Tomorrow... Our Future

For those of us in Wisconsin, California, Montana and New Mexico, let's keep these words by Elizabeth Warren in our minds when we vote

Tomorrow, Tuesday, June 5, could be an historic day. First and foremost, there's Wisconsin-- a chance to replace a destructive anti-democracy shill of the one percent, Scott Walker, with a decent Democrat whose career in politics has always been in support of working families, Tom Barrett. In 2010, Walker campaigned on creating jobs and economic development, decided to pit neighbor against neighbor in an effort to drum up support for the radical Koch agenda, and ended up losing more jobs than any other state in the country. Tomorrow, of course, all hinges on turnout. It's going to be close. There are plenty of Wisconsinites who get their information from Fox and from Hate Talk Radio. They'll be out in force for Walker and Rebecca Kleefisch. Will ordinary working folks be able to overcome the 30-1 spending advantage the right put into this race?

If you live in Wisconsin, or if you have friends or family in Wisconsin, here's where you can find your polling place. Polls open at 7am and stay open 'til 8pm. In Wisconsin voters do NOT need an ID to vote and can still register at the polls as long as they bring proof of their current address. Democrats are also attempting to replace a gaggle of reactionary state senators. Good idea! Walker hasn't been able to carry out the Koch/ALEC agenda on his own. And among the Democrats most worthy of winning a seat is Lori Compas, who's running against Scott Fitzgerald, Walker's Senate henchman.

Few in Wisconsin are more identified with the grassroots resistance than Lori Compas, a 41-year-old wedding photographer and mother of two. With no assistance from the state Democratic Party, Compas led an unlikely yet successful drive to recall the Senate majority leader, Scott Fitzgerald, Walker’s most essential and visible ally. Compas lives in Fort Atkinson, a small town 30 miles east of Madison, and has never run for office before. She is now Fitzgerald’s improbable opponent.

Would that ever be icing on the cake!



The other big races tomorrow are primaries in Montana, New Mexico and California, where Blue America has outstanding progressives going up against run-of-the-mill, garden variety Democratic hacks in most cases. The exception is in CA-25 (Santa Clarita, Antelope Valley and Simi Valley-- the northeast corner of L.A. County) where Democrats-- along with many independents and even some Republicans-- have completely united around Dr. Lee Rogers in a grassroots effort to oust corrupt corporate shill Buck McKeon. In California's "jungle primary," everyone, regardless of party, runs on the same ballot and the top 2 vote-getters go on to the November general election. There are 3 Republicans plus Lee and the latest poll from the Antelope Valley Press shows Lee leading the pack with 46.25% and McKeon struggling to stay in second place with 25%.

One of the most respected and admired Republicans in the Santa Clarita Valley, Scott Wilk, is running for an open Assembly seat. Wilk was formerly McKeon's district chief and there's no one who knows McKeon and how he operates better than Wilk. One of his opponents in the primary, although she appears to be coming in a distant fourth, is McKeon's batty wife, Patricia. My theory has always been that she's never been a serious candidate for office-- she's 70, unaware of any serious issues facing the state legislature and best known for her reply to a question about California's budgetary problems during a debate by stating the obvious, "I have no idea"-- but that her candidacy was a way to funnel illicit campaign dollars from the Military Industrial Complex into the McKeon household. Anyway, Wilks is running against Patricia but over the weekend he penned an editorial about the single biggest issue that is leading to a collapse in support for Buck-- the CEMEX Mine.

On Thursday, our community reaped what its federally elected leadership sewed.  When the CEMEX truce expired with the City of Santa Clarita, our worst fears became a reality.  With nothing to stop them, CEMEX could begin their mega-mining operation in Soledad Canyon any day.  And our Congressman continues to insist that he cannot help us because of a clause in a rule that he voted for.  Its time to make right on his mistake.
 
CEMEX’s projected mine in Soledad is not merely another issue facing our community. It is THE issue facing us. The scale of the mining project is nearly 20 times larger than what is currently mined in Soledad Canyon today, and it will last for 20 years. The daily operation of the mine will result in 18-wheelers and gravel trucks entering and departing from the mine every 2 minutes, which will add an additional 1200 trucks traveling each day on our local freeways and roads. The dust created by the project will greatly harm the air quality of our city and will exceed acceptably safe levels by nearly 200 percent.
 
The City of Santa Clarita has done its part.  They have spent millions on advocacy, on legal wrangling, and frankly begging Congressman McKeon to do what is right and stop this mine.  This issue transcends partisanship and is simply about protecting our community’s quality of life.  
 
Unfortunately, the current federal leadership has failed to prevent today from happening.  Our community is one step closer to an ecological disaster because of this failure.  According to Mayor Bob Keller, Senator Boxer has pledged to do all that she can to help us.  Its time for Congressman McKeon to do more than lip service on the topic.  Its time for him to introduce the companion bill and stop this disaster from happening. 
 
Congressman McKeon likes to tout that he stopped Elsmere Canyon from becoming a landfill, well why is it that this is so much harder than that?  It took him three years to make that legislation reality, in ten years, the Congressman failed to even achieve a hearing on this issue in Washington.

...It is time for leadership on this issue.  It is time for action.  In our community’s time of need, I ask Congressman McKeon to put community ahead of partisanship and quality of life ahead of politics.  For if the mine is to become a reality, our community will face an ecological disaster unrealized to date.  It is time to make right with this community.

Last week we saw Jason Schaff executive editor of the district's biggest newspaper, the Santa Clarita Valley Signal explain why they had decided against endorsing McKeon, for the first time in his entire two decade-long congressional career. He said CEMEX is the most important issue to many voters in the district, but so is anger against incumbents. “I think it goes back to the mood locally, and throughout the country about incumbents. And is 20 years too long to be in Congress?” Washington Dems don't "get" this race. I suspect they will after tomorrow.

