Harry Reid Tells Progressive Media, "but for you, this country would be in much worse shape than it is today." at an invitation only Progressive Media, over 20 US Democratic senators and house leaders meet with leading progressive media talk radio hosts, bloggers, writers and executives.

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Yesterday, I attended the invitation only Progressive Media Summit, organized by the Democratic Steering and Outreach Committee (DSOC).

About 70 progressive media people participated, including a number of people on the business side, including Tom Athans, founder of the Ed Schultz show, Ron Hartenbaum, owner of the Stephanie Miller show, and Mark Green, President of Air America.

There were representatives from firedoglake and dailykos and bloggers John Aravosis of Americablog, Jerome Armstrong of MYDD, Duncan Black of Atrios, and Matt Stoller of openleft, plus a number of talk show hosts and their producers, including Ed Schultz, Jon Elliot, Mark Levine, Christiane Brown, Rob Sherman and Andre Michael Eggelletion.

I was surprised to see many major progressive media sites not represented and I'm not sure if these were not invited or just chose not to show up in person or have a staffer represent them. These included: Huffingtonpost, Rawstory, alternet, thinkprogress, truthout, commondreams, buzzflash, talkingpointsmemo, counterpunch, thinkprogress, smirkingchimp, tompaine, wonkette...

I'm just glad OpEdNews was invited and that I made the decision to show up-- making the 3.5 hour schlepp down to DC and the five hour trip back-- by train.

The reward was direct contact-- Q & A, handshakes, conversations with almost two dozen senators and leaders in the house. Here's the list of members of congress who spoke to our small group. I had a chance to chat with, ask questions of and/or shake hands with and chat with the ones who I've placed an asterisk next to.

*Debby Stabenow
Harry Reid
*Jeff Bingamin
*Amy Kobuchar
*Stenny Hoyer
Byron dorgan
*Sherrod Brown
*Chuck Schumer
*Bernie Sanders
*JOhn Conyers
*Ron Wyden
RObert Menendez
*Bob Casey
Jim Webb

*Patrick Leahy
*Ted Kennedy
Ben Cardin
*John Tester
*Barbara Boxer
Diane Feinstein
*Daniel Akaka
Blanche Lincoln

The goal of the conference was to build bridges between the Democratic outreach committee and the progressive media, to thank us for what we'd done, to ask for patience, because they were very aware of high levels of dissatisfaction with the failure (my word) to end the war and deal with FISA, SCHIP, etc. Officially opening the meeting, Harry Reid told a story illustrating the need for patience,

A fellow asked God, "I've always wanted to know, with you, hOw long is a million years?
And God answered, 'About a second.'
And then, the fellow asked, to you, how much is a million dollars?
God answered, "About a penny."
And the man said, well, could I borrow a penny from you?
And God answered, "I need a second to think about it."

Reid thanked the progressive media for being in the trenches, "protecting our backs" using the example of how the right wing media had attacked the Frost boy they had used as an example in the efforts to pass the SCHIP bill.

"You spoke out. You turned that from a negative to a plus," Reid said, "You did a wonderful job of responding.

...Your criticism, I always take it as constructive criticism, hard as that is sometimes,
has helped us to stay grounded, to focus on what we're doing.

....The role of progressive radio, and of course, on-line work, has changed and increased in efficiency, breadth and I think in direction significantly. I recognize that you and I are not always going to agree on things... but I think if we are honest with each other, that's a tremendous step in the right direction.

Reid specifically singled out progressive media people in attendance who had been especially helpful-- Joan Carter with Dailykos, Christine Hardin Smith with Firedoglake, and talk show hosts Stefanie Miller, Ed Schultz and Christiane Brown (of Reno's KJFK.)

Reid told the 50-70 media people in attendance,

I am frustrated about what we have not been able to accomplish in Iraq. But I am not frustrated with the fact that we have tried. Last year we had 36 separate votes on IRaq and every one of them was a necessary vote. Keep in mind where we were last year. We were in the majority-- 51-49."

He goes on to discuss how, while Sen. Tim Johnson was sick, they were at 49, and Joe Lieberman votes with the Republicans every time on Iraq, so, he said,

"We were in the minority, 49 to 50 and we wer the 49. But we continued to work hard, and want everyone to recognize one of the heroes in all of this and that's a man named Chuck Hagel from Nebraska. Chuck Hagel gave up his career in politics for a higher principle, voting with us every time. And in the process, he was able, on various ocassions to bring in a number of other Republicans. We got up to 57 one time-- We needed three more. We could never do that.

