HOME | BIO | MUSIC | JOURNEYS BY DJ | STUDIO BLOG | POLITICAL BLOG | BOOKING INFO | CONTACT

I've spent the last month reading all about the critical role the Sierra Club played in the formation of our National Parks, so it really, REALLY pains me to say this, but...

If you are giving money to the Sierra Club, please stop.

Kos is right. This move is moronic. Chafee is one of the most vulnerable Republican in the Senate. It's nice that he's supported environmental legislation at times, but really... isn't that sort of besides the point? In a race between a "moderate" Republican and a Democrat, one that very well may determine which party controls the Senate next year, how does it possibly make any sense to support Chafee?

The Sierra Club has been involved in grassroots politics for damn over a century. How could they possibly get it so wrong on this?

UPDATE: A commenter makes an impassioned defense of Sierra Club, and since my response stretched across three separate Haloscan comments, I thought I might as well repost it in full here. So in slightly edited form, here goes....

On some points, you're right - Chafee is in many ways a "moderate" Republican. But on one critical issue, its not "moderate" or "conservative" that matters, its party affiliation.

Party affiliation is what determines who controls the leadership positions within Congress. And leadership positions are what determine the legislative agenda. They determine who has the majority of votes within committees, who controls the committee staff, and who controls the power to hold investigations and subpoena witnesses. They determine who writes the rules, and they determine who gets the most media exposure. They determine, in short, the operation of Congress itself.

So long as Chaffee is willing to vote Republican when it comes time to vote on Senate leadership, he puts the entire Democratic Party agenda out of reach. Vote for Chaffee and in essence you're voting for Frist as Senate Majority Leader (or were - he's not running again, but you get the point), Roberts as chair of the Intelligence Commitee, Domenici as chair of the Energy Committee, Inhofe as chair of the Environment + Public Works Committee, so on, and so forth... Short version? A vote for a Republican is a vote for ALL Republicans in positions of leadership within that body. When partisan control is at stake, there's much MUCH more at stake than just one candidate.

Here's just one example. Chaffee consistently votes to oppose drilling in ANWR. That's good, right? Sure thing! Except... if the Democrats had a majority in the Senate, there wouldn't even be a vote on ANWR. It wouldn't even be on the agenda. It's nice that he votes with the angels on this one, but how bout we work instead to get to the point when we don't even have to worry about the vote at all?

On a broader level, this is exactly I was talking about in my "This is my I'm a Democrat" post yesterday. Once upon a time the individual interests that made up the Democratic Party understood that there is a greater good at stake. They looked beyond their own particular agenda and worked together towards a common interest. They understood that together they could accomplish far more than they would on their own.

But as Tomasky's explains in the piece I was critiquing, that understanding broke down in the 1970s. In many ways I agree with him - it often did so for good reason. But the result has been decades of Republican dominance. Look back at the history of the Democratic Party over the past few decades and you'll see a party dominated by single issue groups who look no further than their own individual interests. Pro-choice groups worry only about abortion, green groups worry only about the environment, labor groups worry only about labor, etc etc. What they've forgotten is that they're all part of a much bigger picture, and that, on their own they simply cannot win. And that's one I don't even need to prove. just look at the election results post-1980 and its obvious!

What's so frustrating about this is that the Sierra Club in particular once understood that. By the end of his life, even John Muir had come to accept that in politics sometimes compromise was necessary. He understood that you have to look both short and long term. And I know that what NARAL and Sierra think they're doing here is compromising, but they're doing it in precisely the wrong way.

"We must prioritize our work?" Absolutely. But retaking control of the majority absolutely must be priority number one. Until you do that, you simply cannot move your agenda forward. Until you do that, nothing else matters. As I said before, I understand that Chaffee has actually been pretty good on some issues, but that's really beside the point. It's not a choice between Chaffee and someone worse. It's a choice between Chaffee and someone much, MUCH better. It's a choice between someone who can help sustain a Republican majority and someone who can help overturn it.

There's so much more at stake here than just one issue, or even just one Senator. And for whatever reason, these groups just can't see that. It tells you something about how badly broken traditional Democratic interest group politics really has become.

We really are at a historical moment that comes only once each generation, if not longer. In realignments, usually the shift returns politics back towards the other end of the spectrum, but once or twice in our history it has not. In 1896, the election on which Rove has based all of his political strategy, Republicans led a realignment that reinforced their control for a second generation. Under Hanna's direction (he's Rove's idol), McKinley led a victory that ensured Republican domination from Lincoln all the way through to Hoover. When the realignment comes, it is not guaranteed to go our way. We must fight - and win - in every possible place we can. We cannot concede anything. And Chafee? He's a Republican in a true blue Democratic state. If we can't win there, we can't win anywhere.

You know me - I'm the last person you expect to have a beef with a group dedicated to protecting our nation's wild places, but in this case these people have it all wrong. The action they're taking here will hurt their own agenda, both short and long term. If the Sierra Club is going to donate money, time, and effort to a Republican Senator who is going to vote for Republican leadership, then I cannot continue to support them.

As for those quotes about impeachment and such, I think you may have mis-attributed them. They seem to come from Carl Sheeler, one of the Democrats running against Chaffee this fall, and not Chaffee himself. And no, no hating on Hawaii from me! Only Hawaii Republicans. They're the bad guys in that story, and they're the ones filing the complaint against a RI Democrat.

But seriously - how on earth could you live in Hawaii and be a Republican? That's just bizarre!

UPDATE II: It looks like there may (and right now I stress may) be a somewhat logical explanation for Sierra's move. It may simply be that they've endorsed him in the Republican primary, and are not extending that to the fall battle with whomever wins the Democratic nomination. If that's the case... Given that RI has open primaries, and given it looks like the race on the Democratic side might be over before the primary, this move would make some sense since Chafee is being challenged from the right. But if that's what they are doing, they better make it very VERY clear following the primary that their members should vote for the Dem. Because as of right now, its not very clear.

Sierra Club... consider yourselves on notice!