|
Now that Democrats are about to increase their majorities in Congress, influential liberal groups and bloggers are banding together so they can hold the party accountable after the election.
The Accountability Now coalition, whose members include the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), MoveOn.org and the United Steelworkers of America, plans to target members of Congress who waver on their agenda. The group is raising money to fund progressive primary challengers in 2010.
Created by liberal bloggers Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com and Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake, the Accountability Now political action committee has already raised $500,000 since starting up in March. The group hopes to press Democrats to use their majorities to pass liberal legislation and work with a White House occupied by Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).
“A lot of people see this as the way to make sure Obama is able to do what he wants to do,” Hamsher said.
The effort grows out of the experience liberals have had in pressing centrist Democrats to change behavior. She said that Rep. Ellen Tauscher (Calif.), whose website last cycle featured photos of her with President Bush and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), pledged not to appropriate more money for U.S. military operations in Iraq last year after rumblings about a primary challenge from the left.
The bloggers already have one scalp from having backed the 2008 primary campaign of Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.). In February, Edwards defeated an incumbent member of her own party, Rep. Albert Wynn, who had sided with Republicans on the Iraq war, the 2005 bankruptcy bill and an intelligence bill that gave lawsuit immunity to telecom companies that participated in the Bush administration’s domestic spying program. Most of Edwards’s $1.4 million campaign war chest came from individual donations, which were encouraged by the SEIU, MoveOn and liberal bloggers.
Hamsher said that more recent votes by House Democrats should give those on the left cause for concern, and that more bad votes could be coming.
“I think people are at a breaking point over the bailout,” Hamsher said. Most of the House members to back the bill were Democrats, she noted. “This whole idea of ‘Let’s give all this money to the people who screwed things up’ pushed people over the edge.”
Early on next year, the group will be fighting approval of a free trade agreement with Colombia, Hamsher said. The deal stalled in the House earlier this year amid partisan wrangling, but it could get a vote in the new Congress.
|
