Author Archive

DCCC Chair Chris Van Hollen on Lessons Learned and the Road Ahead

by , posted on Saturday, May 8th, 2010 at 6:00 am

In Red to Blue: Congressman Chris Van Hollen and Grassroots Politics, author Sanford Gottlieb tells the story of Chris Van Hollen’s successful grassroots campaign for Congress in 2002, and the lessons Van Hollen, and others, took away from that campaign in subsequent election cycles.

Van Hollen’s district

is MD-08, located in Washington DC’s Maryland suburbs. In the primary he beat frontrunner Mark Shriver, a Kennedy cousin with a lot of money to spend and a consultant by the name of David Axelrod on his team. He then went on to unseat longtime incumbent Connie Morella in the general election that fall. Morella was a well-liked, liberal Republican who had been long thought to be unbeatable, having enjoyed more than a little bit of support from local Democrats through the years on election day. And Van Hollen pulled this off in a Republican year. This was the first congressional election to be held after 9/11. The Republicans won back control of the Senate in 2002 and added to their majority in the House. Only two Democrats unseated incumbent Republicans that year. Chris Van Hollen was one of them.

Van Hollen has brought this experience to bear in his subsequent work at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). And he was not the only one to go to school on that 2002 campaign. As Gottlieb puts it:

David Axelrod told Van Hollen in 2008 that he had learned some lessons from being on the other side of the 2002 primary. It was a really good grassroots campaign, Axelrod said, with the passion on Van Hollen’s side. Van Hollen carried the lessons learned in 2002 into the successful effort to build a House Democratic majority in 2006. Axelrod and David Plouffe may have applied those lessons in the 2008 50-state race for the White House. (Gottlieb, Red to Blue, 32)

Last week Van Hollen appeared with Gottlieb at a book event in Washington, DC and talked about his attempt to apply those lessons learned to his work with the DCCC. Van Hollen’s introductory remarks, plus the question and answer session that followed, are presented below.

(more…)

Share

Found Objects for a Friday Afternoon: If Aurora Is Bombed

by , posted on Friday, May 7th, 2010 at 12:00 pm
Share

File Under: Yikes, crazy

by , posted on Wednesday, April 21st, 2010 at 10:02 pm

Catherina Wojtowicz sent me a message on Facebook today ..

Whoa! Harsh.

Obviously not a progressive. Wonder why I friended her? Wonder what I posted that set her off?

(more…)

Share

Found Objects for a Friday Afternoon: Billy Bragg

by , posted on Friday, April 2nd, 2010 at 3:32 pm

To view in full screen mode, click on the little box with the four arrows in the lower right hand corner of the screen. To escape full screen mode, press your “Esc” button.

Everything about Billy Bragg

Share

Movement politics versus partisan politics

by , posted on Friday, December 25th, 2009 at 12:46 pm

Following up on Downtowner’s post, I note that David Sirota has a new post up at Open Left which extends the discussion a little further.

Progressives have some allies right now, even if it sometimes feels like we don’t. There are people in Washington who understand how movement politics actually works. They understand the story Chris relayed about the interaction between President Clinton and then-Rep. Bernie Sanders in 1993 — that continuing to push on health care will get us closer to short-term and long term goals, whether we achieve those goals on this bill or not.

Progressives and Democratic partisans should be able to respectfully disagree on the tactics and process — specifically on whether the Senate bill should have been voted up or down (and you’ll note, those saying the Senate bill should have been sent back to the drawing board have been largely respectful, while the other side has been increasingly enraged and vitriolic). But the value of having at least some progressive voices pushing hard and demanding more is absolutely undeniable.

Movement politics versus partisan politics. That’s the heart of the matter.

(more…)

Share

Annie Leonard’s new story: The Story of Cap & Trade

by , posted on Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 at 9:21 pm

A couple of years ago, I was lucky enough to be in the audience when Annie Leonard’s The Story of Stuff was screened in public for the very first time. The film was an animated version of a short, fast, and riveting talk that Annie had developed about consumption — and all the “externalities” that conventional economists commonly leave out of the story. The Story of Stuff is due out in book form next March.

Now, on the eve of Copenhagen, Annie has a new story to tell: The Story of Cap & Trade. Check it out.

