When Push Comes To Shove, What Do Blue Dogs Do? They Pull Off Their Masks And Show The World What They Always Are: Republicans

 

Two of the members of Congress I respect most, Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Jamie Raskin (D-MD) are in safe blue districts and have been working their asses off to elect other Democrats to Congress. Sometimes, it drives me crazy, though, that they are working to elect all Democrats-- from complete garbage like Oklahoma Blue Dog Kendra Horn to the top progressive challengers across the country. I had a good discussion with Ted about it but he was unshakable in his determination to elect more Democrats. Period.

To my mind, his argument is undercut, though, when conservative Democrats are seen to only help other conservative Democrats and not progressives. Progressives like Ted and Jamie are raising millions of dollars for Blue Dogs and New Dems-- as well as for progressives-- but Blue Dogs and New Dems? Let's go take a look at one of the most-- if not the most-- crucial congressional race anywhere in America: Omaha, Nebraska.

NE-02-- Omaha and the rest of Douglas County plus most of red-leaning, rural Sarpy County-- is a swing district that elects one member of Congress, just like every other district. However, NE-02, also awards an electoral vote to a presidential candidate (as does another swing district, ME-02). That's why the district is so incredibly important. Kara Eastman, a community activist and organizer, won a tough primary against an establishment candidate married to a former congressman, Blue Dog, Brad Ashford, who was beaten in 2018 by Eastman in a bitter primary. In part because of the tireless and effective organizing on behalf of Democrats up and down the ticket, both she and Biden, who is not making any efforts in Nebraska, are leading in the district. Kara is delivering him an electoral college vote.

On Wednesday evening, she beat the Trump-enabling incumbent, Don Bacon, in a debate. Moments before the debate-- in a coordinated effort by the Bacon campaign-- party-jumper Ashford-- who had already endorsed Kara-- switched his endorsement to the Republican.

That's what Blue Dogs do. I wouldn't expect Cheri Bustos, DCCC Chair and a Blue Dog herself, to care, but I would hope Ted and Jamie would take that into consideration when they help elect Blue Dog candidates. There are several Republicans running as Democrats this cycle-- just as Ashford had-- and all are possible party-jumpers like Jeff Van Drew, a New Jersey ultra-conservative who flipped into Trumpism and officially joined the GOP after voting with them for a year.

When Ashford was in Congress, he was generally considered one of the 2 or 3 most right-wing Democrats in the House and was always looking for opportunities to stab the Democrats in the back, just the way he did to Kara on Wednesday night.

Ashford first won the seat in 2014, narrowly beating GOP incumbent Terry Lee, even though he only raised $1,231,958 to Lee's $3,106,288. How did he manage that? The DCCC and Pelosi's House Majority PAC spent a little over $1.5 million slamming Lee and bolstering Ashford. One term of the conservative Ashford was more than enough for Omaha Democrats, who refused to back him again. That's when he lost to Bacon, even though he spent a million dollars more than Bacon and even though the DCCC spent $2,688,673 on his behalf, while Pelosi's SuperPAC threw in another $741,041. So... almost $3.5 million wasted trying to save the seat of a pretend-Democrat who voted with the GOP and who was hated by his own constituents! That's the DCCC!

The following year, Ashford wanted to try again, but despite backing from the DCCC, Democratic voters weren't having anything to do with him and Kara defeated him in the primary-- at which point the DCCC basically pulled out of the race and signaled to the Republicans that the district was all their's. The GOP spent a massive $1.3 million smearing Kara and another $700,000 advertising how amazingly wonderful Bacon was. The DCCC spent a ritual $90,000 on Kara before telling donors and the media that she couldn't win. And by the way, you can contribute to Kara's campaign by clicking on the thermometer on the right. Bacon defeated Kara by less than 1 percentage point despite his mammoth financial edge.

This cycle, Ashford sent his wife in to run in his place. Kara beat her in a humiliating two to one landslide. She has kept up with Bacon on spending so far-- having spent $1,132,014 to his $1,239,832. But he has twice what she does in the bank for the final push and the GOP has spent $1,958,987 on ads calling her a communist and another $1,216,895 boosting Bacon. The DCCC and Pelosi's SuperPAC have spent $1.2 million helping Kara, much less than they've spent on right-wing Blue Dogs and corporately owned New Dems. One of the most far right Democrats in the House-- hated by his normal Democratic colleagues, many of whom hope he loses-- is Anthony Brindisi, who votes with the GOP as much as Ashford used to. The DCCC has spent $2,025,213 on his race. Pelosi's SuperPAC threw in another $632,150 and the Blue Dog PAC kicked in $473,272. Or compare the $1.2 million the DCCC and Pelosi have spent on Kara to the $2,736,430 the DCCC alone had spent on conservative New Dem candidate Carolyn Bourdeaux so far.

Kara Beat The Conservative In The Primary-- Now It's On To The Conservative In The General

Last Tuesday, one of the biggest victories for progressives was Kara Eastman's win in the Nebraska Democratic primary. She beat Blue Dog and DCCC endorsee Brad Ashford 20,239 (51.43%) to 19,113 (48.57%). It was another case of local Democrats slapping down the DCCC for their pig-headed interference in a local primary, where they tried to tell a district that voted for Bernie in 2016 that they needed to nominate a proven reactionary and an "ex"-Republican instead of a woman running on many of the same issues that made Bernie so attractive to the local Democrats.

As of the April 25 FEC filing deadline, Ashford had raised, with the help of the DCCC, $558,946 and spent $397,194, while Kara had raised $355,887 and spent $284,880. Ashford was endorsed by anyone the DCCC could round up from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, not just the Blue Dogs but the New Dems, Gabby Giffords, the labor unions that do whatever the DCCC tells them to and, of course ambitious Blue Dog/New Dem Adam Schiff, who has been traveling around the country using his new-found celebrity to help right-of-center candidates like himself beat progressive candidates like Kara. 

Kara had the support of Blue America and of other progressive forces independent of the Democratic Party establishment, from the Nebraska Unity PAC and Nebraska Grassroots Progressives and the Working Families Party to Climate Hawks Vote, the PCCC, VoteProChoice, local independent-minded uinions like the Plasterers and Cement Masons, the Insulators and the Sheet Metal Air Rail and Transportation union, as well as local political leaders like state Senators Tony Vargas and Justin Wayne and Omaha City Council president Ben Gray.

As soon as Kara's victory over Ashford was official, the DCCC removed him from their Red-to-Blue page. But instead of replacing him with Kara, they took NE-02 entirely off their radar. One of the country's most flippable districts, suddenly no longer existed! What happened to Pelosi's spiel about unity? Is it only the unity of progressives backing successful conservative Democrats but not unity when progressives win? Is that unity? And what happened to Pelosi's spiel about how we all win when women win? Instead we hear Pelosi thundering about how the DCCC won't help party nominees unless the conservative establishment backed them.

The DCCC candidate was Brad Ashford who, as a Republican state Senator in 1994, had run for the congressional seat in the Republican primary and was defeated. Eventually he decided to run for Congress again, this time as a fake Democrat. More recently, Ashford, the most right-wing Blue Dog in Congress for his one miserable term, served as a Hillary super-delegate to the Democratic National Convention, despite his district having gone for Bernie. In the primary his website had no issues page because he knew the voters would never back him on the issues. After he lost a debate with Kara, he canceled all debates. An anti-healthcare Blue Dog, he didn't want to be compared with Kara who was running on Medicare-for-all. "It’s time for our country to acknowledge that quality healthcare and access to health insurance is an American right," her website states clearly. "Families deserve to be able to get the medical treatment and medications they need, when they need them, without breaking the bank. We must ensure that no mother ever weighs the costs before taking her children to the emergency room when they are in the need of immediate care. No father should ever forgo life-saving medication because he is afraid of being unable to pay the medical bills. No family should ever need to claim bankruptcy because they had the audacity to live after an accident or illness. Our country should move toward the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act. We need to force big business and the pharmaceutical industry to offer more competitive prices."

