Fire Dog Lake Email on Ellen Tauscher

President Obama says that allowing bankruptcy judges to write down mortgages is an important part of his plan to arrest the downward spiral of the foreclosure crisis, but corporatist members of Congress and bank lobbyists are trying to stop that.

For every foreclosure in a neighborhood, home values drop by an estimated 1%. Credit Suisse says that if judges have the ability to write down mortgages, it will stem the tide of foreclosures by 20% and it won't cost the taxpayers a single dime.

But banks want taxpayers to bail them out -- and members of Congress like former Wall Street investment banker Ellen Tauscher and her New Democrat Coalition are helping them.

http://firedoglake.com/2009/03/02/action-tell-speaker-pelosi-to-stand-up-to-ellen-tauscher-and-the-bank-lobbyists-she-represents/

They are bragging that Nancy Pelosi "buckled" under their pressure and now the bill is sidelined at a time when mortgage relief is desperately needed and time is of the essence.

Can you help?

Write a letter to the editor of your local papers (just enter your zip code) saying you expect your Member of Congress to represent you, not the banks, and you'll be watching to see if they oppose Tauscher and her bank lobbyist cronies:

http://action.firedoglake.com/page/speakout/Bankers

Sign a petition to Nancy Pelosi telling her not to "buckle" to pressure from bank lobbyists working through greedy corporatist Members of Congress, and to act swiftly to give judges the authority they need to write down mortgages:

https://secure.firedoglake.com/page/petition/BankLobbyists

It's time to let Congress know they need to represent the people who elected them, not bank lobbyists.

Thanks for your help,

Jane Hamsher and the Firedoglake Team

Washington Post front-page story

It is great to see the Democratic Party having a debate about how we can optimize our position in DC. At the heart of the debate is making sure we can have the best representatives possible. In CA-10, we have a Representative who is out of line with her district, but the discussion we are now having will be a win for the district.

The voters deserve a choice and the process of democracy is a win for the voters. If the process makes Tauscher a better representative, it is a win. If the voters choose somebody who they think can do better, it is a win. Even having this debate is a win.

No matter what, I don't think we'll see Tauscher standing behind the Bush any longer, which is a win.

Ellen Tauscher Ranked Most Offensive Democrat

Ellen Tauscher Weekly, V2.03

Today, a new project of "top Democrats" launched and named Ellen Tauscher as the Democratic Party's #1 Worst Offender. Called the Working for Us PAC the goal of the new org is to hold people like Tauscher to account for being out of tune with their districts.

This has changed the dynamics of the 2008 CA-10 primary by fundamentally upending conventional wisdom on the race, especially in the following areas:

The Money Race It is now likely that Ellen Tauscher will be the financial underdog in her primary campaign. Since bloggers started targeting her, it has become apparent to everyone that she has lost her ability to cut deals across the aisle, which dries up her corporate PAC support. In fact, considering Tauscher's long-standing feud with Nancy Pelosi, the smart business PACs will contribute to her opponent and kiss up to the Speaker. And Tauscher's New Dems didn't raise much last year even with PAC support.

In 1996, Tauscher spend $1.7 million to buy her seat, but she lost that ability following her divorce. In short, Tauscher has lost access to the two main sources of support that have been there for her in the past.

But her opponent will be able to raise huge money online with DailyKos and Moveon and receive a great many checks from the trial lawyers. We're talking millions.

Even more important is that there will be more than enough easy money to free the challenger from the phone to go out and campaign while Tauscher is begging for donations.

Candidate Recruitment What potential candidates want to hear are things like, "courageous primary challengers will have immediate, substantive, significant support." Removing viability concerns means that we no longer need to find a self-funding candidate, we are free to find the best candidate. And with the emerging time-frame, there is no rush.

Primary campaigns are like recalls, the first question is whether the incumbent should be retired followed by a traditional comparison race.

It makes sense for a challenger to announce early in the quarter to be able to report good fundraising numbers out of the gate. Nobody wants to announce in the summer. That leaves early April or early October. The former turns this into a marathon and we can do better in a sprint. To make a long story short, the smart move isn't until at least the first week in October (setting up a sprint 2 months longer than Lamont).

