Squeaker In Kansas-- In Wichita... Koch World Headquarters

Over the weekend, Wyoming Democrats elected a Berniecrat, Joe Barbuto, party chair over 2 establishment types who were Clinton super delegates despite Bernie having won Wyoming's caucuses 55.7% to 44.3%. The corrupted system awarded Hillary 11 delegates to Bernie's 7. It was one little piece of how the Democratic establishment stole the nomination for their fatally flawed candidate, resulting in the catastrophe sitting in the Oval Office now.

As you've probably read, a new survey from Morning Consult this week, shows that Bernie is the most popular senator in the country-- with his Vermont constituents and with Americans in general. I don't know any congressional candidates asking for in-district help from Hillary. All of them are asking for help from Bernie though-- and that includes candidates who supported Hillary in the primary!

James Thompson, the KS-04 Democratic candidate, who beat a relatively conservative party establishment type to win the nomination, is a Berniecrat and Bernie backed him as well. Now, keep in mind, last year Trump lost the district to Ted Cruz in the primary and then went on to beat Hillary in November, 60.2% to 33.0%. Cruz was in the district campaigning for Republican Ron Estes. Both Trump and Pence recorded robocalls for him. And Ryan sent money-- lots of it.

Trump isn't popular in KS-04. Trump's agenda isn't popular either. The Republican Governor, Sam Brownback, is even less popular-- so unpopular that Thompson featured Brownback's endorsement of Estes on his own website's front page. Estes probably should have won by at least 20 points. Instead, the final count was 63,505 (52.5%) to 55,310 (45.7%), stunning for the Democrat, who got virtually no help from the official Democratic Party-- except for a nice good luck tweet from DNC chair Tom Perez-- including not from the Kansas state Democratic Party, the leaders of which probably need to get what the Wyoming Democratic Party heads got last weekend.

The DCCC and DNC have put all their eggs in the GA-06 basket-- one week from yesterday. The Republicans were down around 20 points in KS-4 from November. If something like that happens in Georgia... all the millions of dollars Ryan is pouring into Dekalb, Fulton and Cobb counties isn't going to do them very much good. After the voters were in last night, Ryan Grim put it like this: "For Democrats, this battle wasn't in vain. The close margin means that if you're a House or Senate Republican and you won your last election by 20 points or less, you're starting to think a bit differently about your own politics. And that means the every-man-for-himself attitude is much likelier to prevail in Congress, which means it's going to be very hard for Trump to get his agenda through. To see it in action, consider this: Ron Estes, the guy who just won, said during the campaign he was against TumpCare."

Even if you're tired reading David Nir parroting the DCCC's lame-- and wrong-headed-- excuses for not engaging in KS-04, Markos at Nir's website still made a totally worthwhile point this morning, one that all progressive activists really should keep in mind going forward this year and, of course, into 2018. Markos:

What does it mean when an almost-30-point Trump district ends up remaining Republican by single-digit numbers? It means that few-- if any-- Republicans are safe, anywhere. How scary is it for the GOP? Take a gander: Trump won--

• 36 House seats by 5 points or less
• 66 seats by 10 points or less
• 98 seats by 15 points or less
• 123 seats by 20 points or less
• 151 seats by 25 points or less, and
• 159 seats by 27 points or less, which was his margin of victory in KS-04

...[And W]hy wait until 2018 to take out some Republicans when we have two big special elections coming up within the next month and change? The first is in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District... Then we have Montana’s special election, where local folk hero Rob Quist is making Republicans sweat so hard, they’re trying to change the laws to make it harder for people to vote.

Despite Trump's childish and simpleminded tweet claiming victory, in this morning's NY Times Nate Cohn noted that "the Kansas result is not a great sign for the Republicans, and it’s hard to dismiss... The small and imperfect lesson of Tuesday’s special election in Kansas is that the Republicans might be in quite a bit of trouble. Mr. Estes’s seven-point victory is extremely poor for this district, whether under politically neutral circumstances or an environment deeply unfavorable to the president’s party. Mr. Estes would still be considered a 20-plus-point favorite in the district even with Mr. Trump’s approval rating around 40 percent... These Republican struggles are to be expected; the party has full control of government and its president is unpopular. These are the circumstances that often end in a so-called wave election, like the ones that swept Democrats into power in 2006 and out of the House in 2010. We might well be heading for another. At a minimum, the Kansas result is fully consistent with that possibility."