When we endorsed her campaign last February, she told us that "over the last decade, Nebraska’s second Congressional district is one of the two most competitive in the nation. So why can’t Democrats consistently win here? They don’t ignite the base, and they don’t go out and talk to voters. I'm the first serious progressive candidate to run in Nebraska’s second district. I’m pro-choice, I support common-sense gun safety regulation, I’m passionate about health and environmental protection, and I’ve opposed the Keystone XL pipeline. I will fight for a Medicare for All system because healthcare is a right. I also will fight for debt-free education, because I’m tired of seeing students, even at Metro Community College where I serve on the Board of Governors, drowning in student loans. The U.S. has to compete in a global market by investing in green and healthy housing. Climate change is the number one moral and national security threat to our children, and we need to address it now."

Now Kara needs our help to beat a tougher candidate in November, Republican incumbent Don Bacon, a Trump rubber stamp very much out of touch with voters in the Omaha Metro. With the DCCC already signaling they'd rather let Bacon stay in his seat then help a progressive win it, Kara is going to need our help more than ever. She's a fighter and winner. Please contribute what you can by clicking on the Blue America 2018 congressional thermometer above.

DCCC Falls Flat On Its Face Again-- When Will They Ever Wake Up And Smell Their Own... Waste?

Progressive champion Kara Eastman defeats the DCCC, the Blue Dogs and the New Dems-- our hero

All across the country there are counties and districts where Bernie beat Hillary in 2016 (and many where Bernie got more votes on primary day than Trump as well). But the Democratic Establishment-- including the DCCC, their overpaid consultants and contractors and the lazy, feebleminded "reporters" who reprint their press releases-- repeat, ad nauseum, that only right-wing candidates (they call them "moderates, which they aren't) can win the general elections. The DCCC then tries pushing progressives out of primaries in favor of conservatives who Bernie voters certainly don't want to vote for-- Bernie voters who were more numerous than the status quo Hillary voters in 2016.

Let's look at a few counties. In Wisconsin, Bernie beat Hillary statewide 567,936 (56.6%) to 432,767 (43.1%). That say day Trump got 386,370 votes and Cruz got 531,129 votes Bernie beat both of them. Let's look at the counties that make up most of Paul Ryan's district in southeast Wisconsin, a district Trump won 52.6% to 42.3%.

• Kenosha Co- Bernie- 14,612; Hillary- 10,871; Trump- 11,139
• Racine Co- Bernie- 14,651; Hillary- 14,086; Trump- 11,756
• Rock Co- Bernie- 17,337; Hillary- 11,248; Trump- 10,264
• Walworth Co- Bernie- 8,405; Hillary- 5,174; Trump- 7,534

Nebraska's 2nd district, primarily Omaha and the rest of Douglas County went for Bernie 52.6% to 47.4% but the DCCC did all it could to undermine the Bernie-oriented candidate, Kara Eastman, in favor of the very conservative Blue Dog Brad Ashford. Despite the DCCC's poisonous efforts that made it possible for Ashford to spend $397,194 (as of April 25) to Eastman's $284,880, last night, this happened:

Pelosi, losing it, threatened to withhold DCCC general election support from progressives who beat DCCC crap candidates in primaries, so please consider contributing to Kara here. This is important. She should be able to beat freshman conservative Republican Don Bacon as long as she can get her popular progressive message out, with or without help from Pelosi and her cabal.

Let's look at CO-06 where Hoyer and Lujan are doing everything they can to force progressive Democrat Levi Tillemann out of the race to make way for corrupt conservative Jason Crow. But, again, Bernie won the district , all 3 counties:

• Adams Co- Bernie- 61.0%- 38.3%
• Arapahoe Co- Bernie- 53.0%- 46.3%
• Douglas Co- Bernie- 49.7%- 49.6%

On Monday Vanity Fair published a somewhat confused essay by Ken Stern, "There Will Be A Backlash": Will The Bernie Democrats Risk The House?. Maybe it was just bad editing... or maybe Stern is just confused. "The hard truth," he wrote, "is that Democrats could easily push too far, too fast, and lose. But while the midterms may be a poor battleground for the left-wing revolution, the general election will give the party’s insurgents all the advantages." I don't know if he has a point of view or if he's just a bad reporter, but he's all over the map. Is he celebrating Leslie Cockburn's recent win in Virginia? He doesn't seem to have been aware that the candidate he seems to have liked, Blue Dog RD Huffstetler, withdrew from the race when he realized he wasn't connecting with Democratic voters. Why should he though-- with all his Republican ideas? He denigrated the local county-wide caucuses that picked the delegates for the convention, calling them a "rump group" and claimed her progressive platform "may be too liberal," even though her ideas are very mainstream, just not the reactionary ideas which idiots in the media somehow mistake for popular. He then seems to imply Virginia isn't a coastal state.

"The realities of 2018," he wrote, "however, are forcing both parties to make some hard and cynical calculations. Democracy is always messy, and if 2016 proved anything, it can be unpredictable and infuriating as well. Which is why local decisions, like Virginia’s 5th, are enough to make party elders in Washington lose their minds. Working under the radar, national Democratic groups can certainly pull some levers that help particular candidates, and may even flip some purple districts. Ellen Zeng, the Democratic political director at With Honor, a super PAC that supports veterans running for office, candidly described to me how party committees will direct money, facilitate valuable endorsements, share research with chosen candidates, and train up their staffs in order to tip the scales. But there is only so much they can do to guide’s democracy’s hand. When party leaders have tried to be more publicly forceful about imposing their will, it has almost always backfired."

Progressive candidates I know all hope the DCCC "trains up their staffs," a definite kiss of death for the conservatives thet stand behind... "Democrat Party leaders may think they are entitled to be kingmakers, but their efforts come across as more Boss Hogg than Boss Tweed," he wrote, trying to be funny. Fact of the matter is the DCCC comes across as Boss Hogg and Boss Tweed. But then he suddenly, inexplicably turns in the right direction.

It all leads some Democratic strategists, like Peter O’Keefe, a prominent Democratic consultant and the national treasurer of the Democratic Governors Association, to urge caution: “If the national party comes in too heavy, there will be a backlash,” he told me. “It works best when the local grassroots take the political decision-making seriously.” For O’Keefe, that means finding and promoting candidates “built for the general,” whose moderate politics can appeal across party lines. But it is plain that the local grassroots think very poorly of the national strategies and the national strategists. When I asked Corbin Trent, the communications director for the Justice Democrats and the former national campaign coordinator for Bernie Sanders, about the desire to elect the centrists who are “general-election”-ready, he practically scoffed himself off the phone with his contempt for the people and strategies that have lost the White House, the Senate, the House, and in total more than a 1,000 elected offices over the past decade. It is smart politics, in his view, to do exactly the opposite of what the D.C.-consultants might advocate.

Politics matter to Trent, though the divide between him and the party establishment is far bigger than just the right strategy for taking back the House. For Trent, the choices are about more than beating the Republicans; it is about what the Democratic Party should be: a centrist party controlled by political apparatchiks who are only marginally better than the establishment of the right, or a truly progressive party in the Sanders/European Socialist mold. (Hint: it’s the latter.) Groups like Justice Democrats are angered by Trump, of course, but they are inspired by his success: that someone so antithetical to the traditional party structure can beat the Establishment with a mix of bluff, big promises, and the righteous anger of the outsider.

This is all a combustible mix because people like Trent are trying to rebuild the Democrat Party in their own image, and people like Hoyer are just trying to win the damn midterms. In truth, the midterms are probably the worst time for an intramural square off. Midterms are typically a referendum on the party in power, with the electorate seeking a correction, but not an overcorrection in the other direction. It is entirely possible, for instance, that the “universalist” wing of the party will capture the Democratic Party-- even if polls today suggest otherwise-- but 2018 is not the right time and place for that battle.

Doug Jones and Conor Lamb succeeded not because of the bold ideas they offered—I defy you to remember any of their specific ideas—but because they were calming antidotes to the personal awfulness of Trump and Roy Moore. Especially in this odd year, in which voters are both angry at the president and also increasingly believe the country is moving in the right direction, the reality is that it would at least be a tactical mistake for the Democrats in swing districts to offer their own overreach. It will make great theater, of course, especially enjoyable for the Republicans. But it will also likely mean two more years of uniform Republican control.

It is certainly conceivable that the shared goal of making Trump’s life as miserable as possible will engender some Democratic unity through the midterms, but it is equally likely that the universalist and the centrist wings of the parties will be in full-scale conflict before too long. The midterms may be a poor battleground for the left-wing revolution, but the general election is not. The nature of the election will change, at least in part, from a referendum on the past to a fight over a vision for the future. There, the insurgents have all the same advantages that Trump exploited: energy, anger, the endless fascination of the media with the brashest among us, and the appeal of a broad-brush plan for fixing all that ails America.

