Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Edwards beats Wynn

Had to blog this when I got into work.

Very big news. MD4 is a very heavily Democratic district. It's a safe seat, and it's had Al Wynn representing it for years. The thing is, Wynn voted for the war, voted for war funding, voted for the bankruptcy bill, etc... His voting record is conservative-moderate in a liberal district. He also takes scads of lobbiest money (check out this fund raiser invitation). This win is very, very big. If representatives from solid Democratic districts know that if they don't support progressive policies, they will get a serious challenge from the left, that will do more to increase the power and cohesion of the Democratic caucus than anything else.

UPDATE: Look at this to give you an idea of just how democratic this district is. With 76% of the precints reporting, Donna Edwards had about 52,000 votes, Al Wynn was around 30,000. The winning Republican had around 4,200.

UPDATE II: Good post on this by Matthew Yglesias. As he says, "the tree of progressive politics must be watered with the metaphorical blood of sellouts ever now and again. "

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