Jeff Merkley Is Awesome And I Gave His Leadership PAC $5000

Every time progressives have needed something to happen in the Senate over the past 18 months, Jeff Merkley was trying to do it. Back during the last days of the health care fight, he was trying to push the public option through the Senate using budget reconciliation. He's been working to get rid of the filibuster, perhaps on a 6-year delay so that a Senate minority has no short-term reason to oppose it. Most recently, he responded to bad news for cap-and-trade legislation in the Senate by coming up with a bunch of utilities-only proposals to give you most of the anti-CO2 benefits of the larger bill. And it's not just issues that our political culture is thinking about -- thanks to him, health care reform included provisions to help nursing mothers at work.

Financial reform provided a nice display of Merkley's progressivism and his tactical skill. He and Carl Levin came up with a proposal to ban banks from high-risk trading. When it got filibustered, he turned it into a second-degree amendment to a Republican proposal to exempt car dealers from financial regulations. With his proposal attached to theirs, Republicans gave up on their proposal.

Being a just-elected freshman Senator, Merkley isn't up for re-election until 2014. So I didn't give money to his ordinary campaign account. Instead, I donated to his leadership PAC. This is money he gives to other Democrats for their campaigns. Most of the money he's given out recently has gone to people running for the Senate this cycle. So basically I'm donating through him to Democratic efforts to retain the Senate. Some people's leadership PACs are just slush funds that they use for golf, but Merkley's been throwing nearly all the money to candidates.

The point of doing it through Merkley is that he can show up in the offices of people who took his money and persuade them to help out with the awesome stuff he's trying to do. As a random out-of-state contributor, I'm not really equipped to tell Senators to go support Jeff's stuff. Giving to a progressive legislator's leadership PAC seems to be the best way to both help Democrats retain the Senate and ensure that they vote for the right things. I lose some efficiency in terms of being able to pick the races where extra money will make the biggest impact, but I'm thinking that donating through somebody who can actually get in people's faces and call in favors more than makes up for that.

The last time I wrote a big post about Merkley, he was running for for Senate. He was right on all the major progressive issues -- supporting universal health care, gay marriage, public transit, and fair trade, while opposing the Iraq War from the beginning. The thing that really won me over, from a phone interview I did with him back in 2007, was his clear and eloquent explanation of the need for third world debt relief.

Not only was he right on the issues, but he was an excellent electoral and legislative tactician. He won Democrats a 31-29 majority in the Oregon House and became Speaker by recruiting a serious challenger to run against the previous Republican Speaker, tying her down so that she couldn't just go out and fundraise for everyone else. Then on the strength of that slender majority, he passed all sorts of awesome stuff -- same-sex domestic partnership benefits, requirements that insurance companies cover birth control, and all sorts of minor nifty good-government things I would've never thought of, like a law allowing people in trailer parks to join together and form co-ops to prevent the land they live on from being sold out from under them. Take a look -- it's pretty amazing.

So far, he's lived up to the amazing promise he showed as a candidate. And I'm optimistic that he has a long career as a great progressive Senator ahead of him. I'm hoping that we can increase his influence by giving him money to give away. If this sounds good to you, please think about donating to Democratic efforts to retain the Senate through his Leadership PAC!

McChrystal And The Knives

Sir Charles has the right take on the McChrystal stuff -- Obama should use this opportunity to do good policy and put in a general who's interested in leading us out of Afghanistan. I hope that's what he's done.

I don't know which way is the right way to go as far as short-term perception stuff is concerned, and the things that I read McChrystal saying in the Rolling Stone article seemed quite mild to me. (Obviously I don't have any sense of what the norms are for military leaders talking about the President.) But the thing that'll have a big long-term effect here is the general direction of Afghanistan policy. Do that right.

On a different note, I found this part of the Rolling Stone article interesting:

Despite the tragedies and miscues, McChrystal has issued some of the strictest directives to avoid civilian casualties that the U.S. military has ever encountered in a war zone. It's "insurgent math," as he calls it – for every innocent person you kill, you create 10 new enemies. He has ordered convoys to curtail their reckless driving, put restrictions on the use of air power and severely limited night raids. He regularly apologizes to Hamid Karzai when civilians are killed, and berates commanders responsible for civilian deaths. "For a while," says one U.S. official, "the most dangerous place to be in Afghanistan was in front of McChrystal after a 'civ cas' incident." The ISAF command has even discussed ways to make not killing into something you can win an award for: There's talk of creating a new medal for "courageous restraint," a buzzword that's unlikely to gain much traction in the gung-ho culture of the U.S. military.

But however strategic they may be, McChrystal's new marching orders have caused an intense backlash among his own troops. Being told to hold their fire, soldiers complain, puts them in greater danger. "Bottom line?" says a former Special Forces operator who has spent years in Iraq and Afghanistan. "I would love to kick McChrystal in the nuts. His rules of engagement put soldiers' lives in even greater danger. Every real soldier will tell you the same thing."

With soldiers like that, how can we win in Afghanistan? Look, you guys signed up for dangerous duty, and you're eager to follow dangerous orders if they're the orders to attack an enemy position or do some other offensive military action. Good for you. But now we're in a mission where victory depends on not shooting, given the insurgent math that McChrystal is talking about. Why can't you see the dangers of not shooting the same way you see the dangers of heading into combat -- a brave thing that needs to be done for victory?

COIN guru John Nagl has likened counterinsurgency warfare to eating soup with a knife -- something difficult that you should just try not commit yourself to doing. Maybe soldiers who learned to fight in an atmosphere with a courageous restraint medal and whatever else would be more spoonlike. But right now, knives is what we've got, and it's time to walk away from the table.

Utah Blackjack

Ed Kilgore describes the situation in Utah's 2nd district like this: Rep. Jim Matheson, a Blue Dog who opposed health care reform, is facing a primary challenge from Claudia Wright, who has solid left-wing views and is an out lesbian. Matheson tends to do pretty well in general election races, getting over 60% of the vote for the first time in 2008, but this is going to be a tough year for Democrats. I don't know how strong Republican opponent Morgan Philpot is, but he's a former state party vice-chair and state rep, so he's not some Alvin Greene character. Kilgore:

The recent Deseret News poll shows Matheson leading Wright 52-33. He is very likely to win, but even so, a close race will be interpreted as a leading indicator of the peril moderate-to-conservative Democrats court by opposing major progressive initiatives, even in a place like Utah.

Given that there's a major risk of Democrats losing the House this year, is the optimal outcome is for Wright to get as close to 50% as possible without hitting it and beating Matheson? That gives you more juice for the party discipline story, without actually raising the chances of Boehner becoming Speaker and turning the House into a chamber of obstructionist horrors for the rest of Obama's first term, right? Just given the poll numbers, I think this means 'vote for Wright' but I'm not in touch with the situation on the ground.

Daughters Of Republican Presidential Nominees: The Swing Voters Of 2010!

I like this thing with GOP presidential nominees' daughters turning leftwards. (The latest: young Barbara Bush supports Obamacare. (BTW, should Democrats embrace the name 'Obamacare'? I don't see why not.)) You've also got Meghan McCain, and going back to older times, Patti Reagan, who I always found quite intriguing.

Obviously, the conclusion I want to draw is that progressive views are the natural outcome of rational reflection on how the world should be, and their merits are especially obvious to young women, even those raised in the very center of Republican power.

Line Of The Day

From Jemele Hill, via Eugenia Beh: "The horrific call that forced Team USA to settle for a 2-2 tie with Slovenia was so bad that I'm surprised Texas Rep. Joe Barton hasn't already called Malian referee Koman Coulibaly to apologize for the harsh criticism the official undoubtedly deserves."