Crawling Through The Wreckage Of This Year's Republican Party Primaries

Although Dana Rohrabacher is a special case we can look at below, basically there are no Republicans in Congress who are being primaried because they are too Trumped-up. The most Trumpified lunatics in the House-- take Matt Gaetz (FL) or Devin Nunes (CA) as perfect examples-- have no mainstream Republicans trying to take them out. Mainstream Republicans are either a figment of our imaginations or being mighty quiet this year. Instead, Trumpists are savaging GOP incumbents who they claim aren’t sufficiently servile to Señor Trumpanzee. Even without Bannon running a purity jihad from the White House, right-wing extremists and on the attack.

NC-09 stretches along the southern border of the state, from the eastern and southern Charlotte metro, through Monroe, Wadesboro, Laurinburg, and Lumberton into eastern Fayetteville. The PVI is R+8. Obama lost it both times and the district went for Trump last year 54.4% to 42.8%. The incumbent is Republican Robert Pittenger, who has a solidly conservative voting record but been a target of Tea Party extremists since 2014 when he said he wouldn't support shutting down the government over an attempt to destroy Obamacare. They ran crackpot Michael Steinberg, who wasn’t able to get much traction. Pittenger won with 67%. Last cycle he had two GOP primary challengers from the right, Mark Harris and Todd Johnson, which proved to be a very tough primary for him:

Now that’s a close call for an incumbent-- 134 votes! This year the DCCC is running a Republican-lite Blue Dog, Dan McCready and as of the December 31 FEC reporting deadline, McCready had outraged Pittenger $1,221,979 to $780,250. Making matters worse for Pittenger, Mark Harris is primarying him again-- and raised some decent money-- $406,222-- forcing Pittenger to spend all his dough on the primary. A couple of weeks ago the biggest newspaper in the district covered the May 8th primary by running a PolitiFact smackdown with this provocative headline: GOP rival says Pittenger is among the 'most liberal' Republicans in Congress. False.

To close the voting gap before the May 8 primary, Harris is questioning Pittenger’s conservative credentials.

Pittenger has represented North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District since 2013, when he succeeded retiring Republican Sue Myrick. A Charlotte resident, Pittenger previously served in the state Senate and in 2008 ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor.

In a recent newsletter, Harris criticized Pittenger for supporting a spending bill that raised the debt ceiling.

“Robert Pittenger showed us yet again why he is constantly rated as one of the most liberal Republicans in Congress,” the newsletter says.

There are 535 voting members of Congress (the House of Representatives and the Senate). Republicans control Congress with nearly 300 seats: 238 in the House and 51 seats in the Senate.

The term "most liberal" is somewhat subjective. But we at PolitiFact North Carolina wondered whether conservative watchdog groups have consistently singled out Pittenger as liberal.

We contacted the Harris campaign to see what ratings systems he’s referencing in the newsletter.


The primary source for the statement is a rating by Conservative Review, according to Harris campaign spokesman Andy Yates. Conservative Review is a website edited by Mark Levin, a talk radio host who has referred to Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell as a "dummy" and "failure."

"Pittenger has a 55% F grade with them. It is the second worst grade of any NC Republican House member (McHenry is the worst)," Yates said in an email, referring to Rep. Patrick McHenry, who represents Western North Carolina. "Pittenger has consistently graded out as an F with this group which marks him as one of the most liberal Republicans in Congress."

Yates is right about Pittenger's standing among the 10 North Carolina Republicans in the House. Whether that puts him among the most liberal Republicans in these rankings depends on how one defines "most liberal."

According to Conservative Review’s scorecard, there are about 90 House Republicans-- about 36 percent-- who have lower "Liberty Scores" than Pittenger. Among those with lower scores than Pittenger: House Speaker Paul Ryan and majority whip Steve Scalise.

Yates also cited Pittenger’s 2018 rating with FreedomWorks, which is zero. FreedomWorks is a libertarian-leaning advocacy group. The scorecard mostly covers fiscal policy, civil liberties and regulatory issues, said Jason Pye, vice president of legislative affairs at FreedomWorks.

Pye referred to Pittenger as "unreliable" when it comes to reining in spending. Pittenger "generally votes with leadership, and they like to bust spending caps and bust the budget-- things we’re opposed to," Pye said. 
Pittenger has a "Lifetime Score" of 70 with the FreedomWorks. There are about 114 House members with lower lifetime scores than Pittenger. Pittenger's score places him slightly to the right of California Republican Devin Nunes and slightly to the left of U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, also of North Carolina.

Pittenger's Conservative Review rating and his lifetime rating on FreedomWorks aren’t extremely liberal (or conservative) compared to other congressional Republicans… Pittenger votes out-of-step with the majority of Republicans 5.5 percent of the time, according to ProPublica. The group says that’s close to the average for Republicans in Congress.

He has a score of 90 percent with Heritage Action for America, a watchdog group and think tank that says it “turns conservative ideas into reality on Capitol Hill.” The average score for House Republicans is 68 percent.

According to a vote tracker on FiveThirtyEight.com, Pittenger’s votes are aligned with Trump 96.9 percent of the time. And there are dozens of Republican House members who vote in-step with Trump less than Pittenger.


…PolitiFact ruling

Harris said Pittenger is "constantly rated as one of the most liberal Republicans in Congress." We can’t find the results to back that up. So we rate this claim False.

Pittenger has been handing out a campaign document to media: “Rep. Robert Pittenger: Unapologetically Pro Trump,” which detailed the “over 200” media appearances, six rallies, nine town halls and other instances in which Pittenger has offered robust defenses” of Señor Trumpanzee. Club for Growth, always looking to elect extremists and neo-fascists, is backing Harris. As in GOOP primaries around the country, the one in NC-09 has support for Señor T big factor for the dumbed-down Republican electorate, with both sides accusing the opponent of disloyalty to the fascist regime. The latest poll shows Pittenger absolutely crushing Harris so far, up 32 points over him.

Another mainstream conservative in the South, Alabama’s Martha Roby, is under attack for not being pro-Trump enough. Her district, AL-02-- the southeast corner of the state, including part of Montgomery, all of Greenville and Dothan-- has an R+16 PVI that has given Democrats about a third of its vote. Trump beat Hillary 65% to 33%. There are 5 Republicans primarying Roby, one being former Blue Dog Democrat Bobby Bright, who she beat in 2012, and is now a born-again Trumpist. Noe-fascist state Rep. State Rep. Barry Moore is even further right. Everyone is claiming to be Trumpier than Roby, who denounced Trump after the Access Hollywood tape. Another candidate attacking Roby from the (far) right is Rich Hobson, Roy Moore’s campaign manager.

Bright was exactly the kind of Blue Dog the DCCC is recruiting now. He describes himself to Alabama Republicans as having been more Republican in Congress “than several dozen Republican counterparts” and says he was “pro-life, pro-Second Amendment and does not believe in same-sex marriage.” Thank God, he’s admitting he’s a Republican now or Lujan and Pelosi would be trying to lure him back to Congress as a Democrat. “Everything that you might think a Democrat believes, I wasn’t there,” he told the local media recently. The primary is June 5 and Bright can’t repeat often enough that he will help “President” Donald Trump any way he could in pushing the “president’s” America-first agenda.

The Staten Island/Brooklyn district (NY-11) that elected former D.A. Dan Donovan (R) after Mafia thug Michael “Mikey Suits” Grimm was sent to federal prison, may be ready to send Grimm, now out of prison, back to Congress. The district’s PVI is R+3. It was the only district in NYC Trump won, beating Hillary 53.6% to 43.8%, a district Obama won in 2012 by over 4 points. The DCCC recruited a very conservative Blue Dog, Max Rose, who would be a complete long shot except for this wave. But Donovan has a bigger problem now-- winning the primary, especially after he was exposed over the weekend in a shockingly sordid affair, perhaps typical for Staten Island but… well, not something voters are likely to forget. The NY Post scooped everyone about how Donovan used his official position to get his baby mama’s son out of a heroin arrest on Staten Island.

