MoveOn.org has proven that they can be a political force, so has The Daily Kos, and long before either of them existed labor unions were already very influential in politics. That made me very interested to read that those three were teaming up to form a new political action committee called Accountability Now.
Their stated goal is to help recruit and promote move liberal democratic candidates in areas where moderate democrats are currently in office. So how soon until they decide to target Jim Matheson? (And who would they get to challenge him in Utah?) One of their founders also raised the possibility of taking action in Republican primaries as well. (I can just imagine if they had been supporting Chris Cannon against Jason Chaffetz.)
So I’m curious about what other people think about this. It’s obviously a part of the internal debate that Reach talked about in comments earlier this week. Do we think that this approach to the internal debate is healthy, or destructive? Is it better news for Democrats or better news for Republicans – or is it simply bad news for proponents of a civil political process?
Let the factions have at it. The more factions combine, the more they must subdue their fringes to reach common agreement. The politics of the MoveOn-ites and Kos kids overlaps with that of the unions, but not completely. Moreover, the average rank and file union member shares little in common with the average member of the other two groups. So, there will necessarily be some political wrangling.
I have no problem with what they are doing, just as long as we can see it clearly and everyone else out there is free to do the same.
Right now they are in their honeymoon phase. They all want candidates who are further left, but it will be interesting to see what happens when the union definition of “further left” does not line up with the MoveOn definition of “further left.”