Candidate-Wise, Is The Democratic Tent Too Big? Should They Really Keep Recruiting Blue Dogs And New Dems For Congress?

Early Monday morning, the NY Times published a piece by Catie Edmondson and Emily Cochrane, In Conservative Districts, Democrats Have To Answer For Party's Left Wing, that gets off on the wrong foot right from the very start, describing reactionary Utah Blue Dog Ben McAdams as a "moderate." He isn't.

Edmondson and Cochrane started their tale in Nephi, Utah, a small city of less than 6,000 people in Juab County, western Utah. It's part of McAdam's newly won congressional district. In 2016 Democrats there went overwhelmingly for Bernie-- 55 (77.5%) to 16 (22.5%) and Trump came in second (with 14% of GOP votes) behind Ted Cruz 647 to 118. In the general election Trump triumphed in Juab County with 2,759 votes (67.7%) to 742 votes (18.2%) for independent Evan McMullin and 436 votes for Hillary (10.7%). Not exactly a Democratic Party powerhouse county. Senator Mike Lee (R) was reelected with 85.7% of Juab's vote and Governor Gary Herbert (R) got 74.6% of the Juab vote. Last year, Mitt Romney won 80% of the Juab general election vote and Ben McAdams, the GOP-lite Blue Dog was creamed in the Juab County portion of the district, which gave GOP incumbent Mia Love a mind-boggling R+59 share of the county's vote, her biggest percentage of any of the district's 4 counties.

Last week, in Nephi, the The Times reported that McAdams "was grilled by constituents about the 'socialism' and 'anti-Semitism' that they saw coming out of the new Democratic House. 'How long do you intend to ride that train with those people?' one Utahan asked." McAdams is barely a Democrat at all. He immediately joined both the New Dems and Blue Dogs and hasn't been voting with Democrats on the crucial roll calls. He's already distinguished himself as aggressively anti-progressive. And he's hardly the only conservative freshman being attacked, even though they've abandoned their party's positions.

In Michigan, Representative Haley Stevens was asked about her ability to counter what one voter deemed the bigotry of some of her freshman colleagues-- a concern fueled partly by remarks from her counterpart in nearby Detroit, Rashida Tlaib-- and “the negative attitude they bring to Democrats.”

And on a rainy Saturday in Spotsylvania County, Va., one woman stood up in a town hall to remind Representative Abigail Spanberger that while she was the first Democrat to hold that seat in nearly 50 years, the majority of the rural enclave had voted Republican.

“Since the Democrats are now the party of death and taxes,” the woman said, as Democratic supporters scoffed and grumbled, “just how do you propose to effectively represent the taxpayers of Spotsylvania?”

Stevens is also a New Dem and Spanberger, like McAdams, joined both the New Dems and the Blue Dogs. Stevens, who ran as a progressive, is tied with 10 other New Dems as the 99th most progressive member of Congress. Spanberger ran as a conservative and is tied for the 176th most progressive member, already sporting an "F" grade. So does McAdams, who's tied with 4 other Dems as the 227th most progressive. Only 5 extremely right wing Democrats have worse voting records that McAdams. He's already on the watch-list for Democrats likely to switch parties at some point. Needless to say, none of them back Medicare-For-All, the Green New Deal or any other progressive initiatives.

Conventional wisdom-- happily regurgitated by the two non-critical thinking journalist-- is that McAdams and Spanberger are "moderates." Stevens is a moderate; McAdams and Spanberger are conservatives. assert that it was the conservatives who "secured the party’s House majority."

