This morning, the NY Times editorial board asserted that Trump destroyed the Republican Party. They're wrong. The craven, spineless politicians who represent the party destroyed it.
With a tiny handful of exceptions-- basically Kara Eastman in Omaha, Joyce Elliott in Little Rock and Dana Balter in Syracuse (who is running in a D+3 district)-- Cheri Bustos and her DCCC have once again decided to spend all the big money primarily on corporate-friendly conservative candidates backed by the Blue Dogs and
The bell is tolling loudly now-- and the Republicans finally-- albeit too late-- hear it, as their pollsters and operatives tell them that Democrats are turning out more low-frequency and newly registered voters than Republicans are. Marc Caputo and Zach Montellaro report that the early vote lead for Democrats is massive. As of yesterday, 52,718,496 people had already voted 36,518,179 by mail and I16,200,317 in person.
Thursday night during the debate Biden accidentally answered "yes" when asked if he favored closing down the oil industry. He had had a senior moment and he didn't mean that, explaining to journalists a short time later that "We’re not going to get rid of fossil fuels. We’re going to get rid of subsidies for fossil fuels." A step in the right direction.
2018 DCCC recruit Jeff Van Drew is honest enough to be running for reelection as a Republican. Other 2018 DCCC recruits are being endorsed by the US Chamber of Commerce. Maybe someone needs to change the DCCC-- drasticallyProgressivePunch has awarded grades of "F" to 108 Democrats in Congress. 35 of them are part of the the most right-wing freshmen class in the history of the modern Democratic Party.
One of the things that always attracted Blue America to J.D. Scholten has been his independent spirit. I don't see him in Congress as just another Democrat-- not even as just another progressive Democrat. I see him as a guy standing up for working families regardless of whatever some shifting party priorities happen to be at the moment. And he was always a lot more than just a way to replace racist Republican Steve King. In fact, King lost his primary to far right state legislator Randy Feenstra who actually attacked King from the right-- someone who couldn't deliver for Trump!
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%.
IN-05 is an open seat. Rep. Susan Brooks-- a relatively mainstream conservative Republican-- is retiring. There are 15 Republicans running-- and 9 who have raised over the $5,000 that triggers an FEC report. The top-"raising" Republican, Victoria Spartz contributed $750,000 of her own money to her campaign, 98.7% of her funds.
DCCC chair Cheri Bustos should resignLast night 3 important congressional races ended. Nancy Pelosi, Cheri Bustos and their DCCC need to think closely about what happened. One contest was a primary in Omaha and two were special elections to fill seats in Wisconsin and California where members had retired, respectively one Republican and one Democrat.