That plan may or may not survive scrutiny, but Americans do not appear in the mood for much careful scrutiny these days anyway. Moderate Democrats will have advantages, of course, namely money and infrastructure, but their reputation for fecklessness and a message that vacillates between muddled and missing puts them at some significant disadvantage. During our interview, O’Keefe asked me, perhaps a bit plaintively, “How do you blend energy with reality?” If there is a lesson of the last several years, however, it is that those two do not mix well at all. That is to the long-term advantage of those who would push our politics to the edge.

In last night's special election for legislative seat in a Trump districts, Democrat Helen Tai won. More great news in Pennsylvania state House races saw 3 socialists, Sara Innamorato (with 65%) and Summer Lee (with 68%), in Pittsburgh and Elizabeth Feidler in South Philly win as dod progressive Malcolm Kenyatta. Innamorato and Lee beat right-wing Democratic cousins Dom and Paul Costa, both incumbents. (No Republicans have filed for the seats but Dom was trying-- but failed-- to get the GOP nomination as a write-in candidate-- a real turd, like too many conservative Democrats in every part of the country.

There was huge turnout for progressive champion Jess King in PA-11, despite her Democratic opponent having withdrawn from the race. More great news: PA-01 (Bucks County) came through for Henry Wallace's progressive grandson Scott Wallace. He beat Rachel Reddick 56.2% to 35.6%. And in PA-07, Susan Wild, also a progressive edged right-wing lunatic John Morganelli (masquerading as a Democrat):

• Susan Wild- 14,649 (33.2%)
• John Morganelli- 13,384 (30.3%)
• Greg Edwards- 11,309 (25.6%)

Bernie and his supporters were enthusiastic about Edwards but should have little problem in voting for Wild in November.

In a 5-way race for Lieutenant Governor, two progressives came in first and second and the corrupt conservative incumbent, Mike Stack, came in 4th:

• John Fetterman- 284,089 (37.5%)
• Nina Ahmad- 179,920 (23.7%)
• Kathi Cozzone- 141,027 (18.6%)
• Mike Stack- 125,687 (16.6%)
• Ray Sosa- 26,923 (3.6%)

Funniest race of the night was in blood-red southwest Pennsylvania where poor Saccone got clobbered again. He's the poor idiot who got beaten by Conor Lamb. Lamb moved north to a newly-created swing district and PA-14 is unbelievably red (although about the same number of Democrats and Republicans voted. But Saccone lost out to state Senator Guy Reschenthaler, 23,245 (55.4%) to 18,734 (44.6%). What happened? Short version: "Former Rep. Tim Murphy, who resigned last October amid allegations that he asked his mistress to get an abortion, has been working quietly to sink Rick Saccone’s bid for Congress... [in] much of Murphy’s old turf. The fight has gotten personal: Murphy has directed hundreds of thousands of dollars from his old campaign account to an outside group supporting Saccone’s GOP primary opponent, state Sen. Guy Reschenthaler. Murphy also sent around a cropped video clip of Saccone that he believed would damage him."

Big Election In Nebraska Tuesday

Many outsiders tend to think of Nebraska as another hopeless red ink state. But it's not. The Omaha-based 2nd district is a nice normal all-American swing district. In 2012 Obama won narrowly; in 2012 Romney won narrowly and in 2016 Trump beat Hillary 48.2 to 46.0%. The PVI is R+4. The current congressman is Republican Don Bacon, who beat Blue Dog Democrat (an "ex"-Republican himself) Brad Ashford, in 2016. Ashford was unable to motivate the Democratic base, primarily because he tended to vote with the Republicans most of the time. Bacon beat him 141,066 (48.9%) to 137,602 (47.7%). Ashford spent $2,515,416 on the race to Bacon's $1,576,183. The DCCC wasted $2,688,673 and Pelosi's PAC spent another $741,041 on Ashford while the NRCC spent $2,773,264 for Bacon while Ryan's PAC kicked in another $1,243,330.

This coming Tuesday (May 15) is primary day and the DCCC and the Blue Dogs and New Dems are all pushing heavily for Ashford again. As of the April 25 reporting deadline he had spent $397,194 while the progressive he's running against, Kara Eastman, had spent $284,880. Blue America endorsed Kara, as have Climate Hawks Vote, the Working Families Party, the PCCC, Justice Democrats and VoteProChoice. The rotgut insider hellhole, EMILY's List, making nice with the DCCC, has refused to endorse her. By the way, it's totally crunch time for Kara's grassroots campaign now-- which will win or lose based on their field operation in 4 days. If you want to help out, just click on the 2018 ActBlue congressional thermometer on the right.

This week, reporting for Rewire News, Ally Boguhn wrote about how the DCCC is screwing up the race by pushing for the proven reactionary Blue Dog against Kara. She told Boguhn that "What we continuously hear in the district is, 'Oh, it takes either a Republican to be in the seat or a conservative Democrat.' So we run conservative Democrats and they lose. What we need right now and what is exciting the base is a real Democrat." She was discussing Omaha but it's true from coast to coast-- and the corrupt conservatives who run the DCCC don't want to hear it.

Eastman said her campaign has knocked on more than 40,000 doors and is listening to voters about the issues they care about. Those include, she said, health care, education, and the environment.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), the arm of the party that works to elect members to the U.S. House of Representatives, has lined up behind her primary rival, Brad Ashford-- a former Republican, state legislator, and U.S. congressperson-- adding him to their high-profile “red to blue” campaign.

That support comes despite Ashford’s record on reproductive rights. Ashford has claimed he has “always & will continue to support women’s right to choose.” But while in the state legislature he voted in favor of bills that would have restricted access to abortion care based on false premises including a 20-week abortion ban, which was signed into law. Speaking at that time on the state house floor, Ashford reportedly falsely claimed that “the line is 20 weeks” for abortion because “there is no question that there is fetal pain.” This is a myth parroted by conservatives to advocate for later abortion bans, despite the fact that medical experts agree a fetus cannot feel pain until later in pregnancy.

Ashford voted for a so-called informed consent measure later signed into law; it’s an unnecessary legislative intrusion into the doctor-patient relationship that forces doctors to offer an ultrasound to patients seeking abortion care. That bill was co-sponsored by Heath Mello, a Democrat who last spring sparked debate within the Democratic Party about its values when news broke that a high-ranking member of the Democratic National Committee would speak alongside him at a rally despite Mello’s anti-choice record in the state legislature. Weeks later, Mello lost his mayoral bid and suggested the controversy was at least partly responsible for his loss. Omaha, where Mello hoped to win office, is a part of Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District.

Ashford was later elected to U.S. Congress, representing the same district he is running for now, before being unseated by now-incumbent Rep. Don Bacon (R). During his time in the U.S. House of Representatives, Ashford voted against anti-choice legislation, earning him a 100 percent rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America in a 2015 legislative scorecard.

Though his website doesn’t include a section on his platform, Ashford has suggested that he “doesn’t think a single-payer system is politically feasible, but he does support some changes such as allowing those 50 and older to buy into Medicare,” according to the Omaha World-Herald. During a recent debate, he reportedly elaborated on his position, saying that he instead supports repairing the Affordable Care Act.

Ashford’s campaign did not respond to requests for an interview.

DCCC Chairperson Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) has maintained that abortion rights would not be used as a litmus test for candidates receiving its help.

Eastman told Rewire.News she was “surprised” when the DCCC got involved in the race. “I had been talking to them as well and they had told me that they would not be getting involved,” she said. “But the party doesn’t choose the candidate, the voters do.”

...“What we’re finding is that voters are engaged and excited,” Eastman continued. “And this is absolutely winnable, but we have to be speaking about the values of the people of the district and actually be willing to go out and talk, and more importantly listen to the voters.”

