I spent about an hour or so, spread over a couple of phone calls, with Jon Ossoff right after he declared. I was impressed with his energy and verve, his dedication to oppose Trump and the House Republicans and his eagerness to do what’s necessary to win. He didn’t come across as a Bernie Sanders or a Pramila Jayapal or Elizabeth Warren but he did come across as kind of progressive.
The Dream Team-- for the GOP at leastI gradually stopped being a fan of Nancy Pelosi’s. I went from an admirer to a detractor primarily because of how she ran the DCCC-- an utter catastrophe for Democrats-- and because she imperiously declared an impeachment investigation of Bush was “off the table” after the Democrats won back the House.
Everyone thought the Senate would get their hands on the really radical, really destructive-- and really hated-- House Republican “healthcare” bill, TrumpCare, crafted by Paul Ryan and Tom Price and bastardized by Freedom Caucus chairman Mark Meadows and rogue Tuesday Group opportunist Tom MacArthur, and turn it into something more palatable and more mainstream.
Monday, Randy Bryce launched his campaign to repeal and replace Paul Ryan in a southeast Wisconsin district the DCCC has always made clear to Democrats was “off the table.” That’s where Randy lives and a bunch of political hacks in DC claiming his district is “off the table,” isn’t going to stop him for a minute. The fish rots from the head and if Trump can’t be held accountable until 2020, Speaker Ryan’s time is now. And Randy is the exact right person to do just that.
We started DWT a dozen years ago... the spring of 2005. Back then we used to do one post a day. But that only lasted a few months and since then we haven't had a day with just one post in over a decade-- not while I was in a jeep driving around the trackless wastes of Mali on the way to Timbuktu nor while I was laying in a hospital bed (blogging while I was drugged up and attached to industrial speed machinery), getting an experimental full stem cell transplant, and irrespective how big and crucial any one news story ever was. But rules are made to be broken.
Someone needs to explain to Señor Trumpanzee what "exonerated" and "vindicated" mean. No matter where you woke up Friday-- red state, blue state, purple state, there were no newspaper headlines talking about vindication. They were all talking about how we're saddled with a compulsive, manipulative liar in the White House.
Tuesday night Jimmy Gomez became the first Democrat to win a House seat since Trump was elected president. He won pretty overwhelmingly-- 60-40%-- in a deep blue Los Angeles district. Generally Republicans don't even try in districts like CA-34. The jungle primary, in fact, resulted in 2 candidates with "D" next to their names facing off this week in the general election.
Last month we speculated that unless congressional Republicans stop him, Trump would do to the U.S. what Governor Sam Brownback did to Kansas. Stopping him, though, isn't what Paul Ryan and his members have in mind-- encouraging him is more in line with what they want to do.
NC-03-- the Outer Banks and most of the state's coastal plain from the Virginia border south of Norfolk down past New Bern and Jacksonville. It's a very red district, R+11, and Walter Jones has been congressman there since 1994 (a year after he switched from Democrat to Republican). Romney beat Obama there, 59% to 41% and Trump did even better-- 60.5% to 36.9%-- last year. Jones did even better-- beating Democrat Ernest Reeves 67.2% to 32.8%.Jones is a principled, libertarian-leaning social conservative. He votes for progressive legislation quite a lot.
Over the weekend, NY Times reporters Coral Davenport and Eric Lipton traced a metamorphosis inside the upper echelons of the Republican Party. They looked at how GOP dogma went from dealing rationally with Climate Change to obstinate science denialism formerly only embraced by complete crackpots like House Science Committee chairman Lamar Smith of Texas. The are good reasons why the crazy far right fringe was the first part of the GOP to embrace Trump and Trumpism.
