Max Baucus, Senior Senator from Montana, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, has a hearing problem. He can't seem to hear the voices of his constituents crying out for real health care reform that includes a public option. Perhaps they are being drowned out by the raging torrent of lobbyist donations he is being showered with. Perhaps he thinks the voters' memories are short, and having just reelected him in 2008 they will forget his health care obstruction by the time he comes up for election in 2014. But consider this. Eighteen states have provisions for recalling a US senator.
Montana is one of them.
Now its no easy thing to recall a Senator (to my knowledge its never been successfully done). There are petitions to be collected, deadlines to be met, and in Montana (like a few other states) you have to specify cause, and the senator can challenge that cause in court.
What cause might we list? We need look no further than the mountains of special interest money that he has accepted and the near certainty of its corrupting influence. What other explanation is their for his behavior? A solid majority of Americans support a public option including a large percentage of Republicans. Even in a moderate state like Montana, that makes supporting a public option an election winner. It is an issue that his Democratic base is solidly behind, independents favor, and on which Republicans are split. Apposing a public option makes little sense... until you look at the type and quantity of special interest money he is raking in. Its seems obvious he is representing the insurance industry and not his constituents. That seems like justification for a recall effort to me.
OK maybe that wont be strong enough on its own to stand up to a court challenge. But at least he will have to respond in court or face recall. He will have to face us, and answer for his betrayal. Maybe that will be enough to punch through the lobbyist noise machine. I don't know if this will work or not. I would love to hear from someone who knows more about the political process in Montana and what a recall effort would involve. I welcome the input of the dKos community before I go any further on this. But on the chance that this plan has merit, I've already registered a couple of prime domain names, RecallBaucus.com and RecallBaucus.org. Please vote in the poll, share ideas in the comments, and by all means rec this screed up if you think the idea has merit. Depending on feedback, I'm prepare to launch the effort on those domains or transfer the domains to someone else who is up to the task.
Can you hear us now, Senator Baucus?
UPDATE: Some people in the comments are saying there is no way to recall a US Senator. My web/wiki research says otherwise. While it might be true that there is nothing in the US Constitution about it, eighteen states, including Montana, do have provisions for recalling their US Senators. If anyone from Montana has more information about the specific process in Montana, please post it.
UPDATE 2: Rather than answer the same questions over and over in the comments, I'm going to respond to some recurring points here.
I've been criticized for not doing my research before posting. In fact, I did spend quite a bit of time digging around looking for relevant law and history before posting. I found that law in Montana clearly spells out a recall process. I found mixed information on the Internet regarding the constitutionality of the process. I am not an attorney, I admit that I might be wrong about this, but as the saying goes: The fastest way to get the right answer is to post the wrong one on the Internet. To those people who did a better job than me in digging up specific arguments against the idea, I say thank you. Some might prefer I spend more time researching the details before posting, but I personally think crowd sourced research is one of purposes of blogs like dKos. I've found the debate in the comments very productive in that respect.
A few people have argued that a recall effort driven from out of state would be illegitimate. I agree actually; this must be supported by activists within Montana if it is to go anywhere. I am even prepared to transfer the domains to an appropriate party to lead this effort if/when someone steps up.
Several people have expressed that a recall effort is doomed to failure (perhaps on legal grounds or otherwise) and therefore not worth doing. I personally don't agree. We are fighting against a well funded opposition that has a very loud megaphone. We need ways to counter that. This is about shining a spotlight on Baucus and drawing attention to his lobbyist ties, altering the news narrative. Sure, we could just organize a regular old petition asking nicely for him to represent us... but would that have nearly the impact as a petition calling for his recall? Just the act of him responding and attempting to invalidate the recall effort would have a bigger impact. Even the argument over the legality of a recall effort, if it was constantly being rehashed by the usual media talking heads, would creating some very uncomfortable pressure for the illustrious Senator. I think the idea merits at least further discussion rather than just dismissing it out of hand.