The DCCC maneuvered to get them the nominations and then supported them. There's no reason to claim that progressives wouldn't have won those anti-Trump independent voters just as easily, just as Mike Levin did in CA-49 . Overall, the DCCC adamantly refused to support progressives. They spent almost all of their money on conservative candidates. These are 5 Blue Dog-backed candidates from last year and what the DCCC + Pelosi's SuperPAC, End Citizens United and the Patriot Majority USA dark money SuperPAC spent on each. The percentage was their share of the vote:

• Anthony Brindisi- (Blue Dog-NY)- $5,403,585 (50.9)
• Mikie Sherrill (Blue Dog-NJ)- $2,819,952 (56.8%)
• Abigail Spanberger (Blue Dog-VA)- $2,120,805 (50.4%)
• Xochitl Torres Small (Blue Dog-NM)- $1,915,894 (50.9%)
• Ben McAdams (Blue Dog-UT)- $889,742 (50.1%)

OK... and these are 5 progressive candidates the DCCC and their satellite money organizations refused to help flip red seats but who came close. The percentage is the win number for the Republican:

• J.D. Scholten (IA-04-- Steve King)- ZERO (50.4%)
• Kara Eastman (NE-02-- Don Bacon)- $90,000 (51.0%)
• Nate McMurray (NY-27-- Chris Collins)- ZERO (49.1%)
• Mike Siegel (TX-10-- Michael McCaul)- ZERO (50.9%)
• Sri Kulkarni (TX-22-- Pete Olson)- ZERO (51.4%)

None of that is part of the Edmondson and Cochrane Times story. They're trying to prove the conventional wisdom that Democrats won't maintain their House majority next year if they lose the red-leaning districts like McAdams' and Spanberger's and that it's all Ocasio's, Tlaib's and Omar's fault (for standing up so aggressively for the Democratic values and agenda that motivate the party's activist base). So should the Democratic party jettison these values and forget about this agenda to better cater to conservatives who are embarrassed by Trump? That's certainly what the Blue Dogs, New Dems, No Labels and Problem Solvers folks would love.

At the same time The Times was publishing their corporatist perspective on the Democratic Party, The intercept published an essay by Eoin Higgins about what Democratic activists-- not the Republicans and Republ;ican-leaning voters The Times reported on-- are saying about what they want Congress to do. He wrote that "In upstate New York, Utah, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania, voters who feel a much greater sense of urgency than their elected officials have been reacting furiously to politicians who say the attempt to turn the fossil fuel-based economy around in the next 12 years simply isn’t realistic."

Antonio Delgado was underwritten by the Democratic Establishment in a very big way. The DCCC spent $1,568,032 on his race. End Citizens United (a DCCC arm) spent another $408,646, Priorities USA spent $124,749, and Pelosi's SuperPAC kicked in another $2,581,029. Outside groups spent $5,387,563 attacking his opponent and $703,596 bolstering him. Anyone who imagined Delgado was going to turn out to be a good member of Congress was in for a quick shock. He talked a good, solid progressive game during the election-- though he never persuaded Blue America-- but he has already earned an "F" from Progressive Punch and is tied with McAdams for the 227th "most progressive" voter in Congress. His crucial vote score is 42.86. That sucks.

At a town-hall meeting with constituents last week, he took the "no-can-do" approach groups like the DCCC, No Labels, The New Dems, Blue Dogs and Problem Solvers are recommending to freshmen. His constituents didn't like it and he "was pressed repeatedly by constituents over his half-hearted support for the effort. He doesn’t support the Green New Deal... though he noted that there were aspects to the bill that he backed. Delgado said that he’s more interested in solutions that address the issues around climate change that can be solved now and that the bill as written does not sufficiently lay out a path for that kind of approach to the inevitability of climate crisis." There is no bill, just a resolution, so he's also full of shit-- or incredibly stupid.

Democrats, especially freshmen in the House, are having to face voters in their districts who find the lack of action on climate change to be a major issue for the new representatives. And those complaints aren’t coming from blue districts-- as with Delgado, freshmen Democrats from purple districts are facing resistance from constituents over their hesitancy to endorse progressive programs. Republicans aren’t immune either. On Monday morning, roughly 250 young activists from the Sunrise Movement occupied the office of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) with 35 getting arrested.

The main rhetorical device that Democratic skeptics of the Green New Deal have been employing begins with a confident assertion that they believe in climate science, think the crisis must be taken seriously, and admire the ambition of the Green New Deal. But, they add, the resolution just can’t pass a Republican Senate or be signed by President Donald Trump.

