Boris Yeltsin Once Played The Clown Role In His Relation To Bill Clinton-- Now Putin Has Señor Trumpanzee

Is Britain worried that after January 20th the Trumpy States of America might side with Putin in his war against democracy? A report this weekend from London Times' Defense Editor Deborah Haynes, states flatly that "Russia is waging a 'campaign' of propaganda and unconventional warfare against Britain, government officials have acknowledged for the first time. Moscow is behind a concerted drive to undermine the UK through espionage, misinformation, cyberattacks and fake news, senior Whitehall figures believe. Theresa May will chair a National Security Council session within weeks to examine Russian actions towards Britain and its allies and discuss possible responses."

The alarms being raised by the British government sound a lot like early stages of overt McCarthyism, jarringly so:

Concerns have been raised that British institutions and companies have been penetrated by Russian agents, including UK citizens, and last night it emerged that several academics at Cambridge University have stepped down from an intelligence forum over fears of Kremlin influence.

The head of the armed forces has taken the unusual step of calling for increased efforts to catch moles. “We . . . need to pay more attention to counterespionage and counterintelligence to protect our hard-won research, pro- tect our industry and protect our competitive advantage,” Air Chief Marshal Sir Stuart Peach said this week.

Although he did not specify the nationality of the agents, the number of Russian spies and “agents of influence”-- such as useful MPs wooed by the Russians-- in Britain is thought to be higher than during the Cold War.

Military intelligence officials are working more closely with MI5 on Russian issues, including the need to flush out spies. Examples of the new Russian “hybrid” warfare include:

• State-run news outlets, including RT and Sputnik, spreading propaganda to influence British audiences, particularly over key issues such as Brexit and the Scottish independence referendum. The activities of Russian propaganda outfits in Britain were exposed by a Times investigation in July;

• Fears that attempts will be made to discredit hundreds of British troops who will deploy to Estonia next year by orchestrating bogus traffic accidents and pub brawls to smear them;

• Suspected cyberattacks against British companies and infrastructure, though Britain has a policy not to confirm which state or entity conducted the attack;

• The deployment of Mr Putin’s only aircraft carrier and a fleet of escort ships directly through the English Channel last month en route to join the bombing campaign in Syria.

The various Russian hostile activities have been designated as a “campaign” in Whitehall to bring together departments’ efforts to combat the tactics.

“They have just woken up to Russia,” a Russia expert and former adviser to the government said. “They are embarrassed to admit it. They don’t really know what to do because the logic is we should increase our defence spending and we should create a cross-governmental strategy for defending ourselves against this.”

The Russian threat will be discussed by Mrs May and senior intelligence, military and other officials at one of the first meetings of the National Security Council next year. The prime minister is facing calls from security experts to set up a “war cabinet” to respond to Russian hybrid warfare-- or at least develop a cross-government strategy that draws together the weaponry that is being used against the West.

Michael Crowley, writing this weekend for Politico, wrote that Putin is looking for revenge after seeing his country humiliated in the 1990s-- and that he may be winning a kind of new Cold War. Long ago, ex-KGB agent Putin had called the collapse of the Soviet Union-- which many Russians see as a U.S. coup-- "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century." As Crowley explains it, in the '90s "Russia was a defeated nation. It had lost the Cold War, and along with it millions of square miles of territory, as imperial possessions dating to the czarist era declared their independence. The country’s economy collapsed, impoverishing most everyone except the insiders who looted public assets. Alcoholism and prostitution boomed. Life expectancy shrank." A few years later, Putin, who had clawed his way to the top of his country's ruling elite, told Russian troops on the first day of the new millennium that their mission included "restoring Russia’s honor and dignity."

Today, as the U.S. grapples with a Russia with resurgent global ambitions, with a Kremlin that hacks our emails, manipulates our news-- and, according to the CIA, actively worked to elect Donald Trump-- it’s important to realize that for Putin, it’s not just a constant move for advantage. Yes, Putin is pressing Russia’s current interests. But in scheming to defeat Hillary Clinton, and by subjecting American democracy itself to Russian influence, he is also closing a loop opened in part by the Clintons 20 years ago. Putin can’t undo Russia’s Cold War defeat by America. But he can avenge it. And in Donald Trump-- the man who defeated Hillary Clinton and seems ready to deal with Putin on terms that few other American politicians would countenance-- he hopes he has found a willing partner.

Says Strobe Talbott, a Russia specialist who served as deputy secretary of state under Bill Clinton: “He basically wants to make Russia great again.”



...The Bush-Putin relationship deteriorated for many reasons. But one of them, ironically, was a charge of election interference. Putin was furious when Washington backed a popular, pro-Western movement challenging the outcome of Ukraine’s 2004 presidential election. He lashed out at what he called U.S. interference in a former Soviet republic that had long been a possession of the Russian empire. The U.S. was pursuing a “dictatorship of international affairs,” Putin said, disguised with “beautiful pseudo-democratic phraseology.”

Putin saw another kind of political agenda in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, with which he did battle over a territorial dispute in August 2008. In a television interview he implied that the Bush administration had goaded Georgia’s Western-friendly government into a fight.

“The suspicion would arise that someone in the United States created this conflict on purpose to stir up the situation and to create an advantage for one of the candidates in the competitive race for the presidency in the United States,” Putin told CNN at the time. “They needed a small victorious war.”

Some Russia experts and U.S. officials call Putin’s increasingly public grievances about America a contrivance-- a narrative to support what the Russian-born journalist Arkady Ostrovsky, in his recent book The Invention of Russia, calls Putin’s “restoration ideology.” By this line of thinking, Putin has sold nationalism and militarism to his public to cover for a weak economy highly vulnerable to fluctuations in the price of its oil exports. It was this atmosphere of hostility that a newly elected Barack Obama sought to cool with his Russia “reset,” a mission led by his secretary of state: Hillary Clinton. Whatever Clinton thought she might accomplish, she couldn’t have imagined what it would eventually mean for her own political future.

...One was Putin’s belief that America blithely staged military interventions around the world with little regard for international-- or at least Russian-- opinion. Hillary Clinton had been a supporter of the 2003 Iraq War and Obama’s 2011 intervention in Libya. Putin opposed both those campaigns-- and, as a paranoid autocrat, particularly resented Washington’s record of regime-change policies. It didn’t help that the Clinton name already reminded Russian officials of the 1990s U.S.-led NATO interventions in the Balkans, which many hardliners considered to be outrageous Western aggression against their Slavic brothers.

Related was Hillary Clinton’s enthusiasm for NATO’s further expansion into Eastern Europe. That process was based on the well-founded idea that Eastern Europe needed-- indeed, was asking for-- protection from Russia aggression. But Russia’s military establishment treated it as a slow-rolling invasion of their sphere of influence.

