So my Blue Dog "No Labels" Democratic Congressman ran a commercial

[neverforget]

on local television. I swear to God that it was for a Republican. He was talking about how his No Labels bullshit was about bringing the Cons together with Democrats and balancing the budget. Of course what he didn't mention was that it was balancing the budget on the backs of the poor and elderly. Kurt Schrader is my Congressman. Ugh. With Democrats like him.......

I voted against him in the primary but I have to vote for the turd in the general because the Republican, is well, a lunatic Republican by the name of Tootie Smith. She's done a lot to fuck up our county. I so wish I was in Earl Blumenaeur's district like I was in 2010 before redistricting.....

[hollysmom]

1. how much is the crap he has to say to get elected and

how much do you really think he believes.

People are so crazy lately, I think a lot of people are afraid to run as liberals.

[neverforget]

2. I think he believes that BS. I've sent him emails and letters about his votes and I get

nothing in response. Pisses me off that his office doesn't reply and that my choice is a conservative Democrat and a conservative lunatic Republican.

[hollysmom]

3. well, if he is an incumbent, you know where he is going.

if he were a newbie, you might write it off

[neverforget]

4. it's hard to accept that I went from a liberal/progressive Democrat to a Blue Dog/Third Way

Democrat and I didn't even move.

[hollysmom]

14. sorry. I am in a long forgone republican district

the state offices are all pre-selected - the problem is the opponents just are not trying, so there is no choice here, everyone will win big. heck most county and city offices there is no opposition. My sister is sick, so I might even skip the election if my sister is not better and go out of state to help her.

[neverforget]

15. Very sorry to hear about your sister. I hope that she gets better soon!

Vote absentee if you can but I understand that life gets in the way of stuff. In Oregon, we're blessed with vote by mail so I can take my time voting.

[merrily]

5. No Labels-begun by a Bushite, flocked to by Clintonites.

Carroll Quigley believed that what best served financial markets was as little change as possible from one administration to the other.

Influence on Bill Clinton

In his freshman year in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown, future U.S. President Bill Clinton took Quigley's course, receiving a 'B' as his final grade in both semesters (an excellent grade in a course where nearly half the students received D or lower).[2] 4, 96

Clinton named Quigley as an important influence on his aspirations and political philosophy in 1991, when launching his presidential campaign in a speech at Georgetown.[2] 6 He also mentioned Quigley again during his acceptance speech to the 1992 Democratic National Convention, as follows:

As a teenager, I heard John Kennedy's summons to citizenship. And then, as a student at Georgetown, I heard that call clarified by a professor named Carroll Quigley, who said to us that America was the greatest Nation in history because our people had always believed in two things–that tomorrow can be better than today and that every one of us has a personal moral responsibility to make it so.[17]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carroll_Quigley#Influence_on_Bill_Clinton

[ctsnowman]

6. I feel your pain.

[liberal_at_heart]

7. at some point people will have to begin to not vote for these democrats in the general election

or there won't be any thing left for the poor and the elderly. One day we will look back and it will all be gone. Then what will we do?

[Jim Lane]

8. That only helps elect a Republican who'll be even worse.

There's this recurring fantasy that if progressives withhold their votes in the general, Democrats will respond by moving to the left. What it actually does is to convince the Democrats that the liberal "purists" will never vote for them anyway, so they should tack to the right to try to win over some of the centrists.

If the district is one that might elect someone better, support that better candidate in the primary. In other districts, the harsh reality is that getting a conservative Democrat is the best you can hope for, because the only other candidate who might win is a Republican who's much more conservative.

[hobbit709]

9. So you're saying we should eat shit and be happy?

I'm tired of hearing that crap. If you're going to get screwed by either one than how is voting for the D any better. Screwed is screwed.

[Jim Lane]

10. I'm not happy that there so many right-wingers, but my unhappiness doesn't change the real world.

So, no, nothing in my pose says that we should be happy about a bad political situation. I'd love to live in a country where the general election offered me a choice between two major-party candidates with real chances of winning, Hillary Clinton for the Democrats and Bernie Sanders for the Socialists (with the occasional mocking sidebar about the minor-party Republicans, who oppose progressive taxation and who will get their usual 0.5% of the vote).

But I don't live in that country.

Your conclusion that "Screwed is screwed" echoes the Naderite foolishness of 2000 that there's no significant difference between the parties. Conservative Democrats will vote with Republicans on some things but will draw the line on others. For example, I think very few Democrats would vote to privatize Social Security, but most Republicans in Congress probably would. The defeat of an increase in the minimum wage means we're screwed, but that doesn't mean it's exactly the same as the loss on the minimum wage PLUS the privatization of Social Security. The latter would be much worse.

If nothing else, party identification is worth something. The OP's conservaDem will, if elected, be one vote for ousting Paul Ryan as Budget Committee Chair. If you'd like to see John Conyers back in charge of the Judiciary Committee, then, yes, you hold your nose and vote for the conservaDem.

[liberal_at_heart]

11. thank God children don't think like adults. Did the kids in the 60's think that way? Where would

we be if they had? My 19 yr old daughter says that Bernie Sanders name is all over social media. I for one will not let the young people be the only ones to fight for their future. I will fight for it too.

