| U.S. Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) was briefly seen as a potential presidential candidate. But after the Democratic electoral tsunami of 2006, he decided instead to stay out of the race and put his new Progressive Patriots Fund to work helping to elect progressive Democrats across the country.
 On Sunday he appeared at events in Minnesota to do just that, helping rally support DFL candidates Al Franken and Ashwin Madia. Earlier this year Madia and Franken won online grassroots votes for the PPF's support, showing a great deal of online organization and a national profile for their campaigns.
I spoke with Feingold outside the annual Vento Spaghetti Dinner in a brief exclusive interview. He declared succinctly (for all the worried readers out there) that Barack Obama is going to win the presidential race (MP3 audio): We can't be overconfident, we have to be very focused, but things really couldn't be better...the timing of this whole financial disaster has gotten people to get away from thinking about personality stuff and trivia and they're thinking about the bottom line. So that puts the wind at our back in terms of the fact that people are focusing on the hardships that they're going through and they're asking themselves which candidate is likely to address the hardships that people are going through. There's really no serious contest on that.
More audio clips and interview highlights after the break |
| The word "Progressive" has become a popular political catchphrase, especially in the blogosphere, but it seems to mean different things to different people. When asked what it means to him, Sen. Feingold said it followed from the tradition of Wisconsin's Progressive Party and Fighting Bob LaFollette, and is "a belief that you can have clean government, ethical government, but also a fiscally responsible government. That's the Wisconsin-style progressivism." (audio link).
Of particular interest to the business and technology communities has been a piece of legislation sponsored by Feingold that would limit the recent spate of forced searches of laptops being brought back into the country by travelling American citizens. Trade secrets and other private data are at stake, and it turns out that U.S. border patrol agents have been forcing travellers to hand over their passwords upon entering the country. Feingold told me that the revelations of this practice are "just an outrage" (fully audio here): This is unbelievable; this is an unprecedented attack on people who have done absolutely nothing wrong and it fits in with this entire series of things that these departments have been left free to do under this administration...we need to allow [searches] where it's appropriate, and we will, but there's got to be some reason for taking somebody's laptop, just taking every piece of private information, their entire lives.
Other topics of note in my interview with Russ Feingold (click the links for mp3 audio):
Al Franken and Ashwin Madia as Progressive Patriots Fund-supported candidates
What the first days of the Obama administration will be like for Feingold (hint: busy)
In 2006, MyDD.com and MoveOn.org were at the forefront of the Use It Or Lose It effort, which encouraged safe Democratic officials to use their considerable bankrolls to support candidates who really needed the support. Feingold was on that list, and has since then become a leading figure in the continual fight for better Democrats in Washington. With an even stronger Senate majority and an Obama administration come January, Feingold and his compatriots should have an easier time passing more progressive legislation out of Congress and into law.
Be sure to listen to all the audio clips and check out the Progressive Patriots Fund. |
