Two Campaigns Kick Off In The Midwest: Ben Sasse (R-NE) And Nikki Foster (D-OH)

Let's start with Nebraska, where conservative Republican Ben Sasse began his reelection bid yesterday. He was first elected in 2014 against Democrat David Domina, 64.4% to 31.5%. 347,636 Nebraskans voted for him. Sasse was the first sitting senator to announce he wouldn't support Trump if Trump won the Republican nomination in 2016. Trump easily won Nebraska anyway-- with 495,961 votes (58.75%) to Hillary's 284,494 (33.7%). Sasse won all 93 counties in the state. Trump won 91, losing just the biggest and second biggest counties-- Douglas (Omaha) and Lancaster (Lincoln) to Hillary.

There was some talk of billionaire Trump-supporting wing-nut Pete Ricketts, the current governor, primarying him but Ricketts endorsed Sasse yesterday when he announced. Former Lancaster County Republican Party chairman, Matt Innis, a certifiably insane person, is running against him-- as are 2 Democrats (with two more thinking about jumping in). Innis: "You can’t find anything he’s really accomplished other than bashing the president and giving up his (Senate Agriculture Committee) seat for something more glamorous... I want to make sure that Nebraska is in good hands and they have somebody in Washington that will put their interests first."

As a Judiciary Committee member, Sasse has been a strong proponent of Trump’s judicial appointments, and has piped down about Trump lately, not criticizing all the racism and white nationalism, apparently in the hope that hard core Trump supporters will back him. He's gotten something of a reputation for being all bark and no bite when it comes to Trump.

A few days ago, we looked at how Omaha state Senator Hohn McCollister (R) had called on his fellow Republicans to stand up to Trump's racism. The response from the Nebraska GOP came swiftly, in the form of a press release:

They want him out of the party-- a sitting state senator. Amazing! No big tent there-- ad no standing up to Trump's racism will be tolerated!

The video up top was released yesterday as a campaign announcement for Nikki Foster, a Democrat running for the OH-01 seat (most of safely blue Cincinnati and the very red Warren county suburbs and small towns north of the city) against incumbent Steve Chabot, who would absolutely be vulnerable against a strong Democratic opponent. Is Foster? I haven't spoken with her-- and the video looks good-- but... The former Air Force vet looks more like an identity politics candidate with a nice bio than the kind of candidate who can win a tough race against an incumbent. Her weak garden variety platform isn't going to excite anyone other than committed Democrats who vote for any Democrat who runs, not enough to win OH-01. I suppose some people will want to vote for her because she flew 200 missions over Iraq and Afghanistan or because she was an All-American rugby player. But... no mention of Medicare-For-All or any other motivating policies on her website. Last year she lost a state house race last year against incumbent Paul Zeltwanger in a redder district north of the city. That same year, another weak Democrat afraid to take any strong policy positions, Aftab Pureval, lost to Chabot in the middle of the "Blue Wave." The other Democrat in the race this cycle, Kate Schroder, is the same kind of thing, afraid to motivate the base with any talk of Medicare-for-All or the Green New Deal. Both, like Pureval was, appear to have been persuaded by Republicans and the Republican wing of the Democratic Party to not coming out swinging for cutting edge policies. So they'll get Democrats and some independents who hate Trump, but the kind of people who have given up on the two corporate parties... neither Foster nor Schroder is offering them anything, or at least not anything that's going to change their mind about voting.

What a shame! It looks like a winnable district. The PVI is R+5 and Trump only beat Hillary 51.2% to 44.6%. Trump did worse than either McCain or Romney in the district. If only there was a better candidate who understood what it takes to motivate voters!

Last time, Pureval outraised Chabot $4,069,489 to $1,949,962 and outspent him by a over a million dollars. The DCCC and its allies put another $2,289,840 into slamming Chabot. (The NRCC and it's allies put $3,537,280 into smearing Pureval.) The Republicans are not going to give up this district without a fight to the death and neither Nikki Foster nor Kate Schroder appears to be the kind of candidate who could fight that kind of battle. Again... what a shame. This is just the kind of year and environment where a strong progressive candidate could beat Chabot.

OH-01: Pure(val) Lesser Of Two Evils Politics

There's been a lot of silly talk by click-hungry pundits about how there's no blue wave coming. Unless, they're smart enough-- and they're not-- to be explain that there's no blue wave because it's actually an "anti-red wave," just ignore them and they'll slither back under their rocks. Ask a Republican incumbent if they feel a wave coming. Today Politico's Elena Schneider reported on how the wave is impacting once-safe GOP seats by focussing in on one, OH-01, a very carefully-drawn district which includes most of Cincinnati. She wrote that "Republicans who represented some of the safest congressional seats in their party for years are suddenly under intense pressure in 2018, with Democratic challengers threatening to overwhelm them in suburban districts where President Donald Trump has struggled." It's not the best intro for the post about OH-01 she wrote.

A little background: Ohio lost 2 seats after the 2010 census and the Republican legislature gerrymandered the state very effectively, The congressional delegation when from 10 Democrats and 8 Republicans in 2008 to 13 Republicans and 5 Democrats in 2010. Part of that was a flip in Cincinnati, The first district has basically the whole city (aside from parts of the affluent east side) and it's a Democratic city. The western suburbs aren't nor are the parts of Warren and Hamilton counties tied to the district to make sure it would elect Republicans. Romney beat Obama here 52.4% to 46.3%. But during the 2016 race the suburbs started shifting away from Trump. The PVI went from R+6 to R+5 and Trump didn't do as well as Romney did (51.2%) but Hillary was such a wretched candidate that she blew it and did worse than Obama (44.6%). The district, though, just rarin' to vote against Trump now.

