Pat Meagher, Progressive Democratic Candidate for the 41st Congressional District, has received endorsements from multiple Union and Democratic Clubs. A Forest Falls resident and Principle of Fontana Adult School he has gathered the support of the Mojave Desert Democratic Club, East Valley Democratic Club, Stonewall Democratic Club,
Greater Rialto Dual Endorsement, Desert Hot Springs Democratic Club and The Democratic Club of Big Bear Valley. His Union endorsements include IBEW Local 440, UAW Region 5 Western United States CAP Council, California Labor Federation's Committee on Political Education (COPE), San Bernardino/Riverside Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO, San Bernardino/Riverside Building and Trades Council, and International Union of Operating Engineers Local 12.
This father of nine, seven of whom are adopted, has also gotten the attention of Progressive Democrats of America Dr. Bill Honigman, So CA State Organizer, who was the Keynote speaker at Pat Meagher's fundraising event held at University of Redlands. Ahjamu Makalani evoked Meagher's name and sloganas an inspiration to a standing room only crowd at the State Democratic Convention PDA Caucus. Meagher embraces the entire PDA platform including their current campaign for Healthcare Not Warfare.
The war is real for the Meagher family. Their newly married son will be returning to Iraq this summer for a second tour, as well as a daughter whose first tour was in Afghanistan. To thunderous applause at Arlington West Santa Monica following Col. Ann Wright (Ret), Meagher declared "Don't tell me I don't support the troops. Those are my kids. It is time to bring our glorious and victorious troops home!"
Col. Ann Wright, 29 year Army Veteran, 13 year United States Diplomat, was so impressed after meeting with Meagher that she adjusted her schedule in order to share the podium with him when he announced his candidacy to a crowd of community leaders and peace and justice activists from the Inland Empire at the Carriage House in Redlands.
Pat Meagher is proud that his campaign is funded through grassroots supporters who believe he is the best man to represent their concerns in Washington DC.
Pat Meagher, Progressive Democratic Candidate for the 41st Congressional District, has received endorsements from multiple Union and Democratic Clubs. A Forest Falls resident and Principle of Fontana Adult School he has gathered the support of the Mojave Desert Democratic Club, East Valley Democratic Club, Stonewall Democratic Club,
Greater Rialto Dual Endorsement, Desert Hot Springs Democratic Club and The Democratic Club of Big Bear Valley. His Union endorsements include IBEW Local 440, UAW Region 5 Western United States CAP Council, California Labor Federation's Committee on Political Education (COPE), San Bernardino/Riverside Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO, San Bernardino/Riverside Building and Trades Council, and International Union of Operating Engineers Local 12.
This father of nine, seven of whom are adopted, has also gotten the attention of Progressive Democrats of America Dr. Bill Honigman, So CA State Organizer, who was the Keynote speaker at Pat Meagher's fundraising event held at University of Redlands. Ahjamu Makalani evoked Meagher's name and sloganas an inspiration to a standing room only crowd at the State Democratic Convention PDA Caucus. Meagher embraces the entire PDA platform including their current campaign for Healthcare Not Warfare.
The war is real for the Meagher family. Their newly married son will be returning to Iraq this summer for a second tour, as well as a daughter whose first tour was in Afghanistan. To thunderous applause at Arlington West Santa Monica following Col. Ann Wright (Ret), Meagher declared "Don't tell me I don't support the troops. Those are my kids. It is time to bring our glorious and victorious troops home!"
Col. Ann Wright, 29 year Army Veteran, 13 year United States Diplomat, was so impressed after meeting with Meagher that she adjusted her schedule in order to share the podium with him when he announced his candidacy to a crowd of community leaders and peace and justice activists from the Inland Empire at the Carriage House in Redlands.
Pat Meagher is proud that his campaign is funded through grassroots supporters who believe he is the best man to represent their concerns in Washington DC.
XPosted 5/23/2008 1:14 AM PDT on MyDesert.com in Blog by BluePalmSpringsBoyz
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 440 has endorsed Pettis in his race to replace Bonnie Garcia. IBEW Local 440 has long been active in Coachella Valley politics and Progressive Democratic circles.
Chuck McDaniel, an IBEW Local 440 leader and activist, had previously endorsed Pettis for the 80th AD. McDaniel is also Vice-President of the newly formed Desert Hot Springs Democratic Club and is a member of the Riverside County Democratic Central Committee.
Garcia is termed out and cannot run for re-election.
Here in California's 4th Congressional District, we have a clear choice between leadership and partisanship, solutions or more bickering. Charlie Brown has been at the forefront of leading the fight to restore integrity to the 4th CD, and a higher standard of leadership to Washington.
Please, wait, just stay for a little bit and read about my husband's campaign? I know you are busy and I know there are a lot bigger fish to fry, but I'm hoping you will hear me out, please?
You see, Gary needs your help. In order to raise money you need to raise money. Make sense?
UPDATE: (Bob) I just got off the phone with David Dayen for the report from the ground. It was kinda tough to hear because all of the horns honking in the background. He said there was a great crowd, KTLA is interviewing a number of them, and they are having a lot of fun passing out the lapel pins. Also, he loved the fact that a Burbank Police Officer came by and told them he was their officer for the night and if they had any problems (with ABC or Disney) to give him a call. I wish I was there, if you can make it they'll be out there until 7PM.
OK, so everyone's frustrated with the content-free, brainless ABC News debate the other night. Chuck Todd actually gets it wrong - it's not about rabid Obama partisans rising up to hammer ABC, it's about thinking people rising up and deciding not to accept the thin gruel the media tries to feed us anymore.
The moderators are unrepentant and congenitally wired to not get it. So we're going to have to take to the streets - the mean streets of Burbank, California. We want to know if ABC/Disney executives can pass the Gibson/Stephanopoulos flag pin litmus test - it's obviously the most important issue facing the nation, so are they sufficiently patriotic? If not, we're willing to help them out.
(I was happy to co-host this event last night. After a day where there was a lot of sturm und drang among the grassroots, what I remember about this week is the incredible events I've been fortunate enough to witness, both with Tim Goodrich and last night with Darcy Burner. The grassroots is strong when we are all working for incredible candidates who can bring about progressive change. - promoted by David Dayen)
I met Darcy Burner for the second time last night.
It was pretty exciting, meeting a future president. If you have to ask why I would say that, why, then, you haven't had the pleasure of meeting Darcy Burner.
It's about time that progressives start fighting back against the demonization of immigration that will be laced into every policy critique that Republicans make between now and November. The Public Policy Institute of California has helpfully provided the facts on just one of the many falsehoods peddled about immigration.
Fears that immigration leads to rising crime rates are unjustified, says a California study released Monday.
The report by the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan research group, asked the question: Are the foreign-born more likely than the U.S.-born to commit crimes?
"In California, as in the rest of the nation, immigrants ... have extremely low rates of criminal activity," said Kristin Butcher, a co-author of the report, "Crime, Corrections and California: What Does Immigration Have to Do With It?"
Available data, the report's authors said, "suggest that long-standing fears of immigration as a threat to public safety are unjustified."
Just as fears about immigrants stealing government services and free health care are unjustified. Just as fears about immigrants sinking the economy are unjustified. In fact, all that Republicans base this debate on is fear, which for them is of course redundant.
I'll refer to something I wrote many months ago about the preferred progressive approach to the immigration debate:
Dan Schnur is a go-to guy for quotes when it comes to the GOP, especially with California reporters. In 2000, Schnur was Communications Director for John McCain. The New York Times is now reporting that there was a crisis within that "small circle of advisers" about what is now a major scandal:
A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client's corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself - instructing staff members to block the woman's access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.
When news organizations reported that Mr. McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist's client, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.
Mr. McCain, 71, and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, 40, both say they never had a romantic relationship. But to his advisers, even the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee Mr. McCain led threatened the story of redemption and rectitude that defined his political identity.
Who will be the first reporter to pin down Schnur on this?
Obama actually had an excellent overnight. He kept contact in several districts, won enough in CA-09 for a 4-2 split, and I don't think CA-50 and CA-53 are worth calling yet until we see where the final votes are coming from; he's basically in the same position he was in CA-01. My approximations on delegates show that Clinton will win between 31 and 37 more delegates out of California. At one point last night it looked like 50-60.
(Those are slightly different than Caligirl's numbers, based on late-breaking numbers for Obama.)
My initial analysis wasn't all that off except for one key area: Clinton was able to get 3-1 splits in 8 key districts, almost all of them heavily Latino: CA-18, CA-21, CA-31 (hey, great job, Obama surrogate Xavier Becerra!), CA-32, CA-34, CA-38, CA-39 (awesome, Obama surrogate Linda Sanchez!), and CA-43. If Obama got enough votes in those districts to keep it close, and I mean a scant 35%, he would have basically been even or down by 5-7 delegates.
Those are districts that are dominated by Spanish-language media, that are in Los Angeles and Riverside and San Bernardino and Orange counties. They would be uniquely difficult to organize at the precinct level, and Clinton won based on paid media and name ID and connection to the Clinton policies of the past. Clinton's huge Asian vote probably helped as well, at least in CA-39. I also overestimated the value of endorsers like Becerra and Linda Sanchez and Adam Schiff. Congressmen don't necessarily have a machine to get out votes.
Hillary Clinton was up by a whole lot in this race and she ended up winning by single digits (about 9.5%). Given her early voting lead, depending on how many voted by mail she may have won by as little as 5% on Election Day. But she took the districts where she had a natural advantage strongly.
On the Republican side, John McCain won around 49 districts, Mitt Romney 4. Unbelievable.
UPDATE: Frank Russo notes something very important:
Of the 6.3 million ballots counted for Presidential candidates, 63% or over 4 million were cast in the Democratic primary and only 32% or 2.3 million and counting were cast in the Republican primary. Democrats and decline to state a party voters who participated in the Democratic primary far outperformed normal voting patterns in California. Democrats hold a 10 point margin in voter registration over Republicans in this state and decline to state voters account for 19% of registrations. There is a 31% spread between the Democratic primary vote here and the Republican primary vote.
That's extremely impressive, and a good harbinger for November. Russo also says there are as many as a million absentee votes that have yet to be counted, so these numbers could still move, which means delegates could shift as well.
...In addition, there are tens of thousands of votes caught up in the double bubble trouble, so the margin of victory could plausibly shrink to 8 or even 7.
The biggest story of the day is the meltdown with DTS voters in LA. It is so bad that the Obama campaign had to drop an "URGENT" email with phone numbers for their Election Protection lawyers (while Hillary's campaign is issuing statements that there is nothing to be seen, move along...these are not the droids your looking for). But that isn't the only place, the huge DTS surge for Democrats has hit Silicon Valley with another problem. From the Registrar (pdf, h/t to Silence in the comments):
Due to higher-than-expected turnout in today's Presidential Primary Election, the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters is implementing backup voting procedures to help mitigate potential ballot shortages. The shortage is largely attributed to an unanticipated surge in the number of Decline-to-State (nonpartisan) voters who are choosing to vote a Democratic Party ballot.
Can't quite see how this was "unanticipated" but it is clear that there are lots of people in full C.Y.A. mode today. How are they dealing with it? BYOB, of course!
As for election news in California, the final two polls have been wildly divergent. SurveyUSA shows a 10-point Clinton lead, while Reuters/Zogby has a 13-point Obama lead. The final Field Poll (the gold standard, as everyone knows) went with a one-point lead to Obamatwo-point lead to Clinton, almost exactly in the middle.
Of course, this only tells part of the story, as Marc Ambinder picked up on my caveat that the district-level delegate system will skew the results, particularly in those even-numbered districts, where a high bar is needed to be scaled to get anything beyond an even split of delegates. And if you expect an early answer about them, think again:
So much for having a hard delegate count on Super Tuesday, we're hearing that CA Dems won't have final delegate tally ready until Friday.
Debra Bowen's mantra has been that she'd rather get the count right than get it fast, so everyone's going to have to wait. I think it's a small price to pay for voting with a paper ballot. By the way, DTS voters, fill that bubble!
The Cook Political Report did the same district-level analysis that I did yesterday, and found a considerably larger amount of variance. Cook thinks that Clinton can get over the 63% bar in those heavily-Latino districts (I'm not so sure). I understand that the 6-delegate seats require 58.3% of the vote to get a 4-2 split, which seems to me to be possible in Barbara Lee's CA-09 and Nancy Pelosi's CA-08, so Obama could be in an even stronger position than I thought. And as Councilman Garcetti said last night, they are paying attention to this stuff, on both sides I would imagine.
Finally, we have somewhat neglected the Republican race. The chic pick is that Romney has come all the way back and will take California. John McCain is apparently worried about it, since it would mean that Romney has an argument to stay in the race. Both candidates scurried back here today for extra bits of campaigning.
And yet McCain's people fear he may lose the popular vote in California to Romney -- even if they haul in the same number of CA delegates -- and that the Super Tuesday story will therefore NOT be the crowning of McCain but rather his failure to put away the game, a failure born of his fractious and sometimes unloving relationship with conservatives, especially those millions of conservatives who listen to and abide by Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, not to mention Limbaugh and Hannity themselves, and a failure that in turn will be viewed as both a symptom and a cause of the historic crack-up of the conservative coalition that has sustained and nourished the Republican Party for a couple generations.
Which would be fantastic, since it would be desirable for their race to be as screwed up as ours. Could the relentless Rush Limbaugh attacks be having an impact? We'll soon find out.
Barack Obama's endorsement by the Grateful Dead showed the extent to which he is bringing voters out of the woodwork. Typically in campaigns, you start with 1/3 supporting your side, 1/3 supporting the other side, and 1/3 ready to be convinced. The middle is the battleground (unless you buy into the DLC playbook of pissing off the base to try and win over the other side's base, which is why no Clinton has won 50% nationwide). The other option is to not buy into the voter pool as a zero net sum game and bring in new people. To date, Barack Obama has excelled at expanding the pool and bringing in young voters and first time voters and boosting turnout.
When it comes to the Grateful Dead, it is almost a joke when it comes to getting Deadheads to care about politics. It might be the least friendly demographic for increasing participation in electoral politics. The Dead didn't step up against Nixon or any other major threat to America since. But they have been inspired by Barack Obama to come together for a reunion concert to Get Out The Vote. I'm proud to be there and will be updating below the fold, you can listen to a Live stream here (beginning at 7:30 pacific + Dead time).
If he wins the Democratic nomination on June 3, 2008, Rogelio V. Morales will deliver the most bruising fight Congressman Ken Calvert has ever been in. Given Rogelio's humble background, to even be in the position to run for congress is incredible and fills me with pride to be an American. So kicking Ken Calvert's butt should be a piece of cake for Rogelio!
I know Rogelio (pronounced row-hell-leo) and believe me when I say he will make Calvert's life a living hell. Even if he were to lose the general, I am sure Calvert will not want to face Rogelio a second time. By 2010, if he survives, Calvert will be too rich to care since he is in Congress for himself and Calvert Properties.
Rogelio = former infantry Marine. Nuff said. www.morales2008.com
(A great diary about Senator Clinton. - promoted by Brian Leubitz)
Cross posted from my dKos diary with my permission.
New material and lots of stuff I need to say again. This is my final argument for Hillary.
I think Democrats are good people. I have friends in every campaign and we treat each other with respect. The Democrats here are no different.
You are good people and respectful. Those tr's who frequent every candidate's diary's are trolls. They are tr's sent by the right, maybe employed by the right. They are here to do what they do. Disrupt discourse and direct our conversations away from where they should be. I don't have time to waste trying to convince the republican tr's here. I'm am working hard for Hillary just as she has worked hard for us for 35 years.
With the February 5th primary election approaching rapidly, in which voters in California and 21 other states will pick which presidential candidates represent each party, we have a rare opportunity to make a monumental decision.
For the first time in years, we have an opportunity to elect a president who will give the global climate crisis the level of attention that is required to tackle it.
But how are we to know where the candidates stand on global warming, if reporters simply refuse to ask the right questions? Of the 2,938 questions asked of the presidential candidates since January 2007, just 6 mentioned global warming (source: League of Conservation Voters).
Hey all. Sitting here in the spin room at the Kodak Theater prior to tonight's Democratic debate. The place is kind of swamped with media, and I guess Blitzer's doing his live show just outside, so there are a lot of sign-holders afoot.
Earlier today I was down at Los Angeles Trade Technical College, a community college near downtown, to watch a townhall meeting with Senator Barack Obama. A lot of his Southern California supporters were on hand, including Assemblyman Ted Lieu, labor leader Maria Elena Durazo, Congressmen Xavier Becerra and Adam Schiff, LA City Councilmembers Yvonne Burke and Bill Rosendahl, and State Senators Dean Florez, Gil Cedillo, and Majority Leader Gloria Romero. I have as much respect for Senators Cedillo and Romero as anyone in the State Senate. They have been at the forefront of taking on tough issues; in the case of Sen Romero, prison and sentencing reform (Obama expressed support for eliminating the crack/cocaine powder sentencing and for a more intelligent criminal justice system that deals with nonviolent offenders in a different way), and in the case of Sen. Cedillo, immigration measures like driver's licenses and the DREAM Act (which Obama said he would sign). It means a lot to me that they are on board Obama's campaign.
Spurred by John Edwards's withdrawal from the race on Wednesday, MoveOn surveyed a sample of its members to gauge endorsement interest, according to a source with knowledge of the group's operations. Then MoveOn set a deadline of 11 am Thursday for members to back a virtual endorsement vote. If a majority support the idea, virtual balloting will run overnight, open only to the group's 3.2 million activists, and an endorsement could be announced by Friday.
Your ballot will be hitting your inbox shortly. Looking at the movement in the Daily Kos poll, I can see Obama meeting the revised, 2/3 threshold.
The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in California shows Hillary Clinton with a very narrow three-percentage point lead over Barack Obama. The survey was conducted in the hours immediately following Florida's Presidential Primary and before John Edwards dropped out of the race.
Barack Obama's endorsement by the Grateful Dead showed the extent to which he is bringing voters out of the woodwork. Typically in campaigns, you start with 1/3 supporting your side, 1/3 supporting the other side, and 1/3 ready to be convinced. The middle is the battleground (unless you buy into the DLC playbook of pissing off the base to try and win over the other side's base, which is why no Clinton has won 50% nationwide). The other option is to not buy into the voter pool as a zero net sum game and bring in new people. To date, Barack Obama has excelled at expanding the pool and bringing in young voters and first time voters and boosting turnout.