Reid talked about how the Dems have brought back oversight to

Regarding the "surge," he commented, We do need a surge, but in diplomacy, foreign policy. We have less personnel in the foreign service than manning a single aircraft carrier. He observed Bush said he would double the size of the peace corps, but he hasn't does it, that Castro and Chavez have been sending doctors around the world, building goodwill, that we only have 8,000 peace corps workers and we should have 20,000. "Our developmental aid has been cut from 16,000 employees to 3000. We can't match what needs to be done to make America stand for what it needs to stand for-- freedom and justice and fairness. INstead we've been exporting torture and Guantanamo and things that make one ***** (unable to transcribe. Use your imagination.)

The one thing we have to be careful is to not let the president entangle us in some long term relationship with Iraq. John McCain has said we should be there 50 or 100 years. Can you imagine that? But that's that they're saying. We believe that the status quo is not working. We believe that the Republicans are pushing for more of the same and we want to push for a change.

If you're sick of hearing about the 60 vote threshold, so am I. Focus on what's going on about the country. If elections were held today we would win in New Hampshire, we would win in Virginia, Colorado, in NM, we would win in VA, and I think you'll find out pretty soon we would win in Alaska."

He goes on to say that Mississippi looks good and that Kate Hagen will go on to beat Elizabeth Dole.

He tells us that pollster Greenberg (Greenberg Quinlan) says Dems will pick up as many as nine new seats, that that may be heavy but they WILL pick up four or five. THen, instead of needing nine or ten votes to beat the 60 vote threshold

He wraps up telling us, the progressive media,

I respect the work that you do-- don't always agree-- but respect it, and recognize that but for you, this country would be in much worse shape than it is today."

Senator Debby Stabenow told us that, as did many of the senators, that they're frustrated too, that there is a huge difference in philosophy, between the Democrats and the Republicans in the priorities that they bring to the table-- "the change we want." Stabenow told the audience,

We all know with the election of George W. Bush in 2000, that at point, for the first time in modern history, we had Republicans controlling the Whitehouse and the congress. And what that allowed us to see is the Republican governing philosophy--

Frankly, I've been a very tough critic of Harry Reid at times, and the 110th congress Dems as well. Meeting them face to face, hearing them speak, talking WITH them, puts a face to what had been, for the most part, one dimensional icons. Seeing their caring, their sincerity did make a difference for me. Hearing the argument that they hold different priorities than the right wingers in the senate DID reach me.

A series of senators spoke on energy, Iraq, Health Care, rights and liberties, and impeachment.

In a follow up call to one of the lead staffers of the Democratic Steering and Outreach Committee (DSOC,) I asked if their goals had been met. He replied that they were happy with the event, though what was most important was if we, the media were happy.

During the progressive media summit, I asked Chuck Schumer what it would look likeif this progressive media event were totally successful. He replied very generally, saying that he wanted to have more communication with us, more coverage.

I had intended to ask two questions. The second question I was going to ask was what he was doing at a progressive event, since he's been so involved in supporting and funding more conservative democrats running against progressives in primaries. But then, in answering my first question, Schumer said he'd been having conversatios with progressive media people. That was a positive sign. I decided to back off. The fact is, the DSCC, where Schumer is a leader, is funding some candidates in primaries. At least one candidate has received $100,000 from the DSCC. Why can't the DSCC allow the democratic process sort this stuff out. In 2006, some of the highest profile candidates Schumer and Rahm Emanuel picked lost their races.

When I spoke to the staffer, today, after the summit, I asked him what they really wanted. He replied that they want help getting legislation passed-- legislation that is close, like stem cell research and SCHIP children's health care.

Perhaps the most exciting part of the day was a conversation I had with John Conyers on impeachment. He invited questions outside the room, after he finished speaking, and I'd come prepared, having just revised my article, published in the Doylestown Intelligencer daily newspaper, REBUTTALS TO ARGUMENTS AGAINST IMPEACHMENT.

Uber-blogger Matt Stoller of http://www. openleft.com videotaped the scene. You can read about it here.

There's a lot more, but that will come in another followup article.

Authors Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.

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Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.

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For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.

Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017

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