Why Zephyr Teachout Would Rather Be Called "Professor" Than" Lobbyist"

The above is today's best video. Zephyr Teachout is proving every day in a sprawling upstate New York district that includes part of the Hudson Valley from Brunswick northeast of Albany, down through Kingston and Hyde Park almost to Poughkeepsie and then west into the Catskills through Fallsburg and Wawarsing and up to Oneonta, that she's be a great congressmember for her constituents. In the video above she also shows why she'd be an incredible national leader for a geriatric House Democratic Party that has lost its way entirely and needs new blood and a fresh approach in an rapidly-approaching post-Pelosi/post-Hoyer era.

The worst thing that could happen to the congressional Democrats would be if the congressional sheep saddle themselves with corrupt shadows of Pelosi and Hoyer-- namely Queens County boss Joe Crowley and the South Florida crook who's become the symbol of everything that ails the Democratic Party: Debbe Wasserman Schultz. Neither is even a real Democrat. Both are "New Dems," the Wall Street owned and operated Republican wing of the Democratic Party. And the two of them are being touted-- quietly inside the walls of the Capitol-- as the "next generation" of Democratic House leadership. I can't think of anything worse for the party than new/old leadership like Crowley and/orWasserman Schultz. They are, literally, the representatives of everything that people hold in contempt about what the Democratic Party in Congress has turned into.

So what's the alternative? Fresh, tested new leaders with dynamic new approachs to governance like Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Ruben Kihuen (D-NV), Jamie Raskin (D-MD), DuWayne Gregory (D-NY), Paul Clements (D-MI) and, of course, Zephyr Teachout, joining with young congressional leaders already in office, like Ted Lieu (D-CA), Keith Ellison (D-MN), Matt Cartwright (D-PA), Mark Pocan (D-WI), and Judy Chu (D-CA), to bring the Democratic Party back to the "Party of the People" and away from the slide into being a Republican-lite corporate, Wall Street party.

Please watch Zephyr's video. Yesterday she woke up and tweeted "When I am in Congress, I'll stand up to protect our water from big polluters, political insiders, and billionaires who don't care about us." When she talks about cngressmembers swimming in filthy water and not even recognizing the what the milieu has become, she's talking about the grotesque and blatant corruption that underlies everything Congress does but which has been legislated to be defined as garden variety rather than bold-faced bribery. Every single member of the House Financial Services Committee who has enabled the banks to rob Americans while those banks finance their political careers should be in jail-- the Republicans should be in jail and the Democrats should be in jail. In prison. For a long, long time. If House Financial Services Committee Oversight Subcommittee chairman Sean Duffy was dragged away in chains and thrown into prison for a decade or two... or three-- after enabling Wells Fargo to rip off its customers, for example, that example would be the first and only service Duffy would have ever provided to this nation... after his reality show on MTV. These congressmembers are all on the House Financial Services Committee and all have sold whatever integrity they once had to Wall Street in return for campaign contributions. These are the worst of them-- the ones who have taken over half a million dollars-- with the bribes they got just in this current cycle:

• Patrick Murphy (New Dem-FL)- $1,795,561
• Patrick McHenry (R-NC)- $1,259,075
• Jeb Hensarling (R-TX)- $1,159,125
• Edward Royce (R-CA)- $1,084,000
• Steve Stivers (R-OH)- $1,045,070
• Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO)- $981,132
• Kyrsten Sinema (New Dem-AZ)- $879,087
• Jim Himes (New Dem-CT)- $873,700
• Sean Duffy (R-WI)- $838,909
• Bruce Poliquin (R-ME)- $779,821
• Andy Barr (R-KY)- $759,060
• French Hill (R-AR)- $753,612
• Peter Roskam (R-IL)- $733,499
• Ann Wagner (R-MO)- $682,400
• Dennis Ross (R-FL)- $629,148
• Terri Sewell (New Dem-AL)- $625,950
• Ed Perlmutter (New Dem-CO)- $622,012
• Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)- $582,456
• David Scott (New Dem-GA)- $572,490
• Mia Love (R-UT)- $548,641
• Scott Garrett (R-NJ)- $544,363
• Luke Messer (R-IN)- $543,577
• Bill Huizenga (R-MI)- $541,950
• Bill Foster (New Dem-IL)- $533,405
• John Delaney (New Dem-MD)- $526,100

We've been warning DWT readers about crackpot hedge fund manager Robert Mercer for a pretty long time. This guy is at least as dangerous to America as the Koch brothers. At least. And in that video up top, Teachout explains why-- and how he's playing in her race-- so far with a cool $500,000. Please watch it and please consider helping Zephyr overcome that kind of onslaught of SuperPAC cash by tapping on the thermometer and giving what you can: