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There are many pieces of democratic infrastructure that should exist to help deal with Kucinich’s dive on healthcare. Some already exist, but many do not.
I will take it as axiomatic that Kucinich should now be targetted for removal from office, and won’t even argue the point. Actually, I don’t have time and energy to develop much of any argument. My goal is more modest – to just sketch out 3 possible responses, and to get people to start thinking about them. The options I point to don’t essentially depend on the Kucinich dive, but such framing is timely and quite useful.
1 – "Blogging to the Choir"
There is already considerable infrastructure in place for blogging. One can start a new blog from scratch, and get going literally in 30 minutes, or less. Even more easily, one can enroll in a pre-existing blog, and start blogging away.
The main problem with blogging to the choir is that blogs are self-limiting. Even if all progressive blogs were enlisted in the cause of throwing Kucinich out of office (an absurd scenario, given the recent kos incident), I rarely meet anybody outside of the blogs, themselves, which regularly consult blogs for political insight. Thus, unless the blogs can go beyond the occasional TV interview of a prominent blog guru, they will forever be limited to their current level of success, which was not enough to prevent the total (or near total) capitulation of the so-called progressive bloc in Congress.
2 – Firing Him (Kucinich) in an Organized Way
This, IMO, is where citizens should be putting most of their efforts. Right now, it would be difficult to "fire" Kucinich (i.e., primary him), in spite of the fact that his biggest supporters expected so much more from him. Humans build tools and infrastructure to make their tasks easier. Why is it so hard to fire crummy Congress critters? Well, clearly K-Street (the association of lobbying groups and facilitators in that area, not so much the street itself) represents a well-oiled bit of infrastructure to make corrupting Congress easy. OTOH, where is the infrastructure to make get rid of corrupted Congress critters easy? You know, the way it should be? There is a tremendous lack, there, as was (indirectly) noted, e.g., by Scott Crowder at firedoglake, in an article called A failure to plan is a plan to fail – a challenge to the FDL website.:
Instead of worrying about polls, or what the Dems should be doing or what Obama isn’t doing, we should be wholly focused on getting progressives past their primary challenges and replacing Conservadems on the ballot. But we aren’t.
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Where was coverage of the primary? Where was the grassroots effort to stop this guy from getting the nomination? Where was there even mention that this election was coming up?Nowhere.
When did I first hear about him? After it was too late. This guy had already won his primary and where were the progressives? They weren’t online trying to raise grassroot support for a progressive candidate.
Failure to plan is a plan to fail.
I could mention some ideas for infrastructure, but this diary is more to challenge other people to come up with their own ideas.
(Blogs, of course, represent infrastructure, also. But they are clearly not sufficient to give us good government, or to keep Kucinich and other so-called "progressives" honest.)
3 – Firing Him (Kucinich) in an Dis-Organized Way
Unfortunately, barring a "dark night of the soul" experience by Kucinich, where he realizes that there are more important things than his political re-election, support by Obama, goodies for Ohio, etc., and he returns to his earlier, more principled self, I think he should be made an example of. We can’t construct missing democratic infrastructure overnight. (Though we could construct most of the pieces within a year, say, if 10 million citizens donated all of $10 plus 4 hours per month)
So, what could we do, individually, in a dis-organized way, so that his constituents know what a crappy piece of healthcare legislation Kucinich has said he will vote for? What can we do today (or, within a few days), to put ending Kucinich’s career on track? Again, the question I’m asking pre-supposes that such efforts have to go beyond the blogosphere.
I can think of a couple of low cost routes to pursue. And they both start with a blog (or website), but sure as heck don’t end, there. They mostly don’t depend on anybody else, though they’re a little easier if you already have posting priveleges on a pre-existing blog.
If you live anywhere:
Idea 1: Write a diary about Kucinich’s healthcare dive, how Obama betrayed us in so many ways, how Kucinich is now actually supporting Obama (instead of lambasting him), etc.
Run classified ads in college newspapers, giving the link to your diary. If you can afford it, take out a display ad, or a classified ad in a bigger, commercial newspaper.
Idea 2: Write a diary about Kucinich’s healthcare dive, how Obama betrayed us in so many ways, how Kucinich is now actually supporting Obama (instead of lambasting him), etc.
Run your own Google adwords campaigns, where you link back to your diary. Google adwords campaigns allow you to display ads that key off Google searches. So, e.g., you could have a campaign that keyed off "kucinich" and "health care".
If you live in Ohio:
Idea 3: Write a diary about Kucinich’s healthcare dive, how Obama betrayed us in so many ways, how Kucinich is now actually supporting Obama (instead of lambasting him), etc.
