Allan Hoffenblum, a Republican consultant in California politics since the Nixon era, told the NY Times that “Until we solve our Latino problem, we’re not going to be a viable state party, and it’s hard to understand how that’s possible without fixing immigration.” The Times explains what everyone in California is already well-aware of:
After John Murtha died, his chief of staff/in-house thug, John Hugya, became a lobbyist and a shooting range owner. Today he is a 79 year old NRA fanatic, stinking of Beltway corruption, who wants his old boss' seat in Congress, PA-12.
For Democrats, this is the problem, not the solution-- Israel and GarrisonIn his Sunday column, The Wonk Gap, Paul Krugman highlighted "the G.O.P.’s near-complete lack of expertise on anything substantive.
Financiers of the far right's anti-democracy jihad: 2 KochsElizabeth Drew, in a fascinating piece for the NY Review of Books, The Stranglehold on Our Politics, talks about the determinative properties of voter turnout in midterm elections. Normally turnout sinks from between 51.7 to 61.6% for presidential elections into the high 30s for midterms.
The DCCC has been howling for 3 days about how Staten Island Gambino crime family congressman, Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm was first for war and then anti-war. "He changed his mind, he changed his mind" has been the constant, annoying refrain, although they haven't said anything about Ami Bera (D-CA) doing exactly the same thing.
Chris Stewart's Utah congressional district-- the 2nd-- is gigantic, basically most of the western part of the state and almost half the southern part of the state. But most of the population is in the far northeast corner of the district, the northern part of Salt Lake City, the city's western suburbs and West Valley.
Last month we looked at how an unabashedly right-wing, anti-immigration Republican can win in a swing district with a pretty heavy Hispanic population. We're talking about New Mexico's gigantic 2nd district and multimillionaire extremist Stevan Pearce. The last Democrat who Pearce defeated, a one-term incumbent, was nearly as conservative as Pearce.
Leaving out redistricting's incumbent vs incumbent primaries, in 2012 only 22 incumbents lost their House seats. Not one of them was a progressive. Every single one of them was a conservative. Only two Democrats were challenged by non-incumbents in primaries, Blue Dog Tim Holden (PA) and ConservaDem Silvestre Reyes (TX).
