EXCELLENT HuffPo article (a sad rarity lately) by Ryan Grim & Arthur Delaney:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/08/power-struggle-key-highli_n_530366.html The current reality of progressive politics :dilemma: shall be illuminated :think: unto you, which may lead to :banghead:
The 5 minute speed-read version:
"The defensive approach starts with candidate recruitment. Its advocates insist that the path toward liberal governance is to elect as many people with D after their name as possible, regardless of their politics. That is the Rahm Emanuel way. In 2006, as chairman of the DCCC, he successfully engineered a stunning takeover of the House. In 2008, after joining the House leadership, he solidified and expanded the majority. He supported challenges to Republicans in right-leaning districts across the country, often by recruiting the most conservative candidates he could find. The base, he figured, would come out anyway, moved in 2006 by anti-war, anti-Bush passion and in 2008 by hope and change. He was right: the strategy was effective in taking back the majority. But now it's run its course, and progressives are looking for more than just numbers.
The static approach was dictated by simple arithmetic -- win 218 seats. As Pelosi finds on a weekly basis, however, finding that number for a particular Democratic legislative item is a challenge, even with more than 250 Democrats in the chamber. The paradox flows directly from the national strategy of encouraging conservatives to run as Democrats to give the party a majority. The entire caucus gets behind the effort -- even progressives, who actively raise money for candidates who then work to undermine their very agenda.
President Obama, as he so often does, embodies both approaches. He ran as a candidate with a community-organizing background and a dynamic approach to politics, promising to shake up Washington and make the impossible possible. An ever-present and pessimistic "they" haunted his stump speeches, warning that Washington couldn't change, that the power structures were too entrenched. He would prove them wrong. As president, however, he chose instead to work with the institution exactly as he found it, charging Emanuel with accomplishing what was possible. When his economic advisers told him a stimulus of greater than a trillion dollars was needed to fill the hole created by the financial collapse, Emanuel said it wouldn't be possible. So it wasn't attempted, and unemployment soared to 10 percent.
Obama came to office with a list of 12 million supporters ready and willing to help drive his agenda, an army that could have transformed the political reality of Washington. It was never marshaled to the cause of the public option. Obama let it languish and has refused to share it with members of Congress.
...
Walking the line in a conservative district isn't easy and has required burn-out levels of commitment from Periello, Grayson, Tsongas and Shea-Porter to tending to the needs of their districts. But they have shown that they can find success, and likely reelection, by clearly asserting their politics, instead of trying to explain it away. "Part of the problem is that we often take this What's The Matter With Kansas? approach that assumes that people are reactionary and stupid and that we just need to convince them that they're going to make more money under our plan," says Perriello. "But the fact is people are good, decent, smart people and we should treat them that way. ... People don't have to agree with you on every issue but they do have to believe that you are genuinely doing what you believe is right."
...
DCCC has company in retreat. EMILY's List, for example, and the DCCC, have similar goals: The former wants as big a pro-choice majority as possible, the latter as big a Democratic majority as possible. They care, essentially, about nothing else.
Darcy Burner got the EMILY's List education on how to be a candidate. The DCCC does candidate trainings, too, as do the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and Wellstone Action. The EMILY's List and DCCC classes are lessons in how to sound conservative. "They handed out unedited Third Way talking points," says Burner. Third Way is the intellectual source of centrist Democratic talking points. She ran as a progressive, against Washington, D.C. pressure, and lost in 2006 and 2008. Besides pushing them right, the EMILY's List trainer told the class that all this stuff they were hearing about raising money online was largely a myth, that the way to do it was to hit big donors, organize high-dollar fundraisers and otherwise bang the phones. "Everyone in the room turned to look at me," recalls Burner. "I had just raised $125,000 over a weekend in August, all of it online."
...
Of course, it's not the local party that will vote in the House; it's the candidate. Progressive Krystal Ball makes the opposite case, that voters were anti-incumbent and the only way to unseat Republican Rob Wittman was by firing up the base. She was on track, she says, to recruit enough volunteers to knock on every door in the district. The PCCC sent a staffer to Virginia to help with field organizing and raised more than $30,000 for her from more than 3,000 small online donors. That's 3,000 people she can continue to tap for contributions. After several caucuses, Ball had 71 delegates locked up, to Robinson's 23. With Ball 30 short of the 101 needed to win, Robinson dropped out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVkZ8QKDLWM&feature=player_embedded 
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