I wouldn't go nuts on all of those guys, as wrong as these votes are. I think most of those districts we're lucky to have a D in the seat; to me this might speak more directly to Pelosi's skills in enforcing voting discipline.

But Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, can't somebody please step up to the plate vs. that skunk Jim Moran? His district is quite liberal, and his history of troubles--from domestic disputes, to roughing up a kid looking at his car, to making remarks which seemed to imply Jewish cabals steering American foreign policy, to accepting questionable loans from contributors--should make him ripe for the picking.

Then there's that matter of MBNA forgiving his $450,000 home loan, even though he was $30,000 in debt on his MBNA credit card, just before he signed on as a co-sponsor of a (different) bankruptcy bill which benefitted his overlords.

I suppose he gets some measure of props for once shoving Duke Cunningham, but still, one of the most liberal and politically with-it districts in  the country can't do better?

Frankly, I think it's the other way around.  Minority parties only become a majority when they can project an alternative message to the majority.  And these defectors undermine any consistent message by the Dems.

Even if a primary challenge costs the Dems a couple of seats, what difference does it make?  They lose by a couple more votes?

The gain would be a much tighter message and discipline among remaining Democrats.

During the 1980s, the Republicans were never shy about taking out liberal GOPers, even where Dems ended up winning the general election.  They saw it as a way of building a more consistent message that culminated in the 1994 elections where they took control of Congress.

Since getting control, the GOP has actually been more reluctant to allow primary challenges to incumbents, since maintaining harmony and a majority is the priority -- not message discipline.

Primarying members of the minority party is more than slightly braindead.

Ummmm, Petey, Ed Towns (who voted for CAFTA) got more than 10 times the vote of the Republican in 2004. Meeks didn't even have an opponent in the general. So how would supporting a primary challenge against either of thse guys be braindead, exactly?

"Why does voting wrong on CAFTA not meet the criteria?"

IMHO, free trade is, and has been, an openly contentious issue inside the Democratic Party.

The goal, for me, of these types of efforts is to unify the caucus, not tear it apart.  And choosing free trade as the opening salvo would tend to set centrifugal forces in motion.

Contrast free trade with Social Security in these respects...

"as a classic liberal, the principle of opening up trade with central american democracies is a great one. cafta itself has some problems, but there's no way that voting for it should be a "gotsta go" situation, unlike social security and estate tax."

Hear, hear!

If we want a party discipline unifier more specifically geared toward labor than SS or the estate tax, what about Card Check?

(I'm ignorant of the details of card check politics, but if most of the caucus is already on board...)

Oh and also:

"If we want a party discipline unifier more specifically geared toward labor," a good first step would be to listen to what labor is actually saying. Support for card-check is costless for Dems -- and utterly inconsequential.

"Support for card-check is costless for Dems"

And that's exactly why it's a good place to start enforcing an iron-clad party discipline.

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As far as I understand, the whole purpose of primarying is to produce a caucus that will stand together on certain issues.

The more divisive issues you try to impose an iron-clad discipline on, the better the chances the whole thing breaks down.

You do discipline on the easy & obvious things first.  And hopefully you'll be able to count on it someday when you have something crucial and tricky coming down the pike.

I actually think their should be more primary challanges in both parties.  One of the reasons incumbants are so portected is that they are never challanged in primaries meaning the only way they can lose is if people switch to voting for the other party, which even without gerrymandering is not that likely in probably most districts.

damn right.

do progressives have anything consistent to say about trade anymore? for a little while, it looked like we were going to start opposing sweatshop globalization with strong international working standards, strengthening local economies, stopping policies that decimate third world poor and send them streaming into urban slums, driving down wages, etc. does anyone still believe in the global justice movement, or was that ephemera? does anyone believe in promoting fair trade still?

i'm sorry, classical liberalism be damned, if what we're really talking about is whether a job should be performed by a well-paid textile worker in north carolina or if it should be performed by a child chained to a sewing machine stitching soccer balls in bangladesh, then i think any liberal or progressive should have a clear, easy choice. and let's not kid ourselves with business press foolishness and the seduction of quick money, that's what's going on, and it's what has been going on.

see, this is the problem, this is why we lose. large numbers of people in America, millions, who aren't completely seduced with gadgets and the clean fetishes of business press math and one-worlder extolling og globalization, millions understand there are problems. until we actually take a stand on this, until we actually say, dammit, the democratic party stands for fair trade, for small farmers, for working people trying to make ends meet, for union members trying to keep up with the pace of the world economy in the face of sweatshop competition (always, ALWAYS created with major government intervention, regardless of what the apologists and pundits say), we won't possess the moral authority needed to actually win in the long run. and we'll have to keep fighting for every percentage point and campaigning on image and nonsense, turning off as many people to politics as we win.