...Rep. Ben McAdams, the new Democratic Congressman from Utah’s 4th district, who unseated incumbent Republican Mia Love in November by a razor-thin margin, told constituents at a town hall on February 19 that while he supported the Green New Deal’s aspirations in principle, he worried that the legislation wouldn’t make it through the House.

“It seems expensive,” said McAdams. “I’m not sure it’s feasible.”

In Pennsylvania, freshman Rep. Susan Wild beat the Bernie Sanders-backed local minister Greg Edwards in the Democratic primary, before turning her red Lehigh Valley district blue. She was faced with a similar barrage of questions from constituents dissatisfied by the new Congresswoman’s lukewarm take on the Green New Deal during a town hall on February 19. Wild doesn’t support the Green New Deal, at least not yet-- she said that she was interested in seeing more details on the proposal before deciding whether or not to sign on-- and that position rankled some supporters who felt that she wasn’t representing their interests. In response to sustained criticism at the event, Wild told the crowd that she was interested in what could be done now, the same dodge that was used by Delgado.

...The environment has long been a top concern of voters in the largely rural 19th, where Delgado unseated incumbent Republican John Faso in the November midterm election with a narrow 50.2% to 47.3% margin of victory. Delgado’s victory in the overwhelmingly white district was a win for upstate New York’s liberal voters, who sent the state’s first black representative from outside of the New York City area to Washington on the back of a campaign that relied on activists and advocates for support-- and included a call for the Green New Deal on the campaign trail.

“I am only beholden to you,” Delgado said in a speech to supporters on election night. “No special interests, no outside voices.”

The voters at the town hall, however, were less than convinced, asking the Congressman whose interests he was representing by not signing onto the legislation. Environmental issues are a bipartisan affair for the 19th; Faso was a member of the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus during his time in office.

...If the reaction to Delgado’s decision to avoid supporting the Green New Deal in his rural, majority white, purple district is an indication of the mood of the electorate, then Democrats running on a more centrist or right wing platform in the next election may be in danger.

Akiva Hirsch, who asked Delgado about supporting the Green New Deal during the town hall, told The Intercept that given the severity of the problem of climate change and the possibility of irreversible catastrophe in only a decade, Delgado’s response was insufficient. Hirsch and a group of friends from Bard College, which is in Delgado’s district, told The Intercept they were registered voters in the district.

It wasn’t all for Delgado on the Green New Deal, however, as at least one of the town hall attendees expressed support for his rejection of the proposal.

“I’m 100 percent happy that you didn’t sign onto the Green new Deal,” said constituent Hillary Thomas. “I think it’s a publicity piece for the people that are promoting it.”

Thomas told The Intercept that she voted for Delgado’s Republican opponent, John Faso, in last November’s election.

Sounds like the perfect person for The Times to focus on!

Gambling And Prostitution Czar Sheldon Adelson Is Underwriting The Republican Party's Overtly Racist Advertising

Macau/Vegas Mob-affiliated right-wing billionaire Sheldon Adelson continues to fund McConnell's Senate Leadership Fund and Ryan's Congressional Leadership Fund to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. He is, by far, the biggest contributor to right-wing politics in America, around $60 million so far this year... with plenty more coming. Among House races, the biggest Adelson cash dump has been in Wisconsin, against Randy Bryce, where hundreds of hours of vicious smear attacks have seriously changed the complexion of the race. An old friend of mine in Kenosha told me, "You can't escape the barrage of really ugly ads against Randy. Ryan is really doing a job on this guy. If there's a TV ad next week saying the Randy looked over someone's should in the 3rd grade to get a test answer, it wouldn't surprise me one bit. They don't want to talk about issues; they just want to attack, attack, attack on all this made-up personal crap... I hope it backfires on that little slimeball Ryan is pushing."

