Liberal or progressive?

[tabbycat31]

101. I'm not a conservative

But I am also a realist. When it comes to governing, people have to work together. I live in a (blue) state with a GOP governor and a Blue Dog senate president that work together. The senate president is constantly getting flack from PDA, etc for working with him and getting legislation passed. During our last legislative elections, the local progressives were organizing movements against him (well after the primaries were over) and trying to run write in campaigns (they were not successful) against him and most of the Democrats from the region. Last year, that movement was encouraging people to vote 3rd party for president and US senate because Obama and the senator are not progressive enough for them.

As for my own personal issues, I'm as liberal as they come. But I don't live in district (anymore, thanks redistricting-- my old congressman is the one that PDA lambasted at the conference) that supports progressives. I'm in THE most Republican state legislative district in the state and my congressman is a man who's words about rape make Todd Akin look like a feminist. (I was a baby when he was first elected). Luckily I still have two Democratic (and not Blue Dog) senators. Every election, I vote straight ticket, and I attend the county party nominating conventions (there's been primaries but always unopposed). I am a member of the County Party's Democratic Women's caucus and have (unsuccessfully) tried to start up a Young Dems chapter in my county. I'm also on the executive board of my county's DFA chapter.

I work on campaigns for a living and have been sent to states that are very different from my own. (My last district was bigger than the state I live in and a good portion was coal country). The candidate has already clinched the Democratic nomination by the time I landed in the district, so I obviously had no say in that. What I do in those districts is that I look at the candidate's strengths and weaknesses, the district's past performance, and what part of the candidate I can match to what part of the district. If I had self-identified as a progressive and been publicly associated with some of the progressive movement in my state (see my first paragraph), then it could cost me my job.

outspokenliberal.blogspot.com is my blog. Read the post about my own evolution from progressive to blue dog. If you read the old posts, you can tell how progressive I was. I grew up living in a very liberal bubble (NYC area) and I'm all for progressives representing those districts. However if it comes to a district that is heavily Republican, if you had the choice between a Blue Dog and teabagger, what would you choose. If you lived in SC-01 would you have voted for Elizabeth Colbert Busch? She certainly did not run as a progressive because she knew the district would not elect her if she did. And Sanford tied her to the liberal movement. On Lawrence tonight, one of his guests said that in those such districts, you have to distance yourself from the national party. There's a lot of those districts in this country.