New WA Senate Poll (Strategic Vision): Maria Cantwell up by 8%

[brooklynite]

15. Do you approve or disapprove of Senator Maria Cantwell's job performance?
Approve 48%
Disapprove 34%
Undecided 18%

16. If the election for United States Senate were held today and the candidates were Maria Cantwell, the Democrat or Mike McGavick, the Republican, whom would you vote for?
Maria Cantwell 48%
Mike McGavick 40%
Undecided 12%

http://www.strategicvision.biz/political/washington_poll_042606.htm

[oldtime dfl_er]

1. hmm...

as a constituent of Maria Cantwell's, I have disapproved of her and written her a number of times over the last few years, most recently over the Alito cloture vote. However, she is the lesser of two evils, and I will raise money for her and vote for her. I just wish she was a little less corporate-minded and a little more consumer-minded.


http://www.cafepress.com/scarebaby/1386797

[Ignacio Upton]

3. As long as she votes for Harry Reid for Majority Leader

Then she is alright, even if she makes shitty votes occasionally. At least she is still a progressive on the enviroment.

[WA98296]

4. Another constituent. I agree with you. Dems should be: PEOPLE FIRST

[keopeli]

6. I am extraordinarily unhappy with Cantwell.

She is basically a republican corporatist, except on environmental issues. The only reason she won last time (by only about 1200 votes) and that she'll win this time is because she is a Democrat. I will not help her run - the congnitive dissonance over such an endeavor would be too great.

[WhiteTara]

9. Keep hammering on her. Dianne Feinstein

is much the same, but with sufficient pushing, she moves in the right direction.

[jsamuel]

23. right, but the problem for elections is that there are a lot of people who

feel the same way as you. They are dems, but arn't as active. Only vote when they feel strongly. Unfortunately, a candidate like Cantwell probably won't turn out the vote well. She better have a solid lead by election day.

[Ignacio Upton]

2. Not entirely suprised, but this is Strategic Vision

They are a Republican polling company. I see this as the worst-case scenario. However, Maria needs to convince the 18% undecideds that she needs to be re-elected. I think most of those are liberals and progressives who are upset with some of her votes, but aren't sure that they won't vote for her.

[saltpoint]

5. I hope Sen. Cantwell holds and even builds that lead through

November.

[AX10]

7. This is a Republican polling company.

Cantwell should get 55%+ come November.

[newswolf56]

8. A progressive Democrat is running against Cantwell in the primary:

http://votemark.org/

Badly wounded by a total media blackout -- indeed the most blatant political censorship I have ever witnessed anywhere -- Mark Wilson desperately needs an organization like DU to get behind his campaign.

As for Cantwell, as other posters have already noted, she is a corporate Republican in Democratic disguise, particularly hostile to organized labor and lower-income people -- the poor, the elderly and the disabled:

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0316-03.htm

and

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=108&session=1&vote=00262

Note that Cantwell's colleague Murray, another DINO, also voted for the Medicare Prescription Drug Lord Benefit and for the re-imposition of indentured servitude via "bankruptcy reform." Both of course voted for CAFTA, just as Murray voted for NAFTA a decade earlier -- measures that, according to the State Labor Council and the AFL/CIO, cost Washington about 120,000 jobs.

That Cantwell and Murray later reversed their votes on both the Prescription Drug Lord Benefit and the enslavement of Americans to banks makes no difference at all: the first vote guaranteed the measure's enactment (and the continued support of the relevant special interests) while the second vote was simply eyewash.

[depakid]

10. I would hope that Wilson does very well

and my bet is that he'll get more votes than anyone expects.

Not only has Cantwell burned her constituemts one too many times, but there's an anti-incumbant fever out there- and rightly so. Wlison need to make some noise.

[newswolf56]

11. He's damn sure got my vote. (n/t)

[pnwmom]

17. Do you like him as a Green? Or as a Libertarian? Because he's been both.

[pnwmom]

12. Wilson has run as a Libertarian and a Green. Now he's trying to unseat

a Democrat by running as one. If he happened to beat Cantwell, there's no way he'd beat the Republican in this middle-of-the-road state. We'd be worse off than we are now.

The reason both Cantwell and Murray have supported CAFTA is that the state of Washington has an export-based economy.

Both Cantwell and Murray are pro-choice. I haven't been able to find any info on Wilson in this regard.

