Thought it might cheer you up to know it's not just Hillary and Feinstein facing primary challenges from anti-war candidates: right now I'm working for my friend Johnny Hap on a volunteer, grassroots campaign to unseat the unspeakable Rahm Emmanuel in Illinois' 5th district.Good luck, guys -- and I'm not being snide; it would be wonderful if somebody could knock Rahm off in the primary. I'm getting increasingly skeptical about the usefulness of primary challenges, though; I'd much rather see you gearing up for a third-party challenge to Rahm in the general election. Then you'd have some help from the Republicans, you see, assuming they can manage to field a candidate with two brains to rub together.True, Rahm has plenty of money and even more party-machine connections, but still we feel he is vulnerable to a progressive challenge because of the strong discontent among even mainstream Democrats in the district....
Johnny Hap is affiliated with members of the Progressive Democrats of America and is chiefly concerned with pulling the Democratic party back to the left, to a point where it may embrace a radical revision of our electoral system, including the opening-up of our two-party hegemony. Whether or not this is possible from within the Democratic party remains to be seen, but the point is we believe Rahm Emmanuel can be defeated in the primary by a progressive, anti-war, anti-corporate government candidate. Anyway, check out the website www.JohnnyHap.org...
The crucial question is, do you loathe Rahm enough to help a Republican knock him off? If you don't -- and I don't mean you personally, I mean frustrated lefties generally -- then I think you're still entertaining some illusions about the Democratic Party, illusions that are likely to prove seriously crippling.
Comments (1)
this is coming from
a labor democrat
live or die
forget the primary
torpedo em in the general
run as an independent
and run to split his vote
run as an
anti machine democrat
run as a human being
for christ's sake
this is lex emmanuel the super monster anti moses
you're runnin against
extra ordinary measures are the order of the day
fight to take him out
triangulat
get some former bears guard
now a repub to take
the win here
whatever you do
don't stop
with a symbolic
primary gesture of protest
amen
js paine
Posted by js paine | February 15, 2006 7:45 PM
Posted on February 15, 2006 19:45