Austin Improv

I'm at work right now, so I'll explain more later but.

A) Yes, I AM running for U.S. Congress. 100% serious.
B) I'd like your help.
C) There's a point to it all - just wait until I get back from work, I'll explain everything.

What party?

Democrat, running in a primary against incumbent Lloyd Doggett.

Here's the campaign site:

http://boykoforcongress2008.blogspot.com/

WHAT???? Why? Please explain.

Why not against Michael McCaul? At least he's slimy. Doggett's a hero! Explain, Brian!

It's explained on the site. Doggett backed down and voted for an appropriations bill (that I assumed he initially opposed) that Brian doesn't like and so he's going to make Doggett pay for it by spending funds he didn't expect to in a aprimary race.

I think it is rather creative and interesting. Good luck on getting the press you need to make it happen.

Shame I don't vote in the Democratic primaries or you'd have my support, just on principle if nothing else.

I like your style and your reasoning. If I vote for you, does that help put the heat on Doggett, or is the significance only that you are running at all? In other words, does it help you (and AMERICA?) if you get votes? Shall I help spread the word?

The Brigadier wrote:I like your style and your reasoning. If I vote for you, does that help put the heat on Doggett, or is the significance only that you are running at all? In other words, does it help you (and AMERICA?) if you get votes? Shall I help spread the word?

It's a weird political system, the one we have in the U.S. I think "Should you vote for me" is the wrong question to ask at this stage.

I decided to run for Congress yesterday at lunch. I don't think anyone really has enough knowledge about me or my platform to make a decision as to whether or not to vote for me.

Instead, all I'm asking is for your support - which means checking out the blog, saying "Yes, I'm considering voting for him" in polls, and just paying attention as the election campaign rolls on. I'd rather have Doggett, a man who has a ton more experience than me in the political realm, making decisions based on what his constituency wants, rather than me in there - because he knows Washington, has the contacts, etc. I'm not knocking him for being "inside the beltway" - far from it.

But he made the wrong decision and that needs to be corrected. That's what (hopefully) supporting my candidacy will do. I'm hoping I can garner enough support that I'm a threat to his nomination, or, indirectly, his re-election, and that he will change his position because of it.

It helps America if I get votes because of this pressure. Allow me to explain.

There are a number of different outcomes to this campaign, listed in order of likelihood:

1) I lose the nomination, Doggett wins the general election.

This is the most likely outcome. In this outcome, I will have forced Doggett to spend campaign funds on a contested primary - not only will he have spent more funds on a primary campaign, but the Republican party will throw more effort into this district, because they will know that Doggett is a weaker candidate than he has been in the past. This will force the national Democratic party to put in more funds to bolster Doggett's nomination to counter it, thus hurting the Democrats as a whole for their betrayal. Hopefully this will cause them to be more careful to listen to the will of the people who elected them in the future.

2) I lose the nomination, Doggett loses the general election.

This is the next more likely outcome - and it is much the same as the above, only the Democrats lose a seat - a much more grievous injury.

3) I win the nomination, but lose the general election.

If Doggett loses the nomination, the Democratic party will know that their voters want an end to the war in no uncertain terms. Winning the general election on a budget of $0 is much less likely.

4) I win the nomination and the general election.

This is the "If I Am Elected, What Will I Do?" moment. Unfortunately, I don't know the answer to that yet! I decided to run yesterday at lunch! But I can tell you this: I'll use reason and debate to determine which way I'll vote on the issues. I'll spend more time working in Congress than running for re-election, because if I'm a good Congressman, ideally reelection should take care of itself - and running a congressional campaign without fundraising is nothing if not idealist.

I'll work to reform democracy so that the system no longer encourages corruption - not by going after the corrupt, who are replaced by more of the corrupt - but by looking critically at what we are doing and why our problems persist from election year to election year and working to reform the entire system structurally, not superficially.

Other than that, give me time to work on my platform. So many issues I need to think about, work on writing up a comprehensive viewpoint, explaining my point of view. All I know is that if you find me changing my mind about my views, it's usually because I've been presented with new evidence.

But I can tell you this: I'll use reason and debate to determine which way I'll vote on the issues. I'll spend more time working in Congress than running for re-election, because if I'm a good Congressman, ideally reelection should take care of itself - and running a congressional campaign without fundraising is nothing if not idealist.

Hell, that's enough to get my vote, Mr. Smith.

I should preface this by pointing out that I'm not a Democrat. Much of the horror of the last seven years is attributable to the cowardice of the Democratic Party, and I'm real glad they found their cojones once they got a majority, but if they hadn't misplaced them along with their poll results when we went to war, things might have turned out differently.

That said, one of the few who stood up and called bullshit on the war at its inception was Lloyd Doggett, even after the Democratic "leadership" made it clear that the staged debate was going to end in giving the president authorization to invade. So like Mo, I tend to think of him in positive terms.

All of which leads up to my question: Do you consider it a 'betrayal' every time someone votes in a way you don't like? Because if you do, I question your commitment to the idea of representative democracy, and therefore your fitness to participate as a candidate.

Do you really think that Lloyd Doggett just threw up his hands, said "What the hell" and voted for an appropriations bill funding a war that he risked his political career to try and prevent? This was one of the few guys to stand up to Bill fucking Clinton, fer Chrissake. It's not that I love the vote, but you said it yourself: He's been there a while and knows what he's doing. That doesn't mean everything he does is right, but this was hardly a black-and-white issue (especially if you've been lobbying to increase the minimum wage for the last seven years). Even if you don't agree with the conclusions, you can at least acknowledge that there's a case to be made for voting for it.

