David Sirota

Oregon Rep. Peter DeFazio (D) is one of the leaders of the People Party in its fight against the Money Party in Washington, D.C., and it’s encouraging to hear he is considering running for the U.S. Senate in 2008. Having worked with DeFazio when I worked in the U.S. House, I can tell you that this guy is a no-nonsense populist who, if he ran, would instantly become an even bigger Democratic Party star than he already is.

What is particularly important about DeFazio is his profile, and what it says about the state of politics today. DeFazio is one of the strongest progressive populists in Congress, building up a profile and voting record on working-people issues that is the antithesis of that prescribed by the likes of the Democratic Leadership Council. Beltway conventional wisdom would have you look at his record and assume that his district must be solidly Democratic, but it’s not. While the district certainly leans Democratic, it is by no means a walk for a Democrat. In both 2000 and 2004, Bush won two of the three biggest counties in Oregon’s 4th congressional district at the same time DeFazio crushed his Republican opponents. Another way to see this swing nature of this district is is to understand that if DeFazio vacates the House seat to run for Senate, it is very likely the GOP will strongly contest the seat in 2008.

DeFazio, in other words, understands Democrats’ Da Vinci Code (which is why he was in the original article in the first place). He understands that the best way to win in the red regions that the DLC purports to know how to win in is to fully reject the DLC’s model of bowing down to Big Money interests and packaging yourself as a pro-war neoconservative. And what’s most interesting is that DLC-ish Democratic Party elites in Washington, inadvertently, acknowledge the corruption of their own policies.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, headed by Money Party front-man Chuck Schumer, is aggressively courting DeFazio to run, going as far as polling the race for him to convince him to get in. By courting him so intensely, the DSCC is acknowledging that they believe the best Democratic candidate to win Oregon - one of the closest swing states in the country - is not to run a Harold Ford-ish DLC automaton, but to run a progressive populist. Couple this with the DSCC’s backing of progressive populist Sherrod Brown in Ohio in 2006, and the DSCC is admitting that progressive populism is far and away the better model to win swing states than the corporate sellout model.

Taking all of this together, it becomes even more appalling when Democrats then govern as if the DLC model is most “politically safe.” When you hear Democrats cite “centrism” or “political safety” as a justification for supporting the Iraq War and voting for Big Money giveaways like the Bankruptcy Bill or the Class Action Bill or the Bush Energy Bill, an alarm should go off in your mind because you know you are being deliberately lied to.

I say “deliberately” because it’s clear from the courting of people like DeFazio and Brown in the key swing states that Democratic leaders understand that such packaging is dishonest. And they should understand that: It’s not a coincidence that many red-state and red-region Democrats are among the populist leaders in Congress. It’s not a coincidence that many of the Senate candidates who won in 2006 came from states or districts considered “swing” and that the one senate candidate who lost was the DLC’s Harold Ford. From Montana’s Jon Tester to Virginia’s Jim Webb even to Vermont’s Bernie Sanders (Vermont’s House contest was considered very closely contested), populist politics is the winning model in the toughest places to win.

The admission that progressive politics is, in fact, very popular and the “politically safe” choic can be seen on the other side of the aisle as well. In 2005, I wrote this op-ed for Knight Ridder newspapers about how Republican governors often move in a progressive direction when they hit rough waters, understanding that progressive policies are actually way more popular than their right-wing ideology. That progressive populism is still billed as “out of the mainstream” or “politically dangerous” isn’t surprising, because it is those things in Big Money-dominated Washington, D.C. But with people like DeFazio increasingly interested in running for higher office, that really could change.

Sirotablog

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DeFazio’s Da Vinci Code