Steve Chabot had been elected to Congress in the massive 1994 red wave. The 2006 blue wave shook Chabot up but he managed to hold onto his seat, narrowly-- 52.2% to 47.8%. Two years later, in the general, the blue wave was extended and Chabot lost to conservative Democrat Steve Driehaus, 155,455 (52.5%) to 140,683 (47.5%). Dreihaus, former minority whip of the state House, was an unimpressive congressman, an anti-Choice jackass unable, for obvious reasons, to inspire the Democratic base... so they didn't bother showing up for him in 2010. He voted the way the DC Democratic leadership determined a Democrat in a purple district should vote, GOP-lite. In 2010, Chabot wanted his old seat back. 103,770 (51.5%) voters agreed while just 92,672 of the 140,683 voters who had swept Driehaus into office 2 years earlier made their way to the polls. Why bother to re-elect an inauthentic Democrat who was just voting with the Republicans anyway. Too bad the DC Dems are incapable of learning anything from that.

This cycle, Hamilton County clerk, Aftab Pureval, was unopposed in the primary. His website indicates he's the kind of Democrat who will be playing defense rather than offense, working to protect the status quo rather than pushing forward with a progressive agenda. He's definately running a Republican-lite campaign that would make any progressive want to puke. If he wins it's because of the anti-red wave and because of the related Trump-exhaustion. Schneider asserts he's outraging and out-working Chabot. (As of the June 30 FEC reporting deadline, Pureval had raised $1,569,432 to Cahbot's $958,196.) He refused to sit down for an interview with Politico for Schneider's story.

NRCC chair Steve Stivers (R-OH) did the interview instead. "It just took a little while to get him, you know, built back up and run a race because he hasn't been targeted since 2010, and he won pretty comfortably then. But Steve never lost touch with his constituents and that's why he's in good shape... now [he] has his organization up and humming the way he used to when he was in tough races." Schneider wrote that "Another national Republican strategist, granted anonymity to speak candidly, had a harsher assessment: 'The question is, can some of these incumbents, including Chabot, be defossilized?'"

Pureval is pitching himself as an independent voice to voters in Chabot's district. "As a Democrat, I reduced the size of government and saved the taxpayers nearly $1 million," Pureval said in an interview with Politico, echoing his first round of TV ads.

He is running like a lot of red-district Democrats across the country. Pureval, who got his start in politics as student body president of Ohio State University, has vowed not to support Nancy Pelosi for speaker and rejected some proposals popular among liberals-- like Medicare-for-all or abolishing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Pureval also found some room for agreement on trade with Trump, with an eye toward the 51 percent of the district that voted for him in 2016.

"American workers have been getting a raw deal for a very long time," Pureval said, while adding that he thought Trump's approach to trade deals has been "ham-fisted."

Those attitudes aren't putting off Democratic voters hopeful of notching a win. "Being less partisan is a good thing around here," said Keri Arinsmier, a 36-year-old voter who showed up to Pureval's recent opening of a field office in Warren County. "This guy is a shooting star of a candidate because he's practical," said Valerie Naughton, another Warren County voter.

And Republicans acknowledge a close race is brewing. "Chabot is a name brand and Aftab is the new product on the market," said Mark Weaver, a Republican consultant in the state. "It'll come down to the west side of Cincinnati, who know Chabot well, but you also can't deny the Democratic enthusiasm."

Pureval's-- and the DCCC's-- theory of the race is that Democratic voters will have no choice but to vote for him no matter how crappy and uninspiring he is because they hate Trump and his rubber-stamps, like Chabot, so much. That gives Pureval the space to take Democrats for granted and just go after Republican-leaning independents and moderate Republicans. There are garbage candidates like Pureval-- lesser of two evils-- wherever the DCCC was able to prevail in the nominating process. What they don't understand is that no matter how right-of-center their policy agenda is, the Republicans will call them the most far left candidate in the history of the known universe and that no matter how much they shame themselves and make fools of themselves by denouncing Nancy Pelosi, the Republicans will always denounce them as Pelosi-puppets.

Pureval's positioning reflects Democrats' knowledge that it won't be easy to turn this seat blue. Former Hamilton County Democratic Party Chairman Tim Burke called Chabot "a very dangerous candidate who has surprised people with the races he's won before."

But Burke added that the district was "designed to ensure that Chabot be protected, [and] he's not protected in the same way anymore."

The 2016 election foreshadowed the district's new competitiveness: While Trump romped to a 9-point victory in Ohio, he got a lower share of the vote in Chabot's 1st District than Mitt Romney did in 2012, when Romney lost the state to former President Barack Obama.

That happened in only one of Ohio's 11 other GOP-held districts: the 12th District, a longtime Republican stronghold where the GOP flirted with a disastrous defeat in a recent special election before pulling out a narrow lead that is still awaiting certification, with provisional ballots still being tallied in the Columbus-area district.

"That was a huge indicator of what's to come in the suburbs," said former Democratic Rep. Steve Driehaus. "The turnout you saw in Franklin and Delaware counties, and voters moving very strongly toward the Democratic candidates, tells you a lot about the mood out there."

Chabot's campaign panned talk of a Democratic surge in the suburbs, pointing to the raw vote total in the May primary, when 20,000 more Republicans voted in the primary than Democrats.

