There are a few interesting things about getting older, along with the depressing ones: women in their twenties are now potential babysitters rather than potential dates (I passed that threshold a long time ago); having lunch with the widow of a friend; learning that another good friend has died – and you didn’t hear for nearly a year, which reminds you of what a bad job you’re doing as a friend.
And then you get a mailer, and discover that a high school friend is running for Congress. Holy Crap, we’re old enough to be Members of Congress?
So Marcy Winograd sent me a mailer – not because of any long-standing relationship, but because I’m in the district she just moved into to run against incumbent Jane Harman.
Now I have had a tetchy attitude toward Congressmember Harman since before she ran for the first time – we met at one of her exploratory coffees, and I thought her an unprepared, establishment apparachnik.
Harman then abandoned her seat for an ill-considered and somewhat inept run at the Governorship, retired for several years, and then came back to California with the support of the national party and bigfooted several good local Democrats to take the seat back.
So I didn’t start this dance as a Friend of Jane.
And Marcy, when I knew her in high school and intermittently afterwards, was smart, engaged, someone who cared about the world – a good person to sit and talk issues and life with.
So I read the mailer, visit her website, and take a look. And sigh.
Because what’s there is pretty much a straight-ahead Kossak platform.
When we talk about security, we must talk about jobs for all, health care for all, and a foreign policy that embraces diplomacy and builds trust among nations, a foreign policy that chooses war as a very last resort – if ever – and a foreign policy that forever renounces the use of nuclear weapons- because to use those weapons is to ensure our own annihilation.
Marcy is our coast’s Net Lamont. She’s a manifestation of the single-issue orthodoxy that the ‘suicidal lemming’ wing of the Party wants to try and enforce. According to MyDD and Kos and Josh Marshall, you can’t be pro-war and be a Democrat.
And that’s wrong, on just so many levels.
First, and foremost, on the issues. I’ve blogged the kind of foreign policy I think is the intermediate state of this kind of isolationism:
In essence, it’d be a position that said “we’re washing our hands of you”, bulked up border and internal security, and made it a point never to drive through ‘those neighborhoods’ without locking the doors, and never, under any circumstances, to stop there. It solves that whole messy “war” thing, and makes sure that no one says bad things about us in our hearing. We’d be clean-handed liberals, and feel secure.
But I don’t think we’d be secure, or really have clean hands. It’s a nice thing to talk about in the Palisades (or actually, Marina del Rey), or in Georgetown. But the reality of governing America in the 21st Century takes more than this.
Harman has actually been damn sensible about security issues, walking a line in trying to stand for her Party while first of all doing the right thing – as she sees it – to defend America.
I do like Marcy more, but I think she’s flat wrong on the issues, and so I just went over and donated $100.00 to Jane, and encourage you all to go over and give her a few bucks.
I’m trying to do something on the internal struggle within the Democratic Party as an institutional struggle as much as one about issues or worldview; this campaign reflects that more than a little, I think.
The 36th district is a very unique one. The district covers the South Bay, which is home to several large defense contractors (Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon) and the contracts are managed by the LA AFB. While not a majority, these cities (Redondo, Manhattan, Hermosa, and El Segundo) are registered more Republican than Democrat, but by narrow margins.
Here’s where it gets interesting: nearly 40% of the district is in ‘LA’ city, where the majority of the registrants are Democrats and over 40% of the population is Latino.
The demographics and economics make this an intersting district to watch. With nearly 30% of the district Latino (as of 2002), will the ‘war card’ play well (in light of the recent immigration ‘debate’), and where in some of the richest cities in Southern California (the South Bay) reside some of the largest defense contractors in the nation?
http://www.senate.ca.gov/ftp/SEN/cngplan/CD36.HTM
One more thing: I do think this is an exercise in futility. As much as the Democrats rail on Bush’s policies, the party establishment will circle wagons around Harman and defeat the challenger.
The SoCal media (and national media) will probably pick up on this race and hold it up as a litmus test and ‘example of the divide’ etc etc.
Harman is more to the left on social issues, but on national security, she is well aware of how vital the South Bay is in national defense and will NOT do anything to destroy that relationship and commit political suicide, save the restrained criticism for Bush’s policies.
A.L. if you live in So California for any length of time you come to understand first hand how dependent a lot of people are on defense spending. But more importantly in talking to friends and neighbors who actually work in the defense industry you come to realize just how much of that dependency comes from wasting taxpayer dollars.
So equating a politicians votes on defense issues as being srong/weak on defense, when so much ‘pork’ for the district comes with the votes, is not as easy as you make it out to be.
In fact, you show a typical kneejerk reaction against anyone who proposes something other than war, or more war capacity, as a ‘first’ resort, for national security.
