[cross-posted to Blue Mass Group]

My Unitarian Univeralist congregation, the Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence, has lay-led services over the summer since we largely give the minister the summer off.  I've been leading one service each summer for several years, and last Sunday I decided to talk about my experience in politics and what the community organizing model in politics might mean for the mission of our congregation.

I thought BMG and/or MyDD readers might find my readings and sermon interesting.  Religious organizations have to walk a fine legal line between political advocacy and tax-exempt free speech -- I hope I managed to do that here while making no particular secret of my own preferences.

Here are the text of the sermons and readings.  Comments are welcome!  Anybody else involved in organized religion in this way?

I finally got to see John Edwards in person at today's community meeting in Keene.  The audience of about 300 people were serious people -- they looked to me like undecided or leaning Dem primary voters.  There was no wild applause (or "rock star" atmosphere) but I think they mostly liked what they heard.

In my full report at the Edwards blog, I've got a rough transcript of what JRE had to say and how he responded to the (serious, informed) questions.  He spoke for about an hour.

My colleague Lance Fortnow, a computer scientist at the University of Chicago, has just put up a map that shows the status of the U.S. Senate races based on the current trading prices at Tradesports.com, with a nice feature -- the color of the state on the map is a shade between red and blue (or green for independents) that proportionally reflects the relative prices of the red and blue contracts.  You can find the prices for each state by moving the cursor over it.

The trading community is now very confident of Democratic pickups in MT, OH, PA,  and RI, and are fairly sure Lieberman will hang on it CT.  They favor the GOP in VA and TN, favor the Dems in MD, and consider MO and NJ tossups.

[cross-posted from Blue Mass Group]

With a fundraising reporting deadline coming up on August 23, I wanted to fill MyDD readers in on the Congressional race in NH-02, where Democrat Paul Hodes is attempting to knock off Charlie "Catch and Release" Bass.  If you are so inclined, you may donate to Paul's campaign at the netroots ActBlue page.  [Or at the BMG Act Blue page! --ed.] [Sorry, should have mentioned that.  What happened to the link? -DaveMB]

The last poll on the race from UNH was disappointing, giving Bass a 53-25 lead.  This post, from a blogger named NH-02 Progressive, puts the most positive possible spin on the result.  The poll shows that Hodes' name recognition is still very bad, and that voters are not yet identifying Bass with Bush.  Hence, Hodes needs money -- he has a significant amount but needs DCCC help and a lot more donations.

Rahm Emmanuel just did a big fundraiser for Hodes in Boston and the people at Swing State Project are sounding a bit more excited about the race.  Some netroots money may help keep the momentum going.  If you are within driving distance of Keene and feel like canvassing, the Cheshire County Democrats are doing some there this Sunday.

[My union, the Massachusetts Society of Professors, has invited all six MA-Gov candidates to talk to us.  I reported on Christy Mihos' appearance on 30 May, and on 27 June we hosted Grace Ross, the candidate of the Green-Rainbow Party.  She spoke to about twelve people in the Campus Center at UMass Amherst.  We have had contacts with two of the three Democratic candidates but have arranged on visits yet.  Disclosure: I'm a member of the MSP board and a Patrick supporter.  I missed the first half-hour of her appearance but am gratefully making use of notes from Ferd Wulkan.]

Grace Ross has absolutely no chance of becoming governor of Massachusetts in 2006.  She is running, it seems clear to me, to develop her party and her movement, and to provide a model of a different kind of politics and a different kind of politician.  The Green-Rainbow movement is based on resistance to corporate power, environmentalism, and racial justice ("If white folks don't figure out how to move from dominance to partnership, we are in trouble.").  She went out of her way to answer a question no one specifically asked:  "Can I win?  At some point we have to decide [to confront the problems I have identified].  If we wait four years, they will all be worse."

I think that as ambassador for her party and movement, she succeeded.  Her critiques of current policies and her proposals for solutions were grounded in reality -- both factual and political reality, since there is a significant bloc of "progressives" in the legislature already.  I was particularly impressed with her command of technical issues, and was surprised when she told me afterward that she has no technical background other than a career in union and political organizing.  I would have believed that she had been a doctor or engineer, for example.

After the jump are some specific points from the dialogue -- statements from Ross not in quotes are my paraphrase:

Independent MA-Gov candidate Christy Mihos spoke to about twenty UMass Amherst employees and students in Amherst on 30 May.  He was invited by the Massachusetts Society of Professors, the faculty union -- he initiated the contact and the MSP has since invited all the other candidates to meet.  (I'm on the MSP board.)

It's very unlikely that I'll vote for anyone but the Democrat in the general election, and that was probably true for most of the other people in the room, but it's good to get Mihos' perspective.  He was particularly interested in speaking at UMass because he was a trustee of the five-campus system for five years, appointed by Weld and "fired by Swift" (his words).  He promised that if elected governor, he would make himself ex officio chair of the UMass board, cut the UMass president's office to better support the campuses, and honor contracts with UMass employees.  He spoke of his practice as trustee to gather students, etc., to tell him about the real problems of the university, just as he would actively gather input from his store managers.

Mihos' life story is the basis of his candidacy -- he built a small family business into a large chain of convenience stores and entered public service through the board of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority.  He said that he had been ahead of the curve in noting the corruption and inefficency of the Big Dig project, trying to get Bechtel removed as primary contractor.  He was forced out of his position by Swift -- as he described it, Swift tried to remove him directly, was rebuffed by the courts, and then was able to appoint enough new members to remove him as chair with the collusion of the legislature.  He characterized his tenure as support of the public interest in opposition to "big labor, big media, big business, and big government".

Today's Globe reports a new wrinkle in the race for the Democratic nomination for governor.  Christopher Gabrieli, the 2002 Lt. Gov. nominee who was earlier negotiating to run on a team with Reilly this time, may be interested in running himself.  Gabrieli seems like a nice enough guy but his electoral track record is not good -- the Globe story says that he spent $5M of his own money to finish sixth in the primary for MA-08 in 1998, and another $5M in the 2002 race.  (From my perspective it's hard to believe that $5M total was spent on O'Brien's 2002 campaign...)

Getting Gabrieli on the ballot would apparently require 500 of the 3000 state convention delegates elected last week to sign petitions.  Since nearly all of these are committed to either Patrick or Reilly, this isn't so likely unless one of those two actually drops out.

But someone is clearly interested in sending the message that some Democratic insiders have decided that Reilly is a loser, and that they don't like Patrick much.  There's been a lot of negative-about-both press in the Globe lately -- for example, some union leaders were quoted as unhappy about Patrick's position on the board of union-hostile Ameriquest, and unhappy with some parallel thing about Reilly.  (The Patrick spin is that Patrick joined the Ameriquest board in order to help them implement a settlement they had reached with workers.)