2016 congressional races

When Blue America polled issues that would motivate suburban voters to support our progressive candidates around the country, we found gun safety high on every list in every single district. Based on that, two of our mobile billboards, on in NV-04 (North Las Vegas) and one in NY-02 (Long Island's South Shore), are all about gun safety. The DCCC has talked a good game on this but DCCC head Ben Ray Lujan is a quiet backer of gun groups and is one of the few Democrats in the House still taking bribes from gun manufacturers and their lobbyists.

The DCCC never goes after powerful GOP chairmen and the DCCC never looks outside the box towards districts to expand the electoral map, unless, that is, its to promote a shill from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party (a New Dem or Blue Dog). But early in the cycle Blue America saw a shot for dedicated Berniecrat, Tom Wakely running against Lamar Smith in TX-21.

When Doug Applegate came for his Blue America interview, he brought his campaign manager, Robert Dempsey, the guy who ran Bernie's very successful Minnesota campaign-- where Bernie beat Hillary 118,135 (61.6%) to 73,510 (38.4%), winning every single congressional district in the state.

I don't know which e-mails leaked by Wikileaks are real and which are Russian propaganda, which are doctored or which are actual evidence of something-- like John Podesta's refreshingly healthy interest in extrater

Let's start with a guest post from Janet Garrett, a progressive retired school teacher taking on far right extremist Jim Jordan in Ohio's very gerrymandered deep red 4th district, carefully drawn to avoid "the contagion" of Cleveland, Dayton, Columbus and Toledo.

Huge amounts of money is being spent between today and next Tuesday in hot congressional races, much of it on negative TV ads, negative TV ads that tend to cancel themselves out and have a net impact of zero.

Sick of poisonous garbage like Wasserman Schultz? Here's an antidoteGetting rid of powerful Republican policy-makers is something the DCCC doesn't ever even try to do. Even though the NRCC ruthlessly-- and sometimes successfully-- targets Democratic leaders and committee chairs, the DCCC virtually never targets GOP leaders or committee chairs.

The new Reuters/Ipsos battleground state polls that came out this morning, show ties in the presidential match-ups in Ohio (45-45%) and Nevada (40-40%) but show Clinton with leads in Wisconsin (47-42%), North Carolina (48-44%), Florida (49-45%), Arizona (43-42%), Iowa (44-42%), New Hampshire (44-40%), Michigan (41-37%), Pennsylvania (48-46%), Virginia (48-39%), Minnesota (41-37%) and Colorado (46-43%).

It's been a downbeat election cycle and the NY Times' down-ballot endorsements yesterday reflect it. The highlight was an endorsement of Zephyr Teachout-- kind of a no-brainer compared to John Faso, a crooked lobbyist propped up by modern-day robber baron hedge fund managers Paul Singer and Robert Mercer. "Ms.

Michigan is another state about which Trump boasted, early and often, that he would win. It was in the bag. Obama won the state against McCain 57-41% and against Romney 54-45% but Trump assumed his racist clarion call to "poorly educated" white workers would win him the state. It hasn't been working out that way. The RealClearPolitics polling average shows Hillary beating him by 6 points. In fact, Hillary is beating Trump in every Michigan county Obama won and in 4 counties that Romney won: Menominee, Benzie, Berrien & Lenawee counties.