New tactics in the FISA fight

By Libby

I'm with Sha on the time change. I'm foggy and cranky in trying to readjust and it's a work week so my posting has been off, but I'm still reading the news even if I don't have the energy at the end of the day to talk about it. Anyway, new developments in the FISA fight have been a bit confusing in my impaired state. I received a disturbing email yesterday from Jane and Glenn and the team that said we were about to lose. Then this morning, TPM posted this encouraging news.

As The New York Times reports this morning, the House leadership's draft proposal for a surveillance bill contains a provision that would reject giving retroactive immunity to the telecoms. Instead, it would give the courts authorization to hear the classified material at issue in the case -- in essence disposing with the administration's claim of the state secrets privilege. I had a senior House aide walk me through the proposal, which is sure to infuriate the administration.

A complete contradiction of the email that said this last night.

At this point it seems that all is lost on FISA. It looks like in the process of negotiating a compromise with the Senate, the House will be forced to have an up-or-down vote on retroactive immunity. We shouldn't expect that vote to go our way.

Of course, our indefatigable FISA fighters has already come up with a Plan B.

But rather than getting mad while we watch the Fourth Amendment go up in flames, we're going to start getting even.

We've picked out some of most reactionary Democrats, and are turning it over to progressive activists like you to decide who the worst offenders are. We'll then run ads and robo-calls in their congressional districts to let their constituents know how poorly their Representative is representing their rights.

Go here to cast your vote and chip in to the effort to hold Congress accountable.

Since the final votes haven't been cast yet on FISA, hopefully we can shame some of them into righting their moral compass and voting against retroactive immunity. If not, we'll make sure that each one of their constituents knows about it.

It appears to have worked already in light of the improved news this morning and amazingly, they raised $40,000 in one day even though only a few blogs had announced the efforts.

In some ways it's difficult for me to believe we've managed to stall telecom immunity for this long but I think this development is a clear sign that the progressive blogs have not only developed a voice loud enough to be heard over the din of conventional wisdom inside the Beltway, but have also organized to the point where perhaps we instill enough fear of a backlash, that our Congresslizards are no longer willing to bank on the false premise that we will forget, or back off, if they betray us and the priniciples on which this country was founded.

This morning it looks to me, like maybe we can make this system work after all.

Clinton primary coattails

I've been tracking the PA-18 Democratic primary for a while now as I think the incumbent Republican, Congressman Tim Murphy (R-Upper St. Clair) is vulnerable to an aggressive challenge, as he has not had that since he took the R+2 district immediately after it was redistricted to favor him in 2002. I think Beth Hafer (D-Mt. Lebanon) is a pretty good Democratic challenger who has a decent range of party/institutional/good ole boys support, as well as progressive activist support. She fits the district, and she has a good political last name, as her mother, Barbara Hafer has been a fixture in moderate politics in SW PA for a while.

I just received a fundraising e-mail from the Hafer campaign (the first one I have received in months), and it has a couple of strong points in it. The one I liked was the attempt to focus most of her energies against the incumbent, and not her two Democratic primary challengers. She is framing Murphy as corrupt and out of control, which if she can make it stick, is a powerful frame. There is enough supporting evidence circulating that enough people have heard/seen that this charge should stick if aggressively pursued.

Another aspect that is interesting in her e-mail is the assumption that the energized Democratic Presidential Primary vote will help her campaign. I think this is very likely as I am projecting PA-18 will go heavily for Hillary Clinton on April 22nd, and one of Clinton's strongest groups of support are older female voters. Hafer should get a significant boost from down ballot waterfall voting, and in a three way primary, that will be a decisive factor. I wonder if there are other districts that will see Democratic Primary Clinton coattails?

However there is one thing that I really don't like the e-mail and it is who she is using for her polling/strategy:

We have raised the most money of any Democratic challenger. And have put that money to good use. Our campaign team includes nationally renowned firms Penn, Schoen & Berland, Adelstein Liston media services, and JMG 360 direct mail. Moreover, our new campaign manager comes from Joe Sestak’s 2006 Congressional campaign and is familiar with unseating a corrupt Republican incumbent. [emphasis mine]

Bragging about Penn is never a good idea among Democrats. It is a statement with no real value add to it unless the message is being aimed at high money, DLC/Emmanual aligned donors, but this e-mail is targeted at small and medium size donors ($50 to $250 is probably the quartile range that they want to get from this segment of the donor base). Even the people who think what he does is valuable don't like him. The Clinton campaign team, for whom he works for, has buried several battle axes into his back already this month. Most of the activist base of the party thinks that he is a net negative at best. Just don't brag about bringing in the microtrending, school uniform, anti-video game violence, myopic Penn.