"...Supporting The Same Kind Of Candidates Long Favored By The Political Establishment And Financial Elite"

Kirkpatrick and Ashford-- the worst of the DCCC recruits

This quote from Bernie is taking on a life of its own online "We cannot defeat Trump and the Republican Party with the same playbook, or by supporting the same kind of candidates long favored by the political establishment and financial elite. That is how we got to where we are today." I'd bet that even DCCC staffers have seen it by now, even if they can't make heads nor tales of it. One thing the DCCC has no interest in-- negative interest in-- is helping elect a House-ful of game changers. There are very few independent thinkers in the House-- men and women with ideas and basic competence. That's why it's feasible to talk about electing a jovial nothing like Joe Crowley as leader and even Speaker. Game changers are dangerous; maintaining the status quo is what the Democratic Party establishment is all about. Or the status quo ante. Moving forward? No way, José.

But let's go back to Bernie's quote, the party about failing by "supporting the same kind of candidates long favored by the political establishment and financial elite." And, for the sake of argument, let me acknowledge that even the very worst of the DCCC's crap candidates-- sacks of garbage pretending to be leaders like Jeff Van Drew (NJ), Gretchen Driskell (MI), Jason Crow (CO), Paul Davis (KS), Gil Cisneros (CA), Dan McCready (NC), Brendan Kelly (IL), Elissa Slotkin (MI)-- can argue, albeit implausibly, that "same kind of candidates" does not apply to them. The DCCC goes even further. They just leave out the whole "same kind of" and go right to "the same."

Two of the worst candidates they're backing this cycle were recently members of Congressman are no longer members of Congress because the voters rejected them after seeing them in action. The voters rejected them because the voters were smart enough to sense they were absolutely terrible. Yes, I'm talking about Arizona New Dem and NRA ally Ann Kirkpatrick and Nebraska Blue Dog and "ex"-Republican Brad Ashford. Both have long and dreadful records predictive of exactly what they'll do if a blue wave sweeps them back into Congress in November. There are literally no candidates who are worse. They've already shown how bad they are and the voters have already judged them. But the DCCC re-recruited them and the DCCC is working with great vigor-- and great vigor is not something one normally associates with the DCCC-- to undermine the campaigns of inspiring primary opponents for each, Kara Eastman in Omaha and Mary Matiella in Tucson.

When Bernie said that "We cannot defeat Trump and the Republican Party with the same playbook, or by supporting the same kind of candidates long favored by the political establishment and financial elite," I'm going to bet he was talking about political detritus like people who have shown how bad they are in other positions-- like Jeff Van Drew, the worst member of the New Jersey state legislature; Paul Davis a failed minority leader in the Kansas state House; or a pack of robots from the national security state who the DCCC has recruited and is desperately trying to pass of as "leaders" instead of the drones they are; or Gil Cisneros, a compulsive serial liar who worked for the McCain campaign and has proven himself utterly incompetent on the campaign trail; or "socialite" and candidate of the "casino owners" (a respectable way of saying she's backed by the Mob), Susie Lee, in Nevada who already spent $674,805 of her own in a 2016 congressional bid and came in a distant third in the primary.

Pelosi and he DCCC do not want game changers, do not want thinkers, do not want leaders. They want more drones who suck up to rich special interests and build up campaign war chests. Candidates with original ideas? GOD FORBID! That explains why the DCCC primarily supports New Dems and fights against progressives. These are the New Dems running for Congress this cycle, by the way. Institutionally they are the very personification of what Bernie was talking about:

• Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ)
• Greg Stanton (AZ)
• Dave Min (CA)
• Joshua Harder (CA)
• Katie Hill (CA)
• Hans Keirstead (CA)
• Harley Rouda (CA)
• Josh Butner (CA)
• Jason Crow (CO)
• Lauren Baer (FL)
• Nancy Soderberg (FL)
• Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (FL)
• Mel Hall (IN)
• Sean Casten (IL)
• Brendan Kelly (IL)
• Paul Davis (KS)
• Elissa Slotkin (MI)
• Angie Craig (MN)
• Dean Phillips (MN)
• Dan McCready (NC)
• Kathy Manning (NC)
• Brad Ashford (NE)
• Mikie Sherrill (NJ)
• Jeff Van Drew (NJ)
• Tom Malinowski (NJ)
• Max Rose (NY)
• Anthony Brindisi (NY)
• Susie Lee (NV)
• Chrissy Houlahan (PA)
• Archie Parnell (SC)
• Jana Lynne Sanchez (TX)
• Lizzie Fletcher (TX)
• Ben McAdams (UT)
• Elaine Luria (VA)
• Abigail Spanberger (VA)
• Dan Kohl (WI)

Lesser of two evils? Maybe. You'll have to decide that for yourself. During the primaries? In November? Never? Put me in the "Never" camp and let me quote a chunk of Gideon Resnick's essay from yesterday's Daily Beast about a New Dem stalwart Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

The frustrations Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) 2016 presidential campaign had with the tenure of former Democratic National Committee chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) are well documented.

But in a new book written by the man who ran the insurgent Senator’s 2016 run, it is revealed that Hillary Clinton’s team shared many of those frustrations, especially as the 2016 primary was drawing to a close.

In his book, How Bernie Won: Inside the Revolution That's Taking Back Our Country-and Where We Go from Here, Jeff Weaver details a meeting the Sanders and Clinton teams held prior to the Democratic convention, in which aides to the former Secretary of State detailed how “exasperated” they were with Wasserman Schultz.

“I knew that there was no love between the Clinton campaign and the chairwoman. Nor was there any in the White House. Or among large numbers of the DNC’s top leaders. When Bernie was on his way to meet President Obama on June 9, Senator Reid had made a point of calling Bernie during the car ride to remind him to ask the president to dump Wasserman Schultz,” Weaver writes, referencing a meeting Sanders had at the White House in the summer of 2016.

“Every time I had raised the issue of Wasserman Schultz with the Clinton campaign, they had blamed her continued tenure on the White House,” Weaver continues. “Whenever I raised the issue with the president’s people, they blamed the Clinton campaign. From my calls with them, I knew that the Clinton people were exasperated with Wasserman Schultz. But I could never tell whether it was because she had put her fingers on the scale in such an incompetent way.

Regardless, it just always seemed the case that no one wanted to expend the political capital necessary to push her out, especially as her term would be ending soon anyway.”

Weaver’s recollections stand in contrast to the conventional wisdom of many Sanders’ supporters: that Wasserman Schultz’s presence at the DNC thrilled the Clinton campaign because she was, during the course of the primary, putting her thumb on the scales for Clinton. Weaver recounts that during a meeting between the two camps, Clinton ultimately elected not to force Wasserman Schultz’s exit but not out of a feeling of gratitude or patronage.

“At our meeting at the Hilton, Hillary Clinton balked at forcing her out,” Weaver writes. “My suspicion was that the Clinton campaign did not want to do anything that would impugn the legitimacy of her victory. Forcing out Debbie Wasserman Schultz would be an acknowledgment that the DNC chairwoman had stacked the deck in Clinton’s favor. That was not our point, however. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, as chair of the Democratic Party during a vigorously contested primary, was supposed to be neutral. She clearly was not. This action item would resolve itself at the Democratic National Convention, when the chairwoman was pushed out after DNC emails were released proving how the organization had worked against our campaign.”

So much for your lesser of two evils. In fact... Wasserman Schultz has long been the greater of any number of evils. In closing, a few words from Alan Grayson today: "Both parties have been captured by the Dark Money Side... and gorge on corporate PAC money and bribes from Wall Street bankers. Check out the 'Finance Committees' of Team Red and Team Blue. You’ll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy."

Tough Love For The DCCC

Ever since Rahm Emanuel was handed the reins of the DCCC-- the beginning of Pelosi's downfall as a force for good-- this blog has spent a good deal of time exploring what's wrong with that organization. In the last few weeks the eruptions have been so frequent and vitriolic that DCCC-connected congressmen and staffers have been asking me to cool it and one even called a friend of mine and asked him what they had to do to stop. My friend was savvy enough to tell them if they stop the crap, like what they've been doing to Laura Moser and Levi Tillemann, to mention just two-- I'd have nothing to denounce them for. (Sure, sure...)

