Why Do Millennials Hate The Democratic Party Almost As Much As They Hate The Republican Party?

Yesterday while I was getting dressed, I switched on MSNBC and saw Maryland Wall Street whore and DSCC chair Chris Van Holland being interviewed.A little background MSNBC didn't provide:

• Panicked that stalwart progressive Donna Edwards might be elected, last year the banksters financed Van Hollen's successful primary race against her for the Senate, giving him $3,306,869, more than any other non-incumbent from either party.
• The Finance sector has given Van Hollen $4,932,470 in bribes since he was first elected to Congress in 2002.
• Van Hollen has worked very hard to make Wall Street happy they put their faith in him.
• Big Insurance ponied up $267,805 last year to make sure Van Hollen got into the Senate instead of Edwards.
• Pharmaceutical companies chipped in last year too, giving Van Hollen $254,100 for his primary against Edwards.

Now, the 2 questions, he answered while I was putting on my socks. The anchor asked him if he is supporting Bernie's Medicare-For-All bill and he used every focus group-tested weasel word to avoid an honest answer. Slimy politicians are the reason why people absolutely despise career politicians. The closest he came to explaining his position was to assure MSNBC viewers that there would be "other proposals." He's so awful, it's no wonder Schumer picked him to run the DSCC and it's no wonder the DSCC's two first candidates are absolutely execrable conservative shiotheads from the House, Blue Dog Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) and worthless waste-of-a-seat Jacky Rosen (NV), each of whom is more comfortable voting with the GOP than with progressives.

Then she put up a chart from a new poll that shows the millennials hate the GOP but don't much like the Democratic Party either and asked him why, with the Democrats having put so much energy into courting millennials, they have failed to get that demographic to think of them as anything other than just the lesser of two evils. Clueless as always, Van Hollen started babbling nonsense about taking the battle to the campuses. He literally started talking about the geography about where out-of-touch, corrupt Beltway politicians could physically find millennials. It made me want to throw up-- and I hadn't even had breakfast yet.

People like Schumer and Van Hollen can't win in 2018. They can only be there if the Republicans self-destruct enough so that the lesser of two evils party is the only choice for distraught voters who may be forced to vote for unbelievable garbage candidates like Sinema and Rosen. Van Hollen, of course, is working to derail the Bernie-backing alternative to Rosen in Nevada, Jesse Sbaih. Tonight Jesse told us that "In the past 8 years, Democrats lost over 1,000 state and federal seats. The Democratic Party will continue to lose unless corporate money is rejected. Democrats must start putting the best interests of the people over greedy corporations."

I actually stumbled upon the graphic MSNBC asked Van Hollen to explain. And an analysis of the poll. It starts with a bit of good news for the Democrats: "A majority of millennials, 64 percent, disapprove of Trump's job performance, while 58 percent said they have an unfavorable view of the Republican Party." And then a warning: "Millennials are a critical group for Democrats, and although they feel warmer toward the party than they do the GOP, they don’t feel overwhelmingly positive about either party."

Just 43 percent of millennials have a favorable view of the Democratic Party, and only a slight majority (53 percent) said the party cares about people like them.

Similarly, millennials were more likely to say the Democratic Party cares about people like them than the Republican Party does. Only three in 10 millennials said the Republican Party cares about people like them. Still, nearly half (46 percent) of millennials said they don’t think the Democratic Party cares about them.

In other words, millennials aren’t fully convinced that either party best represents their interests.

Political uncertainty among millennials is also clear in terms of 2018 congressional election preference-- 41 percent of all millennials said they’re not sure if they will vote Democratic or Republican in the midterms next year. Another 37 percent said they plan to vote for the Democrat, and only 21 percent said they plan to vote for the Republican.

...[N]either party has convinced a majority of white millennials that their policies are sufficiently concerned with people like them-- 60 percent of white millennials said the GOP doesn’t care about people like them, and 55 percent said the Democratic Party doesn’t care about people like them.

Overall, a third of millennials (33 percent) said that neither party cares about people like them-- a significant portion of young adults when considering the growth of the millennial electorate.

Hillary, During The Primaries: "I don't Understand What's Happening In The Country"

I haven't read Jonathan Allen's and Amie Parnes' book, Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign and I can't imagine a circumstance where I ever would. Terrible candidate, half the country had learned to loath loses to semi-human baboon... not something I want to spend my precious time reading about it. The DailyBeast pointed out that the book is "based on interviews with more than 100 unnamed sources from within Clinton’s orbit-- each account given under the condition that the tales would be told only after the final ballot was counted-- the 480-page report relays the behind-the-scenes drama behind many of the Clinton campaign’s most embarrassing blunders and unforced errors. More damning than any anecdote of petty infighting or a deadly devotion to data, however, is the book’s verdict on the main reason for Clinton’s loss: Clinton herself." Arrogant Clintonian denialism played an outsized role in the debacle and, well... I don't need a book to tell me that.

Despite many obstacles beyond her control-- including a bitter primary opponent who refused to concede long after all routes to the nomination had been exhausted, a Republican rival whose personal attacks shattered all established standards of decency, and a Kremlin-orchestrated operation to thwart her campaign and delegitimize her incipient administration-- Clinton’s race, Allen and Parnes report, was winnable.

But despite its buckets of money, its deep bench of supporters and surrogates, a general-election opponent in a constant state of implosion, and the imprimatur of a popular sitting president, Clinton’s campaign couldn’t overcome its biggest obstacle. “The variable she couldn’t change,” Allen and Parnes write, “was the candidate.”

Maybe it goes too far to suggest that anyone who depends on the vultures at EMILY's List is probably doomed but "part of the problem, Shattered implies, was Clinton’s Cersei Lannister-like reliance on a cadre of informal 'advisers' who offered counsel that was often equal parts sage and self-serving, in the hopes of maintaining close relations with the Clinton political dynasty-- or, better yet, undercutting a rival for her attention. That same dynamic bled into the campaign apparatus, Allen and Parnes write, hampering efforts from speechwriting to debate prep as staffers feared undercutting 'protected' members of the Hillaryland old guard. The candidate’s tendency to 'favor loyalty over competence' turned the campaign into a popularity contest. 'There’s one goal here: to win the fucking election for president,' said one speechwriting source. 'It’s like, do you want to win the goddamn thing or are we in junior high school again?'" It's much easier to blame the misogyny.



A little aside: the book also exposes Chris Van Hollen for what he is, having "urged unions to not aggressively turn out the state's African American vote because it would help his Democratic primary opponent," Donna Edwards. Since Hillary was benefitting from African-American votes in her own primary, she flipped out when she heard about the arrangement. "Who gives a fuck about Chris Van Hollen?" Clinton asked one of her aides after a campaign event in Baltimore, according to the book. "What the fuck are we going to do to fix this?" Today Van Hollen is not just in the Senate, but Schumer's vile pick to head the DSCC.

My old friend Bruce Mulkey wrote an essay, A New Beginning For The Democratic Party? that is far more instructive than the book about Hillary's collapse. He writes for us regularly but you can find his work far more regularly at brucemulkey.com. For those who would rather look forward than dwell on a past many of us saw spiraling downward from miles away, there's this:

I’m a registered Democrat. I’ve always voted for the Democratic presidential candidate, well, except the two elections earlier in my life when I voted for a third-party candidate. As some say, the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree. My parents, Mack and Sue Mulkey, were progressive southern Democrats who fervently supported Tennessee’s liberal senators Al Gore, Sr. and Estes Kefauver in the 1950s and 60s. And throughout their lives they voted for every Democratic presidential candidate who ran-- from FDR to Barack Obama.

After the debacle of 2016, however, I was seriously considering changing my voter registration from Democrat to Unaffiliated. The reason? I believe that, over the past several decades, the Democratic establishment has tilted to the right of center and that they’ve become more interested is serving their big donors than the working people of this nation. As I wrote in an earlier essay:

A 2014 Princeton study that reviewed more than twenty years of data (that includes measures of the key variables for 1,779 policy issues) indicates that political leaders of both major political parties listen to the economic elites, business interests, and people who can afford lobbyists (all entities that fund their re-election campaigns) rather than the citizens who elected them. According to the study:

The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.

We live in an oligarchy, a country run by the economic elite. No matter how popular a measure might be with the bottom ninety-percent of income earners in America, no matter which party holds the presidency or a majority in Congress, issues that are popular with the public—such as federally-funded healthcare insurance for all Americans, regulating the prices of life-saving drugs, job creation, and effectively dealing with global warming, among others—never see the light of day. Our government apparently doesn’t care what you think. Not unless you are willing to contribute excessive amounts of money to a politician’s campaign, an action that is tantamount to legalized bribery.