Pureval is seeking to emulate Driehaus, who unseated Chabot in the last Democratic wave election in 2008. "Those populations shifts, happening late in the decade, 2008 and 2018, the tremendous advantage Chabot once had isn't there anymore," Driehaus said.

But Chabot and his campaign see a key difference in the 2018 campaign, believing that Pureval is the "most liberal candidate I've ever had," the Republican told the Cincinnati Enquirer in August, making him "so much more vulnerable." Pureval, unlike Driehaus, is pro-abortion rights.

Chabot's campaign spokesman Cody Rizzuto called Pureval a "far-left liberal," adding that he's "confident the voters will soundly reject his extremist views and associations."

Chabot is also taking his argument to the airwaves, attacking Pureval for his tenure at the Hamilton County clerk's office. The ad shows a clip of Pureval saying, "The era of political patronage-- of 'it's more important who you know than what you know'-- is over." Then, a narrator cuts in and says, "Aftab broke that promise on his very first day in office.

"He started firing longtime employees and used your tax dollars as hush money to buy their silence. Aftab replaced them with his own political cronies, including the son of the Democratic Party chairman."

Pureval's campaign responded with its own ad, calling the attacks "simply [not] true," adding that "it's not surprising that Chabot is running a negative campaign."

"He's a politician who's been in Congress for 22 years and has little to show for it," the narrator of Pureval's ad continued.

Predictions: Pureval will win and be as uninspiring a congressman as Driehaus was, and then lose in 2022, since 2020 will be another good cycle for Democrats.

The DCCC Can Make OH-01 Into A Real Race-- But They're Not Going To

By the numbers, the craftily-gerrymandered first congressional district of Ohio looks nearly impossible for a Democrat. It includes most of Cincinnati-- Lyle Park and Prospect Hill but not Mount Adams-- but not all of it (which would turn it blue) and enough of Warren County to guarantee Republican majorities. Since the district was redrawn-- after Obama’s 55-44% win against McCain-- Romney won it with 52% and Trump won it 51-45%. Still it looks more possible than almost any other red district in Ohio-- and Lord knows, the moribund Ohio Democratic Party doesn’t do squat in congressional elections and neither does the DCCC. The PVI is R+5, far from impossible in a wave election. But the Democrats don’t seem to have been able to find a Randy Bryce to believe enough in himself or herself to take on longtime incumbent Steve Chabot. SO, instead, it looks like a small gaggle of vanity candidates running in an election which could actually land one of them in Congress.

The last time I looked, a Berniecrat, Sam Ronan, had decided to run as a Republican. But now I can’t tell what he’s running as. His website doesn’t indicate which party and neither does this video he made.



Howard Wilkinson, reporting for WVXU, did a pretty thorough job on the race, although he left Ronan out entirely. He reports that the 2016 candidate, Michele Young, who lost to Chabot 210,014 (59.2%) to 144,644 (40.8%), is about to jump in a primary that already includes Robert Barr, a rabbi, whose website doesn’t mention any issues act all. The DCCC searched-- unsuccessfully-- for a credible candidate.

At the top of the list was Hamilton County commissioner Todd Portune, who has proven he can win cross-over votes from Republicans. But, in the end, Portune gave the DCCC a thumbs-down.

Then there was Mark Lippert, a former Navy SEAL who was ambassador to South Korea under the Obama administration. Another no-go.

And P.G. Sittenfeld was approached by the DCCC. So, too, was state representative Alicia Reece. So far, nothing has come of that either.

The filing deadline for candidates is February 7. Still time for some Bigfoot Democrat to wade into the race, but the clock is ticking.

He reported that Michele Young will officially jump in in early February. He seems more obsessed with the rabbi though.

Today, one month away from the candidate filing deadline, the most active candidate to take on Chabot in Ohio 1 appears to be one who would make history if he were elected.

His name is Robert Barr; and what makes him unique is that he is a rabbi-- and no rabbi has ever been elected to Congress. Catholic priests, a couple; Protestant ministers, a bunch.

But never a rabbi.

And Barr is the only rabbi to run who is a "pulpit rabbi"-- meaning that he leads a congregation, performs weddings, burials, bar mitzvahs and other functions. Thirty-seven years ago, the 62-year-old Barr, a product of Cincinnati's Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, founded Congregation Beth Adam in Loveland, which he still leads today.

"I am not running to become the first rabbi to be elected to Congress," Barr told WVXU. "I am running to be a congressman who happens to be a rabbi."

Barr said he made the decision to run "by watching what was going on in politics in this country. I was extremely disheartened. I saw people who had been good friends stop talking to each other. The atmosphere has been poisonous."

Some of his own friends, he said, tried to discourage him from running.

"The first thing I heard from some of my friends was, 'Bob, running for Congress is going to be awful,'" Barr told WVXU. "But the more they talked about how bad it was, the more I wanted to do it."

Barr is discouraged by what he sees coming out of Washington today-- the acrimony, the name-calling, the extreme partisanship that grinds legislation to a halt and results in nothing positive getting done.

"Politics in Washington is so balkanized, so divided," Barr said. "People on both sides appear to be unwilling to talk to each other because they are afraid of being seen as weak or as a loser."

As for Chabot, Barr said, "after 20 years, I've not seen him work to repair that damage."

Barr is idealistic, but he is not delusional. He knows perfectly well that defeating Chabot would be a steep climb in that heavily-Republican district.