This reaction, too, had its roots under Bill Clinton. An expanded NATO would help ensure democracy, prosperity and stability across Europe, he believed. Moscow took a sharply different view. After one 1994 summit at which Yeltsin gave Bill Clinton his blessing to the addition of new NATO members-- including Poland and Hungary, both former Soviet satellites-- a communist newspaper fumed about “the capitulation of Russian policy before NATO and the U.S.” One of Yeltsin’s main political opponents said he had allowed “his friend Bill [to] kick him in the rear.” He compared the agreement to the treatment of Germany at Versailles after World War I-- a recurring theme among Russian officials since the Cold War’s end.

Some of Bill Clinton’s top advisers correctly predicted that NATO expansion would produce a backlash in Moscow, and would create a handy narrative for would-be nationalists to posture against the West. Clinton’s secretary of defense, William Perry, told Politico this summer that he considered resigning over the issue out of concern for its effect on U.S.-Russia relations. But Clinton pressed ahead, kicking off a process that added a dozen new members over the next 20 years, from the Baltic countries of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia through Eastern Europe (the Czech Republic and Romania) and into the former Yugoslavia-- all places where Russia had once enjoyed uncontested influence.

As Obama kept the NATO train rolling, his secretary of state was fully on board. “There can be no question that NATO will continue to keep its doors open to new members,” Clinton said in February 2010.

Whatever the real-world effect on Russia’s interests, it felt like a provocation to the Kremlin. “NATO enlargement didn't actually harm Russia. It didn't pose a security risk,” says James P. Rubin, a former spokesman in Bill Clinton’s State Department. “It only made Russian elites feel bad, and made them feel that their great power status was somehow weakened.”

Among those elites was Putin, for whom NATO’s expansion fit with the 1990s-humiliation narrative. In a recent interview with the filmmaker Oliver Stone, Putin acknowledged that Russia reacts to the alliance’s expansion “emotionally,” adding that Russia is “forced to take countermeasures” against it. “That is, to aim our missile systems at those facilities which we think pose a threat to us,” Putin explained.

For Putin, the last way Hillary Clinton stoked resentments about the end of the Cold War might have been the most important. Clinton’s “reset” policy briefly improved relations between Washington and Moscow. But Putin was still resentful about Bush-era U.S. political influence in Ukraine, Georgia, and other former Soviet republics. Putin saw steadily rising American funding for civil society and democracy programs in Europe, Central Asia and Russia itself as a form of subversion.

...But it wasn’t until December 2011 that Putin came to see Hillary Clinton as a direct threat to his power. That was when unusually large protests appeared in the frigid streets of Moscow. Though sparked by allegedly rigged parliamentary elections, the demonstrations morphed into something more, with shouts of “Putin is a thief!” and “Russia without Putin.” Putin had seen nothing like it since first coming to power more than a decade earlier. For an autocrat and former spy who U.S. officials call both paranoid and rightfully conscious that a sudden loss of power could land him in jail or worse, it was a dire threat.

And in Putin’s view, Clinton piled on. She offered supportive words about the protests, expressing “concerns” about the parliamentary elections and saying the U.S. “supports the rights and aspirations of the Russian people.” To Western ears, it was boilerplate pro-democracy talk, not exactly a call to arms against the government in Moscow. But Putin treated it that way. He fumed that Clinton had “sent a signal” to the protesters and accused the U.S. of backing election observers who, he said, had a subversive agenda. “We need to safeguard ourselves from this interference in our internal affairs and defend our sovereignty,” Putin said.

Some U.S. officials believed that Putin-- like so many autocrats who finger foreigner provocateurs for domestic unrest-- had found a handy political villain in Clinton. But Clinton herself came to believe he was out for vengeance, as she told donors at a closed-door event on December 15. And other Russia experts believe Putin was genuinely infuriated.

“He was incensed,” said Dmitri Trenin, director of the Moscow Center at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The State Department became more sinister in the eyes of the Russian media than the CIA was during the Cold War.”

...In a March 2014 address shortly after claiming Crimea, Putin made clear that he was re-establishing Russia’s place in the global order. He said the world had to “accept the obvious fact: Russia is an independent, active participant in international affairs. Like other countries, it has its own national interests that need to be taken into account and respected.” Translation: Russia would no longer be seated at the kids’ table while Washington dictated world events.



Increasingly, it has become clear that another foreign nation where Russia has exercised its new influence is the United States itself, where Hillary Clinton’s campaign was beset for months by a steady flow of stolen emails-- hacked, according to U.S. intelligence officials, by agents of the Kremlin, likely at Putin’s personal direction.

It’s impossible to measure the precise effect of the leaked emails on Clinton’s candidacy. But her defeat was unquestionably a win for Putin, who will soon greet an American president leading what could be the most Russia-friendly administration in U.S. history. Putin sent Donald Trump his congratulations within an hour of Clinton’s concession. And when word of Trump’s election reached the Russian Duma, spontaneous applause broke out in the room.

And why not? Trump has questioned NATO’s value and relevance, and raised doubts about whether he will guarantee the defense of its most vulnerable members, including the Baltic states-- positions no American president has ever so much as entertained. He has suggested he would consider removing sanctions imposed over Ukraine and perhaps even recognize Crimea as part of Russia, despite bipartisan revulsion at the idea in Congress.

This is not the future Bill Clinton had hoped for two decades ago. He foresaw a rejuvenated Russia-- but one that would be integrated into Europe, with a blossoming democracy, a free market, and a contributor to stability and security there. Instead the opposite has happened: Russia has become a repressive security state that is working to undermine Western democracy while it rattles a nuclear saber at NATO.

For all his bare-chested-on-horseback posturing, Putin’s Russia is still beset by problems. Its economy remains stunted, hobbled in part by U.S. and European sanctions over Ukraine. Russia experts and U.S. officials say Moscow remains deeply insecure over its place in the world. But there is also a new optimism in the Kremlin, they say-- particularly now that America, perhaps with Russian assistance, has elected Trump.

“I think Russia has bounced back since the end of the Cold War,” said Trenin. “Russia is a rare major power that has bounced back after a historical defeat." Trenin wouldn’t go so far as to say that the country that lost the Cold War has now managed to win the aftermath. But, he said: “Russia is getting back on its feet as a major power.”

Whatever else Trump augurs for the world, it’s clear what he means for Russia: His surprise victory ended the Clintons’ long run at the center of American power, and his avowed respect for the autocratic Putin marks a decisive recovery from the embarrassment and second-tier status that has needled the Kremlin leader for two decades.

Re. the belated concession of NC Gov. "Puppet Pat" McCrory: Good riddance to bad rubbish

Puppet Pat: Not smiling so much anymore?

by Ken

So North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, known to DWT readers as "Puppet Pat," has thrown in the towel on his failed reelection, after dragging the proceedings out with a series of crackpot accusations about election fraud -- only to see his margin of defeat hold fast as limited recounts began.

