Steve Israel

The Republicans have worked hard-- from the moment President Obama was first elected-- to undermine him and denigrate his policies at home and abroad.

Once Rahm Emanuel got the power to fire Howard Dean as DNC chair-- the first catastrophic decision of the Obama presidency-- replacing him with 2 consecutive talentless sieves-- first Tim Kaine and then, much worse, Debbie Wasserman Schultz-- and scrapping Dean's 50-state strategy, it was apparent the Republican Party would have a free-hand in scores of districts where they could be challenged over the long term and that Washington would no longer

Anger at the DCCC is spreading. Well, anger at the DCCC has been huge for over a decade; that it's being talked about more openly and more aggressively at the grassroots level is what's different. Chris Van Hollen and Steve Israel lost dozens and dozens of Democratic House seats (incumbents) and ruined the chances of even more Democratic challengers trying to beat Republicans.

DCCCThere is a natural tendency for the Beltway trade press to never offend the two party establishments and their committees that exercise so much control of access and information. It was the same way in the music industry. So you never read any criticism of the party hacks that run the NRCC or the DCCC, the NRSC or the DSCC.

Steve Israel was trying to sell his own toxic brand of snake oil in Syracuse last nightAs we've been explaining-- basically, since 2005 or '06-- that the DCCC's governing strategies about recruitment and support are fatally flawed. Picking Republican-lite candidates who, if they manage to win in a presidential year, and then vote with the GOP on core issues ,is not a good idea.

Almost a decade ago, Blue America was toiling away on behalf of school teacher and union member Dave Lutrin, running for Congress in the Palm Beach area of Florida, pretty red district then represented by hypocritical Republican closet case Mark Foley. We knew that sooner or later Foley would slip up-- they always do-- and expose himself and become very defeatable.

Scaremongering xenphobia rarely hurts the scaremongers and xenophobesThere's been plenty of talk, including on this blog, about how the U.S. turned away Jewish refugees in the late 1930s-- sending many to their deaths in Nazi concentration camps-- but nothing was going to slow down conservative fear-mongering.

In 2003, the Republican-dominated House passed a GOP version of healthcare, Bush's Medicare Part D. Today it is, by far, the worst part of the Medicare system and it allows for these systemic ripping off of the elderly by Big Pharma. The final vote in the House was 216-215; it passed by one lousy vote.

Steve Israel, de facto head of the DCCC (and the most outspoken member of their recruitment committee) and with a new title Pelosi invented for him, Chair, Policy and Communications, is making noise again. His war against progressives is multi-faceted and never-ending.

Kim Davis and Ro Khanna-- kind of "Democrats"Hopefully Steve Israel won't figure out that Kim Davis, the crackpot religionist fanatic clerk in Kentucky's Rowan County, is a Democrat.