power struggle in the democratic party

8/9/2019 Power Struggle in the Democratic Party

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Power Struggle: Inside The Battle For TheSoul Of The Democratic Party

Ryan Grim and Arthur Delaney

Ral Grijalva is sitting quietly with a few of his staffers at one end of the bar, a bottle of Bud anda shot of whiskey in front of him, while his fellow Democratic members of the House ofRepresentatives roar in celebration at the other end. It's 1 a.m. Less than two hours earlier, after a14-month battle, Congress approved comprehensive health care reform.

Joe Crowley, ascendant leader of the New Democrat Coalition, stands behind the bar, passingout beers to his colleagues -- Bart Stupak, Melissa Bean, Steve Driehaus, John Larson. Crowleyowns the place, his six-foot-four frame and Tyrannosaurus head towering over the crush of

members, staffers, reporters and regulars.

Grijalva is a regular. So much so that for weeks, a cartoon caricature of him hung on a wall bythe front door: a shirtless Grijalva, at the beach, admiring a sandcastle he has built with LynnWoolsey and Debbie Wasserman Schultz. None of them see the menacing gang of senatorsmarching their way. In the unsubtle tradition of political cartoons, the sandcastle spells outPUBLIC OPTION. The cartoon, fittingly, has been taken down before tonight. "We're


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commiserating and celebrating," says Grijalva, whose mood is leaning heavily toward theformer.

The Senate hooligans depicted in the cartoon had co-conspirators. Democrats in both chamberslet the sand castle get smashed, each blaming the other. The Democrats celebrating their victory

in the bar tonight are of a decidedly conservative variety, the result of a conscious strategy tomove the party to the right in order to take back the House and pad the majority. They may bethe ones partying, but it's Grijalva and his progressive allies who are picking up the tab.

Since 1995, members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus have collectively given $6.3million directly to members of the Blue Dog and New Democrat coalitions, according to ananalysis by the Huffington Post of data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. That'snot an overwhelming sum when the average winning campaign nowadays costs more than $1million, but it represents one-sixth of all giving from one faction within the party to another. Itdoesn't include the millions that progressives have given to the Democratic CongressionalCampaign Committee -- rank-and-file members are supposed to cough up $150,000 every two

years (though many miss that mark), committee chairmen $250,000 and up. The DCCC turnsaround and funnels that money to conservative Democrats in close races. Add to that the millionsspent by organized labor and outside groups such as MoveOn.org, and it's clear that progressivedonors have become major financial benefactors of the conservative Democrats who battled toundermine their agenda. "That tension exists a lot," George Miller says about the party's demandthat progressives fund their intramural rivals. "That tension exists a lot. And it's real."

Democrats play it too safe, says Grijalva. "When I give my dues to the DCCC, or when youcontribute to it, you have no distinction as to where your money is going to go. And it goes tofront-liners and usually Blue Dogs and [they] usually vote against our issues. And that's a realfrustration. And usually, if there's a progressive running, it's the last consideration in terms of

support," he says.

The Blue Dog and New Democrat coalitions emerged in the 1990s in the wake of the successfulRepublican campaign to take control of Congress, and have continuously expanded theirmembership ever since. The prototypical Blue Dog comes from a socially conservative, ruraldistrict; New Democrats are more likely to represent pro-choice bankers from the suburbs. Bothgroups offer automatic protection against accusations that their members are too liberal.

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The money flows almost entirely in one direction: The conservative coalitions have givenprogressives less than $600,000. While Blue Dogs and New Democrats have each given theirfellow travelers $2.4 million in the past 15 years, members of the much larger progressive caucushave helped each other to the tune of just $1.3 million.

Progressives have received very little return on their investment when it comes to importantvotes. The 34 Democrats who voted against the health care reform bill in March havecollectively received $2.1 million from progressive members. More than half of that sum came inthe past five years.


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Grijalva is piqued that the caucus his fellow progressives helped create has now launched a peprally in his low-key Tune Inn, which he discovered when he arrived in 2003 after searching for abar stool safely outside the orbit of Washington's power center. His colleagues don't seem tonotice the host's distress. Leaving the bar to shouts of "Crow-ley! Crow-ley!", the Queenscongressman out of central casting barely acknowledges Grijalva. Other members give him

cursory nods. He stays until after the lights come on -- last call. As the remaining reporters fileout, Grijalva says he will begin the fight again tomorrow.

He'll have company. Organized labor, MoveOn.org and progressive members of Congress areincreasingly breaking from the orbit of the White House and the Democratic establishment,beginning to take on the administration, build an independent infrastructure and back progressiveprimary challengers. Unions are working to groom progressive candidates in small, local racesand, inside Congress, the progressive caucus -- after years of being treated like the stepchild ofthe House -- has the potential leadership and organizing vision in place to be ready the next timethe nation clamors for a step forward and, in the meantime, to finish what was started on March21, 2010.

There are two ways to look at Congress. One sees each chamber as a discrete, static body andeach bill a challenge to cobble together the coalition needed to get 218 votes. Do it over andover. Put enough points up on the board, cut enough deals and you win. Or, more importantly,you don't lose. It is, in essence, a defensive approach to politics. Done right, it can achieveresults.

So far this session, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), with the occasional help of PresidentBarack Obama, muscled through a health care reform bill twice, cap-and-trade legislation, WallStreet reform, a $154 billion jobs bill that conservative Blue Dog Democrats hated, and apolitically toxic measure to raise the debt ceiling. None of those bills received more than 223

votes.

Yet for all the real accomplishments, many liberals are celebrating less than they arecommiserating about a lost opportunity, an opportunity for progressive change that pales incomparison to '33 and '34, '64 and '65, when Democratic majorities redirected the course of thenation. "It is only once in a generation that a people can be lifted above material things,"Woodrow Wilson said, perhaps optimistically. "That is why conservative government is in thesaddle two-thirds of the time." This generation reformed health care and built on that foundation,but the contemporary Democratic approach relies more on using government money to prop upprivate institutions, no matter how broken, instead of expanding the public sector. For instance, apublic insurance plan -- the "public option" -- was part of the health reform discussion until itcame threateningly close to becoming law, at which point it was discarded.

There's another way to look at Congress: It's a dynamic institution. Democrats in Congress andWashington, whether consciously or by drift, have long operated and focused their priorities as ifthey were talking points engraved in stone. But in a city governed by a jumpy media culture thatveers from obsession to ignorance and back on a daily basis, a canny member of Congress ismore than a vote on the House floor.


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Take the case of Reps. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) and Chellie Pingree (D-Maine). This past January,the health care reform effort was collapsing amidst the rubble of the Senate special election inMassachusetts and Obama was talking publicly about paring reform down to a few essentialpieces. Polis had a different idea. In a meeting that Pelosi held for Democratic rookies the weekafter Scott Brown's surprise victory, he suggested reviving the public option. The Senate had lost

its 60-vote supermajority and was in the process of considering the use of the reconciliationprocedure, which would require only 50 votes and eliminate the need to placate public optionopponents such as Sen. Joe Lieberman.