And it was by no means a given that Puppet Pat and the NC GOP would accept the election result. In the above-referenced NYT report on the governor's belated concession to NC Attorney General Roy Cooper, Richard Fausset notes:

The sealing of Mr. Cooper’s victory — he leads by just over 10,000 votes in the unofficial state tally — brings a modicum of relief to Democrats here. Many of them had feared a post-Election Day power play by North Carolina’s Republicans, who control the state’s General Assembly, where the Republicans in recent years have enacted aggressive gerrymandering plans and a law curtailing voter access that have been struck down by the federal courts. Some feared that the Republicans would take advantage of a law that allows contested elections to be settled by a vote of the legislature.

So, not gonna happen. Thank goodness for small favors.

My first response to the earlier news that Puppet Pat's lie-fueled demand for a recount wasn't going so well was: Is there really no price to be paid for pols' lying? Of course I had the president-elect in my thoughts as well, and judging by his example, the answer is "What're you, nuts? Of course not!" As long as the pol is telling the right kind of lies, which usually means the hard-core right-wing kind, they're not only tolerated but encouraged.

But with Puppet Pat, there's a wrinkle. His unexpected defeat -- running far behind, in the statewide vote count, both presidential candidate Donald Trump and reelected turdheap Sen. Richard Burr -- is routinely attributed to the mean-spirited "bathroom bill" he reluctantly signed, and I have no reason to doubt this. A certain number of NC voters seem to have cottoned to the fact that some forms of bigotry have become bad for business. Great!

However, when I hear Puppet Pat's name and reign referred to, alluded to in this snippet from the NYT account:

As a mayor of Charlotte, Mr. McCrory was known as a moderate and pragmatist, a reputation that attracted many Democrats to his 2012 campaign. But the legislature pushed, and he generally supported an ambitious conservative agenda, rolling back the state’s generous ballot-access rules. The legislature also passed expanded rights for gun owners, a private-school voucher plan, new abortion regulations and a tax overhaul that opponents criticized for favoring the wealthy.

What I think of is a terrific post our Noah wrote back in December 2013, "A tale of two Popes -- the one in the Vatican, who takes Jesus' words to heart, and the one in North Carolina." I'm going to take the liberty of reprising the start of that post:

There are two Popes in the news lately. Both represent organizations that claim to speak for Jesus Christ. One's name is Pope Francis, leader of the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Francis is the better-known of the two, and his actions befuddle and anger U.S. Republicans. The other's name is Art Pope. Art Pope is the North Carolina Republican Party's pope.

Unlike many past Popes, Francis seems to take the reported actions and words of Jesus to heart and uses his own words and actions to lead his organization toward the betterment of humanity. Art Pope plays for the other side.

While Pope Francis seeks to aid the poor and the powerless, even leaving the Vatican at night dressed as an ordinary priest to comfort the homeless, Art Pope's mission is to exploit the poor and the powerless to gain more power, even seeking to expand the numbers of poor in his state. Art Pope is a mini-me to the Koch Brothers. He has a lot of money but not Koch Brothers Kash, so for now he has been content to buy just one state out of 50.

As you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.

-- Jesus, as quoted in the Book of Matthew, 25:31-46

Art Pope preaches a very different gospel. He has used his material goods to elect and buy the best and truest form of Republican government he can. The end result has been a takeover of North Carolina by political perps that is as extreme as any since the days of segregation. But the agenda that Art Pope pushes is not based solely on race. Women, senior citizens, Hispanics, and students are all targets of this pope.

It is oligarchist Art Pope who has financed an insane asylum that serves as the North Carolina legislature and governor's office. He is now even Gov. Pat McCrory's budget director, all but officially making the governor his hand puppet.

In 2010, 75 percent of all the outside money that came into North Carolina's legislative elections came from groups backed by Art Pope. His candidates won 80 percent of those races. Pope's money then financed a 2012 election that was so successful for Republicans that it ended in this being the first time since 1870 that the Repug Party controlled the governorship and both houses of the state legislature, the General Assembly. Without Art Pope putting his money behind his agenda, there is no feo-fascist Gov. "Puppet Pat" McCrory; there are no attacks on the teachers of North Carolina (right down to removing money for instructional supplies).

In fact, Puppet Pat seems to think that education should exist only to train people for jobs -- vocational training for worker bees, as it were. Puppet Pat wants Pope's legislature to pass laws that would provide funds to universities "not based on how many butts in seats but how many of those butts can get jobs." Apparently McCrory never learned that education deals with the brains in your head. His stated outlook reveals that education is not about expanding the mind or improving society and moving it forward. As for the promised jobs, they haven't materialized, as his policies continue to damage the state economy.

Without people like Puppet Pat who are so willing to do the bidding of the money men, there is no chronic union-busting; there are no attacks on the voting rights of legal North Carolina citizens; there is no well-orchestrated attack on democracy itself. He is his state's Scott Walker. To Art Pope, just as to the Walker-backing Koch Brothers, there are the privileged few and "the least of these," with nothing in between: lords and serfs. It's a push back to the past -- way back. . . .

So all in all my response to Puppet Pat's graceless concession is: Good riddance to bad rubbish.

#

West Virginia-- Its Own World Politically

National Democrats-- as opposed to reactionary "Manchin Democrats"-- have largely given up on West Virginia. In 2012 not only did Romney beat Obama 412,406 (62%) to 234,925 (36%), one of Obama's worst performances in America, but Romney won every single county in the state. This year doesn't look much better, although Hillary is ahead of Trump is Jefferson County (closest , and commuter-distance, to DC) and Monongalia counties and closing in on Kanawha, the biggest county in the state (Charleston) where Romney beat Obama by 12 points but where Hillary is just 4 points behind Trump. Still, the only two relatively recent polls of the state show Trump winning by either 18 points or 27 points.

The big turnout in the primary for Bernie, was just that-- a turnout for Bernie and his populist positions, not a turnout for the Democratic Party and not a turn out that's going to do much for Hillary a week from Tuesday. More Democrats (241,016 votes,) voted in the primary than Republicans (202,880). Bernie won every county (as did Trump). Bernie beat Hillary 123,860 (51.4%) to 86,354 (35.8%). There's been a ton of anecdotal evidence that many Bernie voters will either vote for Trump or skip voting for president altogether.

That said, there is also a gubernatorial race we've talked about before between a billionaire Trump-like fake-Democrat, Jim Justice, and a hack Republican careerist, Bill Cole. Justice won his primary with the same percentage as Bernie (although with more votes-- 131,845. Over 10,000 more Democrats voted in the gubernatorial primary than in the presidential primary. And polling shows Justice up over Cole by about 6 points.

However, there's another factor that isn't being accounted for in most polling. There is an actual Democrat in the race-- Mountain Party candidate Charlotte Pritt. The Mountain Party is the local Green Party affiliate and Pritt is a real life progressive Democrat who served in both the state House and the state Senate and once ran for governor as a governor, beating Joe Manchin, who-- to put it mildly-- holds a grudge and is doing everything he can-- and he totally controls the state Democratic Party-- to undercut Pritt on every level.