Northern California has a completely different dynamic to deal with in the primary to replace the retiring progressive champion Lynn Woolsey in the 2nd CD. This primary will result in two Democrats facing off against each other in November. There are 8 Democrats, 2 Republicans and 2 independents in the primary. The latest polling shows Assemblyman Jared Huffman, author and progressive activist Norman Solomon, Marin County Supervisor Susan Adams, and wealthy hobbyist Stacey Lawsen as the top contenders, in that order. Lawsen is widely viewed as a junior Meg Whitman type candidate. She's got a lot of money she lucked into and has never been involved with politics but needs something to do with herself and got the idea of moving up to the district to run for Woolsey's seat. Huffman has sown himself to be a captive of the corporate interests who have financed his career. Adams is a respectable Democrat who would make a reasonable alternative if CA-2 didn't already have one of the single most outstanding candidates running for Congress anywhere in America, Norman Solomon (the Blue America endorsee). Thursday Jackson Browne played a concert to help Norman raise funds to counter the last minute influx of money from Lawsens' bank account in her desperate and rather pathetic attempt o buy the seat. And yesterday Dennis Kucinich barnstormed with him up and down Marin and Sonoma counties. Kucinich:

"Norman will be an instant leader in Congress-- on war, on bloated military spending, on Wall Street, on threats to Social Security and Medicare (from either party). Norman Solomon was an advocate for the 99%-- challenging the 1%-- before there was an Occupy Wall Street movement. Every supporter of mine should be a natural supporter of Norman. Help him carry on the legacy of strong peace and justice advocacy in the U.S. Congress.”

Virtually every important progressive leader in America has endorsed Solomon, including Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, John Conyers (D-MI), Alan Grayson (D-FL), Dolores Huerta, Glenn Greenwald, and countless others looking for innovative, independent-minded leaders to implement a peaceful and prosperous agenda for this country.


The link above for Glenn Greenwald, also references Rep. Franke Wilmer's race in Montana. It's an at-large district-- so, it's for the whole state, like a Senate race-- and it's an open seat. Like Norman Solomon, Lee Rogers and Eric Griego, Franke is the Blue America-backed candidate. I'll let Greenwald explain:

This Montana candidate’s biography is almost as impressive as her views on key issues. In the 1980s, Wilmer was a single mother raising her daughter, working as a waitress and a carpenter while putting herself through college. Typically working two jobs at the same time, it took her 16 years to finish. Now she’s a full professor at Montana State University, a third-term state legislator, and an author who specializes in solving international problems without resort to war. She spent substantial time in the former Yugoslavia as it was falling apart.

...She’s running in a Democratic primary against two corporatist, Blue-Dog-type candidates of the kind that has helped make so much of the Democratic Party worthless or worse. She wrote an essay for Klein about the basis of her worldview and why she’s running that’s as provocative and smart as it is inspiring. As soon as I read it, there was no question for me that she’s an extraordinary candidate and person; as but one example, she explains that her work in the middle of the horrific war in Yugoslavia led her to devote herself to an examination of “the question of dehumanization (and psychoanalytic explanations for it) as a political dynamic that rationalizes political violence,” both domestically and internationally.

Wilmer told us that she’s ”very concerned and deeply troubled by the notion that the policy that led to the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki essentially defends the practice of extrajudicial execution,” and added that the “suspension of habeas corpus for American citizens [in the NDAA] is equally troubling.” She cited to us a remarkable op-ed she wrote in the Great Falls Tribune on September 12, 2001-- less than 24 hours after the attack, when most people were in full-on panic and vengeance mode-- that calmly warned of the dangers of excessive reactions. The whole op-ed is amazing: it describes her experience with war in Yugoslavia to warn how brutal and savage it is, and ends this way: “Only by the rule of law, only through a just response which punishes the individuals responsible, can we preserve what cannot be destroyed through violence, our commitment to democracy.” There are all too few people demonstrating that perspective even now, more than a decade later; she was urging this on the day after the 9/11 attack.

Wilmer compares current threats to militarily attack Iran with the attack on Iraq, arguing that both are examples of invalid “preventive war” dogma; “instead,” she argues, “what we need is to invest time and resources in the development of an effective and enforceable international non-proliferation regime based on the Non-Proliferation Treaty.” She questions the legality of unmanned CIA drones (“Under international law weapons must be able to discriminate between civilian and military targets and drones do not do that“), and argues that drones are “military weapons” and thus “should only be used in military operations, and military operations, in turn,necessitate a declaration of war by Congress.“ She decries the lack of Wall Street prosecutions: “I don’t believe the investigations have been rigorously pursued, nor have those responsible been held accountable.” And as former Chair of the Montana Human Rights Commission, she has worked extensively, in a not-very-friendly environment, to secure equal rights for LGBT citizens and same-sex couples.

Truly, she’s not just an extraordinary Congressional candidate but an extraordinary person. She combines impressive academic research and theory with all kinds of practical, brave real-world activism. But she’s also been an accomplished legislator, which means, as she explains in that Klein essay, that she’s quite strategic about enacting legislation. There would literally be nobody like her in Congress.

And that brings us to Albuquerque, where progressive champion, state Senator Eric Griego is up against a couple of corrupt careerists, Marty Chavez (corrupt and conservative) and Michelle Lujan Grisham, whose disgraceful and self-serving record of Director of Aging and state Secretary of Health should disqualify her from any elective office anywhere. She's perfect for EMILY'S List, the least trustworthy component of the corrupt DC Democratic Establishment. Griego has been endorsed by women in Congress who are actually trying to work for the protection and safety of American women, like Donna Edwards (D-MD) and Chellie Pingree (D-ME), as well as by Dennis Kucinich, Alan Grayson and Raúl Grijalva. In end of the campaign rallies in New Mexico this weekend Griego sharpened the distinctions between himself and his two mediocre (at best) opponents:

We have to “send people to Congress… who are willing to stand for what we say we believe in, even when it’s tough… we’ve got to stand for something as Democrats, that’s what people are yearning for,” Griego said to the packed crowd. “We need someone who’s like us, has our values. Who wants to fight for Social Security, fight for the environment, take on the special interests and Wall Street.”
 
“One race is not going to do it, but if we add my voice to Elizabeth Warren’s… and we send 15 or 20 vertebrates up there, then the conversation has to change,” he continued, emphasizing his commitment to fight for New Mexico’s working families.