Adam Green, a former staffer for MoveOn.org and co-founder of the Progressive ChangeCampaign Committee, got word of Polis's suggestion and offered to help organize outsidesupport. Pingree, a progressive freshman from a state represented by two moderate Republicansenators, offered to join, and the legislative pair began circulating a letter calling on the Senate touse reconciliation to pass a public option and finish health care reform. Green's PCCC wasjoined by Howard Dean's Democracy for America and CREDO Action in pushing for outsidesupport, generating calls into members' offices asking that they sign on. More than a hundred

members signed on.

Polis enlisted the support of Sen. Michael Bennet, a freshman Democrat from his home state ofColorado facing pressure from a progressive primary challenger. New York's freshman Sen.Kirsten Gillibrand also signed on. With freshman Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) and sophomoreSen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), the four put out a Senate version of the Pingree-Polis letter. andthe effort caught fire in the Senate, where more than 40 senators eventually made thecommitment.

"The Netroots advocacy effort made an enormous impact. When Chellie Pingree and I launchedthe letter, we didn't know if we'd have a dozen, two dozen signatures, and that's probably what

we would've had, absent a strong Netroots effort," says Polis.

As the number of senators joining the effort expanded, it generated leadership support, withDemocratic Sens. Charles Schumer (N.Y.) and Bob Menendez (N.J.) getting behind it. SenateMajority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was the next to jump on board. "Senator Reid has alwaysand continues to support the public option as a way to drive down costs and create competition,"read a statement his office put out on a Friday in late February. "That is why he included themeasure in his original health care proposal. If a decision is made to use reconciliation toadvance health care, Senator Reid will work with the White House, the House, and members ofhis caucus in an effort to craft a public option that can overcome procedural obstacles and secureenough votes."

It gave new life to the effort and cemented the policy as a key legislative priority in the future.

"It helped a whole lot," says Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), the man in charge of whipping votes,of the Pingree-Polis letter. "The base getting fired up helped a whole lot. We could feel it outthere." Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), reflecting on the letter, agrees. "It added energy tothe effort to get to where we wanted to get," he says in an interview in his office the week theHouse passed the final piece of reform.


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The White House didn't appreciate the new energy. A few hours after Reid's office put out astatement in support of the public option, Rahm Emanuel met senior Reid aide Jim Manley and afew reporters from the Washington Postand theNew York Times for dinner and drinks at Lola's,a Capitol Hill bar and grill. Seeing Manley, Emanuel offered a response to Reid's gesture withone of his own: a double-bird, an eerie sight given his half-severed right finger.

Though they couldn't save the public option, while the Democratic establishment was lying flaton its back progressives played offense and helped saved reform itself. The organized effortoffers a glimpse into the progressive resurgence taking shape independent of the White House, asthe movement realizes that Obama will need to be forced to bring about the change he promised.

The most recognizable members of the progressive caucus, the ones who spend more timetending to their committees than organizing, were elected amid the collapse of trust in Americaninstitutions during the mid-1970s. Watergate Babies Henry Waxman, Charlie Rangel and George

Miller took the House by its bull horns: They upended the seniority system in a historic revoltaimed at breaking the hold on power that Southern Democrats had in the House. But as the fallof Nixon gave way to the rise of Reagan, they were forced to spend more than a decade on thedefensive. The most effective Democratic legislator during the period was, not coincidentally,Ted Kennedy, who was renowned for his fine-grained, dynamic understanding of the institutionand, more importantly, the personal pressures facing each member. He was always on theoffense, even with a Republican in the White House.

The battle to make policy on Capitol Hill changed in 1994, when Newt Gingrich and theRepublicans took back control of the House of Representatives for the first time in four decades.Legislating was no longer a priority. Undoing legislation was. And that didn't require intellectual

infrastructure. Gingrich attacked the institution itself, wiping out funding for caucus staff, theintellectual infrastructure around which liberals in Congress organized. "It was a big blow,"Miller says.

For the next 12 years, Democrats came to Congress to run out the clock. Chastened by the lossesof the 1980s and early 1990s, they triangulated, pushing policy positions not because they weregood in and of themselves but because they were better than the opposite. They wanted to be inthe majority because it was awful to be in the minority. And for those on the most left-wingedges of the party who were uncomfortable with a deliberately incremental political vision, suchas Woolsey, Barbara Lee or Maxine Waters, the defensive posture was the best option. Abjectand unbending opposition -- to war, nuclear weapons, free trade, tax cuts for the rich, you nameit -- had been standard for nearly three decades by the time Democrats finally retook Congress in2006 and the White House in 2008. "Some people would like to run on a razor-thin majority, butI don't think that's necessarily the case for me," says George Miller. "This is a system that's verydynamic. The idea that somehow you could perfectly fashion that coalition, you're sort ofdefying history. ... You work with the coalition you have. I think that's the strength of theSpeaker. This is our coalition, these are the seats we fought for, these are the people that camehere. They have a right to have a say in the outcome here."


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Ral Grijalva and his allies, which include other newcomers like Reps. Donna Edwards (D-Md.)and Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), don't have the same scars. Powered by an emboldened, lessinstitutionalized left, they see Congress as a stagnant body in need of a sharper, clearer vision.But while Congress worked on the most significant pieces of legislation in several generations,the Congressional Progressive Caucus was never able to present itself as an organized

negotiating bloc and clearly articulate the demands of the left beyond the public option. Instead,it burned up its energy in a civil war. The fight was personal -- longtime CPC leader LynnWoolsey simply does not like her new co-chair and the feeling appears to be mutual -- but it wasalso about competing political visions.

The reactions from Grijalva and Woolsey to the Pingree-Polis initiative are indicative. Grijalvaencouraged them and urged each member of the CPC to sign the letter and encouraged thesupport from outside groups. Woolsey disagreed. "I wouldn't say she was chastising me oranything else, but saying that those [are the] kinds of things the progressive caucus is happy todo together," says Pingree. People who heard about the conversation claim that it wasn't as gentleas Pingree describes it but, either way, the point was clear: Woolsey thinks CPC leadership

doesn't need any outside help, whether from freshmen Democrats, online organizations or old-school liberal groups.

Pingree brushed off Woolsey's admonishment. With backing from three outside groups, thePCCC, Howard Dean's Democracy for America and Credo Action, they pushed ahead.

"We were thrilled," says Polis. "Without even knowing that it was going to occur, there was astrong Netroots push by Adam Green and others to raise money for Chellie Pingree and I, and itraised over $25,000 for my reelection campaign and similar numbers for Chellie Pingree." Thegroups would go on to raise even larger sums for Bennet and Gillibrand on the Senate side. Andwhile the total dollar amounts so far are small, each candidate picked up the names and email

addresses of thousands of progressive donors who can be tapped again and again. Bennet andGillibrand, both of whom had been viewed with suspicion by the Democratic base, were given aboost, with Bennet's opponent left only to argue that Bennet hadn't fought hard enough for it.Stepping up and pushing a progressive priority had proven to be a winning political strategy.


