Steve Novick's blog

Dear Friends,

A little over a year ago, I started asking each of you -- one by one -- to suspend disbelief and help to do something almost ridiculously improbable. I asked you to defy conventional wisdom, the Washington, D.C. political establishment, and a good chunk of the Oregon political establishment, and help elect a guy who has never held elected office, and who has no personal wealth, to the United States Senate.

Your response has been amazing. You have stunned the political world -- not just our Oregon world, but an entire nation of political observers. You have created a new kind of political animal, an "outside-in" campaign. This is still an outsider campaign, a pickup team, a rag-tag band of idealists.

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In the Willamette Week endorsement interview the other day, I gave a pretty dumb answer to a question about the impact of blogs on politics. Some folks online are blowing my comments up as a betrayal of the netroots, so I wanted to take a moment to apologize for my statement and clarify what I was trying to say.

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As you may know, I’m running for the United States Senate in Oregon because I’m really worried about the direction of the country. We face an awe-inspiring quintuple challenge of ending the war, stopping global warming, combating runaway economic inequality, reforming the health care system, and preventing the national debt from soaring out of control. We need to get moving on all of those issues – and we needed to do so yesterday. To meet those challenges, we need political leaders who will be willing to take risks, willing to call for sacrifice, and be able to persuade the American people that their sacrifices will not be in vain.

That’s why I’m voting for Barack Obama.

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Since it’s my birthday, my staff is allowing me to spend a few minutes talking with you about things other than my own campaign. Here they are:

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As you know, I am deeply concerned about rising economic inequality in America. As you also know, I am a huge fan of Congressman Peter DeFazio. Two items in the news this last week reinforced both tendencies.

In a Sunday article about the contrasting world views of Mitt Romney and John Edwards, the New York Times provided a chart contrasting what happened to income growth in the United States between 1947 and 1977 with what happened between 1977 and 2005. The chart showed in the first 30 years, median family incomes went up by 102%. The incomes of the richest one-hundredth of one percent went up by 35%. As America got richer, she also became fairer.

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The Bend Bulletin reported that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is trying to fix Oregon's Senate primary. The Bulletin reported that:

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spent about $73,000 for an advance team from Arkansas, The Markham Group, to promote Merkley's campaign kickoff tour. It paid about $20,000 to a Washington, D.C., firm for 'research.'

I'm pretty steamed about that news. I'm not pleased to hear that a few people in Washington, D.C. are trying to dictate who we send against Gordon Smith in November. I think a lot of Oregon Democrats will share my indignation and more generally I bet there are a lot of grassroots Democrats across America who resent being told who they should support in their respective Senate races.

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A new Washington Post poll found that Congressional Democrats have just a 36% approval rating nationwide. Unless the public sees some strong evidence that Democrats are committed to a real change in the nation's direction, many Americans may conclude that in 2008, they face a choice between Republicans without brains and Democrats without backbones - and may opt not to vote at all.

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It has been painful for me to see some of Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey's responses to questions from the Senate. As it happens, I know and respect Michael Mukasey. He was a partner in the law firm where I worked right after law school. I am sure that Judge Mukasey knows that waterboarding is torture. I am sure that it pains him to dodge questions about the issue. But apparently, George Bush has told him that refusing to admit that torture is the price of serving as his Attorney General.

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