Kucinich is showing himself once again as an important national leader. Last week he came out swinging for Eric. "Let me introduce you," he wrote to his own supporters, "to a champion for Wall Street reform, Eric Griego. Eric is running for Congress in New Mexico's first district, and he is the first candidate in the nation to run a television ad saying, 'Wall Street bankers who broke the law belong in jail.' That's a bold stand for a congressional candidate. Since Eric is shaking up the status quo, he's come under attack by his more conservative opponents. With just four days left before his primary, he needs our help.
 
"Eric has a record of standing up for what we believe as Democrats. He passed public financing on the City Council and a green jobs bill in the State Senate-- he's one of the few candidates in the nation who can say that. In Congress, he wants to put Americans back to work by passing a real jobs bill-- rebuilding crumbling schools, wiring the country with high-speed internet, and investing in 21st century energy and transportation projects."

Eric Griego, Franke Wilmer, Norman Solomon, Lee Rogers... 4 champions of ordinary working families we hope to be fighting for all the way through November. But first, they have to win their primaries tomorrow. Do you pray? In case you missed it Saturday night, here's some inspiration from Wisconsin musicians Cory Chisel and the Wandering Sons:

Where Was Joe McCarthy From Again? And What About All Those Congressmen Who Were Pro-Nazi During The Run-up To World War II?

My dad was an FBI agent when World War II started. He was a Nazi-hunter-- stationed in Milwaukee. Just outside of Milwaukee, in Ozaukee County, there was a Nazi training camp (or "summer camp"), Camp Hindenburg in Grafton. Wisconsin was crawling with Nazi sympathizers and fascism has always been considered a viable alternative to democracy in certain circles. Joe McCarthy was a hero and so are anti-democracy moles Scott Walker and Paul Ryan. This weekend the New York Times Magazine asked how Wisconsin has become the most politically divisive place in America, but didn't add "again." Dan Kaufman points out that, "according to recent polling, Wisconsin, once known for progressive policy and upper-Midwestern civility, is now the most politically polarized state in the nation." But progressive policy and upper-Midwestern civility isn't all the state has been known for-- not by a long shot.

The fight to turn Wisconsin into a bastion of neo-fascist plutocracy didn't just begin with Scott Walker's anti-democracy jihad and his plans to eliminate collective-bargaining rights for a the state’s public-employee unions. As the Times makes clear, Walker's "move to end collective bargaining placed him at the forefront of a national conservative strategy. His attack on public-employee unions was lauded by Mitt Romney, John Boehner and Karl Rove, and he has received significant financial support from the billionaire conservative donors Charles and David Koch." He told his cabinet he wanted "to change the course of history." This phase of reintroducing fascism to Wisconsin was a counterrevolution and the revolution it was countering was the American Revolution.

After signing Act 10, Governor Walker told a reporter for The Associated Press that the bill was “innovative” and “progressive” — words chosen perhaps because they resonate with the enduring pride many Wisconsin citizens still feel about their state’s pioneering political history. The current Wisconsin Blue Book contains a 68-page essay extolling the achievements of the 1911 Legislature, which included the establishment of the first workmen’s-compensation program, laws limiting labor for women and children and the passage of a forest-conservation act. President Theodore Roosevelt described Wisconsin as a “laboratory for wise, experimental legislation to secure the social and political betterment of the people as a whole.” Native icons like the populist senator and governor Robert (Fighting Bob) La Follette and the conservationist Aldo Leopold still loom in the state’s collective consciousness and legislative record. More recently, Senator Russ Feingold cast the lone vote against the U.S.A. Patriot Act in 2001.

The law that Act 10 overturned had been in place since 1959, when Wisconsin became the first state to recognize collective-bargaining rights for municipal employees. Senator Fred Risser, who began his legislative career in 1956, is the country’s longest-serving state legislator, and he was on the committee that introduced that measure. “That bill was bipartisan, or it would have never gotten through in the first place,” he said. In 1967, collective bargaining was expanded under the Republican governor Warren P. Knowles to include state employees. The Senate voted 31-0 in favor of the expansion. “For 50 years we had relative labor peace,” Risser said. “Not in 50 years was there ever a partisan vote on those contracts. They were almost always unanimously accepted.”

Some Republicans also lamented the end of the long bipartisan consensus on labor rights. Dick Spanbauer, a former Marine and self-described “pro-life, pro-family Christian,” was one of four Republican Assemblymen to vote against Act 10. “The leadership told me, ‘Dick, we don’t need unions anymore,’ ” he told me. “Really? What’s changed? Is a company going to say you don’t need to work 12 hours?” Spanbauer, like his father, had worked much of his adult life in factories in Oshkosh. “They don’t understand anything about the working class,” he said about his Republican colleagues. “They thought you could just go crush somebody’s voice and get away with it.” Spanbauer is retiring this year.

By this time next week, Wisconsin will probably have finished counting the votes in the recall. Scott Walker will have spent over $25 million, much of it from the same kinds of wealthy self-styled aristocrats who were never tried for treason after organizing a coup against FDR. His Democratic opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, will have spent about a million. Walker isn't really campaigning; he's just spending... and spending... and spending. And hoping a few more than half the voters in the state are just clueless enough to vote for him-- and against themselves. All that money has bought him the slimmest of leads. One poll showed likely voters breaking for Walker 50-45% and another showed him up 50-42%. That's all $25 million could buy? Maybe it would have helped if DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz hadn't dragged her ass for so long, refusing to spend a nickel until it looked like it was too late-- just as she had done at the DCCC several years ago when, working for her financial patrons, the Fanjul sugar barons, she refused to endorse 3 Democrats running against 3 GOP incumbents, effectively sabotaging their campaigns and ceding the 3 winnable seats to the Republicans.

Public Policy Polling should have a new poll out this week. Their last-- in early March before the tidal wave of outside fascist money hit the state-- showed that the state wanted the Democrats to take control of the Senate, which would, in effect, stop Walker's agenda dead in its tracks.