On Wednesday, one of the right-wing slime-buckets, Republican Nancy Douglass, who's been slanting the news on WLKG, her Lake Geneva radio station against Bryce for months, was forced to resign as chair of the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association. She appeared in an ad sponsored by Ryan's PAC, referring to Bryce as a deadbeat. Remember, Bryce is union iron worker who's been slaving away his whole life supporting a family. Brian Steil, a shady corporate attorney, has been busy working for a firm that specializes in sending Wisconsin jobs to low-wage hell-holes overseas.

Widely considered one of the most vicious broadcasters in the Midwest, Douglass is a frequent contributor to the Republican Party of Walworth County and has spent lavishly to support Paul Ryan and other right-wingers in southeast Wisconsin. An anti-union zealot and repulsive racist, Douglass represents everything that's wrong with the Trumpist party today. The Wisconsin Broadcasters Association is fortunate to be rid of her and her unAmerican propaganda.

Bryce may be getting the largest amount of Adelson sewer money thrown at him, but he's hardly the only one. Republican Party racism is on display big time as the party and its affiliated SuperPACS descend into a frenzy of white nationalism around the country. Jamiles Lartey has been watching for The Guardian as the GOP takes aim at non-white congressional candidates. Trumpism has given racism a seal of approval. He wrote that "as the 2018 midterm election campaign pulls into its homestretch, Republican attacks in two congressional races happening 3,000 miles apart have triggered alarm bells for targeting non-white candidates in an apparent effort to highlight their 'otherness.' The first comes from California’s 50th district, where Ammar Campa-Najjar is running as a Democrat for a seat currently occupied by the Republican Duncan Hunter. NBC’s Chuck Todd, a veteran political reporter and commentator called the spot 'maybe the most shocking and outrageous political ad I’ve ever seen,' in a Meet The Press Daily segment."

The ad zeroes in on Campa-Najjar’s heritage-- his mother is Mexican American and his father is Palestinian-- calling him a “Palestinian, Mexican, millennial Democrat” who is “working to infiltrate Congress” and a “security risk.”

“At best it’s desperate. That’s putting it mildly,” said Campa-Najjar, who also called the effort “blatantly ignorant” and “unhinged from reality.”

Last Wednesday a bipartisan group of dozens of national security veterans decried the spot as a “racist and bigoted” attack. “The baseless allegation that he is somehow a ‘security threat’ is an affront to our professionalism as national security experts, our American values, and our collective national dignity,” the group said in an open letter.

The ad accuses Campa-Najjar of being supported by the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood with no evidence, and despite the fact that Campa-Najjar is a Christian. “It’s just so interesting that we live in a world where Islamophobia even extends to non-Muslims,” Campa-Najjar told The Guardian.

...In a email statement to The Guardian, Hunter’s spokesman, Michael Harrison, declined to provide a source for the claims about the Muslim Brotherhood or the quote from Campa-Najjar’s father, but insisted that “the facts … raise national security concerns.”

Ironically, when Drunken Hunter was arrested and arraigned on a wide range of corruption, fraud and theft charges recently, Paul Ryan kicked him off the House Armed Services Committee since he really is a security threat. (And to make it worse, one of the groups he stole from was Wounded Warriors.) Hunter, a far right extrenmist, is a well-known philanderer and substance-abuser, who stole money to buy drugs and companionship from sex workers. First the San Diego area saw Duke Cunningham get thrown in prison-- a close "associate" of Duncan Hunter, Sr.-- and now it looks like Duncan Hunter will be the next San Diego member of Congress headed there.

“The fact is, there’s me, who was cleared by the FBI to work at White House, and there’s Hunter who was indicted by the FBI,” said Campa-Najjar. “So the law’s on my side and not his side as of late.”

David Schweidel, a professor of marketing at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University said ads like this may increasingly be more en vogue in the post-2016 election climate largely because Trump’s well-documented reliance on personal attacks proved effective enough to win the White House.

“We saw pundit after pundit kind of commenting on the fact that these personal attacks weren’t coming across as presidential and how ‘it’s the wrong temperament.’ Well, guess what, people responded to it,” Schweidel said.

