On the Ground Reports

- Bill Barclay, Chicago PDA

THE CANDIDATES

One way of thinking about the political terrain that progressives face in 2008 is through the biographies of the three remaining presidential candidates – their inclinations, their strengths and weaknesses. Taking this approach is not to advocate the great (wo)man theory of history but simply to a useful device for thinking about tactics and strategy.

John Laesch held a healthcare forum yesterday. I, unfortunately, was not able to personally attend, as I had to work. I was going to gather reports from those who had attended. Then I got this beautiful write up from Al, one of our volunteers on the communications team, and with a little editing to make it bloggable, I decided to simply use his write-up. So, follow me below the fold for the full report from Al.

This campaign has been a long, fun, exciting road, and while the road ahead is short, it's about to get even more fun and exciting. The primary is 16 days away. That's two weeks and two days. We are -doubling- tripling our efforts on getting yard signs out, on identifying voters, on fund-raising... everything that will be crucial to our GOTV efforts on Feb 5th and then again on March 8th in the special election to replace Denny Hastert.

We have quite a bit of news to report this week. Follow me below the fold for the full update, including our exciting new endorsements, upcoming events, and online action opportunities for you to help out the campaign!

From: John Riley [mailto:jr273@columbia.edu]

This weekend's bird-dogging on HIV/AIDS and Single-Payer issues was
very successful. Our crew of 14, composed of ACT UP/NY & Philadelphia
members, Health GAP, PHIMG and Housing Works members went after
Edwards, Clinton, Huckabee, McCain, Guiliani, and others. Because of
the high media interest in the primary, asking questions
strategically was able to heighten the chances the candidate would
respond in front of crowds of hundreds or thousands in the audience,
reporters for papers, or in the case of Clinton townhall, the
viewership of CNN. CNN covered the Clinton townhall live for at least
part of it. We got newspaper coverage in the Manchester Union Leader
and other publications.

There were two opportunities to "bird-dog" Rep. Nadler this past Sunday at events where he was scheduled to appear in support of Hillary Clinton. In the early afternoon he was at Hudson Guild at a candidates forum sponsored by Chelsea Reform Democrats. Later he was at a NOW-NYC forum on How Critical is the Women's Vote? featuring Congressman Jerrold Nadler, former Congresswoman and Brooklyn D.A. & NYC Comptroller Elizabeth Holtzman, and Sheryl McCarthy, USA Today & Newsday Columnist and Distinguished Lecturer in Journalism at CUNY.

While joining your site i want you to be advised i now consider myself to be an INDEPENDANT!Hopefully democrats will learn ,before it costs them the election,to get Tough on the illegal aliens in this country.Thank you

The League of Women Voters held a forum last night for all the candidates running for the open seat in Illinois' 14th congressional district, which was formerly held by Dennis Hastert. The debate will be put up on the League website, and we'll link to it on our campaign website when it goes up.

Excitement and interest in this race are high, and this showed in the number of people who came out to see the debate. We were told the LWV expected about 200 hundred people but today's papers report the crowd was 600.

The most interesting part of it to me were the alliances that formed on the stage. Two of the three Republican candidates were there, as well as three of the four Democrats. The interesting thing was, even though they were at two tables, seated by party, Republican Chris Lauzen made this race not about Democrat vs. Republican, but about grassroots vs. big money. Bill Foster was compared to Jim Oberweis many times last night, and Jim Oberweis stated agreement with Bill Foster on issues more often than with Lauzen, his fellow Republican. I'm not sure if this says more about Bill Foster or Chris Lauzen... you can be the judge of that.

First off an announcement. I am the new blog team coordinator for the Laesch for Congress campaign. Or should I say new-ish? That's right, I have my old job from the '06 cycle back. So, as my first duty, I am writing to give you all a general update on the Laesch campaign. Included in the update are a great article on John in the Sun-Times, plenty of new endorsements, and our big event for tonight.

“Everybody In, Nobody Out”, means everyone must be guaranteed Health Care.

Reports from the ground are the Obama camp is now using the phrase "Everybody In, Nobody Out" to describe Obama's insurance plan. Our phrase is being redefined. Redefined to mean the illegitimate insurance industry gets to keep “a seat at the table” and a siphon in our health care budget.

The Health Insurance industry is not a legitimate business.

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn04242006.html

I was harsh about Senator Barack Obama of Illinois here a couple of weeks ago, and the very next morning his press aide, Tommy Vietor, was on the phone howling about inaccuracies. It was an illuminating conversation, indicative of the sort of instinctive reflexes at work in the office of a man already breathlessly touted as a possible vice presidential candidate in 2008 and maybe a presidential candidate somewhere down the road from there.

Obama's man took grave exception to my use of the word "distanced" to describe what his boss had done when Illinois' senior U.S. senator, Dick Durbin, got into trouble for likening conditions at Guantanamo to those in a Nazi or Stalin-era camp. This was one of Durbin's finer moments, as he read an FBI man's eyewitness describing how he had entered interview rooms "to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more."

"If I read this to you", Durbin told his fellow senators, "and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime ­ Pol Pot or others ­ that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners. It is not too late. I hope we will learn from history. I hope we will change course."

So Durbin paid the penalty of having to eat crow on the Senate floor. His fellow senator, Obama, did not support him in any way. Obama said, "we have a tendency to demonize and jump on and make mockery of each other across the aisle and that is particularly pronounced when we make mistakes. Each and every one of us is going to make a mistake once in a while... and what we hope is that our track record of service, the scope of how we've operated and interacted with people, will override whatever particular mistake we make."

That's three uses of the word "mistake". This isn't distancing?

Nor did Obama's man like my description of Obama's cheerleading for the nuke Iran crowd. Obama recently declared that when it comes to the U.S. posture on Iran, all options, including military ones, should be on the table. Now, if Obama had any sort of guts in such matters he would have said that if Iraq is to teach America's leaders any lesson, it is that reckless recourse to the military "option" carries a dreadful long-term price tag.