Democracy for Vancouver

With Bush’s approval rating at 24%, it is a miracle of modern politics that the Democrats in Congress are still aiding and abetting his policies and illegal activities. What can you do about this? As Rob Call points out below, you can start by not giving the DCCC or any of the the Bush Democrats any money. Instead give your money to organizations like Progressive Democrats of America and Feingold’s Progressive Patriots Fund who actively support anti-war, pro-impeachment candidates (or you can support those candidates directly). You can run against the Bush-dog Democrats in the primary or help others challenge the incumbents. You can support “clean election” systems at the local and national levels to get rid of the undue influence of special interest money on who ultimately gets elected. Do you have other ideas?

October 18, 2007

The DCC Just Hung Up On Me

By Rob Kall

I got a call on my cell phone from the DCCC this morning, asking for money. The caller clumsily read a script, saying that the dems were working on ending the war and giving more money for children’s health.

I stopped her from continuing with the script. “I’m a very active Democrat,” I told her, “and I’m not giving the Democratic Congressionial Campaign Committee a nickel until they stop the war, which they can do now, immediately, but not voting to approve any more funding.”

I listened to her response. She was gone. I’m sure she’s been instructed to hang up.

Okay, there’s no doubt she works at some outcall company hired by the DCCC. Her job is to make as many successful calls as possible. But still, her response seems to perfectly represent the Democratic congress’s attitude towards we who elected them– “Send us money, support us, but don’t ask anything of us, don’t EXPECT anything from us.”

What’s the solution to Invertebrate Congress?
The solution is to dump a whole lot of incumbents. TO do that, we need to push for laws that make it easier to do. Ideally, we get rid of incumbents altogether, by banning candidates from running for the same job twice in a row. That would get rid of politicians as career people. What a novel idea. Running for office to serve for a limited time, just once, knowing you won’t be able to run again.

Today, it looks like the Dems will fail to over-ride the Bush SCHIP veto. They’ll give immunity to to Telecoms who aided and abetted domestic spying. Who are these politicians? Did we really elect them?

Next spring, a whole lot of them should be facing primary fights. Hopefully, a few of them… hell, maybe even a lot of them… will lose. We need to take them on and dump them.

Now, the right wingers are much worse. We need to clear out more of them from congress. A lot have already announced they are not running again. That’s good. But this is a bi-partisan thing. We need to get rid of a lot of incumbents on both sides.

If your congressional rep or senator is a “Bush Democrat” who sides with Bush too often, it’s time to dump him or her. What are you doing to make that happen. Write an article or blog to report on the status of the efforts for your representative. If nothing’s happening yet, then report that and see if you can find others who will work with you. check other sites that are working on this, like dailykos.com, mydd.com, actblue… and don’t wait. And if you’re not happy with your rep, be sure you’re letting him or her know one a regular basis. I check in every week or two with mine. I post to local listserves.

The dems in congress are not doing enough and are too often doing the wrong thing, making the wrong choices. What are you doing, every day, every week, to make a difference? If you are doing something, leave a comment to share your ideas and strategies. IF you aren’t doing anything, or as much as you could, what are you waiting for… blackwater knocking at your door… or mine?