Rick Weiland

Hillary fans have been grumbling to me about the way I highlighted Mike Lofgren's phrase stuck on awful for the next decade to equate Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush.

Friday, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich made the case that unemployment is still high and the economic recovery so turgid because of the failed European-style austerity measures being forced on the country by the plutocrats and oligarchs, primarily through their bought-and-paid-for conservative handmaidens in government.

The DSCC preview of the electoral cycle that they hand out to big contributors is as upbeat as they can make it. In the section on South Dakota, where Democrat Tim Johnson is retiring, the DSCC asserts that "Democrats and the DSCC are committed to holding Senator Johnson's seat next year and will devote all the resources necessary to elect a new Democratic senator in South Dakota.

I was thrilled this week when Guy Cecil and Michael Bennet got on board and gave the Shenna Bellows campaign the DSCC's big thumbs up. Hopefully, that will be the beginning of the end for fake moderate Susan Collins in Maine. So, RIGHT ON GUY CECIL and RIGHT ON Michael Bennet. I will refrain from any gratuitously nasty statements about the two of them for at least… well, I hope forever. Next up: South Dakota prairie populist Rick Weiland.

I was thrilled this week when Guy Cecil and Michael Bennet got on board and gave the Shenna Bellows campaign the DSCC's big thumbs up. Hopefully, that will be the beginning of the end for fake moderate Susan Collins in Maine. So, RIGHT ON GUY CECIL and RIGHT ON Michael Bennet. I will refrain from any gratuitously nasty statements about the two of them for at least… well, I hope forever. Next up: South Dakota prairie populist Rick Weiland.

Phil Jensen, vicious Kansas GOP racist, brings the hate to South DakotaSouth Dakota Republican Phil Jensen is proud to be widely considered the furthest right member of the state legislature and never tires of calling other Republicans in the state Senate RINOs.

Rick and RoundsThe Rapid City Journal is arguably the most conservative newspaper in South Dakota. And they are certainly more conservative than the Beltway operative who seems hellbent on handing control of the Senate over to the Republicans, DSCC executive director Guy Cecil.

Yesterday the Senate finally reached a bipartisan deal on extending unemployment insurance. Does anyone think the House is going to give it serious consideration? The 5 months worth of benefits (around $10 billion) would go until May… if the House passes it.

Yesterday, Greg Sargent at the Washington Post used North Carolina's hapless Republican Senate primary frontrunner, immensely unpopular Speaker Thom Tillis, to demonstrate the conundrum Republican candidates find themselves in when trying to deal with repealing the Affordable Care Act-- at least when they talk with non-Foxified normal voters.

Rick and RoundsSouth Dakota isn't really a dependable red state. Sure, in presidential elections it is but the state has had a penchant for sending Democrats to the House and Senate in Washington. Two-thirds of the Senate contests since 1986 have been won by Democrats.