But don't get the wrong idea... the Republican dirty tricks are, at best, just as bad. In fact, the DCCC staffers don't have the brain power to think up their own dirty tricks and have been using the Lee Atwater/Karl Rove playbook to come up with how to savage progressives. But... the Republicans: horrible. I recall how Debbie Wasserman Schultz used to deploy this one when she was trying to sabotage the Democratic Party's efforts to dislodge her amiga, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Matt Volz reported on how the Republicans are employing it this cycle in their fervor to defeat centrist Montana Democrat Jon Tester from the Senate.On Monday Timothy Adams filed to run as the Green candidate in the Senate race that pits Tester against... well either Troy Downing, Matt Rosendale or Russ Fagg. Adams registered as a Green, which qualified as a political party in Montana 3 days ago, but he's was an employee of the state Republican Party’s-- on their payroll-- from 2013 to 2015. The GOP is clearly using Adams to siphon votes from Tester. He also heads an anti-tax "group," Montanans Against Higher Taxes. (Montanans Against Higher Taxes is a new legal entity formed to oppose a legislative referendum on the ballot this fall for a 10-year property tax extension for the state’s university system.)

15 year old me in the middle

Maybe I don't spend as much time attacking the NRCC, NSCC and RNC as I spend on the DCCC, DSCC and DNC because I don't give a damn about the Republicans and don't care if they reform themselves or not. I was born a Democrat, made it onto the front page of the New York Post with a sign about Brooklyn liking LBJ at the Atlantic City Democratic convention in 1964 (yep, above; I was 15), worked as an elevator operator for Bobby Kennedy when he was running for the Senate that same year, and was president of my college's Young Democrats the following year. I rode a horse into Kabul from the mountains once so as not to miss a chance to vote in a midterm election at the embassy. Yeah, it's tough love-- albeit no love at all for Blue Dogs, New Dems and others from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- like Brad Ashford in Omaha. We haven't held his feet to the fire for a while. This story below was written by one of his "ex"-staffers.

The gloves are off in the Democrats’ Omaha House race, well at least one set of gloves.

As Kara Eastman picks up the backing of the progressive “Blue America” group she has some choice words for her opponent, former Congressman Brad Ashford.

• (Ashford’s) taken contradictory stands on almost every important issue over his long political career.

• People in the district tell me they are unhappy with Ashford’s voting record.

And then there was this:

• They also feel like he is not in it to win it.

Now, Ashford, the handpicked candidate of the whole Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- the Blue Dogs, New Dems and DCCC (EMILY's List is staying out of this one, for obvious reasons.) All he ever talks about is how he can work with the Republicans. No kidding! Why is the DCCC backing him? For the exact same reasons they're backing, another wretched Blue Dog, Dan Lipinski, in Illinois.

Blue America Endorses Omaha Progressive Kara Eastman

Kara Eastman is the newest Blue America endorsee. She told us that when she was nine, she told her mother that she wanted to save the world; when she was 15, she told her best friend that she was going to a college that would best prepare her to help others (she told Kara that wasn’t smart because she would never make any money). She met her husband, now an associate professor of history at Creighton University, when they were in college together, and they’ve been married for 17 years and chose to raise their daughter in Nebraska, now she's a junior at Central High School in Omaha. I asked her if she would explain the dynamics of the primary she's in the midst of.

She's running for the blue-trending Omaha Metro district-- NE-02, currently tenuously held by conservative backbencher Don Bacon. Before she gets to Bacon, she has to beat conservative "Democrat" Brad Ashford, who was a Republican for 38 years, including the first term of the Obama administration, Ashford has taken contradictory stands on almost all of the important issues of the day over his long political career. Ashford voted for and against the Dreamers, for and against the Iran nuclear deal, and against the Clean Power Plan rule (SJ Res 24) that established carbon dioxide emission guidelines for power plants. According to the Omaha World Herald, Ashford voted with the Republicans while in Congress more than all other Democrats except for two. In the Nebraska legislature, he voted for an ultrasound bill and voted yes on LB 1103, a bill that prohibited abortions in Nebraska after 20 weeks. Even with a record like that he's the DC Dem's establishment candidate with backing from the whole Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- the Blue Dogs, the New Dems and, of course, the DCCC. Kara's primary fight has been based on convincing voters that her pragmatic, progressive stances make her a stronger candidates. The Democratic primary election is on May 15.

She told us that with a grassroots campaign focused on field operations, door-knocking, an integrated digital and communication plan, and engaging voters, her campaign is speaking directly to real people. She and her volunteers have knocked on over 25,000 doors already. Women, labor unions (she just received her fourth labor endorsement), activists, and communities of color that have been disenfranchised by conservative candidates and are crucial to winning NE-02. Her bold advocacy is motivating and energizing the Democratic base, and it’s already been recognized in the form of a national endorsement from Climate Hawks Vote and now from Blue America. This is a district that can be flipped.


Omaha Democrats Are Frustrated
-by Kara Eastman

We’ve run the same kind of moderate to conservative candidate at the local, state, and federal level, and we’ve seen them lose over and over again. Even though my primary opponent won by a slim margin in 2014, he lost his re-election bid in 2016. As a matter of fact, he was the only incumbent Democrat to lose to a Republican in the entire country that cycle. Don Bacon, who won by just over one percentage point, now votes in line with the current administration 97% of the time. He’s vulnerable, and all the political prognosticators say that the election is a toss-up. Over the last decade, Nebraska’s second Congressional district is one of the two most competitive in the nation. So why can’t Democrats consistently win here? They don’t ignite the base, and they don’t go out and talk to voters.

  I’m the first serious progressive candidate to run in Nebraska’s second district. Our grassroots campaign has knocked on over 25,000 doors and has gotten voters excited about the race. The majority of the people we talk to at the doors commit to voting for me. I’m pro-choice, I support common-sense gun safety regulation, I’m passionate about health and environmental protection, and I’ve opposed the Keystone XL pipeline. I will fight for a Medicare for All system because healthcare is a right. I also will fight for debt-free education, because I’m tired of seeing students, even at Metro Community College where I serve on the Board of Governors, drowning in student loans. The U.S. has to compete in a global market by investing in green and healthy housing. Climate change is the number one moral and national security threat to our children, and we need to address it now.

I will be a champion for campaign finance reform because I understand first-hand how hard it is to run for office when you are not a millionaire and when you don’t serve corporate interests. Fixing campaign finance laws and taking lobbyist money out of politics will change Washington. I’m proud to have over 1500 individual campaign donors, but I won’t take just any and all corporate PAC dollars. In fact, my fundraising has been neck and neck with that of my primary opponent, even though he’s been in Congress and accepts a large amount of PAC money.

I’m running against Brad Ashford, who was a Republican for thirty-eight years. He’s taken contradictory stands on almost every important issue over his long political career. Ashford voted for and against the Dreamers, for and against the Iran nuclear deal, and against the Clean Power Plan rule (SJ Res 24) that established carbon dioxide emission guidelines for power plants. Under Obama, he voted against facets of the Affordable Care Act, in the Nebraska State Legislature he voted for some anti-choice bills, and he has gone back and forth on his stances on the Keystone XL pipeline.

People in the district tell me they are unhappy with Ashford’s voting record. They also feel like he is not in it to win it. Nebraskans are looking for someone with energy, with vision and with passion.

With the strong grassroots campaign that I have built, I can win this swing district. As a social worker with a reputation for getting things done in our community, I’m ready to work hard to make real changes in our political system when I get to D.C.

Can An "Ex"-Republican Blue Dog Defeat An Actual Democrat In The Omaha Congressional Primary?

Ostensibly they're both Democrats-- similarly to the way Chicagoland Blue Dog Dan Lipinski and progressive reformer Marie Newman are both Democrats. But in this Omaha case there's an even starker contrast. As far as we know, Lipinski wasn't ever an actual Republican. Brad Ashford, on the other hand was a Republican . He served in the Legislature from 1987 to 1995 and again from 2007 to 2015. He was a registered Republican and opportunistically, he switched his registration to the Democratic Party when he was termed out of his seat in the legislature and decided to run for Congress. In 1994, as a Republican state Senator he ran for the congressional seat in the Republican primary and was defeated by Jon Christensen, the congressman who came home one day and found GOP then-rising star John Shadegg porking his wife and got into several fistfights with him, first in his own bed and letter I'm the House cloakroom.

More recently, Ashford, the most right-wing Blue Dog in Congress for his one miserable term, served as a Hillary super-delegate to the Democratic National Convention, despite his district having gone to Bernie. Douglas County backed Bernie 54-46% and Sarpy Count backed Bernie 59.6% to 40.4%. But that's just one example of Ashford being out of touch with the Democratic voters in his district. He started his political career as working for the clownish conservative Roman Hruska (R-NE), best known for defending Nixon's Supreme Court nominee,G. Harrold Carswell, with a lame anti-Semitic statement: "Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they, and a little chance? We can't have all Brandeises, Frankfurters and Cardozos." Ashford went to work for him after he made that statement.