Thursday the Charleston Gazette-Mail endorsed Justice with an observation that they couldn't remember "a more uninspiring set of choices for West Virginia governor." The endorsement points out how excruciatingly bad both Justice and Cole are but then summarily dismissed Pritt as a protest vote that would only serve to elect the greater of two evils (Cole). A careful read of the endorsement would certainly be encouragement for anyone to stay home. But that would be a mistake. Pritt would make a great governor and she's worth supporting. I love the letter she wrote to the Gazette-Mail editorial board in response to their insulting endorsement of Justice.

I was shocked to see your endorsement of Jim Justice coming from the Gazette especially in light of the reports of Jim Justice’s mine safety and water pollution violations, and his default on taxes that could be used for dire educational needs.

It seems that a NON endorsement was in order for the Gazette, if you were unable to endorse Charlotte Pritt, the only candidate with “hands on” experience balancing the state budget (four years on the finance committee in the WV House), or the candidate with more legislative experience than all the other candidates combined, or the one with a 100% voting record on environmental issues like clean water, and fighting out-of-state toxic dumps coming to WV, or the only candidate who is against hydro-fracking and MTR, or the only candidate with a career voting record of 100% promoting senior citizens and AFL-CIO issues!

Perhaps the reason for the falsehood is that I am the ONLY candidate with the skill set needed to address the “budget crisis” and the ONLY candidate with a specific diversified economic development plan (See: charlottepritt4gov.com). What is most disturbing about this Gazette endorsement is the unprofessional and unethical creation of a false position that was NEVER discussed with me. That smear was your excuse for NOT endorsing the most qualified candidate for governor? [The paper realized they were wrong and removed the smear from their website.]

To say that I would not be a unifying presence for the state reveals either your ignorance of WV political history or else a complete misunderstanding of who West Virginians are. And more particularly, what we are capable of. According to Arch Moore, the 1996 Charlotte Pritt gubernatorial campaign was the most successful grassroots campaign in WV history: the 10,000 plus army of Pritt volunteers in my campaign were from ALL parties.

Only the most politically naive believe that there is any real difference between Jim Justice and Bill Cole. Both are Republicans and both will be controlled by ALEC/Koch Brothers. Jim Justice, Joe Manchin’s handpicked successor to Tomblin, will have a closer tie to ALEC/Koch Brothers because of Joe’s own close ties with ALEC since the early 1990’s. Both Justice and Cole are in an income bracket completely outside the range of those they would be governing.

As a Mountain Party governor, I represent ALL parties of WV because our members and those who vote for us are ISSUE oriented rather than LABEL oriented. In fact, a Charlotte Pritt governorship would be a mandate for governorship that empowers all West Virginians. My cabinet would consist of the best appointees from ALL parties. I would work with Senators, Delegates and citizens of ALL parties because my party and my base would come from BOTH and ALL party affiliations.

Despite your unfounded claim that I “would not be a unifying presence,” the only logical conclusion is that I am the only gubernatorial candidate capable of unifying our state.

Your opinion that “a vote for her is a vote for Bill Cole” not only underestimates my candidacy, it could have been directly lifted out of the Democratic party dirty tricks playbook used earlier this the campaign season.

A vote for Charlotte Pritt is a vote for my voting record and my principled stands for the eight years I served in the WV Legislature. A vote for Charlotte Pritt is a vote of trust by the people of WV!  A vote for Charlotte Pritt is a vote of principle not protest. They are voting for me because they have someone and something WORTH voting FOR!

Since the Gazette requires that those submitting letters to the editor give their names and telephone numbers, it seems only fair that the person who wrote the endorsement, including that smear, should follow the same guidelines that you demand from your contributors. The Voters and I deserve to know who on your staff actually wrote your Endorsement Editorial.

A poll from Global Strategy Group shows Justice ahead with 44% to Cole's 34% and with Pritt at 8%. Justice is winning self-described conservative Democrats 70-30%. Hillary is losing conservative Democrats to Trump 80-18%. Justice has said he won't vote for Hillary. Spending is pretty skewered towards the two reprehensible corporate party candidates. Justice has spent $4,361,913 ($3,274,403 of which is a loan from himself) and Cole has spent $2,557,341 (including a $500,000 loan from himself). Pritt has spent $5,176.

The Trump Effect-- On The 2016 Senate Races... And Beyond

You may have read yesterday that new polls are showing Democrats surging in gubernatorial races. The Trump effect looks like it will be kicking in up and down the ballots, even in the Republican-friendly states like Indiana, North Carolina, West Virginia and Missouri, that have gubernatorial races this year. “We’re in a map right now where we’re pleased, on a race-by-race basis, at how this looks,” said Jared Leopold, a spokesman for the Democratic Governors Association. “Everyone expected that 2016 would be a difficult cycle for Democrats because we were defending more.” Is Leopold celebrating that the Trump-like "Democratic" billionaire, Jim Justice, a detestable arch conservative who reeks corruption and has announced he won't vote for Hillary, is ahead? I called the Democratic Governors Association and they refused to comment on West Virginia. They'd rather talk about North Carolina and Indiana

A Ball State University poll released Wednesday, conducted for WISH-TV in Indianapolis, shows former Indiana House Speaker John Gregg (D) leading Lt. Gov. Eric Holcomb (R) by a 48 percent to 43 percent margin in the race to replace Republican Gov. Mike Pence, Donald Trump’s running mate.

In North Carolina, another Republican-led state, three surveys released this week show Attorney General Roy Cooper (D) locked in a tight race with Gov. Pat McCrory (R), who has faced nationwide backlash over the state’s law on public bathroom use for transgender people. Polls conducted by CNN and Survey USA showed Cooper with a narrow lead, while a survey conducted by the conservative Civitas Institute showed McCrory slightly ahead.

Surveys in two states led by Democrats, Oregon and New Hampshire, show Democrats up by significant margins in gubernatorial races.

A University of New Hampshire poll conducted for WMUR showed Executive Councilor Colin Van Ostern (D) leading fellow Executive Councilor Chris Sununu (R) 44 percent to 38 percent. A MassInc poll conducted for WBUR released last week showed Van Ostern up 47 percent to 44 percent.

...In Montana, both Democrats and Republicans believe Gov. Steve Bullock (D) is likely to win a second term.

Though governor races tend to be viewed differently by voters than federal races, some Republicans worry that Donald Trump’s increasingly perilous political standing could begin to bleed down ticket, especially in North Carolina and New Hampshire, two presidential swing states.

