What happens in Podunk shouldn't stay there.  Or at least if it does, the Democratic Party Establishment, the corporate wing of the Democratic Party, the Blue Dogs among us, will have won one more unrecorded battle against those of us who want real change.

What's happening most immediately in the IL-14 corner of Podunk (a term I use here to describe anything not directly inside the DC Beltway) is a primary and a special primary on Tuesday, between the DC insider "pick" for our district, an attorney who is a relative newcomer to both politics and our area, and John Laesch, the nominee against Denny Hastert last time out, and the only progressive in the race.

At this point, I'd call it a significant bellwether for the upcoming Congressional elections that virtually no one outside of IL-14 is paying much attention to in the glare of the presidential race, as well as a bellwether event in the battle for control of the party.  So while I don't expect this diary to get much attention, I want to leave a record of what has happened in this primary.  Bellwethers, however unobserved at the time, sometimes have a way of becoming useful history for those who follow.  

So, a couple of weeks ago, I was in a public place, right here in St. Charles, Illinois, when I overheard a conversation that alarmed, but failed to surprise, me.  The person doing most of the talking was -talking- complaining bitterly about her new job in an area public elementary school.  Not a St. Charles school and not an educator.  She's a peripheral professional who has frequent contact with children however, and that's bad enough.

Her major complaint?  "All these Hispanic children."

According to her, not only are "all these Hispanic children" unable to communicate, they are "aggressive and obnoxiously rude - especially the girls."  I was supposed to be paying attention to what the person in front of me was saying and lost some of the conversation I was overhearing, but suspect her companion must have voiced some objections, because she started trying to -explain herself- dig herself in deeper.

Crossposted from Show Me Progress:

Last Monday, Jake Zimmerman, the Democratic rep from Olivette in St. Louis County, spoke at the West County Dems meeting.  But he had nothing of substance to say.  He announced that to begin with.

He and Rachel Storch are heading the House DCCC, and, on the assumption that he was speaking to people who already understood the importance of getting Ds elected in this state, he spoke not about policy issues but about his new responsibility to be "a cynic", to calculate coldly what moves will get the most Democrats elected to the Missouri House in 2008.

What follows is close to being a transcript of the first ten minutes of his talk, but his words and mine are so intermingled that I gave up on putting in quotation marks.

The last election showcased a grand strategic debate within the Democratic Party at the national level, and that debate is important to understand, not only for its national implications but also because the same debate is currently playing out at the state level.  

The debate involves three universes of people. The first universe is represented by Nancy Pelosi and Rahm Emanuel.  Their goal before the 2006 election was short term, to get the Democrats into the majority in the House.  The only thing we care about, they'd have said, is immediate victory, because if we control the House, we can stop the Bush agenda and change the direction of the country.

One of the reasons I'm going to focus much energy on the spectrum fight is because the key leverage point for going into Iraq is a media system that allows only the powerful to speak.  Take this account by high priced operative Bob Shrum, of Time columnist Joe Klein's relationship with John Kerry in 2004.  The nexus between high priced media consultants, high priced pundits, and politicians is poison to a democratic system.  And then there are the more overt links between the press and the political class - Jeff Chester points us to this nice episode in Illinois:

Fourteen U.S. lawmakers urged federal regulators to waive media ownership restrictions that would allow Tribune Co. to be taken private in an $8.2-billion deal, according to a letter made available on Monday.

The deal, led by Chicago real estate mogul Sam Zell, needs approval from the Federal Communications Commission as it involves the transfer of broadcast licenses.

Under current media ownership rules, a company cannot own a daily newspaper and a television or radio station in the same market although media companies do under agency waivers.

Tribune has such arrangements in Fort Lauderdale, Hartford, Los Angeles and New York and earlier this month asked the agency to waive restrictions that could prevent it from owning television station and newspapers in the same city....

The 14 lawmakers from Illinois, which included Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin and House Rep. Rahm Emanuel as well as Republican House Rep. Dennis Hastert, encouraged the FCC in the letter dated May 18 to act on the applications "expeditiously and to avoid administrative delay."

