2018 congressional races

It's ironic that notorious Republican closet case and child molester Mark Foley of Florida helped destroy the GOP House majority in 2006, considering that that majority was built with a lie about another Foley, Democratic Speaker Tom Foley. That Foley was a decent, if conventional, politician from Spokane, Washington. In 1964 Foley had defeated Republican Congressman Walt Horan and ably represented eastern Washington in Congress for 30 years, working his way up the ladder to become Democratic Whip in 1981, Majority Leader in 1987 and then House Speaker in 1989.

A couple of weeks ago DuWayne Gregory was elected to his fifth term as the Suffolk County Legislature’s presiding officer. I met DuWayne a few years ago when he helped me conduct a forum for political science and economics majors at the State University of New York, Stony Brook.

The Beltway prognosticators never understand the power of a wave as it forms. Never. They always get it wrong. That's because they've got their heads up each others' asses... inside the Beltway. But the Republicans who are in the wave's path this cycle sure understand what's coming, which explains why so many powerful-- albeit demoralized-- senior Republicans have raised the white flag and bowed out already. Let's see...

I have one more thing-- two lists-- to say about last week's FISA vote and the betrayal by the New Dems and Blue Dogs (the Republican wing of the Democratic Party). Currently there are 51 New Dems in Congress, mostly corrupt garbage with a very few exceptions.The New Dems provided Ryan, Trumpanzee and McCarthy with the votes they needed to pass the Republican FISA bill.

Yesterday, Bernie penned an OpEd for The Guardian, Let’s Wrench Power Back From The Billionaires. I wonder if he offered it to the NY Times, the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and USA Today first.

 A meme from the "Sanders or Bust" camp after the primary.by Gaius Publius I want to keep this short because it's really simple (emphasis mine throughout).Stuff like this...

DCCC incompetence has kept CO-06 in Republican hands for years after the district turned blue. And it's almost as though Steny Hoyer and Ben Ray Lujan are working to keep up their unlikely record of failure. Obama won the district-- the suburbs south and east of Denver (including Aurora, Littleton and Centennial-- in 2008 with 54% and in 2012 with 52%. In 2016 Hillary beat Trump 50.2% to 41.3%.

Last year Blue America looked carefully at the race in the west Houston congressional district held by Paul Ryan rubber stamp John Culberson. The district, which went from a pretty red area with a PVI of R+13 in 2015 voted 48.5% to 47.1% for Clinton (after giving Romney a 59.9-38.6% win over Obama) and now has a more manageable R+7 PVI.

There are 5 counties-- or parts of counties-- within the boundaries of Florida's 11th district north of Tampa: Citrus, Hernando, Lake, Marion and Sumter. Retirees from Indiana, Ohio and Michigan drove down I-75 and settled here, a different breed of the retirees from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey who drove down the I-95 to Miami-Dade and Broward counties.

After the odious Debbie Wasserman Schultz chaired the DCCC's Red-to-Blue program in 2008-- while endorsing 3 Republicans in seats neighboring on her own-- the program lost all credibility and the name faded.