Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Is the Progressive Block Strategy Working?

I've been a bit skeptical only because I've never had spelled out in way that I could process internally and then defend but that all changed today. This new post on FDL finally gave me the backfill I needed to bring it all together when Jane explained the reasoning for the 3 criteria they are pushing progressives in congress to pledge to:

That definition was drawn up to explicitly to get people to commit to vote against the Conrad plan. Available day one (no triggers), nationwide (no state balkanization), answerable to Congress and the voters (as opposed to answerable to states that lack bargaining power at the federal level).

There's a lot more thought given to this strategy than I was giving credit. You'll learn from reading the post how this works to get progressives commit to a strong plan that can only get stronger and how it catapults fiery rhetoric (think Harry Reid) that is frittered away in procedural mumbo-jumbo.

2 comments:

toniD said...

Good post maggiesboy.

I hope it keeps working. Looks like Blanche Lincoln is leaning.

We need the Senator from Missouri who seems very liberal for other things but is balking at the public option.

Nelson, what can I say

maggiesboy said...

It's going to be easier to get Democrats to get with the program if the heat keeps up. I believe they are getting it that we're not going to just settle to have "numerical control" of Congress, they are going to have to start producing legislation. If it takes stepping over and on Republicans to get bills through then so be it. God knows they walked all over us for 12 years.

If we can keep the calls coming in and the ads running, I think we can get things done but we're going to have to vote in some new faces in '10 and '12 to make them remember we don't forget once the election is over.