Just as I was making plans to change from Democrat to Unaffiliated, I got wind of a group called Our Revolution, an offshoot of Bernie Sanders’ campaign for president that claimed they wanted to shift the Democratic Party toward more influence from the grassroots and less from the party professionals. The group’s upcoming meeting was at Odyssey Community School, only a half-mile from my home, so I walked over to check it out. I anticipated twenty or thirty of the usual suspects, and a disorganized gathering that would come to little or nothing. To my surprise, there were more than 150 enthusiastic participants there, some of whom I knew, many I did not. The founder of the group, Matt Coffay, led a lively, well-organized session. Coffay, youthful, spirited, and well-informed, presented an inspiring and clear message: Given that there’s no real path for a third party, we must work within the Democratic Party to reshape it from the bottom up and make it more representative of the working people of this nation. And we would begin at the precinct level of the Buncombe County Democratic Party.

As a result of press releases to local media, e-newsletters, texts, Facebook posts, and word of mouth, at the next meeting on February 18, it was standing room only for the meeting at Rainbow Community Center in west Asheville. Four hundred motivated people received practical information about how the state Democratic Party worked, the importance of attending the upcoming county precinct meetings, and logistical info regarding when and where the precinct meetings would take place. Then, the participants broke into their individual precincts to strategize for the February 25 precinct meetings.

On February 25, many Democratic precincts across Buncombe County reported record turnouts, in some cases ten times the usual attendance. Rather than the predictable handful of graying activists, in some cases approximately eighty percent of attendees said it was their first time at a precinct meeting, and fifty percent of those said that they were there because of the efforts of Our Revolution Asheville. Many of the newcomers were elected precinct officers and chosen as delegates to the county convention on April 8. While deep concern about the fate of our nation during the Trump presidency drove the majority of the new participants into action, they would likely not have known their way into the process without Our Revolution.

Needless to say, I am re-energized and re-engaged in Democratic Party, despite the recent selection of an establishment favorite as DNC chair. It’s exciting to realize that this grassroots activity is taking place in counties across North Carolina and in states across the nation-- California, Washington, Hawaii, Nebraska, Florida, and Michigan. I believe a new day is coming for the Democratic Party, a day in which we will eliminate corporate money, disavow the influence of the wealthy elite, retire the moribund party establishment, and again become the party of the people.

With Schumer And Van Hollen In Charge Of The 2018 Senate Races, It's Safe To Count On Disaster

Friday, David Sirota contrasted the lies Trump told on the campaign trail about bringing down the price of pharmaceuticals with his actions since moving into the Oval Office.

A week before his inauguration, Donald Trump said that when it came to drug prices, pharmaceutical companies were “getting away with murder”-- and he pledged to take decisive action to reduce the rising cost of medicine. Six weeks into his presidency, though, his government has moved to help drug companies block shareholder initiatives designed to help bring more scrutiny to drug price increases.

With drug prices skyrocketing in the United States, investor groups last year filed shareholder resolutions with 13 drug companies that-- if passed-- would force their boards to more meticulously detail their price increases for major medicines, and to provide “the rationale and criteria used for these price increases.” Days after Trump met with pharmaceutical industry CEOs at the White House, the Securities and Exchange Commission endorsed drug companies’ moves to block the resolutions from being voted on by shareholders at their annual meetings. The SEC move followed Trump promoting Republican SEC commissioner Michael Piwowar to serve as acting chairman of the agency.

...The SEC has not always helped drug companies squelch such shareholder initiatives: Under the leadership of President Obama’s appointees in 2015, the agency told Gilead Sciences and Vertex Pharmaceuticals that the companies were obligated to let shareholders vote on a separate proposal that would have forced the companies to disclose the risks they face from their pricing policies. The companies’ shareholders ultimately voted down the measures.

This cycle looks really bad for the Democrats. It goes beyond former DSCC executive director-- now lobbyist-- Tom Lopach running around and telling everyone what a micro-manager/always wrong asshole Schumer is. Even in Trump keeps on the self destructive track he's on for the next 22 months (likely) and even if McConnell and Ryan are viewed as his loyal henchmen (likely) and even if the Democrats win more than the 24 seats in the House they need to win power and dump Ryan (likely), the 2018 Senate elections are stacked up very badly for the Democrats. Remember, last cycle they were stacked out perfectly for the Democrats who would have had to make every mistake in the book to not win the majority. Lopach and many others say that's exactly what Schumer did-- every mistake in the book. By handpicking unelectable corrupt conservative candidates, Schumer lost Pennsylvania (Katie McGinty), Florida (Patrick Murphy), Ohio (Rob Portman), Arizona (Ann Kirkpatrick) and Iowa (Patty Judge). Lopach insists it was completely Schumer's fault that the Democrats lost Missouri as well and that he was overwhelmingly complicit in the defeat in Wisconsin to boot, two even I would't have blamed him for. The Democrats probably never had any real shot to win Indiana but that didn't prevent Schumer from wasting $7,833,646 of DSCC money plus another $5,083,309 in Senate Majority PAC money to try to elect his scumbag lobbyist conservative crony (Evan Bayh). Almost $13 million just flushed down the ole toilet for no reason at all (as Bayh wound up with a paltry 42.4% of the vote).

