Greenwald: 3 Congressional challengers very worth supporting
My research assistant, Columbia Law student Jessica Lutkenhaus, and I spent the last several weeks examining a dozen or so Congressional challengers, obtaining their answers to a questionnaire we prepared about vital issues that receive far too little attention, and determining as well as we could which were actually viable candidates to win in their districts. The search was not restricted by party affiliation or any considerations other than quality of positions, independence, and viability. From that process, three candidates emerged who I really believe are worth highlighting and supporting: Norman Solomon in California, Franke Wilmer in Montana, and Cecil Bothwell in North Carolina. All three have a long, established record of genuine independence and outspoken advocacy on difficult issues, and I’m positive that none will simply become loyal foot soldiers to Party leadership or blend into the rotted D.C. woodwork. We took this process very seriously because once you encourage support for a candidate, their future acts become a reflection on you: people who support a candidate based on your recommendations hold you responsible, and rightfully so, for whatever they do in office.
Before highlighting what I find interesting about each — and I encourage everyone to examine what we’ve obtained and form your own judgment about who deserves your support — I want to say a few words about what this process is and is not, and why I think it’s worthwhile to do this. I obviously devote much less time, attention and energy to electoral politics now as compared even to a few years ago, and that’s because I believe that meaningful political change is far more likely to come from work done independent (and outside) of the two-party electoral process than from within it. Supporting specific Congressional candidates does not negate that assessment, nor is it (as suggested by some who take bizarre pride in their own defeatism and impotence) an implicit claim about the comparative Goodness of the horrendous Democratic Party, nor is doing this at odds with the view (which I hold) that political problems in America are systemic in nature and will not be solved through the mere (or even primary) act of voting.
But none of that means that no good can come from supporting specific candidates. It can be very helpful in many ways to have like-minded allies with intellectual integrity, true independence and political courage in Congress. This was the point I was making when I wrote a few weeks ago about why Dennis Kucinich, even in the absence of legislative successes, achieved so much good and why his defeat was a real loss.
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Below are the three candidates we’ve identified as uniquely worthy of support. Each faces a primary race, and none is the favored candidate of the Party apparatus or its leadership (those challengers favored by the Party machine are invariably corporatist types or poll-shaped, soul-less careerist politicians expected to be loyal Party foot soldiers if they win). For obvious reasons, none of these three candidates is going to receive any real support from the lobbyist and corporate class that typically finances these elections. But polling and other indicia demonstrate that victory for all three is realistic (though far from certain).
http://www.salon.com/writer/glenn_greenwald/
