PA DEMOCRATIC PARTY IS HIGH ON CARNEY-- EVEN THOUGH HE VOTES LIKE A REPUBLICAN AND ENDORSED ONE FOR PRESIDENT

Carney still calls himself a Democrat for some reason

One way to tell how "Democratic" a member of Congress is, is to fire up Progress Punch and ask it to rank all the members based on how they voted when the chips were down. In the 2007-'08 session, only 7 Democrats (5 Dixiecrats-- Dan Boren, Gene Taylor, Jim Marshall, Nick Lampson and John Barrow) and two Indiana reactionaries (Brad Ellsworth and Joe Donnelly) have voted more frequently with Bush and the GOP than Chris Carney. This makes all of us at DWT ill because we were bamboozled by his sweet-talking lies-- even though we were warned to beware-- and we recommended him to Pennsylvania voters and helped raise money for his bid to unseat Don Sherwood. Since Carney has gotten into Congress he has broken nearly every promise he made, voted with Republicans on substantive matters and pandered to corporate interests, throwing every Democratic constituency under the bus. He is the only congressmember we endorsed last year who we asked to return the money we gave him (722 donations totalling over $8,000). He refused to return the money to Blue America or to any of the individual donors who demanded he do so. We've covered this before-- more than once. So wasn't I surprised today when I received an e-mail from Abe Amorós of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, extolling the virtues of Carney's candidacy. I sold my place in Stroudsberg and live full time in L.A. so there really was no reason to send me the mail except to get me to write about Carney. OK.

Our real problem with him, by the way, isn't even how reactionary he is. There are worse. It is how he blatantly lied to us-- telling us specifically that he would support a ban on hate crimes and then voting with the Republicans against the ban.

Now, the e-mail talks about how Bush has become less and less popular in the very Republican leaning 10th CD in northeast PA and how a poll the Democratic Party took shows how Carney will beat either of the two unknown Republicans, Dan Meuser and Chris Hackett, who want to run against him. Half the Republicans responding to the poll are satisfied with Carney's job so far. [Why shouldn't they be. Look at his Republican-lite voting record.]

Carney leads Republicans Dan Meuser and Chris Hackett by more than 20 points each.  The poll found that neither Meuser nor Hackett were well known.  Less than one 10 knew Meuser (8 percent) while Hackett was slightly better off (15 percent) after having run two weeks of radio ads prior to the poll. 

In head-to-head competition, Carney outperformed Meuser (31-11) while maintaining a higher lead over Hackett (34-10).

"These numbers not only show that Congressman Carney has done an excellent job in his district but that he also enjoys support with Republican voters that should be very discouraging to the Republican candidates," Rooney said. "Congressman Carney is well known, popular and well regarded with most voters in the 10th Congressional District.

I think what the numbers show is that the Republicans couldn't come up with a credible candidate and that Carney votes like a Republican often enough to satisfy GOP voters anyway. Too bad the Pennsylvania Democratic Party is more interested in power than in values or principles. Carney endorsed Bloomberg and Hagel for president, by the way. Corrupt Democratic leader Rahm Emanuel donated $10,000 to Carney's current re-election campaign-- the highest to any candidate; in fact, Emanuel donated large sums to all reactionary freshmen who vote frequently for the Bush agenda (like Carney). Great job, Rahm!