A new poll by Public Policy Polling finds that Wisconsin voters would prefer that Democrats control the State Senate rather than Republicans, 48%-41%.  Nearly all Democratic and Republican voters want their own party to control the chamber, but the scales are tipped by independent voters who say they would rather Democrats run the State Senate by a 45%-31% margin.

As controversy continues to swirl around a possible upcoming recall election of Governor Scott Walker, voters say that in general, they think Wisconsin should have recall elections by a 53%-41% margin.  Democrats support the idea of recall elections 86%-9%, Republicans oppose recall elections 16%-78%, and independents support them 56%-37%.

“Recall elections have become a polarizing issue in Wisconsin politics, but a majority of independent voters side with Democrats in having the option to use them,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling.

Wisconsin Takes Another Step Forward Fighting Off America's Right-Wing Counter Revolution

Yesterday Wisconsin Democrats picked Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett as their candidate to take on Scott Walker and the Koch brothers on June 5. He had 57% and his closest rival, Kathleen Falk, the union favorite, took 35%, in the 4 person primary.

Addressing jubilant supporters at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Milwaukee, a fiery Barrett called for unifying his party and ending Walker's term before it reaches a year and a half. Barrett, who defied unions by getting in the race, repeatedly referred to himself as the independent candidate in his speech to supporters and said he would not be beholden to special interests.

"Do we want a governor who has divided this state like it has never been divided before? Do we want a governor who has caused this state to lose more jobs than any other state in this country?" Barrett asked the crowd. "This race is not about the past. It is not about the past. It is about the future of Wisconsin."

Just before voting started historian Rick Perlstein was out with a piece in Rolling Stone about why voting in Wisconsin's cluste#@ck recall was so important. Walker's boast of being a job-creator," he writes, "was crushed when it was announced in October that the state had added only 5,500 non-farm jobs in the previous twelve months. His claim to be a budget balancer was undone by the $1.6 billion in corporate tax breaks he had championed that left the state budget $117 million deeper in arrears. He bent regulations to allow a mine to be built by some sensitive Lake Superior wetlands-- no small political blunder in a state where hunting and fishing is religion. By the end of the year, polls found 58 percent of Wisconsin voters favoring his recall-- including 24 percent of Republicans, up from only 7 percent in spring.

In January this year, the recall election was scheduled for June 5 after an astonishing million voters' signatures were submitted, way more than they needed. In March, a federal judge said Walker's law violated the First Amendment because it maintained collective bargaining rights for the police and fire unions that endorsed him while stripping them from the unions that didn't. In April, the federal courts struck down a strict voter I.D. law designed to make it harder for Democratic constituencies to vote and counted upon by Republicans to help Walker pull through. Then Walker found himself reeling further with the announcement that during the month of March state had lost 4,500 jobs.

And then there's the whole Joe Doe investigation... Walkergate, which could see the governor rotting in prison for criminal activities, something even the Koch brothers won't be able to save him from if a jury finds him guilty. But, Perlstein reminds us, the reason this is all so important nationally is because "If conservatives succeed in breaking public unions in Wisconsin, they will try the same thing everywhere, with mind-blowing seriousness. Already by this February, Walker, taking advantage of a loophole that allows donors to recall targets to blow through the state's $10,000 contribution cap, had raised an astonishing $12.2 million dollars; then, by April, he had added $13.2 million more... [mostly] from corporate titans and movement conservatives for whom, as per usual on the right, Walker's law-skirting brazenness has made him a hero, not a pariah."


Writing this week in Madison's progressive Capital Times Wisconsin's savviest and most respected journalist, John Nichols, explains how his state has turned against Scott Walker-- and he's not just talking about cosmopolitan Madison and Mikwaukee. This time he's talking about "small towns and dairy farm country of western Wisconsin."

For all the efforts of Gov. Scott Walker to convince the hosts on Fox and CNBC that he is a popular governor who is threatened not by angry citizens but by “the left, the radical left, and the big labor union bosses” who are “somehow counting on the idea that they can bring enough money and enough bodies into Wisconsin to dissuade voters,” the message from farm country tells an entirely different story.

Walker has had the overwhelming spending advantage since the recall fight started last November. Walker has had all the benefits of the Republican Party organization, which has gone into overdrive to aid his candidacy, while Democrats have faced a multi-candidate primary fight.

Yet Walker does not have the swing counties of western Wisconsin wrapped up. Not by a long shot.

Along Highway 14, heading out of Dane County and into Iowa and Richland counties, hundreds of hand-painted signs propose to “Recall Walker.” Most list reasons for the governor’s removal: “Worst Job Losses in U.S.,” “Attacks on Collective Bargaining,” “Cut Education,” “Cut BadgerCare,” “Divided State,” “John Doe.”

...[T]here is genuine, broad-based and statewide opposition to this governor in every region of Wisconsin-- especially in the western and northern parts of the state. Even as he has spent $21 million so far on the recall campaign, that opposition is growing.

In the new Marquette University Law School Poll, disapproval of the governor’s performance had moved up to 51 percent. Indeed, his approval rating has now declined to 47 percent, the lowest point so far this year. And one of the prospective Democratic challengers, Tom Barrett, has now moved ahead of Walker in head-to-head matchups run by the Marquette pollsters.

What has changed? The polling shows that Wisconsinites, who once felt that Republicans had the right equation for creating jobs (tax cuts for multinational corporations, attacks on public employees and their unions, slashing of education and public service funding), have soured on the GOP and its poster-boy governor. They’ve been influenced, of course, by the Bureau of Labor Statistics study showing that, in the year since Walker implemented his austerity agenda, Wisconsin has suffered the worst job losses in the nation. The Marquette poll shows that Wisconsinites now believe that investments in education, good relations with unions, and fair tax policies are more likely to grow the economy than Walker’s “war on workers” approach.

The governor admitted Wednesday that the recall contest on June 5 is “a 50-50 race.” But what’s notable is that his numbers are declining, while numbers for the opposition are rising.

