IL-10 Dems Schneider & RoteringYesterday 4 generally conservative Democrats-- Heidi Heitkamp (ND), Bob Casey (PA), Joe Manchin (WV) and Joe Donnelly (IN)-- voted with the GOP to end the Senate Democrats' filibuster of an anti-human trafficking bill that includes anti-Choice provisions. Even with supposedly pro-Choice Maine Senator Susan Collins voting with her own party on this, the final vote, 55-43 wasn't enough to shut down the filibuster.People wonder how we wind up with Democrats like these. It's easy enough to make excuses for conservaDems in red states like West Virginia and North Dakota, but Democrats could have/should have done a lot better in Pennsylvania, where progressives don't have pander to bigots, haters and anti-Choice fanatics to get elected. But the Democratic Beltway Establishment never learned that lesson and is always encouraging the worst Democrats to run for office. This year, the DSCC is encouraging horrible conservative candidates, like Patrick Murphy in Florida and Bill Foster in Illinois, to run for the Senate, after watching them vote with Republicans over and over and over for two terms. Florida and Illinois are not red states.The DCCC is, if anything, even worse than the DSCC. With anti-family/pro-Big Business millionaire New Dem Denny Heck as chairman of the Recruitment Committee (which also includes Blue Dogs Steve Israel and Cheri Bustos and New Dems Ann Kuster and Terri Sewell), they've been doing a dreadful job all cycle, encouraging an especially wretched batch of horrible conservative candidates like "former" Republican Monica Vernon (IA), pro-business lobbyist tool Isidore Hall (CA) and defeated Blue Dog Pete Gallego (TX).The DCCC especially loves conservative losers former colleagues who were defeated the cycle before. They're trying to recruit plenty of them. One, for example, is Wall Street shill New Dem Brad Schneider, who managed to lose a district gerrymandered by the Democratic legislature to elect Democrats. The PVI is D+8, the bluest district won by a Republican in 2014. In 2012, when Schneider beat incumbent Robert Dold-- the one who came back and beat him last November-- he only won, and just barely (50.6-49.4%), because Obama was at the top of the ticket. Out of 264,000 votes cast, Schneider only managed to win by around 3,000 votes. In 2014, Dold beat him 93,984 (51.6%) to 88.010 (48.4%), Schneider having catered to Republicans for 2 years and turned off the Democratic base, many of whom just stayed home. But the DCCC thinks it's smart to run him again-- even though a far better candidate, Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering, has already declared her candidacy.I spoke with Nancy yesterday a few hours after he announced and her campaign seems to be all about her how her local experience working to expand and protect middle can translate on a national level. "You can't change the gridlock in DC," she told me, "by electing the same people over andover again... The rate of poverty in the suburbs has been growing rapidly-- in this district and across the countrt-- and that's something that has to be addressed seriously on a national level... To expand the middle class we need to provide constant, sufficient education across the entire district. Fair wages are critical. 81% of SNAP recipients have at least one full time employee in the family. What does that say about wages?" We'll be hearing more from Nancy as the primary unfolds.
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