[newswolf56]

13. The pro-choice stance of Cantwell and Murray is meaningless...

because the economic policies they support already deny reproductive choice to anyone not rich enough to afford it: their stance is therefore relevant only to the bourgeoisie and the ruling class. Impoverished women are already denied reproductive choice by their very impoverishment; meanwhile the reason they are impoverished is the direct consequence of corporate rule: outsourcing, downsizing, pension-looting, forcible wage reduction, methodical destruction of the social safety net -- the very concentration of wealth in which Cantwell and Murray are such enthusiastic collaborators. This is precisely the ugly no-choice truth underlying a ballot that asks us to decide between an allegedly "pro-choice" closet Republican (e.g., Cantwell) versus an openly anti-choice admitted Republican.

The pro-choice/anti-choice alternative is ultimately moot because, economically speaking (that is, in the only realm that matters), the entire nation is already as anti-choice as South Dakota. Thus a vote for Cantwell (or anyone like her) is implicitly a vote AGAINST reproductive choice precisely because it is a vote AGAINST the restoration of the New Deal economic conditions that would make the exercise of reproductive choice again universally possible: thus the overall importance of a candidate's economic stance.

Moreover, Cantwell tacitly supported the nomination of Alito -- the nomination that gave Christian Fundamentalism total control of the Supreme Court -- not only by refusing to support the filibuster but by voting for cloture: that is, the enabling action that ended debate and cleared the way for Alito's approval. Thus she served corporate interests and betrayed all her genuinely pro-choice constituents as well:

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=2&vote=00001

Cantwell's tacit support of Alito is especially infuriating given Washington state's long history as a haven for religious diversity: it has long been recognized that the underlying purpose of the Alito appointment is to provide judicial sanction for the imposition of theocracy -- the Talibanesque social fabric Big Business deems essential to make the nation safe for its obscene profits and fascist foreign policy. Indeed even Murray -- normally a dependable servant of the corporate will -- voted against cloture. (Note again, linked above, how both Murray and Cantwell voted in favor of indentured servitude and for the Medicare Prescription Drug Lord Benefit.)

Furthermore, your claim that the state of Washington's "export-based economy" explains why Cantwell and Murray chronically vote for the corporations and against labor makes no sense at all in light of the fact that NAFTA and CAFTA have cost the state at least 120,000 jobs: unless of course you're calling the AFL/CIO and the state labor council a band of liars and malcontents.

In any case, the votes of Cantwell and Murray demonstrate not just an anti-labor bias but profound contempt for for anyone who happens to be poor, disabled or elderly.

As to Wilson's personnel political odyssey, I was referred to his website by several DU members; therefore please provide linked proof of the claims by which you are attempting to discredit and denounce him. (I doubt that, given his union membership, Wilson would have been allowed to run for anything as a Green: bourgeois-elitist to the core, the Greens are as fiercely anti-union as their Republican opponents.)

_________
Edit: hasty typos.

[pnwmom]

14. The DU members you're listening to forgot to mention that he has run as

both a Green and a Libertarian. Sorry. Guess he's a "bourgeous-elitist" after all. Be careful whom you trust!

This wasn't exactly hard to find, even if you haven't been following recent Washington elections very closely. (Are you from here?)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Wilson_(politician)

"Mark Wilson (politician)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mark Wilson is an American politician who was a candidate for the U.S. Senate from Washington State in 2004. He ran as a candidate from the Green Party. In 2002, he ran as a Libertarian for the 1st Congressional District. Wilson is challenging incumbent Maria Cantwell in the Democratic primary for the US Senate in 2006."


Now, if you don't mind, I'd like you to show me how NAFTA/CAFTA has cost the state 120,000 jobs.

[newswolf56]

15. Running as a Green does indeed identify him as a bourgeois elitist,

which means he's as untrustworthy as Cantwell. Moreover his claim of union membership is obviously false (not surprising his given his former Libertarian and Green alliances): the Libertarians are even more anti-union than the Greens. In this context, note that while he claims to be a "former Teamster" there is no union affiliation listed among his current memberships:

http://www.votemark.org/Links/Default.asp

Good catch, and thanks -- I won't vote for Wilson after all.

It would never have occurred to me to do a Wiki search on him: I'm 66, of the library-age, not the computer-age -- though at the very moment you posted your response, I was wondering how I might run a Mark Wilson name-search through state election records, since there's no obvious provision for doing that. Googling Mark Wilson is pointless: it generates an immediate connection to his web site but includes 140,000,000 other hits -- and therefore no other useful links.

