Breaking: Progressives aren’t losing all their races

by digby

The only problem is the facts are wrong. Of course some progressives have lost this season. Some tea partiers have as well. Also moderates. It’s the nature of primaries. But the article in question takes the example of the PCCC’s big three losing races — Sheyman, Griego and Saldana — as if they represent the whole country. It’s just not true. There have been winners as well, they just didn’t happen to be the ones the PCCC were involved in. (This is not to say the PCCC’s candidates were bad. They weren’t. Blue America endorsed them too. They just happened to have lost in this cycle.)

Despite the fact that people seem to think they don’t matter, a couple of the progressive winners were shockers, taking out establishment incumbents. The first was Matt Cartwright in Pennsylvania who defeated Blue Dog Tim Holden and more recently Beto O’Rourke in Texas who defeated the longtime head of the House Intelligence Committee Silvestre Reyes. These were outsider races that anyone would have expected to be huge losses for the progressive challengers … and they weren’t. In both cases, the Party (unofficially) brought out the big guns to support their friends and big contributors kicked in large sums as well. But the progressives won. What does that mean nationally? You tell me. But it can’t mean less than the Griego and Sheyman losses, can it?

Meanwhile, Patsy Keever in North Carolina won her race against a handpicked DCCC anti-choice conservadem and Dr David Gill won his in Illinois running against Dick Durbin’s machine. And we still don’t know if Norman Solomon might have made it to the general, they’re still counting votes. (And even if he has lost it, he didn’t lose to a moderate or a conservative — he will have lost to a standard issue Northern California liberal .)

The fact is that we don’t have the 40 years of well-funded conservative infrastructure the Tea Party had to build on so the fact that we win at all is a miracle. The Republican party happily brands itself as far to the right as it can get, while the Democratic Party reflexively rejects the progressive and liberal labels and prefers to be seen as a moderate/center party, embracing all views under its big tent. The default is to move to the center, not move the party to the left, and primaries are, therefore, much more ideologically diverse and contentious.

And of course it is true that more voters identify as conservative than liberal. But I don’t know that people agree on what those labels mean, much less are able to place themselves within them ideologically. Many older Democrats like me tend to identify as liberal. Younger people call themselves Progressives. Some use both. There are even left libertarians. But a vast number of Democrats call themselves moderates. Why? Because the party goes to great lengths to brand itself as that. So, I’m not all that sure just how useful the designations really are in explaining primary wins and losses.

One thing that cannot be overstated is how really, really difficult it is for progressives to raise money, which in this environment is even more problematic than it has been in the past. They are at a serious disadvantage because their principles preclude them from going where the money is — corporate America while, sadly, wealthy liberals listen to the Party establishment and so spend their money protecting incumbents. And believe me, raising money online isn’t the cash cow some people may imagine. It takes much more effort on the ground, fundraising one dollar at a time, and perhaps a few losing races before progressive movement candidates can gain the name recognition and experience to win. It’s not like you can grow talented people who are willing to do all that on trees.