Sam Zell, the mogul behind the deal, gave $5000 to Rahm Emanuel's PAC in 2005, the Common Values PAC, and to Dick Durbin.  He was also a donor to Bush and now John McCain (as well as Russ Feingold and Tom Delay).

So a media and real estate mogul is calling in political favors to waive cross-ownership requirements to consolidate media properties.  That's a problem.  This weakens our ability to have a diversity of voices speaking out, and it prevents a media check on the powerful.

The internet is our best (and maybe) last hope.  Here's Al Gore:

I truly believe the most important factor is the preservation of the Internet's potential for becoming the new neutral marketplace of ideas that is so needed for the revitalization of American democracy... People are not only fighting for free speech online, but they are also working to keep the Internet a decentralized, ownerless medium of mass communication and commerce.

That's why this spectrum fight is so important.  If we can generate enough pressure on the FCC, we can ensure that the public airwaves can be used for a wireless open network which any citizen can use to create media.  New business models will emerge, a diverse set of voices will use it, and we can revitalize democracy.  How do I know this is possible?  Well I'm doing it, in a care, right now, with nothing more than a laptop.  And you're reading and commenting on it.

Now it's time to route around the damage caused by the George Bush's, Sam Zell's, Verizon's, and Comcast's of the world, and ask the FCC to free the spectrum for public use.

It's become increasingly clear that the thing back last year that Congressional Dems really objected to in the Culture of Corruption was that they weren't getting enough of it.

Sirota is distressed at the news that House Dems, faced with the prospect of dealing with S 1 (the Senate version of the promised ethics bill), are back-peddling at 100 miles an hour.

There's a well-practiced routine whereby the lefty sphere builds up a person or policy to impossibly stratospheric levels, and, when they fail to meet the superhumanly exacting standards appropriate to their mythic status, said sphere lurches into a bout of recrimination, weeping and wailing, and general wah!.

As of the first day of the session, the appropriate, rational achievement standard for the 110th on Iraq was nothing. Zero. Zilch.

A sane and informed observer might have hoped that they'd have got through some more dough for body armor, and care of returning vets. But expecting the 110th to have any material effect on the conduct of the war - no.

Last week, I wrote that a few of the key obstacles to ending the war are Blue Dogs,, Harry Reid and Rahm Emanuel.  The Washington Post reports:

"If you strictly limit a commander's ability to rotate troops in and out of Iraq, that kind of inflexibility could put some missions and some troops at risk," said Rep. Chet Edwards (D-Tex.), who personally lodged his concerns with Murtha.

...

"Congress has no business micromanaging a war, cutting off funding or even conditioning those funds," said Rep. Jim Cooper (Tenn.), a leading Democratic moderate, who called Murtha's whole effort "clumsy."

...

"I think Congress begins to skate on thin ice when we start to micromanage troop deployments and rotations," said Texas's Edwards, whose views reflect those of several other Democrats from conservative districts.

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.) pointed out that Democrats still have public opinion strongly on their side and that a vote on any plan would place Republicans in more jeopardy than Democrats. A new, more restrictive authorization for the war also is gaining serious consideration in the House, Emanuel noted.

Chet Edwards and Jim Cooper are both Blue Dogs from Southern districts, so I get that they aren't going to be outfront on liberal issues.  But what they are saying here is not only arguing that Bush ought to continue the war, but reaffirms all the right-wing tropes.  Murtha's plan endangers the troops.  Don't tie the hands of the Commander-in-Chief.  There's talk of passing the Murtha plan, but giving waivers to Bush to deploy non-combat ready troops.  I told you - not serious.  And then there's this.

But that approach may be all but dead, according to several Democratic lawmakers. Murtha doomed his own plan in part by unveiling it on a left-wing Web site, inflaming party moderates.

