Sunday, January 17, 2010

Sending a True Blue Message

What's a liberal to do?

Shorter Digby: Two ways. (1) Cast a protest vote for a third party candidate, and enable "the other side," which is "batshit insane." Or, (2) Send messages to the Democratic party... through the unsatisfying and often thankless process of primary challenges.
It's hard to find challengers and it's no wonder. It's expensive, time consuming and after all your hard work you will probably lose. It takes real commitment and a desire to not only win a seat in congress but do it by way of unseating an incumbent of your own party with whom you disagree, an act which is guaranteed to make you an odd man out among the party hierarchy. But if you win, it can send shockwaves through the system.

And guess what? We are in the most favorable year for primary challenges in recent memory. The insane teabaggers aren't going to allow any rational Republicans to run and the anti-uncumbent fever is going to be as high as it's been since 1994. The Democratic base has an energetic activist faction, the netroots can raise money and there is a burning desire to show the party establishment that they cannot take liberals for granted. It's a perfect environment for successful primary challenges.
Act Blue began, today, a new web page where you can support real Democrats running, in most cases, against fake Democrats. Send a message, and make it count.

When sane, moderate Republicans -- if there are any left -- begin a similar effort, we'll give them equal blog time.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I rarely catch Jon Stewart but I was lucky enough to see him last night.

Wonderfully funny man:

The Republicans are playing chess and the Democrats are in the nurses office because, once again, they glued their balls to their thighs.

Brilliant!