MD-04: The case against Al Wynn, Part 1

With less than a week before the Democratic primary, campaigns are going into high gear in Maryland. This will be especially true for Donna Edwards, who, while having an incredible amount of momentum in her favor, still has a difficult fight ahead of her as she tries to unseat the Republican-lite incumbent, Al Wynn. So with the end of providing some last-minute buzz for Edwards, let's go over why Wynn has been such a bad Democrat, such a bad representative of Maryland's 4th congressional district, and why Edwards would do so much better on both counts. (I'll be doing this in stages.)

Here's the thing: Wynn's faults lie not in having a conservative voting record (viewed as a whole, it's fairly liberal); nor does it lie merely in his deviations on recent key votes, as bad as that is. Rather, it's the fact he has made these deviations while representing a heavily liberal Democratic district. Wynn is not the only offender here, as the American Prospect points out, but given that he has a serious challenger for the first time in his congressional career, it's only fair that his record on certain key issues be brought out into the light.

Let's start with last year's bankruptcy bill, shall we? As these posts by Kevin Drum and Hunter make clear, it was more or less a giant giveaway to the credit and debt industry, which had wanted the bill for years. Although its stated purpose was to crack down on "bankruptcy abuse," the truth is that the majority of individual bankruptcy filers do so because of necessities like medical bills, not because they're living large on the credit card. And the Republicans blocked every single attempt to make the bill even a little bit more fair and equitable. Of all the bad policies Republicans have pushed in the last five years, this was one of the worst.

Al Wynn voted for this bill. Support Donna Edwards' effort to defeat him.