Print the link on small pieces of paper, and pass them out at your local tea party and coffee party.
Idea 4: Write a diary about Kucinich’s healthcare dive, how Obama betrayed us in so many ways, how Kucinich is now actually supporting Obama (instead of lambasting him), etc.
Print out flyers, using a program that will write the numbers radially along the edge of the paper (or just hand write it, yourself). Cut ribbons into the edge of the paper, so that people can tear off the strip of paper, take it home, and punch it into their web browser. Post the flyers in foodstore bulletin boards, and the like.
31 Comments
I’m not sure any of this aimed at Kucinich is helpful. Yes, he made some horrible decisions. It was a rookie mistake to get on Air Force One (you seek NEUTRAL sites in negotiations, not the other guy’s power base). It was a rookie mistake to attend Obama’s rally, where a plant asked him to “Vote Yes” and Obama rubbed in the insult by repeating it.
Unfortunately, DK had his rendezvous with destiny and failed. The Democratic leadership doubtless despise him more now than before because he crumbled so quickly (before the Stupak faction). His former followers are all angry with him, as they should be.
Yet, on almost every issue, he is the most progressive representative we have in the House. Why primary him when the replacement likely will be much worse?
What we learned, is that DK is NOT a leader, that he didn’t have the cojones to stand up to Rahm and Barack, and that we cannot look to him for leadership in the future. But he’s still a good guy to have on the team in a backup kind of position.
The progressive cause now needs a leader and DK has shown he doesn’t have it. So we did learn something valuable. Before we get rid of DK, we have to get rid of the Blue Dogs, Rahm and Obama first. Replacing DK should not be a priority at this time so your diary is misfocused.
First of all, I’d like to thank you for a serious and non-hostile reply. I get the sense that you are amenable to reason. Which is not the impression that I got when I originally posted this diary at docudharma – one guy wrote:
The comments were better when I posted a quick hit at OpenLeft to my Docudharma diary, but not by a lot.
As to whether or not Kucinich should be primaried, I still think this is desirable (even if too late for this election cycle), because I can’t think of a better person to make an example of.
However, as I state in my first main paragraph in my diary, I’m actually much more interested in the question of democratic infrastructure (democratic with a small “d”). Before Kucinich flipped, I was thinking about going after “kos” (Markos Moulitsas). The lack of infrastructure to put him (i.e., kos) in his place aggravated me.
After Kucinich flipped, however, it not only became even clearer that there needs to be far more effective means to realize the public will than we currently have (sometimes, progressive is populist, in the sense of majoritarian) – it also became sadly clear to me that arguing for democratic infrastructure ‘sticks’ (and not just ‘carrots’) should now apply to Kucinich, as well.
And the reason is that he is the biggest disappointment. It’s my belief that, in a vibrant democracy, citizens will collectively “fire” bad Congress critters with close to the same facility that you would “fire” a bad waiter at a restaurant (though we’ll still have to wait for re-election time to do the deed, unless we amend the Constitution to allow supermajorities to recall crappy Congress critters; which is something I support, though not for the short term). You would either demand another waiter – and almost certainly get one – or else you could simply not patronize the offending restaurant until the lousy waiter was gone. Kucinich should get no special consideration. And since his civic ‘sin’ is greater, that makes him a better target.
The question of comprehensive strategy, though, is one best left to a ‘pro’ – an accomplished political game theorist. (See the OpenLeft thread for a link).
Now, as to my main underlying concern – democratic infrastructure – for which the sad Kucinich dive played a secondary role…. by providing very timely framing for the argument… I hereby challenge you to make some outside the box suggestions of your own.
To make this easier for you, pretend that the object of your ire is not Kucinich, but, say Lieberman. (If this example doesn’t work for you, pick somebody else.) How would you get rid of this guy? MORE IMPORTANTLY: What infrastructure – systems, new technology, even simple tweaks of existing infrastructure that nobody has thought of, yet – would you build to make FIRING a lousy Congress critter of your choice EASY.?
K-Street represents infrastructure which makes the corrupting of Congress critters easy. We should be using our heads, and creativity, to make getting rid of sellout, corrupted Congress critters just as easy.
Do you have any ideas in this vein, at all? Do you even have an opinion as to whether asking the question is desirable? (This may be obvious to me, but that doesn’t mean that it’s obvious to anybody else.)
===========================
a quote from my email to jeffroby, originator of the Full Court Press (“FCP”), on 3/15:
My email to jeffroby of 3/17, as reply to his reply of me:
I only turned on Kucinich after he turned on his principles….