Anyway, excuse the tangent; what I was getting at was that Schumer wrecked the perfect set-up for Democrats. How's he likely to do with the toughest possible hand the Democrats could have been dealt. Let's forget for a minute that they have to play serious defense in 9 states Trump won (Indiana, Montana, West Virginia Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, Missouri, Ohio and Michigan) as well as serious defense in Virginia, Maine and Minnesota and that they have a corrupt, sleazy incumbent in New Jersey (Menendez) who could be indicted or on trial around election time. The only natural opportunities are in Nevada, where Hillary won but where the Democrats don't have a candidate and will probably run the worst imaginable cowardly and worthless conservative, freshman Jacky Rosen, who barely scraped by in an open seat in November, winning 146,653 (47.2%) to 142,726 (46.0%). Rosen has gone on since then to distinguish herself as one of the worst Democrats in Congress, not just an ignorant and ineffectual backbencher, but with a voting record that brought her an "F" from ProgressivePunch low enough to make her someone Ryan and McCarthy know they can completely count on when they need fake-Democrats to help make their toxic agenda appear bipartisan. In a sane world, Democrats would be thinking about to get her to retire, not about how to move her into the only good shot the Democrats have on the board to replace a GOP incumbent. The other state where conventional wisdom says there's a chance is Arizona, where the GOP is in turmoil because Trump hates Jeff Flake, the incumbent, and will run a primary opponent against him, while Democrats, at least theoretically, keep registering more and more Hispanics, Asians and young voters.

Then there's the outside chance that Texans just can't stand Ted Cruz enough to elect El Paso Congressman Beto O'Rourke instead. The likelihood isn't great but the Democrats would have to hold every single at risk seat and win Nevada, Arizona and Texas to win back the Senate. Is it doable? Not with Schumer's hands all over everything.

In fact, the very first thing did was find a new DSCC chair, the worst possible loser you can ever think of, Chris Van Hollen, a numbskull from Maryland who presided over the loss of more Democratic House seats as DCCC chair than anyone who still draws breathe. And Schemer had to lure him into it with a seat on the Senate Appropriations Committee! He bribed the least qualified Senate Democrat-- a man with "loser" imprinted onto his political DNA-- to run the 2018 campaign! It;s almost beyond comprehension. Nick Fouriezos gave it the ole college try today, writing for Oxy.com.

Van Hollen told him that economic opportunity-- "revitalizing the ports and other infrastructure projects as part of the solution to the poverty, unemployment and crime"-- is "an important part of the strategy." I hope it took more than that to win Van Hollen-- "full of optimistic plugs for bipartisanship"-- the job. "[L]et’s just 'get everybody around the table,' he says. It’s part of his larger vision of the Democratic Party, at a time when party soul-searching seems to be at an all-time high. 'We need a big table,' he says, 'but we need to focus on kitchen-table issues.'" And yes, the likelihood is that the Democrats won't win back the Senate or even narrow the gap, but that between Schumer and Van Hollen the narrow gap will become a prohibitive chasm for 2020.

From his shimmering new office in the Hart Senate Office Building, still unadorned after a recent move up from the basement, Van Hollen lays out his operating philosophy for Democrats: Beyond resisting the “ugly parts” of the Trump agenda, which he says includes the immigration ban and eliminating the Affordable Care Act, they need to advance a vision. “Part of that is blowing the whistle on the fact Trump talks a populist game, but at the end of the day he’s delivering for his 1 percent.”

It’s here where the tug-and-pull personality of Van Hollen most shows, between truly liberal positions and yet a desire to find commonalities. He suggests a willingness to reform the ACA but not repeal it, to lead on the $1 trillion infrastructure investment Trump spoke about on the campaign and to consider some Republican financial efforts, including some variation of lowering taxes. Van Hollen “doesn’t appear ready to support corporate tax reform, which most fair-minded Democrats seem prepared to do,” says Maryland GOP chair Dirk Haire. For his part, Van Hollen says that’s a mischaracterization, citing a willingness to lessen part of the overseas corporate tax but also complaining about how Republicans “talk a good game about reducing the deficit but refuse to close a single tax break in order to do it.”

