courageousness

Yes, Republicans check their spines at the front door-- but many Dems do tooLate Wednesday afternoon there was an interesting vote in the House. It was a GOP procedural move to prevent the Democrats from passing Pete DeFazio's infrastructure bill. The bill itself

Blue America hasn't endorsed many candidates for governor this year. Governors, like senators, tend to be a little too establishment, a little too conservative-- and not leaders so much as managers. We just added a third-- Andru Volinsky of New Hampshire-- to our short list.

Everyone I know has come to absolutely hate Mayo Pete, mostly due to the fact that he's a plastic phony careerist running for president because of himself, not because of the American people. Was he always such a creep? When he was a senior in high school closeted young Pete won the John F Kennedy Presidential Library's annual Profiles in Courage Essay Contest. This was Mayo Pete in 2000.

Saturday morning, I pointed out on Twitter that though Pelosi managed to hold the entire Democratic caucus together to pass H.R.-3, her rather weak drug price reduction bill, just before the vote, the Republicans offered a way to kill the legislation via a Motion to Recommit.

I talk to candidates all day, 7 days a week. I'm so sick of hearing from "progressives" who back Medicare-for-All but are afraid to say the words... or of Democrats who believe in the Green New Deal as much as I do but have been counseled to not use the term or to speak out about it too much.

Three freshmen members of Congress who no one in their right mind will ever accuse of being courageous are Kim Schier (New Dem-WA), Elaine Luria (New Dem-VA) and Colin Allred (D-TX). Schrier's district is 72.3% suburban, the rest being about equally urban and rural. Luria's is over 95% urban and suburban; just 4.5% rural. And Allred's is 100% urban and suburban-- no rural precincts at all.

Blue America's newest endorsee is Jason Butler, the progressive candidate taking on reactionary Trump enabler George Holding in a North Carolina red district (NC-02) that has started trending purple. Last cycle, Holding only eked out a bare 51.3% win-- in a district where Obama lost both times and where Trump beat Hillary by over 10 points!

Civiqs just released some fascinating state by state polling data on how registered voters view the way Trump has been performing in office. Nationally, 54% say they disapprove and 43% say they approve (July 23).

This morning, Mitt Romney told Jake Tapper on CNN that he doesn't feel the Senate is ready to remove Trump but that Justin Amash was courageous when he called for Trump's impeachment. "I respect him. I think it’s a courageous statement. But I believe that to make a case for obstruction of justice, you just don’t have the elements that are evidenced in this document... The American people just aren’t there. And I think those who are considering impeachment also have to look at the jury, which would be the Senate.

As you can see in the video above, on Thursday-- 6 days after a completely garden variety, typical Trump supporter went on a shooting rampage and slaughtered 50 Muslims worshipping in 2 mosques-- New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced an immediate ban on all military-style semiautomatic weapons and assault rifles, along with a government buy-back program. Many have noted how different that quick and decisive decision by New Zealand's government was in comparison to the inability of the U.S.