“Big Night for Progressives”
May 19, 2010 – 9:08 am(Cross posted from Blog for America.)
Congratulations to everyone who worked so hard to get out the vote for the primaries last night. You guys rock. Arshad reported one highlight from AR: 392 volunteers called voters yesterday resulting in tens of thousands of voters who were contacted in Arkansas.
Thanks also to everyone who participated in our call from around the country. We know that we had 144 locations calling in from 28 states, 84 of which were house parties. If you joined us on the call, please give us your feedback here: http://www.democracyforamerica.com/50statefeedback
Here are some key highlights from the coverage last of the races:
Activists seize control of politics - Politico, By John F. Harris & Jim Vandehei
For any politician with the usual instincts for self-protection, the lessons of Tuesday’s primaries could not be more clear: This could happen to you.
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Levana Layendecker, communications director of Democracy for America, a group founded by former presidential candidate and DNC Chairman Howard Dean, suggested there is unrest on the left that is similar to, if milder than, what’s happening on the right.
“Since 2008, a lot of people got their hopes up for some major change,” she said. “Obviously there was a huge appetite for that in the country based on the election results. I think that this election is about the people who feel that either that change isn’t happening fast enough or that that change isn’t happening the way they hoped it would.”
Howard Dean Tells TPMDC: ‘Big Night’ For Progressives - TPMDC, Christina Bellantoni
Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said in an interview that Tuesday’s elections look like a “pretty big sweep” for progressives. “They are having a big night,” he said.
“My belief is that progressive Dems are a lot more appealing to mainstream voters than tea party advocates,” Dean told me in an interview just after Rep. Joe Sestak was declared the winner over Sen. Arlen Specter in the Pennsylvania Democratic Senate primary.
“This is a big night for people who really want Washington to be a change agent,” Dean said, adding the results show a “backlash” against both parties in official Washington. Dean, also former governor of Vermont and a 2004 presidential candidate, said he views Jack Conway as the progressive choice in Kentucky and said Lt. Gov. Bill Halter’s forcing of a runoff in Arkansas proves that candidates on the left can prevail.
At the same time, Dean thinks Sestak is a Democrat in the mold of Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) — a centrist who was elected in 2006 in part thanks to online progressives supporting and funding his candidacy until it attracted national attention. “New progressives are the old centrists. Conway and Sestak will be pretty damn appealing to the middle of the road,” Dean said. “Joe is a bit of an iconoclast and that’s what you want in a race like this. Joe is a centrist with conviction politics.”
Tonight the political operatives on the Obama team got a big lesson in an old political adage that they had, perhaps, found quaint: You gotta dance with the one what brung ya.
Progressives tonight are basking in victories deemed impossible months, even just weeks, ago, with outright victories in two primaries for U.S. Senate, and a possible victory in a third. All required them to take on the political power of the president they helped to elect. You can’t blame them for gloating.
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Arlen Specter was something of a pet for President Obama, having provided the president with a coveted 60th vote in the Senate when the veteran Republican switched parties last year in order to avoid being vanquished in a GOP primary. Tonight Specter met that fate at the hands of a Democrat, Rep. Joe Sestak, a former admiral. Backed by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Democracy for America and other netroots progressive groups, Sestak, according to what the Philadelphia Inquirer called “unofficial returns,” received about 54 percent of the vote to 46 percent for Specter.
