Forever beleaguered in finding enough red meat for his-- in ex-Senator Alfonse D’Amato's words-- right-wing whack-a-doodle base, Trump wants to pivot away from his embarrassing loss to Pelosi over the anti-Hispanic vanity-wall to crapping all over the LGBTQ community.
Pelosi thinks it's "bad politics" to impeach Trump. (It's no less her duty than it was Paul Ryan's-- maybe more so.) She may be wrong... and her hand may be forced. A new poll, released this morning by the Associated Press, confirms that most Americans believe that Trump has obstructed the investigation by Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 election that put Trump into the White House.
Dan Canon would have been a game-changer in Congress. But on Tuesday Democratic primary voters in southern Indiana decided to nominate a garden variety Democrat-- not a bad person as far as I can tell-- from DC who's friends with all the DC people. Well, they lost an opportunity... and so did we all. Up top and below were the meager efforts Blue America did to try to help at the very end of a wonderfully inspired campaign.
Mostly uninteresting run-of-the-mill candidates who will make no difference to anyone won their primaries, but not entirely. Let's start with some good news in North Carolina. Durham County has just over 310,000 people, one of North Carolina's most populous. Last night the county elected the first African-American in its history, Clarence Birkhead, who beat the racist incumbent , Mike Andrews. And he beat him in a landslide-- 69-31%.
It's primary day in West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana and North Carolina, all states Trump won in 2016, but all staes with pockets of resistance and all states with lots and lots of buyers' remorse. There should be plenty of interesting results up and down the ballots in November when Democrats go up against Republicans. But today is the day when each party picks which candidates.
Indiana has a really important primary for progressives a week from today-- the 9th congressional district has a face-off between stalwart and brilliant progressive Dan Canon and some DC insider who's pretending to be part of the local community. Electing Dan can be a game-changing event because there are so few members of Congress like him.
A week from tomorrow 2 crucial congressional primaries will be playing out-- one on Indiana's 9th district and one in North Carolina's 5th district.
A campaign manager I've worked with on a few campaigns in the past has been asking for for the last few days to consider endorsing the candidate he's working with this time. The candidate doesn't seem bad and it's a winnable race. There are 4 Democrats competing for the nomination and the DCCC isn't involved so they all seem somewhat progressive. His candidate doesn't seem financially competitive-- but when have we ever allowed that to determine supporting someone. The newly redrawn district has counties that went for Bernie and counties that backed Hillary.
A few days ago the libertarian website, Reason.com published an interview with Michigan Republican Justin Amash asserting that Ryan was an even worse Speaker than Boehner (of whom he was no fan). "I would," Amash said, "rather have the guy swearing at me and letting me have a vote than not considering me at all... Under [Ryan's] speakership, we've had the fewest open amendments of any speakership. We've had zero... Everything has to be pre-approved by the Speaker... Under Boehner, you could walk up...
On Wednesday evening we talked about Randy Bryce’s powerful platform on immigration issues. One was a very controversial call to abolish ICE… something the DCCC advises its candidates to stay away from.