Congressional Status A Big Negative Among This Year's Gubernatorial Candidates

There are two states with primaries coming up this month: Georgia and Oklahoma. DWT readers know that this coming Tuesday Blue America-backed Regina Thomas goes up against reactionary Blue Dog John Barrow in the 12th CD and the following Tuesday (July 27), late entrant Jim Wilson takes on even worse Blue Dog Dan Boren in eastern Oklahoma's 2nd CD. What we haven't discussed, however is that both states have gubernatorial primaries as well. Taylor Dolven has pointed out in The Hill that members of Congress aspiring to governor's mansions-- as is this case in both Georgia and Oklahoma-- are finding their congressional experience an albatross. These are the members of Congress-- two of whom, Nathan Deal and Neil Abercrombie, have recently resigned from that body-- who decided to leave Capitol Hill for a shot at running the show in their own state's capitals:

Nathan Deal (R)- GA
Mary Fallin (R)- OK
Artur Davis (D)- AL
Gresham Barrett (R)- SC
Pete Hoesksta (R)- MI
Zach Wamp (R)- TN
Neil Abercrombie (D)- HI

Fallin, better known for her times at Lt. Governor than for her short stint as a congressional, backbencher, is considered a lock and so is Abercrombie. The rest have either already lost-- Davis and Barrett-- or look like they will lose.

Once Davis, who represents one of the most overwhelmingly Democratic districts in the South (Obama have thrashed McCain 72-27%) decided to run statewide, his moderate voting record turned sharply right, ignoring his own constituents to make a play for... the KKK? His vote against the healthcare reform legislation was widely seen as the last straw for his cowardly and craven pandering-- and the death knell for an idiotic campaign. He lost to Ron Sparks. He lost 10 of the 12 counties in his own congressional district and only managed 37.6% statewide. Why should Democrats vote for someone who votes with the GOP in their own primary when they have a plausible alternative?

Gresham Barrett didn't change a thing to run. But the South Carolina GOP changed. No one can deny that Barrett has a long career as an ultra-conservative corporate hack, long the ticket to higher office in one of the most historically reactionary states-- going right back to colonial days-- in the U.S. But Barrett, like virtually the whole House Republican hierarchy, including teabagger hero Joe Wilson, I might add, followed the lead of John Boehner and Paul Ryan-- as well as party standard bearers George Bush and John McCain-- to support Bush's 2008 no-strings-attached Wall Street Bail-Out. The same deranged, demented teabaggers in South Carolina who were ready to erect statues of Joe Wilson in their town squares after he screeched "You Lie" at President Obama at the State of the Union, were unwilling to accept Barrett's abject daily apologies for voting the same way as Wilson. No doubt if Barrett would have campaigned on a "platform" of Obama being an Indonesian, Mexican or Kenyan-born Muslim terrorist, he would have won the GOP primary. But he didn't-- and he lost.

Congressional experience has been a boon in the past for lawmakers running in gubernatorial races, according to Jennifer Duffy, an analyst with the Cook Political Report.

“Now that experience is a liability because of Congress’s poor image,” she said.
Georgia Republican Nathan Deal will be the next former lawmaker to test voters’ anti-Washington mood.

A recent Mason-Dixon poll showed Deal, who left the House in March after casting his vote against healthcare reform, locked in a three-way battle for the GOP gubernatorial nomination with state Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine and former Secretary of State Karen Handel. 

Deal this week joined Oxendine in attacking Handel, who is seen as the front-runner after securing the backing of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Observers say he may not make the expected runoff between the top two finishers in next Tuesday’s vote. 

His third-place position in the race comes despite leaving Congress in the hopes of improving his chances in the primary. 

“It was important that he devote 100 percent of his time to the election,” said Brian Robinson, a Deal spokesman.

Being out of Congress also eliminates the chance a candidate will have to make a controversial vote. This cycle, members from both parties who ran for governor were forced to defend tough votes. 

Wamp's membership in the radical right C Street Cult probably isn't hurting him in his primary bid, but just the fact that he's a congressman is. He's trailing the multimillionaire mayor of Knoxville, Bill Haslem. There are so many Republicans running in Michigan-- with no clear front-runner-- that the party nod is completely up for grabs. Aside from the bumbling and lackluster but well-known Hoekstra, Attorney General Mike Cox and Ann Arbor businessman Rick Snyder are contenders, with Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard and state Senator Tom George lagging.

Last Night's Primary Runoffs

North Carolina Secretary of State, Elaine Marshall, yesterday's big winner

The first election to end last night was in South Carolina (7pm), where it was easy to predict the outcomes: in every single runoff in the state a dangerous conservative sociopath would win. I was right. South Carolina, where teabagger= secessionist, is one of the places where being a far right extremist of any stripe appeals to the anger, bigotry, willful ignorance and confusion of so much of the population-- and the vast majority of the Republican base. And as repulsive as a political Palin-- rather than a reality TV show Palin-- is to most Americans, in South Carolina Republican politics, she's a serious political figure. Couple that with the explosion of anger towards GOP Establishment politicos Gresham Barrett and Bob Inglis, and there was no room for surprises last night. Inglis, though a conservative kook by any standards, once publicly berated Glenn Beck-- saying nothing that 80-90% of House Republicans would agree with-- off the record. That was his undoing.

A.P. called the gubernatorial race early. Less than 90 minutes after the polls closed, and with just 36% of the precincts counted, they stuck a fork in Barrett, who wound up with 35%. Palin's candidate beat the Establishment guy. In the two important House runoffs, Tim Scott, an African-American teabagger-- also endorsed by Palin-- beat Establishment fave Paul Thurmond, son of Strom, 68.4-31.6%. And in the very conservative 4th CD, the spawning ground of Jim DeMint, Inglis got trounced by Trey Gowdy 70.6-29.4%, a horrible repudiation for an incumbent.

Conservatives and teabaggers also had their fratricidal spats going in Mississippi's 2nd congressional district (where Bill Marcy won and will face popular incumbent Bennie Thompson in the state's most powerfully Democratic district), in a couple of North Carolina House races and in Utah's Senate race.
The only discernible difference between most of the Republican candidates were like those between a mere sociopath and a full-on psychopath. In NC-08, where worthless and cowardly freshman Dem is among the most vulnerable incumbents, the sociopath, Harold Johnson, beat the psychopath, Tim D'Annunzio, handily, 61.2% to 38.8%. William Randall, another bizarre kook-- who insisted that the Gulf Oil spill was part of an Obama plot, took 58.9% of the vote and will be thoroughly beaten by Democrat Brad Miller in November.

