are blue dogs whippable?

Why is it everytime I see the “Whip the Blue Dogs” that John Williams song from Indiana Jones play through my head…..dun dun da da, dun dun daa.

While ‘critters are holding Town Halls, it would be nice to see the liberal ideal discussed. I hope Medicare-for-All gets some visibility, especially since Claire McCaskill promised her Town Hall today that “Congress will never vote for it.” Just to spite her, I’d like to see some 676 t-shirts in her next crowd.

I was at a town hall on health care with my blue dog rep, Parker Griffith, a few weeks ago and he was, and is, very forthright in rejecting any public option. I have been e-mailing him for months urging his support for single payer to no avail, but I, and many others, will not give up. I’m hoping he will have another in the area soon.

One of my dingbat senators, the Keebler Elf Jeff (Beau) Sessions, has scheduled a town hall later this week on a weekday morning when I cannot get away, but I already know what he will be spouting!

I doubt you can ever get a lot of blue dogs on single payer but it would be helpful for them to know that they are upsetting more than just birthers and teabaggers.

Isn’t there a problem with the way this is framed? HR 676 won’t be brought to the floor as HR 676 (or will it?). It will be brought to the floor as a substitute amendment to HR 3200 offered by Anthony Weiner.

So the advertising can be HR 676, but in conversations with Congressional staffs, shouldn’t we make it clear that we are talking about a Yea vote on the Weiner amendment?

And to blub: Yes, the Blue Dogs are whippable. Not all of them are as deep in the healthcare industry pockets as is Mike Ross and Charlie Melancon. But we need to get a quick sense of which of them is a non-starter. Obviously those two, but who else?

This is great, and thank-you so much, Jane, for voicing support. Although I see no downside to pressuring as many Dems as possible to stand for HR 676, I still believe the more critical SP tactic, beyond symbolism, is to keep the state single-payer ERISA waiver amendment alive. (I deliberately don’t want to call it the Kucinich amendment, because as much as I admire DK, his name is radioactive.)

Problem is, I’ve seen no indication that the ERISA waiver amendment will be put up for a free-standing floor vote, which means whether it lives or dies depends on the closed-door deliberations among House leadership. So I’m not clear on what the “ask” should be in whipping rank-n-file Dems to help keep it active. Would welcome suggestions.

You mean Beauregard will be chanting, “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”?

Yep, see the clips from Rep. Broun (R-GA) at his town hall meeting.

It looks like the Congressional sausage-makers are going to wind up serving us a big heaping helping of tofu bratwurst — i.e., something nobody likes.

When you try to please everyone, you please no one.

be nice if you included a link with that

This morning you posted about the inaction of OFA. I was meaning to comment and I didn’t get a chance …
Yesterday I attended an OFA scheduled event at Dianne Feinstein’s office.
They sent out this notice the day before:
————————————

All throughout August, our members of Congress are back in town. Insurance companies and partisan attack groups are stirring up fear with false rumors about the President’s plan, and it’s extremely important that folks like you speak up now.

So we’ve cooked up an easy, powerful way for you to make a big impression: Office Visits for Health Reform.

This week, OFA members like you will be stopping by local congressional offices to show our support for insurance reform. You can have a quick conversation with the local staff, tell your personal story, or even just drop off a customized flyer and say that reform matters to you.

And as a medical professional who knows firsthand why our system so desperately needs reform, your impact here can be enormous.

We’ll provide everything you need: the address, phone number, and open hours for the office, information about how the health care crisis affects your state for you to drop off (with the option of adding your personal story), and a step-by-step guide for your visit.

According to our records, you live near Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s office in San Francisco, CA.

Sign up now to visit Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s office in San Francisco this week.

(Not your representative, or think there might be another office that’s easier for you to get to? Click here to find a different office.)

As you’ve probably seen in the news, special interest attack groups are stirring up partisan mobs with lies about health reform, and it’s getting ugly. Across the country, members of Congress who support reform are being shouted down, physically assaulted, hung in effigy, and receiving death threats. We can’t let extremists hijack this debate, or confuse Congress about where the people stand.

