Scaremongering xenphobia rarely hurts the scaremongers and xenophobesThere's been plenty of talk, including on this blog, about how the U.S. turned away Jewish refugees in the late 1930s-- sending many to their deaths in Nazi concentration camps-- but nothing was going to slow down conservative fear-mongering.
Tom Guild (OK-05)With the renewable energy sector already creating far more jobs-- and far better jobs-- than fossil fuel extraction, its difficult to understand why Republicans are so hysterically opposed to the thriving new industry. Difficult until you look at the Big Oil & Gas payroll for Congress. Last year alone, Big Oil and Gas rewarded their Republican congressional allies with $26,850,111 in legalistic bribes.
This evening Bernie Sanders will be speaking at the DeMeester Performance Center, an outdoor amphitheater that holds 7,000 people, in Tucson's Reid Park. He'll be introduced by the local congressman, Raúl Grijalva, chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a group that Bernie founded in 1991. Wednesday, Grijalva became the first member of Congress to endorse Bernie's campaign.
Have Oklahoma City voters had enough of congressional mad dogs like Clyde Russell?Imagine a candidate's platform making this promise: "If elected, I promise to never vote to shut the government down!" As odd as it seems, it makes sense in the context of the infantile and nihilistic Republican response to not getting their way.
A couple of reality stars in OklahomaOur old friend Tom Guild is running for the Oklahoma City congressional seat, going up against right-wing freshman Clyde "Steve" Russell. And although the Fifth District is the least red in Oklahoma-- PVI is R+12 and Obama scored 41% against both McCain and Romney-- it's a steep climb.
Tom Guild, the progressive candidate who ran for the Oklahoma City congressional seat that was abandoned by James Lanksford, who's taking Tom Coburn's Senate seat, lost out, narrowly, to a sad sack Blue Dog-type, Al McAffrey, who offers virtually no choice and has virtually no chance to win. Not even fellow Blue Dogs like him. The 2010 Blue Dog nominee, Billy Coyle, endorsed Republican Steve Russell.
One week from today is primary run-off day for both parties for OK-05, the open seat centered on Oklahoma City (+ Edmond, Shawnee and Seminole). Right-wing extremist James Lankford gave up the seat so he could run for Tom Coburn's Senate seat. The last Democrat to hold that seat was John Jarman, a reactionary who switched to the Republican party in 1975, claiming the Democrats were "too liberal." Before he jumped the fence the district had been a Democratic Party bastion since the GOP caused the Great Depression.
There are quite a few of them but the ones progressives have a stake in, in chronological order, are Hawaii (August 9), Wisconsin (August 12), and then a late super-Tuesday on August 26 for Arizona, Florida and Oklahoma. That same day has primaries in Alaska, Missouri, Oregon and Vermont with interesting races but no races that pit a progressive against a shill from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party.Up top is the brand new video from one of the most grassroots campaigns anywhere, the Tom Guild campaign for the open Oklahoma City congressional seat.
We don't always expect much from Republican bastions like Oklahoma. But Blue America endorsed an across-the-board progressive, Tom Guild, to run for the congressional seat based in Oklahoma City. And a couple of weeks ago Tom came in first in a tough 3-way primary against a very conservative state Senator who is the polar opposite of a progressive. Tom walked away with 42.1% of the vote while that state senator drew 30.9% and a third candidate took 27%.
Zach Goldfarb celebrated the 4th of July with a column for the Washington Post informing us that the moneymen behind the New Dems, Blue Dogs and Third Way-- i.e., the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- have had enough of all this income gap and economic inequality palaver.