WOW! If you fire Kucinich don’t you have to fire them all? I’m sorry but I don’t know how to “get rid” of a house member. Impeachment? Recall? I feel certain Obama could git rid of Kucinich. He could have thrown him off of Air Force One. Obama could get rid of Lieberman too, but you never could. Obama loves Lieberman and will continue to protect him. I think you should get rid of Obama.
But first you might want to ask yourself if you are still a Democrat and why or why not. I say this with respect. Dennis could have retained your respect and his political career would be over. He chose to live to fight another day and to endure your wrath. A lot of Democrats are making hard choices these days. You may be one of them.
Mar 20, The only things in life that one has to do are to pay taxes and die.
I haven’t studied political game theory, or even game theory, in general. But intuitively, it would be irrational – i.e., a poor strategy, no matter how one felt about things – to “fire” (primary) ALL of one
‘s weak allies (which, for progressives, would guarantee replacement with Blue Dogs, Republicans, etc.) OR to “fire” (primary) none of them. The latter could be justified as targeting only the “worst of the worst”, but is it a smart strategy?
I honestly don’t believe so. However, it would not be wise to take my word for it, as I have not studied political game theory.
I will say, though, that for a given subset of Congress critters, it’s occurred to me that combining a “worse of the worst” strategy with a random selection process might well be the optimal strategy. Essentially, I propose that the most efficient way to allocate resources would be to put some of your collective $$ targeting the “worse of the worst” in a given subcategory of Democrats, and yet other of your collective $$’s targeting a random Congress critter who is, say, in the worst half. And campaign contribution $$ should be divided into tranches – some will target weak or ‘fallen’ progressives, some will target Blue Dogs, some will target moderates.
So, let’s say that there are 40 Blue Dogs, and that Progressives collectively amass $24 million for getting rid of the Blue Dogs, and replacing them with somebody progressive. (They will also budget $24 million for targeting weak progressives, $24 million for targeting centrist Dems, and $24 million for targeting vulnerable Republicans. But I will give an example for only 1 of these subgroups, which will suffice to make things clearer.) $24 million (let’s say) is not enough, currently, to make all 40 races competitive – say because you need $2 million dollars per race in order to be competitive. Basically, you know that you will only be able to make 12 races “financially competitive” (whatever that may imply, exactly). Question: Which 12 do progressives focus their $$ on?
I’m suggesting that it’s not optimal to target only the “worst of the worst”. Instead, there’d be more leverage during the year preceding election day, if progressives announced that they would target, say, the worst 6 definitely, and 6 of the next worse 10, chosen randomly. This way, you put much more pressure on the 10 next worse Blue Dogs (after the worse 6), since they know that their odds of getting targeted are still high – 60%, to be precise.
There’s an analogy in college basketball. Maybe things have changed since I first read about this maybe 20 years ago, but the most efficient defenses, overall, are ones that combine zone defenses with man-to-man defenses. For example, a “box and one”. The “box” is a 4 man zone, the “one” is a defensive specialist, who can be assigned to shadow the top scorer. Most college teams have at most one star, or “scoring machine”. Shut that person down, and you’ve taken away most of their firepower.
Zone defenses are harder to drive against, and thus better at stopping easy baskets. (I’m not sure, but they almost have to be better for defensive rebounding.). On the other hand, to stop a scorer, you don’t want to give them any room – even a 1 step advantage can be all they need to make their shots, unmolested.
Now some people think that you shouldn’t target so-called progressives, at all, but I think that’s a HUGE mistake. The progressive bloc had collective veto power over the crummy healthcare bill – they COULD have made it MUCH better. THE PROGRESSIVE BLOC COUNTS AS A HUGE FAIL. Chis Hedges has recently written a good article called “Liberals are Useless”. (And indeed, most of the liberal intelligentsia are useless, though his criteria of leaving the Democratic Party seems a little silly.) Well, the so-called progressives in Congress have, IMO, proven to be pretty damn near USELESS when it comes to healthcare. And I think, in terms of the healthcare debate, one person who would definitely agree is Jane Hamsher. See her recent diary Yes, Rahm is Totally Vindicated.
The question of how to optimally target people who you consider to be weak or flawed allies is an interesting one, and this diary of mine suggests that the answer should not be made with the same criteria as is applied to other groups, such as Blue Dogs. Kucinich is not among the “worst of the worst”, but I have called for him to be definitely targeted, anyway.