He added that spots like Hunter’s are generally not intended to sway undecided voters, but to inspire the base to show up at the polls. As US politics continues its long slog towards ever-increased partisanship, elections become more about turning out the base and less about converting undecideds: which could mean negative and personal attacks only become more prevalent.

On the other side of the country, attack ads on a black congressional candidate’s former career as a rapper have taken on racist undertones in a district that, like California’s 50th, is predominantly white. Antonio Delgado, a Harvard Law graduate and Rhodes Scholar is running as a Democrat for a seat in New York’s 19th district currently held by Republican John Faso.

As a young man, Delgado released a socially conscious and political hip-hop album under the name AD the Voice in 2006.

Since the album came to light, a number of Republican groups have seized on it to paint Delgado’s flirtation with hip-hop as out of step with the values of the district. The Congressional Leadership Fund released an advert spot referring to Delgado as a “New York City liberal” and “[Nancy] Pelosi’s candidate” before clipping a handful of Delgado’s song lyrics, overlaying dramatically loud “bleep” sounds over words like “fuck,” “sex” and “porno.”

The ad also accused Delgado of “lacing his raps with extremist attacks on American values”, playing a clip where Delgado states, factually, that more civilian lives were lost during the Iraq war than the 9/11 attacks.

Faso didn’t place the ads, but has not condemned them either, saying in a statement this summer that “Mr Delgado’s lyrics paint an ugly and false picture of America.”

The subtext of the ads was seemingly illuminated in a New York Times article from July when Gerald Benjamin, a friend of Faso’s and director of the Benjamin Center at State University of New York at New Paltz, posed the question: “Is a guy who makes a rap album the kind of guy who lives here in rural New York and reflects our lifestyle and values?”

He continued: “People like us, people in rural New York, we are not people who respond to this part of American culture,” eventually sparking protests from students at his home campus in New Paltz. Benjamin later apologized for his remarks.

Delgado has said the ads are an effort to “otherize” him in the eyes of the white voters he needs to win.

“It’s insulting to people in the district that Faso believes they will buy into this sort of deception and dishonesty,” said Delgado’s campaign manager, Allyson Marcus, noting that a similarly themed Super Pac radio ad was even pulled by the local radio station WDST, which called the ad “highly offensive” and “factually distorted” in a statement.

“The truth is Antonio grew up in a working-class family in Schenectady, right here in upstate New York, where he learned the values of hard work and accountability. The real question is, why won’t Faso condemn these divisive and deceptive ads,” Marcus asked.

Faso did not respond to a request for comment.

The GOP 2018 Congressional Campaign: The Stench Of Desperation

When politicians don't have anything to say about issues that will appeal to voters they go negative in the hope that they will disgust voters enough to discourage election day participation. That's what the GOP is doing now. They read the same polls the rest of us do and they know the only way to win is to keep Democrats and independents away from the voting booth next month. Even Politico noted that the ads they're running are ugly distortions of reality. They're not meant to change any minds... just to create confusion, apprehension and disgust so that people don't want to vote. Paul Ryan's SuperPAC alone has poured an unbelievable $3 million into a smear campaign against Randy Bryce in Wisconsin hoping to persuade workers and women not to vote.

Earlier this morning Randy Bryce reminded us that Bernie and his policy agenda are extremely popular in his corner of Wisconsin. "He won 71 out of 72 precincts in the 2016 primary election. Both events he did with me packed the venues to capacity on opposite sides of the district. Having been endorsed early by Senator Sanders has been a huge help. Republicans think that the progressive ideals both of us fight to advance are 'radical.' If making sure people can see a doctor is radical or, if promising not to make cuts to Social Security is 'far left' I’ll take that title. It just shows how out of touch these extremist Republicans really are." And that's a good description of how the Republicans are trying to turn the world topsy-turvy. Paul Ryan disparages Medicare-For-All supporters as off the rails, counting on voters not remembering that he has-- for a decade-- tried to dissolve Medicaid and Medicare and whittle away at Social Security. Ryan, using the talking points all Republican have been using, blasted Democrats this week: "Democrats propose to abolish our health-care system as we know it. And it is the best representation of how far today’s Democratic Party has gone off the rails... Everyone-- no matter how much you like your plan-- would have their plan taken away. The only way to control costs would be to ration care, and restrict access to doctors and treatments. All of these decisions would be made in Washington."

