Barbara Lee vs. Debra Bowen Pony Party.
This is the final showdown between two strong progessives within the Democratic Party -- Congresswoman Barbara Lee vs. Secretary of State Debra Bowen. This diary will have one purpose and one purpose only -- to select a challenger for Dianne Feinstein, the DINO incumbent of California.
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The case against Dianne Feinstein
The Senators who caved in on FISA
And just as a visual reminder:
And already there are rumblings of discontent among Democratic ranks. The votes to confirm Leslie Southwick and Michael Mukasey showed that Dianne Feinstein is not listening to the people who elected her and that she would rather gain access to the Bush administration rather than answer to the people who elected her. There is a legitimate debate to be had over whether the Democrats in the Senate lack spine or whether these caveins are part of their political calculations for the 2008 election. But what is clear is that Dianne Feinstein caves into the Bush administration because she wants access. This is similar to the SCLM in 1972 prostituting their vocation and giving favorable coverage to the Nixon administration so that they could gain access to them.
"Dianne Feinstein does not listen to the people of California," said Rick Jacobs, president of the Courage Campaign, a progressive organization in California. "She supports George Bush's agenda time after time."
Feinstein's office did not respond to messages seeking comment.
East Bay For Democracy, a chartered Democratic Club outside San Francisco, will introduce the censure motion on Saturday at the state party's executive board meeting in Anaheim. The Governing Board of the Progressive Caucus of the California Democratic Party and the Progressive Democrats of America are also backing the measure.
In addition to her move to back Mukasey, critics have lashed out at her decision last month to vote to confirm Judge Leslie Southwick to the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans. Southwick's opponents charged that his record on the bench in Mississippi demonstrated that he was both racist and homophobic. The Congressional Black Caucus, Human Rights Campaign and People for the American Way opposed his nomination.
For this to work, everybody has to get behind whoever is the winner. So, the winner of this poll will take on DiFi herself next week. It will not do us any good to continue this process unless we are all willing to get behind a challenge to DiFi; all that will do is result in needless warfare similar to the Casey vs. Pennacchio wars. Below, I will list the strengths and weaknesses of Bowen and Lee and leave you to be the judge.
Debra Bowen:
Bowen is the Secretary of State of California. Her strength is that she has shown the ability to win elections at the statewide level. She has become a tireless champion against vote fraud and vote suppression within California by taking voting machine companies to court which try to operate outside the law.
One of the biggest concerns of the next election will be who shall succeed George Bush, the worst president ever. But as the 2004 and 2000 elections showed, the problem is that no election will be won unless people of all parties can go to bed knowing that the votes were fairly counted. Barbara Boxer's challenge of the 2004 election returns was the first step back towards showing a spine against the abuses of power of the Bush administration. With the election of Bowen in 2012, we would get a strong voice for progressive values in the Senate as well as electoral reform. Bowen would be a nice compliment to Barbara Boxer.
Barbara Lee:
Lee has been one of the most strident critics of the President's Iraq policy as well as one of the strongest critics of Dianne Feinstein, hinting at supporting a primary challenge to her. And not only that, she is one of the few elected officials to show even more of a spine than Russ Feingold and his lone vote against the Patriot Act -- She voted to oppose the war in Afghanistan.
And now, the more Bush has abused his power, the more it seems that Barbara Lee may have been right all along in opposing the war in Afghanistan. The vote was a tremendous gamble even for someone in a safe district like hers:
California Congresswoman Barbara Lee, a black Democrat, is gambling that she won't share the fate of Montana Republican Jeanette Rankin, Oregon Senator Wayne Morse, and Alaska Senator Ernest Gruening. Rankin cast the only congressional vote against Franklin Roosevelt's declaration of war against Japan following the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941. Morse and Gruening cast the only votes against the Tonkin Gulf resolution that gave Lyndon Johnson full power to wage war in Vietnam in 1965.
The voters didn't forgive or forget their dissent. Rankin left Congress in 1943, and Morse and Gruening were trounced in their re-election bids. Lee followed their example when she cast the lone vote against giving President Bush carte blanche to unleash war against terrorists. She ignored polls that show that a staggering number of Americans want a swift, pulverizing hit against terrorists even if that means body-bagging innocent civilians in the process. The vote was her personal message to Bush to think before lobbing bombs, cruise missiles, and ground troops at Afghanistan.
Regardless of what one thinks about the authorization to attack Afghanistan, the fact of the matter is that this is the kind of spine that we are looking for in elected officials -- the willingess to do the will of the people, but also to be a voice of reason and to sound the alarm when the President or the rest of Congress goes too far.
It may well be that the winner of the 2012 primary will take on Ahnold, who might very well try to gain the Senate. So, whoever we select should be able to take on the governor and win once they get past DiFi in the primary election. But it can be done -- let me explain.
I spoke with someone who was from California about this -- California has morphed from being a reliable Republican state to a solid Democratic state. But the reason that Ahnold has bucked the trend was because of Gray Davis -- who people saw as more of a Republican than Ahnold ever was. And add that to the acrimonious primary fight between Phil Angiledes and Steve Westly, and it was a recipe for disaster -- Westly supporters saw Angiledes as more of a Republican than Ahnold and vice versa. So, we must pick someone that we can get behind as well as fight for.
Obamathon