The relative success of the effort was a rebuke to Woolsey. "Politically, we think it's not aquestion of influence, it's a question of coalition-building," Grijalva says when asked aboutWoolsey's concern about the influence of outside groups. "Somebody needs to knock on thedoor, and knock hard sometimes," he says. "This is not an intellectual exercise, this is a politicalexercise, and you need political backing."

It's not the kind of backing Woolsey is looking for. In June, Amy Isaacs went to see her oldfriend Woolsey to tell her that she was retiring after a long organizing career that included 20years at the old-school liberal organization Americans for Democratic Action. Isaacs wanted tointroduce her to the succeeding director and to offer help with her agenda. She had no idea whatshe was in for. Isaacs describes the meeting that ensued as "what has to have been the mostbizarre conversation with a member of Congress that I've had in 40 years." Woolsey made it


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clear that one of her top priorities was making sure that Grijalva didn't win out in his effort toally the CPC with outside organizations. "Those aren't quite the words she used, but that wascertainly the meaning she conveyed. And it was odd. It was very odd," says Isaacs.

Woolsey, a single mother who worked her way off welfare and was elected to Congress in 1992

to represent the super-wealthy Marin and Sonoma counties, doesn't want help from outsidegroups, but she also doesn't want them praising her rival. When MoveOn.org sent a mass emailinto districts represented by members of the CPC, asking them to thank Grijalva for his work onthe public option, Woolsey lost it. "They just sent out this universal thing and dropped themember's name in it," says Woolsey. "And they've actually apologized to me profusely for doingthat. They were chagrined that they would've done that to me. But they just didn't think. It was amistake. They shouldn't have done it."

Woolsey would rather wage an internal struggle free from interference. "They're outside groupsand they belong -- it is not their job to give direction to the progressive caucus, who are working,all 83 of us, at breakneck speed, to get things as progressive as possible," says Woolsey, who

doesn't appreciate her door being knocked on. "To go to the most progressive members of theHouse and tell them they're not progressive enough is not healthy."

HuffPost asks how the co-chair setup has been going.

Woolsey pauses. "It's hard," she finally says. "I think now the progressive caucus might bemature enough that in the next Congress, we should be looking at having a single chair."

Would she run?

"No. I mean, this is my third term. Year six. No, I won't run for it," she says.

The defensive approach starts with candidate recruitment. Its advocates insist that the pathtoward liberal governance is to elect as many people with D after their name as possible,regardless of their politics. That is the Rahm Emanuel way. In 2006, as chairman of the DCCC,he successfully engineered a stunning takeover of the House. In 2008, after joining the Houseleadership, he solidified and expanded the majority. He supported challenges to Republicans inright-leaning districts across the country, often by recruiting the most conservative candidates hecould find. The base, he figured, would come out anyway, moved in 2006 by anti-war, anti-Bushpassion and in 2008 by hope and change. He was right: the strategy was effective in taking backthe majority. But now it's run its course, and progressives are looking for more than justnumbers.

The static approach was dictated by simple arithmetic -- win 218 seats. As Pelosi finds on aweekly basis, however, finding that number for a particular Democratic legislative item is achallenge, even with more than 250 Democrats in the chamber. The paradox flows directly fromthe national strategy of encouraging conservatives to run as Democrats to give the party amajority. The entire caucus gets behind the effort -- even progressives, who actively raise moneyfor candidates who then work to undermine their very agenda.


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President Obama, as he so often does, embodies both approaches. He ran as a candidate with acommunity-organizing background and a dynamic approach to politics, promising to shake upWashington and make the impossible possible. An ever-present and pessimistic "they" hauntedhis stump speeches, warning that Washington couldn't change, that the power structures were tooentrenched. He would prove them wrong. As president, however, he chose instead to work with

the institution exactly as he found it, charging Emanuel with accomplishing what was possible.When his economic advisers told him a stimulus of greater than a trillion dollars was needed tofill the hole created by the financial collapse, Emanuel said it wouldn't be possible. So it wasn'tattempted, and unemployment soared to 10 percent.

Obama came to office with a list of 12 million supporters ready and willing to help drive hisagenda, an army that could have transformed the political reality of Washington. It was nevermarshaled to the cause of the public option. Obama let it languish and has refused to share it withmembers of Congress.

Without access to the list, Democrats are left to raise money the way they have for decades.

Interest groups with business before Congress shovel money to high-powered members, whothen funnel it to vulnerable Democrats and the DCCC.

A significant amount of the money flowing from progressives to conservatives comes from themembers of the caucus who chair committees -- George Miller, John Conyers, Barney Frank,Henry Waxman, Louise Slaughter, and formerly Charlie Rangel -- members from safe districtswho have risen to positions of power, and who by virtue of their gavels easily rake in the cash,much more than they need for themselves. Keeping those gavels is a matter of keeping themajority, no matter its political makeup.


"Progressive and moderate and conservative Democrats all together have been trying to makesure that we have the majority, and in the districts that are the most up-for-grabs, our candidatestend to be more conservative," says Waxman, chairman of the Energy and CommerceCommittee. "So you see a trend for everybody to give to those seats where we have anopportunity to win or we have to have the backing to hold onto it. So that explains why you seeprogressives giving to Blue Dogs and Blue Dogs giving to Blue Dogs."

After all, what could possibly hurt the progressive agenda more than losing the majority? Aformer Democratic staffer who came to the Hill in 2001 says padding the majority is aworthwhile endeavor.

"Anybody who actually says [we'd be better with a smaller, more progressive majority] may ormay not have experienced the minority and doesn't know how terrible it is living in that world,"he says. "It's a shit world to live in. On the House side, to be in the minority, you get nothing.You get absolutely nothing. No legislation gets enacted. You have less staff. You have lessresources. You have hundreds or thousands of well meaning young progressives out of work. It'sa terror -- it's an absolute terror."


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Outside groups also face existential pressure to maintain a majority, especially given anincreasingly rightward tilt in the Republican Party - a Speaker John Boehner probably wouldn'thave the president of the Sierra Club or EMILY's List in his Outlook contacts.

But a thumbnail description of where a person, especially a new candidate, sits on the political

spectrum -- insofar as it's even an accurate depiction of a political ideology -- is not always thedetermining factor when it comes to winning elections. "There are a lot of places where there's aformula to winning that has nothing to do with ideology, and you just have to be a goodcampaigner and a good politician. ... There are some pretty liberal members in Republicandistricts, and they don't have any problem doing what they want to do," says Tom Matzzie, apolitical consultant and former senior official with MoveOn.org. "It's a big project. You need torecruit starting with city councils and school boards and state legislatures or also find some reallytalented people. [Freshman Rep.] Tom Perriello [D-Va.] is a very talented person."

Schumer, every bit Emanuel's political match if not more, led an even more stunning takeover ofthe Senate in 2006 and, after the next cycle, improbably expanded it to a (brief) filibuster-proof

60. Schumer didn't need to depend on conservatives, even in swing states. Newcomers such asSherrod Brown, Jeff Merkley, Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) and Al Franken (Minn.) have allchampioned progressives causes.