What I was more concerned with, of course, were two important Democratic races. The biggie, for the Democratic nomination to face extremist Senator Richard Burr (R-NC), was won-- and very decisively, by Secretary of State Elaine Marshall, the grassroots populist heavily backed by... well, basically by everyone but the DSCC. Bob Menendez, continuing his losing record, personally recruited some guy named Cal Cunningham-- idea being that North Carolina isn't "ready" for two women senators. North Carolinians didn't agree and the $300,000 plus massive support from DC insiders didn't save Cunningham from an electoral thrashing. He was trounced 60- 40% in a runoff that saw Ken Lewis' primary voters follow Lewis straight into Marshall's camp. Score one-- one big one-- for the good guys. Menendez, who forced this divisive and costly primary on North Carolina Democrats sounded on the inauthentic side last night when he managed to croak out, "Tomorrow, we begin the general election and the choice for North Carolinians could not be any starker. Voters will face a choice between a Democrat who has focused on creating jobs and the needs of North Carolina's middle class and a Republican who puts partisanship ahead of doing what's right." He should resign from the DSCC before its too late. Blue America has been urging progressives to contribute to Marshall from the day that Menendez blatantly inserted himself into the race. And we still are-- let's beat Burr!

And then there was the longshot grassroots primary pitting Claudia Wright, an ex-Mormon, openly lesbian, openly progressive, great great granddaughter of Brigham Young, challenging a rolling in corporate cash Establishment Blue Dog, Jim Matheson. Claudia's feisty challenge saw Matheson voting with Democrats on issues-- like abolishing DADT-- that would have been unthinkable without a vigorous primary. We consider the ads Blue America ran this past week in the St. George area to be the least we could do for a stalwart Democrat taking on such a thankless and odious task. Her first try for public office, Claudia wound up with around a third of the vote. Matheson spent $46.00 for every vote her received; Claudia spent $2.91/vote. Thanks to everyone who stood with her!

Lindsey Graham, Under Attack From Teabaggers, Goes After Ron Paul

Do you remember a few months ago when a mob of crazed secessionists and teabaggers in Greenville, South Carolina tore into conservative Republican Gresham Barrett and booed him mercilessly? Barrett has an uber-right wing voting record-- career-long slightly to the right of Joe "You're a liar" Wilson, also of South Carolina, although this year both can brag of big fat zeros on the ProgressivePunch chart. Look at that chart below and get an idea of the company he keeps, vote-wise. But that isn't good enough for the KKK adherents and neo-Nazis who are laying claim to the South Carolina Republican Party.


Monday night it was Senator Lindsey Graham's turn to face the backward Greenville mob. CNN reports on the angry confrontation-- and the anger wasn't all one-sided either. Graham may be a closet queen-- he is-- but he's no sissy when it comes to facing down a roomful of degenerate redneck constituents angry about whatever nonsense they heard from Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs and Ann Coulter. They report that the room was "packed with libertarians and Tea Party activists who accused the Republican senator of ditching conservative principles by working with Democrats on issues like climate change and voting to send Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court." Graham didn't pander, not even close-- telling the purity mongers that if the Republican Party doesn't reach out to the mainstream it will soon become extinct.

"I'm not going to leave the Republican Party," Graham said when one questioned asked him why he hasn't yet joined the Democrats. "I'm going to grow it. We're not going to be the party of angry white guys."

His comments were met with a salvo of boos and shouts of "Ron Paul!"

"I love this party," he responded. "I'm not going to be let it be hijacked by Ron Paul."

Graham emphasized his conservative bona fides-- particularly his record of opposing abortion rights and support of gun rights-- but said GOP needs to build a broader coalition. Otherwise, he warned, those trying to purify the party will turn Congress over "to the most liberal people in the world because somebody disagrees with you."

"I'm going to find people in Maine, Delaware, Illinois and other places that can win," he said. "And I'm going to help them, and we're going to move this party and this country forward. If you don't like it, you can leave."

Many of the teabaggers seemed to reference Graham's barely-concealed status as a closet case in the epithets they hurled at him. "Angry attendees called Graham a 'traitor, of 'going to bed with John Kerry,' and making a 'pact with the devil.'The extreme reaction mirrors the sentiment perpetuating through the conservative blogosphere, where Graham's legislative endeavors have led him to be labeled a 'Democrat in drag,' a 'wussypants,' and a 'half-a-sissy,' among other things." You almost feel sorry for the poor guy, having to deal with the Neanderthal religionist fanatics that the GOP has courted and is now stuck with:

A woman who had been carrying a sign that condemned “unconstitutional, anti-Christ, socialist, federal, deficit-spending programs” told Graham that “God does not compromise” and that he had violated his oath of office by supporting federal ideas including health care reform that overstep states’ rights.

She was supported by more stomping, clapping and cheering. Graham asked her how she’d voted for president, and she identified Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party as her choice.

Graham then said he wasn’t there to please her, and that her party had lost the election “marketplace” of ideas.

What Can The Right-Wing Party In The U.S. Learn From The Tribulations And The Disastrous Defeat Yesterday Of The Right-Wing Party In Iceland?

My first trip to Europe started in Iceland. Air Iceland would fly you from JFK to Luxembourg, a banking center nestled between Germany, Belgium and France, for $100. The catch is that you had to stop in Keflavik. I was delighted; it was summer and I was out to discover the world. My girlfriend and I met another couple of adventurous Americans on the plane and the 4 of us decided to rent a car and drive around the island for a week. If I can remember that far back (1969) let me ask you to remember a party you probably didn't go to but surely heard about. It was November, 2005 and the host was notorious war profiteer David H. Brooks who was celebrating his daughter's bat mitzvah at the Rainbow Room. The event cost upwards of $10 million and featured Aerosmith, Nelly, Tom Petty, the Eagles, Kenny G. and 50 Cent. Aerosmith was paid $1 million and there's no way on earth Tom Petty or the Eagles would have played for less; they share the same manager. Brooks was a big macher; he had just donated $25,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee a couple of month earlier. So what's all this got to do with Iceland?

