My two favorite senators are Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. They both have phenomenal records, not just on voting, but on leading. No one's perfect though. Bernie, for example, endorsed anti-choice Michigan reactionary Jerry Cannon, the former commandante of the Guantánamo gulag. What does that say about Bernie? Not much; just that he's human and makes mistakes.
Saturday night I had dinner with Matt Stoller and Ted Lieu. Matt, a former organizer and blogger works on Capitol Hill now as a senior policy advisor. Ted, California's most accomplished state senator, is running for the congressional seat being vacated by Henry Waxman (Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Venice, Malibu, Manhattan Beach, Torrance, West L.A.) Matt wanted to know why Ted wanted to work in Washington.
Maine Republican Susan Collins makes $174,000 a year, along with great retirement and health benefits-- the same as the boys make. And that's the way it should be. But yesterday Collins, a millionaire, joined the Republican Party filibuster seeking to prevent a simple up-or-down vote on Barbara Mikulski's Paycheck Fairness Act, S.2199.
Although Rick Santorum has reassured his far right-wing allies that Collins has to occasionally make believe dh's a moderate to trick Mainers, she never betrays the GOP when push comes to shove, voters still expect her to come through for the mainstream when it's important. Yesterday it was important, very, very important.
Conservative Democrats who cannot winProgressive Democrats who can winRecent polls-- like this morning's release of the latest NBC News/Marist poll in Kentucky-- confirm what astute observers have been saying for some time: the DSCC braintrust-- Harry Reid, Michael Bennet and Guy Cecil-- are wasting their money on conse
Grayson's amendment to stop funding the over-militarization of local police forces never made it to the Senate. The House Republican leaders-- Boehner, Cantor and McCarthy-- teamed up with the House Democratic leaders-- Pelosi, Hoyer, Clyburn (along with Wasserman Schultz, Israel and Crowley)-- to urge their caucuses to vote against it.
The end of last week saw a lot of outrage on the left. It was primarily directed towards the House Republican racism and xenophobia on display Thursday and Friday. Even left-wing rags like the NY Times and Wall Street Journal were outraged. There was less left-wing outrage directed towards President Obama's horrifying defense of CIA criminal John Brennan, a defense that will dog Obama's legacy for all time.
One of Blue America's most dedicated supporters is offering an end-of-the-month match for Shenna Bellow's, the progressive Democrat running for the U.S. Senate seat in Maine. As you can see, Blue America contributors have donated as much to Shenna's campaign as to all the other Senate candidates we are backing combined. But its going to take more than that to get her message out; she's up against Susan Collin's money machine. Collins is already swimming in $5,380,803, only 2% of it ($123,536) from small grassroots contributions.
There's supposed to be this huge chasm in the Maine Republican Party between the business-oriented moderates and the far right extremists (with another split in their for the Ron Paul libertarian branch). The moderates have been the home base for respectable political leaders like Senators Margaret Chase Smith, Bill Cohen, Olympia Snowe.
