excerpt: 

[...] I also think she — and her colleagues Jared Golden and Mary Peltola, among the younger cohort of House Blue Dogs — are important for Democrats’ long-term prospects in the Senate. To an extent, you can take or leave these R+4 House seats, but with the current Senate map, Democrats have to win in Republican-leaning states to get a majority. The current Democratic majority relies on deeply endangered legacy incumbents Sherrod Brown, Jon Tester, and Joe Manchin. Those guys won’t be around forever. And because the average state is a lot whiter, more rural, and less educated than the country as a whole, the party needs to develop new models of what it looks like to be a Democrat in a state that is whiter, more rural, and less educated than the national average.

I don’t think there’s a magic formula 

for winning in red-leaning states and districts.

But I do feel pretty confident that it’s not just vibes and persona. Vibes count. Persona counts. But you also need to clearly differentiate yourself policy-wise from a normal Democrat. So I don’t think it’s surprising that Gluesenkamp Perez has taken some votes that have made liberals angry, nor do I think it’s problematic that liberals have expressed that anger. Her efforts to differentiate herself work better if people notice.

That said, Slate’s recent article titled “With Democrats Like Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, Who Needs Republicans?” really bothered me for three significant reasons:

• The headline suggests that left-wing people should be indifferent as to whether she is defeated by a Republican, which is wrong.

• The body of the article is, I think, wrong on the merits about student loan issues.

• The subhead of the article is “a Washington congresswoman campaigned on pro-choice and anti-corporate policies. First year on the job, she’s nothing like her backers expected.” This implies, falsely, that she has betrayed her former pro-choice and populist stances.

I think it’s beneficial for both sides of these arguments to debate on the merits. Gluesenkamp Perez voted to block the D.C. criminal code rewrite, for example, which I think is no-brainer politics for her. But it’s genuinely true that she broke with anti-incarceration activists on this topic, and they ought to say so and explain why they think she’s wrong. But telling people she’s not pro-choice when she is because you’re mad about student loans generates confusion.

The case against Marie Gluesenkamp Perez

Here, per Alexander Sammon, is the case against Marie Glusenkamp Perez: [....]