Donovan, a former district attorney who now represents Staten Island and part of South Brooklyn, stepped in after his domestic partner’s son was arrested with a friend for “criminal sale and possession of a controlled substance (heroin),” according to an allegation filed with the Office of Congressional Ethics last week.

Timothy O’Connell, son of Serena Stonick, was detained with the female friend after the bust, the allegation states. The friend’s name is being withheld by The Post.

“Later that evening, Donovan, while serving in Congress and as a former District Attorney, visited the 122 Precinct and used his position to illegally request that officers issue O’Connell and [the friend] a ‘desk appearance ticket’ instead of proceeding with normal arrest protocols,” the allegation says. “This intervention allowed the detained to be immediately released from custody, as well as the records to be sealed.”

A desk appearance ticket lets an arrested person show up in court at a later date to answer a summons and avoid being sent to central booking, jailed or arraigned.

…[Donovan spokesman Pat] Ryan noted that when Donovan first began dating Stonick in 2011, she told him that her daughter also struggled with addiction and was in drug-treatment court. As the DA at the time, Donovan requested and was granted a special prosecutor in that case.

Donovan and Stonick now have a young daughter together.

“This is a disgusting, vicious and false attack on a young man’s struggle with addiction to score political points two months before an election,” Ryan said, referring to June’s GOP congressional primary in which Donovan will face ex-con former Rep. Michael Grimm.

Ryan pointed to O’Connell’s arrest report, which shows the young man did not make a phone call after being collared.

O’Connell’s attorney, Joe Mure, said his client was charged with seventh-degree criminal drug possession, not sale. The misdemeanor is punishable by up to a year in jail. The charge was dismissed in March 2016.

Mure claimed four glassine bags of heroin were found in the woman’s wallet when police pulled her and O’Connell over and that marijuana was later found in her shoe at the station house. But the arrest report indicates O’Connell was seen buying heroin.

Ryan said, “We’re not saying [O’Connell] was charged without any cause.”

O’Connell denied doing drugs.

“No marijuana, no heroin. I don’t even drink . . . I go to church every Sunday,” he said.

He denied Donovan helped him get out of trouble. His friend would not comment on the case.

The tipster who made the allegation to the Office of Congressional Ethics said “multiple sources” contributed to the account, including a retired cop and an active detective on Staten Island, elected officials and someone close to the female friend.

The source close to the friend said the woman was driving O’Connell when he asked to go to a house in Great Kills. The source was told that “he went in, he came out. They continued driving. They were pulled over. They were found with drugs.”

The source said that if Donovan did quash the arrests, he made the wrong decision.

“I thought if these kids went through the system and you get a taste of prison... That’s going to scare you some, and maybe it was a chance to keep these kids off drugs,” the person said.

Ironically, when Grimm was in Congress he had the same kind of mainstream conservative record as Donovan does. But now Grimm is attacking Donovan for it and running as an extreme, off-the-cliff Trumpist. Democrats generally feel they can flip the seat more easily if Grimm wins the primary. No one seriously though he could until this weekend.



Todd Rokita is an unaccomplished Indiana member of Congress currently embroiled in a tough primary against Luke Messer, another unaccomplished Indiana Rep. They’re both running for a Senate nomination. Rokita’s new ad doesn’t mention anything remotely connected to issues or policy-- just that he’s the Trumpiest Republican in the race. Writing for the Washington Post today, Aaron Blake noted that the ad encapsulates the all-consuming tribalism of Trump’s Republican Party. “The ad,” he wrote, “titled ‘MAGA,’ is a remarkable little window into how at least one candidate thinks you win in today's GOP, and Rokita hopes it's his ticket to the Republican nomination to face Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-IN) next month… [Trump] has turned a Republican Party that was all about conservative purity earlier this decade into one that is more about Trump purity. It's a party built on personality whose base has stood by Trump, even as he has shrugged off an antagonistic foreign power's incursion into U.S. elections. It's a party that almost instantly and universally dismisses every Trump-inspired controversy as unimportant and a media creation-- even ‘fake news.’… The problem with being the most ‘with Trump,’ though, is that what it requires can change depending on the day. Trump isn't just a political novice-- he's a chameleon. That may sound harsh and negative, but it's objectively true and even a testament to Trump's ability to hold his base almost by sheer force of personality. The prevailing ethos of Trump's presidency isn't conservative policies so much as ‘Trump will take care of it, and don't worry about the details. There's no question as to why candidates such as Rokita want to be associated with Trump. But just at its core, Rokita isn't subscribing to any specific policies; he's subscribing to supporting a president who might do all kinds of things he never expected. Yet Rokita has wagered that the most important thing is that he assures people he'll be along for the ride.”

And that brings us to Dana Rohrabacher in the coastal Orange County district (CA-48). Hillary narrowly beat Trump there and Rohrabacher has been successful exposed as a Putin puppet. California has open primaries and there’s aq slight chance Rohrabacher won’t even make it into the general election. New Dem Harley Rouda is favored to win among Democrats-- and he would for sure except for the support the DCCC is surrepticuousl funneling to another New Dem, Hans Keirstead, a candidate who looks good on paper but who has been a complete bust in the flesh. Rohabacher’s other problem in the primary, though, is former Assemblyman and former Orange County GOP chairman Scott Baugh. Now Baugh, a former Rohrabacher ally, is attacking him as a Putin puppet, likely to help Rouda if Rohrabacher makes the general. Trump’s unpopular in the district and he’s not really as much of a factor as he is in GOP primaries in the rest of the country-- unless Putin = Trump in the minds of Republican primary voters in South Brooklyn which is lousy with pro-Putin (and pro-Trump) Russian immigrants who are extremely disloyal to the U.S. and ought to be all deported as dangerous aliens.

What's The Difference Between A Blue Dog And A Republican?

No one every knew which party Bobby Bright belonged to when he was mayor of Montgomery. But when the longtime congressman for southeast Alabama (including about half of Montgomery) he decided to claim he was a Democrat, even though he's a total gun nut and NRA ally, a gay-hater and, of course, anti-Choice. But as a Democrat he was able to avoid the crowded GOP primary.

The district, AL-02 includes Autauga, Barbour, Bullock, Butler, Coffee, Conecuh, Covington, Crenshaw, Dale, Elmore, Geneva, Henry, Houston, and Pike counties and part of Montgomery County. McCalin beat Obama 64-35% and Romney beat him 63-36%. Bad enough, but Trump beat Hillary 65-33%. The PVI is R+16. So... Blue Dog Bobby Bright, who voted very consistently with the Republicans for the one session he was in Congress, is now, as of today, trying to get his old seat back-- as a Republican.

When Everett decided to retire and Bright decided he was a "Democrat," he beat far right Republican state legislator Jay Love 144,368 (50.3)% to 142,578 (49.7%), Love having spent $2,444,627 to Bright's $1,193,166. The DCCC put $625,102 into independent efforts to help Bright, almost as much as the NRCC put in for Love ($671,718). Bright was the first Democrat to represent the district since William Louis Dickinson won it in 1964.

In 2010 Bright was defeated by Martha Roby 111,645 (51.1%) to 106,865 (48.9%). He spent $1,435,526 (+ DCCC - $1,405,067) to Roby's $1,240,276 (+ NRCC- $1,059,414). In 2013 he switched parties and has been a conservative Republican since 2013.