In the current race, Ashford has no issues page on his website, so no one can be sure where he stands on any issues. An anti-healthcare Blue Dog, he likely does not want to be compared with Kara, who is very clear on her website about where she stands:

It’s time for our country to acknowledge that quality healthcare and access to health insurance is an American right. Families deserve to be able to get the medical treatment and medications they need, when they need them, without breaking the bank.

We must ensure that no mother ever weighs the costs before taking her children to the emergency room when they are in the need of immediate care. No father should ever forgo life-saving medication because he is afraid of being unable to pay the medical bills. No family should ever need to claim bankruptcy because they had the audacity to live after an accident or illness.

Our country should move toward the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act. We need to force big business and the pharmaceutical industry to offer more competitive prices.

Yesterday the Omaha World-Herald compared Ashford with the actual Democrat in the race, Kara Eastman. As you know, the DCCC, which claims-- falsely-- that it doesn't interfere in primaries, has backed Ashford (as have the New Dems and Blue Dogs, the Republican wing of the Democratic Party) Blue America has endorsed Kara and if you'd like to contribute to her campaign, just click on the ActBlue "Primary A Blue Dog" thermometer on the right. Recently Kara's race was featured in the Lee Fang-Ryan Grim blockbuster about how the DCCC rigs primaries. She was also the subject of a short Frank Schaeffer film (up top). "Democratic voters in Nebraska’s 2nd District," wrote Roseann Moring, someone who is clearly skewering her "reporting" in favor of Ashford, "could use the May 15 primary as an opportunity to weigh in on the national party debate over whether Democrats should take a no-compromises approach to support of abortion rights. The two Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives, former congressman Brad Ashford and nonprofit executive Kara Eastman, both support abortion rights. [What a joke! Ashford may be claiming otherwise now but he's been an anti-Choice Blue Dog for his whole short career as a "Democrat."] But Ashford supports some restrictions on abortion while Eastman supports none. And beyond that, the issue highlights the two candidates’ differing approaches to getting things done. Ashford says he has made a career of brokering compromises and working with the other side, while Eastman argues that some issues are too important to compromise on."

Eastman has been trying to position herself to the left of Ashford on several issues, and abortion is no exception. She floated the issue in October when she tweeted that Ashford had “voted against women’s healthcare choices” when he was a state senator in 2009.

The 2009 bill she was referring to was introduced as a measure that would have required women to view an ultrasound, if one is performed.

The law that Ashford voted for was a compromise measure, which clarified that a woman would not be required to view the ultrasound.

The legislative bill might be familiar to Omahans who were paying attention during last year’s mayoral election. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders drew intense criticism around the country for supporting Democratic mayoral candidate Heath Mello, who had voted for that same bill and who opposes abortion.

That grew into a national debate over whether the Democratic Party should support candidates who oppose abortion rights.

Ari Kohen, an associate professor of political science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said the primary election will be an opportunity for Democratic voters with strong feelings about abortion to promote their positions.

“Obviously the Mello election in particular showed us that people in Nebraska care a lot about this issue and people care about it on both sides, like they do across the country,” he said.

But ultimately, Kohen said, the differing positions by Ashford and Eastman would likely lead to nearly identical outcomes on the kinds of votes that Congress generally takes on abortion.

In 2009, Ashford was a state senator and the chairman of the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee.

He said the measure involving ultrasounds was a compromise intended to stop what he saw as unconstitutional legislation from advancing.

“I thought about it a lot and tried to carve out something that would be fair and preserve a woman’s right to health care,” he said.

Ashford has long supported abortion rights, even when he was a registered Republican. And in his two years in Congress, he voted with Planned Parenthood 100 percent of the time, according to VoteSmart.

But he said he would be open to restrictions on abortions in the “latter terms” of pregnancy and some restrictions on minors seeking an abortion, such as a requirement that they obtain parental consent.

Eastman said, if elected, that wouldn’t be her approach. Eastman said she would not support any restrictions on abortions.

“It’s really easy as legislators, as politicians, to say we’re going to compromise about a law,” she said. “But the reality is, the people who are being compromised are women.”

The Democrap Establishment Still Doing What They Like Doing Most: Resisting the Resistance

Frank Schaeffer is continuing his roadtrip, meeting progressive congressional candidate and filming them as introductions of the best candidates running. Last we caught up with him was in Lewiston, Maine where he spent a day Jared Golden, the progressive candidate running for the swing district that isn't the Portland coastal area. From there he headed off to Omaha where he met with Kara Eastman. Please watch the video Frank did up top.On his own blog he introduced Kara by noting that she's "a trained social worker who runs Omaha Healthy Kids Alliance (OKHA), a non-profit dedicated to securing healthy home environments for kids and their families. Kara is a political outsider with real leadership experience who knows how to create policy, prepare and stick to a budget, and always puts people first. In addition to OKHA, Kara also led Extra Hands for ALS, whose mission is to fund research for Lou Gehrig’s disease. Kara cares about the environment and is often referred to as a 'climate hawk' by her supporters. Kara is incredibly passionate about her work and here’s something that blew me away when I spoke with her; when I asked her why she was running, she told me plain and simple, 'I am running because I am desperate–not desperate for a job, but desperate for our country–and in particular for our kids…I want to make a difference.' Kara wants to create an environment where people can be themselves and thrive. She wants to create the America that she tells her daughter about; where people care for one another, value innovation and diversity, and you can become what you want to be."

If you've been paying any attention since around 2006 or so, DWT has been blasting away at how the DCCC, and the Democratic establishment in general, rigs primaries against progressives in favor of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- Blue Dogs, New Dems, "ex"-Republicans, self-funders, anti-Choice freaks, homophobes... the whole panoply of candidates who make voters scratch their heads and say "what's the difference?" Nothing deflates turnout from the Democratic base like the DCCC and EMILY's List and associated groups offering a lesser-of-two-evils strategy. It doesn't work but the DCCC is incapable of learning the lesson. Sure, their shit candidates can be sometimes swept into office-- as they were in 2006-- but in the next midterm they are invariably swept back out of office (as they were in 2010) when Democratic voters realize they've been tricked-- and stay home in droves.

That's how Kara Eastman's current primary opponent, conservative "ex"-Republican Blue Dog Brad Ashford, wound up a one-termer. I'm usually the only one writing about this. But yesterday two big-time investigative journalists, Ryan Grim and Lee Fang, blew the whistle on the DCCC's primary rigging. "Candidates", they wrote, "who signed up to battle Donald Trump must get past the Democratic Party first."

They started with how the DCCC and the wretched EMILY's List are working to rig the election for some sad sack corporate shill in PA-16 and against the exciting progressive, Jess King. Normally, "the trio of groups that represents the party’s central authority"-- the DCCC, EMILY’s List and End Citizens United (which has nothing whatsoever to do with ending Citizens United and is just a DCCC/DSCC scam operation to vacuum up grassroots money from the unsuspecting). The New Dems and Blue Dogs often join them, in the cases of Angie Craig-- a pathetic candidate in Minnesota not only did the New Dems join in, so did a very confused an undependable Congressional Progressive Caucus.

End Citizens United, an ostensible political reform group, was founded in 2015 by three consultants from Mothership Strategies, all veterans of the DCCC. End Citizens United has since paid Mothership Strategies over $3.5 million in fees, according to Federal Election Commission records. In its first few years, other campaign finance reform groups grew suspicious of the PAC, which they referred to as a “churn and burn” group dedicated to raising money by blanketing email lists with aggressive solicitations, a hallmark of the DCCC’s own email strategy. That reputation began turning around the last two years, as the PAC began putting significant money into important races and working more collaboratively with other groups in the space.

But its pattern of endorsements remains closely aligned with the types of candidates backed by the DCCC, though End Citizens United is often far ahead the party. (In 2016, End Citizens United backed progressive Zephyr Teachout, while the DCCC lined up behind her opponent, one of the few instances of the two diverging.) The PAC’s entry into the Minnesota race is particularly odd, given that Craig, while at the medical device company St. Jude Medical, directed the firm’s political action committee in the 2012 election cycle, after spending the previous six years on its board. The goal of the PAC was to buy influence with Republican and Democratic leaders, as well as members of the tax-writing committees, in pursuit of repealing the medical device tax that was a key funding mechanism of the Affordable Care Act. The effort eventually met with significant success.