In this morning's NY Times it was reported that Iceland had just elected it's first left-of-center government... ever. The bankster crisis hit that country early and hit it hard, very hard. I was drawn to a quote by Finance Minister Steingrimur Sigfusson (a former truck driver and geologist who heads the Green Party, a partner in the new ruling coalition):

“What are the people of the United States mad about now?” he said in a recent interview. “It is the same poisonous philosophy that we had here, based on a lack of moral awareness and greed, and people who thought nothing of flying Elton John into Iceland for their 50th birthdays and paying him 70 million Icelandic kronur.” [$600,000]

The unrestrained "free market" greed and avarice that swamped Iceland resulted in the toppling of the Republican-like right-wing government and it's replacement with a caretaker government led by Johanna Sigurdardottir, the first openly gay woman to head a national government. Yesterday's election gave her party 22 seats, the Greens 13 seats and the right-wing Independent Party 14 seats (23% of the vote).

23%? For the political party that has dominated Icelandic politics since independence from Denmark? The number sounded familiar and I racked my brain trying to remember... and then I did. Going into the 1934 congressional elections we've written about so many times here at DWT, Republicans found themselves in the minority for the first time in decades. Two years earlier Franklin Roosevelt had swept to power promising massive change from the reactionary, corporate policies the Republicans had used to bankrupt the country and cause the Great Depression. About half the Republicans in the House had been defeated, leaving them with just 117 members from mostly hard-core GOP districts. They had learned nothing from their 1932 drubbing and greeted FDR's first two years with an unrelenting obstructionism and invective, doing their best to persuade the American people that Roosevelt and his congressional allies were a bunch of socialists. The result came in the 1934 midterms-- 23%. That's the portion of seats the GOP held onto after they were smashed down by the voters again. The Republicans lost another 14 seats, for a grand total of 103-- 23.6%.

This morning Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin at Politico have the worst possible news for the Republican Party. It's own base, driven mad by years of hate-filled propaganda, is rebelling against any Republican politicians who move towards the mainstream. The base wants the pre-adolescent, obstructionist behavior radicals and extremists like Limbaugh, Beck, Coulter and Hannity extol to gain cable ratings points. It works in the ratings game but most Americans hate the extremism and see through the obstructionism.

The far right now utterly dominates the GOP base. That's OK in most of the Deep South-- although even there the GOP is on the defensive, losing red congressional seats in Florida, North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi and Virginia last year-- but it is pure poison north of the Mason-Dixon line and in the West, where states that had supported Bush in 2004, like Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, went for Obama in 2008.

Within the party, conservative groups have grown stronger absent the emergence of any organized moderate faction.

There is little appetite for compromise on what many see as core issues, and the road to the presidential nomination lies-- as always-- through a series of states where the conservative base holds sway, and where the anger appears to be, if anything, particularly intense.

"There is a sense of rebellion brewing," said Katon Dawson, the outgoing South Carolina Republican Party chairman, who cited unexpectedly high attendance at anti-tax “tea parties” last week.

We watched that rebellion on tape 2 weeks ago as Gresham Barrett, a right-wing congressman who had hoped to become South Carolina's next governor, was mercilessly booed at the Greenville teabagger party. And Barrett has dedicated his entire political career to far right extremism-- except when it got in the way of his ability to raise "donations" from the now unpopular banksters. The Republican Party, devoid of respected leadership, and stuck with the flotsam and jetsam of opportunistic hacks like Boehner, Cantor, Ryan, Hensarling, McConnell, Kyl, and Cornyn, has no choice but to embrace the paranoid hate, ignorance and bigotry of its base-- and race towards... well losing another dozen or two congressional seats in 2010.

Extremist Wingnut Gresham Barrett Booed By His Teabagging Neighbors For Hypocrisy-- End Of His Gubernatorial Campaign?

End of a wingnut's dream?

A few weeks ago we mentioned how right-wing extremist Gresham Barrett is running for governor of South Carolina. There aren't any members of Congress more clueless, more extremist and less sincere. Seeing a sea of anti-Obama signs at the teabagger party in Greenville yesterday, Gresham assumed he would be welcomed with open arms. Instead he was vociferously booed. Since none of the other elected officials-- including Governor Mark Sanford and Senator Jim DeMint (Miss Lindsey knows better than to get anywhere near a crowd of angry yahoos)-- were booed, Gresham used every trick in the book to ingratiate himself with the mob. Nothing worked. Watch the fascinating video below; I was surprised he didn't start screaming that Obama is a nigga. He tried everything short of that-- from pathetically begging for their forbearance and telling them how much he respects them to throwing out red meat terms like "the librul Democrats in Washington DC," "trillions of dollars in pork barrel spending," "raising tax levels that would make the French blush," "rewarding illegal behavior with amnesty at your expense," "abortion," "waste in the name of Stimulus," "gluttony of reckless spending," "automatic pay raises [for Congress]," even a claim that he introduced a bill they inspired called "the Tea Act."

No doubt Gresham's career flashed before his eyes as all his efforts at demagoguery and pandering to the Know Nothing base he's always courted elicited nothing but louder and more persistent booing and a sea of people turning their backs to the stage. It must have been especially galling for the reactionary rabble-rouser because his own congressional district starts about 10 miles from where he was speaking and the Greenville media is where most of his constituents get their local news. (Obviously they get their national news from Limbaugh and Hannity.)

