Mostly uninteresting run-of-the-mill candidates who will make no difference to anyone won their primaries, but not entirely. Let's start with some good news in North Carolina. Durham County has just over 310,000 people, one of North Carolina's most populous. Last night the county elected the first African-American in its history, Clarence Birkhead, who beat the racist incumbent , Mike Andrews. And he beat him in a landslide-- 69-31%.
It's primary day in West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana and North Carolina, all states Trump won in 2016, but all staes with pockets of resistance and all states with lots and lots of buyers' remorse. There should be plenty of interesting results up and down the ballots in November when Democrats go up against Republicans. But today is the day when each party picks which candidates.
A week from tomorrow 2 crucial congressional primaries will be playing out-- one on Indiana's 9th district and one in North Carolina's 5th district.
A campaign manager I've worked with on a few campaigns in the past has been asking for for the last few days to consider endorsing the candidate he's working with this time. The candidate doesn't seem bad and it's a winnable race. There are 4 Democrats competing for the nomination and the DCCC isn't involved so they all seem somewhat progressive. His candidate doesn't seem financially competitive-- but when have we ever allowed that to determine supporting someone. The newly redrawn district has counties that went for Bernie and counties that backed Hillary.
On Monday, journalist and author Jonathan Tasini wrote a "Dear colleagues" letter about bias in mainstream journalism, especially in the coverage of economics. It impressed me so much that I asked him if I could publish it here at DWT. He graciously agreed.Mainstream/traditional journalism is replete with examples of bias and utter cluelessness when it comes to economics.
There have been rumors circulating for months that one of the planks of Bernie's 2020 platform will be Job Guarantee. This week the Levy Institute at Bard College published a paper that could well be the intellectual underpining of that plank, Public Service Employment-- A Path To Full Employment by distinguished economists L. Randall Wray, Stephanie A.
On Thursday evening the Houston Chronicle reported that when Blake Farenthold slithered out of Congress last week he did so without repaying the $84,000 he stole from the taxpayers to cover up the charges that he had sexually harassed a female staffer.
Because Blue America has spent years trying to defeat Paul Ryan, about a year ago we got two consecutive call, one from former Ryan opponent and one from state Senator Chis Larson, asking me to call a very politicized progressive union iron worker in Racine County and help persuade him to run against Ryan. The Wisconsin Working Families Party had already done the heavy lift and they just needed me to push Randy Bryce over the edge.
I asked several members of Congress about the DCCC's reticence to take on Trump. Most didn't want to be quoted by name. One e-mailed me "I don’t want to be quoted on this, but you’re absolutely right, and the deeper problem is that this is part of the socialization process that leads even good candidates to become worthless pieces of crap upon election. Ann Kuster, for instance-- she could have gone either way.
