(Exactly.  If anyone thinks that this AIPAC/wiretapping story is the only reason progressives have to primary Jane Harman, they’re wrong.  See my comment here as well. – promoted by David Dayen)

In the grand scheme of things, what one individual voter does is statistically insignificant.  As a professional researcher, I know this better than anyone else.

Still, I felt it was important to say that Jane Harman matters a great deal to me because of a deeply personal experience.

You see, Jane Harman alone got my Dad, a lifelong anti-war Democrat (with some very conservative social views, but an anti-war yellow dog Democrat nonetheless), to support the invasion of Iraq.  He didn’t trust Bush or Cheney.  He certainly didn’t trust the Republican Party.  He hated the Military-Industrial Complex and still does.  But he believed Saddam Hussein must have been an imminent threat because Jane Harman said he was.

Today, my father is ashamed to have been taken in so easily.  At the time we argued endlessly about the war and the invasion over the phone and in emails, even as Fox News blared in the background on his TV.  Now both Fox News and Jane Harman are dirty words to him.

But this really isn’t about my father.  It’s about the many scores of anti-war, yellow dog Democrats like him who get taken in by the support of pro-corporate, pro-war, pro-spying, anti-Constitution “Democrats” like Jane Harman.  The people who should by all rights despise the evils done in our name, but trust our own representatives to make the right call, because they are privy to information to which we are not.

“I don’t trust Bush any farther than I can throw him, but Jane Harman has seen the evidence.  If she says we have to do this, we have to do this.  Who are you to say what we should or shouldn’t do?  Do you know what Jane Harman knows?”

I cannot tell you the number of times I heard this line.  The completely understandable assumption of arrogance on the part of the regular citizen and activist who knows that we are being lied to on the part of our own Representatives–Representatives who have all the more reason to see things our way because of the information to which they have access, and yet betray us because the power to which they have access is far more interesting.

I am proud to have supported and personally interviewed Jane Harman’s opponent in the 2006 primary (though certain statements since have caused me to shirk from that individual candidate somewhat).  The fact is that even in 2006, it was apparent that the threat from the Blue Dog wing of our Party was almost as dangerous and at least as insidious as the threat from the Republicans themselves.  This is especially true in districts and states that have no business electing conservative Democrats: as we all know, Ben Nelson in Nebraska gets a pass; Joe Lieberman in Connecticut does not.

And Jane Harman is among the worst offenders.  Not only because of what she has done herself to support the invasion of Iraq and warrantless wiretapping, but because of the presumably countless Democrats like my father who were persuaded to support such things on the basis of her opinion.

If we are to have a successful progressive national movement, housecleaning in our own party is critical.  Millions like my father must hear other, just as credible voices on the national stage to counter power-hungry people of no conscience like Jane Harman.  Primaries against some of our most influential Blue Dogs must start in 2010.

There is no better place to begin than with Jane Harman.  It’s personal for me, but it matters for ALL of us more than we may know.