Gil Cisneros, an "ex"-Republican lottery winner-- the kind of utterly worthless candidate the DCCC comes up with when left to their own devisesTom Wakely was the progressive Democratic opponent to Lamar Smith last cycle. Next year he's a candidate for governor of Texas. This week he observed on twitter that "here in Texas Bernie style Democrats not only are not supported they are actively opposed by the party establishment." Of course, that isn't only the case in Texas. Much of the Democratic establishment, like the Republican establishment, exists, and thrives, on corruption. Any kind of profound reform-- which is, at its core, exactly what Bernie is offering-- is an existential threat.So it's not just in Texas that the Democratic establishment is screwing over progressives. It's been the policy of the DCCC at least since 2006 when Rahm Emanuel implemented procedures still in place to exclude progressives as congressional candidates. And just minutes after I saw Wakely's tweet I read an e-mail from a Democratic congressional candidate here in California. Let me see how much of this I can quote without giving away his identity.
Off the record, there seems to be a coalition of candidates in xxx for various races ...state and local... looking to break apart the DNC, DCCC machine and go more progressive. Knowing the traditional party won't support us, we're looking for ways to win with ground campaigns and getting our story out to other sympathetic parts of the country to raise money. The divide within the state party is vast and cuts right through us here in xxx.We face heavy opposition from the right, as you can imagine, but also get abandoned by the democratic party establishment. We're pretty much left to fend for ourselves... We know we are true underdogs, but we have little to lose and so much to gain so we are fighters!I'm going to connect you with the campaign manager for xxx, candidate for state Senate, in another email... his campaign manager can tell you of the realities of running a Dem campaign in this area-- hate crimes, houses being burned and death threats are to be expected.
Yeah, so... it's not just in Texas that the establishment will do whatever it has to do to hold onto power. Just look at the garbage Schumer recruited to run for Senate seats in 2016 in seats that looked like good bets for Democrats. Tens of millions of dollars were spent of these sub-par candidates. This whole list has something in common-- worthless anti-progressive Schumer recruits who he shoved down Democrats' throats and who all lost:
• Ted Strickland (OH)- 37.1%• Patty Judge (IA)- 35.7%• Katie McGinty (PA)- 47.2%• Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ)- 41%• Patrick Murphy (FL)- 44.3%• Evan Bayh (IN)- 42.4%
As a Chuck Schumer special bonus, 5 out of these 6 horrible candidates of his underperformed Clinton in their own states and dragged down the whole Democratic ticket. And guess what Schumer is up to this year. That's right... he's been recruiting more garbage to run for the Senate. There are really only two states-- Arizona and Nevada-- where red to blue flips are reasonable to expect and Schumer has found the worst possible candidate in each, ultra-conservative monstrosities Kyrsten Sinema and Jacky Rosen, respectively in Arizona and Nevada. The GOP must thank it's lucky stars every day that Schumer calls the shots at the DSCC and Pelosi calls the shots at the DCCC.All that said, a YouGov poll from last week seems to be predicting substantial Democratic gains in 2018, not because the Democrats are any good, but because a strong anti-Trump/anti-Ryan wave is building, a wave that may will be strong enough to sweep even worthless garbage candidates the DSCC and DCCC are busy recruiting. The poll found the largest Democratic lead all year among registered voters in generic D vs R congressional matchups-- an 8-point lead for the Democrats.Independents, who went for Trump by 4 points last year have flipped and are now saying they will vote for Democratic candidates in 2018... by 6 points-- a hefty, albeit mindless, 10 point move in a blue direction.
There are other indications of problems for Republicans. Few people like Congress-- it has just a 10% approval rating, while the President’s approval rating in this week’s poll is 39%. Just 36% have a favorable assessment of Democrats in Congress. But even fewer rate Congressional Republicans favorably. 15% more people give Republicans in Congress an unfavorable rating than judge Congressional Democrats negatively.Barely half of Republicans give their own party’s Congressional representatives a favorable rating, while three in four Democrats have a favorable assessment of the Democrats in Congress. Half of Republicans approve of Speaker Paul Ryan’s performance, but only a third approve of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
There are many progressives who don't trust MSNBC's establishment smearmeister Joy Reid. It's because she does things like this for corrupt establishment politicians like Schumer and Harry Reid. I can tell you one thing, when Joy Reid's face shows up on my screen, I instantly switch the channel. Any progressive candidate desperate enough to go on her show might as well just get booked onto Fox News.OK, so in the time I've been writing this post, the congressional candidate in California-- referred to above-- offering to introduce me to the party activist willing to tell the story about Democratic establishment misdeeds, did the intro. And I spoke with the guy at great length, checked out his bona fides and he's agreed to get me a guest post over the weekend. Something to look forward to. I hope he includes the part about how a progressive's house was burned down. Oh, look... speaking of Fox News, even their viewers are starting to get a bit of a reality check on how Americans view Trumpanzee. I bet he hated seeing this up on his TV screens today!