"I just have this feeling that, right now, people are looking for someone who has worked in the community, someone who is authentic," Barr said. "I've been doing that for 37 years."

Last week, he announced an impressive group to serve as his campaign co-chairs.

They are retired Judge Nathaniel Jones of the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, Barb Rinto, the former director of the University of Cincinnati's Women's Center; and Sallie Westheimer, the retired CEO of 4C for Children.

He is not going to run a campaign on duct tape and bailing wire; he plans on raising serious money for this campaign-- although he knows that, in a general election, Chabot and his allies, would outspend him by a large margin. Chabot already has over $1 million in his campaign account.

Barr told WVXU that as of about two weeks ago, he had raised $150,000 for his campaign since he officially became a candidate on Oct. 15. He won't say how much he has now, but said that when he files his first quarter campaign finance report with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) it will be "substantial."

The only Democratic candidate in Ohio 1 to have filed a campaign finance report so far with the FEC is a little-known transgender dentist named Laura Ann Weaver, who has a little over $8,000 in the bank.

While Barr is out raising money and putting together a campaign organization, Young is organizing. her campaign.

Sabato's Crystal Ball managing editor is Kyle Kondik, an Ohioan and he told Wilkinson that "The Democrats can win back control of the House without picking up a single seat in Ohio” which explains why they are ignoring the state and why “Ohio 1 will not end up being a prime target” for the DCCC. They use similar excuses all over the country, part of the explanation for a decade of pitiful failure.

The Establishment Plot To Insert Paul Ryan As The Republican Party Presidential Nominee

Few of the growing number of Republicans opposing Trumpf say their opposition is rooted in what's good for the country. It's about what's good for the fucked-up political party they share with him-- albeit uneasily-- that spawned him in the first place. I don't recall ever seeing so many elected officials from a party saying they will not support a candidate if he's their party's official nominee. Miami-Dade walking dead freshman Carlos Curbelo comes right out and says he "wouldn’t support Donald Trump for president if he were our nominee. I would support any reasonable idea to find a better nominee." That's the brokered convention idea we've been talking about for the past two days in which the GOP will seek to thwart their own bigoted, ignorant base and sell them Paul Ryan.

Another Florida Congressman, David Jolly, who represents the Pinellas County district but finds it too blue-leaning now and is giving it up to run for the Rubio Senate seat, said that he has "broad disagreement with Donald Trump. If he is our nominee, I think he loses, I think Republicans lose the Senate. He puts the House at risk and sends the party into the wilderness for the next decade... If there is a mechanism to make sure somebody other than Donald Trump wins the nomination, I think that is a good thing for Republicans." Again, "good for Republicans." What about America? Do any of them care?

Establishment goon, Steve Chabot, who represents a severely gerrymandered district that allows him to win in Cincinnati-- remember Obama beat Romney in Hamilton County 208,508 (52%) to 188,653 (47%) and Sherrod Brown beat Josh Mandel there 208,611 (53%) to 171,718 (44%), while the state legislature redrew the district to include blood red/all white Warren County northeast of the city, where Romney took 69% and Mandel took 65%-- thinks the GOP establishment can trick the idiot Trumpf followers. He advocates feigning "respect" for them while doing what the establishment feels is best for the party. "Whatever it is that makes that more likely to happen, I’m for it. I don’t know if it’s a brokered convention or not. But it would be unrealistic for us not to at least have that in the back of our minds that that is a distinct possibility this time."

Many of the Republicans in Congress-- Chabot and Luke Messer (R-IN) are two examples-- are already laying the groundwork for what amounts to an Establishment coup d'etat against their own base in favor of Ryan. The editorial board of Ryan's hometown newspaper, the Janesville Gazette was setting it up Friday, much the way establishment editorial boards will be doing all over the country:

If Donald Trump defects and runs as an independent because leading Republicans won't accept this egomaniac as their presidential nominee, so be it.

The sooner the better.

So far, he has denigrated women, Hispanics and those with disabilities. On Monday, he fanned the flames of fear in suggesting we ban Muslims from entering our country.

Let's see, are we missing anyone? Is there any group Trump hasn't disparaged?

Seemingly every time he opens his mouth, he stoops to a new low, and his poll numbers rise. Too many Americans who are fed up with politics as usual and Washington gridlock appreciate Trump as the ultimate outsider, the anti-establishment candidate who's willing to say what's on his mind, regardless the law or consequences. It matters not whether he can unilaterally act and fulfill his promises. It's disturbing that Trump's hateful positions are embraced by so many.

New polls show Trump is backed by twice as many Republican voters as his nearest competitors. Yet every fresh statement from this bombastic “carnival barker”-- as one Gazette letter writer put it this week-- leaves Republicans one step closer to handing Hillary Clinton the keys to the White House. That's because Trump's comments further cast Republicans as an exclusive rather than inclusive party.

Republicans can blame themselves. Other candidates, feeling poll envy, have been too tempted to join in this rhetorical cesspool, this caldron of poor taste in which Trump says whatever outrageous thing will fuel media and public attention, regardless of accuracy and credibility.

Blame the national media for playing into Trump's hands. As Charles Haynes of the Religious Freedom Center pointed out in a column in Thursday's Gazette, CNN makes “breaking news” of every Trump move and comment. Trump gets more airtime on network evening news programs than the entire Democratic field.

Into this fray steps a voice of relative reason in House Speaker Paul Ryan of Janesville. On Tuesday, he urged fellow Republicans to steer clear of Trump's Muslim message.

