Antoinette Sedillo Lopez

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.

West Virginia is the Trumpiest state in the union. The PVI is R+19 and Trump beat Hillary 489,371 (68.5%) to 188,794 (26.4%). Trump won every single county in the state. (In the primary, Bernie also won every single county in the state and beat Hillary 124,700 (51.4%) to 86,914 (35.8%). In fact, on primary day, there were plenty of candidates where Bernie took more votes than Trump.

I asked several members of Congress about the DCCC's reticence to take on Trump. Most didn't want to be quoted by name. One e-mailed me "I don’t want to be quoted on this, but you’re absolutely right, and the deeper problem is that this is part of the socialization process that leads even good candidates to become worthless pieces of crap upon election. Ann Kuster, for instance-- she could have gone either way.

This is not-- nor will it ever be-- Joe CrowleyIf you follow this blog at all, you probably know, this is a place where identity group politics gets short shrift. We believe, strongly, that the best candidate should be supported, regardless of race, religion, gender, etc. That said, there are 435 members of the House and my guess is that if the best candidate was elected, at least 217 would be women, but probably more than that.

Monday evening, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren took their probable 2020 campaign out for a test run, calling their 90-minute TV show the Economic Inequality Town Hall, or more formally, "Inequality in America: The Rise of Oligarchy and Collapse of the Middle Class." You can watch the whole thing above. Last night 1.7 million people did.

Blue Dog John Barrow (GA) is a putz. He never belonged in Congress and never accomplished anything while he was there. After his Democratic constituents saw the ad above, they abandoned him and he lost his seat, since Republicans int appealed to had their own candidate. Pelosi and the DCCC never gave up on Barrow. When he was finally defeated, the DCCC wasted $2,382,846 trying to save him. Pelosi kicked in another $194,510 from her own SuperPAC.

In 2014 Oklahoma reelected conservative Republican Mary Fallin over conservative Democrat Joe Dorman 460,298 (55.8%) to 338,239 (41%). Although there have been some shocking recent special election wins by Democrats in Oklahoma, the state Senate has 39 Republicans and just 8 Democrats and the state House has 73 Republicans and 28 Democrats. The Oklahoma congressional delegation consists of 5 Republican congressmen and 2 Republican senators...

The Levy Economics Institute-- a nonpartisan public policy think tank at Bard College-- just published The Macroeconomic Effects of Student Debt Cancellation by Stephanie Kelton, Scott Fullwiler, Catherine Ruetschin and Marshall Steinbaum. Sound familiar?

Breitbart appears frightened that Señor Trumpanzee could abandon Stephen's racism and xenophobia for something more pragmatic. They were calling him "Amnesty Don" Thursday morning (above) but appear to have changed the headline slightly by afternoon (below). But they're still whining about the DREAMers, as you can see.

Last summer we met Jasper Ward and his dad, former Kentucky congressman Mike Ward. Since then Jasper and Mike have been helping progressive candidates around the country-- like Kendra Fershee in West Virginia and Dan Canon in Indiana-- with marijuana legalization messaging.