By the way, I do live in Washington state -- have lived in the Puget Sound area off-and-on through 35 years -- but I have never lived anywhere near the First Congressional District, which is mostly Snohomish and Kitsap Counties. One of the ugly realities of Washington state's corporate media -- as far as I am concerned the most incompetent journalism I have ever seen anywhere (this in a writing career spanning 50 years) -- is its local news outlets' attitude the world ends at the boundaries of the relevant circulation or broadcast areas. Thus even if I had read my local daily cover-to-cover 7/365, I wouldn't know about anything about Mark Wilson: none of our local papers have seen fit to cover the major story you and I just discovered via our researchers: that he is a false-flag candidate. This needs coverage, particularly since a lot of progressives seem to be leaning toward Wilson as an alternative to Cantwell.

Nor would television have helped: no story there either. And even if there had been -- that is, if our Markie had been involved with a missing blonde co-ed or some other if-it-bleeds-it-leads incident -- I wouldn't have known: I refuse to squander my time on the panem et circenses (bread and circuses) promoted by the idiot box. Television news is a contradiction in terms.

In fact the media here is so awful, Washingtonians are among the worst-informed people in the United States. This is something I know all too well because, though most of my newspaper experience is in the East (the bulk of it in New York City and environs), I've worked many years in Washington state too. Hence for example my knowledge of state transport policy (and Seattle's long ugly history of xenophobic opposition to adequate mass transit -- the real reason the Sound Transit system is already nine years behind schedule -- and because of escalating costs will never be completed as envisioned).

Nevertheless I read the online service of my local daily, which seldom fails to insult my intelligence with its censorship and distortion as I search for matters of interest to the advocacy journal for which, in semi-retirement, I now write issues-analysis. But I get the rest of my news from infinitely more dependable sources: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, The Guardian, der Spiegel, Asia Times etc.

Thanks again; I'm not easily conned, but I surely was this time -- and I'm frankly mortified. My failure was the fact I (formerly) trusted DU membership as an imprimatur of credibility. I wish I remembered the identity of the DU members who sent me to Wilson's website; as I recall there were three, and I would denounce them publicly here and now if I could. Nor will I EVER again assume the trustworthiness of anything I learn on this site. Once burned, twice shy -- and more embittered at this personal betrayal than I will ever have words to express.

Lastly, none of this changes the ever-more-obvious truth of my analysis that a vote for a corporatist is a vote against reproductive choice, specifically because the corporatist (of whatever party) is opposed to the redistribution of wealth essential to make reproductive choice a reality -- particularly in a nation that, alone in the industrial world, does not have (and never will have) national health insurance.


_________
Edit: structure.

[pnwmom]

16. I have to admit, I almost fell for him, too. I'm glad you've told me

more about yourself, because I had you pegged for one of the Greens who lurk around here, trying to pick off progressive Democrats.

I just ran into a blogger's opinion about Mark Wilson and Cantwell that might interest you. His name is David Goldstein, he's had some minor fame as an anti- Tim Eyeman, and he's a writer, too.

http://www.horsesass.org/about.php

After acknowledging his opposition to the war in Iraq, which he shares with Cantwell's critics, he writes:

"But… there’s more to being a senator than just this one issue, and before rank and file Democrats buy into Wilson’s hoo-hah about being the “populist voice” of the party, they might want to look a little closer at where this “populist” Libertarian Green Democrat actually stands on the issues.

Wilson said “90 percent” of his platform is unchanged from 2002, when he first ran for Congress as a Libertarian in the 1st Congressional District, which was won by Democrat Rep. Jay Inslee.

Uh-huh. “90 percent.” That means that on issue after issue, Wilson is not a progressive Democrat… he’s a Libertarian. For example, on health care, where Progressive Punch scores Cantwell at a perfect 100% (better than both Patty Murray and Jim McDermott,) Wilson had this to say on his 2002 campaign website.


'Every attack on private health insurance markets should be resisted. A genuine free market in health care will encourage competition and help reduce costs. Comprehensive Tort Reform would take the bite out of insurance premiums and promote personal responsibility. Insane lawsuits awarding multimillions, punch taxpayers right in the fries.'"

Goldstein goes on to liken Wilson's positions to those of the Cato Institute.

