The Long Game
by digby
Howie has an excellent piece up this morning about the big progressive win in Arkansas last Tuesday ----Blue America endorsee for the 2nd CD, Joyce Elliot, won her race against a DLC corporate lackey. What with all the White House pettiness over Lincoln and Halter this story got lost, and it's an important one for the the netroots to include in any postmortems on what happened in Arkansas.
Howie went over Blue America's history in the Arkansas race, recounting how we went into Arkansas with ads a year ago in targeted Democratic strongholds to try to influence Lincoln's vote on the public option and explains our history and thinking about the Halter race. It's true that we were all disappointed that he didn't win after having watched Lincoln's performance over the past few years, but for blue America, the story actually ended very well. While we didn't officially endorse Halter, we did officially endorse Joyce Elliott. And against all the odds that we were given from Arkansas political hands ("she can't win the nomination because she's black") she won.
Here's Howie:
[V]irtually everyone I spoke with in the state told me the most progressive voice in state government was a Little Rock senator, Joyce Elliott, but that she would be unlikely to go up against Blanche and the Democratic Machine, something that would end a promising political career.
And then moderate Democrat Vic Snyder, the congressman who represented the 2nd CD, which includes all of Joyce's senatorial district, suddenly decided to retire. Every progressive in the state wanted to see her run, although there was almost immediately a crowded field-- of conservative-leaning white men. In January Blue Arkansas really introduced Joyce to outsiders like myself, calling her the "the one candidate that really thrills me":
Senator Elliott is an excellent representative and a great progressive, but there are reasons to question her ability to win this district, and we all know why-race and ideology. The second was President Obama’s best district in Arkansas, but he still lost it by nine points. There is of course deep seated racism and reluctance to vote for African American candidates in some segments of Arkansas, even among so called Democrats, and the Republicans have a top tier recruit in Tim Griffin. Then you have to factor in sourness towards Obama and national Democrats found heavily in Arkansas, a product of both the President’s indifference to connecting to voters here and of our Democratic establishment refusal to respect voters by talking to them like adults and their cowardly refusal to stand up to the teabaggers and the rest of the rabid right. It’s all plenty of reason to give any of us pause when considering such a promising progressive as Elliott.
In the end Blue Arkansas endorsed her and fought hard for her. She won the first round of the 5-way primary, beating her closest opponent, arch conservative House Speaker Robbie Wills 39.6- 27.9%. Blue America endorsed her immediately, started raising funds for her and had her over to Crooks & Liars for a live session. Wills' campaign was basically to have his surrogates repeat over and over that an African-American could not win in November and that if she were nominated she would be beaten by the execrable Tim Griffin. The scare tactic didn't work and last Tuesday Joyce triumphed decisively, 53.8- 46.2%, over Wills.
If Joyce wins in November she'll be the first Africa American to win a federal election in Arkansas since the Union troops were withdrawn from the state after the Reconstruction period that followed the Civil War. She'll be facing Karl Rove protégé Tim Griffin, the disgraced ex-U.S. Attorney.
Elliott is a super impressive candidate. She has a great personal story, is a highly accomplished, effective politician, who rose to become the majority leader of the State Senate. In any other place she would have been elevated to national politics long before now.
But here's the kicker. While none of the national groups were paying attention to this race because they were concentrating on Halter, they were helping Joyce Elliott win, just by being there, ginning up enthusiasm, getting out the vote. Seems that work is worth doing, even if you lose, because there's no end to the possible salutary effects of spreading the good word wherever you can. Joyce didn't have a lot of dedicated union or national netroots help aside from BA, but all that help those groups gave to Halter spilled over onto her campaign and a true blue progressive was nominated over an establishment corporate hack.
Howie writes:Right after the votes rolled in AFL-CIO activist Amy Dean posted a worthwhile piece at Daily Kos Why Taking on Blanche Lincoln Was the Right Call + Building a Real Progressive Agenda.
Challenges within the primaries allow us to define what it means to be a real Democrat--to insist that the party truly puts the interests of working people first. That's what makes elections like Tuesday's run-off in Arkansas between Bill Halter and incumbent Senator Blanche Lincoln, the victor, so important. Labor and progressive movements got together to target Lincoln because she had opposed the Employee Free Choice Act, helped to block a robust public option in health care reform, and refused to back one of President Obama's key nominees to the National Labor Relations Board.
Conventional wisdom within the Democratic Party states that we need strong majorities in order to pass better public policies in Washington, DC. But the logic of "more" doesn't add up if those people we elect do not provide us with the votes we need. As long as our political strategies ask only that candidates have a "D" behind their names, we'll never get the type of majorities that will take hard stands to confront the power of big business and create real reform.
Going back to the Carter years in the 1970s, we had large Democratic majorities in Congress, yet we saw labor law weakened and the right to collective bargaining eroded. Under Clinton, Democratic majorities gave us NAFTA and more unfair trade. If we don't want history to repeat itself with the current administration, we cannot get wrapped up in the temporary excitement of a given electoral campaign. We need to have the memory, foresight, and strategy to craft something different. That's why we should hope that challenges within the primaries become more standard.
Doing politics differently means two things:
1) having a higher standard of accountability; and
2) judging our success in electoral contests based on a dual bottom line.
Accountability first means being clear about what our agenda is. Strong health care and labor law reforms are key structural changes needed in our economy if we are to rebuild the American middle class. We can't forget these in the next Congress and simply move on to new matters. Rather than waiting for the White House to lead and hoping that candidates follow, we must lead by putting our priorities forward. We don't need friends on issues that are foundational to working people, such as health care, living wages, and making collective bargaining the norm; we need champions.
There have been countless calls from labor and other progressive constituencies for accountability from politicians. Nobody disagrees that elected officials should be made to answer for their votes. But there is not much said about how to make this happen--about what the vehicle for ensuring accountability will be.
The answer is an organized base. None of the progressive lobbies in Washington, DC can hold any elected official accountable without strong, organized, permanent grassroots organization in the home states.
That's what Blue America's been about since its inception. If you don't try, don't support progressive candidates, challenge the establishment, work hard over a long time horizon to help build progressive infrastructure it will never happen. And like all progress it happens in fits and starts, two steps forward, one step back.
It's easy to lose heart and figure there's no point, especially when you try something as big as the Halter campaign, with all the money and institutional clout, and lose. But it seems clear from all historical examples that it takes a while to build a movement, especially one based upon a value system, worldview and set of principles rather than a single issue. It obviously requires long term dedication to education, rhetorical refinement, infrastructure building and patience. Solidarity --- the single most important aspect of movement building, in my opinion --- takes time. I don't think there are any shortcuts. And like most things in life, I would guess that it's important to acknowledge the smaller victories and build upon them.
Joyce Elliott is facing one of the most disreputable GOP dirty tricksters in the business, Tim Griffin a truly malevolent piece of work who made his bones manufacturing lies about Al Gore in the 2000 election and went on to be the poster boy for Karl Rove's despoiling of the US Attorneys office during the Bush administration. There is no person more unworthy of being in the United States congress. And at least partly because of a netroots and union push in the state, we have a very accomplished progressive running against him in the most progressive district in Arkansas. And he can be beaten.
So, despite the fact that the Halter campaign didn't go the distance, never think it wasn't worth it. If Joyce Elliott becomes the next congressional representative from the 2nd district, every penny will have been well spent, no matter what the petulant complainers from the White House said. She could very well be the one that ends up succeeding Blanche Lincoln a few years from now. That's what playing the long game is all about.
You can donate to Joyce's campaign here.
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