And I have already stated the reason why, but now I note that such a reason should be generalized. The general rule that I propose is that, for groups that you consider your allies, a “no forgiveness” criteria applies, and formerly reliable members of Congress who back-slide should know that they will be judged more harshly in terms of their worthiness for being targeted for primary elimination.
We couldn’t even rely on Kucinich to be a stand-up guy. Since he was, previously, IMO he needs to go. That will serve as an example for others, in the future.
(Actually, he wasn’t a stand-up guy in terms of doing any sort of re-investigation of 911, which – if a poster at 911blogger is to be believed – Kucinich lied about a number of times. But I am ignoring that, 911 as a “false flag” being what I call a “high strangeness” event, most people don’t know how to process this, anyway.)
That is primarily my point. While I think Kucinich may have proven himself easily rolled, it’ll be interesting to see his voting patterns in the future. Will he all of a sudden, based upon one vote, become a shill for the Obama Administration’s agenda, or will he remain an outspoken critic of many of their policies.
The bottom line is that I think Kucinich in House is a better option than having him out of House.
Just because he was one of the last to fall you are picking him as the target. Why don’t you go after the establishment candidates holding guns to progressives heads?
Chuck Schumer, Steny Hoyer. Barbara Boxer, Jane Harman, Eric Cantor, John Boehner, Harry Reid.
Do you want to send us off a right wing cliff? I can’t believe you can even propose such a thing.
Barbara Boxer is going to be in trouble if the Stupak faction gets its deal like is being reported. She is having enough problems with the fired up righties wanting to take her down. She doesn’t need her base of liberals and women not bothering to help her out. I’d rather see Feinstein go, but Boxer is the one who’s up this year and following the feckless leader has made it a dangerous year.
If I had my druthers, honest democratic groups would hire the best political game theorists out there, to recommend optimal primary-ing strategy.
We can be sure that such people will not pre-ordain their optimal strategy for progressives as either “you MUST go after the biggest disappointment, Kucinich” or “you MUST NOT go after the biggest disappointment, Kucinich”.
Just to show you what a swell guy I am, I will copy the same NY Times quote here, that I already posted in my OpenLeft quick hit.:
(emphasis mine)
You may find this interesting regards power and the types of it; the speaker talks fast and you need a bit of historical knowledge but his points are well made.
Boxer…. I would like to see her go..”In this country,~~~EDITED IN MODERATION~~~, to encourage the others.”
She thinks the midway between full female reproductive choice and Stupak/Nelson/Hatch is “just about right”.
And she stumped for Lieberman when he ran against a progressive after he lost the primary.
~~~ModNote: Please refrain from injecting violent attributions, even imaginary ones to anyone, no matter their station.~~~
Sorry, that was a voltaire quote.. no violence intended.
You have to fire some.. “admirals from time to time, to encourage the others.” — to do the right thing.
Yes, we are quite familiar…
I agree with those who suggest that there are better targets than Dennis. Sure we can’t count on him to be there in the crunch, but let’s get rid of the others who we can count on be against us first. Shuler and Stupak before Edwards and Kucinich.
Actually, I think you should chill. Dennis is still on your side. He just ain’t super man any more. Who you gonna replace him with? Do you have somebody who didn’t cave? Dennis wants to stay inside the party. They would have driven him out. Give him a break.
Your question actually points to another gaping hole in our democratic infrastructure. Where are the candidate pipelines that can generate TONS of decent, uncorrupted candidates, who can quickly step up to actually run in primaries, with very little notice and without needing lots of corrupting $$?
The Full Court Press can be viewed as a piece of budding democratic infrastructure that will help force the creation of yet another essentially missing piece of democratic infrastructure – viz., candidate pipelines.
My apologies metamars. I’m jumping all around this little thread. I can see that you are sincerely seeking systemic reform of the party. I just don’t think that’s possible. Bush was perfectly happy to destroy his party to satisfy his owners. Obama is the same way. What are you gonna do when the leadership would rather destroy the party than let you participate?
“RALPH NADER: They’ve all caved. They’ve all been put into line by the majority rulers in the House. So that’s not going to change, Juan.
What—I think Dennis Kucinich has been known as the great dissenter in the Democratic Party—against the criminal wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan, for impeaching Bush and Cheney, for single payer, on and on. His subcommittee hearings, which are almost never covered by the press, provide a standard for what House subcommittees should be investigating all over the country. But I think he owes an explanation to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of progressive Americans, many of whom who watch this show, who have clinged to Dennis Kucinich as the great dissenter, as the principled person, as the person who will hold the banner high. “
You change the infrastructure by public financing of campaigns.
