2020 congressional elections

Tuesday evening, J.D. Scholten was the first guest on Marianne's week long down-ballot progressive summit. (Tonight, Hector Oseguera will be on with Marianne; here's the schedule.) Tuesday, while J.D. and Marianne were chatting, Iowans were voting in their primaries. J.D. wasn't challenged so, no drama there. But his opponent, GOP neo-fascist and arch-racist-- largely disowned by the DC Republican establishment-- Steve King had 4 primary opponents.

Old school New Dem Eliot Engel has been weathering the pandemic in the wealthy suburban neighborhood where he lives-- in Maryland-- and leaving the residents of his hard hit district-- which includes part of the Bronx and the three cities in Westchester with the highest number of COVID cases-- on their own. Last week Edward-Issac Dovere blew the whistle on Engel in an embarrassing piece at The Atlantic,, Why This Democrat Won’t Go Home

Starting tonight at 9 PM (ET)-- so 6 PM on the West Coast-- Marianne Williamson will be hosting a week-long summit for progressive Congressional candidates on her Facebook page-- one candidate each night. Her first guest, someone she has already shared a stage with in Iowa, is J.D. Scholten, the progressive Democrat who nearly beat neo-fascist and racist Iowa Republican Steve King, in 2018.

In 2018, the DCCC successfully perpetrated the myth of the Blue Wave. That kind of p.r. is part of their job. The problem is, they believed it. And the results reinforced that mightily. There were 41 seats that flipped from red to blue. In 2016, the House Dems hadn't done badly. Even with an apparent Trump victory, they had managed to flip 6 seats and they increased their national congressional vote margin by 2.5%.

Later-- after the CNN appearance above-- on Fox News Sunday, Cornel West said "What we’re seeing here is the ways in which the vicious legacy of white supremacy manifests in organized hatred, greed and corruption. We’re witnessing the collapse of the legitimacy of leadership, the political class, the economic class, the professional class, that’s the deeper crisis... The beautiful thing is we’re seeing citizens who are caring and concerned hitting the streets.

People seem surprised when they find out that Nashville is a Democratic city and that Tennessee's 5th congressional district is safely blue. Obama won the district both times he ran. In 2016 Trump took just 38.2% of the vote- and in Davidson County (Nashville), he only got 34.3%). In 2018, Davidson County backed Democrats in both the gubernatorial race and the U.S.

Will, Brigid and AmyThere's a red hot race for the Democratic nomination for New Jersey's 2nd congressional district, the one the South Jersey (Norcross) Machine and the DCCC screwed up when their repulsive Blue Dog pet-- Jeff Van Drew-- switched parties and (openly) became a Trump butt wipe. The same machine-- along with the DCCC-- has another candidate though...

On Tuesday, a poll by Harris X for The Hill showed that a majority of American voters consider establishment corruption the top issue going into the 2020 election. And, keep in mind, it isn't just about Trump and his family and his Mafia-like regime.

What Campaign? by Nancy OhanianThis morning, Washington Post reporters Meg Kelly and Elyse Samuels, did a blockbuster report about how, Trump is creating an alternative reality online about coronavirus.

Last year, it was reasonable to look at the Senate election table for 2020 and predict that the Democrats would have a hard time flipping that chamber. It looked like they were most likely to lose one-- Jones in Alabama-- and possibly gain three-- Colorado (Gardner), Arizona (McSally) and Maine (Collins). That would leave them with the Turtle running the Senate again-- with a fragile 51-49 majority.