February 23, 2006 at 11:35:42

Progressive, My Ass

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By Rob Kall (foul language warning) (about the author) Page 1 of 1 page(s)

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For OpEdNews: Rob Kall - Writer

We have DFA endorsing four Progressive women. Very nice.

We have moveon.org sending out a poll, basically asking if we should be working on dumping right wing asshole democrats. Whoopeedoo!

But here in PA we have the DNC pouring millions into the campaign of the most right wing purportedly democratic candidate since Zell Miller-- Bob Casey jr. And none of these major "progressive" organizations, and not PDA-- Progressive Democrats of America-- are doing a damned thing, when there are two perfectly good candidates (Pennacchio and Sandals,) and my opinion, one superb progressive candidate, Pennacchio also declared and in the race. Shame on them.

This tells me how weak these progressive organizations are. It tells me that they are possibly not really progressive at all. Maybe they are even the wimpy democrats that the right wingers who write to me talk about all the time.

Moveon.org is already on my shit list for running a lousy excuse for a poll last year that was biased and set up to make Casey the winner. It failed to disclose the most important facts in terms of the candidates positions on issues. I KNOW from the scientific poll I ran, (OpEdNews/Zogby People's Poll )that when people DO know the positions, they drop Casey like a lump of hot coal. His lead on Santorum disappears. I later learned that there was a connection between the wife of the man who ran the moveon poll and Casey's campaign. Pathetic!! Moveon should make up for it by doing a similar poll again, only this time, do it right, maybe even use a third party organization like I did-- Zogby.

I can't help but think that across the nation, this same kind of failure on the part of progressive leaders must be playing itself out. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they are just pathetic, leaderless failures in Pennsylvania. I know one groups says that every local group in PA must endorse a candidate before they will get behind a progressive candidate instead of Casey. One or two local groups have not agreed on the same candidate, so they don't have unanimous concensus. So they haven't made a decision. I don't call that grassroots decision-making. I call that unwillingness to commit or decide. Even if they are unwilling to commit to a progressive candidate, they should, at least, speak out against Casey, who is about as far from progressive as a candidate can get. And they should speak out against the centrist politicos who claim to be progressives. Well, maybe not speak out against them, but at least challenge them to prove they are progressive. This, of course, raises the important question, what makes a progressive a progressive?

We don't just need progressive organizations. We need tough progressive organizations which are willing to stand up to the hard boiled, cynical, sold-out-to-business Democratic regulars. We need progressive organizations that are willing to take a stand. Now, I am very pleased to see that DFA is supporting Christine Cegelis. The DNC really screwed her in picking a wounded and disabled female Iraq vet over her when Cegelis has done such a great job. But it's an obvious call. I want to see something done about the PA senate race. Even if the three organizations I've mentioned just take a stand and say that Casey is not acceptable, and recommend that, in the primary, progressives vote for either of the declared progressives (though, in my mind, Pennacchio is the obvious first choice) that would be better than stupidly, impotently, gutlessly standing by and doing nothing.

I hope I piss off someone in these big progressive organizations. I hope some of my readers forward this to people in those organizations, because if they don't do something about Casey, they don't deserve to be called anything but Progressive Wimps.

Rob Kall is executive editor, publisher and site architect of OpEdNews.com, Host of the Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show (WNJC 1360 AM), President of Futurehealth, Inc, (more...)

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