IL-03

When you accept an endorsement from the Blue Dogs, you're enabling thisHow do you know when a member of Congress is a Republican pretending to be a Democrat? Well, one is is when you catch them voting with the GOP to kick 700,000 low income people off healthcare. But let's start with the good news: on Friday morning Congress finally voted to reauthorize the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) that they had allowed to lapse.

Progressive Democrat Marie Newman is running against Blue Dog Dan LipinskiOne of the hardest tasks in politics is primarying an entrenched incumbent. Some of Blue America's grandest days was helping reformers oust corrupt conservative Democrats Tom Holden (PA), Al Wynn (MD) and Sylvestre Reyes (TX), launching congressional careers for, respectively, Matt Cartwright, Donna Edwards and Beto O'Rourke.

One of the hardest and most thankless tasks in electoral politics is primarying an entrenched incumbent of one's own party. No matter how corrupt and awful the incumbent, the party establishment always rallies round the colleague and heaps abuse on the challenger.

In his Rolling Stone essay after Gianforte beat Quist in Montana Thursday night, The Democrats Need A New Message, Matt Taibbi included a litany of excuses the DC Dems always have on hand to explain why they've been losing all the time-- even to monstrosities like Gianforte, Staten Island Mafia thug Michael Grimm, patient-raping-doctor Scott Desj

When Dan Lipinski inherited his father's Southside Chicago district in 2004, he hadn't lived in Illinois in 15 years. He was a Tennessee conservative-- eventually he even voted for Tennessee Blue Dog Jim Cooer as Speaker instead of Nancy Pelosi-- but returned "home" to hold the family fiefdom. It's widely acknowledged that his corrupt father manipulated and subverted the Democratic process to get him into the seat.

Do you get excited that Trump's approval ratings keep sinking and sinking in most polls? How about how much Americans dislike the congressional Republicans? Nice, huh? But, you realize, of course, that those same Americans rate the congressional Democrats almost as badly. Sometimes just 1 point better. The Democrats seem to revel in the idea of being the lesser of two evils and even seeing how far they can push the "evil" thing without being seen as worse-- or even just as bad-- as the Republicans.