Tuesday at midnight was the FEC deadline for campaigns to get their quarterly fundraising reports in. A few candidates got extensions for one reason or another. But I wanted to share a few bits and pieces with you. Before I get to the congressional races-- which is what I want to talk about-- I have one presidential factoid to make clear.
The Republican wing of the Democratic PartyA reminder: As soon as Blue Dog/New Dem Cheri Bustos grabbed the DCCC chair for herself, she instituted an aggressive new policy aimed at progressives challenging Blue Dogs and New Dems (like herself). She officially declared that any campaign consultants, vendors, polling firms, strategists or operatives who worked for a campaign running against an incumbent would be blacklisted by the DCCC.
Yesterday, The Hill ran one of it's never-ending condemnations of Democratic Party "purity" politics. Purity politics...
Birds of a feather... Lipinski and BustosIn 2018, it was shocking when incumbents in Congress, led by Jan Schakowsky in the House and Bernie in the Senate came out and endorsed progressive Democratic reformer Marie Newman in a Chicagoland primary that pitted her against longtime incumbent, reactionary Dan Lipinski, an anti-Choice, anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-healthcare Republican-lite Blue Dog.
I want to reference Tom's post from Thursday, a reminder of how the DNC's attorneys told a court that "We do not owe voters an impartial or evenhanded primary election." It was part of a DNC defense of Debbie Wasserman Schultz and her DNC cronies-- many of whom are still part of the DNC-- stealing the presidential nominat
Bustos and Casten-- Climate IncrementalistsCorporate Dems in Illinois really are spearheading the effort to keep the fossil fuel industry alive. New Dems, Blue Dogs and Vote-For-Sale Democrats are moving quickly to normalize false "solutions" to the climate crisis and to make them acceptable to the public.
In 2018, corrupt conservative, Darren Soto, pretended he was a progressive during his primary battle with Alan Grayson. After he won, he stopped pretending and admitted he's a member of the right-of-center, Wall Street owned and operated New Dems. Yesterday, like virtually all the New Dems, Soto voted against impeaching Trump. It reminded me on one of Grayson's brilliant TV spots which focused on impeachment. Watch closely. The point is simple: "I'll vote for impeachment; Soto won't." And Grayson was... clairvoyant?
One of the big surprises in recent years when I talk with new congressional candidates is the number who tell me that the reason they're running is climate change. The first one who ever told me that was when I spoke with a state Senator in California struggling with the idea of leaving his family behind in his beloved southern California to immerse himself in tawdry Washington by running for Congress.
