Matt's been co-opted! Our very own Matt Stoller! He's one of THEM! The progressive blogosphere is FINISHED now -- OVER. Watch for the "MyDD Implodes" report on Fox tomorrow evening. Chuck. Schumer. Matt Stoller, we hardly knew ye.

 (This is SNARK, RedStaters.)

 Seriously, this is great news. The best thing about the netroots is that we can keep ourselves honest, because we're about IDEAS. If a "leader" moves to the dark side, there are plenty of credible  people to move right into his or her slot and keep things humming.

 And if the netroots are meeting with established Dem leaders, hopefully learning how we can work WITH and THROUGH each other to achieve our common goals, we're going to have a whole new country in a couple of decades. In a good way.

The AFL-CIO is NOT against bloggers. They have a duty and an obligation to protect their members' interests, which sometimes means supporting otherwise unfavorable candidates that have voted in favor of working people. If the AFL-CIO were inconsistent in its bipartisan support of pro-union candidates, it would lose credibility and effectiveness as a voice for the employed persons in America.

Actually, union strategy has undergone fundamental transformations in the past, and will undoubtedly do so in the future.  The creation of the Change To Win coalition shows that some degree of transformation is happening now.

The current practice is to support pro-union incumbents, with the definition of "pro-union" being unfortunately narrowly defined, and limited mostly to treatment of existing unions, not to the larger issue of favorability to a union political culture.  This practice is badly out-of-synch with the political realities that have existed since the beginning of Reagan's presidency, when the political culture took on a decidedly aggressive anti-union tone, which has continued without letup to this day.  25 years is a long time to be out of synch.

I am not saying this to "bash" unions.  There is obviously a necessity to not be capricious in changing fundamental strategy.  But change is definitely overdue.

p.s.  These considerations were dominant in producing almost universal union endorsements for LA Mayor Jim Hahn's re-election, despite the fact that challenger Antonio Villaraigosa was a former union organizer.  The rank-and-file did not follow the leadership's direction, however--yet another indication that the model is broken.

If the unions had pressed Hahn for a much higher standard of conduct to earn their endorsements, and he had met that standard, they would have had a lot stronger hand in giving him their endorsement, and the membership probably would have been much more amenable to their leadership.

This is how it works--power is synergetic.  By demanding more for your support, you actually make that support more valuable.  By low-balling your support, you undermine its value.  And the unions, like most of the liberal/Democratic establishment have been low-balling themselves into a downward spiral for the better part of a generation now.

I interviewed Sibel Edmonds this week - President of the National Security WhistleBlowers Coalition. They have a new campaign out about the worst dozen members of congress.

Lieberman is on the list. She hates him. Here is the link to the Lieberman part of the interview.

She said that her and some of the other whistleblowers would love to go to CT and campaign against Joe.

does anyone have a sense of how "hard" the forces of darkness are actually working to further the Joementum?

I mean, has anyone seen The DSCC, the Connecticut Democratic Party, Sierra Club, NARAL, League of Conservation Voters, Planned Parenthood, AFL-CIO, SEIU, CWA, NALC, NAGE, Food and Commercial Workers, Teamster's, Firefighters, Carpenters, Postal Workers, IBEW, Human Rights Campaign actually WORKING for Joe?

(i am only being slightly sassy - i am actually curious if they are working, or if most of these folks just cut their $5,000 check and did the photo-op. I would imagine there are enough folks here who are on the ground for lamont that they could report on it)

If they aren't, can't we turn the rhetoric down between the usual allies and focus it on Joe/Ned?

The groups supporting Lieberman are followers.  Connecticut viters who think we can do better than Lieberman, who think that Ned Lamont is a great candidate, are leaders.  As George Bush might say, "it's hard work" -- it's easy to follow, it's hard to lead.  

I'd add Tester and Webb to the victory list though -- of course -- the real victory is in November.  If the choice had been left up to the interest group list there is no doubt that Morrison and Miller would be the Dem. nominees.  

It's already becoming cliche, but we're at the "then they fight us" stage, and the beginning of the "then you win."

-C.

thanks For Matt

...bloggers? Can you link to them, because I'd be interested in reading them if they put the pressure on.

Friends ~ the following list of interest groups were listed as aligned with the Lieberman campaign.....

the DSCC, the Connecticut Democratic Party, Sierra Club, NARAL, League of Conservation Voters, Planned Parenthood, AFL-CIO, SEIU, CWA, NALC, NAGE, Food and Commercial Workers, Teamster's, Firefighters, Carpenters, Postal Workers, IBEW, Human Rights Campaign

However, their endorsements were made BEFORE the rise of the roots; I feel all of those endorsements were made to solely protect a Dem senate seat.

Now, I bet their actual ground and financial support will be far LESS for Joe because of the rise of roots.

No doubt, they will be on board and helping to steer if/when Ned wins next month.

I assume that number includes about 25-30 Senators on the Republican side of the aisle because Lieberman's support in the Democratic caucus is anemic.  Also, I'm confident that Lieberman cannot even count on each the Senators who've "lent their name" to his campaign.

Look for a huge sigh of relief among Dems. on Capitol Hill when Ned Lamont wins the primary.

Please come back to this post on Aug. 9th. Trust me, it will be obvious then that far more Democratic Senators are sick of getting stabbed in the back by their honorable colleague than there are who actually want him coming back to them.  If Lieberman falls flat on August 8th, there will be plenty of self satisfied grins in the Senate Democratic cloakroom.  In fact there is no shortage of Democratic Senators who believe that they have more riding on Ned Lamont than we do!

slainte,
cl

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Hey Matt,

I wanted to thank you for your post. I was one of the black gay bloggers who launched this campaign, and it was similar to a few other efforts I've been involved in online in that we all decided to do it, posted about it, and then sent it out to our various networks. From there it became bigger news than it might have been otherwise.

It helped that we'd all collaborated in similar things, in particular covering incidents of violence against black LGBT people (many of which were in NYC area, including a recent attack just blocks from the concert venue). I had experience publicizing Zach's story (the Tennessee kid who came out to his parents only to have them put him in a preparative therapy camp) last year, and Laurel Hester's story this year.

It was hugely helpful that I could get it out to progressive bloggers, and that you, John Aravosis and Kos either posted about it or linked to it. Your point about the blogosphere not being a "top down" affair is worth noting. A group of bloggers like ourselves can push a story into the spotlight, but along with our combined audiences it requires coordination and effort on our parts to reach a critical mass of eyeballs looking at it. You, John, and Markos probably helped get more people to pay attention to it than our efforts alone would have accomplished in the same amount of time.

Interestingly enough, we heard nothing from any of the major gay organizations about this, and they didn't do much of anything about it.

http://www.thenewpolitics.com/2006/07/st oller_details.html

"The firepower lined up against us is remarkable.  The DSCC, the Connecticut Democratic Party, Sierra Club, NARAL, League of Conservation Voters, Planned Parenthood, AFL-CIO, SEIU, CWA, NALC, NAGE, Food and Commercial Workers, Teamster's, Firefighters, Carpenters, Postal Workers, IBEW, Human Rights Campaign, 40+ Senators, John Lewis..."

Matt,

I wonder if we can include the GOP in that list?   It won't surprise if they direct some resources at the race in support of Leaverman.