McConnell salutes West Virginia grassroots Republican votersThird party Super PACs spent $7,343,577 tearing apart Roy Moore in the Alabama Senate race. $6,552,448 of that came from Mitch McConnelll's Senate Leadership PAC. McConnell had so sullied Moore's reputation that when he won the primary against the establishment candidate, he couldn't win the general election.
Some congressional candidates campaign explicitly on impeaching Trump. The DCCC advises against that. Kaniela Ing, for example, warns Democrats at the top of his issues page that "It's not enough to simply resist Donald Trump. People are struggling and feeling left behind.
Melanie Zanona and Mike Lillis co-authored a post for The Hill, Dems seize on gun control heading into midterms.
Tuesday evening 5 Republicans joined the Democrats to end the US role in Yemen-- so it could have passed-- but 10 Democrats crossed the aisle in the other direction and killed Bernie's joint resolution, 55-44. These were the Republicans who voted to end the war:
Teachers with Guns by Nancy OhanianOn the extreme right, the Freedom Caucus has decided they can replace Ryan with neo-fascist Mark Meadows (R-NC) as Speaker and they are doing everything they can to undermine Ryan and bolster Meadows. Mainstream conservatives have their own problems with the incompetent and ineffectual Ryan and are also eager for him to announce his retirement and move on.
Yesterday after months of careful vetting, Blue America endorsed the progressive candidate in the CO-06 race, Levi Tillemann. I was struck by one of the points on his website about making banksters-- not just bank shareholders-- pay for bank criminality. "[W]e need to ensure," he wrote, "that ALL Americans are treated equally under the law. This includes white collar criminals from powerful banks on Wall Street.
You think what the DCCC has done-- is doing-- in undermining Laura Moser is unique? It isn't. It's been fairly standard operating procedure since 2006 when Rahm Emanuel and Steny Hoyer decided they should determine who Democratic nominees should be, not local Democratic voters.
Frank Schaeffer is continuing his roadtrip, meeting progressive congressional candidate and filming them as introductions of the best candidates running. Last we caught up with him was in Lewiston, Maine where he spent a day Jared Golden, the progressive candidate running for the swing district that isn't the Portland coastal area. From there he headed off to Omaha where he met with Kara Eastman.
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%.
Thursday morning's tweet from Ro Khanna (D-CA)-- above-- is a good example of how someone can promote genuine economic populism. The program he, Bernie and virtually all progressives back to make state colleges free again is incredibly popular-- far more popular than Schumer's and Pelosi's recycled Papa John's Pizza slogan.
