First of all, let me preface this by saying I in no way attend to attack Kos, this community, or (in fact) any organizational member of They Work For Us. These folks (Kos in particular) are the Good Guys, and we're honored to have them as leaders of our movement. This diary is intended as a respectful dissent, and nothing more.
But after reading the news that Kos has cofounded the group "They Work For Us," comprised of Change To Win unions, trial lawyers' associations, MoveOn, and Daily Kos, I find myself very uncomfortable with the implications of this group and its strategy (to target out-of-touch Democrats in Congress such as Al Wynn, Ellen Tauscher, and Henry Cuellar).
It's hard to explain this dislike of the group. I've turned this over a lot in my head, and three problems I have with the idea have come to mind.
First of all, I don't think we should be targeting Henry Cuellar. Don't get me wrong, I can't stand the guy. I wanted to target him immediately after he "bought" Ciro Rodriguez's seat with a recount that upended the result of that primary. I was an early supporter of a netroots push for Ciro in early 2006.
But we learned something important in the results of that primary. Ciro didn't lose to Cuellar because he was a bad candidate (as evidenced by his handy defeat of Henry Bonilla last month), or because Cuellar had a big powerful machine. He lost because Cuellar's local base absolutely loves the guy. Liberal Dems, conservative Dems, doesn't matter -- they love him because he's the hometown boy who made good. Now, I'm all for targeting the hometown boy if he's a Republican, but this particular hometown boy just voted for Pelosi. Cuellar's base reelected him, whereupon his district was altered and Ciro's home base was excluded, making the district even MORE pro-Cuellar.
Look, we didn't oppose Joe Lieberman because he was "out of step with his constituents," we opposed him because his extreme fulminating against the Democrats disgraced, shamed, and undercut our party. Al Wynn is a bully who resorts to thuggish intimidation to win elections, and his constituents hate him, so I can see that one. Tauscher seems to have declared holy war on the blogosphere, so I guess she's brought our opposition on herself. But as much as I dislike Cuellar, I don't think he meets that burden of disgrace. Yeah, he voted with Republicans on a whole lot of issues; I didn't like that. Yeah, he frenched Bush; that made me angry, and I wanted him to lose to Ciro. But his Democratic constituents returned him to office by a healthy margin, and I don't see how it's the right of all these wonderful liberal groups to show up in that district and tell those Democrats they can't have their hometown boy because he's "out of step with his constituents."
So that's one thing. Here's another: as long as we're targeting Congressional Dems, why don't we go after some of the real disgraces? I'm all for rooting out the bad seeds (I supported Lamont, after all), but shouldn't we be primarying the Congressman who hid money in his freezer (Bill Jefferson)? Or the one who's under investigation for fraud (Alan Mollohan)? Or the one whose trashy love life makes Bill Clinton look like a choirboy (Jim Moran)? Or the one who's an impeached judge (Alcee Hastings)? Why aren't we focusing our firepower on those in Congress who demean and debase our party, rather than those who simply disagree with us (like Cuellar)?
Finally -- and this is the biggest part -- there's something about this group of heavyweight interests that just seems TOO big. Don't get me wrong, I like all the groups involved, even the trial lawyers. But this new grouping of heavyweights seems a little too much like a technocratic elite to replace the one in DC. I've got no love for the folks in DC, but the point of this movement, for me, was to give the little guy a voice. I don't see much "little guy" influence left in this picture of a powerful coalition of established leftist interest groups. Of course, the union leaders can be recalled by their membership, and Kos is in some way responsible to his readership, but I'm looking for something a little less representative and a little more direct. My ideal grouping would have come to its readers and members first and asked them who they thought it should go after, what they thought its purpose was -- and, what's more, it would also have gone to the locals in the district and asked them whether they felt they were being well-represented. At least in the case of Cuellar, I'm pretty sure the locals would have told They Work For Us that ol' Henry was workin' fer them just fine, thanks.
I want to thank Kos for the opportunity to voice my dissent on his blog. I'm mindful of the fact that he doesn't have to give me or anyone else that chance, and glad that he's willing to anyway. And I'm thankful for this site and for this community, which has worked so hard and done so much to advance the progressive cause over the past five (yeah, five!) years.