One of the great (so far) untold stories about the battle for the Senate involves Schumer's very explicit threat to Bernie Sanders to not interfere in primaries against his hand-picked candidates in 4 key states. The threat was loss of a good Senate committee chairmanship in 2017 if Bernie did anything to help progressives against Schumer's Wall Street-friendly picks in Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio.
Yesterday, speaking to a fringe right-wing radio show, John Cornyn, McConnell's #2 in the Senate said Republicans in Congress will continue "investigating" Clinton if she's elected.
There are 5 Senate races that are really close and that will determine which party controls that body for the next two years-- but neither swingy Ohio nor Florida, where Chuck Schumer picked his own candidates, Ted Strickland and Patrick Murphy, and rammed them through the primary process-- are among them.
Blue America spends most of its time and energy on House races. As far as the 2016 Senate races go, after Donna Edwards (MD), PG Sittenfeld (OH) and Alan Grayson (FL) were defeated in their primaries by establishment candidates the only Senate endorsements we have left are for Russ Feingold (WI), who looks like he'll probably win a week from tomorrow, and two long-shots who beat their more conservative opponents, Ray Metcalfe (AK) and Misty Kathrine Snow (UT).
Trump didn't, but most serious political campaigns do an opposition research look at their own candidate in order to be ready for likely attacks. At the end of 2013, as his campaign was preparing for re-election, they took a look at Patrick Murphy from how they thought his opponents might see him. The report leaked-- and, if you know anyone as stupid as Rachel Maddow yelling about saving the seat for Team Blue, please make sure they see it.
How do you know which congressional candidates-- often without records, or without easily accessible records-- you should vote for? Many people just base it on party ID. People who identify with the Democratic Party, for whatever reason, vote for Democratic candidates and people who identify with the Republican Party, vote for Republican candidates. I bet that accounts for upwards of 70% of the electorate.
You may have read yesterday that new polls are showing Democrats surging in gubernatorial races. The Trump effect looks like it will be kicking in up and down the ballots, even in the Republican-friendly states like Indiana, North Carolina, West Virginia and Missouri, that have gubernatorial races this year.
Patrick Murphy... with Little Chucky SchmuckyThe Democratic Establishment is panicking progressives into voting for unspeakably corrupt conservative candidates, warning them that Trump is under the bed and that if they don't vote for Democrats up and down the ticket, he will kill and eat everyone-- and not necessarily in that order.