Office Visits for Health Reform are our chance to show that the vast majority of American voters know that the cost of inaction is too high to bear, and strongly support passing health reform in 2009.

Don’t worry if you’ve never done anything like this before. The congressional staff is there to listen, and your opinion as a constituent matters a lot. And if you bring a friend, you’ll have more fun and make an even greater impact.

Click below to sign up for an Office Visit for Health Reform:

http://my.barackobama.com/OfficeVisit

Wherever you live, these visits matter: Many representatives are pushing hard toward reform, and they are taking a lot of heat from special interests. They deserve our thanks and need our support to continue the fight. But those who are still putting insurance companies and partisan point-scoring ahead of their constituents must know that voters are watching — and that we expect better.

Earlier this week, the President wrote that “this is the moment our movement was built for” and asked us all to commit to join at least one event this month. This is the way to answer that call, and rise to the challenge of this moment together.

Thank you for going the extra mile when it matters the most,

Mitch

Mitch Stewart
Director
Organizing for America
———————————————————————–
I signed up for 2PM monday and immediately received a confirmation.
I went. It was terrific. There were about a dozen of us there, and a representative of Feinstein met every group on the hour in the lobby for a
long and in depth discussion.
I have had an email today, saying the hourly groups had grown to 75 people
as one time.
These groups are scheduled every hour all week.
I am putting this account here, because the group I attended made it clear to the Feinstein staff that we were all for single payer — but would support a strong public option.
The Feinstein rep told us that Sen Feinstein supported a public option, and many people said that she had not previously said that publicly.
Our group then asked why Sen Feinstein was not out there fighting for us.
It was very dramatic, and I thought very effective.
I’ll tell you that they did not know that we would be coming, and were
quite surprised.

So, why is trying to whip the blue dogs a great idea?

Teddy is upstairs!
Reid’s Re-Elect Reasons to be Rocky

bravo!

Can’t find the clips. But here is a first-person account:

Broun Town Hall

I’ll try to find the YouTube that I saw.

I wrote a post about it:

http://campaignsilo.firedoglak…..amendment/

This sounds like a Democratic organized thug like campaign against the Blue Dogs. Don’t you know that organizing and showing up at Town Hall Meetings with Opposition Views is Un-American.

For your information there is no HR 3200. There is a version in the House E & C Committee that had over 40 amendments, there is a versison that came out of House Ed. & Labor, and a version that came out of House Ways and Means. The staff of E & C told me today that they would not have their part correlated until sometime in Sept. and then the Rules Committee would have to put the bills from the three committees together. Anyone who says that they know what is in the bill is a liar because there is no one bill with all the amendments.

That post was about pressuring Blue Dogs to vote for a bill containing the amendment. I’m asking about how to exert pressure on House leaders and/or the Rules Committee to keep the amendment alive in the consolidated HR 3200. Because without that pressure, the amendment is going bye-bye before the bill comes up for its full vote.

thanks for the advertising, and for issuing the challenge. we’ll take all the help we can get!

whipping blue dogs may feel like banging your head against a brick wall, but i live in joe scarborough’s [yes, that joe scarborough] former district. blue dogs can’t be any scarier than that.

why the hell not?

if it doesn’t work, then it didn’t work. but the blue dogs sure aren’t going to whip themselves!

yay!

thank you! heartwarming to hear reports like yours, and i hope more people follow your example.

will it be brought to the floor as hr 676?

i don’t actually know that right now, and have to admit that i was assuming weiner was planning to do the same thing he had planned in the e&c committee: offering an amendment that would essentially substitute hr 676 for hr 3200. i’m going to have to make some phone calls tomorrow.

yes!!!!!!

howdy, neighbor! [well, form er neighbor, i guess. i used to live in the next district over from yours].

Jane, I want to know what you think about this. Why not ask everyone in a Blue Dog district or any Democrat district to sign a petition stating that they will just stay home in 2010 if their representative doesn’t support a true public option? Since we don’t have the dollars of the health insurance “industry” lets make these POS representatives and Senators remember that it’s votes that count! I don’t know how to pull this off but I think someone (especially you) knows how to.