Share

The Cherry Mine Disaster, 1909

by , posted on Thursday, November 12th, 2009 at 10:19 pm

Cherry, Illinois was a company town. Named after James Cherry, the superintendent of the St. Paul Coal Company, mining operations had begun at Cherry, in the Illinois River Valley of north central Illinois, in 1904 in order to produce coal for the steam engines of the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad.

The Cherry operation was considered a safe, modern mine by the day’s standards, but on November 13, 1909, a fire started in the mine when torches used to light the mine after it’s state-of-the-art electrical lighting system had broken down set fire to a coal car full of hay that was being taken to feed the mules living down in the mine. There were 481 miners in the Cherry mine that day; 259 died. At the time it was the most deadly mining disaster the country had ever seen.

What follows is a description of what happened in the mine that day, based on first-hand testimony, excerpted from The Report on the Cherry Mine Disaster, published by the State of Illinois’ Board of Commissioners of Labor in 1910.

(more…)

Share

Everybody In, Nobody Out: Single-payer rally on Capitol Hill

by , posted on Sunday, August 2nd, 2009 at 9:27 pm

Last Thursday was probably the hottest and most humid day of the summer so far in Washington, DC, and yet several hundred health care reform activists, brought together by the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care, stuck it out in the heat to rally and lobby for single-payer. It was the 44th anniversary of the

passage of Medicare and the day began with the delivery of Medicare birthday cupcakes and cards to congressional offices. Later in the day activists met with their representatives to lobby for single-payer. And in between a rally was held in Upper Senate Park, just across the street from the Capitol. The remarks of several of the speakers and photos from the rally follow.

(more…)

Share

nyceve and Jane Hamsher’s health care briefing on Capitol Hill

by , posted on Monday, July 13th, 2009 at 12:07 am

Last Wednesday, July 8th, Rep. John Conyers’ office brought Eve Gittelson, aka “nyceve,” a leading blogger on health care issues at Daily Kos, and Jane Hamsher, founder of the blog FireDogLake, to Capitol Hill to present a briefing on health care to congressional staff.

More specifically, as Conyers legislative assistant Joel Segal put it, Eve was there to “talk about her perspective as a blogger. What she hears day in, day out, from people about what they want to see in a

national health insurance program. What are their concerns, what are their problems?” And Jane was there to discuss organizing strategies, what she thinks the American people want, and what the role of congressional staff and Members of Congress is in putting a good bill through. She was also there to talk about a project she’s engaged in, seeking to get forty members of Congress to go on record on video saying that if there’s no public plan like Medicare, then there will be no health care reform this year.

Rep. Conyers himself joined the briefing as well, leading a Q&A session that turned into an initial planning session for a prospective hearing on the health care crisis, perhaps to be held on Capitol Hill during in August recess.

Eve and Jane’s remarks, as well as more on the Q&A session, after the jump.

(more…)

Share

Has anyone else been wondering whether Bill Foster is running for re-election or not?

by , posted on Sunday, June 28th, 2009 at 10:08 am

When Ethan Hastert officially announced he was running for Congress a few weeks ago, a number of the stories made passing reference to Bill Foster’s intentions. Or perhaps I should say lack of intentions, because the impression that was initially given was that maybe Foster hadn’t decided yet whether he was going to run for re-election. Which seemed odd, because why on earth wouldn’t he? He just got the job, what, a little more than a year ago?

And yet, the first story I saw, in DeKalb’s Daily Chronicle, stated that “Foster said this afternoon that he hasn’t decided if he’ll run for re-election.”

The next story I saw, in the Kane County Chronicle, said Foster wasn’t undecided at all: “Foster is planning on running for re-election, according to a spokeswoman who released a statement Monday in response to Ethan Hastert’s announcement.” But all the statement itself had to say about whether Foster was or was not planning on running was this: “he is not thinking about elections right now,” which didn’t seem to unambiguously support the claim that he was indeed planning on running again. Washington Wire, a Wall Street Journal blog, quoted that same line from the official statement, but said nothing to indicate that he was nevertheless going to run again.

That Daily Chronicle story seemed pretty unambiguous. “Foster said … he hasn’t decided.” Where was the Kane County Chronicle‘s certainty coming from? Was it possible that some of these media outlets were running only a part of the statement that Foster’s office had released? “What’s the deal, here?” I wondered.

(more…)

Share