How Progressive Activists Are Organizing to Elect Better Democrats

AMY GOODMAN: Many progressives helped to elect Democratic majorities in Congress in 2006 and 2008 and helped Obama win the presidency. But with the Democrats in power, the feeling now among many grassroots activists is that most Democratic lawmakers haven’t acted on behalf of their progressive constituencies.

My last two guests participated in a very interesting panel discussion yesterday here at the Netroots Nation convention in Las Vegas called "Primaries Matter: Reclaiming the Democratic Majority." Ilyse Hogue is with MoveOn.org, and Adam Green is a co-founder of Progressive Change Campaign Committee at boldprogressives.org.

Welcome, both, to Democracy Now! Ilyse, let’s begin with you. Well, what about this? The media looks at Democrats versus Republicans. You guys are talking about recapturing the Democratic Party.

ILYSE HOGUE:  Well, Democrats are not monolithic, but what we have found is that if you only look at your choices through the frame of a general election, the political dynamics, the mainstream media narrative, encourages a race to the bottom, because everyone is after this elusive swing voter. What primaries do is allow us to actually have our champions, have our champions compete on courage and the issues that most Americans, and most of the base certainly, care about. They’re critically important in defining the values of the Democratic Party.

AMY GOODMAN: Adam Green, talk more about the primaries that are going on in this country. And particularly yesterday there was a focus on Arkansas and what happened with Blanche Lincoln.

ADAM GREEN: Yeah, Arkansas was a fascinating case study. Blanche Lincoln has made a career out of voting for things like deregulating Wall Street, and she’s very unpopular back home. And part of our point in this panel yesterday was that Bill Halter was both the more progressive populist candidate and the more electable candidate. A new poll came out this week showing that Blanche Lincoln, who squeaked by in that primary, is now behind twenty-five points against the Republican. And many polls, going into that primary, showed that Bill Halter would have actually been much more competitive.

AMY GOODMAN: And Bill Halter was here. He was at Netroots Nation. He was on your panel.

ADAM GREEN: He was. He was running a really populist campaign, taking on Wall Street. And one of our big-picture messages yesterday was that for Democrats in a governing capacity right now, doing the populist thing is also the politically winning thing. There’s not a tension between being very progressive and doing what’s politically smart. They actually align very well, and we’re trying to push Democrats to really do the politically smart thing, which also results in good policy.

AMY GOODMAN: Ilyse Hogue, what about other primaries that are taking place?

ILYSE HOGUE: Well, I think Bill Halter was the precursor. What we saw was him embodying a very strong feeling that our members have and, we think, is sweeping across the country, which is, he was taking on Wall Street, but Blanche Lincoln was also showing a friendliness towards the HMOs during the healthcare fight, and what we’re seeing is our—the base, our members, saying, "Enough with Democrats who think that they are more accountable to corporate powers in this country than they are to us."

So we’re seeing that same thing play out with Stephen Lynch and Mac D’Alessandro in Massachusetts-09. That primary is September 14th. What’s interesting about that is that that is largely believed to be a safe Democratic seat. So the primary is actually the election. And Stephen Lynch, who is the incumbent, voted against the healthcare bill, even though, at the end of the day, you know, most of the Democratic base thought it would provide some relief, he did not do it as a champion for the public option. He was not there for the public option fight. Mac D’Alessandro has come in, and he said, "You know what? If we really want this democracy to be owned by the people and work for the people, we’ve got to do things. We’ve got to overturn Citizens United. We’ve got to actually get public financing. We’ve got to get lobbyists out of DC." And I think that most Americans are looking for action on specific legislation, like financial regulations, but they’re also looking for people who are going to challenge the system, because the system is not working for most Americans.