Infrastructure is many things. Consider infrastructure for moving commericial goods around: roads, oceans, rivers, trucks, boats, airplanes, etc., etc.
You only mention one thing, and quite frankly, I don’t think you’ve given much thought to just how hard it will be to get public financing of campaigns, when achieving that requires the passing of laws by an already corrupted Congress.
Think harder, please.
newsmax.com.
Go after the biggest disappointment, but only because he is the biggest champion..
Even though Kucinch is a progressive that doesn’t help blue dogs and new dems get elected…
Game theory.. fail.
This is a completely wrongheaded idea. Are you trying to weaken progressives? Sure seems so.
You are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Who is there in Ohio to the left of Kucinich that has a reasonable chance of winning an election or primary against him?
You’re asking a good question, but not thinking hard enough about an answer. There are probably thousands of potential Kucinich’s in Ohio, maybe even 10′s of thousands, who would gladly take Kucinich’s place, if they could do so without compromising their integrity.
Where is the democratic infrastructure (small “d” democratic), that would allow one to just jump on a web site and read the biographies and activist backgrounds of all these thousands of public minded citizens, who have also stated that, under the right conditions, they would seriously entertain a run for office?
Answer: It doesn’t exist. But it would exist, if all of the progressives who spend 100′s of hours reading whiney blogs each and every year put their nose to the grindstone and first created and supported a website dedicated to that purpose, and then went about “stocking” it with interested citizens.
Heck, we could use Craig’s List to find our thousands of Dennis Kuciniches.
Again, I think the basis of my question stands. Yeah you can go to Craigslist, find a couple people worthy of your support but…do they still have a chance of winning an election, either in a primary against Kucinich or in a general election against a republican? Even if progressives mobilize that does not guarantee victory.
Personally, I think this effort to cast Kucinich as some devil in disguise is pointless and fruitless.
I agree, I’m profoundly disappointed he caved on this but crucifying him? I don’t get it.
I think you’d get it just fine, if you were a Congress critter, who is assumed to be a reliable progressive ally, and you were thinking of taking a dive.
As it is, by giving Kucinich a pass, you are sending a message not just to him, but to future members of Congress that would be rough analogues of Kucinich, that they will be forgiven for taking a dive.
Also, you should now prepare yourself for even more diving by Kucinich in the future, and furthermore, adjust yourself to a world where Kucinich is no more credible that the rest of the so-called progressive bloc.
Well, to each their own!
well if it comes to that, I’ll break out my hammer and nails.
Were progressives ever considered credible, at least by the Administration? Seem to me that the Administration never doubted any progressive votes not falling in line, even though they pandered to them by supposedly listening to their ideas on the public option and single-payer.
You can register as a lobbyist, set up shop on K-Street, and start trying to get Congress to let you – an unelected official – write legislation to profit whoever is paying you.
Is your success guaranteed? By no means.
If you fail, utterly, does that mean that K-Street is a failure, in general? Absolutely not.
There is no guarantee that the Full Court Press will succeed, either. I have supported this project, anyway, and at a time in my life when I could barely afford to. And I did this in spite of the fact that I don’t believe in all of it’s core agenda.
However, it is a different approach, and has some chance of success. Perhaps wild success. And just as importantly, it not only can – eventually – result in getting lots of incumbent deadwood out of office, it can also demonstrate an improvement in democratic process, and help build out some democratic infrastructure.
Do you have a problem with throwing
Although I didn’t develop the thesis much, I wasn’t thinking of a one-off takedown of Kucinich. OK, my ‘unorganized’ option could be characterized as such. But I’m most interested in getting people thinking about relatively permanent democratic infrastructure, that will stay in place long after Kucinich – and you and I – are dead and buried. If such infrastructure were already in place, it would have been utilized for Americans by the millions to leap to Kucinich’s defense, before he flipped.
And it would also facilitate the efforts of millions of Americans who now no longer trust Kucinich, and agree that both the United States, as well as the people of Ohio, deserve somebody with more backbone.
I have a problem throwing Kucinich under the bus based upon one vote. Should he have been voted out of office after his vote on September 14, 2001?
As upset as I am with Dennis, I cannot endorse voting him out. I do think sending him a warning would be a good idea.
I want to thank people here at FDL for addressing the Kucinich question, in a non-hostile manner. However, I am still hoping for some comments about the more general, and more important, question of democratic infrastructure.
Since people seem attracted to this thread principally because it deals with Kucinich, I will phrase the question this way:
What sort of democratic infrastructure, had it already been in place on January 2008, would have kept Kucinich from flipping?