Greg at Carter for Nevada : Why I've just quit Jack Carter's campaign

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NV-SEN: Why I've just quit Jack Carter's campaign (it's OK, he'll still win)

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Don't worry - it's not what it sounds like. I've neither lost my ideals nor my mind.

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That link above is to a diary about President Bush apparently receiving the right to declare national martial law, a move that guts the "Posse Comitatus Act."

I wrote that diary on October 18 in the hope that someone would pick up the ball and run with it. (As some of you have known and others of you might have guessed from various hints and slip-ups, you have known me here on the website for more than a year as "Major Danby.") Though it got a gratifying 24 hours on the Rec list, its impact beyond that has been limited. It got a little radio play - Thom Hartmann's show, for example - but not much. With the prospect of possible widespread election irregularities on November 7 - and at least the possibility of domestic disturbances afterwards if it looks like the Republicans have tried to steal the election - it is important to clarify the President's power to declare martial law NOW.

I'm willing to lead that charge -- as a professor I've done plenty of radio interviews and an attorney I'm used to extemporaneous public speaking. But I can't do so as a member of the Carter campaign. And I can't even do that effectively as a partisan - I don't want to raise the hackles of well-meaning Republicans, I want their cooperation in agreeing to clarify and/or repeal this law pronto. So I am out of the business of electing Democrats this year. I am starting a non-partisan group that I will announce here tomorrow and that I hope others will announce on right-wing sites.

But that is tomorrow's business. Today's business is saying goodbye to my campaign.

My first diary on the topic of martial law, posted on September 21, got a bit less of a response than the later one - but this was of course before the bill had passed. You may wonder, why did I post this under "Major Danby" instead of "Greg at Carter for Nevada," given that Jack Carter has been the only politician I know of who is aware of and willing to talk about the issue? It's because I was doing it without permission. At that point, I had no idea what would happen to this issue or what role it would play in Jack's campaign. I just thought that what Pat Leahy and the Governors had to say was important enough that people had to know about it. So I took the information that had come across my desk and posted it here. (No, I did not get into trouble for it, or for any other post here; I don't think anyone there ended up knowing about it. I just didn't want to "represent the campaign" in taking that action.)

Having started posting on the topic as Major Danby, I thought it appropriate that my next diary on the topic - the one that got some notice - continue under that name. And once that diary got noticed, I realized that either someone else was going to pick up that ball or I would have to do so.

After the last debate Monday night - and after putting together our "blank check" prop that I diaried about earlier this week - I spoke to Jack and told him that I wanted to go and do this. It was not obvious to me that he would release me to do so - you don't really want to lose any senior staff two weeks before the election. But his answer was immediate: go and do what needs to be done.

I've been proud to work for a candidate who has used some of his limited airtime to push an esoteric, unsexy, and yet incredibly important issue like this. And I have never been prouder of him than in the moment he allowed me to quit.

I am waiting until tomorrow to post my call to arms on this as "Major Danby" out of respect for the one-diary-per-day rule. I've worked hard since I created this account to avoid "sockpuppetry" - never commenting on or recommending a diary written under one account from the other, and trying hard not to violate the spirit of the one-diary-per-day rule across all my accounts. I know that many of you will care about that "meta" issue, and rightly so. So I just want to let you know how I've handled it.

And I did not start work on creating a new organization to push this issue until I officially left the campaign Friday night. So, today I'm getting my ducks in a row; tomorrow I will come out with a "Major Danby" diary with requests for your help. If anyone would like to post a diary in the meantime collecting the addresses of bookers for radio shows -- and the fax numbers and e-mail addresses of every Member of Congress, every Governor, and every challenger for every seat in Congress or statehouse -- that would give me a leg up. Because, starting Monday, I and whoever is with me will start demanding that everyone asking for our votes take a stand on this new law. People are going to know about this. We are going to head off the President's ability to declare martial law.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/10/28/155911/22