But it's the Senate where most attention has been focused. This should have been a relatively easy year for Democrats to win the majority and to bank seats for the expected GOP come-back in 2018. The 2018 midterm map favors Republicans as much as the 2016 midterm map favors Democrats. Unfortunately, Schumer and Tester, who run the DSCC recruited excruciatingly bad candidates and not only are the Democrats not banking the seats they need to offset expected losses in 2018, they could possibly manage to not even win the Senate back this year. The only reason Schumer's dreadful, Wall Street-friendly conservative recruits are even in contention at all is because of Trump's toxicity. "Without Trump," one progressive senator who's no fan of Schumer's told me, "we wouldn't have a prayer. Schumer screwed up royally in too many states."

There are 34 Senate seats with elections this year. 10 are safely Republican-- Utah, South Dakota, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Kentucky, South Carolina, Alabama, Kansas, Idaho and Arkansas-- and not looked at as worth contesting by the Democrats and 8 are safely Democratic-- California, Oregon, Vermont, Hawaii, Maryland, Connecticut, New York and Washington-- not looked at as worth contesting by the Republicans. That leaves 16 seats with vulnerable incumbents that the two parties are battling over: just 2 Democratic-- Nevada and Colorado-- and a whopping 12 Republican seats-- Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Hampshire, Illinois, Georgia, Alaska, Indiana, Arizona, Missouri, Iowa, Louisiana, North Carolina and Florida.

Despite poking around to see if he could get Wall Street whore and New Dem chief Ron Kind to run, Schumer didn't interfere in Wisconsin, where Russ Feingold was the overwhelming favorite of the state's Democrats and is kicking unpopular extremist Republican Ron Johnson's ass. Other states were-- and thereby are-- less fortunate. Schumer overrode Iowans to insert corporate shill Patty Judge, who is going down to a tremendous defeat. Schumer squelched the early enthusiasm for smart, young, ideas-driven candidate PG Sittenfeld in Ohio and forced walking corpse, conservative throwback Ted Strickland, into the race, where he's being slaughtered by dull and unaccomplished Republican Rob Portman. Schumer recruited reactionary New Dem Ann Kirkpatrick to run against the very vulnerable John McCain. The only way she will become senator is if McCain dies before election day. In Florida, Schumer promised Wall Street he would keep Alan Grayson out of the Senate and the vessel was Wall Street's favorite New Dem, Patrick Murphy, who the DSCC and their allies spent millions on to get over the primary finish line. The DSCC has now abandoned him to Marco Rubio-- a weak and flawed candidate Grayson could have eviscerated and beaten-- who is beating Murphy. In Pennsylvania, Schumer spent a fortune denying the nomination to the extremely popular Joe Sestak-- popular with real Democrats, not with establishment elites-- and Schumer's mediocre candidate, former fracking lobbyist Katie McGinty has been unable to put the reprehensible Republican, Pat Toomey, away. Even in the one race where Schumer's strategy worked-- recruiting very right-wing corporate whore Evan Bayh in Indiana, a state that would not have otherwise been in play-- even if Evan wins, it's a mixed bag, since he tends to vote with the GOP as much as with the Democrats and if he's in the Senate he will be constantly dragging the Democratic caucus further right on most issues. He's so bad that Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have pointedly left him out of their appeals to Democrats to vote to give the party a Senate majority.

The Democrats could take back Alaska-- where the GOP is in a vicious civil war between mainstream conservatives led by Lisa Murkowski and fringy neo-fascists led by Trumpist Joe Miller (running as a Libertarian) but instead of embracing the Democrat in the race, progressive reformer Ray Metcalfe, Schumer tried recruiting the incredibly corrupt Mark Begich and when Begich turned him down, gave the OK for his allies in the party establishment to throw Metcalfe under the bus and support an independent candidate instead.

The state of the race as I see it now is that Schumer has thrown away Alaska, Arizona, Iowa and Ohio and that the GOP will win each of those states. Georgia and Louisiana are going to vote Republican. Colorado, Wisconsin and Illinois are safely Democratic and Indiana, Nevada, and New Hampshire will probably go Democratic. That leaves Florida leaning Republican, Missouri leaning Republican, North Carolina and Pennsylvania true toss ups.

Over at Politico yesterday, Burgess Everett wrote that the battle for the Senate is down to 6 states: "the traditional swing states of Nevada, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, and the newly competitive states of North Carolina, Missouri and Indiana, which historically lean Republican."

One wild card is Florida, where Democrats are engaged in an internal battle about whether to add the Sunshine State back into the battleground mix. President Barack Obama was just there hammering Sen. Marco Rubio, but Democratic groups have cut more than $15 million in ad buys. Some in the party are advocating that Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Fla.) can win with a reinvestment of party resources, but the DSCC and Senate Majority PAC are for now unmoved.

Here's Politico's guide to the half-dozen states that truly dictate whether Mitch McConnell or Chuck Schumer will be running the show next year.

New Hampshire

Democrats just got their best poll of the race from UNH/WMUR, showing Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) losing by nearly double-digits to Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan. Democrats are crowing about it, but no one on the ground actually thinks it’s a blowout.

...Hassan is trying to make Ayotte pay for not disavowing Trump until this month.

“When it became untenable to stick with him ... she switched,” Hassan said of Trump in an interview this month.

Indiana

Republican Todd Young's campaign is laser-focused on a glaring vulnerability that’s dogged Democrat Evan Bayh since he entered the race in July: The charge that he abandoned Indiana until he wanted to run for office again.

...Thought by Democrats to be a lock when the former senator and governor enjoyed a double-digit advantage three months ago, Bayh has seen his lead dwindle to single digits after a barrage of attack ads. Democrats are betting that Indiana voters’ long history with the Bayh family will be enough.

Pennsylvania

More than ever before, Democrat Katie McGinty’s campaign is hitching itself to the Clinton wagon and attempting to make GOP Sen. Pat Toomey’s indecision on Trump the race’s signature issue. Toomey has said he's still waiting for Trump to earn his vote.

...But nationalizing the race by making it about Trump carries risks for McGinty as well. While Toomey has carved out a brand distinct from Trump’s, many voters still see her as a generic Democrat. While Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has pulled away in Pennsylvania, McGinty and Toomey are running neck-and-neck.

North Carolina

It’s all tied up in North Carolina, where Democrat Deborah Ross has steadily gained on Sen. Richard Burr, a low-key and relaxed lawmaker who vowed not to start his campaign until October. Now, Republicans are betting it all on an advertising blitz about the “radically liberal” stances Ross took while at the American Civil Liberties Union. The spots slam her for voicing concern over the state’s sex offender registry, defending flag burners and even for advocating for an adolescent who was convicted of sexual assault. (The ACLU believed he had been given too harsh a sentence for someone his age.)

Burr, however, waited to launch the attacks, causing much grumbling among national and local Republicans, who say an aggressive summer ad campaign to define Ross would’ve put the race out of reach for Democrats. Republicans familiar with Burr’s campaign said there was not enough cash to do so, as other Senate races were seen as “higher priorities.”

