Sheehan: Well, I always say that there's not enough laughter in the world today ... but seriously, we have a society where "winning" is the only acceptable outcome of any event: from sports, to American Idol to politics. I believe that every day our campaign office is open and functioning and attracting more volunteers and positive energy is a victory. I go to sleep every night convinced of this fact and wake up every morning ready to get back to the important work of confronting what Nancy Pelosi represents to many people: corporate militarism and a fascist police state.
Besides the daily victories, and the major victory of just getting on the ballot as a non-partisan candidate, I do think that this election is winnable. There is excitement from all over the world, really, for this race. We have a comfortable amount of money right now that we are planning to use to wage a fierce-issues based campaign. I can't really believe that the people of the 8th District would vote for Pelosi when they find out that she knew about torture and sanctioned the inhumane practice as well as her other failures for the people (but victories for the war machine).
I tried working the whole inside/outside strategy of the PDA, and was, in fact, on its national board until they refused to endorse me in my race against Pelosi. I believe that the only way we are going to save our representative republic and restore some kind of peace and economic equality is to challenge the two party duopoly that only suppresses these attributes.
Frank: Progressive Democrats of America did not endorse your candidacy? Did they give you a reason as to why? What has your support been like among Democrats in general this year?
Sheehan: PDA only endorses Democratic candidates, so to the organization, it's not how progressive a candidate is, but what letter comes after their name.
They won't endorse Pelosi, I don't think, at least that's what I have been told, but I think the organization should enthusiastically endorse me because of my platform and the work I have done with them.
I have had some very private endorsements from Democrats, but nothing public. I also have a few top people in the California Democratic National Committee who are helping me behind the scenes because they have been warned away from my campaign.
I know I have to appeal to progressive Democrats to win, but I think my message does this directly. However, "Decline to State" makes up the second highest amounts of registration here in San Francisco, so we just need an aggressive campaign to get the progressive message out there.
Frank: Why did you decide to target Pelosi out of all the bad Democrats out there?
Sheehan: I decided to target Pelosi because she is the number one Democrat in Congress and she was the number one obstacle to ending the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
My reasoning was and is that if she refused to hold Bush accountable, then someone needed to hold her accountable. I am not the kind of person to wait for someone else to do something that needs to be done. So here I am.
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