[Jim Lane]

12. And where exactly did I say that we shouldn't fight for the future?

Maybe someone should set up a sock puppet account counseling defeatism and despair, so all you people who are so keen to rebut that view would have a punching bag where you could vent your energy.

As for those kids in the 60s, my memory is that a lot of them sought to change society in 1968 by working for the primary campaigns of Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy. After Humphrey won the nomination, McCarthy endorsed him, saying to his supporters something like, "I'm voting for Humphrey and I think all of you should suffer along with me."

If Humphrey had picked up a few more votes and beaten Nixon, the country wouldn't have been perfect, but it would have been substantially closer to the ideals of McCarthy and Kennedy than it was with Nixon in office. I considered both Al Gore and John Kerry to be too conservative, but I voted for them and volunteered for them, and it's clear that we would have been better off with either of them in office than with Bush.

In my book, the people who are NOT fighting for the future are the ones who, if they consider the Democratic nominee to be less than perfect, petulantly stomp off and make themselves irrelevant by voting third party or not voting.

[liberal_at_heart]

17. You can think of me whatever you want. Seattle City Counsel has its first socialist

counsel member. The city has adopted a $15/hr minimum wage. Radical change can happen. People just have to fight for it. I see my son suffer in school everyday because both the republicans and democrats are privatizing public education. Both parties are cutting social services, so I don't know if SSDI will be around for my autistic son when he will need it. Neither party supports proper federal funding for K-12 or universities the way they did decades ago, so my daughter is having to take on massive debt to get a college education. Neither party really supports a living wage($10/hr that democrats suggest is not enough) so even if my daughter gets a college degree she will probably be making less than someone in her field did a decade ago. Our way of life is disappearing before our very eyes. It is happening now. I will not sit by and let the democrats slowly sell my children's future.

[MohRokTah]

13. What is the name of your local precinct committee person?

How much effort did you put into getting this guy out in a primary?

[neverforget]

16. What are you getting at? That I didn't do enough to get him out?

[MohRokTah]

18. Just establishing your level of activism.

The primary happened. It was an opportunity to get rid of him.

What did you do personally to make that happen? Did you canvas for his opponent? Did you donate, or work to get donations for Anita Brown? Do you know Anita Brown's postions on the issues and are they more progressive than Schrader's? I know the answer to that. She only got 16.2% of the vote, so it's hard to say if you can get anybody more progressive in that specific district and a Blue Dog Dem is better than a Republican any day due to the numbers game in the Congress.

You might be able to get somebody more progressive, but maybe not nearly so progressive as Anita Brown. She certainly didn't have the funds to successfully challenge Schrader.

In any district, it takes work to change the beliefs of the electorate, which is why I asked if you could name your local party precinct committee person. Everybody who is active should be on a personal basis with the person who holds that position.

Otherwise, figure Schrader will be your Representative for another 12 to 20 years.

At least you'll be able to type out complaints about him on the internet.

[neverforget]

19. Speaking of typing out complaints on the internet..you've been on DU since

April 11, 2014 and have 4774 posts since then. That's 795 posts per month. I've been here since 2001 and I have 7790 posts or about 49 posts per month. Someone is a little more active on the "internet" than me.

As for my time and money, I work graveyards anywhere between 40-60 hours per week. My time is precious and I spend what I can with my family because I don't see them much due to my schedule. I belong to a union in which I am active because the company is trying to fuck us. I vote in every election and donate to candidates and causes of my choosing.

I'm voting with my nose plugged and very reluctantly for Schrader because the alternative is far worse. I don't like it and I will complain about his policy stances all I want. He's all on board the Simpson-Bowles Budget which repugnant. How can a Democrat support such an austerity driven budget that cuts Social Security and Medicare? Raising the Medicare age from 65 to 67? Chained CPI for Social Security? Really? And it gets worse as the Chained CPI would affect civilian and military pensions, veteran's benefits and Pell Grants. But the Defense Department only has to save about $10 billion/year until 2023. My priorities don't line up with Schrader but his seem to line up more with Republicans.

[MohRokTah]

20. It really doesn't take that much to get involved.

And getting involved at the local level can result in you being able to eventually get rid of Schrader for somebody who is at least a bit more progressive.

I spend a few hours each month with the local party committee most months and spend more time as primaries approach and as the GE approaches (hint, getting busier now).

It's that easy, and your impact is incredibly huge with that little investment of time because so few people get active in the way that is most effective. The most local level is the way to have the biggest impact. You'd be surprised how few people actually get involved at a local level.

And believe it or not, you could end up getting yourself elected to some local office and eventually end up challenging Schrader yourself.

I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever in my mind that you would be a better Democratic Representative for your district than Schrader.

If you ever do get involved and do end up running for some office, PM me. I'll donate to your local campaign committee. I support your stances on the issues you've laid out and I believe we would never be far apart on most issues.

It's people like you that can effect the most change, starting locally.

[neverforget]

21. Thank you for believing that I could do a better job than Schrader. I wish I had the time

to help out, but I don't. I need to work on my family life more than politics right now.