While she ran it, the PAC spent heavily on Republican politicians, directing funds in the 2012 cycle to Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell, Finance Committee Chair Orrin Hatch, Scott Brown, Mike Enzi, Richard Burr, Bob Corker, and John Barrasso. Then-Speaker John Boehner and presumed-future-speaker Kevin McCarthy, as well as the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, all got money from Craig’s PAC.

This, then, was the résumé that earned the support not just of the DCCC and EMILY’s List, but also of a group publicly committed to campaign finance reform. It’s as dissonant as the group’s support for Jason Crow in Colorado, a DCCC-backed candidate who works at a powerful law and lobbying firm.

A DCCC official, asked about Craig’s time running the corporate PAC, said it was unfair to accuse a married lesbian raising a family of being part of the political establishment, and that her business success was an asset, not a liability.

End Citizens United also stands by its endorsements of Craig and Crow. “Angie pledged to fight for reform, advocated for the public funding of elections, and ran a grassroots campaign with the support of many progressive organizations and local elected officials,” said End Citizens United’s Communications Director Adam Bozzi.

“Angie lost in 2016 by a narrow margin of 6,000 votes,” Bozzi added. “Unlike many House challengers in 2016, she was able to match the Democratic performance at the top of the ticket. Angie ran a strong campaign, in a tough district, in a difficult year for Democrats in Minnesota.”

“All Jeff talks about is political reform, so that was a shot to the heart,” said Rosenow, Erdmann’s campaign manager, on losing the endorsement. “If your goal is to get money out of politics, how in the fuck-- I’m sorry, how in the hell are you backing someone who ran a corporate PAC?”

The DCCC still blatantly lies about not getting involved in primary battles. They do it everyday and in everyday. And the whole purpose is the kill progressives in the cradle. Their own Red to Blue website currently lists 18 carp candidates they are backing, almost all of them also backed by the New Dems and/or the Blue Dogs and almost all of them in hot races with progressives. As Grim and Fang reported, "the Democratic Party machinery can effectively shut alternative candidates out before they can even get started. The party only supports viable candidates, but it has much to say about who can become viable." Let's look at 4 of the races the DCCD is fucking up that Grim and Fang singled out:

• AZ-02 (Tucson)

Last year, former Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, a tough-on-immigration candidate who previously represented a northern Arizona district, bought a house to run for this Tucson-area seat. The DCCC, Emily’s List, End Citizens United, and other PACs coalesced quickly behind her campaign, ignoring a spirited challenge from former Assistant Secretary of the Army Mary Matiella. “A candidate’s viability is judged too quickly and too narrowly,” Matiella, who could be the first Latina to represent Arizona in Congress, told The Intercept. “The ability to immediately post a six-figure quarter isn’t just the primary consideration, it’s the only one. That kind of artificial barrier to political involvement is going to disenfranchise not only qualified candidates like myself, but thousands of new and optimistic voters the party should be engaging.” Matiella is backed by Justice Democrats, Democracy for America, and Project 100.

• KS-04 (Wichita)

In April, the political world turned bug-eye on Wichita, Kansas, as the results of a special election to replace Mike Pompeo came rolling in. For a tense stretch of time, it looked like James Thompson, running on a progressive platform that hewed closely to that of Sanders, might just pull off an upset in the heart of Koch Industries country. He wound up about 7,500 votes short, but immediately announced his plan to run for the same seat, this time against the Republican incumbent Ron Estes, in 2018. Washington Democrats were not particularly enthused about his chances. “I have never heard hide nor hair from the national party about the race,” Thompson said. His primary opponent, Laura Lombard, who moved back to the district from Washington, said she’s been in touch with the DCCC, but the party doesn’t like the odds of winning the district and isn’t helping in the primary.

Thompson is not clamoring for party support. “From what I’ve seen of the DCCC’s help, they want a bunch of promises made you’ll raise X amount of money, and you’ll spend this amount on TV ads.” he said. “At this point I’m not interested in having the DCCC, which has a proven losing record, try to come run my campaign.”

• NE-02 (Omaha)

The Democratic Party has largely lined up behind former Rep. Brad Ashford to take back this Omaha-based seat. The DCCC and other PACs have provided resources and endorsements to Ashford, who compiled one of the most conservative voting records for any Democrat in the House during his time in office. Kara Eastman, another Democrat competing in the primary on a populist campaign of single payer and tuition-free college, said that, after inviting her to candidate week, the party has attempted to shut her out of the campaign. “Well, we have been in contact with people from the DCCC since we started the campaign, and I was told that they would be remaining neutral until after the primary, and now it’s clear that’s obviously not the case,” Eastman, who has raised more than $100,000, told The Intercept. Eastman is backed by Climate Hawks Vote, at least three local unions, and some local party officials. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which was founded in 2009 as a small-dollar alternative to the DCCC, is leaning toward planning to endorse her. In 2017, the national Democratic groups shocked Nebraska Democrats by pulling support for mayoral candidate Heath Mello over his past votes for bills to ban abortions after 20 weeks and the requirement that an ultrasound is used on a woman seeking abortion. Ashford, as a state legislator, voted for the same two bills, while Eastman is running on a solidly pro-choice platform. But that hasn’t prevented national Democrats from rallying behind Ashford. Last year, DNC Chair Tom Perez, in the wake of the Mello controversy, drew a line in the sand, saying that “every Democrat, like every American, should support a woman’s right to make her own choices about her body and her health. That is not negotiable and should not change city by city or state by state.” But that hasn’t prevent national Democrats from rallying behind Ashford. An EMILY’s List spokesperson said the group is monitoring the race but has yet to weigh in.

• CO-06 (Denver suburbs)

This suburban seat has long been an elusive Democratic target. One candidate for the district, clean energy expert and entrepreneur Levi Tillemann, charged that Rep. Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 Democrat in the House, pressured him to get out of the race in favor of Jason Crow, a veteran and partner at powerhouse Colorado law and lobbying firm, who is backed by the DCCC, the local Democratic congressional delegation, and End Citizens United. In a response to an inquiry from The Intercept, Hoyer did not deny pressing Tillemann, and said that he is “proud to join countless Coloradans in supporting Jason Crow in Colorado’s 6th District.” Not all Democrats are on board with the party’s strategy, though. State Party Chair Morgan Carroll protested the DCCC’s support for Crow over Tillemann, writing on Facebook, “The DCCC verbally said they would be neutral and in practice just endorsed one of the candidates in CD6.” Tillemann comes from a long line of political heavyweights in Colorado and moved back to the state to run.

Last week, we looked at how slimy corporate whore Steny Hoyer was in Colorado trying to rig the election in the 6th district for one of the DCCC's worst recriuits of 2018, a completely crooked lawyer named Crow, and against progressive reformer Levi Tillemann. Last night, Tillemann read the Grim-Fang story and this is what he told us about primary rigging in his district:

It didn’t have to be this way. After the controversy surrounding our 2016 presidential primary, the Party ought to have remained impartial during all Democratic primaries. Local leaders have, but unaccountable power brokers in DC have decided to try and rig the system and disenfranchise the voters of CD-06. That's wrong.

When political insiders want to rig an election they don’t stuff ballot boxes, instead they rely on backroom deals, super PACs, campaign contributions, pressure and threats. That's what's going on here, and it extends well beyond Colorado’s 6th District to races across the country where the DCCC has decided to try and push out progressives in favor of more 'controllable' Democrats. That is why I am speaking out.

I believe in the power of democracy. Testing ideas and candidates through a hard-fought primary makes us stronger. Making people feel like their vote doesn't matter leads to disengagement. I have always been deeply committed to running a campaign focused on the values and issues. I will fight Trump and the GOP every step of the way as they try to dilute minority influence through gerrymandering, voter ID laws, and voter suppression. But I will also fight the DCCC if they try to turn Democratic primaries into nothing more that a pep-rally for anointed insiders nationwide. The DCCC would do well to remember that voter access, free and fair elections, campaign finance, and good government are Democratic values; calling out violations of Democratic values by people we usually agree with isn’t mudslinging, it’s integrity.

