Jamie Raskin

Last week, we predicted that Pelosi would appoint the biggest Wall Street shill among the new freshmen, Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), to the biggest fount of congressional corruption, the House Financial Services Committee.

Last year, one of the very first candidates Blue America endorsed for Congress was Jamie Raskin, a Maryland state Senator and constitutional law professor at American University. We knew him from his work as a counsel at People for the American Way and as the very skilled and successful majority whip in the state legislature.

Yesterday we all read that life expectancy-- particularly for the American working class-- has dropped.

I've never seen as many self-funders running for House seats with million dollar checks from their own accounts as I'm seeing this year. We looked into it a couple weeks ago and I'm sure everyone knows by now that David Trone's $12 million didn't buy him anything but second place.

It was pretty awesome that Democratic primary voters in PA-07 (the suburbs south and southwest of Philly) so thoroughly rejected the DCCC-recruited candidate Tuesday and voted massively for Elizabeth Warren-wing local progressive Mary Ellen Balchunis. Local Delaware County Democrats were as pissed off about DCCC heavy-handed interference as Democrats are all over the country. And in PA-07 they expressed that by voting 51,525 (73.8%) for Balchunis to 18,276 (26.2%) for the DCCC's wealthy handpicked outsider, Bill Golderer.

Yesterday Bernie drew 43.6% at the polls in Pennsylvania and John Fetterman, the Senate candidate who had endorsed him and was running on his platform, drew a mere 19.3% of the vote (better than most polling had been predicting but still less than half of Bernie's voters). In Maryland Bernie took just 33.3% of the vote, while Donna Edwards only got 38.8%. Although Donna and Bernie were running on a similar progressive package of issues and values, she had endorsed Hillary.

Donna Edwards, Jamie Raskin, the pride of MarylandTuesday is the first day of early voting in the Maryland Democratic primaries. Blue America is strongly backing three candidates in the April 26-- Donna Edwards for the open U.S.

A lot of Democratic coalition Beltway organizations are reluctant to endorse in primaries, a terrible tactical error. But in the case of Maryland's 8th district, the choices are starkly clear... and so is the danger and organizations that would rather not, are stepping up to the plate.

-by Jeffrey HearnWhen Zephyr Teachout called Kathleen Matthews a corporate lobbyist, it clearly struck a nerve. The occasion was an endorsement of Jamie Raskin, the progressive who is Matthews' chief rival for the Democratic nomination in Maryland's Eighth congressional district, by MAYDAY.US, the Super PAC dedicated to advancing campaign finance reform by attracting grassroots support to "champions of democracy" who can be counted on to lead the fight for such reform in Congress.

It's becoming harder and harder to watch MSNBC election coverage. I find myself flipping the channel whenever Chris Matthews comes on. His brand of corporate, establishment conservatism colors everything he says. His sly, vicious little jihad against Bernie has been turning more and more Bernie supporters off to MSNBC entirely. I honestly have no idea who Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell or Chris Hayes leans towards, if anyone.