I don't know if I believe that, as Post reporters Shailagh Murray and Jonathan Weisman are kind of crappy.  But I'm sure this argument is at least being used within the House.  Look, if you want to know why the Democratic brand has problems, it's because Blue Dogs are always reaffirming right-wing frames, and idiots like Rahm Emanuel are talking to reporters about what's popular as opposed to what needs to happen to end the war.  It's important to note that now the House wants to move to where the Senate is, which is to rewrite the Authorization for the Use of Military Force.

I got some flack last week for saying that the Democratic leadership, in particular Harry Reid, isn't really serious about ending the war.  Scott Lemieux, Matt Yglesias, and Steven Benen all disagreed with my assertion because they argued that Reid couldn't pass the nonbinding resolution.  Eric Alterman even labeled me one of many lazy reporters for asserting that Reid wasn't serious about ending the war.  One of Reid's spokespeople called me up pretty upset that I would dare assert something like this.  

Of course, I didn't argue that Reid should have passed the resolution.  I said that his priorities are misplaced.  He never did the work to force the Republicans to vote on the war, giving them the easiest possible out.  Rather than deal with Iraq, Reid let the Senate go into recess.  Rather than put up an initial strong position, defunding the war, he started with a fig leaf and McConnell smacked him around.  

And let's be real.  This talk of authorization is coming from Joe Biden, and while I agree with it, it's only a starting point which will only get worse as McConnell takes a whack at it.  Already the House is moving from Murtha's hard stance to the Senate's position.  This is soft negotiating.  Do you really think, if Reid couldn't get a nonbinding resolution through, that he's going to be able to get a rewrite of the AUMF through?  Of course not.  He needs to task for more.  Reid should demand the Murtha plan.  That will push the Blue Dogs back in the House, and actually give us a real shot of restricting Bush's power.  Reid can't pass it, of course, but that was never the point.  If you start with defunding, maybe you can get to rewriting the AUMF with some cession of the escalation.  If your main fight is over the AUMF, I don't see how you get there.  In other words, where you start dictates where you finish.  And Reid has chosen to put his priorities somewhere other than ending the war.

That's fine.  That's who he is.  But let's stop having illusions about the conservative Democratic leadership in Congress.  I mean, Yglesias, Lemieux, Alterman and Benen seem to have an awful lot of confidence that the Democratic docility of the last twenty years, the docility that caused Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid to sabotage Ned Lamont, has suddenly changed.  I'm still looking for evidence.  Chet Edwards, Jim Cooper, and Rahm Emanuel are problems in this debate, and they need to be primaried.  So is Harry Reid, and Joe Biden.  I'd like some progressives to step up and go after these people publicly, because it's time to fight to end the war, and push the ball down the field.

As for us, let's get rid of our illusions.  Democrats in the House and Senate will move only if we move them.  As of now, they are laughing at us openly, and I will point you to Reid's clumsy misleading statements about his obvious role in the Fox News debacle, and his lack of concern about our extremely reasonable demand not to give Fox News legitimacy.  If he's so disdainful of Democrats on something so trivial, what makes you think he's serious about Iraq, an issue he really doesn't want to touch.  It's time to get to work.

UPDATE: Chet Edwards is not a Blue Dog.

I've looked before at the politics of Pelosi's proposal to set up a select committee on global warming (EIGW); the Post this morning fills in some details (and on A1, too!):

The House Democrats had not quite finished their "100 hours" agenda when they met in the Capitol basement Thursday morning, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) was already looking ahead...For her next act, she planned to take on global warming.

Democrats, she explained, had to show a sense of urgency about the carbon emissions that threaten the planet, and so she was creating a select committee on energy independence and climate change to communicate that urgency. The new committee, she said, would help the caucus speak with one voice -- even if it trampled the turf of existing committees.

Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), a close Pelosi ally, raised his gavel and asked whether anyone had anything else to say, in the same pro forma way that question is posed at weddings. "One, do I hear anything?" he asked. "Two do I hear, 2 1/2 do I hear, three." Emanuel's gavel came down. "The caucus meeting is over."