TX-21

This week Blue America has been working with our friends at Climate Hawks Vote to win House seats for candidates committed to ameliorating climate change, primarily House seats that are in winnable districts that the DCCC is ignoring.

The stated mission of Tom Colicchio's group, Food Policy Action, is to highlight the importance of food policy and to promote policies that support healthy diets, reduce hunger at home and abroad, improve food access and affordability, uphold the rights and dignity of food and farm workers, increase transparency, improve public health, reduce the risk of food-borne illness, support local and regional food systems, protect and maintain sustainable fisheries, treat farm animals humanely and reduce the environmental impact of farming and food production.

It's that time of year again. Staring tomorrow we have trucks, 2-sided mobile billboards prowling the highways and byways of at least 4 districts with Republican incumbents that we think are flippable. These are the four races:

Republicans are still embarrassed about how Reagan got caught in what came to be known as the Iran-Contra scandal. It started as a scheme to ransom 7 U.S. hostages being held in Lebanon by having Israel sell U.S. weapons to Iran and the U.S. replacing those weapons for Israel. Oliver North's twist was to have the Iranian money shipped to fascist rebels in Nicaragua (the Contras).

Yesterday, Hillary had an OpEd in Policy.Mic, Here's What Millennials Have Taught Me.

When Tom DeLay directed the Texas legislature to radically gerrymander up the the Lone Star State's congressional districts, one of the key objectives was to take away the very progressive voice of Travis County, primarily Austin.

Jeff Flake has never been someone with whom we've found much common ground here at DWT. He was a very conservative House member and he is a very conservative senator. But unlike most Republicans in Congress, Flake isn't a coward when it comes to the execrable Señor Trumpanzee.

Although educated women in the Texas Republican heartland-- the suburban belts around Houston, San Antonio, Austin and Dallas-Fort Worth-- have turned against Señor Trumpanzee, the Washington Post/Survey Monkey poll released yesterday that shows Hillary leading in the Lone Star State shouldn't be taken to mean she's actually going to win Texas' 38 electoral college votes; she's not.

This morning, I was speaking with one of the congressional candidates Blue America is most enthusiastic about this cycle, Paul Clements from southwest Michigan. He's running for the seat held by Energy Committee chairman Fred Upton (MI-06) and he told me that "the biggest holes in investment in America, if we were going to promote broad-based economic growth, are in infrastructure and education.

One ominous development we've been watching with alarm this cycle is the DCCC's systematic discounting of the public's preferences in primaries. It seems that every time a progressive wins, the DCCC decides the district is "not winnable" and they immediately abandon the winner and the district.