I kept the feelings to myself, but i was hoping that Marcy Winograd would achieve 33 percent in her anti-war campaign against Jane Harman. When Winograd finished with 37.5 percent, many of her diehard supporters may have been dismayed. I was deeply relieved because she had been tested and proven herself a serious threat to the hawkish consensus, now and in the future.
Politics is simplified into winning and losing, but politics also is a process of changing the balance of forces too. Marcy revealed the hidden depth of anti-war sentiment among Democrats, and delivered a message for 2008.
Consider Jane Harman. In her first Congressional campaign in 2000, her Green Party opponent received 22 percent of the vote. After eight years representing the people of the 36th, she was rejected by 37.5 percent of her own party. If she chooses to run again in 2008, she will be forced to remake herself or risk another Winograd-style challenge.
Harman spent at least $750,000 to win 62.4 percent. Harman was backed by the machine of the whole Democratic hierarchy, including liberals like Barbara Boxer. She had the Sierra Club fronting for her in a coastal district. By comparison, Marcy spent perhaps $100,000 on five lively pieces of mail. What if Marcy had spent $500,000 on fifteen or twenty mailers? Marcy's campaign began only three months ago. What if Marcy had started building a profile and campaign organization twelve months ago? Marcy may have won...and this is what Jane Harman and her party backers are thinking about. Marcy made them shiver, and might have given them a heart attack. She could have been the Cindy Sheehan of electoral politics.
Where were the Hollywood liberals this time? Nowhere to be seen. The diva of global warming, Laurie David, was raising thousand dollar checks for Harman. What were the little group of power brokers at the Sierra Club thinking? That it was pragmatic to connect coastal protection with the War on Terrorism? Then there was the LA Weekly, which branded Harman as horrible then endorsed her anyway. All these progressive forces were out of touch with the spirit that was animating Marcy and her volunteer network. Marcy has given them much to think about.
And what about the Democratic Hawks - from Harman to Berman to Schiff and Brad Sherman, to Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, to the corporate Democratic Leadership Council, AIPAC, and the "muscular internationalists". Don't they see a repeat of Vietnam and Watergate, and an electoral opportunity, in the current implosion of the Bush Administration at home and abroad.?
Are the worried about all the Winograds building an anti-war firewall in Iowa, New Hampshire and the primary states? Do they see that if Marcy could assemble a 37.5 percent voter base in a defense-dependent district the anti-war constitutuency waiting in the primaries might be larger? Are they going to begin, as they say, repositioning themselves on Iraq before 2008? Or do their cold-blooded consultants believe that ignoring the rank-and-file anti-war sentiment will help establish their candidates as centrist? Can they win in 2008 by being against the Bush era but favoring Bush's war in Iraq? Can they take the peace and justice movement for granted and still mobilize a vast and successful coalition?
In the long run, we may see that the Winograd campaign - and others like it - was a marker in either the realignment or the tragic decline of the Democratic Party. And not just the Democrats - the two-party system cannot ignore the anti-war majority, in blue states and red, without a crisis of legitimacy. #