Donna Edwards, Where Are You?

Blue America supporters contributed $64,000 to Donna Edwards’ campaign last year, helping to keep it afloat in the early days before the big institutional money came in at the end.  Many did so because of her great position on health care.

Howie Klein has covered Donna’s health care support at length:

Thank God, there are members of the House who are looking out for their constituents. The gold standard in this case is Maryland Congresswoman Donna Edwards who has stated flatly that there will be no health care bill passed without, at a minimum the compromise position (public option):

"I think that there is absolutely a strong sentiment in the House of Representatives, frankly, that we will not get a bill through there if we don’t have a strong robust public option…

But if you parse that statement, she’s not actually saying she won’t vote for a health care bill without a public option — she’s saying she doesn’t think there will be support for one.

 "[W]e’ve had a number of conversations in a variety of caucuses, you know that the tri-caucus, which is the Black caucus, the Hispanic Caucus, I mean, Asian Pacific Islander caucus, actually came up with a set of ideas and principles for healthcare reform, as did the progressive Caucus and a strong public option was part of that. Well if you add the numbers together, those caucuses, if you don’t have those in the fold, then you don’t have a bill."

How many of those people will vote "no" if those principles are not reflected in the final bill?  Because if they won’t commit to that, their good intentions are ultimately worthless.  But we don’t know, because Donna doesn’t say.

Howie continues:

A few weeks ago Donna told me herself that Speaker Pelosi had asked her to work on bringing together different parties to guarantee that the bill that comes out of the House will include the public option and the Speaker has also said that without its inclusion, there will be no bill.

We’ve seen two very successful whip operations by Nancy Pelosi in the past few weeks to crush progressive opposition to some very bad bills — the war supplemental and the Waxman-Markey ACES bill (see Doggett, Lloyd).  Do you really trust her to make sure that no bill passes without a public plan?

Really?

Donna may be facing a primary challenger next year because AIPAC has marked her insufficiently loyal to their causes.  Which is crazy.  Nonetheless, if and when that happens, she’ll need the support of people who were there for her in 2006 and 2008, and who want to be there for her again in 2010.  But waiting until the last minute and then getting steamrolled into voting for a bad bill health care bill like Lloyd Doggett did over ACES is a recipe for disaster, and Donna needs to let us know now that she won’t do that. 

I’ve contacted both Donna and her office four times now, and have never gotten any response from them, despite the fact that we’ve been fighting for her for years.

There is reason for concern:

1. Donna initially opposed the bank bailout last year, but under pressure she switched her vote. 
2. She voted against the supplemental the first time, she’s vote against it the second, had her arm twisted by Obama and changed to undecided, but in the end cast a "no" vote.   (Several progressives got released when leadership found they found they had enough votes to pass it, but I don’t know what happened with individual members.) 
3. She was emphatic that "a price should be paid by polluters and the resources placed in communities for renewables use" in any climate change bill, but was whipped into voting for Waxman-Markey anyway.

Call Donna’s office and tell her you want her to take the Pledge.  Let her know that you’ve been a big supporter of hers for years and you have confidence that when it comes down to it, she’ll be there for you, but you want her to say it now — recent history has shown that waiting til the last minute is not the best idea.

DC: (202) 225-8699, Silver Springs: (301) 562-7960, (301) 516-7601

Will she or won’t she Take the Pledge?