special elections

Trumpist candidate Bruce LeVell fails to get past 0.2%. Sad!GA-06 is the best educated district held by a Republican congressman in the whole country. They don't like Trump there. But instead of keeping a low profile, Trump was blithely tweeting away this morning and even did an attack ad robo-call, making it clear to everyone that the contest today was a referendum on Trump. Turnout was very high-- over a third of registered voters.

Trump stumbles into making the GA-06 special today all about himAccording to Alan Grayson today is "a great day for a Trump train wreck...

Over the weekend, Wyoming Democrats elected a Berniecrat, Joe Barbuto, party chair over 2 establishment types who were Clinton super delegates despite Bernie having won Wyoming's caucuses 55.7% to 44.3%. The corrupted system awarded Hillary 11 delegates to Bernie's 7.

I suppose some people know Joe Wilson (R-SC) for any number of things-- like the time he got sloshed and fell out of a Sigma Nu frat house window at Washington and Lee University in 1968, landing on alumnus Cy Twombly, who wound up with a severe concussion that is widely credited with a drastic change in his painting style.

Tax Day is nearly here-- April 18. When right-wing Congressman Tom Price was confirmed by the Senate as Trump's Secretary of Health and Human Services, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal decided to make Tax Day the date of round one of the special election. That's one week from today. The Republicans had every intention of making the election about their usual claptrap about "tax and spend Democrats," something fewer and fewer rubes still fall for. The brand new Brave New Films video is exactly the tie-in Jon Ossoff needs to be pushing in GA-06.

This morning I read that despite the DCCC ignoring the Rob Quist congressional race in Montana, Bernie says he's willing to go campaign for him there. Remember, although Montanans went for Trump over Hillary last november Bernie won Montana 274,120 (56.5%) to 174,521 (36.0%), Sanders won the Montana primary 51.1% to 44.6% and his brand of progressive populism is still very popular in the state.

Tuesday-- in 2 days-- is the first of the special elections to replace the members of Congress Trump drafted into his Regime. In this case it's for the Wichita-based seat that was held by Koch Brothers-owned Mike Pompeo. The seat is hopelessly red. Hopelessly. Kansas state Treasurer Ron Estes will face off against progressive Democrat Jim Thompson, who beat the Republican-lite candidate, Dennis McKinney, to become the Democratic nominee. He's been endorsed by OurRevolution.

Yesterday, as expected, progressive Democratic Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez came out far ahead of any of the other 23 candidates in the first round of the congressional contest to replace Xavier Becerra. CA-34 in an overwhelmingly Hispanic district entirely within the confines of Los Angeles. It goes from Eagle Rock. Highland Park, Mount Washington Cypress Park and El Sereno down to Chinatown, Downtown L.A., City Terrace, Boyle Heights and Koreatown.

L.A. County is not a Republican-free zone, even though areas of L.A. are. Hillary won the county 1,893,770 (71.4%) to just 620,285 (23.4%) for Trump. Steve Knight (CA-25) is the only Republican member of Congress with a substantial piece of L.A. County in his district-- and he's only still in Congress because of massive and repeated DCCC incompetence.

This morning we looked at a new bill introduced this week by Ro Khanna and Beto O'Rourke that would end the pervasive influence of PACs on Congress. It's another example of how Democrats are getting behind Bernie Sanders' most salient ideas. Ro Khanna endorsed Bernie during the 2016 cycle and Beto O'Rourke had endorsed Hillary.