Eric Kingson

Steve Israel was trying to sell his own toxic brand of snake oil in Syracuse last nightAs we've been explaining-- basically, since 2005 or '06-- that the DCCC's governing strategies about recruitment and support are fatally flawed. Picking Republican-lite candidates who, if they manage to win in a presidential year, and then vote with the GOP on core issues ,is not a good idea.

As we've been discussing for the last month or so-- and despite the indisputable fact that real costs the seniors have to spend (housing, medical, food...) have been rising-- next year will see no Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) for Social Security beneficiaries. Progressives in Congress-- as opposed to Republicans or Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party (the New Dems and Blue Dogs)-- are furious that seniors are being kicked to the curb.

This week the DCCC is having a series of meetings to introduce their favored candidates to incumbents, lobbyists and other DCCC supporters. Tonight they're throwing a big dinner at an event space for lobbyists and both political parties, the Oracle Townhouse on D Street.

Monday Paul Krugman used his column to explain why-- after 80 years-- Republicans are still working to wreck Social Security. Americans love Social Security and it's not a smart move to try to undermine it...

Eric Kingson and his grandson, SammyNY-24, the congressional district centered on Syracuse, is the bluest district (D+5) in the entire country represented by a Republican-- thanks in no small part to the deranged insistence from the DCCC that only conservative DINOs should run there.

A few weeks ago Blue America endorsed Eric Kingson, co-founder of Social Security Works, for the Syracuse-based congressional seat (NY-24), just a few weeks after GOP presidential hopeful Jeb Bush started espousing raising the retirement age and a few weeks before he started calling for a phasing out of Medicare and an end to the American social safety net-- i.e., the Paul Ryan plan.

A couple of months ago Blue America urged Eric Kingson, a nationally known Social Security expert and advocate and a professor of Social Work at Syracuse University, to run for the upstate NY congressional district centered around Syracuse, NY-24.

New York's 24th Congressional District-- basically Syracuse plus a chunk of central New York from Oswego to the Finger Lakes to Rochester's eastern suburbs-- turned blue in the '90s. The PVI is D+1 and Obama beat McCain 56-42% and then beat Romney by an even greater margin, 57-41%. The Democratic congressman, Dan Maffei, was a wishy-washy New Dem who never embraced core progressive values and tended to vote with the GOP on crucial roll calls too frequently for grassroots Dems to countenance.