Although there are rumors that South Jersey machine boss George Norcross is toying wit the idea of replacing Jeff Van Drew with Patrick Kennedy as the Democratic nominee for the second district seat, so far Van Drew has no primary opponent, just a 3 Republicans trying to get to the right of him, no easy task.
Cheri Bustos with pals Rahm Emanuel and Debbie Wasserman SchultzWhen Pelosi gave her new DCCC chair, Cheri Bustos (Blue Dog-IL), the thumbs up to undercut challengers in primaries, Pelosi, Hoyer, Bustos and all their corrupt conservative robots ran to the media-- too lame, as usual, to check-- screeching about how they had to protect "the majority makers." The majority makers, they insist, are the freshmen who beat Rep
In his State of the Union interview Sunday with Jake Tapper, Justin Amash (I-MI), Amash was steadfast in his position that it isn't Trump-- who he obviously detests-- that caused him to leaved the GOP but Congress itself. He told Tapper he had made the decision to leave the party before he called for Congress to begin the impeachment process and before Mueller issued his report. While Tapper kept trying to get him to say something negative about Trump, Amash wanted to make the point that he "had concerns with the Republican Party for several years.
Although it was certainly predictable, Katie Porter has been distinguishing herself as one of the best of the 2018 freshmen. She joined the progressive caucus, dominates on his committee and avoided the sleazy Wall Street-allied New Dems and Blue Dogs. So... she's exactly what the DCCC wasn't looking for. And they predicted it too-- which is why all their primary heft lined up behind weak centrist and corporate shill Dave Min, an especially bad candidate the DCCC loved but voters didn't.
The joke's on usI’d like to take at least a little credit for preventing Debbie Wasserman Schultz from becoming DCCC Chair after Rahm. If you ask her, she’ll tell you that I got her fired as chair of the DCCC recruitment committee. She actually asked a friend of mine in Congress what it would take to get me to stop writing about her.
All My Sons And Daughters by Alejandro CartaginaRachel Cohen and Ryan Grim have been keeping an eye on reactionary anti-democracy Blue Dog— and DCCC chair— Cheri Bustos. Bustos is working overtime to disadvantage the progressive movement… but not effective pushback from the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which didn’t even bother to run a candidate against her when she moved— successfully— to grab the DCCC chair.
On Monday, Vox published a strong piece by Tara Golshan about the establishment Democrats' uncomfortable dilemma over Lipinski: The Democratic Party is protecting one of its last anti-abortion members in a safe blue district.
In 2018, the DCCC timidly and reluctantly got behind a tepid centrist, Andrew Janz, in the Central Valley race to unseat Trump enabler Devin Nunes. On the first day after his announcement, I spoke to Janz and he volunteered that the two issues that were motivating him to run were the death penalty-- he said it needs to be used more frequently-- and the Second Amendment-- he said it needed to be protected.