...If anyone can unite and save the Republican Party, it might be Ryan. While he didn't want the speaker's role, he answered the call to duty. And while he has taken a tough tone with President Obama, in a few short weeks he also has forged bipartisanship too seldom seen in Washington. He helped usher through a five-year transportation bill and a replacement for the No Child Left Behind education law.

On Dec. 3, in his first major address as speaker, Ryan again advocated conservative, free-market solutions to America's ills. He pledged to craft a plan “to replace every word of Obamacare,” as well as rewrite and simplify the tax code and propose a “bold, pro-growth agenda.”

If only presidential candidates would follow Ryan's lead and outline a meaningful and constructive reform agenda rather than join Trump in verbal assaults and the rhetorical gutter, the GOP might have a chance to win next November.

This morning on ABC-TV's This Week, Dr. Ben reiterated that if the party bosses try to fix the convention in favor of an insider-- no one is mentioning the beloved Ryan by name you'll notice-- he would quit the Republican race. Asked about the GOP establishment's brokered convention plot, he said "one of the reasons that I got into this is because I heard the frustration in the people who are so tired of back-room deals, of subterfuge, of dishonesty... if that is the case, then you know I’m out of here."

If, as many Republicans believe, Trumpf is a Bill Clinton false flag operation, the Clintons may well be hoist on their own petard by Hillary winding up having to run against Ryan. Of course the newest polling from Iowa could put a spanner in the Republican establishment's plans to insert Ryan as the candidate without him having to compete for the lunatic fringe base voters. I kind of think Cruz would be able to make mincemeat out of Ryan if this whole thing doesn't get shut down.

Why Do Conservatives Hate Small Business And The Entrepreneurial Spirit?

Gwen Graham, first 2015 freshman to earn her clown outfit

Yesterday, the House passed Steve Chabot's Small Business Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act of 2015 (H.R. 527), every single Republican plus 19 conservative Democrats-- overwhelmingly New Dems and Blue Dogs-- making up the 260-163 majority for what they're calling a "bipartisan bill." Two of the worst congressmen from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN) and Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)-- were co-sponsors. These are the Democrats who crossed the aisle to vote with the GOP:

• Pete Aguilar (New Dem-CA)
• Brad Ashford (Blue Dog/New Dem-NE)
• Ami Bera (New Dem-CA)
• Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA)
• Jim Cooper (Blue Dog/New Dem-TN)
• Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)
• Pete DeFazio (OR)
• John Delaney (New Dem-MD)
• Gwen Graham (Blue Dog/New Dem-FL)
• Ron Kind (New Dem-WI)
• Ann Kirkpatrick (New Dem-AZ)
• Patrick Murphy (New Dem-FL)
• Ed Perlmutter (New Dem-CO)
• Scott Peters (New Dem-CA)
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
• Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog/New Dem-OR)
• Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog/New Dem- AZ)
• Tim Walz (MN)

The legislation was designed to pad the bottom line of big political campaign contributors in Big Business. Using "Small Business" in the title is typical Beltway subterfuge meant to mislead the public. Chabot's bill is more in line with GOP priorities-- further deregulating Wall Street, for example-- which are harmful to small businesses. Chabot's bill also seeks to help Big Business get around EPA regulations and to undercut regulations that protect consumers and workers from excessive greed from capitalist sociopaths. The three Democratic freshmen most blatantly in the pockets of Big Business-- Pete Aguilar, Brad Ashford and Gwen Graham-- all backed the bill, signaling the K Street lobbyists their offices are open for business.

Amit Narang of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch Division wrote that Chabot's bill is vague by design. "The SBRFIA is designed to mislead lawmakers and the public into believing they are helping small businesses, while giving large corporations a free pass on rules designed to hold them accountable and protect the public."

Wisconsin Congressman Mark Pocan was one of the progressives urging his colleagues to defeat the proposal. "This bill," he told us, "is what America has come to expect from House Republicans-- nothing more than a deregulation bill for Wall Street and big corporate polluters disguised as a small business bill. It would delay or block environmental safety, food safety, workplace safety and consumer product safety regulations even when those regulations don’t apply to small businesses."

Meet Fred Kundrata-- Cincinnati Democrat

This month I've been talking with Fred Kundrata, the Democratic candidate running for the Cincinnati-based seat that Steve Chabot lost in 2008 to Steve Driehaus, who ran as a progressive, and then regained 2 years later after Driehaus had amassed a conservative record at the behest of the DCCC. OH-01 was gerrymandered in 2010 to make the district much less hospitable to Democrats. Parts of Cincinnati were shaved off and wealthy, deep red Warren County was grafted onto the district. The PVI went from R+1 to R+6, a skewer rarely within the grasp of a Democrat. Fred, however, is undaunted and feels that voters in the district are ready to replace Chabot again.

I asked him to introduce himself with a guest post and he penned one about the issue set that he feels is working magic for him in southwest Ohio: the area's crumbling infrastructure.

Building Bridges-- Community Outreach and Investing in Infrastructure
by Fred Kundrata

I love Cincinnati. This is where I live and work, I have property in the heart of downtown and in communities around the city. The Queen City, as it was coined by Wadsworth-Longfellow, is beautiful and filled with history. The first major inland city in the nation, Cincinnati has a rich history of industry and organized labor. That history of commerce however is fading in favor of a future ushered in by stagnant leadership more concerned about their own job security and the pocketbooks of their corporate sponsors than caring for Cincinnati.

For 17 years, Steve Chabot has walked into his congressional office and walked away from his constituents. He has turned down federal funding to rebuild his city. His trickle-down economics are sending floods of money into the pockets of his corporate sponsors while everyday Ohioans are struggling to stay above water.

When I look at the roads and bridges of Cincinnati, I see opportunities for those everyday Ohioans. Opportunity to bring fair-wage jobs to the city, to attract commerce to invest here, and the chance to clear up the congested traffic and polluted air.

I’m not interested in the partisan rhetoric and biased sound bites that surround Steve Chabot while he neglects our infrastructure. That is why I’m laying out a clear plan to cut through the red tape and partisan extremism, and reaching out to Ohioans to hear their ideas on how to rebuild our infrastructure and expand the opportunities of the Queen City.

I will create a Jobs Leadership Team that will bring together Labor, Business, Elected Officials, and Community Leaders to focus on job creation and reinvesting in America’s infrastructure. Ultimately this collaborativeeffort coupled with effective action, expands the middle class, attracts more business to the Cincinnati region, and strengthens labor unions.

Labor Unions were the backbone of the worker's rights revolution that created the middle class. I believe we must strengthen Labor Unions that will in turn help restore the middle class-- a win-win for our communities, businesses, Labor, working families and America!

I will sponsor legislation to cut through the red tape for approving public works projects, and work with local, state, and national elected officials to bring a state of the art, clean-energy powered, mass transit system to Cincinnati, built with Union labor. I will work to expand our streetcar program and to build bus terminals with dedicated lanes on our highways to create public transportation arteries in and out of the city. We must prevent our infrastructure from flat-lining, and start pumping life into our “channels of commerce” in and around the heart of this great city. This will create short-term and long-term employment opportunities, improve highway safety, cut down on pollution, and provide our economy with a solid base of infrastructure support to last for the next 50-100 years.

This election will be about infrastructure verses neglect, grassroots communication verses corporate greed. Above all, it will be about bold, progressive action verses stale partisan extremism.

I’m spending every day reaching out to my community, listening to their stories of overcoming odds and day-to-day struggles. It’s my favorite part of being the Democratic nominee for Congress-- hearing these stories and working with my community to turn them into stories of action.

Be a part of the action: Stand with me in my campaign, help me serve the people of Ohio’s 1st District and bring real change to the U.S. Congress. Please learn more about our campaign at FredKundrata.com.

Cincinnati Wing-Nut Steve Chabot's Constituents Jeer His Anti-Choice Fanaticism

On Monday an Iraq War vet and progressive Ohio state legislator, Rep. Connie Pillich, did a guest post for us here about her battle against John Kasich's fascist anti-union agenda. At the time I found a floor speech she gave in Columbus that I thought showed what she's made of and asked for readers to consider chipping in a contribution for her campaign. I reposted it above. Why again? And so fast?

Her opponent is a pathetic John Boehner clone named Steve Chabot, who Cincinnati voters fired in 2008 and who managed to slip back into office in the Great Shellacking of 2010, mostly because of dissatisfaction with the Democrats' tepid agenda for what they promised would be Change. In 2008, 155,089 voters (52%) elected moderate Democrat Steve Driehaus over the incumbent Chabot, who they gave 140,469 votes (48%). Two years later far fewer voters came out for the rematch. But Chabot only lost 36,699 votes, while Driehaus had a catastrophic 62,417 voter falloff (allowing Chabot to regain the seat with 51%, even edging Driehaus in Hamilton County, which is a relatively Democratic stronghold.

Next year, voters won't have to chose between a conservative Democrat and a more conservative Republican. Connie comes from the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt wing of the Democratic Party. She's all about the legitimate aspirations of ordinary working families. And Chabot is... still as extreme and far from the mainstream as ever. Monday be was abusive towards constituents who wanted to talk with him about unacceptably high unemployment in the region and was booed and jeered at his own Cincinnati town hall meeting-- and it centered on his virulent opposition to federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

After a citizen asked the congress-man why he stood “against funding Planned Parenthood when public funds are not used for abortion,” Chabot argued that the money was fungible so he opposed funding because “they are the largest abortion provider in the United States.” This response brought loud jeers and shouts of “no!” from the audience. When Chabot later accused Planned Parenthood of using federal funds for abortion, one constituent asked, “Do you have any proof of that happening?” Chabot declined to respond.

...By Chabot’s logic, Congress ought to strip federal funding for any religious organizations that receive federal funds to finance their charitable and social work because “money is fungible.” Yet it’s difficult to imagine Republicans will use the same standard to target groups like the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops any time soon.

Still, the questioner makes an important point that ought not be missed in the discussion: Planned Parent is vitally important to women’s health care, especially poor women. Despite Sen. Jon Kyl’s (R-AZ) assertion that abortion is “well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does,” in fact, it accounts for just 3 percent of their services. The other 97 percent includes such procedures as breast cancer exams, STI testing, and cervical cancer screening.

Yet if Chabot and Republicans in Congress had their way, Planned Parenthood would lose $330 million in federal funding that would otherwise be used to provide critical medical services to women across the country.

So... if you'd like to see a strong progressive woman working for working families in that seat instead of a crackpot like Chabot, you can help Connie win the election here.