So the political winds, for now, are behind Ross, a former state legislator and a late-round draft pick for her party. Trump trails in the state, as Clinton airs wall-to-wall ads. And the GOP brand has suffered during a months-long fight over the state’s transgender “bathroom law,” which a majority of voters don’t support.

Missouri

The GOP assumed Trump’s popularity would guarantee GOP Sen. Roy Blunt’s reelection. But while Trump’s numbers in the state slid slightly over the past month, Democrat Jason Kander gained momentum and kept outperforming Clinton on the Democratic ticket.

Kander got reinforcements from the Democratic Party’s liberal firebrand Elizabeth Warren on a recent Friday in Kansas City before a capacity crowd of over 1,000 people. Warren delivered a roaring indictment of Blunt as “part of the problem” in Washington and tied him to special interest groups such as the Koch brothers.

Warren has limited appeal in red Missouri, but her depiction of Blunt as a career politician with deep ties to Washington lobbyists-- including within his own family-- syncs with Kander’s central message in the race.

Polls show Blunt with only a slight lead, and Republicans have privately urged Blunt to hit back at the Democrats' attacks more forcefully. But Blunt has instead focused on criticizing Kander over his support for Clinton and Obamacare.

Nevada

The Silver State is the most diverse swing state up for grabs and the only one in which Republicans are on offense. Rep. Joe Heck (R-Nev.) has been a solid recruit for the GOP, acquitting himself well in the Democratic-leaning state against former Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto. The winner will claim a big prize: the seat of Democrat Harry Reid, the retiring minority leader.

Heck has led for most of the year, though polls are showing the race beginning to tilt Cortez Masto’s way. Polling in Nevada is notoriously unreliable due to the difficulty of reaching casino workers and cellphone users. The past two surveys showed Heck up 3 percentage points and Cortez Masto up 7.

But one thing is more certain: Heck is taking plenty of heat from conservatives for unendorsing Trump.

"No Cortez Masto supporter was going to change their vote and vote for him" because Heck unendorsed Trump, said Chuck Muth, a former state GOP executive director, on Nevada radio this month. It’s one of several similar clips being circulated by Nevada Democrats.

So let's imagine that the Schumer curse is somewhat ameliorated by the Trump curse and that Democrats win Nevada, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Indiana and even Missouri and Florida. Hard to imagine, but play along. Two years later, unless Hillary suddenly turns into FDR (rather than the more likely Richard Nixon), the Democrats will face an electoral nightmare. Of the 33 Senate seats up, 9 are held by Democrats who will be considered vulnerable-- the governor-filled Kaine Virginia seat, Heidi Heitkamp (ND), Joe Manchin (WV), Claire McCaskill (MO), Sherrod Brown (OH), Tammy Baldwin (WI), Bill Nelson (FL), Jon Tester (MT) and Joe Donnelly (IN). On top of that Bob Menendez (D-NJ) will either be super-vulnerable or in prison. Independent Angus King (ME), who caucuses with the Democrats, will also be vulnerable if LePage decides to challenge him (likely). And among Republicans, only Dean Heller (NV) could be thought to be vulnerable to a Democrat.

So... say the pretty much everything within reason goes for the Democrats-- even Missouri and Florida-- they going into 2018 with 54 seats. That's 2 years into an obstructed Hillary term and with weak candidates in red states North Dakota (Heitkamp), Missouri (McCaskill), Montana (Tester), and Indiana (Donnelly), who-knows-what in Virginia, New Jersey and Florida, where Nelson is likely to run for governor and Rick Scott will probably run for the Senate. And no Trump on the ticket. I'm sure McConnell likes those odds better than the one's he's looking at today.

West Virginia Has A Candidate Running For Governor At Least As Bad As Trump-- And He Calls Himself A Democrat!

Charlotte Pritt With TweedleDee and TweedleDum

Last month, we took a quick look at the three-way race for governor in West Virginia, a race that pits progressive Democrat, Charlotte Pritt, running on the Mountain Party, against two corrupt conservatives-- garden variety reactionary Republican Bill Cole vs fake Democrat Jim Justice, West Virginia's very own Donald Trump.

Justice, West Virginia's only billionaire represents absolutely nothing remotely related to the Democratic Party-- not in terms of values, principles or even team identity. He's outspokenly anti-Obama and anti-Hillary and says he's not voting for her. His campaign, of course, is self-funded-- in a state where, of the 241,016 votes Democrats who voted in the presidential primary, 123,860 (51.4%) voted for Bernie and only 35.8% went for Hillary. Bernie won every single county in the state. And now West Virginia Democrats are being asked to support the local equivalent of Trump. And he's winning! The alternative for these Bernie-backing West Virginia Democrats is to vote for the Mountain Party-- the local affiliate of the Green Party-- candidate, Charlotte Pritt, a former Democratic state legislator and well-known and much-respected activist.

Yesterday Howard Berkes of NPR News and West Virginia Public Broadcasting did another exposé on Justice's career-long scumbaggery. This guy belongs in prison, not the governor's mansion. Following his campaign it's virtually impossible to think Trump and Justice weren't separated at birth.

[A]n NPR investigation shows that Justice's mining companies still fail to pay millions of dollars in mine safety penalties two years after an earlier investigation documented the same behavior. Our analysis of federal data shows that Justice is now the nation's top mine safety delinquent.

His mining companies owe $15 million in six states, including property and minerals taxes, state coal severance and withholding taxes, and federal income, excise and unemployment taxes, as well as mine safety penalties, according to county, state and federal records.

In the past 16 months, while fines and taxes went unpaid, Justice personally contributed nearly $2.9 million in interest-free loans and in-kind contributions to his gubernatorial campaign, according to state campaign finance reports.

Grant Herring, a spokesman for the Justice gubernatorial campaign, said Justice "won't be doing an interview," despite multiple requests after NPR provided details of its investigation.

But Billy Shelton, an attorney for Justice mining companies in Kentucky, responded to Justice's failure to pay $2.6 million in delinquent federal mine safety penalties, which are levied by the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration. MSHA and Treasury Department data obtained by NPR show that Justice has paid $675,000 this year as part of a payment agreement, but the agreement covers less than half of the total amount owed.

"Unlike the coal companies that filed for bankruptcy and walked away from their obligations, the Justice companies are being responsible and following the agreed-upon payment plan. ... The Justice companies are taking the proper steps to make good on all MSHA commitments," Shelton says. "To imply anything beyond that is purely for political reasons and ignores the facts."

Justice is celebrated in West Virginia for saving the historic and luxurious Greenbrier Resort, a major economic driver for the surrounding region. But dozens of his coal mines in West Virginia and other Appalachian states have a history of safety violations and failure to pay on time the penalties that are supposed to discourage unsafe practices, according to MSHA violations and penalties data.