Until then, it will only be about Tauscher. Not about her compared to somebody else, but about what she is doing.

And now, there is a perfect vehicle to advance the debate on the first question. Working for Us probably has 9 months to keep the focus squarely on Tauscher while organizing the district and raising an army.

Field One huge potential for a challenger is the ability to leverage the entire Bay Area and deploy activists via the 6 different BART stations stretched across Tauscher's district.

With Moveon and Kos working in tandem to electronically mobilize their tens of thousands Bay Area supporters the online potential for offline volunteering is enormous and scalable. The unions have impressive infrastructure in place and taken together there is an army waiting for walk kits and phone lists.

Communication Frank Russo has a great read on the democratizing of ideas that this race is triggering. Tauscher's opponent is going to have real-time message capability across the blogosphere.

Voice in traditional media are going to be held to account -- publicly. This is now the number one primary race in the country and online fact checking is going to keep the discussion in the reality-based world.

And newspapers aren't just going to follow this in print, they are going to do it online. Already, this story has been blogged on by Lisa Vorderbrueggen, Robert Salladay and Josh Richman

In fact, within 70 minutes of the Richam piece it was discovered that Tauscher Press Secretary Kevin Lawlorlied to both the Oakland Tribune and Associated Press.

This isn't suprising, the Tauscher press office also mislead Lisa Vorderbrueggen the day before. Some might call that a pattern. Two things are for sure: Tauscher is going to have a nationalized primary campaign and her press office can't be trusted.

CA-10: Let's Take This Primary on a Trial Run

Ellen Tauscher Weekly, V2.01

On St. Patrick's Day 2005, then Congressman Rob Portman was tapped by President George Bush as U.S. Trade Envoy. The progressive blogosphere paid attention within two hours and the very next day, Swing State Project publisher DavidNYC wrote the following on the front page of Daily Kos:

Portman's district is very Republican - it voted for Bush over Gore by a 63-35 margin in 2000. I'd say this makes it extremely unlikely that we'd win this seat. As I understand things, the most Republican district represented by a Democrat is PA's 17th, where Tim Holden sits. His constituents went for Bush over Gore 56-42, but the district was much Dem-friendlier when Holden was first elected. In any event, a 63-35 margin is quite a bit worse.

But I don't think this is only bad news, and I don't think we should write this seat off. Rather, I think an off-year special election (which will likely take place either in August or November) for a seat we have little chance of capturing is the perfect time to get creative and try out new ideas.

As Atrios is fond of observing, being in the opposition can be fun. Similarly, it can also be freeing. I'd love to see local, grassroots/netroots-type Dems get behind a candidate willing to be bold - to do things like Jeff Seemann's highly successful "Campaign Manager for a Day" and whatever daring ideas lie beyond. We can use this race to experiment - to see what works and what doesn't - in plenty of time for the midterm elections next year.

Back then, the OH-02 race had all the numbers going against it, but the initial things that made it worth fighting for were the facts that the major national bloggers were willing to link to good stuff on the race, some pioneers were willing to fight to the point of (actual) potential lawsuits, and there was a vacuum effect because the GOP thought they had it easy and DC Dems indicated little interest in getting involved.

So we fought and learned a great deal. Not only did we fight, but we played the expectations game so effectively that our loss dominated the national media as a win. And the netroots decision to fight despite the odds invigorated the local grassroots to the point where in 2006 Vic Wulsin did better than the Hackett results that were a nationwide story. But nationally, many of the tactics refined during the Ohio 2005 Special Election were used successfully across the country during the 2006 general election. I would suggest that we think of the inevitable primary in California's 10th district along the same lines.

It makes sense for the netroots to decide to fight in CA-10 -- against Ellen Tauscher in the primary.

The netroots may win or may lose, but because of the support the local blogs will receive from national supporters, we will be able to test and pioneer new tactics that Democrats everywhere can re-deploy against Republicans in the general election.

While many Californians are prominent national bloggers, there has never been a single race to force the teamwork that in other states has resulted in a unified group that coordinates offline to win online.