Steve Driehaus Is Suing A GOP Front Group For Defamation But If He Wants To Know Why Democrats Didn't Bother Voting, He Should Examine His Own Record

The misleading Susan B. Anthony List billboard

Last we caught up with Cincinnati Congressman Steve Driehaus, a middle of the road Democrat on his way to a thumping 52-45% defeat, he was denouncing the DCCC for abandoning his race. They spent exactly $59,778.01 in his district, while he was being inundated with third party ads tearing him apart, much of it, $77,698.00, from GOP front group the Susan B. Anthony List.

Driehaus announced Friday that he's bringing a defamation suit against the anti-Choice group for lying about him in public statements.

The group claims Driehaus, who has campaigned as an anti-abortion candidate, supports taxpayer-funded abortions because he voted for the national health care law. Driehaus said the claim is false and that the law bars any federal funding of abortion.

"A lie is a lie," Driehaus' lawyers wrote in his federal defamation lawsuit. "The First Amendment is not and never has been an invitation to concoct falsehoods aimed at depriving a person of his livelihood."

In fact, Driehaus lost a great deal of support from Democrats because he followed the Susan B. Anthony List position on abortion by voting for the Stupak Amendment on November 7, 2009, one of only 64 Democrats to cross the aisle and vote against Choice. In fact, it's been my contention that that was one of the votes that cost Driehaus his reelection bid in the rematch with former Congressman Steve Chabot, a Boehner crony he had decisively beaten in 2008.

Driehaus' 51.18 ProgressivePunch score shows that on the contentious substantive issues that divided the Congress along partisan lines he voted with the Democrats a tiny bit more than he voted with the Republicans. There were an awful lot of disappointed Cincinnati voters who turned out for him-- and Obama-- in 2008. Back then Obama took OH-01 by beating McCain 55-44% (this after two consecutive Bush wins against Gore and Kerry). Cincinnati voters were ready for Hope and ready for Change. Neither Obama nor Driehaus lived up to voter expectations and two years later, Democrats and left-leaning independents stayed home on election day.

Before we look at how Driehaus beat Chabot in 2008, let's go back to 2006, the last midterm before the one that we just went through. That was a wave year for Democrats but Chabot had managed to beat City Councilman John Cranley 101,838 (53%) to 90,963 (47%), taking both OH-01 counties, the sliver of suburban Butler plus Hamilton (Cincinnati itself). In the hard fought Senate race going on simultaneously-- in which Sherrod Brown ousted incumbent Republican Mike DeWine-- DeWine eked out a narrow victory in OH-01.

Two years later the story changed. Obama won Ohio 52-47% and he managed to win Hamilton County with a slightly larger margin of victory, 53-46%. That helped sweep Driehaus to victory as well and he beat Chabot 155,089 (52%) to 140,469 (48%), strictly based on a great Democratic turnout in Cincinnati, where Driehaus pulled 151,547 votes (54%) to Chabot's 131,012 (46%), while getting creamed in the Butler County suburbs (Driehaus 27% to Chabot 73%, about 13,000 voters participating in total). If that wasn't a message to cater to the Democratic base, there has never been one. But instead Chabot's voting record indicates he was trying to placate implacable conservative voters in the suburbs. And look what happened. Over 50,000 Democrats who had propelled Driehaus to victory in 2008 just stayed away this year. Chabot beat him in both counties-- 76-21% in the white flight suburbs of Butler County and 94,502 (51%) to 85,450 (46%) in Cincinnati itself.

It wasn't the Susan B. Anthony List's lies about Chabot that ended his congressional career-- although they certainly helped keep the GOP turnout high. He lost because he failed to inspire Democrats and they just did not bother to come vote for the lesser of two evils. Obama should be looking at results like this around the country because he's falling into the exact same trap Driehaus did, a trap poignantly laid out by Frank Rich yesterday, that will guarantee him the same one term that Driehaus got. Here's a news report on Driehaus' problem and after that, Rich's explanation of Obama's dilemma.

Those desperate to decipher the baffling Obama presidency could do worse than consult an article titled “Understanding Stockholm Syndrome” in the online archive of The F.B.I. Law Enforcement Bulletin. It explains that hostage takers are most successful at winning a victim’s loyalty if they temper their brutality with a bogus show of kindness. Soon enough, the hostage will start concentrating on his captors’ “good side” and develop psychological characteristics to please them-- “dependency; lack of initiative; and an inability to act, decide or think.”

This dynamic was acted out-- yet again-- in President Obama’s latest and perhaps most humiliating attempt to placate his Republican captors in Washington. No sooner did he invite the G.O.P.’s Congressional leaders to a post-election White House summit meeting than they countered his hospitality with a slap-- postponing the date for two weeks because of “scheduling conflicts.” But they were kind enough to reschedule, and that was enough to get Obama to concentrate once more on his captors’ “good side.”

And so, as the big bipartisan event finally arrived last week, he handed them an unexpected gift, a freeze on federal salaries. Then he made a hostage video hailing the White House meeting as “a sincere effort on the part of everybody involved to actually commit to work together.” Hardly had this staged effusion of happy talk been disseminated than we learned of Mitch McConnell’s letter vowing to hold not just the president but the entire government hostage by blocking all legislation until the Bush-era tax cuts were extended for the top 2 percent of American households.

The captors will win this battle, if they haven’t already by the time you read this, because Obama has seemingly surrendered his once-considerable abilities to act, decide or think. That pay freeze made as little sense intellectually as it did politically. It will save the government a scant $5 billion over two years and will actually cost the recovery at least as much, since much of that $5 billion would have been spent on goods and services by federal workers with an average yearly income of $75,000. By contrast, the extension of the Bush tax cuts to the $250,000-plus income bracket will add $80 billion to the deficit in two years, much of which will just be banked by the wealthier beneficiaries.