Blue America got involved in making sure Bright wouldn't be reelected and many professional Democrats got angry with us. The stupid, incompetent Republicans hadn't figured out how to beat Bright. They were busy calling him a "Nancy Pelosi pawn" in the white suburbs of Montgomery, where he-- and his conservative politics-- were quite popular. So Blue America decided to point out his record to some of Bright's other constituents. We began a massive, targeted radio and TV campaign in just 4 counties, the 4 counties where Barack Obama did best in 2008, the 4 counties most badly effected by Bright's anti-family votes, the 4 counties that make it hard for a Democrat to win district-wide without landslide victories: Lowndes, Bullock, Barbour and Butler. When the African-American precincts in and around Montgomery were gerrymandered into the 3rd CD, the 2nd was left as a hopeless Republican bastion. It's a freak of nature that even a throwback Democrat as far to the right as Bright could have ever won the seat. He won it 144,368-142,578... but with massive support from the African-American voters in Lowndes, Bullock, Barbour and Butler counties, voters whose interests he consistently ignored from the moment he was elected. Obama only won 36% of the vote in Alabama's 2nd CD but he won landslides in Lowndes County (5,447 to 1,807) and Bullock County (4,001 to 1,389) and ties in Butler and Barbour counties. This is the radio ad some local actors made for us:



Not everyone thought it was sage to help defeat a Democrat in a perilous election. "But what exactly," I asked at the time, "does Bobby Bright bring to the table? What good would saving his seat do? He had already announced he wouldn't vote for Pelosi (which meant he wouldn't vote to organize the House for the Democrats). He voted with the GOP on every contentious issue. He worked within the Democratic caucus to destroy or water down every single piece of progressive legislation he could get his hands on. And he denigrated the Democratic brand with his framing, making it seem toxic to even be a Democrat… When Democrats passed the DISCLOSE Act in the House, to stop the flow of foreign money into American elections, something they knew would be a boon for the GOP and a disaster for Democrats, Bright was one of the Blue Dogs to cross the aisle and vote with the Republicans. He was one of only five Democrats who had been endorsed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the funnel for millions of yuan, dinars and rubles being used to pervert our country's political system. So here's the TV ad we ran:





What do you think? Should we do a campaign like this to Dan Lipinski in Illinois? In IL-03 it won't be some crazy Republican like Martha Roby who tales over the seat; it's be a solid progressive Democrat: Marie Newman. What do you think? Let us know. Back to Bright for a moment again. Bright "pointing out that at one point Gov. Kay Ivey, Sen. Richard Shelby and even President Donald Trump were Democrats. Bright said the GOP more closely aligns with his values."

"I tried to be a Democrat, and I didn't do the job as a Democrat that I wanted to do, mainly because my beliefs are conservative and that held me back," he told reporters in Hoover, where he submitted his qualification papers to run as a Republican. "You have to look at where I came from when I chose to run as a Democrat. I was a non-partisan mayor for 10 years, so I worked to make things happen and to be successful across party lines. I felt at the time I could go on to Washington as a Democrat and be very, very effective and we did-- we were very effective to a great degree. But there's limited things you can do up there as a conservative controlled by a liberal party."

Bright was a Blue Dog Democrat, a caucus of the party's most conservative members. He voted against Obamacare.

The attempt to win back his own seat was spurred by people in the district, which spans from most of Montgomery to the Wiregrass Region, asking for change, according to Bright.

"I am answering their call," he said of his former constituents. "They've asked me to consider stepping back into the political arena and represent their interest, and that's what I intend to do."

Bright claimed that residents in the district are not being "properly represented" because Roby does not currently sit on the Armed Services or Agriculture committees and the district has a sizeable military presence and a robust farming community.

"We have two military bases, we have many, many farmers... they have no voice, they have no direct voice to Washington, D.C.," he said.

Last year, Roby told AL.com that her seat on the House Appropriations Committee gives her a platform "to fight for our military men and women" by securing funding.

"Representative Roby is focused on doing the job that the people of Alabama's Second District sent her to Washington to do, and she looks forward to discussing her clear conservative Republican record on the campaign trail," a spokeswoman for Roby's campaign said in an email statement Thursday.

The National Republican Congressional Committee-- the campaign arm of House Republicans-- slammed Bright for his vote to elect Nancy Pelosi speaker. The committee is backing Roby in the primary.

"A candidate running as a Republican in Alabama who voted for Nancy Pelosi is definitely the most shocking news of the day-- even in 2018," NRCC regional spokeswoman Maddie Anderson said in an email to AL.com. "Nancy Pelosi is the most unpopular political figure in the entire country and I look forward to watching Bobby Bright explain to Alabamians how exactly he supports both Pelosi and the tax-cutting GOP agenda."

As of Thursday, there were two other Republican challengers for the seat: Roy Moore aide Rich Hobson and state Rep. Barry Moore, R-Enterprise.

Why Blue Dog Mike Ross Will Lose His Run For Arkansas Governor

The ad above was released 3 days ago by the Republican Governors Association. It's an unadulterated attack ad on Mike Ross, the Democratic Party candidate for governor of Arkansas, who is running against extremist GOP sociopath Asa Hutchinson. I don't care who wins because both candidates are the worst garbage American politics has to offer. I suppose a lesser of two evils argument could be made in favor of Ross, but, given his virulently reactionary and anti-working family record when he was in Congress, that would be a stretch. Ross was one of the leaders of the Blue Dogs and-- when it came to the crucial, values-driven issues that define the Democratic Party-- he voted with the GOP. A raging homophobic asshole, Ross is also an anti-Choice fanatic (even voting against contraception!), a complete NRA shill (one of the only "Democrats" to get an A+ for them), against healthcare for the working class and a paragon of repulsive Beltway corruption. It makes no sense that he's a Democrat and it never has. But that ad above isn't going to lose him his race.

The ad is how Republican zombies react to Blue Dogs. To them, a reactionary like Mike Ross is the same thing as Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Alan Grayson or Keith Ellison. In other words: NANCY PELOSI!. In 2010, Blue America tried showing them how to actually beat Blue Dogs. Instead of lying, just tell the truth. When you tell the truth about Blue Dogs, discouraged Democratic voters don't go to the polls. In 2010, the worst Blue Dog in Congress was Bobby Bright of Alabama. He was even worse-- though just fractionally-- than Ross. And his own campaign ads were vehicles for attacking Democratic Party goals and… Nancy Pelosi herself. Like this one:



The DCCC wasted millions on Bright, who was going to jump to the GOP if they won a majority and he was reelected. Blue America made sure he wasn't reelected. We ran a huge TV and radio campaign in the bluest parts of AL-02. The stupid, incompetent Republicans hadn't figured out how to beat him. They're busy calling him a Nancy Pelosi pawn in the white suburbs of Montgomery, where he-- and his reactionary politics-- are quite popular. So Blue America decided to point out his record to some other of Bright's constituents. We began a massive, targeted radio and TV campaign in just 4 counties, the 4 counties where Barack Obama did best in 2008, the 4 counties most badly effected by Bright's anti-family votes, the 4 counties that make it hard for a Democrat to win district-wide without landslide victories: Lowndes, Bullock, Barbour and Butler. When the African-American precincts in and around Montgomery were gerrymandered into the 3rd CD, the 2nd was left as a hopeless Republican bastion. It's a freak of nature that even a throwback Democrat as far to the right as Bright could have ever won the seat. He won it 144,368-142,578... but with massive support from the African-American voters in Lowndes, Bullock, Barbour and Butler counties, voters whose interests he has consistently ignored since being elected. Obama only won 36% of the vote in Alabama's 2nd CD but he won landslides in Lowndes County (5,447 to 1,807) and Bullock County (4,001 to 1,389) and ties in Butler and Barbour counties. This is the ad some local actors made for us:



With 217,777 votes cast, Bright won 106,455 (48.9%) to Martha Roby's 111,322 (51.1%). We were able to depress his vote in the 4 counties crucial to Democratic candidates. Below is a comparison of the votes Bright got in each of these candidates when he won in 2008 and when he lost in 2010:

Lowndes- 5,667 (79%) in '08 and 3,874 (74%) in 2010
Barbour- 6,889 (61%) in '08 and 4,822 (59%) in 2010
Bullock- 4,203 (79%) in '08 and 2,980 (77%) in 2010
Butler- 5,601 (59%) and 3,878 (55%) in 2010

He would have been reelected if he got the same percentage of support in those counties in 2010 that he had in 2008. And that was done just by telling the truth about his record. Instead of doing that in Arkansas, the Republican Governors Association is playing their same idiotic single note marching song against Ross: he's Nancy Pelosi! Run for your life! Arkansas voters aren't that stupid. Friday, FactCheck.org called them out on their lies, pointing out that their numbers are inflated and that the RGA ignored votes Ross cast in favor of the massive 2001 Bush tax cuts, several votes to permanently bury the estate tax, and to permanently extend the Bush cuts for low- and moderate-income taxpayers.

The ad from the Republican Governors Association began running June 18, calling Ross’ campaign promises to cut state taxes “all hogwash.” Ross promises to phase in lower income taxes and to phase out the state’s business tax on partial replacements and repairs of manufacturing machinery and equipment. But the RGA’s narrator says, “Ross voted with Nancy Pelosi over 80 times against taxpayers. … No wonder Ross received an ‘F’ from the National Taxpayers Union.”

…Our quarrel here is with the tired, old trick of padding vote counts on taxes. We called it “tax tally trickery” when John McCain’s campaign tried it against Barack Obama in 2008, and we started debunking this sort of claim a decade ago, when President George W. Bush used it against John Kerry, his 2004 Democratic opponent.

In this case, the RGA’s “ad verification” lists 85 votes that Ross cast during his 12 years in the House (out of 8,570 roll call votes recorded by the House clerk during those years). Very few of them would have actually raised taxes on anyone, and some would have actually cut taxes.

We’ve gone over all 85 votes listed, and we find the total to be padded because:

• Forty-six were purely procedural votes. For example, the very first vote listed is against a parliamentary motion to bring to a vote a proposed House rule to set terms of debate for what became the 2001 Bush tax cuts. (Not mentioned is that Ross was one of only 28 House Democrats who later crossed party lines to vote in support of final passage of those cuts.)

• Fifteen of the votes were on non-binding budget resolutions that set targets for revenue and spending, but would not have had any direct effect on tax law.

• Only 16 of the votes favored measures that would have raised taxes. These included:

• Seven votes on measures to raise taxes on tobacco products to fund the expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (including votes for a failed attempt to override President Bush’s veto of the Democratic measure in 2008, and multiple votes for the 2009 measure that President Obama signed soon after he first took office.)
• Seven votes on amendments to increase taxes only on couples making $1 million or more per year. All of these were Democratic proposals that would, for example, have provided an extra $1 billion to spend for anti-terrorism security measures, or to increase spending for education, health and other Democratic priorities. All of these were offered when Republicans were in the majority, so none had any hope of passage.
• Two votes on Democratic measures to raise taxes on oil and gas companies to fund renewable energy subsidies. These included his vote for the House version of the 2007 energy bill, which was signed by President Bush after the Senate stripped out the oil-and-gas tax increases, and his 2008 vote for another energy measure that died in the Senate.

…The RGA ad also spins by omission. It fails to mention, for example, that Ross went on to vote for permanent repeal of the estate tax after the Democratic alternative failed. He was one of only 41 House Democrats to do so. And he also voted for permanent repeal in 2005 and 2006, votes also not mentioned in the RGA analysis.

And we’ve already mentioned Ross’ support for the 2001 Bush cuts. Padding the list of “against” votes with procedural and non-binding votes, while ignoring votes cast in favor of tax cuts, gives a distorted picture of Ross’ record.

The ad’s narrator makes the claim that “Ross and Pelosi voted for higher taxes on families and small businesses.” Our advice to viewers is to ask, “Which families?”

It turns out, according to the RGA’s own ad verification, that only very high-income families would have seen higher taxes. The RGA lists seven votes in 2003, 2004 and 2005 for Democratic proposals to scale back the Bush rate cuts for individuals making over $500,000 a year, or in some cases over $1 million a year.

None of these would have fallen directly on “small businesses,” but profits from many small businesses flow through to the owners’ personal income tax returns. In those cases, only those with profits of $500,000 or $1 million (depending on the amendment in question) would also have been affected.

For those keeping score, every single poll has shown Hutchinson beating Ross, by an average of 5.7%. The most recent PPP survey has Ross down the most, losing to Hutchinson 46-38%. Democratic Senate incumbent Mark Pryor us beating Tea Party challenger Tom Cotton in the same survey and when asked if they approve or disapprove of Democratic Governor Mike Beebe’s job performance, 62% of Arkansas voters say they approve and only 22% disapprove. He's one of the most popular governors in the country. But the voters are smart enough to have figured out that the reactionary Ross is not Mike Beebe.

Alabama Reactionaries Bobby Bright And Parker Griffith Reemerging From Their Holes?

Unless you're from Montgomery, Alabama, I wouldn't blame you if you can't remember who Bobby Bright was. As Mayor of Montgomery, Bright never had to say if he was a Democrat or a Republican. But when Republican Terry Everett announced he would not run for reelection in AL-02, a seat that had been in GOP hands for over 4 decades, Bright avoided the crowded GOP primary by running as a Democrat, albeit as gay-hating, anti-Choice NRA Blue Dog. He won the general election by 1,776 votes (just over a half of one percent). He then went on to accrue the worst voting record of any Blue Dog in Congress and voted with the Republicans virtually always. Blue America took a lot of incoming from Democrats because we worked hard to defeat him. (More about that below.) This week, he announced he's BACK-- as a Republican.

Bobby Bright has disappeared from the public eye ever since he lost his re-election bid to Congress three years ago. But after serving in city hall and on Capitol Hill, he may want to come to the Alabama State House… [H]e says he is interested in serving the people.

…Bright says if he runs, he'll switch to the Republican Party. That would put him in a primary battle against at least two people. One is Harris Garner, who owns Garner Electric in Millbrook. He says he's the best candidate... with or without Bright in the race… Another candidate is Suzelle Josey, a former spokesperson for Chief Justice Roy Moore. She wants to be the missing voice in the state senate, which has no republican women.

Before Bright even started running his 2010 reactionary campaign ads, he had already marked himself out as the single most right-wing Democrat in the House. His ProgressivePunch score-- a dismal 19.83 (out of 100)-- was not just the lowest Democrat's score; it's also lower than two conservative Republicans'! Bright had consistently shown his fealty to Boehner on every single contentious issue that came before Congress in his single term. In fact, when SCHIP came up for it's final vote only two Democrats crossed the aisle to vote against health care for needy children and Bright, of course, was one of the two. He has been sure to noisily vote against a woman's right to Choice (and, like Christine O'Donnell, he's even been against contraception), against equality for the LGBT community, against health care reform, against Wall Street reform, against energy legislation... You name it-- if Barack Obama was for it, Bobby Bright was against it. And that was the theme of his reelection campaign.