Another benefit is that high profile early races draw people from around the country who believe in themselves to the point where they think they can be an asset in the all-hands-on-deck battles. During Hackett's campaign, a young volunteer drove to Ohio from Florida because she knew deep down inside she had game and was looking for a place to prove it (she is now the chief blogger for the DNC).

So let's take Web 2.0 out for a test drive in California's 10th Congressional District. Let's test and if successful refine the tactics we need to redeploy during the 2008 general election in races nationwide. We have the talent, the national bloggers' links will give us the platform, and even if we don't win the primary we will help win more seats for Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2008 if we decide to test the next generation of online politics against Ellen Tauscher.

Happy New Year

Ellen Tauscher Weekly, V1.03

Joementum Plagues Tauscher Re-Election Campaign

Ellen Tauscher Weekly, V1.02

If last week was defined by Katie Merrill catapulting a primary campaign against Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher, this was the week that Tauscher tried in vain to distance herself from Joe Lieberman.

The following is how the week developed, you can activate a free email subscription at the Ellen Tauscher Weekly website.

Sunday, December 17, 2006 - Sunday morning began where late Saturday night had left off. Before dawn, Crooks and Liars posted with five links to the continuing fallout from Representative Tauscher's federal staff scrubbing her official government website of "The Caress" picture.

Rain Storm said the picture was, "definitely worth a thousand words" while pointing out, "In case anyone hasn't been paying attention, the 2008 election cycle has already begun." A short time later, skippy the bush kangaroo said, "if you enjoyed the lamont run against lieberman, pull up a chair, grab some popcorn and feast your eyes on california district 10, where ellen tascher, aside from being terribly out of touch with her constituents, made the unfortunate gaffe of knocking blogtopia (and she didn't even acknowledge that yes! we coined that phrase!)."

That afternoon, a front-page post on Calitics looked at Tauscher's internet blunders and concluded, "the larger problem is that her campaign should lack the ability to hire a netroots consultant who knows better. Working for Tauscher would be a career killer for a blogosphere coordinator and while the money might be good, it would be likely to cost other clients". A post at Left in SF agreed, "Hiring an internet consultant for the very purpose of insulating the candidate from the internet is a pretty good way to end someone's career. You'd have to be awfully cynical about politics and pretty contemptuous of the netroots to take that job."

Monday, December 18, 2006 - Headlining CA-10 as, "Just One Ned Lamont Away From Being The Next CT SEN", the Hotline Blogometer reported, "Rep. Ellen Tauscher's (D-CA) vote for the Iraq war, her perceived coziness with K Street and Pres. Bush, have already made her the netroots number one target for '08's primary season."

The week's bombshell came Monday afternoon at Fire Dog Lake. You see, not only did Tauscher's congressional office scrub photos of her with George Bush, but two pics of Ellen Tauscher with Joe Lieberman were also scrubbed. FDL noted, "The days when you could hire the idiot nephew to run the netroots component of your campaign are long gone. It should be very interesting to see who might be willing to stand in the line of fire currently being aimed at Tauscher".

Not surprisingly, getting caught scrubbing Joementum pics was the fastest route to permanently brand Tausher as getting Liebermanned in 2008. A FDL reader set up a new home for the pics and the story hit the front page of Calitics with quotes from Tauscher on why Lieberman was rejected by primary voters during the 2004 presidential campaign. And then the story rocketed to the front page of Daily Kos, "for those who want to know the full case against Tauscher, it will be laid out over the coming year in full." Ruck Pad suggested anyone thinking of doing netroots outreach for Tauscher, "would be well advised to think twice" and declared the fiasco, "a textbook example on how not to head off a netroots fueled primary."

Tuesday, December 19, 2006 - The National Journal Blogometer starting things off with, "The samecircles that got such mileage out of naming Sen. Joe Lieberman's (I-CT) SOTU embrace of Pres. Bush "the kiss" have now labeled the pre-Iraq-war picture of Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) sitting with Bush's hand on her lap "the caress.""

Josh Richman won the prize for the first reporter to ask for a comment from the Congresswoman, but he failed to pin down who in Tauscher's office did the scrubbing or whether the Representative sanctioned the cover-up.

Calitics covered "The Caress" and posted two videos from Tauscher's town hall meeting with Rossmoor Democrats.


