2020 congressional elections

  This ad the Sunrise Movement just released to assist Mike Siegel win TX-10 from Trump appendage Michael McCaul, is going to be part of the visual history of the 2020 election-- and one of the best ads of the year. The brand new polling released yesterday show Mike and McCaul tied. Hopefully the Sunrise Movement ad will help enthuse more voters to get out and support Mike. Although... Travis County, the biggest in Mike's district, doesn't need much more enthusiasm than it already has.

  Let's remember on November 4 that as late as mid-October, DC prognosticators were still predicting, on average, that the GOP would lose about 7 seats in the House.

  One of my childhood homes was on East 17th Street between Avenues O and P in Brooklyn. Manny Cellar was the powerful congressman from that district from 1923, long before I was born, to 1973, long after I had moved away. The district has been redrawn many time since then and it is divided between the current 8th (Hakeem Jeffries), 9th (Yvette Clarke) and 11th (Max Rose) districts. About 2 blocks from my old house, Yvette Clarke's district ends and Max Rose's begins-- the corner of East 15th Street and Avenue P.

  Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer noted what they termed a remarkable fact in their Politico column yesterday: Señor Trumpanzee and Pelosi haven't spoken since she ripped up his State of the Union speech last October. Suddenly, though, "their incentives are aligned: they both want a massive Covid deal in an unthinkably quick timeframe. This may happen, it may not, but both sides seem to be rowing toward the same goal at the moment.

  Republicans have controlled Texas for too long and have grown comfortable enough to overlook arrogance and embrace corruption. It's time for them to be put out to pasture. Many Texas voters-- particularly in the suburbs and exurbs around Dallas-Ft Worth, Houston, Austin and San Antonio-- are sick of Trump and giving up on his enablers.

  Republicans in Congress are preparing to triage Trump-- but not Amy Coney Island Baby. That's the hill they all seem happily willing to die on, a hill that symbolizes anti-Choice fanaticism, anti-healthcare mania, a pro-corporate and anti-regulatory extremism and, of course, the religious bigotry the GOP has wrapped itself in over the past two decades.

 Courtesy of Republicans Against Kat Cammack I follow-- pretty closely-- the FL-03 congressional race, so I can't say that the report that came across my desk yesterday is as shocking for me as it might be for regular Florida voters.

  We've been writing extensively about Trump's electoral toxicity for 4 years. I checked and noticed that I started using the tag "toxicity of Donald Trump" in early June, 2016. Now, as election day 2020 approaches, Republican operatives and funders have largely given up on Trump himself and are freaking out over how to save down-ballot Republicans in places that haven't been truly competitive in the recent past.

  Two of the members of Congress I respect most, Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Jamie Raskin (D-MD) are in safe blue districts and have been working their asses off to elect other Democrats to Congress. Sometimes, it drives me crazy, though, that they are working to elect all Democrats-- from complete garbage like Oklahoma Blue Dog Kendra Horn to the top progressive challengers across the country.

What's worse? This or supporting another dynast?  The New Dems, even more so that the withered and impotent Blue Dogs, are the heart of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. They are Wall Street and corporate-America sell outs and have more in common with Eisenhower-era Republicans than they do with progressive Democrats.