Bright's ads and campaign statements targeted and demonized Nancy Pelosi, while building up... John Boehner. He flat-out declared he wouldn't vote for her as Speaker, the bare minimum Democrats have always required of their candidates. But that didn't stop the clods at the DCCC from spending more on Bright than on any other Democratic incumbent-- enough money to have shored up the shaky seats of real Democrats like Alan Grayson, John Hall, Mary Jo Kilroy and Carol Shea Porter who unjustly lost their seats in the Great Blue Dog Apocalypse that flushed Bright down the toilet. The DCCC continued spending on him, even though it was widely assumed in Washington that Bright would jump the fence if the Democrats lost the majority so he could officially be what he already was unofficially: a conservative Republican.

So here's where Blue America came in and why so many professional Democrats got angry with us. The stupid, incompetent Republicans hadn't figured out how to beat Bright. They were busy calling him a Nancy Pelosi pawn in the white suburbs of Montgomery, where he-- and his conservative politics-- were quite popular. So Blue America decided to point out his record to some of Bright's other constituents. We began a massive, targeted radio and TV campaign in just 4 counties, the 4 counties where Barack Obama did best in 2008, the 4 counties most badly effected by Bright's anti-family votes, the 4 counties that make it hard for a Democrat to win district-wide without landslide victories: Lowndes, Bullock, Barbour and Butler. When the African-American precincts in and around Montgomery were gerrymandered into the 3rd CD, the 2nd was left as a hopeless Republican bastion. It's a freak of nature that even a throwback Democrat as far to the right as Bright could have ever won the seat. He won it 144,368-142,578... but with massive support from the African-American voters in Lowndes, Bullock, Barbour and Butler counties, voters whose interests he consistently ignored from the moment he was elected. Obama only won 36% of the vote in Alabama's 2nd CD but he won landslides in Lowndes County (5,447 to 1,807) and Bullock County (4,001 to 1,389) and ties in Butler and Barbour counties. This is the radio ad some local actors made for us:



Like I said, not everyone thought it was sage to help defeat a Democrat in a perilous election. "But what exactly," I asked at the time, "does Bobby Bright bring to the table? What good would saving his seat do? He's already announced he won't vote for Pelosi (which means he won't vote to organize the House for the Democrats). He votes with the GOP on every contentious issue. He works within the Democratic caucus to destroy or water down every single piece of progressive legislation he can get his hands on. And he denigrates the Democratic brand with his framing, making it seem toxic to even be a Democrat… When Democrats passed the DISCLOSE Act in the House, to stop the flow of foreign money into American elections, something they knew would be a boon for the GOP and a disaster for Democrats, Bright was one of the Blue Dogs to cross the aisle and vote with the Republicans. He is one of only five Democrats who has been endorsed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the funnel for millions of yuan, dinars and rubles being used to pervert our country's political system.

Oh, and speaking of Bobby Bright, another scummy Alabama Blue Dog who jumped the fence, Parker Griffith, actually ran for reelection as a Republican and was defeated in the GOP primary. Now he may be about to run for his old seat again, this time as an independent.

"I do not regret changing parties, (but) I think politically it may have been a mistake," Griffith said the morning after his defeat. "On principle, it was the right thing to do, and I'm happy about it."

He tried to reclaim to 5th District seat from Brooks in 2012 but fared even worse, despite pumping more than $500,000 of his own money into the campaign.

Earlier this month, Griffith told WHNT that he now considers himself an independent. "I've been on both parties, I've seen them up close and personal," he said. "Neither one of them are worth a damn. I'm an independent."

Independent and third-party candidates have had limited success in Alabama, and the 3 percent signature requirement is one of the highest thresholds in the nation. According to the Secretary of State's office, Griffith would have to collect signatures from at least 6,858 voters who live in the 5th Congressional District and cast a ballot for governor in the 2010 general election.

Are there still Democrats in the House today as bad as Bobby Bright and Parker Griffth were back then? Blue Dogs John Barrow (GA), Jim Matheson (UT), Dan Lipinski (IL) and Mike McIntyre (NC) are in the same league. And several of the New Dem freshmen, like-- from bad to worse-- Patrick Murphy (FL), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Bill Owens (NY), Pete Gallego (TX), Sean Patrick Maloney (NY) and Ron Barber (AZ), are just about there.

Which Way To Point The Finger?

I hope it doesn't come as a shock to anyone who reads DWT for me to mention that the American masses are clearly less likely to guillotine the very people who outsource their jobs, foreclose on their homes and drive their families into penury than they are to elect them senator from Ohio and Wisconsin or governor of Ohio and Florida. Which they did; but you know that by now. There are plenty of reasons that motivate voters and even in relatively sane California, where Barbara Boxer was reelected to the Senate with 3,789,777 votes, her incredibly ill-suited and failed opponent, Carly Fiorina, wound up with 3,091,426 poor deluded California souls voting for her. And in New York, almost a third of the voters wanted Carl Paladino to be their governor! And more than a third of the voters in Colorado pulled the lever or touched the screen for infamous, or-- depending in which circles you move--celebrated racist Tom Tancredo.

The Democratic Party-- the corporate entity headquartered in Washington, DC-- has hardly offered voters a clear or compelling narrative in opposition to the very clear right-wing message carried by the Republican Party. The Republicans are uniformly conservatives and reactionaries whose vision of governance is authoritarian and excessively, even cravenly, deferential to the wealthy. The Democrats have some vague organizing principles and values but in the quest for the biggest tent ever pitched, the party has room for lots and lots of polar opposites-- those who would protect a woman's right to choice and those who would imprison doctors for performing abortions; those who sincerely believe in equality for all Americans and those who adamantly oppose it, particularly for the LGBT community and for ethnic minorities; those who believe it is their job to represent the interests of ordinary American families and those whose motivation is getting on board the corporate gravy train that will entitle them to whatever they personally aspire to in the material world...

The silver lining last night, as I predicted a week ago, was the political demise of the Blue Dogs. Over half the caucus was defeated, including the most reactionary members-- those who voted most frequently with the GOP against working families: Bobby Bright (AL-19.83% with Democrats), Gene Taylor (MS- 22.50), Travis Childers (MS- 22.95), Walt Minnick (ID- 27.64), Harry Mitchell (AZ- 28.46), Glenn Nye (VA- 30.08), Charles Melancon (LA- 32.17), Jim Marshall (GA-32.52). In fact all the Blue Dogs who voted less than a third of the time with the Democrats except for arch-reactionary Dan Boren (OK- 26.50), were defeated, as were so many of the ones who voted against the Hate Crimes bill, for the Stupak Amendment, against the health care bill, against the Wall Street reform legislation. And in the Senate, reactionary Arkansas bootlick to the Walton family, Blanche Lincoln wound up with a stunning 37.2% of the vote.

Blue America started the ball rolling against Blanche over a year ago by letting loyal Democrats in Democratic parts of the state know what she was up to. And we just did the same thing-- with equal success-- to Bobby Bright in Alabama. With 217,777 votes cast yesterday, Bright won 106,455 (48.9%) to Martha Roby's 111,322 (51.1%). We were able to depress his vote in 4 counties crucial to Democratic candidates, Lowndes, Barbour, Bullock and Butler. Below is a comparison of the votes Bright got in each of these candidates when he won in 2008 and when he lost last night:

Lowndes- 5,667 (79%) in '08 and 3,874 (74%) Tuesday
Barbour- 6,889 (61%) in '08 and 4,822 (59%) Tuesday
Bullock- 4,203 (79%) in '08 and 2,980 (77%) Tuesday
Butler- 5,601 (59%) and 3,878 (55%) Tuesday

We hope right-wing Democrats willing to shill themselves out to Big Business will know there's a price to pay for their perfidy. We'll be thinking carefully about Ben Nelson's race in 2012-- as well as Jim Cooper's, Joe Donnelly's, Mike Ross' and John Barrow's. And then there's our fearless leader.