Is it really beyond your understanding that Americans don’t want to defend policies that are strictly for the benefit of the wealthy, that treat workers like assets, and a foreign policy that has imperialist designs of people and places we couldn’t care less about?
Don’t you see that is the kind of country’s our ancestors fled from when they came here to a ‘new’ country and ‘free’ from that kind of government?
If you are truly concerned about the lack of war fever among your fellow countrymen you are not going to improve it by supporting the politcal party that makes our country a worse place instead of the political party that makes our country a better place.
What is bizzare is that you are willing to spend you money and shed you blood to conquer a country that was of no threat to any of us.
Oh wait, you are not actually willing to ‘spend’ any of your own money or ‘shed’ any of you own blood,. Instead you support borrowing money and squandering it on pork barrel spending like $400 toilet seats, and shedding the blood of nineteen year olds who see no way out of a dead end life without joining up. And later they can look forward to the struggle to pay off that debt their ‘betters’ saddled them up with.
Yeah, that is far better than a liberals proposal for good jobs, health insurance and diplomacy, you know, the kinds of things that might actually be worth fighting and dying for?
I sometimes wonder if conservatives do succeed in turning this country into another soviet style police state would our future hope lie only with liberation from outside? Or would people like you finally join the rest of us in our battle for a restoration of American values to our own government?
Yeah, that is far better than a liberals proposal for good jobs, health insurance and diplomacy, you know, the kinds of things that might actually be worth fighting and dying for?
Holy Cow.
Ken, I gotta say, even outside of the way you’ve just casually slandered a third of the country as fascists (and I’m not even a conservative), with this one moonbat sentence you’ve just done more to argue AL’s case for him than any nine paragraphs he could possibly come up with.
ken, this is the last time I’ll engage anything you say here; you’re not offensive enough to ban (yet) nor interesting enough to argue with.
So you’d go to war for health insurance? For good retirement benefits? What a maroon.
And I’m worried about how you those home numbers for your banker buddies – aerospace and direct defense contracting were the engines of the Southern California economy two decades ago. Today there are about 75K aerospace employees in all of California. You might want to try and keep up.
So long, and thanks for the yucks. May I suggest that there are other sites where your brand of handwaving is considered good form?
A.L.
A.L.
Sometimes it is hard to show your face in the same company as your own friends or your own party, when you know they are wrong. But I urge you to treat the experience like an argument with your wife or your children when they are hellbent on riding down the wrong road. Keep your chin up, stay in the game, and continue to do your best to pull your party back into the realm of rational and competent defense of America, by aggressive and determined Men and Women who realize that not all the world will love us. Much of the world will never love us, but they must RESPECT us.
And that is a noble use of force for any Democrat or Liberal to support.
Press on, son. Without you, your party will go right off the cliff.
Subsunk
“According to MyDD and Kos and Josh Marshall, you can’t be pro-war and be a Democrat.”
That’d have to come as a shock to Josh Marshall, who once indeed did support this war. And, as far as I know, Josh Marshall has always called himself a Democrat, both back when he supported the war, and now, when he opposes it. Finally, Josh Marshall has had Jane Harman herself in as a guest poster on his TPMCafe site.
Not to get in the way of your generalizations, or anything.
“Harman has actually been damn sensible about security issues, walking a line in trying to stand for her Party while first of all doing the right thing – as she sees it – to defend America.”
Jane Harman’s way of “stand(ing) for her Party” involves calling herself, quote: “the best Republican in the Democratic Party.” She does not deny this quote. Jane Harman is an official member of the Blue Dog Democrats, a coalition of self-described “conservatives.” Jane Harman is one of the few Blue Dog Democrats who is not from the Deep South.
Jane Harman is one of the key Democratic supporters of the president’s illegal warrantless eavesdropping program. She was one of the four Democratic members of Congress briefed years ago on the nature of the program, and who chose to remain silent. And when the program was finally exposed, Jane Harman voiced her outrage… not at the administration for engaging in this program, but at the NYT for daring to speak of it. Throw this on top of her votes in favor of the Iraq invasion and occupation, her multiple votes in favor of the Patriot Act, her vote in favor of Bush’s bankruptcy bill, and the fact that 6 of her 7 top campaign contributors are defense contractors and you’ve got a congressperson who’s way, WAY, WAY out of step with her own progressive district.
And it IS a progressive district. Kerry carried CA-36 in ’04: 60%-40%. I don’t even know if the GOP is gonna bother to run a candidate this year (two years ago, the GOP offered only token opposition: a school teacher who paid for his entire candidacy out of his own pocket, and who ran largely to the left of Jane Harman).