Wednesday, December 20, 2006 - The Berkeley Bubble started the day off with a post headlined, "Ellen Tauscher: The Caress, the Iraq Mess, Forgetting her District’s Address?" and a short time later it was read by a house.gov I.P. address. The House Race Hotline reported, "Emboldened by their role in the Dem sweep, liberal bloggers are now targeting Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-CA 10), a Bay Area centrist, pro-business Dem in the mold of Joe Lieberman. Her crime? Bloggers perceive her as too cozy with Pres. Bush and big business. And as chair of the New Democratic Coalition, she's been a proponent of free-trade agreements to the ire of the populist crowd."

A front-page post at MyDD said, "Calitics is doing good work tracking Ellen Tauscher (including video). She's a real problem for Democrats, and should face a serious challenge." A Calitics diary looked back at the type of candidate who has run against Tauscher in the tenth since redistricting.

Later that day, the San Francisco Chronicle's Spun Cycle Blog offered a hyperlink-free post that was widely mocked and Carla Marinucci was quickly refuted at Ruck Pad.

Thursday, December 21, 2006 - A Calitics diary looked at Tauscher's endorsement page from 2006 and notes that neither Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi nor Senator Barbara Boxer made the list.

A MyDD diary (that remained recommended for more than 48 hours) looked back of the major, public feud between Pelosi and Tauscher, "In the end, Tauscher's two blunders ended up with Burton creating a new 10th District that would remove any fear of Tauscher losing in a general, but one that was specifically designed to allow her to lose in a primary if she kept undermining Pelosi. Tauscher wasn't redistricted out of a seat, but was given a clear shape up or ship out choice."

D-Day disputed the Tauscher/Lieberman link, "there's NOBODY like Joementum when it comes to arrogance, false victimhood, dishonesty, and condescension."

Friday, December 22, 2006 - The internet tubes were quiet on the last weekday before Christmas, but the 18 year-old high school student we mentioned last week posted his second diary on Calitics and the Rescue Rangers bumped the Pelosi/Tauscher Feud to the front-page of Daily Kos.

Saturday, December 23, 2006 - On Festivus Day, there was but one airing of grievances. A post at Calitics using the Way Back Machine to see Tauscher's thoughts on her nomination speech for Joe Lieberman.

There should be much, much more next week in the Ellen Tauscher Weekly.

Katie Merrill Catapults a Primary in CA-10

Ellen Tauscher Weekly, V1.01
This was the week that the anticipated 2008 primary campaign against Ellen Tauscher transitioned from an idea into reality - with political editors taking note. San Francisco Bay Guardian Executive Editor Tim Redmond labeled it a, "district to watch." SFist Editor Jon Shurkin stated, "it's on." And California Majority Report Editor Donald Lathbury explained one incentive for all of the coverage when he noticed, "CMR's Katie Merrill posted a piece that has generated quite a bit of heat in the blogosphere (not to mention quite a lot of traffic for CMR, go Katie!)."

Indeed, this race will bring many eyeballs to the writing of California pundits and the early attention of the race can almost all be attributed to Katie Merrill. Since so much was written last week, here is the first post in the handy Ellen Tauscher Weekly to keep everyone on the same page moving forward.

Monday, December 11, 2006 - Former Ellen Tauscher campaign manager and chief of staff Katie Merrill began the week with the worst political mistake since Gary Hart goaded the press into following him around. For some unknown reason, Katie Merrill described the netroots efforts in 2006 as having "ultimately failed" and suggested people could not be "good Democrats" if her benefactor were to face democracy in the primary.

Within a few hours, there was a Calitics diary pointing out that only a few months earlier Merrill had described herself as a "political Luddite" who knew nothing about online politics. Robert Salladay then picked up the story for the LA Times Political Blog. By mid-afternoon, Ruck Pad had destroyed Merrill's position with a detailed, 8-point rebuttal (that agreed with Katie Merrill's assertion that she had no clue about the blogosphere). Monday evening there was a Calitics post on Tauscher and Republicans along with a recommended diary on MyDD wondering if Merrill was auditioning to be Sean Smith or Dan Gerstein (in reference to the Joe Lieberman staffers whose contempt for democracy served as an online rallying cry that helped Ned Lamont win the 2006 Connecticut primary). Monday was a disaster for Tauscher, but the week got worse.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006 - Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, Editor and Publisher of the most read political blog in the world, threw down against Katie Merrill. Kos wrote that he could understand why she feared what he characterized as a, "vicious fight for this seat" but declared, "we will have a candidate, and there will be a primary." Within an hour there was a second diary and a third by dinner time.