With Boehner already claiming a mandate from the voters to overturn the healthcare "monstrosity," and Miss McConnell hissing from his closet that the lesson of Tuesday was that Democrats should not side with Obama-- irrespective of the fact that the vast majority of the losers were Democrats who did not side with Obama but who crossed the aisle habitually and voted most often with the GOP-- Obama was making Clinton-like gestures that he would like to go along to get along with an energized mob of nihilists and extremists who basically don't even recognize him as the legitimate president and whose self-imposed task number one is to make sure to make things as miserable as possible for the country so they blame him and defeat him in 2012. Obama wants to compromise. But how do you compromise with that?

He said he supported second-ranking GOP Rep. Eric Cantor's (Va.) proposed earmark moratorium, and suggested he was open to modify IRS reporting requirements for small businesses contained within his signature healthcare bill.

But Obama also exhorted Republicans to negotiate in good faith and put aside politics to the best of their ability. He suggested one message from voters was for the two parties to work together instead of taking shots at one another.

"What Americans don't want from us is spending the next two years re-fighting the battles of the last two," he said.

But Obama added: "I'm not so naive to think everybody will put politics aside until then."

Oh, whew. I kind of wish he would have called for the extension of the middle class tax cuts at the press conference and left the onus on the Republicans to stomp their feet and just say no. Instead he probably read retiring ConservaDem Evan Bayh's excruciating OpEd in the NY Times yesterday calling on the Democrats to be more like the Republicans and adopt their platform and ideas-- in other words to do exactly what sent 27 Blue Dogs hurtling to their political graves.

Bob Scheer had a very different way of looking at what happened Tuesday and a very different perspective on what conclusions the president and the Democratic Party should draw from it. If you've been following his writing and his radio appearances, it won't surprise you to hear that he thinks Obama and the Democrats got what they deserved "for a failed economic policy that consisted of throwing trillions at Wall Street but getting nothing in return."

At a time when, as a Washington Post poll reported last week, 53 percent of Americans fear they can’t make next month’s mortgage or rent payment, the president chirped inanely to Jon Stewart that his top economics adviser, Lawrence Summers, who was paid $8 million by Wall Street firms while advising candidate Obama, had done a “heckuva job” in helping avoid another Great Depression. What kind of consolation is that for the 50 million Americans who have lost their homes or are struggling to pay off mortgages that are “underwater”? The banks have been made whole by the Fed, providing virtually interest-free money while purchasing trillions of dollars of the banks’ toxic assets. Yet the financial industry response has been what Paul Volcker has called a “liquidity trap”-- denying loans for business investment or the refinancing necessary to keep people in their homes.

Instead of meeting that crisis head-on with a temporary moratorium on housing foreclosures, as more than half of those surveyed by the Post wanted, the president summarily turned down that sensible proposal. Instead he attempted to shift the focus to his tepid health care reform and was surprised that many voters didn’t think he did them a favor by locking them into insurance programs not governed by cost controls. Health care reform was viewed by many voters with the same disdain with which they reacted to the underfunded and unfocused stimulus program. Neither seems relevant to turning around an economy that a huge majority feels is getting worse, according to Election Day exit polls.

That is a problem that is not obvious to the power elites whom the leaders of both political parties serve or to the high-paid media pundits who cheer them on. The tea party revolt, ragged as it is, fed on a massive populist outrage that so-called progressives had failed to respond to because of their allegiance to Obama. As a result the Democrats squandered the hopes of their base, which rewarded the party with a paltry turnout at polling stations.

Marshall Ganz put it a bit more deferentially in an OpEd, How Obama Los His Voice, And How He Can get It Back, in yesterday's Los Angeles Times. "Obama," he writes, "went from being a transformational leader in the campaign to a transactional one as president. It didn't work, and he must reverse course." He glosses over-- or never got-- the point that Obama was a transactional career politician before he repackaged himself for the campaign.

President Obama entered office wrapped in a mantle of moral leadership. His call for change was rooted in values that had long been eclipsed in our public life: a sense of mutual responsibility, commitment to equality and belief in inclusive diversity. Those values inspired a new generation of voters, restored faith to the cynical and created a national movement.

Now, 18 months and an "enthusiasm gap" later, the nation's major challenges remain largely unmet, and a discredited conservative movement has reinvented itself in a more virulent form.

This dramatic reversal is not the result of bad policy as such; the president made some real policy gains. It is not a consequence of a president who is too liberal, too conservative or too centrist. And it is not the doing of an administration ignorant of Washington's ways. Nor can we honestly blame the system, the media or the public-- the ground on which presidential politics is always played.

...In his transactional leadership mode, the president chose compromise rather than advocacy. Instead of speaking on behalf of a deeply distressed public, articulating clear positions to lead opinion and inspire public support, Obama seemed to think that by acting as a mediator, he could translate Washington dysfunction into legislative accomplishment. Confusing bipartisanship in the electorate with bipartisanship in Congress, he lost the former by his feckless pursuit of the latter, empowering the very people most committed to bringing down his presidency.

Seeking reform from inside a system structured to resist change, Obama turned aside some of the most well-organized reform coalitions ever assembled-- on the environment, workers' rights, immigration and healthcare. He ignored the leverage that a radical flank robustly pursuing its goals could give a reform president-- as organized labor empowered FDR's New Deal or the civil rights movement empowered LBJ's Voting Rights Act. His base was told that aggressive action targeting, for example, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee-- where healthcare reform languished for many months-- would reflect poorly on the president and make his job harder. Threatened with losing access, and confusing access with power, the coalitions for the most part went along.

The Democratic Party is bereft ideas & bereft of backbone. Obama's going to have a tough time figuring out a path to victory in 2012.

Did Throwing Pelosi Under The Bus Save Any Filthy Blue Dogs From Oblivion?

Conservative Democrats-- primarily Blue Dogs-- have gone to great lengths to distance themselves from the first female Speaker of the House, the leader of their own caucus, Nancy Pelosi and from the Democratic agenda. Some have publicly vowed to oppose her reelection as Speaker. What kind of a message do you think this sends people about Democrats and the Democratic brand? And it isn't just the Bobby Bright and Jim Marshall TV ads we looked at in the last couple of weeks. The Hill counted 5 incumbents and 8 challengers who told voters they would not vote for Pelosi:

•    Ala. Rep. Bobby Bright: “I am not going to vote for Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the House. Neither the leader of the minority party, John Boehner, nor the present speaker, will get my vote. I will vote for someone, a centrist, who is much more like me.” [$1,411,243.95]

•    Ga. Rep. Jim Marshall: “My candidate’s going to be somebody who’s a centrist, preferably somebody who’s going to be speaker of the entire House” [$42,321.21]

•    Miss. Rep. Gene Taylor: “I will not be voting for her again.” [$156,326.93]

•    N.C. Rep. Mike McIntyre: “From what we're hearing, she's probably not going to run for speaker again. And if she does, I'm confident she's going to have opposition, and I look forward to supporting that opposition.” [$270,224.62]

•    Pa. Rep. Jason Altmire: Next Congress would “certainly necessitate new leadership in the Speaker’s position.”

Candidates:

•    (Ala.-05) Steve Raby supports Rep. Allen Boyd for House Speaker.

•    (La-03) Ravi Sangisetty: "I believe Washington is broken, and it's time for new blood.”

•    (Mich.-03) Patrick Miles: “It’s time to have a leader of the House of Representatives who can heal the partisan divide… Nancy Pelosi is not the person to do that.”

•     (Mo.-07) Scott Eckersley will not support Pelosi or Boehner. “Frankly anyone who wants to raise the age on Social Security I'm not in favor of.”