There are examples of conservative voters electing populist, liberal-leaning candidates in theHouse, too. Perriello, who won a 2008 race in rural Virginia, is probably the most visibleexample, the subject of a recent New Yorker profile. Niki Tsongas and Carol Shea-Porter aretwo more. Then there's Alan Grayson, the outspoken freshman from a Orlando-based swingdistrict. In 2009, he helped pass a bill that would open up the Federal Reserve to a historic auditthat could end up changing the makeup of the institution. That bill had been introduced everyyear for more than two decades by Rep. Ron Paul, a libertarian-leaning Republican with a large

following off the Hill but not much of one on it.

Grayson was key, but it's not like Paul was one vote short and Grayson's election put it over thetop. Instead, Grayson changed the dynamic. He made an assault on the Fed a central goalthroughout the year, using his Financial Services Committee hearing time to question FedChairman Ben Bernanke and his underlings in revealing exchanges that were viewed millions oftimes on YouTube. Grayson worked his colleagues one-on-one, explaining the importance of anaudit. As the crucial vote approached, an alliance of bloggers, progressive economists and laborunions backed his bill against a combined Fed and Treasury effort to water it down.

He won. Even if it's weakened in the Senate -- or even if it doesn't pass at all -- the dynamicnature of Congress in particular and politics in general means that the outcome is different for thefight having been waged at all. The Fed still feels and reacts to the pressure. For instance, shortlyafter Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd came out with a financial regulatoryoverhaul that stripped the Fed of all its consumer protection authority, the Fed unexpectedly putout tougher rules for credit card issuers than Congress had even wanted when it passed itscrackdown in the spring.


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Shea-Porter survived a close race in 2008 and is expected to be reelected in 2010. The longer sheholds her seat while sticking to her progressive politics, the more comfortable her district willget. Washington Republicans never expected to have a tough time retaking Grayson's seat, butthe party's top eight recruits have declined to take him on as he has amassed a huge war chestcourtesy of progressive online donors. And despite voting his conscience, against the advice of

D.C. consultants, Perriello stands as good a chance as any Democrat in a GOP district of holdinghis seat.

Walking the line in a conservative district isn't easy and has required burn-out levels ofcommitment from Periello, Grayson, Tsongas and Shea-Porter to tending to the needs of theirdistricts. But they have shown that they can find success, and likely reelection, by clearlyasserting their politics, instead of trying to explain it away. "Part of the problem is that we oftentake this What's The Matter With Kansas? approach that assumes that people are reactionary andstupid and that we just need to convince them that they're going to make more money under ourplan," says Perriello. "But the fact is people are good, decent, smart people and we should treatthem that way. ... People don't have to agree with you on every issue but they do have to believe

that you are genuinely doing what you believe is right."

The DCCC has company in retreat. EMILY's List, for example, and the DCCC, have similargoals: The former wants as big a pro-choice majority as possible, the latter as big a Democraticmajority as possible. They care, essentially, about nothing else.

Darcy Burner got the EMILY's List education on how to be a candidate. The DCCC doescandidate trainings, too, as do the American Federation of State, County and MunicipalEmployees and Wellstone Action. The EMILY's List and DCCC classes are lessons in how tosound conservative. "They handed out unedited Third Way talking points," says Burner. ThirdWay is the intellectual source of centrist Democratic talking points. She ran as a progressive,

against Washington, D.C. pressure, and lost in 2006 and 2008. Besides pushing them right, theEMILY's List trainer told the class that all this stuff they were hearing about raising moneyonline was largely a myth, that the way to do it was to hit big donors, organize high-dollarfundraisers and otherwise bang the phones. "Everyone in the room turned to look at me," recallsBurner. "I had just raised $125,000 over a weekend in August, all of it online."

Burner came to Washington despite her loss and now heads the Progressive Congress ActionFund, which is affiliated with the CPC and aims to be a bridge between liberal members ofCongress, outside organizations and the blogosphere. Burner is making some progress. On April10, the group holds a fundraiser in Los Angeles headlined by Barney Frank, chairman of theFinancial Services Committee and the kind of cash draw that could raise real money forprogressive candidates. (Grijalva and Ellison both had committed to be there as well, butcanceled.)

Melissa Bean, a New Democrat from Illinois with a clear pro-business bent, is the prototypicalEmily's List candidate. Over the course of her career, Bean has received $243,000 from EMILY'sList, far more than from any other single source (though, collectively speaking, nobody givesmore to Bean than Wall Street does). Bean has received $130,000 from progressives, making hertheir 11th most popular conservative Democrat.


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Bean won her suburban Chicago seat in 2004 from the ultraconservative Republican Phil Crane,founding chairman of the Republican Study Committee and the longest-serving Republican inthe House at the time of his defeat. Toppling Crane was no small victory for Democrats acrossthe spectrum.

Aside from no Phil Crane, what do those two groups get for their massive investment in MelissaBean? EMILY's List gets a pro-choice stalwart. Progressives got yes votes on health care, capand trade, and financial regulatory reform -- but not quite the regulatory reform they wanted.


Bean is a case of House dynamism in effect -- a Grayson or a Polis in reverse. Though just onemember and only in her third term, she's able to use her solid grasp of financial issues andgenuine intellect to carve out a leading role -- often doing the handiwork of Wall Street. Crane,meanwhile, would have been merely one more Republican vote against financial regulatoryreform.

In the fall, Bean, as chair of the New Democrats' financial services task force, led a bloc of NewDems in a revolt against a sweeping financial reform bill as it was about to come to the Housefloor for amendments and a final vote. Progressives wanted to allow states to pass tougher lawsto protect consumers from abusive bank practices -- things like inactivity fees and excessiveoverdrafts. Bean threatened to take down the entire bill unless party leadership allowed a vote onher "national standard" amendment, which would allow state attorneys general to prosecutenationally chartered banks but not to enforce state laws that might be tougher than the nationallaw.

Bean, confident in her support, deftly navigated the rabbit warren of committees and power

centers in Congress. She faced off with Treasury department officials in Nancy Pelosi's office,negotiating a compromise that disappointed consumer advocates but gave bank lobbyists a"glimmer of hope."

She'd outmaneuvered progressive Democrats, who in the Financial Services Committee hadlikewise threatened to tank the entire bill if her amendment was included. She pulled heramendment in committee but secured a promise from committee chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) that she could have a vote on the amendment when the bill reached the floor. The promisegave her leverage in the negotiations in the speaker's office, and the resulting compromise wasadded to a catch-all "manager's amendment" that was easily approved.

To the Bean camp, a candidate in a red district like hers simply can't afford the luxury of beingprogressive on financial reform. And donors know it. "She is terrifically progressive about somethings, not as progressive as I like about other things, but I understand why," says Matt Flamm, aBean campaign volunteer and candidate for state representative in Bean's district. "When itcomes to choice, when it comes to gay rights, 100 percent. When it comes to fiscal issues, she ismore conservative than I am. If she weren't, she couldn't get elected."