In sum, Jane Harman does NOT represent the values of this district, and is holding on to it solely on the strength of her great personal wealth, and the power of her incumbancy. That may be fine for you, since you’re perhaps to the ideological right of the district at large, but it’s not democratic. And I, as a resident in CA-36, will do all that I can to turn her out of D.C. and replace her with someone who shares my personal values.
That person is Marcy Winograd.
Patrick Meighan
Venice, CA
Patrick, it’s amusing to me that when it comes time to challenge Harman, you’ve got two points to make:
1) she supported the bankruptcy bill (as did the Democratic leadership – pathetically, if you’ll look at “what I wrote”:http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/006450.php on this site); and
2) she supports steps that a bunch of relatively serious people (note that Nancy Pelosi was also one of those briefed on the NSA program) think are important to secure our country. And to you, that’s her real crime.
You really don’t know the demographics of the district if you think it’s not far to the right of Venice (although I’ll point out that my personal politics are somewhat to the left of the typical Venice resident these days – with the sole excpetion of security policy).
But we’ll have an election in June and we’ll see, won’t we?
A.L.
Evidently, Marc, more important than the results of the election is reading you out of the party with bell, book and candle.
“Patrick, it’s amusing to me that when it comes time to challenge Harman, you’ve got two points to make:… 1) she supported the bankruptcy bill (as did the Democratic leadership – pathetically, if you’ll look at what I wrote on this site)…”
A.L., if you’re waiting for me to defend the Democratic leadership, you’ll have a very long wait, indeed. I am no longer a member of the Democratic Party, in large part *because* of sellouts like this. So, certainly, I applaud your principled opposition to the bankruptcy bill. I only wish your opposition were demonstrated via a vote for an outspoken critic of said bill (Marcy Winograd), rather you voting for a key supporter of it (Jane Harman). But here you are, voting for Jane nonetheless. That oughtta teach her! She won’t vote for bills like that again!
“(Harman) supports steps that a bunch of relatively serious people (note that Nancy Pelosi was also one of those briefed on the NSA program) think are important to secure our country.”
“Serious” people, indeed, think that it’s important for the Bush administration to eavesdrop on terror suspects… but only after first securing a warrant (or, if neccessary, securing the warrant retroactively, within 72 hours), as the law requires. As for people who think it’s fine for the Bush Administration to eavesdrop on whomever they choose, for absolutely any cause, without any form of warrant, and without any sort of check on their unilateral power… well, I’ve got other adjectives for them, but “serious” is not one of them.
“You really don’t know the demographics of the district if you think it’s not far to the right of Venice… But we’ll have an election in June and we’ll see, won’t we?”
This last sentence reflects amazingly willfull naivete. Elections, in the abstract, are measurments of the citizenry’s values, but in practice are often measures of who’s got the most money, or who’s got the greatest name recognition, or who’s the most photogenic. A blogger who purports to be as pragmatic as you, it seems, would already be aware of that.
Anyway, I’ve already been out precinct walking (on a volunteer basis) for Marcy several times, and will continue to do so between now and June. That’s democracy, baby! If you’re as strong a Harman supporter as you purport to be, then get out there on the pavement with me, and knock on some doors!
Patrick Meighan
Venice, CA
Marcy represents more than just an anti-war stance. Yes, she is progressive through and through, and she comes to those positions naturally, organically if you will, as you probably should know having known her in your youth. There is a legitimate debate about the precise politics of the district, and then there is the question of who will actually come out to vote in the primary. In that regard, Marcy seems more likely to energize her base — which includes not only Venice, but Mar Vista, Palms and San Pedro — while Harman, as AL suggests, is not very inspiring to her own base. Marcy is also not without friends in the Democratic party, because she has paid her dues through energetic toil for Kerry, for Rosendahl, for Debra Bowen, for Villaraigosa, running a Dem HQ in Santa Monica, traveling to swing states to GOTV, taking on the fight for election protection, working with the clubs. So when push comes to shove, yes, the party establishment will probably support Harman, but as with some of the unions, the leadership may go with the incumbent, but the rank and file won’t. And even some of the leadership will be less than enthusiastic.
We start with the fact that a lot of people are seriously dissatisfied with the status quo, and Harman can share in some of the responsibility for that, because she has supported some of Bush’s pet policies. And why shouldn’t progressives finally have someone in the party they don’t have to hold their nose to vote for? It’s one thing to say the country as a whole is more conservative than Marcy, and another to say those who can be persuaded to vote June 6 in CA-36 are. What is there to lose by voting for Marcy in the primary? The Repugs have put up a turkey named Brian Gibson, so whoever wins the primary has the election sewn up. Why not send a message to the party establishment that “go along to get along”, leaving Feingold hanging on censure, continuing to rally around the Liebermans of the world as they continue to favor Bush’s failed policies, is not acceptable, at least in districts like this one?