Jane,

Please. Why can’t FDL get behind Single Payer now? Use the clout with Progressive Caucus? You got the troops. Single Payer is a structure that will work with monitoring and intelligence, and removal of Bush sabotage of 2003.

I was disturbed by earlier thread. Felt like FDL egos might be blocking progress and going after messengers of truth to power. I’m just sayin….

Responsibility is the “ability to respond.” We don’t have time to do the 5 stages of grief over PO. Rally for Single Payer. They — we — need you. So does Obama. He waded into lobby-loving Congressional and his own pool of corporate quicksands. And wingnuts, many have Medicare, and will criticize it anyway. WTF! Media keeps defining surreality. We need to just keep our eyes on the prize.

Public option was a brand … a trust-us idea … Medicare is a structure and sure it is in the hands of the less than trustworthy. It will bankrupt us if Obama doesn’t jettison not add Bush and corporate “protections”.

But no Pyrrhic victory with PO especially for poor Prog Caucus. Give them some meat to really defend. Single Payer. Weiner is sticking his neck out. Single payer people still working hard. Doctors Mad as Hell, and Calif. nurses and many many from all ideologies are working for this. Mike Moore has a website of where House members stand on Single Payer. Can you apply FDL support where it is needed? Where there is still a snowball’s chance?

Pelosi voicemail is never available. She can pull it off. She wants WH to tell her to. WH? We need loud pressure on him FAST!!!!

Patriarchal paradigm is about power and competition. Humanist (feminine) paradigm is about cooperation and partnership. Dems need to rally together again. We need catalytic leaders. Not hard-jawed ones. Single payer people and Public option people working together to help America against the bastards. We need each other.

FWIW.

libby

$100K is the very bottom threshold; that’s the figure state rep candidates here in MI have been told they should have on Jan. 1st of the election year. Senate seats are naturally going to take considerably more, given the size of the turf being covered.

A candidate must also be able to muster the shoe leather to do the job, both their own and that of others. Has a candidate already courted key entities and asked for their endorsement? has a candidate a built-in organization they can tap for volunteers? If not, they need to pursue these manpower resources ASAP. And they must show a commitment of their own either through past experience or current effort. In highly local races, a candidate should expect to knock on each door three times during the course of a race, and in the case of larger races, they must have a plan to have proxies help do this with them to assure name recognition.

And a viable candidate must be one who is grounded in the reality it may take two or more runs for office to develop both a solid understanding of their district and the requisite name cred to win. Especially important if they have a name which ends up below the incumbent on a ballot — seriously, sometimes if a race is that tight, even placement on a ballot makes a difference unless the candidate has made a very compelling and personal case to voters.

Lastly, a really good candidate is wired into the right resources and can tap on a really great campaign manager, online outreach and organizer folks and not flounder around for too long on their own. They’ll have the discipline necessary to get a solid website, literature, signage all in sync with their messaging and they can stay on message without having to be battered by their campaign manager to do so.

Not easy, but I can think of a truly excellent candidate right now. Just wish they lived in MI-12.

Naturally, local press must also see how you’re going to raise the other $250K (if you live in a rural, single media-market district), or the other $2 – 4 million (if the district is urban).

The only other approach requires a person with unquestionably thorough name recognition in the district, who also can convince local press the requisite funds are within reach.

Issues then come into play, but, in truth, for a serious campaign, especially one unseating an incumbent, the issues are very much secondary.

For example, General Electric has a captive insurance subsidiary which participates in the larger insurance industry.

Although GE stands to make a lot of money from health care information systems under reform, it already makes one helluva lot of money staying in bed with its friends. It’s simply betting on the sure thing.

Like David Bonior, who used to be the rep for MI-12 before Sander Levin. Where is Bonior now? and is he still in support of John Edward’s public option?

There’s another challenge with Bonior’s district, and that is redistricting; I don’t know yet which district(s) are likely to suffer for the massive loss of population here, could very well be MI-12 is one of several which will be gerrymandered and re-jiggered into another district. Hazel Park, which is part of MI-12, has had a devastating loss of population in sync with the fortunes of the auto industry; no idea where it all will end up.

And it could be this factor which is causing both Dale Kildee (MI-05) and Sander Levin (MI-12) to play it far too close to the cuff. Kildee’s district includes much of the city of Saginaw and Flint, which have also suffered immensely from auto industry-related population losses. Where these districts have been consistently blue in the past, the people who migrated out may well have been blue voting, blue collar workers.

Might need some feedback from AFL-CIO and SEIU folks in these districts on likely young prospects. Do NOT trust the UAW alone on this as they have been pointedly missing in action, and I suspect they’ve either been told to stand down because they were bailed out or that they’ve become too partisan in the wrong direction.