"This is incredibly hostile territory," Flamm says of the district.


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The problem with perpetually electing candidates like Bean, though, is that progressivecandidates are left to fend for themselves, battling Blue Dogs in primaries who have financialbacking from Blue Dogs already in Congress. With the cash advantage, the Blue Dog cruisesthrough the primary, which should be progressive terrain. Once ensconced as the Democraticcandidate, progressives move in and, at the direction of the party, funnel money their way.

There's a distinct bias in favor of anointing Blue Dogs, even when progressives have shown theycan compete. Doug Tudor, a progressive and a veteran, ran unsuccessfully to unseat FloridaRepublican Adam Putnam in 2008, winning 43 percent of the vote on a shoestring budget.Putnam retired to run for statewide office in 2010, so Tudor jumped back in the race. So did LoriEdwards, a Blue Dog and a state representative. "Calls to the DCCC were never returned," saysTudor, "but within three or four months they had picked this Blue Dog, Lori Edwards. And she'sa fine lady, a good public servant or whatever, but she's certainly not awe-inspiring, and is notgoing to get your grass roots and your voters excited about going to the polls. They get behindher, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz is hosting fundraisers, and fire-breathing liberals -- self-proclaimed fire-breathing liberal -- [Robert] Wexler is sending out fundraising letters for her, a

Blue Dog."

Wasserman Schultz is a DCCC vice-chairwoman and is expected to take over for Rep. Chris VanHollen (D-Md.) next session. She says Edwards has the best shot of winning and has a base ofsupport as a local elected official in the district. Van Hollen says that it was his understandingthat she had the backing of local Democrats, but that he'd look into why the DCCC weighed inon an open primary to back a Blue Dog.

Tudor says no one from the DCCC came down and talked to him or the local Democratic countychairs. "They never once came down here and talked to -- not only to me, but to the chairwomenof the local Democratic executive committees. The county chair people, I have three counties, all

of them are Tudor supporters. Perhaps they did talk to the state party, but she didn't talk to thecounties," he says. "So they're not talking to the people on the ground and [instead] they'retalking to Debbie Wasserman Schultz who's sitting in a D-plus-17 seat or some shit."

Beyond Wexler, a CPC member from Florida who retired in 2010, and Wasserman Schultz,Edwards is already benefiting from Blue Dog backing. The AFL-CIO has backed her. The state'spresident says that Tudor may more closely reflect the union's politics, but the DCCCendorsement "absolutely" tilted the decision in her favor, making her the most viable candidate.So far, FEC filings show Blue Dogs have given her more than $20,000 while Tudor has gottenalmost nothing from progressive members. He had hoped to pick up some cash from an onlinefundraiser hosted by Nadler and planned for March 13. Nadler, who says he thinks progressivesin Congress should do more for the ones trying to get there, had arranged to help five candidates,including Tudor, raise money online, in coordination with Howie Klein's Blue America PAC.The day before the fundraiser, it was canceled.

If Democratic leaders are right that Edwards can pick up the seat, the fight will shift to the Housefloor, where she will need to be whipped hard to back Democratic legislation after explicitlyrunning against the Democratic agenda.


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There is a growing sense that the key to building a progressive party establishment is to stoptrying to fix the Democratic Party from within and instead build new institutions. Severalprogressive members, including Grijalva, Ellison, Edwards, Pingree, Polis and Nadler say ininterviews that they are willing to go against the DCCC and back progressive candidates inprimary contests where there is no incumbent Democrat. "There should be some members on the

inside who do that," Pingree says of supporting progressive challengers. "I've talked to peoplelike Donna Edwards a little bit -- we're freshmen, so we're not a part of the old system as much."

Until they do, however, it'll be the job of outside groups. "People get so immediately panic-stricken about our majority numbers that the caucus will make a front-line list based on who'smost vulnerable, no longer who votes with you. And they just start throwing money in thatdirection," says Pingree.

The newest arrival on the scene, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, positions itselfas the progressive alternative to the DCCC and tries to help candidates who aren't versed infundraising and the ins-and-outs of a contemporary campaign. The administration, which met

regularly with progressive groups -- such as the powerful labor-backed coalition Health Care forAmerica Now -- and approved and disapproved of strategy, often in blunt terms, created a powervacuum that the PCCC has filled. The PCCC now claims a membership of more than 400,000,largely thanks to its activism around the public option and willingness to operate outside of theWhite House orbit.

They drew blood first, after a disastrous foray into the race for Rahm Emanuel's oldcongressional seat, in a Virginia primary in March. Scott Robinson argues that the way to winthe seat was for the local party apparatus to "lock down the base" while he campaigned to theright. "You come around the left flank. I come around the right flank. And guess what? We'regonna win," he promises. Of course, it's not the local party that will vote in the House; it's the

candidate. Progressive Krystal Ball makes the opposite case, that voters were anti-incumbent andthe only way to unseat Republican Rob Wittman was by firing up the base. She was on track, shesays, to recruit enough volunteers to knock on every door in the district. The PCCC sent a stafferto Virginia to help with field organizing and raised more than $30,000 for her from more than3,000 small online donors. That's 3,000 people she can continue to tap for contributions. Afterseveral caucuses, Ball had 71 delegates locked up, to Robinson's 23. With Ball 30 short of the101 needed to win, Robinson dropped out.

Throughout the health care fight, the blogosphere attempted to make the connection betweenfinancial backing of progressives and support for the public option. Jane Hamsher'sFireDogLake, along with DailyKos, OpenLeft and other blogs, rewarded the growing number ofprogressives who insisted they'd vote against any bill that didn't include a public option tied toMedicare rates. That number eventually rose above 60, but it was meaningless, perhapsironically for its large size. Nobody in power believed that progressives would take down healthcare -- and they were right. Grijalva and Dennis Kucinich both offered to return any moneydonated to encourage them to oppose health care reform without a public option, but the resttook the money and ran.


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The blogosphere didn't have the power to keep the progressives in line in the end. A new projectwill work on building an online infrastructure to make the threat of retaliation or the promise ofsupport more real. Prodding progressive Bill Halter into an Arkansas primary challenge to publicoption opponent Blanche Lincoln has been the effort's biggest success. "We spent months tryingto get everybody behind him to secure the money that could tempt him into the race. We knew

that that was critical. And that just needs to happen on an ongoing basis," says Hamsher. "At onetime we talked about having monthly parties for members of Congress in liberal electorategroups. And then it sort of broke down -- [SEIU President] Andy [Stern] and I had, last year --and then it broke down into, 'Well, we don't want to challenge the White House,' and that sort ofended that. But that coalition is happening again because the labor unions and MoveOn were soprofoundly let down by the alliances that they made."