Earlier today we asked you to look at how John Nichols at The Nation dealt with the hypocrisy of other Republican hacks trying to glom onto the Know Nothing teabagger movement, particularly the biggest hypocrite of all, Wisconsin Congressloon Paul Ryan. "Sam Adams and the more radical of his Boston compatriots," wrote Nichols, "would, presumably, have been bemused by the image of conservatively-clad Middle Americans recalling the revolutionary acts of December 16, 1773, by meekly clutching tea bags." He points out, though, that the congressional Republicans who chose to run out in front of the parade and make like they were leading it-- the way we can see the hapless Barrett doing in Greenville and the way clods like John Shadegg did in Phoenix and Sue Myrick did in Charlotte and Paul Ryan did in Madison-- was pure hypocrisy, since each of these wingnut pols voted in favor of Bush's Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which gave hundreds of billions of dollars to banksters and speculators. You can see the angry anti-Obama sore losers booing Gresham. I wonder what they would have done to him if they knew that his vote for the bill was at least in part motivated by the $786,873 in legalized bribes he took from the financial/insurance/real estate sector. Ryan, who Nichols points out as the most hypocritical of all the teabagger Republicans, has gobbled up $1,555,321 from the FIRE sector while Shadegg took in $1,191,961 and Myrick's haul was a cool $1,140,388. Why does he single out Ryan?

The ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee has emerged as the GOPs pointman on "fiscal responsibility" issues. Yet, this Tory legislator played a key role in passing the Wall Street bailout last fall, rallying Republican votes for the measure when sincere conservatives wanted to vote "no" to the $800-billion giveaway with Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders, who said, "rescuing the economy does not mean we have to just give away $700 billion of taxpayer money to the banks," and Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold, who said, "Taxpayers deserve a plan that puts their concerns ahead of those who got us into this mess."
Technically, Ryan represents Janesville, Wisconsin, but his real designation ought to be: Paul Ryan, R-Wall Street.

Janesville is, or at least was, a manufacturing town. Yet, Ryan has since his election to the House in 1998 consistently voted for free-trade pacts-- including the extension of most-favored nation trading status to China-- that have been devastating to the community and others in his southeastern Wisconsin district. How devastating, last winter, the sprawling General Motor plant that had been the community's top employer for nine decades, was shuttered.

What was Ryan doing in the months before the plant closed? Campaigning for a scheme to gamble Social Security funds on the stock market and gut Medicare and Medicaid. Had Ryan gotten his way, tens of millions of Americans who lost most of their retirement savings when the stock market crashed in the fall would also have lost much of their Social Security safety net. And they would have had an even harder time getting access to medical care.

Fiscally responsible? Not Paul Ryan.

His whole career has been about redistributing wealth upward, rewriting trade rules to favor multinational corporations, robbing the federal treasury to enrich his banking industry benefactors and running up debts to bail out Wall Street.

If Sam Adams had encountered this Tory, they would have tossed him in Boston Harbor with those crates of tea.

Forgive me if you read this earlier. There's never enough exposing the hypocrisy of Paul Ryan at this site. (At least I'm not using his clown picture again.) If you'd like to help stop him dead in his tracks, please donate here. And today's an especially good day to do just that since every donor today will get one of the books we write about at DWT sent to the address on the ActBlue account.



H/T: Adam Fogle at Palmetto Scoop. It's worth going over to his right-wing lunatic fringe site to see the comments. I especially enjoyed the one asserting Barrett is a socialist. I'm sure he did as well.

Far Right Extremists Gresham Barrett (SC) And Mary Fallin (OK) Running For Governor

Governors, who actually have to govern, are generally less extreme than members of legislatures. Jim DeMint, the fanatic senator from South Carolina is the worst extremist in the Senate. His state's governor, Mark Sanford, is nearly as extreme-- and probably the most extremist governor in the nation. In this case we can be grateful for term limits inasmuch as we probably won't have to hear any of Sanford's hypocritical bullcrap after that. There is one drawback-- it looks like his successor will be even worse!

This morning the most radical right member of South Carolina's House delegation, Gresham Barrett, announced that he would like to run for governor. His district, SC-03, takes up most of the western counties of the state, bordering on Georgia, from Aiken in the south to Pickens in the north. While Barrett won re-election in November with 65%, McCain had almost the same percentage (64) against Obama in the district, when has a PVI of R+14-- much better than he did statewide (54%). It's pretty much the reddest part of the state-- a bizarre area where people still have a chip on their collective shoulder about Yankees, alienated from America and from the most vibrant currents of contemporary culture and thought.

Barrett's closest comrade in the House is another radical wingnut, Mike Pence-- who has been blabbering all over today about how he, like Limbaugh, absolutely wants Obama to fail. No one has to ask Barrett. He hates blacks-- and was one of only 33 members of Congress to vote against renewing the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He also hates gays; he hates unions; he hates taxes; he hates peaceniks; he loves nuclear energy.

South Carolina has an even worse unemployment problem than the rest of the U.S. so an anti-working family fanatic like Barrett is the last thing in the world the state needs. His primary opponent is likely to be a mainstream conservative ally of John McCain's and Lindsey Graham's, Attorney General Henry McMaster. Barrett will probably beat him in a primary where it's impossible to be too far to the right.

Though Barrett advisors will portray him as an underdog in the race for governor, other South Carolina political observers say he has a good chance to knock off the two statewide elected officials.

"Barrett's my odds-on favorite to win this primary. Solid conservative, great support base in the vote-rich Upstate, and he connects well with voters on the stump," said Jason Miller, who managed Sanford's successful re-election campaign in 2006. "As long as the money comes in, and he has an excellent fundraising team, he should win this thing."

Democratic state Senator Vincent Sheheen of Camden is the first Democrat to jump into the gubernatorial race.

And speaking of wingnut extremists looking to jump from the House to the state house, Oklahoma City's congresswoman, Mary Fallin-- almost as ideologically out of sync as Barrett-- has let it be known that she's running to replace termed out Democratic Governor Brad Henry. She's a sophomore congresswoman with a robotic right wing voting record across the board but between 1995 and 2007 she was the state's lieutenant governor.

Obama only managed a third of the vote in Oklahoma and the chances of a Democrat winning the governor's mansion is pretty much zero. Dan Boren should run, although the state's current lieutenant governor, Jari Askins is likely to be the sacrificial lamb. There is also a chance that the failed ex-chair of the NRCC, Tom Cole, who's as far right as Fallin, will also jump into the race.