If Henry Cuellar Is The Worst Democrat In The House, Why Shouldn't He Be Primaried Before Schumer Picks Him To Run For The Senate?

Would you call this a safe blue district? Obama beat McCain here 58-41% and then eviscerated Romney 60.3-38.7%. In 2016 even Hillary scored big-- 58.3% to 38.5%. TX-28 is just 15.9% white and just around 25% rural. The PVI is D+9 and most of the voters are in Webb County (Laredo) and in the Rio Grande Valley, although the district twists and turns up into eastern Bexar County and grabs a few San Antonio neighborhoods around where the 410 intersects with the 10 and up around Windcrest and Live Oak. It also includes some neighborhoods west of McAllen, including Mission, Palmview and Palmhurst. There's a lot of oil and a lot of drug smuggling.

The Republicans love the Blue Dog Democrat who represents the area, Henry Cuellar. They often don't even bother fielding a candidate against him, a though when they do, they don't even get a third of the votes. In November, Cuellar's only opponent was a Libertarian, Arthur Thomas, who took 15.6% of the votes. Like I said, Republicans in the tea are just fine with Cuellar. Historically, it's one of the lowest turn-out districts in the country.

Cuellar, who used to be known as "George W Bush's favorite Democrat," is also Congress' worst Democrat now that Kyrsten Sinema has moved on to the Senate. Here's the place at ProgressivePunch where the voting records of the half dozen worst Democraps-- all Blue Dogs, of course, meet the Republican Party. I hope you're not surprised to see which Dem is the worst of the worst.

Click on the image to see just how horrible Cuellar's record is

Do you know what a 38.65% lifetime crucial vote score means? It means he voted over 61% of the time with the GOP on any measure that could remotely be viewed as progressive. So what about his Trump adhesion score, you may be wondering? His 68.8% was the Trump-friendliest of any Democrat in the House.

All that said, the Justice Democrats are trying to find a progressive to take Cuellar on in a 2020 primary. Remember, although all the Democrats squawking about Alexandria Ocasio in that Politico hit piece last week were upset she might help challengers primary corrupt conservatives, do you think that any of them cared that Cuellar helped finance right-wing GOP loon John Carter in his race against the official Democratic candidate, M.J. Hegar or that he himself won election in 2004 by primarying Ciro Rodriguez, a normal Democrat who leaned more liberally than Cuellar. It's common knowledge that Cuellar, whose entire family is in politics-- stole the election, supposedly winning by a few dozen votes after a shady recount.

In 2000, Cuellar endorsed George Bush over Al Gore. He represented much of Webb County in the state House between 1987 and 2001. He was so far to the right that in 2001 Governor Rick Perry appointed him Texas Secretary of State! As far as I remember, he was the only Democrat ever endorsed by right-wing extremist Club for Growth. He is a member of the Wall Street-owned New Dems, one of the only Democrats to vote against Wall Street reform, voted to repeal Obamacare, voted to permit domestic spying on American citizens, was the only House Democrat to vote for a Republican bill to make it easier to deport unaccompanied minors to Central America, and is now a senior member of the far right Blue Dogs. He claims his best friend in Congress is anti-immigrant fanatic Michael McCaul and he sure didn't do anything in 2018 to help Mike Siegel in his razor-thing race against McCaul.

Those Democrats who criticized Ocasio in the Politico story were almost a pathetic self-parody-- yammering about her having to choose about whether to be an effecting member of Congress, when most of them have been anything but. Virtually all of the ones quoted in the Politico story wouldn’t be able to name a single thing that they’ve accomplished... so who are they to talk about AOC being an effective Member of Congress? Cuellar sure never did anything worthwhile in his decade-plus of seat warming in the House.