Late Monday Thad Cochran's office announced that the 80 year old Mississippi Republican will resign on April Fools Day, due to rapidly deteriorating health. When Cochran first won his Senate seat in 1978 he was the first Republican to win any statewide seat in the state since Reconstruction. Gov. Phil Bryant will appoint an interim senator and then both seats will be voted on in November.
On top of the court case he filed last week to vacate the results of the Mississippi Senate election, Tea Party sore loser Chris McDaniel has been trying to pick a new fight-- this time with poor, embattled Miss McConnell, threatening to turn Kentucky's far right fringe-- which he so desperately needs in his neck-and-neck fight against Alison Lundergan Grimes-- into a pack of s
Right-wing populists-- who are sometimes referred to as teabaggers-- have pretty much taken over the Republican social policy agenda. But have been largely unable to beat Chamber of Commerce Republicans in primaries this year, the way they did manage to do in 2010 and 2012 by replacing longtime Senate incumbents like Bob Bennett (R-UT), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and Dick Lugar (R-IN) and beating Establishment candidates in Delaware (Mike Castle), Florida (Charlie Crist), Nevada (Sue Lowden), Colorado (Jane Norton), Texas (David Dewhurst) and Kentucky (Trey Grayson).
Louisiana teabagger Steve Scalise isn't the biggest win for the Ted Cruz wing of the GOPThe reaction from ugly Republican racists to the embarrassing Tea Party losses in Oklahoma and Mississippi Tuesday-- two of the most brainwashed and extreme right-wing states in the U.S.-- was, to put it mildly, ungracious. McDaniel, of course, is refusing to concede.
Karma's a bitch, y'allStunning upset last night as Thad Cochran's team managed to inspire enough African American Democrats to come to the polls to defeat bigoted teabagger Chris McDaniel by just over 6,000 votes.
Amazing new Gallup poll was released yesterday. Gallup's analysis: "Americans' confidence in Congress has sunk to a new low. Seven percent of Americans say they have 'a great deal' or 'quite a lot' of confidence in Congress as an American institution, down from the previous low of 10% in 2013.
Democrats regularly win statewide races in Maine and South Dakota, though DSCC executive director Guy Cecil, some kind of a self-loathing Beltway creature, has written off both states to the Republicans in November. He's much more excited about spending DSCC millions down in Mississippi on behalf of homophobic, anti-Choice Blue Dog Travis Childers. Don't forget, the last two times Democrats won Senate seats in Mississippi were when John Stennis was reelected in 1982, having first become a senator in 1947, and when James Eastland was reelected in 1972, having first become a senator in 1942.
Sunday morning we asked what it's like to be a Blue Dog in America today. And the picture that emerged was far from pretty. When looking at the natural progression from Blue Dog-- the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- to plain old Republican, we focused on the freak from Kansas who led the anti-gay and anti-Choice forces of hatred and bigotry in her badly afflicted state, Janice Pauls, finally finding her natural home in the GOP.
And the Democrat still isn't worth voting for!Joe Manchin (WV) is the most conservative Democrat in the Senate. According to ProgressivePunch, his lifetime crucial vote score is 60.71, pretty dreadful. He's the 55th "most progressive" member of the Senate. Every Republican is worse. The 5 Democrats almost as bad as Machin-- from bad to worse-- are Kay Hagan (NC), Joe Donnelly (IN), John Walsh (MT), Mark Pryor (AR), Mary Landrieu (LA), all in red or purple states.
