Schechter for US Congress in District 5

A different kind of Democrat. I'm challenging Democratic incumbent Jim Cooper in the primary; I hope you'll vote for me on August 5. I think it's appropriate for me to explain here why I'm asking members of the Democratic Party to replace Jim Cooper, the man that they have reelected several times. I'm working on a longer explanation, but for now here is an extremely brief version: Cooper is an avowed conservative; he is a member of the Blue Dog Coalition. I am a liberal and progressive, and if elected I would instead be a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. I'm in what Paul Wellstone called "the Democratic wing of the Democratic party."

This difference in our philosophies would be reflected in differences in our votes in congress. I think this makes me more suitable than Cooper, for two reasons: (1) My views are closer to those of the voters. The 5th congressional district is fairly liberal, and there is no reason for our liberal values to go unrepresented in congress. (2) My views are better (in my opinion, and I hope to convince you of that too). Conservative ideology has failed -- anyone who looks at the history of the last few decades can see that arrogant militarism, trickle-down economics, massive deregulation of banks and other large businesses, etc., have been detrimental to the interests of all people, and to the long-term interests of business too (though some businesses may have benefited in the short term). For the good of the country, we need to elect more progressives to congress. I may expand on that theme in some later text.

Of course, if I am elected, I will represent not only the liberals, but also the conservatives in my district, and I do not wish to simply ride roughshod over their views and sensibilities; I am working to build bridges of understanding and consensus. And I try to be open-minded, to accept new ideas, and to sometimes change my mind; I believe that synthesis can be achieved when people truly try to understand each other's viewpoints. But I won't naively surrender to obstructionists; I leave conversations when I think they're not getting anywhere. And I'm not going to pretend that I am a "centrist," and all things to all people, in the hope of picking up votes from more parts of the political spectrum. I don't think that tactic works, and moreover one of my reasons for running this campaign is to try to explain and promote progressive values, because I believe in them. Paul Waldman summarized those values this way: I believe that "we're all in this together." I've written about my values at much greater length on one of my campaign pages, but in summary here I'll just say that I am a liberal and a progressive, and I am proud of it.

I'm working on two different campaign websites:

http://VoteNoFatCats.com/ discusses the excessive money in politics, and its effect on my own campaign strategy. The recent Supreme Court decision merely makes worse a situation that was already very bad. I believe that politics should be about ideas, not about fundraising, so I am not collecting any money in my campaign. I have no corporate sponsors, and there are no "donate" buttons on my web pages. (And I'm not wealthy, either.) Consequently, I will have no mass mailings, no color brochures, no television ads, etc. I don't know whether I can build sufficient name-recognition, but my campaign will consist solely of people telling other people about my campaign. Evidently it will take time for my ideas to spread, and for my volunteers to recruit more volunteers. Feel free to suggest to me ways that you'd like to help. Admittedly, the idea of a no-money campaign is very idealistic, but before you write it off as impossible, I hope you'll read the web page.

http://SchechterForCongress.wordpress.com/ discusses my views on other issues (peace, sustainability, economic justice). I've kept it brief, so that volunteers can reproduce it easily (see the PDF version linked at the bottom of the web page). But for people who want more details, I've begun to attach additional pages to that website; you can see links for them at the top of the page. For instance, one of those pages is a biographical sketch.