One Week From Today

Things can only get better for the Democrats after this asshole steps down

One week from today is election day. Are you counting down? The Blue America strategy has been to see if we could elect some solid progressives to Congress. Once Pelosi reappointed Steve Israel to the DCCC, it was immediately obvious that the Democrats would have ZERO chance to take back the House. And the Senate, because of the nature of the seats up for grab and the nature of the pathetic DSCC leadership, looked like a matter of how many losses. This is our list of House candidates still in the running and this is our list of Senate candidates. Our goals are modest, achievable and, if met, have the ability to help account for profound, longterm social change in Congress and in the country.

All of the candidates on both pages have been carefully vetted and will, first and foremost, represent the interests of regular working families in Congress, not corporate special interests and not their own careerism.



If you've been waiting for the last minute to see where end-of-the-cyle money would do the most good, I'd recommend Paul Clements (MI-06), Mike Obermueller (MN-02), and Pat Murphy (IA-01) in hotly contested House races and Rick Weiland (SD) and Shenna Bellows (ME) for Senate seats. At this point, all money coming in to those campaigns at the links above go for Get-Out-The-Vote operations.

The other ActBlue page we want to ask you to consider is for the Blue America I.E. committee, which is running ads in South Dakota, Maine, CA-33 and MN-06, hoping to bolster our candidates, respectively Rick Weiland, Shenna Bellows, Ted Lieu, and Paul Clements.

This is the last time we're expecting to ask our members to contribute for the 2014 midterms.

So if you've been waiting... now's the time. The DCCC hasn't lifted a finger to help any of the Blue America-endorsed candidates with the exception, eventually, of Pat Murphy. DCCC chairman Steve Israel has personally worked to protect GOP committee chairs Fred Upton (MI-06) and John Kline (MN-02) but both are vulnerable to effective grassroots action.

This week we have a full page ad in the L.A. Times talking about Ted Lieu's record of accomplishment, vision and leadership in the state legislature. We decided to run it because of the hundreds of thousands of dollars Las Vegas mobster Sheldon Adeleson and his circle have thrown into the race at the last minute, much of it not just ugly and divisive but extremely racist. We feel these races are progressives' best shots to win between now and the 2016 general elections.



UPDATE: South Dakota

The DSCC isn't helping. Harry Reid has been sandbagging, undermining and sabotaging progressive Democrat Rick Weiland since he first declared his candidacy. Reid was forced by late circumstances to allow the DSCC to take ads out against GOP corporate crook Mike Rounds, but those ads were never really meant to help Rick-- and they're not. Last week, Rick challenged Rounds at a debate to agree to not join him in announcing that neither Senate party leader was fit to lead and that both be replaced. Rick declared he would not vote for Harry Reid as Majority-- or Minority-- Leader. Rounds has every intention of voting for Mitch McConnell since the two are practically joined at the hip and the culture of corruption that has propelled each man's career is the essence of what they are both all about.

Yesterday Weiland told Reid and his DSCC to get their negative ads out of South Dakota and either start running positive, issue oriented ads that actually help South Dakota Democrats, or go home. I don't recall that ever happening anywhere in any campaign. Not ever. "Everybody knows," Weiland told Reid, "the ugly attack ads you have been running against Mike Rounds help Larry Pressler, not the candidate of the party you are supposed to be campaigning for. They make me, as the Democratic candidate, look like a dirty campaigner. They damage Governor Rounds. And they let former Senator Pressler stand on the sidelines looking clean and gathering votes from disgusted South Dakotans, just as you intended them to do." Pretty powerful stuff! Weiland:

"For every one of the 18 months since I became a candidate for the United States Senate, and the 6 months since I was formally selected to be the candidate of the party you are supposed to represent, I have been asking you for positive assistance with my campaign. Instead of that assistance you have said I am not your choice, tried to dry up my funds by saying I cannot win, refused to have your DSCC even endorse me, and now you have come into my state with ugly, negative attacks against Mike Rounds, ads that you and every knowledgeable political strategist in America knows hurt me and help Larry Pressler, the longtime Republican who has apparently won your support for his so called independent campaign by whispering that if elected he might vote to help you keep your job as Majority Leader.

Based on this record of non-support for me, and of actions which assist one of my opponents, I am today formally requesting that you either begin airing positive advertising about my fight against big money, and for the ordinary citizens who our party is supposed to be pledged to support, or else you get out of our state. I do not want phony help that actually helps Larry Pressler by attacking Mike Rounds over what appears to everyone to be my name because it says paid for by the national political party of which I am a member."

I am also today requesting that the South Dakota Democratic Party join me in repudiating these tactics and requesting that you and the National Democratic Party assist all South Dakota Democrats in our fight for a higher minimum wage, protection and expansion of Medicare and Social Security, equal rights for all citizens, and in helping us to help like-minded voters get to the polls on November 4."

This would be a much better ad for Harry Reid to run in South Dakota... if he really wants to help Rick Weiland: