Who are the Social Democrats/Marxists Backing in the 2012 Elections?

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5 Progressive Candidates to Watch as the 2012 Campaign Heats
Up

By Sarah Jaffe

September 23, 2011

http://www.alternet.org/story/152514/5_progressive_candidates_to_watch_as_the_2012_campaign_heats_up

Watching the news lately, you’d think that Election 2012 was
only between Republican candidates for president, each
trying to outflank the next to his or her right.

The Republican primaries may be getting lots of attention,
but several progressive candidates around the country are
gearing up for races that could swing the Congress and put
some control back in the hands of progressives.

It can be easy to despair when audiences at GOP debates
cheer executions and boo gay soldiers, but the fight is far
from over. With Barack Obama striking a new, more populist
tone as election season nears, we should all remember that a
lot can happen between now and next November. And attention
early on for the good candidates can help ensure their
success in primaries and general election campaigns alike.

While Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul eat up time on cable
news with their latest out-there soundbite, we thought we’d
bring you five progressive candidates to keep an eye on.
Their message is resonating with people in their districts,
and these candidates are ready to steal some of the
spotlight back from the ultra-right with policies that would
actually improve the lives of working people.

1. Tammy Baldwin – Wisconsin Senate

One of the hardest losses in the 2010 election was Russ
Feingold’s Senate seat, as conservatives swept Wisconsin’s
races. Yet just a few months later, Wisconsin was the center
of a growing resistance to anti-worker, anti-union, pro-
corporate politics, as hundreds of thousands of
Wisconsinites hit the streets and camped out in the capitol
protesting Governor Scott Walker’s attempt to strip union
workers of their right to collectively bargain.

Walker won’t be on the ballot in 2012, but there will be an
open Senate seat, as Wisconsin’s senior senator, Herb Kohl,
is retiring. Tammy Baldwin, the only openly gay woman in the
House, where she represents Madison and its surrounding
areas, is running to be Wisconsin’s next progressive
champion.

“I know that, in this campaign, well be up against some
powerful special interests. But I’ve beaten the odds before.
All my life, the naysayers have told me that I can’t win
because I’m a progressive, because I’m a woman, even because
I’m a lesbian. And I’ve proven them wrong because I’ve had
rock-solid supporters like you standing with me,” she said
when she announced her campaign.

Republicans are going to try to paint Baldwin as too liberal
for the state, but as Wisconsinites already held insurgent
recall elections this year and removed two Republican state
senators from office, Baldwin’s early move into the race
seems to fit with the mood of her state.

Meredith Clark, a reporter and Wisconsin political watcher,
said, “Baldwin has enough character and charisma to get
votes from UW-Madison students and their farm-dwelling
grandparents as an openly gay woman. She supports policies
that are good for all of her constituents, and her
constituents care more about that than right-wing moral
panic.”

2. Eric Griego – New Mexico House District 1

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee’s made its first
endorsement for a 2012 Congressional race, and it’s Eric
Griego, currently a state senator and running for New
Mexico’s 1st district House seat, as Democrat Rep. Martin
Heinrich is vacating the seat to run for Senate.

The PCCC’s email called Griego “one of the most progressive
members of the New Mexico Senate,” and pointed out that he
challenged a more conservative Democrat for his state senate
seat. They jumped into the race to try to raise funds for
Griego early and warn off more conservative Dems, saying
that Griego will “vote to bring our troops home, tax big
corporations and the rich, and protect Social Security and
Medicare from benefit cuts proposed by either party.”

The 1st district, in central New Mexico, in and around
Albuquerque, is considered pretty safe, so it’s a move by
the PCCC and others to get a fierce candidate who will
actually fight into the Congress rather than have another
Blue Dog in the spot.

And Griego seems to be up for the challenge–”The last thing
we need to send to Washington is a Democrat who is a kinder,
gentler version of the Republicans, frankly,” his campaign
video says.

3. Chris Murphy – Connecticut Senate

At long last, Joe Lieberman is retiring from the Senate. The
Connecticut Democrat-turned-Independent was almost driven
out back in 2006 due to a primary challenge from Ned Lamont,
but managed to remain in his seat as an Independent and
seems to have dedicated the last six years of his career to
thumbing his nose at those progressive voters.

With Lieberman leaving, it’s possible to put a real Democrat
back in that seat, and Chris Murphy looks like a good chance
to do just that. He’s currently leading in the polls against
both Republican and former World Wrestling Entertainment
executive Linda McMahon, and another Democrat, Susan
Bysiewicz.

As the representative from Connecticut’s 5th district,
Murphy is the founder of the Buy American caucus, a group
dedicated to bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US, and
has advocated for the end of the Defense of Marriage Act.
Recently, as several Supreme Court justices were accused of
possible unethical conduct regarding fundraising, Murphy
introduced a bill that would end the Court’s immunity to
federal ethics law – making such fundraising explicitly
illegal.

Connecticut has been one of the few bright spots for
progressives since 2010′s election, becoming the first state
in the country to mandate paid sick days for its workers,
and leaning blue in a very red year.

It’s too soon to tell what a general election campaign from
Murphy might look like, but if his Twitter account is any
indication, he’s willing to pick a fight. This week, as the
House debated continuing to fund the government and John
Boehner was grandstanding about government spending, Murphy
tweeted: “Question for @SpeakerBoehner: if now isn’t a good
time to rebuild roads, bridges, etc…when is? Just
wondering.”

4. John Waltz – Michigan House District 6

Blue America wrote, endorsing John Waltz in his challenge of
Republican – and budget supercommittee member – Fred Upton:

“I want to introduce you to Democrat John Waltz, a
movement progressive, who’s taking on cartoonish
plutocrat, Fred Upton, the Whirlpool heir who has always
treated the district as though it were a feudal fiefdom.
Upton, by inheritance one of the richest members of the
House, was appointed to the SuperCommittee by his crony
John Boehner because Republicans know he will never
agree to anything sensible that can in any way help dig
the middle class out of the economic mess the modern day
Robber Barons, in their unparalleled greed, have created
for the rest of us.”

Waltz, an Iraq veteran, appears ready for a fight. He’s
hitting Upton for his family’s outsourcing of manufacturing
jobs as well as his votes on the issues, and hashtags his
Tweets #FedUpton. And just this week, he responded to the
booing of a gay soldier at the latest Republican debate this
way:

“Not one presidential candidate uttered a peep about the
hateful and homophobic booing of a gay soldier in Iraq.
I challenge any Republican or Tealiban member to sign up
for the military and get shipped over there and see if
they have any complaint when a gay or lesbian soldier is
protecting their lives.

“I know during my time in the service we had a massive
fire and several of us were pulled out by a lesbian and
not one of us stopped her to ask if she was sleeping
with a man or woman that night. This behavior is
despicable and should never be tolerated. The repeal of
DADT was a major step forward in civil rights for our
nation and anyone that is willing to serve our nation to
protect our freedoms should never be discriminated
against.”

Michigan is one of the states with a widely hated new
Republican governor, attacks on workers, as well as a long-
standing jobs crisis. Michigan residents have known for
years what most Americans have just begun to realize; that
big business doesn’t have working people’s interests at
heart.

A populist Democrat running against the heir to a
manufacturing fortune whose idea of job creation is the
Keystone XL pipeline? In a district, in southwestern
Michigan including Kalamazoo, that voted for Obama in 2008,
that’s already seen protests against that business scion,
including a giant puppet?

That sounds like a race worth watching.

5. Elizabeth Warren – Massachusetts Senate

The death of Ted Kennedy was always going to be a blow to
supporters of universal health care and the rights of
working people. But when his seat went to Tea Party
Republican Scott Brown in the special election, progressives
felt punched in the gut. A Tea Partier in the Liberal Lion’s
seat?

Now Elizabeth Warren is stepping into the fray – and doing
so in a big way. The plain-spoken Harvard law professor has
the banksters and Congressional Republicans terrified, and
with good reason.

The Washington Post said of Warren, “She came to keep banks
honest; she stayed to keep consumers safe.” She first came
to national prominence as the chair of the Congressional
Oversight Panel, keeping an eye on the bank bailouts. From
there, she was able to get her brainchild, the Consumer
Financial Protection Bureau, created, though Republican
opposition kept her from being named to lead it. Instead of
simply returning to teaching bankruptcy law, Warren decided
to challenge Brown for Kennedy’s former seat.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee has reportedly
raised $300,000 for her campaign already–$100,000 of it
before she even declared she’d run.

Republicans might try to paint her as an out-of-touch
elitist, but Warren’s got working-class roots, and her work
over the course of her career has been solidly on the side
of the people and against the big banks. She’s just the kind
of person, in other words, that Democrats need to strike
back at those “elitist” arguments.

A video of Warren doing what she does best – explaining
deficits and progressive taxation, not normally sexy
subjects, in a way that both makes them clear and rallies
the crowd to fight with her – has gone viral, and it’s easy
to see why:

Elizabeth Warren on Debt Crisis, Fair Taxation
http://youtu.be/htX2usfqMEs

She gets a laugh or two, just to get the crowd firmly on her
side, and then she gets to her real point:

“I hear all this, you know, ‘Well, this is class
warfare, this is whatever.’ No! There is nobody in this
country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a
factory out there – good for you! But I want to be
clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the
rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us
paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because
of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us
paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands
would come and seize everything at your factory, and
hire someone to protect against this, because of the
work the rest of us did.

Now look, you built a factory and it turned into
something terrific, or a great idea – God bless. Keep a
big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social
contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for
the next kid who comes along.”

Greg Sargent at the Washington Post noted, “A Warren
candidacy could test the electoral limits of true populism
in a way that few other Dems have been willing to venture.”

We’ve seen right-wing populism over the last four years as
the Tea Party rose to power. One of the first places it
demonstrated that power was putting a Republican in a
Massachusetts Senate seat. If Warren can take it back – and
take it back as a progressive populist – she’ll not only
help put another nail in the coffin of the Tea Party
movement, but she might inspire other candidates around the
country to get a little bit fiercer on the campaign trail.

LINK

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Do your homework America; vet the candidates and study their platforms and ideology BEFORE you vote.

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