None of that is true, but it doesn't stop GOP robots-- from Bruce Poliquin in Maine to Cathy McMorris Rodgers in Washington state-- from parroting the same frightening-sounding bullshit in their ads. Here's how Poliquin's progressive Democratic challenger, Jared Golden, threw Poliquin's lies right back in his face. And, by the way, the healthcare lie is far from the only way the Republicans are bullshitting the voters. 

Democratic House candidate Jason Crow received a Bronze Star for heroism in Iraq and a “lawyer of the year” award for his veterans advocacy. But according to his GOP adversaries, he has “neglected” Colorado veterans.

Virginia Democrat Abigail Spanberger spent nearly a decade fighting terrorists as an undercover CIA officer. But to hear Republicans tell it, she harbors terrorist sympathies.

Attacks ads have always been a staple of campaign season. But Republicans have twisted facts in some ads to an extraordinary degree as they fight to save their House majority, weaving narratives about Democratic candidates that are misleading at best-- or blatantly false at worst.

In several ads, military vets-- who count as some of Democrats' best recruits to defeat sitting Republicans this year-- have had their patriotism called into question. One spot insinuates that Spanberger, who is challenging Rep. Dave Brat’s (R-VA), has ties to extremists because she taught at a Saudi Arabian-funded Muslim school where two infamous terrorists once attended. The CIA not only knew about the job, but later hired Spanberger and employed her for eight years.

Democrats say the spots, aired mostly by the outside GOP super PAC Congressional Leadership Fund and the National Republican Congressional Committee, smack of desperation. In some cases, local Republicans, religious leaders and newspaper editorial boards have have denounced the attacks.

The aggressive tactics highlight a party grappling to save its majority. Many of the Democrats who've come under attack have short or nonexistent records in political office, leaving Republicans to pick over their personal lives for any scraps to use against them.

“Republicans are having a heck of a time right now, and they’re just looking to attack anywhere they think they might be able to.... throwing whatever they have at the wall to see what sticks,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) told reporters at a Bloomberg breakfast last week, calling the attacks “smears.”

Targets of the ads have called for them to be taken down, and spent time and resources trying to rebut the claims. Republicans involved in making the ads say that's exactly their intention: to keep Democrats on the defensive.

They also argue that Democrats would be doing the same thing if the roles were reversed.

"The mere fact that Democrats are complaining about CLF ads speaks to the effectiveness of the ads and the degree to which it’s taken Democratic candidates in key races off their message," CLF spokeswoman Courtney Alexander said.

Democrats argue that the charges have backfired and helped Democratic candidates raise money and gain ground on their Republican rivals. Spanberger’s campaign is now in a dead heat with Brat, according to a Sept. 24 internal poll, and raised more money after the terrorist ad launched than she did in the entire first quarter of 2017. Among likely voters, she's up 5 points, her campaigns says.

But Republicans say their Terror High ad actually helped reverse Brat's fortunes: They say he now has a narrow lead after being tied with Spanberger in August, according to their polling.

realistic polling by Monmouth

Both parties, of course, always spend heavily on opposition research to sniff out their opponents’ weaknesses and flash them before voters. But it’s one thing to highlight flaws in a candidate’s record, like Republicans have done with Wisconsin Democrat Randy Bryce’s drunk driving arrest. It’s another to connect dots that aren’t there.

CLF’s recent attack on Ohio Democrat Aftab Pureval, for instance, accuses the Indian-Tibetan, first-generation American of aiding his former employer in making “millions” by “helping Libyans reduce payments owed to families of Americans killed by Libyan terrorism.”

