Peace Tree Farm

A Responsible Plan

Leading the “netroots” in a broad-based effort to take action toward extricating ourselves from the Bush fubar in Iraq, WA-08 Congressional candidate Darcy Burner began a dialogue with military, foreign policy, and energy policy experts at her Virtual Town Hall last summer. At Monday’s Take Back America conference in Washington DC, Darcy unveiled the results of their group endeavor.

Some have compared the Responsible Plan To End the War in Iraq to the disastrous “Contract On For America” created by Newt Gingrich in the 1994 election campaign, in that it’s an outline of significant and comprehensive proposals for national action. That comparison is completely wrong, and not only because this one is being proposed by progressive Democrats while Newt’s was a singularly odious attack on government and governance.

The “Contract On For America” was an authoritarian, top-down coup perpetrated by the Republican House leadership cabal. Gingrich, Armey, DeLay, et al. strong-armed colleagues to sign on, demanded fealty to their radical plan, even chased off reasonable Republicans (yes, there used to be a few) who wouldn’t knuckle under. In sharp contrast, the Responsible Plan was conceived by a lone Congressional candidate out here in far-off Washington state, gaining support from other candidates—no confirmed sitting legislators yet (but see below)—through word-of-mouth and face-to-face discussions. Darcy’s workproduct exemplifies the burgeoning power of the netroots and grassroots in the Democratic Party.

At yesterday’s unveiling, the Responsible Plan had already been endorsed by nine additional progressive Democratic House candidates from across the country:

Donna Edwards (MD-04), who defeated incumbent Al Wynn in the Democratic primary
Eric Massa (NY-29), a “Fighting Dem” Navy veteran
Chellie Pingree (ME-01), vying for Tom Allen’s seat
Tom Perriello (VA-05)
Jared Polis (CO-02)
George Fearing (WA-04), trying to upset Doc Hastings
Larry Byrnes (FL-14)
Steve Harrison (NY-13), who hopes to remove Vito Fossella, New York City’s only remaining GOP Congressman
Sam Bennett (PA-15)

In just a bit more than 24 hours, additional Democratic contenders have endorsed the Plan. Off the top of my head, I can come up with such worthies as Larry Grant (ID-01) and both of the leading Democratic candidates for Gordon Smith’s Senate seat in Oregon—Jeff Merkley and Steve Novick. I’ve also seen a report that a sitting House member, newly-elected IL-14 Congressman Bill Foster (in the House seat recently occupied by the ample butt of Dennis Hastert), is endorsing the Responsible Plan too, but I can’t find confirmation of that at the moment.

Many other bloggers, here in Washington and across the land, have written about this exciting development in the 2008 campaign season. And, since this is a netroots-based project, put forth by perhaps the (neologism alert!!) netrootsiest candidate on the scene today, we regular Joes and Joans are invited to add our own names to the list of endorsers. In fact, Darcy’s supplied a nice banner link to make it easy to add yourself to the list. Just click on the red button in the image immediately below this paragraph!