Got a great email from Rep. Mike Thompson, the blue dog on the Ways and Means Committee that voted for their version of HR 3200. I don’t know if it was written especially as a statement I can share with the neuropathy community in his district, or was a general newsletter to his constituents, but one of the things that impressed me was the review of his long standing health care advocacy from his state senate days to his present role as our rep.

His doc doesn’t address some of my special concerns – like no particular/specific reference to the public option, much less HR 676 option, or the need to incorporate HR 2002 to provide for greater and easier access for IVIG treatments for neuropathy and other patients to correct for present legislation. But his long legislative health care reform history and his specific concerns for which he’s worked as an active HWMC member were encouraging. I hope that any FDL readers in his district will thank him for his courageous actions and thus repudiating the other blue dogs who are fighting reform.

Tonight I attended what was billed as a prayer vigil, but was actually an interfaith pep rally for health care reform now. There was only one reference to HR 3200 and no references to HR 676, etc. The event at the federal court house building featured a big sign thanking Rep. Doris Matsui for her support for health care reform. The speakers were clergy and lay persons, some of whom were old personal friends and colleagues, and some local political leaders who have long been present at SacACT political action gatherings. (SacACT stands for Sacramento Area Congregations Together, an interfaith org representing some 40 institutions in our area that have been working together for years on many issues, including health care, concerning socio-economic justice issues of concern to families. They’ve been quite successfully, I might add.

It was a low-keyed, pleasant, and occasionally inspiring experience that was such a contrast to the televised town hall meetings. Rep. Matsui was not present, but will be at one of the sponsoring churches later in the month. The event was not publicized to the public and the hundred or more attending were mostly white, although hispanic and black congregations were represented and their clergy were featured speakers. Another of the speakers was a young high schooler recently diagnosed with Type I diabetes; she was fairly newly enrolled in a state program (whose funds I think have been cut by the Schwarzenegger budget) and whose dad is also diabetic. While he works 14 hours a day six days a week, he doesn’t make enough money to pay for insurance for the family, or his much needed meds. She worries about his life and potential death for lack of proper care. Youth speakers are common at SacACT events.

SacACT is part of a national network of local community organizations (one might consider them a “conservative” ACORN org) and that network is doing a lot of local events and DC lobbying work for health care reform.

I’m glad to have been told about the event being provided the means to attend, and most of all being enlivened and encouraged to get back in to the process.

Maybe there’s a SacACT type organization in your area that’s mobilizing the faith communities in your area to work for health care reform at the local, state and national levels.

Blessings,

That’s correct, but the amendment is to HR 3200 even though the substitute language is HR 676. So it will come up in consideration of HR 3200.

Another link reporting on a Broun Town Hall, this time from Clarkesville, GA.

Obamacare a ‘rotten fish,’ says Broun at town hall

I don’t think such petitions will work. They think most people will settle for what we finally get, and I’m not entirely sure they’re wrong about that. In any case, it smells of negativity. The effort level is just too high for the reward it promises.

I am much happier with the fact that I’m seeing the HR676 and Public Option supporters working together instead of mutually recriminating.

Depends. They only reason they’d keep it off the floor that I can see is if they think the Republicans would vote for it just to fuck with everyone. But that sort of blows their whole “anti-socialism/death panel” crap, so unlikely.

Otherwise, why not? It’s not going to pass. Let it get to the floor. No danger.

If you’re looking for a way to leverage it onto the floor, however, it would be the same mechanisms. Cosponors would have to band together to hold up something that leadership wants. But it’s a lot of anxiety to go to for something that doesn’t have the votes, and I can’t see any member of Congress doing that.

good point. and since we don’t know for sure that it will be purely hr 676, and since goodness only knows what’s really going to come out of the conferencing anyway, i’m sticking with talking about the original single payer bill that i want — hr 676.

i figure that as things evolve, the message can too.