As long as the progressive movement is funneling money to conservatives, the key to futuresuccesses is turning grassroots support on the left into serious money -- and spending it electingprogressives. And it's only possible if there are other people like Doug Kahn. Kahn is a bigDemocratic donor and heir to the Annenberg fortune who is sitting out this cycle even though he

has donated more than $200,000 to Democratic and DCCC candidates in recent years. "Thepeople who are really liberal, like me, are disgusted. And the ones I've talked to are just saying,'Forget this'. They're throwing their hands up. They're not going to give money," says Kahn.

In 2008, says Kahn, he asked the DCCC to list candidates who had an outside shot of beating aRepublican and weren't currently getting much party backing. He jumped in and gave themaximum contributions. In 2010, he says, he'll spend his money in a different way. "Anger is areal motivator," says Kahn.

The Florida donor plans to spend $100,000 between two districts currently held by Blue Dogs.He'll come in during the last few weeks and spend money educating Democratic voters about the

Blue Dogs' record. "I'm convinced that if they know what the voting records of some of thesepeople are -- that is, Blue Dogs -- a significant percentage, a percentage that could beat the BlueDog, will simply not vote. I might be wrong about that, but I'm going to try it out," says Kahn.

Kahn says he doesn't yet know which districts he'll attack and has no interest in working todefeat a Blue Dog who is already going to lose. He wants Blue Dogs on the edge and he wants topush them off. The purpose, he says, is not to teach those particular dogs a lesson, but "to movethe Blue Dogs who are in the House to have some fear of Democratic voters."

Kahn's plan is to donate the money to Howie Klein's Blue America PAC, which is devoted tofunding progressive primary candidates, but he's determined to go forward even if the PACbacks out. Following an interview, Kahn emails a reporter: "I want you to understand mycommitment to spend the money I was talking about isn't dependent on future events. It's justthat I don't know what Howie and his colleagues are going to do this fall and how they'll feelabout the election. I expect to spend the $100,000 through their 527, but allow the (remote)possibility that they won't want to do that, in which case I'll do it independently."

The revenge being plotted by Kahn is an extreme response, but it's merely the sharpestexpression of donor dismay. In 2006, MoveOn and Big Labor heavily backed Jason Altmire in


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his western Pennsylvania race. "He was elected with the support of independent groups and hewould not have won in 2006 without them," says Matzzie. He followed Altmire's race closelywhen he was the Washington director of MoveOn because he grew up in Altmire's district.Collectively, MoveOn and the AFL-CIO raised more than a million dollars for Altimire in 2006,the bulk of his money. Progressives in the House, meanwhile, have given him more than

$50,000. He turned around and cast a crucial vote against health care reform.


Certainly, on health care, we had no inclination he was going to do this," says Matzzie. "I can'timagine what he'd have to do [to win back support]. This is a once-in-a-100-years vote."

A similar dynamic is playing out across the country, where Democrats who voted no have foundthat there is a limit to progressive support. Congressmen like Michael Arcuri, Larry Kissell andTim Holden have been told, either explicitly or implicitly, by labor and progressive groups, thatthey are cutting off funds.

Some have already been abandoned. In November, staffers for Suzanne Kosmas were meeting inher Orlando office with representatives of the local AFL-CIO, telling them why she was stillundecided on her vote. At the same moment, Kosmas herself was in her Washington officetelling Orlando Sentinel reporters why she was voting no.

"After her health care vote, we sort of put her on legislative time-out, as some of our teachers putit," says Stacy Stepanovich, president of the local AFL-CIO. Mike Williams, president of thestatewide union, supported the decision. "There will be no more free passes," he says.

Beginning in the 2008 cycle, he says, the union began focusing more on small, local races. In

2010, he says, more than half of its resources will go toward candidates down-ticket. "One of theissues and problems that organized labor has had over the years is concentrating at the top andnot the bottom of the ticket, at the local level," he says.

The time-out seems to have made made an impression on Kosmas, who came back betterbehaved. She flipped and voted yes on the final health care bill. The union plans to meet on April10 to decide if she has sufficiently rehabilitated herself to remove the dunce cap.

At the center of this effort sits Ral Grijalva. He might not be the most powerful progressivemember of Congress, but he, Edwards and Ellison have made organizing their main focus andpresent the most promising vision of a more effective congressional political strategy. They were

the engine behind the effort to rally around the public option. (Which, at the very least, distractedcritics from other liberal components of the bill.) He is a first-generation American who didn'tlearn English until the fifth grade. "Growing up, you were made to believe that the fact that youspoke another language or you came from another culture, that there was a bad stigma to that,"he says. "I watched my parents go through a lot of stuff, not all of it good, to take care of theirfamily, and it can't help but shape your values."


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Grijalva's start in politics came when he volunteered with the farm-workers union in the early'70s, where he met legendary labor leader Dolores Huerta, who is often described, in a fairlysexist way, as the female Cesar Chavez. Their friendship lasts. In the run-up to the final healthcare vote, Huerta was in Washington, D.C., cracking heads: she gave two hold-out congressmenfrom California -- Dennis Cardoza and Jim Costa -- a stern lecture, she says. Both came around.

"Ral is the kind of person that, when you first meet him, you always think that it's the guy that'sstanding next to him is the politician," says Huerta, who is based in Arizona, where Grijalva'spolitics were forged.

Like the resident of the White House, Grijalva began as a community organizer, the type ofexperience that teaches much about how power operates and the art of a specific kind ofcompromise. "I'm very proud of being a progressive, but I'm also a pragmatist," Grijalva says. "Iunderstand that you take your victory and you build on it. And I think sometimes we on the lefttend to think an issue to death as opposed to do an issue. We learned that through the civil rightsmovement, the farm workers movement, how you get this contract and you work on it.

Community organizing, OK, you get the street lights in the neighborhood, then you move to thebigger things: the schools, no health services. But you give everybody a taste of what a victoryfeels like, and then you get much more help after that."'

Eve Shapiro is a pediatrician in Tucson and a member of the Physicians for a National HealthProgram, a national group that supports universal health coverage or "single payer," as it isknown in the jargon. Grijalva, if he had his druthers, would be a single-payer booster as well.But by last summer, he'd shifted to the public option. He persuaded Shapiro that his strategymade sense because it was achievable, but he also persuaded her that supporting the publicoption did not mean giving up on single payer.

"As long as people see it as a work in progress, and that's how Grijalva saw it, that's why we feltcomfortable in supporting what he was going to do," she says.


The work on the ground, Grijalva says, instills in him the idea that he is representing theprogressive community, he says. Asked why he and Woolsey can't agree on whether to workwith outside groups, he says: "I don't know, I think it's a question of backgrounds. I, Keith[Ellison], Donna Edwards and some of the other people that have come in, we realize that a bigreason that we're here is because of the support we have from progressives in the base, and wegrew up with that. Maybe that's it."

It was a Sunday in the middle of October when Pelosi and Woolsey boarded the Speaker'smilitary plane in San Francisco bound for Washington, D.C., where the battle over the Househealth care bill was entering its final stage. For the past few weeks, the progressive caucus, withthe express approval of Pelosi and House leadership, had been canvassing House Democrats tosee if there was enough support in the party for a health care bill with what had come to beknown as the "robust" public option.


