Help Make It Our Congress, Not Theirs

Got ten bucks to help prove that Democrats can get elected without having to suck corporate cock? How about five bucks?

You've got four and a half hours left to contribute to a "money bomb" that seeks to prove just that.

From Down with Tyranny:

Over the weekend Paul Rosenberg at OpenLeft interviewed Grayson about today's money bomb. He said he's "doing it to show that it's possible for progressive to raise money without having to cater to lobbyists and people who want favors. We're trying to invent an entirely new model to finance a campaign. My campaign next year is going to cost $2 million. There's no getting around it. I don't set the media rates around Orlando, somebody else does that. And the result of that is that we have to show that money can be raised for progressive causes in the old fashioned way, which is $20 here, $50 there, $100 here, rather than asking big shots for favors. I want a campaign that's a campaign by the people and for the people. And this money bomb will show whether or not it's possible. I think we've already shown a lot of success, I mean we've already raised a quarter million dollars, and the money bomb is still three days away. But what we need to do is to show that we can do it the same way the right does it. The right has had multi-million dollar money bombs for Ron Paul, and we need to show that we can do it that way ourselves. Otherwise people on the left in Congress will feel that they have to keep making deals with lobbyists just for the sake of financing their own campaigns."

If you've read a progressive blog in the last two months, you already know what a gift to Liberals and Real Democrats Alan Grayson is. But in case you're been climbing K2 since August, here's a refresher from Digby:

"Pugislitic, outlandish rhetoric" by a super smart, self-made millionaire, economist/lawyer is just what the doctor ordered in the Democratic Party. Indeed, I think we should put him and Michelle Bachman on a program and send them around the country for a series of Lincoln Douglas debates.

Grayson is throwing the Overton Window wide open and showing the Democrats how to appeal to average people in this populist era from the left. He's almost the only one. Of course the establishment doesn't like or understand it, but that's to be expected. They don't want to upset Real America by being too hot. (Liberals, you see, must always be cool or they'll scare the rubes. )

Grayson gets that this is a hot moment and it demands hot rhetoric. Politics as they've been played for decades are changing. We are now a realigned country with two polarized parties with different worldviews where a more parliamentary style of governance is going to reign. The days of Tip and Ronnie sharing a scocth after work are long over. But it's also a hot moment in history. Something is happening in this country and around the globe. The near collapse of the financial system and this dreadful recession have exposed the disgusting income inequality that was kept hidden beneath a pile of credit card bills and home equity lines for decades. People are feeling it and seeing it for the first time and they are demanding that it change. The Republicans are pulling out their old well worn playbook and blaming the liberals and the government for this (and it is partially responsible) while the Democrats appear to be blaming ... nobody. That is a mistake. This is is a blaming moment

Sadly, the Democrats seem to only be able to speak to this in wonkish, elitist terms believing that (the illusion of) technocratic competence is what people desire in this moment and are dismissing the anger and betrayal that's bubbling up from beneath. The systemic problems of inequality, job loss and lwoering living standards in this country are not being addressed by the left and unless they are, it's very likely that people will turn to the right, who always have an easy set of answers to these kinds of questions. And they're not answers any of us are going to like.

Grayson gets this moment. He makes people uncomfortable. He shakes up their cozy little world and exemplifies what to them is the more frightening future -- one in which the left empowers the average voter to demand something more than symbolic change. Who knows what might happen?

Pack a baloney sandwich for lunch tomorrow, and throw the lettuce you were going to spend on a five-dollar footlong to the anti-Blue Dog, anti-coward, anti-corporate-millions cause. You know those subs are 90 percent bread, anyway.