Allen West, the Republican Party nominee for Congress in Florida’s 22nd District, has made a speech publicly railing against the idea of coexistence:

As I was driving up here today, I saw that bumper sticker that absolutely incenses me. It’s not the Obama bumper sticker. But it’s the bumper sticker that says, ‘CoExist,’ and it has all the little religious symbols on it. And the reason why I get upset, and every time I see one of those bumper stickers, I look at the person inside that is driving. Because that person represents something that would give away our country. Would give away who we are, our rights and freedoms and liberties because they are afraid to stand up and confront that which is the antithesis, anathema of who we are. The liberties that we want to enjoy.

Watch the video of these remarks and you’ll see that Allen West makes these comments without the slightest sense of irony, which is quite sad. The “rights and freedoms and liberties” that are the foundation of American society are found in the Constitution. The very first freedoms are written in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

In other words, Government shall not be used as a cudgel for one group to dominate another, for one belief to suppress another, for one religion to eliminate another. The central idea of the U.S. Constitution, which is the Supreme Law of our Land (Article VI), is CoExistence of different people, of different religions, of different expressions, of different ideas.

The GOP’s new nominee Allen West stands against CoExistence.

Allen West stands against the idea of America.

If you are for the American value of coexistence, be against the election of Allen West this November.

If you oppose the Patriot Act, don’t vote for Martha Coakley.

No, we don’t, and Democrats in Congress are the reason we don’t. In the House of Representatives, the Blue Dog Democrats wrecked health care reform. In the Senate, five right wing Democrats joined the Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee today to vote against a public option in health care reform. These five Democratic turncoats were:

Max Baucus
Blanche Lincoln
Kent Conrad
Bill Nelson
Tom Carper

Progressive organizations agree – without a public option health care reform is rendered virtually meaningless. Now, these right wing Democratic senators have killed the public option. They’ve ripped the heart out of Barack Obama’s reform program.

So what are we going to do about it? Sit around and mope? No. We’re going to teach these anti-progressive Democrats a lesson about what happens when leaders break promises made to progressives. The progressives get organized, and they fight back.

In Arkansas, John Gray is leading the charge. He is challenging Blanche Lincoln from the left, asking why Lincoln is abandoning Democratic Party promises and voting like a Republican instead.

Today, Gray responded right away when he heard that Blanche Lincoln had voted against Barack Obama’s public option. Gray linked Lincoln’s anti-reform vote to the large campaign donations she receives from insurance companies and other commercial entities that make a profit from the broken status quo. “She has a rather large campaign chest, almost half of which is from the medical industries,” Gray said. “The fact that she is loyal to her sponsors is not at all surprising.”

Gray pledged to support single payer health care instead of the pro-industry sham promoted by Senator Lincoln. By eliminating the commercial inefficiencies created by insurance companies, the Gray Health Plan would enable savings that would pay for health care coverage for all Americans.

Universal health care coverage – remember that promise? John Gray has not forgotten. That’s a darned good reason to vote John Gray for Senate in 2010.

That’s My Congress maintains a progressive action index for the House of Representatives for all 435 members of the House of Representatives, judging members according to their action or inaction on a slate of 31 bills. The two least progressive members of the Massachusetts caucus in Congress are Richard Neal and Stephen Lynch, who have supported just 36% and 41% of the progressive slate of bills, respectively. If Richard Neal or Stephen Lynch end up in Senator Kennedy’s seat, they won’t be carrying on the Kennedy tradition.

On the other hand, the two most progressive members of the Massachusetts caucus in the 111th Congress have been Barney Frank, supporting 68% of the progressive slate, and James McGovern, supporting 77% of the progressive slate. Neither has a perfectly progressive record — but then again, neither did Ted Kennedy. If a Senate candidate comes from the House, either Rep. Frank or Rep. McGovern would be a reasonable choice.

In this oval bumper sticker, an Orwellian all-seeing eye is incorporated into the classic icon of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. The message: we may have a new president who ran on hope and change, but under his new administration, Big Brother is Still Watching. The Patriot Act is still in effect. The Military Commissions Act is still in effect. The FISA Amendments Act is still in effect. Barack Obama has committed to continue using tools of warrantless surveillance in contravention of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The election is over. It doesn’t matter whether Barack Obama was on “your team,” or whether you campaigned as part of “his team.” As of his inauguration, he will be the principal executor of a surveillance state. As long as the president and the agents of the president are watching, it is incumbent upon defenders of liberty to watch back.

That anti-Bush bumper sticker movement crested in early 2005, and then was replaced by the phenomenon of the Barack Obama presidential campaign. That campaign, unlike the campaign against Bush in 2004, was centered around one personality, and so the grassroots bumper sticker approach of individuals expressing themselves creatively was replaced by a flash again of the old way of movement uniformity.

Look out on the road today, and you see the result – a lot of official Obama for President bumper stickers, and not very many independently produced items. As long as Obama holds sway over the imagination of the progressive imagination, that’s how it’s going to be, and ironically, that centralized, personality-focused approach, as effective as it has been at electing Obama himself, may be the undoing of progressive idealism itself.

So we see the emergence of a new, post-election group of bumper stickers, with themes such as thank me, I voted for Obama.

Almost disappeared are the issue bumper stickers, and now, the Obama campaign itself is disappearing, to transition through Inauguration 2009 into the Obama Administration.

What will become of progressive activism? Can the progressive grassroots survive, when the White House accepts responsibility for progressive action itself?

I’ll put this in another way: John McCain is history.

It isn’t just because John McCain is old. A person can be old and still remain relevant and be able to contribute meaningfully.

It has to do with John McCain’s place in time. John McCain has failed to update his ideas.

John McCain is a politician of the past. McCain embraces ideas and attitudes that are two generations out of date.

John McCain has no vision for the future of America. His agenda is one of defense, trying to delay progress, to fend off hope, to desperately cling to the old ways of thinking that he and his supporters are fond of.

John McCain is a relic of time gone by, of plans that didn’t work out, of limitations that most Americans have transcended.

The way of John McCain is the way of the failures of America’s past.

John McCain is history. Now is the time for America to do better than it has done. Now is the time for a candidate of the future. Now is the time for Barack Obama.

Will it end there? Will John Edwards fade off into the background now? Don’t bet on it.

After seeing the crowd’s enthusiasm for John Edwards last night, combined with the tidal surge of support for Obama, I’d say that an Obama-Edwards ticket is more likely than ever.

John Edwards fits with Barack Obama, politically and biographically. Both come from modest economic backgrounds, and understand political issues from the perspective of working Americans. Both have rejected negative campaigning and lobbyist influence as well, and that will be a strong point in opposition to John McCain, who has filled his Senate office and his campaign staff with corporate lobbyists. Edwards and Obama also both represent an idealistic vision of a better American future, not a desperate clinging to the past.

If you’ve caught me being enthusiastic about the idea, well, I’ll admit it. Isn’t it time that Americans begin to feel a sense of optimism again? That’s what the Barack Obama campaign is about, really – overcoming fear with hope. With John Edwards on Obama’s team, that hope is all the more believable.

That’s the idea that’s behind this Obama-Edwards bumper sticker – and I’ll add on a note about the Obama Edwards campaign tshirt as well: It’s made in the USA, not in some overseas sweatshop factory that uses outsourced labor to make big profits for some corporate executives on the backs of child labor. This t-shirt fits the moral vision of the Obama Edwards campaign.

Maybe this one in particular is not for you – but please, make sure that when you do buy Obama or Obama-Edwards campaign shirts, they’re made in the USA. Don’t mix hope with despair.