Friday evening the Washington Post ran an editorial, Scott Pruitt Is Unfit To Serve. That should surprise anyone. He was unfit to serve as Oklahoma Attorney General and many people think he was Trump’s worst cabinet pick, or tied for worst with Betsy DeVos. But he’s getting hammered not for his earth-destroying agenda but for his swampy ethical problems. He thinks he’s president or king and behaves that way.
Ever since Rahm Emanuel was handed the reins of the DCCC-- the beginning of Pelosi's downfall as a force for good-- this blog has spent a good deal of time exploring what's wrong with that organization. In the last few weeks the eruptions have been so frequent and vitriolic that DCCC-connected congressmen and staffers have been asking me to cool it and one even called a friend of mine and asked him what they had to do to stop.
Kara Eastman is the newest Blue America endorsee. She told us that when she was nine, she told her mother that she wanted to save the world; when she was 15, she told her best friend that she was going to a college that would best prepare her to help others (she told Kara that wasn’t smart because she would never make any money).
Blue Dog John Barrow (GA) is a putz. He never belonged in Congress and never accomplished anything while he was there. After his Democratic constituents saw the ad above, they abandoned him and he lost his seat, since Republicans int appealed to had their own candidate. Pelosi and the DCCC never gave up on Barrow. When he was finally defeated, the DCCC wasted $2,382,846 trying to save him. Pelosi kicked in another $194,510 from her own SuperPAC.
For too many people "but better than Trump" just wasn't enough motivationUntil just now, I have avoided going to the Blue America endorsement page and counting how many woman are on it, how many people of color, how many from the LGBT community.
According to a Gallup survey released a week ago, Trump's overall jon approval is 38% and his disapproval is 56%. What does that tell us for the midterms 9 months from now? Not all that much, primarily because despite Trump's overall poor showing, it's in states that senators and governors are elected and in congressional districts where House members are reelected, not nationally.
Ostensibly they're both Democrats-- similarly to the way Chicagoland Blue Dog Dan Lipinski and progressive reformer Marie Newman are both Democrats. By in this Omaha case there's an even starker contrast. As far as we know, Lipinski wasn't ever an actual Republican. Brad Ashford, on the other hand was a Republican . He served in the Legislature from 1987 to 1995 and again from 2007 to 2015. He was a registered Republican and opportunistically, he switched his registration to the Democratic Party when he was termed out of his seat in the legislature and decided to run for Congress.
Frank Schaeffer is continuing his roadtrip, meeting progressive congressional candidate and filming them as introductions of the best candidates running. Last we caught up with him was in Lewiston, Maine where he spent a day Jared Golden, the progressive candidate running for the swing district that isn't the Portland coastal area. From there he headed off to Omaha where he met with Kara Eastman.
After the odious Debbie Wasserman Schultz chaired the DCCC's Red-to-Blue program in 2008-- while endorsing 3 Republicans in seats neighboring on her own-- the program lost all credibility and the name faded.
As you probably know, the Blue Dogs, New Dems and DCCC are all furiously pushing Brad Ashford on Omaha voters again. Ashford, an opportunist who changes parties like normal people change underwear, was one of the 3 worst Democrats in the House for his one miserable term. Having been fired from his new job, he decided to jump into a race he can probably win in an anti-GOP wave, but not hold in a normal midterm.
