Katie Hill

The other day I was talking with a first-time Democratic candidate who has a bit of a reputation as a centrist, although he insist-- at least to me-- that he's a progressive. I'm not persuaded. He says he's kind of, sort of good with Medicare-For-All but there's no way he'd say he's going to co-sponsor John Conyers Medicare-For-All bill.

I've been mad at the DCCC since Pelosi named Rahm Emanuel chairman in 2005. It's barely over a decade and other people are starting to catch on as well.

The vote in the House Tuesday evening was 231-190. Every Republican but Walter Jones of North Carolina voted to hamper the ability of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to protect bank customers from the kinds of systemic abuse and predatory behavior that led directly to Bush's Great Recession and destroyed the financial stability of millions of American families.

Just over 10 years ago I started a series of on-line interviews for candidates Blue America was working with and it went for several cycles until I just became too bored with it to continue. But in its heyday it was a blast and an opportunity for Blue America donors to ask questions of the candidates we were asking them to contribute to.

As you know, both the DCCC and the NRCC-- if anything, the DCCC is even worse than the Republicans on this-- look for rich candidates who don't have to worry about the financial repercussions of not working for 12-18 months during an election cycle.

Yesterday, Bob Goodlatte's racist, xenophobic, Trumpist Kate's Law (H.R. 3004) passed the House. It should have been called O'Reilly's Law, since it was all his idea. In fact, the House passed two Trumpist garbage bills yesterday-- Kate's Law and Goodlatte's No Sanctuary for Criminals Act (H.R. 3003).

Last cycle the DCCC recruited some guy into CA-25 from Orange County. He had never set foot in the Santa Clarita, Antelope Valley, Simi Valley district before the DCCC decided to shove the local activist out of the race and install this Beverly Hills lawyer. The result was tragic and very predictable. IN a blue-trending suburban swing district, Hillary Clinton beat Trump handily-- 50.3% to 43.6%, a nice solid win, where Romney had beaten Obama by 2 points in 2012. But the congressional race was a mess for the DCCC's hapless interloper.

You know what scares me? That I might not be representing a Blue America candidate accurately enough, that I miss up on something important. That’s one of the reasons I encourage them to write guest posts. It’s why I’m always asking them for substantive quotes on issues before Congress.

Remember how well Trump's coattails worked out for Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire?We still have a year and a half before the 2018 midterm election day and I feel confident we'll be seeing a LOT more stories like the one Politico's Jake Sherman wrote to start this week off:

The new issue of the Harvard Business Review carried an adaptation by urbanologist Richard Florida from his new book, The New Urban Crisis, warning about "a sterile sameness" that's been hard to miss taking over cities we all used to love and feel inspired by. I don't think Florida is as worried about it as I am...