•    (S.C.-02) Rob Miller: “We all know Washington is broken, and I hold Nancy Pelosi accountable for that” [$6,440.22]

•    (Tenn.-06) Brett Carter: “Voters in my district believe that you [Pelosi] do not represent their values”

•    (Tenn.-08) Roy Herron: “Roy would not be supporting either Nancy Pelosi or John Boehner for Speaker of the House. Neither of them are in the common sense center.”

•    (Utah-03) Karen Hyer: “I think it's time for new leadership in Washington.”

Democrats who say they MIGHT not back Pelosi:

•    Ark. Rep. Mike Ross: “No candidates for leadership positions, including Speaker of the House, have announced for the 112th Session of Congress.”

•    Ga. Rep. John Barrow: “November is a long way off. Congressman Barrow doesn’t even know who’s running.”

•    Idaho Rep. Walt Minnick: "I'm going to have to see who's running."

•    Ill. Rep. Bill Foster [$1,303,014.50]

•    Ind. Rep. Baron Hill says he wants to wait to see who is running. [$1,376,746.34]

•    Ind. Rep. Joe Donnelly didn't want to make any "pre-judgments." [$770,760.74]

•    Md. Rep. Frank Kratovil: “I do think that leadership-wise the Democratic party would be better if in some of the leadership positions there were some more moderate people.” [$1,514,468.48]

•    Miss. Rep. Travis Childers: “I'd like to see somebody more moderate in that role. I'd like to see a Blue Dog, quite frankly, because I agree with them on most of the issues.” [$966,806.38]

•    Mo. Rep. Ike Skelton: Declined to say if he would support her. “I’m not associated with her. She’s the speaker, but I’m an independent voice.” [$1,247,955.66]

•    N.C. Rep. Heath Shuler: Told constituents perhaps jokingly he might consider running for speaker himself. [$231,112.63]

•    N.Y. Rep. Mike McMahon: “It's hard to answer a hypothetical question when you don't know who the candidates are, you don't know if she's running again.”

•    N.Y. Rep. Scott Murphy: "We'll see. We'll see what happens when the election's over and we'll look at the leadership.” [$686,418.54]

•    Ohio Rep. Zack Space: “It’s inappropriate to commit because we don’t know who’s going to be running, whether she’s going to be running, whether she’s going to have opposition.” [$1,512,696.39]

•    Ore. Rep. Peter DeFazio: “any time you suffer big losses in business or politics, you need to step back and ask if we need to make some changes.”

•    Pa. Rep. Mark Critz: “I’ve never voted for Nancy Pelosi before, but I’m concentrating on my race.” [$1,609,857.86]

•    S.D. Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin: "I don't know who will be running," she said. "I haven't made any commitments." [$402,595.77]

•    Texas Rep. Chet Edwards: "No commitments." [$627,002.38]

•    Utah Rep. Jim Matheson: “If someone challenges her within the caucus that is more moderate in their views, that is someone I would take a serious look at.”

The number in brackets I inserted is how much the DCCC has spent, just in Independent Expenditures, on trying to elect these worthless Benedict Arnolds this cycle. Keep in mind, because the DCCC decided to spend the bulk of it's $65.103,409.58 on this garbage, there was no money to spend on actual Democrats who stand up for working families, stalwarts like Alan Grayson, Carol Shea-Porter, and Mary Jo Kilroy.

Some say-- including poor Pelosi-- that this isn't a problem and that all the Democratic caucus wants is for these people to be reelected. And there lies the root of the problem. Why? Why re-elect Bobby Bright? He claims he voted with Boehner 80% of the time. That barely scratches the surface of his record. When it came to contentious, substantive issues where the House divided by party, Bright not only voted with the Republicans nearly every single time, he do so more frequently than conservative Republicans like Ron Paul (R-TX), Walter Jones (R-NC), Vern Ehlers (R-MI), and Tim Johnson (R-IL). It wasn't just on healthcare reform, women's Choice, gay equality, and Wall Street reform where Bright, and many of these other Blue Dogs crossed the aisle; Bright even voted against the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009 (SCHIP), which was aimed to help better the lives of the very constituents who helped him eke out a narrow win in 2008. Interestingly 40 Republicans voted for it while it was only Bright and-- guess who-- Jim Marshall who stood by Boehner and Cantor when they tried to torpedo it. And yet, the DCCC will have spent nearly $4,000,000 on trying to get and keep this creep in Congress since 2008. That $4,000,000 could have been much better used. Bright, however, knew exactly which consultants tied to the decision makers to use. We'll get into that more fully when the dust has settled a bit.

Later today. I'll come back to this page and post the final votes for the Democrats who tried to throw Nancy and the Democratic brand under the bus. Do you think it saved their worthless hides? By the way, this is the ad Blue America ran in the counties in Bright's district that were most supportive of President Obama in 2008:

Blue Dogism Slipping Under The Waves?

Yesterday I got a message from a friend in Ohio that that state's Democratic Party, headed by a sleazy and corrupt lobbyist and hack Chris Redfern-- whose heavy handed interference and mindboggling incompetence is virtually just handing the state back to the Republicans-- has removed the Coussoule campaign's access to the state's voter data base, the only way the Ohio Democratic Party has even remotely helped Coussoule's campaign. Redfern and his whole corrupt, conservative establishment is circling the toilet but he apparently thinks his lobbying business will benefit by his having helped John Boehner win another term and, perhaps, the Speakership.

In yesterday's Charlotte Observer, North Carolina's #1 newspaper, there was a glowing endorsement of Elaine Marshall's Senate scrappy insurgent campaign. The endorsement was a slap in the face not just to reactionary corporate shill and incumbent Richard Burr, but also to his pal, sleazy New Jersey ward-heeler and failed DSCC chair Robert Menendez. Marshall, they enthused, "dove into this year's Senate race without Democratic Party backing, yet beat the party's hand-picked choice in the primary. 'I don't have to vote with the Senate leadership,' she told us. 'I wasn't their pick'."

Not only was she not their pick, when North Carolina Democrats let Menendez know what he could do with his pick-- and handed the progressive, activist Marshall a decisive win against the corporate-oriented slug-- Menendez took his toys and ran back to Washington. He had forced Marshall to spend almost a million dollars to win a primary fight he insisted on-- even after she won the first round-- and since then has studiously, many would say vindictively, ignored North Carolina, easily the Democrats' best chance of picking up a GOP-held seat in the entire country.

From the time he handed Scott Brown Teddy Kennedy's Senate seat in Massachusetts, right through all his wrong-headed primary meddling, Menendez's place in history has been assured: the worst DSCC Chair ever. He has been the driving force in making John Cornyn look astute and in turning a filibuster-proof Democratic majority into a hodge podge that may or may not be able to cling to a bare majority. Out of touch, self-serving political hacks like Menendez and Redfern are managing to emphasize that the Democratic Party, despite the disciples of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt at the grassroots level is anything but a peoples' party.

Yesterday a friend of mine, Ari Berman, author of the brilliant new book, Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics, published an incisive OdEd in the NY Times about the damage Blue Dogs and ConservaDems have done to the Democratic Party and, thereby, to the one hope that working families have for a fair shake in this country. And it isn't only Blue Dogs and ConservaDems, but the political bosses like Redfern, Menendez and, of course, Rahm Emanuel, whose milieu they swim in.