The cliché criticisms of Obama are (from the left) that he is a naïve centrist, not the audacious liberal that Democrats thought they were getting, and (from the right) that he is a socialist out to impose government on every corner of American life. But the real problem is that he’s so indistinct no one across the entire political spectrum knows who he is. A chief executive who repeatedly presents himself as a conciliator, forever searching for the “good side” of all adversaries and convening summits, in the end comes across as weightless, if not AWOL. A Rorschach test may make for a fine presidential candidate — when everyone projects their hopes on the guy. But it doesn’t work in the Oval Office: These days everyone is projecting their fears on Obama instead.

...In the summer before the election, the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll (of June 21) found that only 15 percent of respondents thought the deficit should be the government’s top priority (behind jobs and economic growth, at 33 percent); the Washington Post/ABC News survey just a week before Election Day found that only 7 percent chose the deficit as the most important issue influencing their vote (again well behind the economy, at 37 percent). After constant G.O.P. fear-mongering about the budget-- some of it echoed, rather than countered, by Obama-- deficit reduction did jump to first place in Nov. 2 exit polls as voters’ highest priority for the next Congress. The disciplined Republican message had turned the deficit into a catchall synonym for America’s entire economic health. But at 40 percent, deficit reduction still was neck and neck with “spending to create jobs” (37 percent). Cutting taxes was chosen by only 18 percent.

We’re now at the brink of a new economic disaster that will eventually yank a chicken out of every pot. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities calculates that the extended Bush-era tax cuts will contribute by far the largest share to the next decade’s deficits-- ahead of the recession’s drain on tax revenues, Iraq and Afghanistan war spending, TARP and Obama’s stimulus. The new Congress’s plan to block any governmental intervention on behalf of 15 million-plus jobless Americans guarantees that the unemployment rate, back up to 9.8 percent as of Friday, will remain intractable too.

Obama should have pounded home the case against profligate tax cuts for the wealthiest before the Democrats lost the Senate. Even now Warren Buffett-- not a socialist, by the way-- is making the case with a Christie-esque directness that usually eludes the president. “The rich are always going to say that, you know, just give us more money and we’ll all go out and spend more, and then it will trickle down to the rest of you,” he told Christiane Amanpour on This Week last Sunday. “But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on.”

Everyone will have caught on by 2012, but that will be too late for many jobless Americans, let alone for Obama.

It gets better more painful, and you can read the rest of it here

So Far Three Extreme Right Republicans Want Rematches In 2010

Corrupt Republican lobbyist Mitchell Wade is in prison but Virgil Goode still isn't-- and he wants his old job back

Bill Sali (R-ID) can certainly make the case in he western Idaho district he used to represent that the Democrat who beat him in November, Walt Minnick, votes like a Republican on all the key issues but hampers the GOP's ability to govern on a national basis by supporting a Democratic organization of the House (and the boogie-man... err... woman: Nancy Pelosi). ID-01 is one of the most backward and reactionary districts in the country and includes the Nazi and KKK redoubts around Lake Hayden and Coeur D'Alene. Obama only scored 36% in the district at the same time Sali lost his seat to Minnick, 175,567 (51%) to 171,324 (49%). That represented a lot of serious ticket-splitting, indicating that anyone who wasn't a card-carrying member of Aryan Nations probably had had it with Sali. But he's going to try again. He sure can't accuse Minnick of supporting Obama. Well... he can and, no doubt he will. But it isn't true. In fact, Idaho Democrats have more reasons to stay home than Republican voters have to turn on Minnick and bring back the intensely disliked Sali.

Steve Chabot (OH-01) was also defeated in November-- by moderate Democrat Steve Driehaus, 143,743 (51%) to 135,376 (49%) in the Cincinnati-based district where Obama beat McCain 55-44% (a huge turn around from Bush victories in 2000 and 2004). Unlike Minnick's reactionary Republican voting record, Driehaus has consistently stood up for the Ohio working families who elected him. Cincinnati voters who wanted change have no reason to be disappointed. Chabot will have no leg to stand on except that he wants his career back.

This morning a third defeated wingnut-- this one also a crook-- Virgil Goode, has announced he wants a rematch. VA-05 is the heart of Virginia and it leans Republican but Obama did far better (48%) than Gore (41%) or Kerry (43%) and voters ousted Goode after a dozen unsatisfactory corruption-filled years of right-wing extremism. It was one of the closest, down-to-the-wire races in the country, Tom Perriello beating him 158,712 to 157,967. Perriello has been one of the most conscientious of this year's freshmen, extremely careful to balance his own progressive inclinations with the sensitivities of his district. His voting record has been moderate and tends to reflect opinion in southern Virginia. Goode is still screaming for the rejected far right ideology that devastated the region's economy. And he is also claiming credit for earmarks in the Omnibus Appropriations Bill that will bring around $10 million to VA-05. Perriello voted for the bill-- and for most of the legislation needed to implement President Obama's rescue plan for the nation. Goode insists he opposes everything and there is no doubt that if voters in central Virginia want a pointless obstructionist representing them, Goode is their man. Others might want to consider making an early donation to Tom Perriello's re-election campaign.

Dick Gregory explains what the policies rubber stamped by Goode, Sali and Chabot have wrought. If these guys-- and others like them-- somehow get back into Congress, we could wind up with lots more like this: