Democracy in action

So on Saturday I dipped my toe into state party politics for the first time, and I got to see how the sausage gets made.

There is more to this democracy thing than just showing up at the polls to vote, you know…a whole hell of a lot more.


The state convention is where we select the members of the DNC who will represent Missouri’s issues to the national party, and it is where the at-large delegates are selected who will attend the national convention in Denver in August in support of either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. It also serves as a launching point to get us energized and fired up and ready to unite behind the eventual nominee and take on McSame and the republican fear machine that is rolling at us, preaching doom and gloom and the necessity of ever more war, drilling for oil in ANWR and of course, the gospel of tax cuts. They are going to pay for their folly with yet more tax cuts. Fortunately, the vehicle they like to think of as a Mack truck is actually more akin to a Ford Pinto, and reality is coming up on 'em fast from behind.

Technical issues with my firewall prevented me from doing the live-blogging from the convention that I intended, so I shifted gears. I took a lot of pictures and talked to a lot of people and tried to learn something.

The Missouri Democratic Party is the oldest continuously-functioning political organization west of the Mississippi River, and it is effective. The two biggest urban areas in the state, St. Louis and Kansas City, are both Democratic strongholds and a testament to the history and resilience of the Democratic party in this swing state.

I did have the opportunity to spend a little time with Jack Cardetti and make the case to him that the party needs to reassert itself in the rural areas - especially in the northern tier. They might not make any inroads in the bible-college saturated southern counties, but the Missouri Sixth? Nuh-uh. Get some damned party representation up there in Bethany and Princeton and Trenton and Unionville, and do it right damn now.

I am fond of saying that the population isn’t dense up there - but neither are the people.

Last week, as I was making my plans for the convention, I called my father-in-law who had turned into a republican for a while, but came back to the Democrats this year, and I asked him if he could ask anything of the state party, what would it be? He answered me immediately. He said "why can't I pick up bumper stickers and signs in [the county seat]? Tell 'em nobody's gonna vote for 'em if they don't bother to ask."

Well, my father in law is one of my heroes, and he has the medals, including a Bronze Star, earned in Korea to prove he's a hero in that sense of the word, too. So I made a pest of myself, bringing it up every time Jack Cardetti was anywhere near me, and then I hooked up with a reporter from the Times-Tribune in Grant City, and we pestered him together. (Meeting her was kinda like meeting the cool cousin you didn't know you had at a family reunion.)

Anyway, I have no intention of shutting up about the lack of party presence up there so long as it is lacking. And not to be the cranky old granny lady shaking her cane and yelling at the kids to stay off her lawn...but the folks at the state party are younger than Bridget (that is my new friend's name) and I, by enough years that they have no personal recollection of the strong Democratic history that runs through that part of the state. History is on our side, and the state party needs to remember that. The only reason Democrats lost control of the statehouse in 2000 was because of a perfect storm...term limits (what a lousy idea - there is no institutional memory now, no legislative agendas, just strongarm tactics) kicked in and was coupled with the republican presidential candidate taking the state and carrying down-ticket repubs along on his coattails. It's true - you can look it up. That area up there is not reliably red - Kay can take Sam Graves, and she is going to. He is running scared and everyone knows it. That is why he has gone negative this early on. Seven years of goose-stepping with Bush is going to take a huge bite out of his ass.

The Democratic party also has an advantage they may not realize - there are enough old-time Roosevelt and Truman Democrats left up there in the Sixth who still remember when the WPA brought jobs and electricity to the countryside, and they remember the howling the republicans did about that back then. There are also enough young people who have been negatively impacted by the last eight years of this republican president and the last four years of our current republican governor - Blunt gutted Medicaid and then Graves turned around and voted against SCHIP - that the Missouri Sixth can be flipped back, and if history is any indicator, a party change is due. Provided the opportunity doesn't get pissed away.

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A year out, and the MO 06 is already heating up

The 2008 elections might still be 53 weeks hence, but it is already getting brutal in the Missouri 6^th.

For the first time since Sam Graves slid into the seat in 2000, he is facing a real challenger in the person of popular former Kansas City mayor Kay Barnes, and it is already getting nasty.

This race is quite possibly going to be the nastiest fought battle for a seat in the entire 111^th congress. Graves is, without a doubt the meanest sonofabitch in the Missouri delegation, if not the entire congress. He routinely uses that white-trash, trailer-park minion of Rove, Jeff Roe to wield a hatchet – but Kay is highly skilled with a scalpel. May she show Roe his black little political heart before it stops beating. I think he – and Graves – may have made a tactical error in conflating winning elections against sacrificial lambs with successful electoral strategy. Graves has been a nasty, negative campaigner from day one, starting with the Republican primary in 2000.

[keep reading]

In 1999, the National Republican Congressional Committee recruited Teresa Loar, a moderate Republican to challenge popular conservative Democrat Steve Danner, the son of long-term and much-loved Congressman Pat Danner. Then late in the election cycle, Danner stepped aside, guaranteeing that a first termer would be elected in November 2000.

Congressional attack dog DeLay saw a chance to put a junkyard cur in that seat, and there was no room for an ethical moderate Republican who would work for the constituents instead of the Party Agenda. DeLay wanted an acolyte, he wanted a swaggering jingoistic goon, and he was gonna have one, no matter what. Roy Blunt and Tom DeLay called Loar personally, telling her, in essence, “Step aside, little lady.”

When she didn’t, Roe unsheathed the long knives. They went through her trash, they followed her, they staked out her home and office, they stalked her like paparazzi, getting in her face and snapping pictures nonstop.

Sam Graves is busily trying to paint Kay Barnes with the Nancy Pelosi brush, making sweeping statements like “She’s going to be very frustrated because the 6^th is not like San Francisco.”

And that is the kind of garbage that makes this daughter of the 6^th just want to slap the jackass silly. I went to high school in the 6^th, I am the same age as Graves, and I know a dozen jerks just like him. No kidding the 6^th isn't like San Francisco! You don't say! Why, I would have been totally confused without Sammy setting me straight. (Get it? That was a poke at San Francisco and the Camp cover. Geez, Sam, try to keep up. These are the jokes, Son...)

We tire of your antics. The 6^th has a history of flipping regularly, the people are not as homogeneous as Graves would like to think. A whole bunch of us have been to college - hell, some of us have even been to europe! For the most part, we aren't scared of brown people, don't think terrorists are gonna blow up the courthouse in Trenton, And are more concerned about CAFO's than gay marriage. Shoot, a whole bunch of us realize that our marriages aren't in jeopardy if the gay people we know are given equal standing in their relationships.

Graves is banking everything on xenophobia and immigration. And yeah, we are concerned about the problem of undocumented labor, and the drain on our schools and healthcare systems - but we are also smart enough to cypher two and two and come up with four. We know that deporting ten million people en masse would wreak economic havoc. We also realize that if they would get the CAFOs under control, a lot of our problem with immigration would be solved as a byproduct.)

Graves has been the most loyal of Bushies, and it’s going to bite him in the ass. He can’t run away from his support of Bush on virtually every issue. His unflagging support of a war that the district wants over yesterday would probably be enough to sink his chances in 2008.

But then, he followed aWol off the SCHIP cliff. Bush isn't running next year, but Graves is. And that is gonna hang him. The people of the 6^th are fed up with the dirty politics, the lies, and the loyalty to Bush. They went for McCaskill last November, and they passed Amendment 2 with a comfortable margin. So keep misreading and underestimating us. And by all means, continue the way you have.

I already have my little black dress picked out for January 20, 2009!

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If You Liked Her as the Mayor, You'll LOVE Her in Congress!

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Meet my Beloved Mayor. Her name is Kay Barnes. She will be exiting city hall gracefully after two wildly successful terms in office on May 1, leaving on a high note with a popularity rating that has been phenomenally high all eight years she has been in office. Her success in office is evidenced by the cranes punctuating the skyline, and the revitalized downtown.

She is going to take Sam Graves seat away from him in November 2008, and then KC will have two former mayors in the Congress.

I simply find it a wholly intolerable situation that Sam Graves (R MO 06) has a seat in congress in the first place. The word 'apostasy' seems an understatement when applied to that situation. The man is an embarrassment to Missourians and an offense to decent, thinking people everywhere. He is not our finest offering; that is certain. Since election night 2000, I have been plotting his political demise from the district to the south.

I live and vote in the Missouri 05/State Senate 10. My zip code is the bluest Missouri has to offer. My zip code is literally – and figuratively – as far left as the state goes. I want this blue tint to spread, because we have it pretty damned good, and I think all my fellow residents should be so fortunate. Being a liberal, I want to share, not just hoard the good stuff for myself. In this case the good stuff is responsive and responsible Democrats elected to office. Part of that good stuff I want to share is Kay Barnes.

I always have an eye cast toward future elections. When Kay Barnes sold her Ward Parkway mansion and moved north of the river a couple of years ago, I took note. She moved from the Missouri 05 to the Missouri 06. The 05 is solidly Democratic and currently represented by Rev. Emmanuel Cleaver II – Mayor Barnes predecessor at City Hall. A congressional bid in the 05 after her wildly successful time in the mayors office would have most likely involved a primary challenge to a sitting Democrat. Why would she do that when she could gain a seat for the Democrats and unseat an embarrassing stereotype in the process?

Graves has not had any serious competition since taking his seat. Sarah Jo Shettles earned the endorsement of the KC Star in the 06 midterms, but she garnered less than 40% of the vote.

Kay Barnes would not be such an easy opponent. And with vast personal wealth, she would be able to push back in the media against the Graves slime machine. Prime Graves: His opponent in November, Ms. Shettles, once sold advertising for Omni magazine. Because Bob Guiccioni owned Omni, he charged that she had worked for the porn industry. He is a typical right-wing bully, and his low-rent tactics would wither in the face of a pro like Barnes.

The Missouri 06 is largely rural, covering area from KC North all the way to the Iowa line, and reaching east to within a hundred miles of Illinois. Vast – but empty. The population growth that is happening in the MO-06 is all happening in Kay Barnes neighborhood – or Kansas City North.

She will go into the race with higher name recognition than anyone he has yet faced, perhaps with name recognition higher than Mr. Graves himself. Additionally, there has been very little negative reporting about Kay Barnes in the entire eight years she has been Mayor.

This is the race that will turn Missouri purple, after too-long in the red. It will shift Missouri’s nine-member House delegation to 5 Democrats and 4 Republicans. Our Senate delegation is split, and will be for the foreseeable future (McCaskill, Democrat, just elected in Class I and Kit Bond, Republican, Class III).

The Washington Post agrees with me:

The district's electoral history suggests the potential for real competitiveness. Although President Bush won the 6th relatively easily in 2000 and 2004, Sen. Claire McCaskill showed that the district's voters are willing to vote for the right Democrat. After losing the district by more than 20 points in her 2004 gubernatorial race, McCaskill narrowly carried it in 2006 over incumbent Sen. Jim Talent (R).

The Virginia Tech massacre turned the spotlight last week to gun control, a political hot potato that has been dormant in recent years on the national stage. But cross a presidential campaign with the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, and you're going to get a gun debate -- another volatile wedge issue to define the crowded 2008 field.

Mayor Barnes will have credibility on the gun issue – KC has a lot of gun crime, and she and her Mayor Pro Tem Alvin Brooks have been effective on the issue on the local level. Her experience as a mayor of a large, urban area with a gun problem will be an asset, and the events of the last week have primed the long-overdue debate.

One thing is for sure – a farmer in Mercer County that hunts deer, quail and pheasant – and who sends the kids off to one of the state schools at Columbia or Springfield or Maryville or Warrensburg – is not identifying with the image of the V-Tech shooter staring into the camera, brandishing his guns and babbling incoherently. They more likely identify with the parents of the victims. Kay Barnes has dealt with the issue in real-time. Sam Graves has, for the last six years, offered mealy-mouthed platitudes and pablum.

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