[newswolf56]

18. One major (and profoundly damning) correction:

Don't know how Progressive Punch rates its politicians, but both Cantwell and Murray deserve the Big Zero for their votes in favor of the Bush Medicare Prescription Drug Lord Benefit and bankruptcy "reform." (See links above.) The latter -- as I already noted, literally the re-imposition of indentured servitude with the added bonus to the bankers that they can arbitrarily raise our credit-card payments to force us into default -- is the most calculatedly savage blow Congress has dealt U.S. workers in my lifetime (and probably ever). As to the former, its critics -- mostly advocates for elderly and disabled people and a few genuinely progressive Democrats (Kennedy et al) -- were warning long before it was enacted that it would literally kill people, which is precisely what it is doing:

http://www.recordonline.com/archive/2006/04/15/news-tleddie-04-15.html

I write about this deliberately genocidal program every month, and its awfulness -- including the fact it denies AIDS patients life-saving prescriptions that were formerly free -- is beyond infuriating. And while it is true Murray and Cantwell subsequently reversed their votes, the damage was already done: it is a meaningless gesture to vote against legislation their initial vote enabled and guaranteed would pass.

Thanks a lot, however, for the Goldstein link. Don't have time to do it now -- I've got an editorial conference all afternoon (and I'm still on my first cup of coffee) -- but I'll e-mail him with the above voting-record links.

[pnwmom]

19. You're certainly right about the prescription drug fiasco and the

bankruptcy bill. My mother-in-law has just figured out that under the best of the new plans, she will be paying $5,000 a year more than she was under her old company plan (which was discontinued because of the Medicare bill).

Maybe I'm wrong, but I still feel that under a Democratic leadership, neither of these bills would have been passed.

As it is, the Republicans have the votes to pass anything that Bush pushes, with or without any Democratic support.

[geniph]

20. Part of the reason the media isn't paying attention to Wilson

is that he simply is not a viable candidate. I'm sorry to those who like the nice things he says, but it's the truth, for a lot of reasons. Look, I just finished running for office myself, and I also had a holy hell of a time getting any of the media to even notice I existed, and that's frustrating, but that is the reality of the situation with open campaign finance books. When your opponent has a quarter of a million dollars (as mine did) and you raise $12,000 (as I did), you're not seen as a serious candidate.

Mark Wilson, financially, is several orders of magnitude worse off than I was. Take a look at his PDC filings. They're horribly out-of-date (despite laws stating the required filing periods), they don't make sense from period to period, he's raised almost nothing - his books are a mess. Mine were at least financially in order. He's also running against a primary candidate with considerably more money.

Now, here's why the money matters. The party does not want to throw money down a rathole. If you cannot prove to them that you can raise funds yourself, they will not help you by contributing more funds. If you cannot prove that you can manage campaign books, why would anyone trust you with a government's budget? If you don't raise your own money, you have NO WAY to get your message to voters. It costs money to print materials, it costs money to do robo-calls, it costs money to rent an office and a phone bank, it costs money to print yard signs, it costs money to do broadcast advertising. If your opponent raises that kind of money and you do not, you will be buried alive in advertising. My opponent sent out five widescale mailings. I was able to do one infinitesimally small one and a few yard signs. I suck as a fundraiser. Unfortunately, so does Wilson.

He also does not have the right temperament to run for this kind of office. Watch him at a political event - I have, several times. He doesn't know how to politick. He goes off in a corner by himself and doesn't talk to anyone unless they come up to him. Now, I was guilty of that to some extent myself, so I understand why he does it - but you do not get volunteers, donors, evangelists to your cause by waiting for people to come to you, especially when you're surrounded by political junkies.

I won't even go into how I personally feel about anyone running for a national office who's never held any municipal or local office, or had any legislative experience whatsoever, or how I feel about someone who keeps changing parties to try to find one where he can win. The fact is that what matters is that, no matter how ardent his handful of supporters (and they are VERY ardent), he has not shown that he has what it takes to win an election, let alone govern afterward.

Neither did I. I know how that feels. But that's the reality of the situation.

[pnwmom]

21. Thank you for your info. I wish you had done well!

[geniph]

22. I actually did really well, considering

but all is relative. ;-) I got 38% of the vote in the general - against a three-term incumbent who's been in politics around here for 40 years, who has a quarter of a million bucks in the bank. No one ran against him in 2001, and no one was going to run against him this time, because everyone was scared of him, which offended me. I did okay. But getting the media to notice a dark-horse candidacy is pulling teeth; you want to appear as professional as possible every chance you get, politick your butt off at any event you appear at, and make sure your financial books are above reproach. Otherwise, you look like not just a dilettante, but a dork.