Donna Edwards

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.

Maryland State Senator Jamie RaskinEveryone is looking at the scramble among Maryland Democrats to replace Barbara Mikulski in the U.S. Senate. But do you recall what happened when a bunch of House incumbents in Georgia found out that Saxby Chambliss had decided to retire from the Senate? 7 Republican congressmen started rumbling over the seat. In the end Tom Price, Rob Woodall, Lynn Westmoreland and Austin Scott decided-- wisely-- to back away.

Donna Edwards has had to fight her own party's entrenched Establishment before. In fact... every step of the way.

Yesterday, Blue America launched a Draft Donna Edwards Act Blue page and all Blue America members got this email from us:

Despite nonsense from the Beltway media, the only "surprise" about Barbara Mikulski's retirement announcement yesterday was that she made it yesterday. There was no chance she was running for another term. She'll have served in the Senate for thirty years (the longest-serving woman in the history of Congress, when you recall that she was also in the House for a decade, from 1977-1987).

Gwen Graham had an exciting first week in Congress-- thanks, EMILY's ListJust a few days into the new Congress and we're starting to get a clearer picture of which Democrats are delighted to sell out Democratic values and principles... and the interests of their own constituents for their own personal agendas.

We live in a political system where Congress shirks it's clear and unambiguous responsibility to declare war. Instead we get military actions of dubious legality and with superficial public support, which often quickly sours. Thursday the House came as close as they do to debating and voting for war. Disguised as H.R.

New DCCC Chairman, Ben Ray LujanTomorrow the Republican conference-- presumably all the old members who are staying on next year plus the class of 2014-- will vote of the recommendations of the Republican Steering Committee for committee chairs. There are 20 members of the steering committee but Boehner, as Speaker, gets 5 votes and Kevin McCarthy, as Leader gets 2 votes. Everybody else gets one vote. As far as I could piece it together, these are the other members:

You may remember Nate Shinagawa as one of Blue America's top candidates for Republican Tom Reed's NY-23 seat southern and central New York, which stretches from Jamestown to Elmira and up to Ithaca and Geneva. The PVI is R+3 but Obama won narrowly against McCain in 2008 and lost narrowly to Romney in 2012.

Isn't it time for an actual progressive DCCC chair?People are starting to care about who Pelosi selects as the next DCCC chair. Given her track record for picking DCCC chairs, she's the last person in the world who should have that task. But Rahm won so many seats, you say? He recruited a pack of anti-working class Blue Dogs, presided over a wave election, and almost all of his awful GOP-voting recruits were subsequently defeated or forced to resign before being defeated.