Raising the Dead

[Joanne98]

Moribund Democrats showed surprising signs of life in yesterday's elections.

Harold Meyerson | May 19, 2010 |

For a party presumably at death's door, the Democrats had themselves a pretty fair election yesterday, while liberal and labor Democrats, had an altogether bang-up time.

The Democrats held John Murtha's southwest Pennsylvania house seat in exactly the kind of white working class district that is supposed to be trending Republican this year. Voters ousted the exquisitely vulnerable Arlen Specter -- an avowedly careerist incumbent in an anti-incumbent year -- in favor of a far fresher face, Joe Sestak, who also has a better chance than Specter come November.

In Kentucky, Attorney General Jack Conway eked out a come-from-behind victory over Lt. Governor Daniel Mongiardo after campaigning against Mongiardo's reluctance to support President Obama's health care reform. And in Arkansas, Bill Halter, backed by the kind of liberal-labor coalition that the state has seldom seen, forced center-right incumbent Blanche Lincoln into a runoff -- a double victory for unions, really, since they made clear their power to punish anti-labor Democrats in even the most anti-labor states, and since the prolongation of the race until the June 8 run-off makes it difficult for Lincoln to accede to the watering-down of the one left-populist plank in her platform: her financial reform provision banning banks from trading in derivatives.

Underpinning these successes were voter turnout operations that should cast some doubt on the conventional wisdom that 2010 is shaping up as a year when hyper-motivated Republicans outperform lackadaisical Democrats at the polls. The result in Pennsylvania's 12th congressional district is a case in point: Democrat Mark Critz, a former Murtha staffer, defeated Republican Tim Burns by a 53-percent-to-45-percent margin in precisely the kind of white working class district, devastated by deindustrialization and trade deals, that's plainly immune to Barack Obama's charms. (Indeed, the 12th is the only one of the nation's 435 congressional districts to have voted for John Kerry in 2004 and John McCain in 2008.) An all-out effort, however, from the United Steelworkers and from the AFL-CIO's Working America program -- knocking on 16,000 doors, distributing 75,000 worksite flyers, making more than 100,000 phone calls -- pulled Critz through.

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=raising_the_dead

[tavalon]

1. Not dead yet

Just mighty sick of Blue Dogs and DLC types.

[rpannier]

2. Can't be true

Conventional wisdom and the best political team on television don't see it that way

So therefore it can't be true

on note: +1 for posting this awesome article