What if we elect a Democrat to the White House?

[Kenneth ken]

How effective can he or she be against a Republican House and Senate?
It's time to start thinking beyond Presidential politics; not dispense with tham, but expanding our sights.

I think meetups should be looking within their group and finding candidates to run for national offices.

There are 435 open seats for the US House. There are about 33 seats in the Senate up for election. I do not think the Democratic Party leadership will choose to contest them all.

I think each meetup should find a candidate to run for office (in some areas maybe the Dems will field a good candidate, so those may not need to come from the meetups.) and then reach out to other candidates' meetups in their area and come to an agreement that they will support the candidate who wins the nomination. There are numerous Dems in office who appear to be more DINO than Dem, let a grass roots Dem replace them, as well as replacing a Repub.

So, as an example, the Kucinich meetup in Hoboken NJ finds a person to run for the house seat in that district; reaches out to the Dean meetup in Hoboken NJ, which has also determiined who they want to run for the house seat in that district, etc. for each candidate’s meetup group in Hoboken NJ.

Then, when a Presidential candidate is nominated, say Carol Moseley-Braun, the various meetups in Hoboken all get behind the person who was chosen from the CMB meetup and help to get that person elected.

The campaign strategy is easy. CMB is running for President, and I am running for the House seat in district ## for one reason only - to help get her agenda passed into law. If you like CMB, vote for her, and also vote for me!. *

Same in the Senate races.

Think about what Congress would look like with say 300 freshman Representatives all focused on pushing through the President’s agenda. 300 would be able to determine the Speaker of the House, all the committee chairs, drive the legislative agenda, and have no problem pushing through their legislation, free of unwanted pork.

20 Freshman senators would have a tougher time of it, but there would be 33 or so Senators knowing they faced re-election in 2 years, and spending a lot of time thinking how much they could oppose the House/White House agenda.

I posted something similar to this in a thread that was started in GD, but that died with little response, so I’ll try it here. This thread WILL have at least 50 responses, or be locked. I will continue to kick it at least once a day until that happens.

So, good idea? Am I full of $h!t? Tell me, tell me, but do not simply ignore me.



* - feel free to change candidate names in any portion of the above where you dislike the candidate named. The underlying idea still applies.

:bounce:anyway, that's my idea, but I don't much care for the DLC nor any of the other so-called party leaders, so DLCer's might not like it.:bounce:

[Kenneth ken]

1. gosh - don't everyone reply at once! n/t

[WiseMen]

3. Will not mean much unless the victory includes the Congress

The Nominee must have long coat-tails.

[Kenneth ken]

2. one day someone will read this, reply,

and my jaw will hit the floor.

[genius]

4. That's a great idea and the reason I'm voting for a Democrat in March

I could instead vote for some Republican to get the Democratic nomination. But I'd rather vote for Dennis and keep the party in Democratic hands.

[demvoter]

5. UtOh as reported on the news tonight

Good news/bad news Libya has agreed to disarm their WMD's,
Won't that be the proverbial :hippie: feather in you know who's cap.

The repubs are now gloating and probably will raise his ratings again. Great. NOT!:mad:

Hey I totally AGREE with the original post we need to vote in (preferably NEW senate and congress).

:kick: Bu$h out now!

[Toucano]

8. If Libya actually had ARMED WMD's

Why didn't we invade them? No, no, no! We invade the country without WMD's! Excellent, George. Good call!

Anyway, original post is an excellent idea. I was actually worried about this earlier on my way home from work as I tried to imagine our new president working with the Senate. We've got to get ahead in congress.

Thread is dying in this forum because of little traffic, nothing to do with the value of the ideas. :)

[Kenneth ken]

6. ...

:wow:

I was starting to think this thread was destined to die a quiet, lonely death.

THANKS!

sign up for your local meetup. Hey, you could even drop in on your rival candidate's meetup and pass this idea on to them. :D

[BertrandL]

7. This is a great idea

I think the DLC will be fine with it, since you stipulate that you'd only do this for offices where there is no Democrat challenger.

[demvoter]

9. Bad news just starting....Redistricting in TX

"AUSTIN -- A federal court today threw out claims by Democrats that the U.S. Constitution barred the Texas Legislature from doing congressional redistricting in the 10 years between censuses.

"With regard to the plaintiffs' argument to mid-decade redistricting, the point is not well taken," 5th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Patrick Higginbotham ruled from the bench for the three-judge court. "The Legislature is not prohibited from redistricting."

The ruling came as testimony concluded in the lawsuit challenging the Legislature's plan to redraw district boundaries to take the congressional delegation majority away from Democrats and give it to Republicans.

Gerry Hebert, a lawyer representing some of the Democratic incumbents, said the ruling was not unexpected. Hebert said the mid-decade redistricting argument was a small part of the case and ultimately will be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott praised the ruling. He said it agrees with a legal opinion he issued in April that said the Legislature had the authority to redraw the district boundaries if it wanted to do so.

Final arguments in the case were put off until Tuesday."

Houston Chronicle
(go to the Houston Chronicle for the entire article)

:kick: their butts!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

10. Excellent idea

My own Cong. district is represented by a liberal Dem with a safe seat (Martin Sabo), but just south of me is a Republican-held swing district. Perhaps all the Dems who live in a "safe" district could work in the nearest swing district or even raise the visibility of the Democrats in "safe" Republican areas.

[cyclezealot]

11. Not much hope.

Sorry, but I do not hold out much hope. DeLay and his cronnies are bent on making this a one party monopoly. First,you have to fight the media. The media has caused our people to be asleep to reality.
Then you have gerrymandering. As Common Cause once stated...You do not have a Constituency in search of a congressman, but a congressman in search of a constituency.
Before democratic values can prevail in this country we need systemic change. I advocate using state initiative to change the way we elect congress members..Why not proportional representation and public financing.... That would really shake up the system and we would have representatives that reflect its constituents,instead of being patsies for the lobbyists.
Otherwise a Democratic president can only slow down the regressive nature of the congress.
The states of Maine and Arizona have instituted public financing and we see the promise of positive change.

[audibledevil]

12. Thats what Democratic Party meetups are all about.

So get everyone to join democrat meetup!

[ipaul]

13. We could only hope.

It would be a great day if Carol Moseley-Braun would get the nomination. Then we would have a real interesting pres. race!

Cheers,

:)