The Blue America contest for Alan Grayson is still going strong. It ends Saturday. We're giving away a very rare gorgeous RIAA-ceritfied double platinum award for Neil Young's HARVEST, his 4th studio album (1972). Just contribute any amount to Alan Grayson's congressional campaign on this ActBlue page.
At this point, national polling doesn't tell us as much as district polling doesA nice theme has been developing over the past year or so: our political system is riven with corruption-- a culture of corruption-- and congressional Republicans are at the root of it. Sounds about right, although letting the Democrats off the hook is ludicrous. Sure the Republicans are more corrupt... but the Democrats are plenty corrupt.
Conservatives want members of Congress to look like the mug on the right, never like the young woman on the leftConnecticut Democratic primary voters basically kicked Joe Lieberman out of the party by denying him the 2006 Democratic nomination for the Senate seat he had held since 1994. He ran on the Connecticut for Lieberman Party that year.
In 2010 Democrats had been in control of Congress for two terms and they were loaded with campaign cash. Democratic incumbents outspent Republican challengers-- sometimes by immense margins, double, triple, three times, four times... Let me show what I mean. In 2010 Jim Oberstar-- first elected in 1974-- was the longest-serving member ever of House from Minnesota.
Ojeda and ManchinWV-03-- the southern third of West Virginia-- had two populist landslides in 2016. First Bernie beat Hillary by over 20 points and, in many counties got more votes than Trump did on the same day in the GOP primary. Then, in the general, the 3rd was Trump's biggest district in the state. He beat Hillary by a shocking 72.5% to 23.3%. The PVI of West Virginia is R+19. The PVI of WV-03 is R+23.
For most candidates for Congress-- and incumbents-- the economics of politics is about how to access money to keep their careers moving ahead. For the new breed of Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the economics of politics has more to do with how to finance the Bernie policies they're espousing and that their supporters are clamoring for.
Florida has a late primary, August 28-- a couple weeks before this year's harvest moon (September 14). If you win this contest you'll have your own harvest moon in time to celebrate. Blue America is doing a contest/give-away to benefit Alan Grayson' campaign for Congress in Orlando. The winner gets a very rare and very beautiful RIAA-certified double platinum award for Neil Young's release of Harvest.
How about better congressional leadership?In the new issue of the Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi takes issue with Frank Bruni's NY Times column-- another sour centrist reaction to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's dsiplacement of centrist standard bearer (and avatar of personal and systemic corruption), Joe Crowley.
No One In Congress Remembers Dwight Eisenhower's Farewell Message To America?Justin Amash (R-MI) has the least objectionable crucial vote record of any Republican in Congress-- 42.86. It's a better voting record than 7 Blue Dog "Democrats" have this cycle. Translation: Amash has voted more frequently for progressive positions on important roll calls than these monstrosities pretending to be Democrats (from bad to worst):