But Pureval wasn’t working for the Washington law firm that reached the restitution agreement when it was initially struck. When he did join the firm, Pureval worked on anti-trust litigation, not payments to the families of victims of the 1988 Lockerbie terrorist attack.

Not mentioned in the ad was the fact that former President George W. Bush backed the settlement negotiation with Libya-- and that Rep. Steve Chabot, Pureval’s GOP opponent, did not object when it was approved in the House.

Local media called the attack "misleading." And one American family who lost their father in the Libyan attack was so outraged by the video that they reached out to donate to Pureval’s campaign.

“My response to the CLF ad involved words that are best not repeated here,” Scott Rosen wrote in a letter to Pureval’s campaign. He was 5 years old when his father, Saul Mark Rosen, was killed in the Lockerbie bombing, leaving his mom to raise two children. “The attempt to connect you to the murder of my father was utterly beyond the pale."

CLF says the ad has helped Chabot stretch his lead over Pureval, according to their internal polling.

But they haven't seen the same results in other races-- particularly in Colorado, where many Republicans believe Rep. Mike Coffman is going to lose. There, CLF portrayed Crow as a willing bystander to the massive Veterans Affairs Department backlog scandal. (The group recently pulled its ads from the district.)

Crow sat on the local department’s board from 2009 to 2014, and Republicans have highlighted his absence from more than a dozen board meetings to say he’s at fault.

“While veterans suffered from the VA scandal, Crow didn’t show up for work,” one ad said. “Jason Crow neglected Colorado veterans.”

Crow’s campaign said his wife was either on bed rest due to pregnancy complications or that they’d had a new baby at the time of the missed meetings.

Backlash was swift. Local veterans who know Crow showed up at Coffman's office to protest. Crow’s campaign highlighted the thousands of pro-bono hours he’d dedicated to helping veterans with substance abuse issues, as well as the “lawyer of the year” award he received in 2010 from the Denver Bar Association for his veterans advocacy.

In Spanberger's case, CLF ran a commercial calling attention to her onetime position as a substitute teacher at the Saudi school. Spanberger never worked with the two would-be terrorists, having left the school before it came under congressional scrutiny. She later received a top-secret clearance with the CIA.

“So dangerous, even Chuck Schumer called for the school to be shut down,” the ad nonetheless warns. “But Abigail Spanberger cashed her paychecks like nothing was wrong.”

Some Republican candidates have launched similar attacks impugning the motives or patriotism of their opponents. West Virginia Republican candidate Carol Miller ran a clip of her Democratic rival, Richard Ojeda, saying “the United States of America is not the greatest country.” One vet in the spot accuses Ojeda, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, of “stepping on the graves of every dead soldier.”

What Ojeda actually said is that U.S. isn't the greatest country because homelessness is rampant, the health care system is lacking and the opioid epidemic has been allowed to fester. Ojeda issued his own ad in response, talking about the names of fallen soldiers tattooed his back.

“My military record and my love of country has come under fire … by Carol Miller,” an angry Ojeda said in the video filmed before a veterans memorial. “How dare she! A millionaire, who has enjoyed a life of privilege under the very freedoms that I have fought for.”



In New York, Republicans have accused Democratic hopeful Antonio Delgado of “attacking our democracy” because the former rapper once sung about finding peace in the Middle East. In the years-old anti-war jam, Delgado, who went on to graduate from Harvard Law School and become a Rhodes Scholar, says “God bless America, God bless Iraq, God bless us all.”

But an NRCC ad highlights only the “God bless Iraq” line. Delgado is running against vulnerable GOP Rep. John Faso.

The party has also hit Delgado for being a “big city rapper” and not “like us,” depicting the lawyer wearing a dark hoodie and playing his old rap songs that reference sex and drugs and use of the “N” word.

Nearly 20 local clergy members denounced the attacks for their racial undertones; Delgado is African-American. A local radio station said it recently pulled an ad sponsored by CLF for their “inaccuracy.” (CLF disputes that the ad was removed, arguing that PAC officials took it down of their own accord.) Even the district’s former Republican congressman, Chris Gibson, has expressed discomfort.

