The DCCC Is Hiding NRA-Democrats Jeff Van Drew, Ann Kirkpatrick, Anthony Brindisi And Elaine Luria

I've reported this here before but bear with me a moment; there's a reason I'm repeating it now. The week Andrew Janz declared he was running for Congress and eager to take on Devin Nunes in the Central Valley district (CA-22) that stretches from Clovis and the neighborhoods and suburbs north and east of Fresno through Dinuba and Visalia and down beyond Tulare, he called to ask about a Blue America endorsement. He was a brand new candidate without the consultants who teach new candidates what to say and not say. He has them now. But then he was still speaking from the heart, raw and unfiltered. I asked if I could run him through some of the questions we talk about with candidates. He agreed immediately. And we ran into problems right off the bat. He didn't know what single payer or Medicare for All meant. He grew exasperated and asked if he could just tell me his motivations for running. I said sure. He said the death penalty and the Second Amendment. I was confused and asked him to explain. He said he wanted to see the death penalty more widely used and that Congress needed to protect the Second Amendment. I asked him if he was a Democrat. He laughed and said Democrats in the Central Valley are different from Democrats on the coast.

Janz isn't on the DCCC's Red to Blue list yet but he's clearly being supported by the establishment and the DCCC's stalking horse, the scam known as End Citizens United has endorsed him. His issues page was written by his consultants and it's a garden variety Democratic position page across the board, nothing innovative, no passion... just standard issue D for Democrat; no mention of the death penalty he told me was motivating him to run and his gun position-- while saying nothing about banning the manufacture and sale of automatic weapons-- is also standard DCCC fare for candidates, albeit nothing like what he told me less than a year ago:

I am in a unique position to tackle gun safety issues with credibility in Congress. As a prosecutor, I deal with violent crimes daily, and as a gun owner, I support an individual's right to bear arms. I am committed to enacting universal background checks, and closing gun show and private sale loopholes. Additionally, I believe that no one who commits a violent crime or who is mentally ill should have access to guns. Specifically, I support a measure banning those who are convicted of committing domestic violence from owning a gun. I also strongly support the no-fly no buy list. My opponent Devin Nunes has an A rating from the NRA and has accepted over $20,000 in contributions from them. I will never take a dime from the NRA or any organization that opposes common-sense gun safety legislation that will save lives and end the epidemic of mass shootings in America. 

Many politicians whose views are aligned with the NRA have moved swiftly to distance themselves from the group. Very few Democrats still take bribes from the gun makers and their lobbyists. Only a few hard core gun nuts among the Blue Dogs and New Dems-- 4 to be precise-- still do: like Collin Peterson (MN), Henry Cuellar (TX), Sanford Bishop (GA), and Ron Kind (WI). So far no non-incumbent candidates have taken any money for their congressional races from the NRA. But several have very extreme NRA records, particularly gun-fanatics with clear records they can't run away from, DCCC recruits as bad as any Republican gun nut and day of any week: Anthony Brindisi (NY), Jeff Van Drew (NJ), Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ) and Elaine Luria (VA). The vast majority of DCCC endorsed candidates are either Blue Dogs or New Dems from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. There's virtually no chance that Brindisi, Van Drew, Kirkpatrick and Luria are the only NRA Democrats among them; they're just the ones who haven't been able to obscure their records, the way Janz has.

The DCCC recruited Jeff Van Drew to run in an open New Jersey House seat

One of the slimiest of the former DCCC chairmen, Steve Israel, a former Blue Dog who was forced to leave Congress to avoid legal prosecution, penned an OpEd for The Hill on Monday: The 'Teen Party' can change Congress like the Tea Party. The DCCC, incapable of creating its own energy, is desperate to capture and exploit the energy being created by the March for Our Lives activists. There is nothing they want more than to pin the gun deaths on the Republican Party and paper over the fact that they have been RECRUITING, not just endorsing, NRA allies to run for Congress. "[I]ntangible energy in the environment," wrote Israel about elections, "the charge in the air. It makes everything mechanical and methodical almost irrelevant. It’s like an electromagnetic pulse that can render sophisticated technology useless. We saw that energy gather in Saturday’s 'March For Our Lives' in Washington and in 800 sibling marches against gun violence held in 390 of 435 congressional districts, according to organizers at supportive national organizations. And it very well may work at changing the majority in Congress and changing the laws."

Keep in mind, the DCCC adamantly refuses to disassociate itself from the NRA-Democrats or to kick like the likes of Van Drew, Luria, Kirkpatrick or Brindisi off their Red to Blue list. If you contribute to the DCCC-- or to DCCC fronts like End Citizens United-- your money will go to the blood-soaked campaign coffers of gun fanatics, of that you can be certain. Steve Israel is hoping the DCCC can trick the Match for Our Lives activists into being foot-soldiers for their partisan objectives, a DCCC equivalent of the Tea Party.

The energy transmitted almost instantly, echoing and amplifying across kitchen tables, in diners and coffee shops, in workplaces, and at rallies, protests and boisterous congressional town halls. The Tea Party disabled the precise engineering devised by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to protect its House majority. It swept over its canvassers, drowned out its paid advertising, claimed 63 Democratic seats and toppled its majority (aided and abetted by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, which opened the floodgates of money for Republicans).

Now, we see it again, only in hard reverse. Not a Tea Party, but a Teen Party. Not in the diatribe of pundits, but in 11-year-old Naomi Wadler’s captivation of her audience at a rally on Saturday. In the thousands of voters drawn to rallies by the energy of children too young to vote. In the hand-drawn signs and the spontaneous chants of “vote them out” that I heard at a rally in Huntington, Long Island, that attracted more than 1,000 people. I used to represent that community in Congress, and getting 100 people to show up for a political event was almost impossible.

Something powerful is in the air when a discussion of “midterms” at the kitchen table isn’t about school exams but about elections. Of course, the energy isn’t spent efficiently across the map. In blue districts, it won’t make a difference between a member of Congress who is servile to the gun lobby and one who isn’t. In unwinnable bright red districts, it may depress turnout, but in the absence of a criminal indictment or the incumbent representative being caught in bed with a copy of President Obama’s autobiography, it won’t change the outcome.

But in the 48 or so districts that are competitive, in suburbs and exurbs, that mysterious energy tosses the toss-up districts. If the Teen Party, like the Tea Party, ramps up town hall meetings, channels their energy and masses in districts that matter, vulnerable Republicans will find themselves in a perilous place-- on the wrong side of energy, and maybe of history as well.

If the DCCC is serious about supporting "the Teen Party," they should immediately dump NRA-Dems and vow to not spend another dime trying to elect Kirkpatrick, Brindisi, Van Drew, Luria or any other NRA allies they have endorsed. They should get their resumes ready. This is NOT the position of the Blue Dogs, the New Dems, the DCCC or the Democratic Party:

Politicians-- either represent the people or get out;
The people demand a law banning the sale of assault weapons;
The people people demand we prohibit the sale of high capacity magazines;
The people people demand universal background checks.
Stand for us or beware: the voters are coming