2014 congressional races

This morning, Quinnipiac released a poll that shows Americans continue to view Democrats in Congress as the lesser of two evils, with a negative 30 - 60% approval rating, compared to a negative 18 - 73% score for Republicans. 46% want Democrats to take over the House, while 45% want GOP control.

Yesterday Steve Israel was crowing on Twitter how 4 powerful senior Republican committee chairmen are retiring (Doc Hastings, Mike Rogers, Buck McKeon and, now, Dave Camp). What his tweets conspicuously left out, of course, is that Israel didn't recruit any candidates against them and actually undermined candidates who ran against Rogers and McKeon last cycle.

Blue America reached and surpassed our March goals for most of our candidates. Today's the last day of the month. We can make up for the contributions we didn't deliver next month. But, if you're inspired by all the spam from the DCCC and their dreadful candidates to give to candidates who would represent our values in Congress, these are the candidates we fell a little short on. Actually, first, these are the candidates where we hit the goals:

Last week, you may recall, Blue America did a end-of-the-quarter fundraiser for our House candidates. The name of one of the most generous contributors looked vaguely familiar, so I looked him up. Steven H. Levinson was a judge on the Hawaii Supreme Court and the reason why I had his name in my memory bank was because he authored the lead opinion in Baehr vs. Lewin, the first-ever court ruling to determine that denying marriage to same-sex couples was discriminatory.

Good riddance to corrupt McCarthyite stooge Mike Rogers (left)For whatever reason, Steve Israel has a policy at the DCCC-- Thou Shalt Not Contest Elelections Against Senior Republican Policy Makers. No matter how vulnerable the districts, Israel has not allowed the DCCC to go after any committee chairs last cycle or this cycle.

I met state Senator Ted Lieu at John Amato's birthday dinner a few weeks ago. I didn't know a lot about him-- just that he's one of the hard-working progressives in the state legislature and that he infuriated the banksters by writing and passing-- it took two sessions-- a consumer protection bill that stopped shady mortgage come-ons dead in their tracks.

Republicans know they will never win the CA-17 congressional seat. It's way too educated, way too blue for them, D+20. So wealthy GOP plutocrats are bankrolling a sleazy, conservative fake Democrat, Ro Khanna to run against beloved progressive icon Mike Honda. It won't work any more than Khanna's past ridiculous races against Democrats Tom Lantos and Pete Stark.

Blues in a good way though. We don't like making a big fuss about these arbitrary reporting quarters, as though they have any kind of intrinsic value. It's just a Beltway subterfuge Blue America prefers to ignore. Except not this quarter. We're embracing it.

If you ever donate to Democratic candidates or committees, for the rest of this week, you are likely to be bombarded with with hysterical, desperate spam from the DCCC, DSCC and their myriad candidates.

Despite the hairdo, Susanne Atanus is not from EMILY's ListEvery good progressive deserves their own opponent like Susanne Atanus. Recall that last January we had a chuckle over the crackpots running against Jan Schakowsky in her Evanston, Wilmette, Winnetka, Des Plaines, Arlington Heights district (IL-09).