That's what NPR and Mine Safety and Health News documented in a joint investigation in 2014. At the time, Tom Lusk, the chief operating officer of Justice's mining companies, insisted that Justice "does not run from his obligations. ... He's made it abundantly clear that there's no way we're going to not fully meet and satisfy these obligations."

NPR conducted another analysis of federal mine safety data exactly two years later and found that mines owned by Justice added $1.38 million in new and unpaid mine safety penalties.

Delinquent Justice mines also continue to have worse-than-average safety records, according to NPR's analysis of MSHA injury and violations data. NPR's analysis shows that injury rates (for injuries forcing time away from work) are twice the national average and violations rates more than four times the national rate during the years the Justice mines failed to pay penalties.

The MSHA data also show that those mines were cited for 3,657 violations while they were delinquent, including 699 violations that are classified by MSHA as factors in mine fatalities, fatal mine accidents and major disasters.

MSHA mine inspectors issued dozens of citations for excessive coal dust, which can feed mine explosions, and roof and wall violations, which can lead to mine collapses.

One Justice mining company, Kentucky Fuel Corp., owed more than $709,000 in delinquent penalties, according to MSHA data, and was admonished in an April decision from the Federal Mine Safety and Health Commission, which adjudicates penalty disputes.

"Kentucky Fuel's history regarding the payment of penalties is abysmal," the commission wrote. "The operator's record indicates that it has repeatedly disregarded final penalty assessments."

The Justice fines concern Celeste Monforton, a former MSHA official, mine disaster investigator and lecturer on workplace safety at George Washington University and Texas State University.

"I don't think we should forget that the reason that he has those penalties is because there were violations and hazards in his coal mining operations," says Monforton.

NPR found two more noteworthy developments in its 2016 review of delinquent mine safety data after the 2014 investigation:

• As NPR reported in 2014, five people died in in a mine explosion at Kentucky Darby in 2006. The $500,000 in penalties for that disaster plus $2.4 million more in fines at mines owned by Ralph Napier Sr. and his partners disappeared from the Mine Safety and Health Administration's books. The agency says the delinquencies were declared non-collectible and the IRS issued 1099 forms declaring the unpaid fines taxable income. But the companies are defunct so no collection is ever expected.
• NPR profiled D&C owner Horace Garrison Hill in our 2014 stories and detailed a fatal accident there. His mine owed more than $4 million in delinquent fines. That debt also disappeared from MSHA's records and resulted in a 1099 form. D&C is also defunct.

"That's the way the system is set up and it has to change," says Tony Oppegard, a former mine safety regulator who represents the families of miners killed at both D&C and Kentucky Darby. "There's no incentive to run a safe mine if you know that you don't have to pay your fines."

MSHA says it supports a bill in Congress that would give the agency authority to shut down delinquent mines six months after they become delinquent.

The agency did revive a little-used enforcement tool after NPR's 2014 stories. It cited a mine's failure to pay penalties as a failure to fix the safety hazards that led to those penalties. It then shut down the mine until the owner agreed to a payment plan. That's happened four times since.

NPR's stories also prompted an inspector general's audit of MSHA's penalties system and practices. A report is expected soon.

Kentucky Fuel also tops all of Justice's mining companies for delinquent fines, county taxes and state and federal tax liens combined, with more than $8 million due, according to county, state and federal records.

Justice was asked about safety at his mines when he announced his run for governor last year.

"I'm a safety fanatic," he said at a news conference. "So I'm the last person in the world that's wanting something to where you would put an employee in a situation that would be unsafe."

As for the delinquent mine safety fines reported by NPR in 2014, Justice said "we'll absolutely ... make sure that every one of them is taken care of."

Lusk and MSHA agreed to a payment plan in December 2015, after two years of discussions, and the Justice mining companies have made every $75,000 monthly payment since. But the plan does not cover more than $1.7 million in unpaid fines referred to the U.S. Treasury for collection, according to Treasury records provided in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

The records show that some of the delinquent fines have been sent on to the U.S. Department of Justice for possible litigation and that others are pending referral to the agency.

Shelton says he is seeking a payment plan to cover the fines referred to Treasury.

The "Justice group has diligently pursued payment plans and full resolution of all outstanding issues," Lusk recently said.

Payment plans also exist in counties where Justice mining companies failed to pay more than $5.4 million in county taxes.

Media and legal pressure have been successful in getting the Justice companies to pay.

In April, the Charleston Gazette-Mail reported that the Justice companies owed $3.9 million in delinquent 2015 property taxes in West Virginia. Most were paid within two weeks.

In Harlan County, Ky., in October, the county attorney sued. In Tazewell County, Va., in April, the county sheriff seized mining equipment at a Justice mine, citing back taxes. Both moves got the checks flowing.

In Knott County, Ky., multiple lawsuits were filed against Justice's Kentucky Fuel Corp. A suit last year sought $2.7 million for three years of back taxes. That triggered about $300,000 in payments, but those suddenly stopped in April, says Knott County Judge-Executive Zachary Weinberg.

Weinberg calls Kentucky Fuel a "habitual offender" that is denying the county critical funds.

"You're talking about maybe a grant writer, or to keep the senior citizens' program whole or to pick trash up or to keep lights on, [or] to keep the employees with good health insurance," Weinberg says, adding that the county health board, school board, conservation district and extension office share in and need the unpaid taxes.

Knott County sought court orders twice in the past two months and payments suddenly resumed again.

Even Shelton, Justice's Kentucky attorney, sued to get paid.

In 2013, Shelton filed a complaint in Pike County, Ky., seeking $85,220 in unpaid legal fees from seven Justice mining companies. Within a month, Shelton had a default judgment awarding him his money plus legal fees and interest.

"[The] lawsuit was the result of a misunderstanding," Shelton says now, adding that the right Justice executive wasn't aware of the dispute until the suit was filed.

Just last week, 26 Justice mining companies and the Environmental Protection Agency agreed to a $6 million settlement for thousands of water pollution violations, which have been the focus of news stories in the past two years.

It's not just federal fines and county taxes that have public agencies seeking money from Justice's mines.

NPR found in county records in South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia more than $6 million in state and federal tax liens for failure to pay state withholding and coal severance taxes, and federal income, excise and unemployment taxes.

Most of the state and federal liens-- more than $4.5 million worth-- are in Justice's home state of West Virginia, and more than 60 percent of that debt is for state coal severance taxes.

In 2014 alone, Justice's Kentucky Fuel Corp. failed to pay $1.14 million in coal severance taxes. That's documented in a lien filed by the West Virginia Tax Department, and that single lien made up about a third of the state's total coal severance tax delinquencies for the year, according to figures provided by the agency.

Justice generally contributes to Republicans and to Blue Dog Democrats who vote with the Republicans. He contributed to George W. Bush's campaigns, Joe Manchin's campaigns, to the West Virginia Republican Party and to the West Virginia Democratic Party. When I called the Democratic Governors Association-- the DCCC for gubernatorial races, they refused to comment on the West Virginia gubernatorial race at all. Not even a chirp or a grunt. Nothing.

