Last year, during the crowded primary battle over the seat Henry Waxman was giving up, I brought a Capitol Hill staffer to a small dinner with then-state Senator Ted Lieu. My friend the staffer asked Ted why he would even want to go to Washington since it's so difficult to get anything done. He was impressed by Ted's record of accomplishment in Sacramento and warned him it would be a lot rougher in DC.
Last year when Blue America endorsed Ted Lieu for the open congressional seat on the West Side of L.A. (Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Venice, Malibu, Westwood, Redondo Beach, Manhattan Beach, Torrance), Alan Grayson sent a letter to his own supporters asking them to consider supporting Ted Lieu as well.
Yesterday the House defeated the Progressive Caucus's People's Budget... again. It was a budget put together as a roadmap to do the job of uplifting ordinary American working families-- and doing so in a fiscally responsible manner. Conservatives easily beat it back without breaking a sweat, 96 to 244.
Tuesday I blundered into putting on MSNBC before Chris Hayes' show started and the ghost of yesteryear political journalism was barking away happily. Appropriately enough, Chris Matthews' guest was Alabama racist throwback Mo Brooks who was eager to get on TV and accuse President Obama of being-- at best-- weak and, at worst, a traitor. Brooks and Matthews are from another generation, a generation where brain growth ceased many decades ago.
This week, we sent our final letter out to the Blue America members. People sometimes ask me how to become a member. That's easy: contribute-- anything, even just one dollar, to any Blue America candidate on any Blue America page, and voilà!, you're a member. This week's letter was more than just a thank you and Merry Christmas note-- although, yes, thank you and Merry Christmas.
Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, had an ironic idea this week-- Obama pardoning Bush and Cheney for torture, making the point that what they did is illegal.
It isn't difficult to do a post mortem on Mary Landrieu's idiotically-doomed Senate race. Saturday's runoff saw the 3-term Louisiana Senator struggle to reach beyond 40%. In 2008 she beat Republican John Kennedy 988,298 (52%) to 867,177 (46%), the same percentage she got in her 2002 reelection. Saturday's results were Cassidy 712,330 (55.94%), Landieu 561,099 (44.06%). She won 15 of the state's 64 parishes.She never had a chance.
Despite the $762,885 in independent expenditures organized crime gambling kingpin Sheldon Adelson and his circle threw into the CA-33 race to elect a random Republican stooge, progressive champion Ted Lieu won the race handily-- and with a bigger turnout than any other Los Angeles districts-- 59.19% to 40.81%.
Presidents: Ken and TedThis year's House Republican freshman class is over twice the size as the Democratic freshman class-- 41 to 17. Both classes elected their respective class presidents this week (Freshman Orientation Week), after the new members had a chance to meet and feel each other out. The Republicans picked extremist Colorado crackpot Ken Buck.
For our final push, Blue America ran independent expenditures in 4 races, two for Senate seats and two in House races. When Adelson and his slimy allies jumped into the CA-33 race with a million dollars worth of racist smear against Ted Lieu, we decided to reach likely voters with a full page ad in the L.A. Times, which we think has worked very well. Early vote returns from Democrats started spiking very sharply as soon as the ad ran.
