Sam Stein provides some details on the planned Health Care For America Now initiative, a $40 million campaign aimed at supporting a post-election drive for major health care reform in 2009. Intelligently, the plan calls not only for paid media but also for organizers to be deployed to a variety of spots around the country including all the districts represented by members of the Blue Dog caucus.
That sounds like the right strategy to me. A big part of the issue with a lot of these Blue Dog types is that they represent areas where there's little to nothing in the way of real progressive organization on the ground. Anyone representing a district like that is going to wind up listing to the right, especially on key votes where there are potentially large sums of money to be made by doing the wrong thing. Winning elections in marginal districts gives a political party a majority, but building infrastructure in those districts creates a working majority for substantial change.
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Heads in the Sand
This is one of the keenest tactical insights I've seen lately. Look--the blue states are rich, and carry the red states on their tax/budgetary backs already. Then they thank us by electing the most disastrous president in modern history--twice--and bringing a great nation to its knees.
It would thus behoove the numerous and relatively (and absolutely) well-heeled in the blue states to tip the balance wherever possible toward their own views by sponsoring a vast subsidy for progressive organizing in the red states, watering the political ground, giving the mic--and maybe a little part-time and nonprofit scratch--to local progressives. What shouldn't be done is anything that smacks of carpetbagging (remember the Brits instructing Ohioans on how to vote in '04...). There are people on the ground already, everywhere. They just need some pick-me-up money.
Posted by elle loco | July 8, 2008 9:40 AM