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Woolsey took a seat with Pelosi, perhaps the most powerful liberal Speaker of the House inAmerican history. They swapped intelligence on the flight back, a journey that may prove tomark the height of progressive ascension in a generation. The two went over Woolsey's surveyresults: He's not voting for it. She told you that? Don't believe it. By the time the aircraft toucheddown, it was clear that the robust public option was a handful of votes shy.

"We compared notes, and it was very clear that the robust public option totally had as muchsupport as most plans have around here before they go to the whip operation, but we didn't havethe 218 that we needed. But usually, outside of the whip organization, you don't need to go andget 218 votes," recalls Woolsey. "That's why there's a whip organization."

The whip office would only be brought in to deliver the bad news. Run by Clyburn, it would getinvolved later in the week. Clyburn met with Woolsey and Grijalva to go over the surveydocument. With 47 "no" votes out of 256 Democrats, that left them nine short. It's not going tohappen, Clyburn told them. The whip list was quickly leaked to the press (PDF).

"I don't know who did it. But they blame the progressives," says Woolsey, who, along withleadership, blames Grijalva for leaking the document.

"We were the only ones in the room. But it was a very big mistake, however that happened," shesays.

Clyburn called Grijalva into his office and asked if he had been the leaker. After initially denyingit, he copped to the breach. Though it was widely assumed in the Capitol that Grijalva was theguilty party, he talked about it openly for the first time for this story. "It didn't help," Grijalvasays, pausing to reflect on his decision. "It didn't help. It was some level of desperation ... andfrustration."

It had worked out better before. Earlier that year, he had leaked to DailyKos blogger JoanMcCarter, a smaller, CPC-driven public option whip count of progressives who had committedto voting against any bill that didn't include a robust public plan. That leak paid off, as theblogosphere pressured those who weren't on the list to sign up.

This one backfired. The caucus had lost the trust of leadership and the push for the public optionhad been dealt a major blow. "That was the end of it. Because no longer were we team players,"says Woolsey.

Clyburn still feels burned. "It had a very negative impact on the effort," he says. "That was a low

point in this whole process."

"We're much more protective of our whip [sheet] after that. We've started telling people what thenumbers are, rather than showing them," Clyburn says. "I can't see myself doing that again."

Last Halloween, Howard Dean stuck up for conservative Democrats like Bean at the annualDemocratic fundraiser in Illinois' 10th District, which is currently represented by RepublicanSenate candidate Mark Kirk. "After Dean spoke," Democratic activist Matt Flamm writes in an


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email to friends, "I asked him the following question: 'The cities have remained Democratic, andrural areas have remained Republican. The suburbs are the place where real change is takingplace. Here in the Chicago suburbs, we've elected Melissa Bean, Bill Foster, and DebbieHalvorson, and we will elect a Democratic congressperson in the 10th District next year."Attendees applauded. "Is this true across the country, and why? What do Democrats need to do

to appeal to suburban voters?'

"Dean said this is true across the country," Flamm writes. "Suburban voters are intelligent andgenerally well educated. They are progressive on social issues like abortion and gay marriage.But they are fiscally conservative. Dean said that when people have made a little money andmove to the suburbs, they want to hang on to it. Democrats need to establish themselves as theparty of fiscal responsibility."

Dean pointed to New York's 23rd District, where moderate Democrat Scott Murphy was in themidst of a come-from-behind campaign victory against a conservative Republican. Murphy wasone of the Blue Dogs who gave Democratic leadership a headache before the health care vote,

though he ultimately supported the bill. Dean was asked: "What is the point of electingconservative Democrats just to get numbers if they aren't going to vote with Speaker Pelosi?"

"Dean said that the Blue Dogs and other moderate Democrats had, in his opinion, made thehealth care bill better in several ways," Flamm writes, describing the conservative policies andcompromises that they raised during the debate. "Dean said these are points that should havebeen raised by Republicans in a functioning two-party system. In their absence, the moderateDemocrats have done us all a service."

The first sign that Blue Dogs would have their way came last summer, on the House Energy andCommerce Committee, when Henry Waxman agreed to their demand for a "weak" public option,

where rates could not be tied to Medicare. Progressives reacted furiously, and sent a letterannouncing that more than 50 progressive Democrats would vote against the bill. After severalweeks during which the Blue Dogs were hailed by the media for successfully leveraging the sizeof their bloc to get what they wanted, it seemed progressives might be able to do the same. Butthey didn't; when it came time to vote, the "robust" public option had not been revived, and allbut two CPC members voted for it.

Then came the abortion issue. Bart Stupak, a New Democrat from Michigan, successfully led agang of 40 pro-life Democrats who threatened to block the health care bill in November if theywere not given an opportunity to have a floor vote on an amendment to restrict funding forabortion. HuffPost asked Stupak how he got his way while the progressives failed to get theirs.

"You have to pick your fights at the right time," says Stupak, pointing out that Pelosi knew froma previous appropriations fight in July that he would be willing to block a bill. "You can't becrying wolf all the time because you lose your wolfiness. You lose your credibility. So I'm notgoing to lose my credibility. So you use it at certain times when it's appropriate."


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Despite the much-ballyhooed efforts of New Dems and Blue Dogs to impede Democraticlegislation, Barney Frank disagrees that moderates have more power within the Democraticcaucus.

"They are able to put the brakes on to some extent, but we're driving the car," he says. Frank

regards the agenda of House Democrats as essentially a progressive one, and in his view, to thinkof Blue Dogs and New Dems as more "effective" than progressives is to miss the point.

"The progressive caucus is behind these things coming up at all," he says. "You take that forgranted. We have had basically liberal bills in health care, financial regulatory reform -- we gotan independent consumer agency. ... Your definition of effectiveness is for people being able tomodify the basics, but you forget about the people who got the basic thing through. Can you notsee that? You start when the movie's four-fifths over."

Political statistician Nate Silver rejects the notion that progressives -- one group out of about adozen involved in health care negotiations -- could have leveraged their bargaining position

much better than they did. "The influence of any one group in what is essentially a 10- or 12-waynegotiation is liable to be fairly limited, no matter how wisely they select their strategy," writesSilver, "and to suggest otherwise probably reflects a certain amount of self-importance."

Frank does acknowledge that the more conservative caucuses are good at what they do.

"Well, they're effective," he says. "It's easy to be effective if you're in the middle, but if you're inthe center -- how are they effective if they're threatening not to vote for bills if they're tooliberal? What's our tactic? We threaten not to vote for the bill?"

The question Frank poses -- "What's our tactic?" -- is the one that progressives inside and outside

of Congress are mulling. Mike Lux, founder of Progressive Strategies and a former Clintonadministration official who works closely with both the blogosphere and the White House, saysthat the options extend beyond a binary choice for or against a final bill. In other words, look atCongress dynamically.