Bob Poe is an old friend, the former chairman of the Florida Democratic Party. When he ran for Congress in Orlando last cycle, the DCCC backed a conservative go-along-to-get-along pointless careerist with no political point of view. He also read Grim's and Fang's piece today, shook his head and said "Some things don’t change. Gutless wonders! [The DCCC] never learns the lesson that if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you always got."

Democratic party officials are not, by nature, moved to deep reflection by election losses. They have a plan and they’re sticking to it. The bad news for grassroots activists is that the Democratic Party’s leaders cannot be reasoned with. But they can be beaten.

If Democratic leaders are getting the sense that 2018 could be a wave election much like 2006, it’s worth looking at the last time the party swept into the House. The DCCC that year was run by Rahm Emanuel, who institutionalized the practice of only endorsing candidates with a demonstrable ability to either fundraise or pay for their own campaigns. Democrats that year beat 22 Republican incumbents and picked up eight open seats that had previously been held by Republicans. Because winners write history, the strategy has become conventionally accepted as wisdom worth following. But taking a closer look at the races themselves suggests the DCCC was flying blind.

In New Hampshire, for instance, the DCCC backed state House minority leader Jim Craig over local activist Carol Shea-Porter, in a classic establishment-versus-grassroots campaign. The conventional wisdom suggested that Craig’s endorsements, his moderation, and his ability to fundraise were what was needed in the district. Instead, Shea-Porter took a firm stand against the war in Iraq and organized an army of foot soldiers on the ground. Vastly outspent, she smoked Craig by 19 points in the primary.

The DCCC, in its wisdom, wrote her off, declining to spend a dime on what they saw as a lost cause. She spent less than $300,000 and, on the back of progressive enthusiasm, won the general election. She is retiring in 2018.

In California, the DCCC backed Steve Filson, a conservative pilot, against Jerry McNerney, who Emanuel believed was hopelessly liberal. After McNerney beat him in the primary, a peeved Emanuel said the DCCC wouldn’t be helping him in the general. A coalition of environmental groups got behind him instead, and McNerney won anyway.

In upstate New York, Emanuel went with Judy Aydelott, a former Republican who was a tremendous fundraiser. She was crushed by environmentalist and musician John Hall, after which the DCCC shunned the race as unwinnable. Hall won.

...It can be difficult for challengers to go up against the party because it is often hard to tell how or if the party is taking sides. Short of a public statement, candidates are left to quiz donors, consultants, or other operatives who might be in the know.

Steve Cohen, a Democratic representative from Tennessee, learned that lesson in a roundabout way. Much to Emanuel’s displeasure, Cohen ran a far-to-the-left campaign in 2006 and won a Memphis district. A white man in a minority-majority district, he was presumed to be a one-termer and drew a well-funded challenger in 2008, Nikki Tinker. (She won the endorsement of EMILY’s List, which tends not to endorse candidates against incumbents, even anti-choice ones like Dan Lipinski in Illinois.)

Cohen suspected that Emanuel was working against him but had no firm evidence, until one day he was having breakfast at the bar in Bistro Bis, a Washington restaurant, after Tinker had announced her bid. He saw Tinker in the restaurant-- and then he saw Emanuel. “Rahm came in and walked around and saw me and danced around, like doing a pirouette, like he had to pee or something, dancing on his toes,” said Cohen, describing the jittery reaction of the Chicago pol who had famously studied ballet as a young man.

Cohen left the restaurant for about five minutes and then returned to find Emanuel and his opponent dining together. “I caught Rahm,” Cohen said.

Tinker wound up running a campaign widely condemned as anti-Semitic. Cohen is now in his sixth term; Emanuel is the mayor of Chicago.

But the party’s inability to rethink conventional tactics creates an opening for progressive challengers. The party, like the media covering House campaigns, is relentlessly focused on 23 particular House districts where Clinton won, but the seat is still held by a Republican. Those seats, the party believes, belong to Democrats and are theirs for the taking. That was the strategy in 2006, too, as Emanuel dug in on the 18 seats in districts Kerry had won in 2004 but still were represented by Republicans.

Those seats were toss-ups, and despite Emanuel’s vaunted tactical genius, he did barely better than flipping a coin, winning 10. Democrats won 10 more seats in districts George W. Bush had carried with between 50 and 55 percent of the vote. They won seven in races where Bush pulled in 55 to 60 and won three upsets where Bush had won 60 percent or more of the vote just two years earlier. In other words, a third of all the Democratic pick-ups came in races where the party had been crushed two years prior and was paying little attention this time around. “Back in 2006, a strong argument can be made that Rahm was in the right place at the right time with the wrong strategy,” said Podhorzer, the AFL-CIO’s strategist who worked on the ’06 campaign.

The same pattern held in the Virginia House races in November, in which the party focused on a handful of swing districts, only to see stunning upsets across the state-- epitomized by a Democratic Socialists of America-backed nobody unseating the House minority leader, and transgender journalist Danica Roem knocking off a legendary bigot.

Those types of candidates in 2006 were boosted not by the DCCC, but by outside groups like the AFL-CIO and MoveOn.org, which was at the height of its power. This time around, there’s no shortage-- well, there’s always a shortage-- of outside groups that can come into a race and lift a candidate up. The explosion of grassroots energy post-Trump didn’t just create new candidates, it made new groups, too. That means candidates who get shunned by the DCCC still have the possibility of connecting to an organized faction of Democrats who can make their race viable.

...The DCCC, notably, hasn’t yet added any Democratic candidates in California-- where there are multiple crowded primaries for competitive seats-- to its Red to Blue list. Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., the western regional vice chair of the DCCC, has discouraged the party from taking sides in contentious primaries. “We’re not placing our thumb on the scale in these primaries,” said Marc Cevasco, a spokesperson for Lieu.

But the increased party primary meddling in races in other parts of the country has come at a time when the DCCC is increasingly wedded to congressional moderates. In somewhat of a reprisal of the Emanuel strategy, the DCCC is leaning on business-friendly Democrats to take back the House.

For the first time since 2006, the Blue Dog Coalition, the right-leaning Democratic group that prides itself on promoting socially conservative, business-friendly lawmakers, has worked with the DCCC to select the party’s candidates for the 2018 midterms.

The new collaboration is a stunning reversal for a party that has seen a groundswell of support for progressive ideas-- such as a $15 minimum wage and single-payer health care-- that are staunchly opposed by the Blue Dog wing of the party. Operatives from the DCCC meet on a weekly basis with the Blue Dogs to discuss recruitment and how to best steer resources to a growing slate of centrist Democratic candidates, according to Politico.

“The DCCC recognizes that the path to the majority is through the Blue Dogs,” Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., chair of the Blue Dog PAC, told Politico.

For party officials concerned about raising cash, Blue Dogs are a safe bet. Public disclosures with the Federal Election Commission show that the Blue Dog PAC is fueled by the biggest spenders on congressional campaigns on K Street, the term Washingtonians use colloquially to refer to a center of lobbyist shops. PAC money from the National Mining Association, AT&T, McKesson, Comcast, the National Restaurant Association, and other business interests have buoyed Blue Dog PAC coffers, which are spent recruiting and financing moderate Democrats.

But there is more than one way to raise big money. As for Jess King, a DCCC official said that the Pennsylvanian wasn’t invited to candidate week in Washington because her campaign has not been in close touch with the national party, and that party support is a two-way street. But by the party’s favorite metric-- fundraising-- going it alone hasn’t hurt her. In the fourth quarter of 2017, relying on small dollars, King added another $200,000 to her war chest, bringing her above $300,000 for the first year.

Her fundraising broke a record last held by Christina Hartman.

Now is the time when these primaries are going to be won or lost. The DCCC is pouring resources into the races to defeat progressives and advantage their corrupt conservative candidates. As you know, Blue America doesn't support or endorse New Dems or Blue Dogs and, historically, we're usually the ones first backing candidates like Carol Shea-Porter and Jerry McNerney back in 2006. We frequently get behind progressives who find themselves pitted against the worst of the DCCC recruits like Brad Ashford and Ann Kirkpatrick. Please consider contributing what contributing to the progressive candidates on the page that the thermometer on the right will take you to. There's not a single one the DCCC has endorsed, at least not yet. Please help us shove a dozen of them up right up their corrupt asses.