Triple Clinton blow-outs needed to avoid Obama Clinch

Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings is running some numbers and the basic conclusion is that Clinton needs blow-out delegate wins in Ohio (plausible), Rhode Island (probable) and Texas (implausible) to have a reasonable chance of winning the pledged delegate battle with Obama.

Average: Obama 1180, Clinton 1031.125. Difference between the two: 148.875 delegates.

There are 981 pledged delegates yet to be assigned. Of these, by my count, Clinton must win 565, or just under 58%, in order to be tied in the pledged delegate count coming into the convention.

What all this means is that I don't see how Clinton can manage to win the nomination absent either truly astonishing wins in the delegate counts, or some sort of massive Obama flameout. That being the case, I think that while Clinton obviously has the right to stay in the race as long as she wants, if she doesn't pick up over, say, 40 delegates tonight, she should consider withdrawing. 40 delegates would still raise, not lower, the percentage of the remaining pledged delegates that she needs in order to tie Obama before the convention. Anything less would leave the odds of her winning the nomination very, very small.

Hillary Clinton needs blow outs in a campaign season that has seen her win no blow-outs in heavily contested states. The only significant blow-outs have been in caucuses where she did not deign to compete, or the Wisconsin and Potomac primaries. And those blow-outs went to Obama. I can understand 'suspending' her campaign if she thinks Obama will flame out but if she does not net 60+ delegates, the math requires a massive flame-out to work.

BJ at Northman's Fury is understandable getting frustrated that unless Clinton wins massively tonight, we'll be shooting ourselves in the foot:

If Hillary doesn’t win both contests, and by significant margins, the chances of her catching up to Obama in delegates are very slim indeed. At that point, the only thing her staying in the race does is diminish the chances of a Democrat winning in November....

Whatever else, I don’t want to see the Democrats wasting their resources beating each other down for the next several months, because I really, really don’t want to listen to failed Beach Boy President McCain tell us all how great his “bomb, bomb Iran” strategy really is.

IF Hillary Clinton comes out of tonight (actually sometime this weekend with the Texas caucuses reporting late) with sixty or more net pledge delegates, then I welcome a sustained and on-going primary. I am a bit worried about seeing more yellow and red cardable attacks that validate right wing frames, but I think the Democratic Party has two very popular, widely accepted candidates who have strong but different bases of support. If both candidates still have plausible pathways to the nomination, then a continued contest is beneficial. However if one candidate has a plausible pathway and the other is looking for a heart attack or the Samson Option, all institutional means should be used to preserve the party's core strength.

Tonight should be interesting.

Edwards joins anti-occupation effort

By Libby

The headline is somewhat misleading but this is great news. John and Elizabeth Edwards will be joining a campaign co-ordinated among several liberal/progressive groups who will mount an effort to raise public awareness on the monetary price of remaining in Iraq. The Iraq/Recession Campaign hopes to gain public support by highlighting the connections between the cost of the Iraq occupation and our economic meltdown at home.

Two of the groups involved, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and MoveOn.org have endorsed Obama, but others including VoteVets.org and Americans United for Change haven't endorsed anyone. Also participating is "the Center for American Progress, the liberal think tank led by John Podesta, a former aide to President Bill Clinton." If it wasn't an election year or these were Republicans organizing to support the occupation, one might suppose the media would be calling it a non-partisan group.

Progressive Policies Open Thread

by shamanic

Okay, so I'm a little behind on these here intertubes, but I've got to agree with Ezra that as nice a change as four years of poetry emanating from the White House would be on its own, this is a really critical juncture in America where real progressive change can happen. I do believe that Obama is the candidate to do that, to make the arguments and build the coalitions and make the shriek machine of the right look like exactly the kind of dollar-for-shouting mill it is, and I'm crossing my fingers that he will.

And what kind of progressive changes most interest me? Well, if we can return back to American history before it was so rudely interrupted by George Bush, Florida, 9/11, and Iraq, there was a growing progressive consensus in this country that our trade policy was completely insane, and that's where I'd like to see some energy focused.

We ink these deals that basically wipe out businesses and even industries here in the States, that include no language on environmental impact or the right of labor to organize in our partner nations, and then over and over again we get horror stories about abuse and destruction in the factories that make the crap we buy every day. This is crazy.

We already have large international institutions like the World Trade Organization, and they are not going anywhere. So let's use them not just to mediate trade disputes, but as enforcement tools in better, less exploitative, more ecologically astute trade pacts. In short, let's be actual partners in the prosperity of our partner nations, and let's level the playing field just a tad.

That's a progressive policy change I'd like to see. Anyone else?