I agree with you about corruption. I agree that the system is broken. I will defend to anyone your right to run, and I'll sign any petition to that effect.

But I respectfully suggest that your considerable intellect and energy would be much better deployed elsewhere. Unless you're sitting on Glad bags of cash, you're no threat to Doggett and therefore of no interest to the Republicans either. It doesn't bother me that he'll have to spend some of his money to fight you, but YOU could use those same resources to support existing initiatives, create a media campaign, engage in direct action, or any number of other creative responses to the problems at hand.

If it were someone I didn't know, I'd assume this was just another ego run amok. Since it's you, I urge you to reconsider . . . and then to put the same amount of time, energy, and money into a project that will genuinely help your fellow citizens.

And if you run anyway, good luck (seriously).

ratliff wrote:I should preface this by pointing out that I'm not a Democrat. Much of the horror of the last seven years is attributable to the cowardice of the Democratic Party, and I'm real glad they found their cojones once they got a majority, but if they hadn't misplaced them along with their poll results when we went to war, things might have turned out differently.

That said, one of the few who stood up and called bullshit on the war at its inception was Lloyd Doggett, even after the Democratic "leadership" made it clear that the staged debate was going to end in giving the president authorization to invade. So like Mo, I tend to think of him in positive terms.

All of which leads up to my question: Do you consider it a 'betrayal' every time someone votes in a way you don't like? Because if you do, I question your commitment to the idea of representative democracy, and therefore your fitness to participate as a candidate.

Do you really think that Lloyd Doggett just threw up his hands, said "What the hell" and voted for an appropriations bill funding a war that he risked his political career to try and prevent? This was one of the few guys to stand up to Bill fucking Clinton, fer Chrissake. It's not that I love the vote, but you said it yourself: He's been there a while and knows what he's doing. That doesn't mean everything he does is right, but this was hardly a black-and-white issue (especially if you've been lobbying to increase the minimum wage for the last seven years). Even if you don't agree with the conclusions, you can at least acknowledge that there's a case to be made for voting for it.

I agree with you about corruption. I agree that the system is broken. I will defend to anyone your right to run, and I'll sign any petition to that effect.

But I respectfully suggest that your considerable intellect and energy would be much better deployed elsewhere. Unless you're sitting on Glad bags of cash, you're no threat to Doggett and therefore of no interest to the Republicans either. It doesn't bother me that he'll have to spend some of his money to fight you, but YOU could use those same resources to support existing initiatives, create a media campaign, engage in direct action, or any number of other creative responses to the problems at hand.

If it were someone I didn't know, I'd assume this was just another ego run amok. Since it's you, I urge you to reconsider . . . and then to put the same amount of time, energy, and money into a project that will genuinely help your fellow citizens.

And if you run anyway, good luck (seriously).

John:

Let's take this point by point.

Yes, Congressman Doggett did indeed stand up and opposed the war at it's inception. And that's certainly worthy of mention.

However, his position of three years ago is tempered by his recent vote. Lloyd Doggett made a hard choice to oppose a war he had absolutely no power to stop. But now he, and the Democratic party, made the easy choice to let the war continue when they did have the power to stop it through defunding.

Do I consider it a betrayal every time someone votes in a way I do not like? No. But I DO consider it a betrayal when politicians are overwhelmingly elected primarily because of opposition to a war, and they fail to oppose the war when they enter office.

As for my commitment to representative democracy - I'm certainly in favor of it, but I'm not in favor of American representative democracy, where there is so much insulation between the politicians and the people they are supposed to serve. In short, this betrayal would not have occurred, I believe, in a system such as those used in Europe, where there are multiple choices for candidates, and not merely two choices.

Do I really think Lloyd Doggett just threw up his hands, said "What the hell" and voted for an appropriations bill funding a war that he risked his career to try and prevent?

Ultimately, yes. I do believe that his thought process was more nuanced than that - along the lines that he did not believe that Bush would withdraw the troops if faced with a lack of war funding - leaving the soldiers to 'throw bullets' at the enemy, and did not want to risk his career facing the political blowback from the inevitable impeachment that would follow. Additionally, I think the $20B in pork may have had much to sweeten the deal. If you agree with this analysis, vote for my opponent.

As for glad bags of cash and being "no threat" to Doggett, we can only see. As for whether I could use my own resources (which, it seems, are limited to Web savvy and time) more effectively, I honestly don't believe I can. Ultimately, all I can do is mobilize public opinion - but that public opinion has already been mobilized. The problem is that the Democratic party has chosen to ignore it. So a media campaign would not be effective. We've already got the people behind stopping the war - and those people voted for the Democrats to do so. The next step is to prod the Democrats into doing what they were elected to do. That's what I'm trying to do.

Fair enough. I appreciate your taking the time to respond to my points, and I really do wish you luck.

I got the bills mixed up. I was basing my decision to run on records found at Project Vote Smart - and thought that the last appropriations bill that Project Vote Smart had a record for was the appropriations bill that I opposed. It wasn't. That bill was one of the appropriations bills that did have a timetable. Because Project Vote Smart had a bit of a lag. The real voting record can be found here, at clerk.house.gov. Doggett is quite clearly in the "nay" column.

Lloyd Doggett voted against the war appropriations bill without timetable.

Obviously, I'm not continuing the campaign.

Also, obviously, I owe Congressman Doggett an apology - I plan to call his office on Tuesday and apologize to him. Mea maxima culpa.

If you live in her district you could always challenge Dawnna Dukes, a Craddick Democrat.