You can find out more about Charlotte Pritt here. Last Tuesday, the two conservative males debated in Charleston and, of course, excluded the progressive woman from the debate. It didn't shed much light, other than to confirm that neither of these dirty hackish candidates will do anything for West Virginia families. The two spent the whole debate regurgitating campaign talking points, avoiding specifics, even when pressed for them by the moderator, and hurling accusations and attacks at each other. That said, here's an interview that Public Radio ran with Pritt:



The two of them "debate" again on Tuesday and have, once again, made sure Pritt would be excluded.

Since The Beltway Democratic Establishment Refuses To Back Progressives Candidates, Why Should Grassroots Dems Unite Behind Their Crap Candidates?

Earlier today, we took a quick look at why Hillary isn't doing better in Florida. Last week, it was Ohio. The latest national polling of likely voters shows Hillary beating Trump 42-36% in a match-up that includes the third party candidates. Part of the reason she isn't doing better in Florida and Ohio is because the Beltway Establishment helped impose vile loser candidates locally-- Wall Street garbage like Patrick Murphy in Florida and pathetic walking corpse Ted Strickland in Ohio, neither of whom brings a single thing to the table other than a prayer that they can ride Hillary's coattails.

Meanwhile, on the generic congressional question in the same Morning Consult poll, about voting for a Democrat or a Republican, Democrats win 46% to 37%. Unfortunately many of the DCCC and DSCC recruits are far worse-- far, far worse-- than a generic Democrat and others, good, solid progressive ones, are being starved of resources by a DCCC more eager to keep progressives out of Congress than electing Democrats to Congress.

Beltway Villagers and establishment goons everywhere reached for their smelling salts when Tim Canova courageously refused to endorse Debbie Wasserman Schultz and when Grayson passed on endorsing Patrick Murphy after both were beaten in the Florida primary at the end of August. This past weekend, Elizabeth Warren had some establishment noses out of joint when she did a Senate Democrats fundraiser and very pointedly left out craven Wall Street shills-- and Schumer favorites-- Patrick Murphy (FL), Evan Bayh (IN), Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ) and Patty Judge (IA).

The problem is that neither Canova, Grayson nor Warren sees themevles as mindless cogs in a well-greased party wheel that goes round and round and round. Grayson and Warren have been beyond-the-call-of-duty loyal Democrats but there's a serious question as to whether or not Patrick Murphy fits any reasonable defination of "a Democrat" and there is no serious question about which interests Murphy, Bayh, Kirkpatrick and Judge would be working for were any of them to ooze into the Senate. Each of them could only be viewed as part of the problem Warren's career is built on tackling, not part of any reasonable solution. And her list of endorsed candidates doesn't just include progressives. Aside from Russ Feingold-- a sure-fired ally-- she's raising money for moderates like Katie McGinty (PA), Maggie Hassan (NH), Jason Kander (MO), Tammy Duckworth (IL) and Catherine Cortez Mastro (NV). Murphy, Bayh, Kirkpatrick and Judge, on the other hand, have records of working for the banksters and very much against the crucial issues Warren and Grayson and other progressives are working on.

Sunday, Kevin Robillard and Gabe Debenedetti reported that Bernie is refusing the help the crap-conservative Democrat, Sue Minter, running for governor in his own state-- and that it could cost her the race. They wrote that "Sanders' unwillingness to participate in the Minter race "is starting to generate ill will" with the state's Democratic establishment, according to "a top Vermont Democrat." Before Gov. Howard Dean put a stop to it, corrupt right-leaning Vermont Democrats like Minter and others from the Democratic Party establishment used to run right-wing Democrats against Bernie. In fact, in 1988 they ran someone just like Minter-- Democratic State Rep Paul Poirier-- against Bernie, draining away enough votes from him (19%), to throw the congressional seat to Republican Peter Smith and keep Bernie out of Congress.

How popular is Bernie in Vermont? In his last reelection race in 2012 he beat Republican John MacGovern 207,848 (71.1%) to 72,898 (24.9%). On that same day, Obama was reelected with 199,259 votes (67%). Yep! This year, Bernie beat Hillary in the state primary 115,900 (85.7%) to 18,338 (13.6%). He's been spending his political capital in Vermont trying to get a big turn-out for Hillary and for progressive allies like David Zuckerman (for Lt. Governor), Tim Ashe (for state Senate) and Mari Cordes (for state House). Howard Dean told the two Politico reporters that Minter is "very much a moderate Democrat"-- a polite way for Democrats to point out someone in their own party is a corrupt conservative piece of shit-- "which is probably why Bernie is sitting aside."

Minter, a technocrat who won a three-way Democratic primary by hyping her support for gun control and her role helping the state recover from flooding after Tropical Storm Irene, is still capable of winning without Sanders' help. But some observers believe the senator's endorsement would essentially guarantee a Democratic victory.

It's unclear exactly why Sanders hasn't backed Minter. He's been holed up with a top aide writing his book, mixing in travel to campaign for Hillary Clinton and higher-profile Senate candidates like Pennsylvania's Katie McGinty. Sanders also isn't fond of Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin-- who endorsed Clinton the day Sanders announced his presidential bid and scrapped plans to implement single-payer health care in the state-- and Minter worked in Shumlin's administration.

Minter also simply has a more moderate [again, that purposefully misleading Beltway word for "corrupt right-wing piece of shit"] profile than Sanders does.

“There is always an underlying question of who Bernie will support, but it isn't of the utmost importance,” said Dottie Deans, the state Democratic Party chair. “I certainly would welcome his support for any of our Democratic candidates, but what’s clear in this state is we have three parties: the Republican Party, the Democratic Party and the Progressive Party, and that makes it a little dicey.”

Sanders has marched to his own drumbeat on endorsements this year. National party leaders asked the Vermont independent to back two lower-profile Senate candidates over the summer-- Iowa’s Patty Judge and North Carolina’s Deborah Ross-- but they are not among the candidates Sanders has personally endorsed so far.

During the presidential primary race Schumer threatened Bernie with loss of a committee chair if he endorsed Grayson in Florida, Sestak or Fetterman in Pennsylvania or Sittenfeld in Ohio, where Schumer was desperate to have his conservative handpicked pro-Wall Street candidates-- respectively Patrick Murphy, Katie McGinty and Ted Strickland-- win the primaries. Bernie went along with it and the details of that will be a chapter in my "book" one day.

For establishment monsters like Steve Israel, Rahm Emanuel, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Ben Ray Lujan, Schumer, Tester, etc, "party unity" is always a one-way street. The thermometer below goes to a page that has progressive House candidates who won their primaries and have been completely and spitefully abandoned by the DCCC. All are in winnable districts, although some are very winnable and others are tougher shots. Please consider contributing to any-- or all-- of their campaigns: