary contests with other Democrats. His critics say that this interference was in direct contradiction of a DCCC policy to "remain neutral" in party primaries....
How Emanuel came to his decisions about which candidates to support against Democratic opponents is known only to Emanuel and his staff....But an examination of individual races reveals a pattern of financial and political support for wealthy conservative candidates and an assault on their grassroots-supported opponents who were running on platforms that included a full withdrawal of US forces from Iraq.
But on Iraq, there has been no sellout by anti-war Democrats. In fact, considering the conservative makeup of the Congress, Pelosi, Reid, et al, have done a remarkable job of moving the peace process along. The peace movement needs to keep up the pressure to bring more members of Congress to its side. Charges of "betrayal" and "cowardice" against potential Democratic allies are not only inaccurate, they also make putting together a Congressional majority in favor of getting out of Iraq more difficult.
The rest of the story: Truthout.Org
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