Donna Edwards is giving up a safe congressional seat in a deep blue district (MD-04) in Prince George's County, where Obama won in 2012 with 78%, to run for the open Senate seat of one of her mentors, Barbara Mikulski. Last year Donna won her own reelection bid with 70%, the best of any incumbent in Maryland.
In the last couple of days Republicans Reid Ribble or Wisconsin and Stephen Fincher of Tennessee have announced they won't be running for reelection. No loss-- in either case-- although, the corrupt, incompetent, basically moribund DCCC has no candidates in either district. For more interesting was an announcement from a far more accomplished congressman, Elijah Cummings (D-MD), filed to run again which is a big deal because it was thought he might run for the U.S.
Anger at the DCCC is spreading. Well, anger at the DCCC has been huge for over a decade; that it's being talked about more openly and more aggressively at the grassroots level is what's different. Chris Van Hollen and Steve Israel lost dozens and dozens of Democratic House seats (incumbents) and ruined the chances of even more Democratic challengers trying to beat Republicans.
Chris Van Hollen, top Dem on the Budget Committee-- as slimy as any RepublicanAs you may have seen yesterday, I was going through the campaign contributions of the Members of Congress Wall Street likes best.
Bill Maher has told people that this Alan Grayson response to GOP hacks Nicolle Wallace and P.J. O'Rourke is the only instance of his Real Time audience ever giving one of his guests a standing ovation. And now there's a pretty good song based on it! Not a song, though, that the Senator from Wall Street, Chuck Schumer ($23,059,037), is likely to play at the next fundraising event he or one of his allies throws for Wall Street's pick for the open Florida senate seat, Patrick Murphy ($2,260,848). What are those number amounts next to their names?
Wall Street has picked its candidate for Maryland's open Senate seat: Establishment lackey Chris Van Hollen. He's their kind of Democrat and he's always played ball with them-- as they robbed his constituents blind. The Finance Industry has been very supportive of Van Hollen's career-- having put $1,584,364 into his political campaigns.
The video above, from a Democratic congressional conference introducing an expansion of Social Security, includes statements by two Maryland congressmembers who are running for the Senate: one, Donna Edwards, who you expect to see at this kind of announcement, and one, Chris Van Hollen, who was forced into coming because of earlier support for the Simpson-Bowles proposals that would have cut Social Security benefits. Van Hollen's support for cutting Social Security-- while Donna Edwards fought tooth and nail against Simpson-Bowles-- has become an issue in the Maryland Senate race.
Last month, when Barbara Mikulski announced she wouldn't be seeking reelection to the Senate in 2016, Blue America began a Draft Donna Edwards campaign. It was very successful in terms of helping inspire a dozen other groups to jump in on behalf of Donna and in helping start the very tough campaign fundraising slog Donna will face, and, of course, in helping persuade Donna to give up a safe House seat and try for the much tougher Senate race.