* * * * *

At the end of each day of work in the Senate, Lyndon Johnson would tramp across the Capitol tospend a few hours with his mentor, House Speaker Sam Rayburn (D-Texas). Johnsonassiduously cultivated the relationship and used it to his benefit back in the upper chamber. If asenator crossed Johnson on one vote, a separate bill that the senator had championed could be

bottled in the House. The reverse was also true: Take care of Johnson and he'd take care of youon the House side.

"Everyone has something they want. Every Blue Dog has a business back home that wantssomething," says Lux. Joe Lieberman, for instance, is well-known to be very close with theinsurer Aetna. There are all manner of legislative favors that Aetna wants that are entirelyseparate from the health care bill. Members of the progressive caucus hold the gavel on everyone of these committees: Financial Services, Energy and Commerce, Education and Labor, and


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Rules; they chair powerful subcommittees on Appropriations, Ways and Means andTransportation and Infrastructure; three are members of House leadership and one formermember is Speaker of the House. They collectively dominate the flow of money and path oflegislation that makes or breaks a congressional career. So there are things that can be done.

But rather than an asset, the number of progressive committee chairmen can be viewed as anobstacle to cohesive action.

"I think one of the problems the caucus has, ironically, is how powerful its members are and howclose they are to leadership," says Robert Borosage, chairman of the American ProgressiveCaucus Policy Foundation and co-director of the Campaign for America's Future. "Whereas ifyou're the Blue Dogs, you can operate collectively because of the lack of power in yourleadership."

There has also been precious little attention paid to the endgame. "A lot of us had this notion inmind that, at the end of the day, we might pass the less controversial stuff through the regular

legislative process but that we would have to use reconciliation to get, for example, a publicoption. Looking back on it, I realize we never got any type of commitment whatsoever aboutgoing to reconciliation," says Lux. "We have to get better, very early on in these fights, at gettingour most powerful negotiators -- which I think is both inside of Congress and the Senate, andlabor leaders, and the key players who've got some juice -- and really sit down and say, 'Weknow some compromises are going to be made, but can we just have a conversation about whereyou think this is going, where are we going to stand united and [where are we going to] maybehave to not be together in the end? ... Any time I tried to have those conversations, they'd say,'Are you kidding? We've just got to get out of the Finance Committee this week.' They're focusedon the short-term goal."

That stands in stark contrast to the strategy employed by the most successful interest groups:PhRMA and the for-profit hospitals. Both wanted a few things from the legislation: morecustomers and better profit margins; no drug-price negotiations or reimportation; no publicoption. The groups cut deals early in the process and held tough. (In a letter to the HuffingtonPost, the hospitals' top lobbyist says that there was no deal on the public option.)

Those "backroom deals" propelled Tea Party darling Scott Brown to victory in a January specialelection in Massachusetts. The days following the election were perilous. A bloc of Blue Dogswas threatening to come out publicly against using reconciliation, which could have been the endof reform. Hoyer kept them from going public, while Pelosi beat back the incrementalist factionin the administration -- and made no secret of her joy in doing so. Her derisive moniker for theEmanuel-preferred strategy -- "Kiddie Care" -- turned up in the New York Times and Politico onthe same day. During an interview in her office with progressive media before the final vote, shecelebrated the victory in the strategy war. "My biggest fight was against those who want dosomething incremental versus those who want to do something comprehensive. We have wonthat," she says. "In our midst, there's the small bill crowd -- here and there," she says, gesturingout the window behind her, where Pennsylvania Avenue stretches to the White House.


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In March, Stupak and his gang of pro-life dissidents eventually came around to a compromise onabortion and voted in favor of the bill. The votes he delivered did not put the bill above 216; itwas already there. When Rep. Zach Space (D-Ohio) announced the day before the vote he'd beopposing it, Republicans and other Hill observers saw it as a sign that Pelosi had the votes andwas now releasing vulnerable members. But the Stupak group was made up of public option

supporters. With him back on board, Pelosi now had at least the 216 votes for a reconciliationpackage with a public option in it. But she didn't want 216. She wanted more. As the voting process began on that Sunday evening, the lights in the House chamber dimmedand projectors displayed individual members' votes on the wall above reporters' heads in thepress galleries. Several anxious faces peered upward from the floor, but not Pelosi's -- she madeher rounds, hugging Democrats and signing copies of the bill before the tally even neared 216(After all, a vote on the "rule" to proceed to the bill succeeded with 224). She spent severalminutes in a friendly conversation with Stupak.

Both knew the bill was in the can. "We knew who the 219 were," says Hoyer. Having Stupak on

board gave cover to the members deciding the vote based on politics. Several Democrats, such asRick Boucher of Virginia, had not announced their intentions and refused to reveal them until thelast minute. Boucher was one of several members who voted only after 216 yeas had already

piled up. (His spokeswoman says he released a statement the moment the vote beganannouncing his opposition.) But letting some Democrats retreat makes it harder for the ones whohad the courage to stand and fight. Immediately after the vote, and repeatedly since, the NationalRepublican Congressional Committee has used Boucher's vote to blast his neighbor Perriello,whose energetic defense of health care reform during 21 town halls in August was thecounterattack the administration had desperately needed. "Boucher: Perriello's Obamacare votewill hurt seniors," reads a typical missive from the NRCC. Perriello must now defend his votenot only from GOP attacks, but from Democratic ones.

Both Clyburn and Hoyer say that they probably could have whipped enough votes to offset theloss of Stupak. "I think we could have," Clyburn says, who also adds they had the votes for the

public option. "But I would much rather have 219 than try to eke out 216." Hoyer agrees. "Ithink we could've done it," he says, but getting that 216 would've forced more Blue Dogs to takea hard vote, something leadership would rather avoid. "We would've had to get more marginalmembers, the Blue Dog and other caucuses -- I guess the Blue Dogs primarily."

Stupak, as savvy a vote-counter as anybody in the House, saw it, too. "Speakers never bring abill to the floor unless they have the votes. And they always have a few in reserve," Stupakexplained to the Catholic News Agency in a post-vote interview. "I had a number of members

who thanked us after, because they could vote no."The public option died so that Rick Boucher could vote no. Progressives inside and outside ofCongress have no intention of letting that happen again.

"MoveOn members have contributed countless hours and dollars to help elect a Democraticmajority only to be deeply disappointed by those elected officials who rode that wave into officeand then promptly forgot who got them there," says Ilyse Hogue, MoveOn's campaign director.


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"We've learned over the last year that when it comes to taking the hard votes to do what's rightfor our country and stand up to corporate interests, not all Democrats are created equal. 2010 isgoing to be about supporting courage and abandoning the Dems who abandoned the folks whogot them into office."

Grijalva, too, says he wants better Democrats. "Polis is a good example, Shea-Porter is a goodexample, Tsongas is a good example of progressive people who had to fight their way in. And Ithink we have the capacity to really help those people. Help them get in and then keep them,"says Grijalva. It's just like with streetlights and health clinics. "If you didn't back away from yourissues and you win, I think that just strengthens you."

power struggle in the democratic party

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