Fall in for Fallon
As the Washington Post concedes, it's becoming increasingly impossible for the Democratic party to ignore its base activists and their progressive root principles. These impassioned citizen leaders-- now both the spiritual and financial lifeblood of the party, thanks to the internet, are not going to bend over any longer for the Clinton-style triangulators, cowards, and horse thieves that have been running the party into the ground in Washington for a generation.Here in Iowa, we'll be on the front line of the battle for the party's future in 2006 as we begin welcoming the 2008 presidential candidates to our borders. They will come, both, because the state holds the first-in-the-nation caucus, and because Iowa looks to be a vital swing state yet again in the general election. This year, many of us will be attempting to elect a progressive governor to the open seat being vacated by the accommodationist, Republican-lite Tom Vilsack, who now heads the national Democratic Leadership Council, a right-leaning Washington beltway organization that has orchestrated countless electoral defeats on behalf of the party for more than a decade, and whose membership includes the candidate likely to become the party's most heavily-financed candidate in 2008, Hillary Clinton.
We can send invading right-wing appeasers like Clinton, Evan Bayh, Mark Warner, Joe Biden, and Joe Lieberman the first clear warning of defeat on June 6 by nominating state representative Ed Fallon of Des Moines to be the Democratic candidate for Governor. Ed has been a passionate and ethical advocate on behalf of Iowa's working class, its children, and the disadvantaged. He's earned the personal and professional respect of colleagues on both sides of the aisle, and above all for me, he's been a great neighbor in my home district-- so visible and responsive in the community that I'm tempted to use the expression "often underfoot" to describe my experience dealing with him.
Ed is operating at a severe disadvantage in fundraising because he refuses to accept PAC money, and he has limited individual campaign contributions to $2,400. Meanwhile, one of his primary opponents, the state's Agriculture Secretary, has accepted a $10,000 contribution from corporate farm polluter Peter DeCoster, and the incumbent Secretary of State, a Haircut, has raised more than a million dollars, having accepting personal contributions of up to $50,000 from out-of-staters who realize the stakes of this campaign at the national level, and who never met a wheel that couldn't be greased. (A $40,000 contributor from Texas was once fined a million dollars for insider trading.)
In 2004, Democrats surely learned how far a "flip-flopping" candidate will lead them. (Yes, that's exactly what he was.) Kerry's centrist posturing allowed him to be painted as feeble and unsure. Odd, it seems in retrospect, that a decorated war hero could be cast as so weak-kneed when just a generation ago, a pacifist like Martin Luther King Jr. was being described as anything but. The missing ingredient in '04 was not of policy or orchestrated rhetoric, but of conviction. All along, it hasn't been a battle between centrists and liberals at all, but rather between postulators and fighters.
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I'm including a link to Ed's campaign website, with this proviso: If you click on "About Ed" and examine his background and accomplishments, he may seem too good to be true, but please trust that he is the real deal, as authentic and courageous a public servant as there is.
posted by CM @ 6:45 PM
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