Berman asks how Obama's breathtaking victory just two years ago could have turned to such bitter ashes today. "One important explanation," he begins, "is that divisions inside the Democratic coalition, which held together during the 2008 campaign, have come spilling out into the open. Conservative Democrats have opposed key elements of the president’s agenda, while liberal Democrats have howled that their majority is being hijacked by a rogue group of predominantly white men from small rural states. President Obama himself appears caught in the middle, unable to satisfy the many factions inside his party’s big tent." Even inside the DCCC, which should be theoretically controlled by Pelosi and her sluggish assistant, Chris Van Hollen, a rogue bunch of Emanuel leftovers, basically Jon Vogel and John Lapp-- each of whom has ownership stakes in outside consulting firms (which we'll be discussing at greater length on November 3)-- has taken it upon themselves, for curious reasons (more on... November 3), to bolster the campaigns of violently anti-Obama, anti-family reactionaries like Bobby Bright (see the Blue America response in the video above, which is running as an ad in the Democratic-leaning counties of his Alabama district), Travis Childers, Baron Hill, Ann Kirkpatrick, Harry Mitchell, Joe Donnelly, and Frank Kratovil, while ignoring not just progressive challengers, but even tried and true progressive incumbents like Alan Grayson, Raul Grijalva, Mary Jo Kilroy and Carol Shea Porter.

Conservative Democrats in the House of Representatives-- whose election in 2006 and 2008 enabled Nancy Pelosi to preside over a supermajority (there are 255 Democrats and 178 Republicans)-- increasingly question whether she should relinquish her position as speaker. Representative Heath Shuler of western North Carolina, a leader of the restive Blue Dog Coalition of Democrats, has even hinted that he may run for her job. Representative Shuler is an unlikely candidate for leader of the party-- a devout Southern Baptist who voted against the stimulus, the bank and auto bailouts and health care reform. Yet he’s exactly the kind of Democrat that the party worked very hard to recruit for public office.

In 2005, Howard Dean, who was then the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, carried out a campaign to elect as many Democrats as possible. In long-ignored red states, both Mr. Dean and Rahm Emanuel, then the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, backed conservative Democrats who broke with the party’s leadership on core issues like gun control and abortion rights. Mr. Shuler was one of Mr. Emanuel’s top recruits. The party leaders did not give much thought to how a Democratic majority that included such conservative members could ever effectively govern.

With President Obama in office, some notable beneficiaries of the Democrats’ 50-state strategy have been antagonizing the party from within-- causing legislative stalemate in Congress, especially in the Senate, and casting doubt on the long-term viability of a Democratic majority. As a result, the activists who were so inspired by Mr. Dean in 2006 and Mr. Obama in 2008 are now feeling buyer’s remorse.

Margaret Johnson, a former party chairwoman in Polk County, N.C., helped elect Representative Shuler but now believes the party would be better off without him. “I’d rather have a real Republican than a fake Democrat,” she said. “A real Republican motivates us to work. A fake Democrat de-motivates us.”

Ms. Johnson is right: Democrats would be in better shape, and would accomplish more, with a smaller and more ideologically cohesive caucus. It’s a sentiment that even Mr. Dean now echoes. “Having a big, open-tent Democratic Party is great, but not at the cost of getting nothing done,” he said. Since the passage of health care reform, few major bills have passed the Senate. Although the Democrats have a 59-vote majority, party leaders can barely find the votes for something as benign as extending unemployment benefits.
A smaller majority, minus the intraparty feuding, could benefit Democrats in two ways: first, it could enable them to devise cleaner pieces of legislation, without blatantly trading pork for votes as they did with the deals that helped sour the public on the health care bill. (As a corollary, the narrative of “Democratic infighting” would also diminish.)

Second, in the Senate, having a majority of 52 rather than 59 or 60 would force Democrats to confront the Republicans’ incessant misuse of the filibuster to require that any piece of legislation garner a minimum of 60 votes to become law. Since President Obama’s election, more than 420 bills have cleared the House but have sat dormant in the Senate. It’s easy to forget that George W. Bush passed his controversial 2003 tax cut legislation with only 50 votes, plus Vice President Dick Cheney’s. Eternal gridlock is not inevitable unless Democrats allow it to be.

Republicans have become obsessed with ideological purity, and as a consequence they will likely squander a few winnable races in places like Delaware. But Democrats aren’t ideological enough. Their conservative contingent has so blurred what it means to be a Democrat that the party itself can barely find its way. Polls show that, despite their best efforts to distance themselves from Speaker Pelosi and President Obama, a number of Blue Dog Democrats are likely to be defeated this November. Their conservative voting records have deflated Democratic activists but have done nothing to win Republican support.

Far from hastening the dawn of a post-partisan utopia, President Obama’s election has led to near-absolute polarization. If Democrats alter their political strategy accordingly, they’ll be more united and more productive.

Although he was asked, for the sake of some semblance of party unity, to back off, what Berman is saying is very much what the dean of California's congressional delegation said this summer: the Democrats would be better off without the Blue Dogs.

“I think a lot of the House seats we’re going to lose are those who have been the toughest for the Democrats to pull into line-- the Democrats that have been the most difficult,” Waxman said.

Waxman, one of the Democratic Party’s stalwarts, is simply voicing publicly what many in his party have said privately as the reality of the looming November elections sets in. If Democrats retain a majority, it will be smaller but more cohesive.

 As Waxman sees it, the fractious coalition of Democrats that House leaders have cobbled together to pass sweeping healthcare and energy bills is not markedly different from the bipartisanship of the past, when Democrats partnered with centrist and liberal Republicans, whom Waxman says are “practically nonexistent at the moment.”

 “We’ve been trying to get the Democratic conservatives together with the rest of the Democratic Party, so in effect we’ve gotten bipartisan support among Democrats in the House,” the chairman said with a laugh. “Now we’ll have to work on genuine bipartisanship in the future.”

The Bobby Bright Blue America ads were paid for with a single contribution from a dedicated progressive who feels much the same way about this that Henry Waxman and Ari Berman feel. But if you'd like to chip in a little to hammer home the message... here's The Bobby Bright Page on ActBlue.


UPDATE: And Don't Forget The New Dem Coalition

They're a couple steps further away from the white sheets and hoods than the Blue Dogs, with this group of conservative Democrats has been nearly as lethal, especially when it comes to protecting their corporate benefactors. Sebastian Jones and Marcus Stern blew the whistle on these bad dogs at ProPublica today. Usually the ugly public faces of the New Dems have been Illinois corporate whores Rahm Emanuel and Melissa Bean but right now the chairman of the corporate Wall Street bagmen is Joseph Crowley, whose under investigation for collecting bribery checks. A congressional friend of mine told me the Democratic Caucus has decided to elevate him in the leadership-- and probably not in spite of all the bribes he takes but because of them! After all, they reason, how can the Democrats fight Boehner, Cantor, Ryan and that lot without people just an unsavory and criminally-minded?

In a review of data collected by the nonprofit Sunlight Foundation, ProPublica found that at least 16 other New Democrats also held fundraisers in the days leading up to the December vote on Wall Street reform. Several explicitly mentioned their membership in the New Democrat Coalition or their seat on the Financial Services Committee on invitations distributed to lobbyists.

Throughout their rise to power, the New Democrats have maintained that their pro-business positions are based not on the campaign contributions they receive but on their personal convictions, their experiences in the private sector, and on the politics of the affluent suburban districts many of them represent.

Staffers for the New Democrat Coalition refused to answer questions on the record, but the group's spokesperson, Natalie Thorpe, read a one-sentence statement over the phone: "The fundraising activities of the NewDemPAC are completely separate from the New Democrat Coalition and have no effect on the official work of the coalition or the positions taken by our members."

...The Blue Dogs took the lead in protecting business interests during healthcare reform. Although the Blue Dogs and the New Democrats have much in common, including 21 members and many of the same K Street backers, there are differences as well. Because of their generally Southern and rural constituencies, the Blue Dogs’ top concerns involve the national debt, energy legislation and social issues. The New Democrats represent suburban districts, some of them solidly Democratic, and are more interested in hi-tech industries, trade policy and finance.