“Shame on you!” the religious leaders wrote to Faso, asking him to denounce the ads, which he has not done. “This tactic should be called out for what it is, a thinly veiled, racist attack for the purpose of insinuating fear in the voters in our district.”

to count the number of exclamation points, click on the image

Above is an ugly Republican Party Facebook entry from a typical GOP official-- well, not really that typical, 'cause most of them are smart enough not to do it so publicly. This was was created by a Republican precinct committeeman, Michael Kalny from Shawnee. He was stupid enough to send it to Anne Pritchett, president of the Johnson County Democratic Women’s Club. Supporters of Kevin Yoder are weepy because the Paul Ryan just tossed the Yoder campaign overboard as a lost cause. Democrat Sharice Davids is way ahead in polling.

History Will Remember Paul Ryan-- If At All-- As A Racist Pig

Paul Ryan's PAC has unleashed a series of vicious personal smear attacks across the country. The Trump enablers his PAC is defending can't run-on issues because voters hate their anti-healthcare, anti-middle class, pro-millionaire stands. So they're running on personal hate ads. They want to run by claiming Democrats are socialists or that they have tattoos or that they were in punk rock bands as teenagers or were skateboarder. They seem to have special animus towards Democratic candidates who were veterans and served the country on the front lines. Ryan, a draft dodger, has always pushed policies that target veterans. And now his SuperPAC is denigrating men and women who served defending the country.

In the upstate New York district (NY-19) represented by Trump rubber stamp John Faso, Ryan has run a series of vile racist ads against Faso's Democratic opponent Antonio Delgado, exposed last week by Tim Murphy at Mother Jones: Republicans Are Deploying Staggeringly Racist Ads in Upstate New York. The ad up tops released on Friday by the NRCC, controlled by Paul Ryan. "Delgado," wrote Murphy "did release a rap album, in 2007, under the pseudonym AD the Voice. In a July story about his race against incumbent Republican Rep. John Faso, the New York Times reported Delgado’s songs 'criticize capitalism and America’s history of racial injustice…include frequent use of a racial epithet common among black rappers, and criticize some of the founders as dead presidents who believe in white supremacy.' It sounds a lot like the kinds of political views, in other words, you’d expect from a young, politically active black progressive. But Republican campaign ads have emphasized the vehicle by which Delgado expressed himself as much, if not more, than the actual ideas he espoused. The Republican ad barage is deliberately focused on rap and, by extension, race. The new spot comes a week after the NRCC released this ad:



Why is Paul Ryan resorting to such disgusting racism? Delgado has Faso on the ropes. He's outraised Faso-- $2,703,056 to $2,297,980 and has now pulled ahead of him in this extremely tight race. The 538 forecaster shows Delgado with a 51.7% chance to win and Faso with just a 48.3% chance.

Ryan and the two PACs he controls have panicked and gone all racist in their ads, consistently referring to Delgado-- who was born in Schenectady-- as a "big city rapper." In fact there are a lot of ways to describe him. A graduate-- with honors-- from Colgate in Hamilton, NY, a Rhodes Scholar who studied at Oxford before graduating from Harvard Law. This is the second racist ad Ryan made and released trying to make Delgado sound like the other who should be feared:



A couple of weeks ago, the NY Post reported that "Republican sources told The Post they’re concerned about losing the seat because Delgado has emerged as a formidable candidate and prodigious fundraiser while Faso is running a lackluster campaign."

So far, Ryan's PAC has spent $1,699,211 smearing Delgado-- basically screaching "nigga, nigga, nigga"-- while the DCCC and Pelosi's PAC have responded with $1,155,736 in defense of him. Ryan and the GOP can't help their innate racism. Here we have a successful young African-American man-- far more accomplished academically than Ryan, for example-- and all they can do is point to the color of his skin. Wow-- the Party of Lincoln really has turned into the Party of Trump!