DownWithTyranny!: A Chance To Make Congress Better? Tomorrow In Los Angeles, Yes; Next Tuesday In Buffalo... Probably Not

Debra Bowen, Kathy Hochul

Tomorrow voters in CA-36 go to the polls to pick a replacement for Blue Dog Jane Harman. Her own choice is sleazy City Hall political hack Janice Hahn, the worst of example of meaningless careerism in the California Democratic Party, Hahn stands for nothing... except personal ambition. And all the rot inside the party has come out to back her. The endorsement list on her website reads like a lesson in political untrustworthiness. There are two outstanding progressives running as well, Debra Bowen and Marcy Winograd, either of whom would make an extraordinary and much-needed upgrade in southern California's congressional caucus. Blue America weighed the race carefully and concluded that Bowen has the far better chance to beat Hahn-- which is why Hahn and her slick consultants lured Winograd into the race. A vote for anyone tomorrow other than for Bowen is, alas, a vote for Hahn.

And then a week from tomorrow the two tribes-- plus right-wing rogue Jack Davis-- battle it out in a primary in a New York State's reddest district in the Buffalo suburbs. Team Red has put up a multimillionaire robot named Jane Corwin who has been campaigning on her backing for the Ryan budget that other Republicans are running away from.

Newt Gingrich slammed the House GOP budget on Meet The Press this morning, telling interviewer David Gregory that replacing Medicare with a voucher system was too "radical" an approach. His words were by far the harshest of any major presidential candidate towards Paul Ryan's proposal on entitlements.

"I don't think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering," Gingrich said, calling the plan "too big a jump" for the country. "I don't think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate."

But Corwin has dug herself into a hole and isn't budging. In fact, she just keeps digging

A late April Siena poll of likely voters in the 26th suggested a majority in the district, 59 percent, do not favor that proposal. Hochul has been hammering Corwin for saying she would have voted for the Republican spending plan. Donald Trump, the TV personality and real estate mogul, opined Wednesday in the national press that Corwin’s campaign is struggling because of the Ryan Medicare issue.

Corwin did not back away from the Ryan bill in the debate.

“If we keep Medicare the same plan that it is now, we’re going to be out of money by 2029, which means nobody will receive benefits,” she said. “This (plan) does not eliminate Medicare, it protects Medicare” for future generations.

Not so, Hochul countered.

Corwin’s insolvency claim is “a scare tactic, to tell our seniors that there’ll be nothing for them in 2029; it’s not the truth,” she said.

The Ryan bill would take the country back to the early 1960s, before seniors had guaranteed health care coverage and many went without, Hochul said.

“There’s a way to fix (Medicare). ... We have to continue what’s been a very successful program,” Hochul insisted.

But as we pointed out last week, the Team Blue contestant, Hochul, is another conservative shill who we'll find cowering behind Boehner on bill after bill should she wind up, because of Davis' spoiler routine, winning the seat, a seat she probably wouldn't be able to hold without voting a pure GOP line.

Hochul gobbled up the big endorsements yesterday (the Buffalo News and the Democrat and Chronicle). She's winning in the endorsements area because she's "independent" enough to back a conservative Republican agenda, despite the blue t-shirt.

Hochul has a long history of being an independent thinker. As Erie County clerk, she defied former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, a fellow Democrat, on his plans to give drivers licenses to illegal immigrants. And she went toe-to-toe with former Gov. David Paterson, also a Democrat, until he relented on plans to increase new license plate fees.

Her election will have national implications inasmuch as it will cause a stampede of already spooked Republican congressmembers away from Ryan's toxic "cause"-- and that's a good thing-- but in terms of making Congress better... no way. Expect all the worst from a Congresswoman Kathy Hochul. Any Democrat who builds a political career by throwing a weak component of the Democratic coalition under the bus, as Hochul has, is going to be bad news. The most that can be said about her is, "but she isn't as bad as Corwin." It's true, but a Congresswoman Corwin wouldn't be inside the already conflicted Democratic caucus pulling it always further and further rightward, blurring the differences between the two parties and making it irrelevant to working families.