At Calitics, there was a long, passionate diary declaring that Ellen Tauscher does not share my values. And Left in SF noted a rumor that, "some bloggers may start a blog specifically to take on Tausher and make her accountable for her actions".

But a short time later something even more remarkable happened. An 18 year old high school student took Congresswoman Tauscher to task. He noted, "Her belief that government is for professional activists and politicians undermines all that netroots, grassroots, and the Democratic Party should stand for. If we want to remain in control of the House and Senate, if we wish to take back the White House, than we've got to be the party of the people and it's Democrats like Tauscher that are standing in our way." And so, but the end of Tuesday night, Katie Merrill had guaranteed the very primary she was seeking to avoid.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006 - The day began with a post by Jane Hamsher, titled, How to Win Friends and Influence People on the popular nationwide blog, Fire Dog Lake. The post picked up where Tuesday night left off in a way that showed a high school student had more political game online than Katie Merrill. But Merrill surfaced a short time later in the comments at CMR, where she stuck her head in the sand by concluding, "On the contrary, my post far from backfired. In fact, the critical responses to my post on CMR and on different blogs prove my point." Uh, yeah. Within two hours she had be given the nickname, Counterproductive Katie. Ruck Pad responded, "Your post backfired completely, insuring that there will be a primary challenge of Tauscher that will be supported locally and nationally. It created a sense of unity and purpose." At Left in SF it was detailed how Merrill had poked a stick in the eyes of people with far more fundraising ability than Tauscher's friends in the DLC.

Thursday, December 13, 2006 - The battle for CA-10 made The Left Coaster in the morning, "In my view, it is counterproductive for her supporters (see here) to make the situation worse by misconstruing the reason why the netroots have an aversion for Rep. Tauscher."

That night the SFist noted, "Now Tauscher is in trouble with the netroots for showing up and not pulling a Jim Webb (Webb, by the way, rules) They're even throwing the "L" word to describe her, you know, Lieberman. The site Calitics has been all over her lately and even has a post from one of her constituents saying that she's really not that nice of a lady. And needless to say, the Kossacks are in full bile spewing mode. There's even talk of running someone against her in the next primary and when her campaign spokesman pooh-poohed the whole thing, the netroots brought the pain. Oh, it's on." The SFist went on to note the conventional wisdom when it comes to soon-to-be Speaker Nancy Pelosi, "It doesn't help that it's well known that Tauscher and Pelosi don't get along."

Friday, December 14, 2006 - In the morning, the issue was revisited by the California Majority Report where the editor suggested, "the potential clash between Rep. Ellen Tauscher and an unknown primary rival is certain to be a topic of discussion here far into the future."

A short time later, a Calitics article pointed out how Ellen Tauscher had scrubbed her official government website of a notorious photo of her and President George Bush that had been making the rounds on the blogs. As Jane Hamsher noted at Fire Dog Lake, "Don't worry, Ellen. We'll remember."

Saturday, December 15, 2006
The website scrubbing scandal entered Day 2 on Saturday with the SFist noting, "Tauscher's site may have been scrubbed clean of the picture, but that picture now exists all over the place."

Late Saturday night, the picture and the scandal were on the front page of Daily Kos, "And if you're wondering what a netroots-backed primary challenge looks like from day one, read this. We're going to have fun with this future race."

Indeed.

Subscribe to the Ellen Tauscher Weekly

Stay in the loop with a free weekly email update on Ellen Tauscher and her embattled campaign in CA-10.

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

About EllenTauscher.blogspot.com

With the high volume of information on the 2008 primary campaign against Ellen Tauscher in CA-10, this site was created to host a weekly digest on the race.