...[W]hile Trump espouses a return to American nativism, Van Hollen sees an opportunity to raise the light of a global beacon-- a similar prognosis, but a separate prescription. For sure, his policies will seem Sisyphean in a Republican Senate, and the path to Democratic wins in 2018 seems riddled with potholes. But Van Hollen says he isn’t afraid of the challenge: “If you’re not pushing even at times when there seems no hope, then you’re never going to break down the door.”

The Senate Democrats elected Schumer to be their leader. They deserve the misery-- including the lame new DSCC chair-- he's bringing them. America doesn't. The ActBlue thermometer on the right is for progressive senators up for reelection in 2018-- because it's just way to important to leave it to losers like Chuck Schumer and Chris Van Hollen.

The Man Who Gave The House To The GOP Is Tasked With Basically Doing The Same For The Senate In 2018

I have to give credit to Schumer for firing the spectacularly failed DSCC chairman, his 2016 sock-puppet Jon Tester. I can't remember the DSCC ever doing worse in terms of money spent compared to contests lost. This should have been a cycle the Democrats won back the Senate and took at least 6 seats. Instead they won a measly two, New Hampshire and Illinois. These are the ones they lost and how much they spent (DSCC + Senate Majority PAC, not including allied groups):

• McGinty (PA)- $32,883,006
• Hassan (NH)- 29,048,374
• Ross (NC)- $16,142,247
• Bayh (IN) $13,723,677
• Strickland (OH)- $9,690,671
• Kander (MO)- $8,459,872
• Feingold (WI)- $4,668,343
• Murphy (FL)- $4,187,566

After inserting a disliked corporate shill, Patty Judge, into the Iowa race-- which might have been won by respected state Senator Rob Hogg had Schumer and Tester not interfered-- the DSCC immediately withdrew from Iowa leaving Grassley to clobber Judge. They spent a grand total of $577 on her. They also quickly withdrew from Arizona after recruiting conservative corporate shill Ann Kirkpatrick, having spent a total of $40,674. Having inserted conservative losers in Florida and Ohio, they stopped spending in those two states as well, leaving both of their hapless candidates to suffer ignominious defeats. Murphy only won 44.3% of the vote, considerably below Clinton's 47.8% and Strickland was the embarrassment of the cycle-- albeit completely predictable-- losing with just 36.9% of the vote, far under-performing Clinton's 43.5%. I can't say if Grayson would have beaten Rubio in Florida or Sittenfeld would have bested Portman in Ohio, but each would have done much better than the Schumercrat that was whisked through the primary. A Gravis poll recently showed that had Schumer not forced the tally flawed McGinty into the race, Joe Sestak would have won Pennsylvania.

Schumer was more at fault than Tester who was, basically, just a sad-sack order-taker. But he couldn't exactly hold himself accountable, so he just pushed Tester aside and announced Friday that the next DSCC head would be Maryland freshman Chris Van Hollen, best known for being the most dismally failed DCCC chairman in contemporary history. In the run-up to the 2010 congressional midterms, Van Hollen and his lieutenants told Democrats to play Republican-lite. And did they ever. A huge Democratic majority offered very little to ordinary voters and watered-down every piece of useful legislation progressives offered. These are the Democrats who Van Hollen and his DCCC enthusiastically encouraged to vote with the GOP... and who were abandoned by Democratic voters are got swamped in the midterms-- or sensed what was about to happen and retired first:

• Bobby Bright (AL)
• Marion Berry (AR)
• Vic Snyder (AR)
• Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ)
• Harry Mitchell (AZ)
• John Salazar (CO)
• Betsy Markey (CO)
• Allen Boyd (FL)
• Suzanne Kosmas (FL)
• Ron Klein (FL)
• Jim Marshall (GA)
• Walter Minnick (ID)
• Melissa Bean (IL)
• Debbie Halvoson (IL)
• Bill Foster (IL)
• Baron Hill (IN)
• Dennis Moore (KS)
• Frank Kratovil (MD)
• Bart Stupak (MI)
• Travis Childers (MS)
• Gene Taylor (MS)
• Ike Skelton (MO)
• John Adler (NJ)
• Harry Teague (NM)
• Michael McMahon (NY)
• Scott Murphy (NY)
• Mike Acuri (NY)
• Dan Maffei (NY)
• Bob Etheridge (NC)
• Earl Pomeroy (ND)
• Steve Driehaus (OH)
• Charlie Wilson (OH)
• John Boccieri (OH)
• Zack Space (OH)
• Kathy Dahlkemper (PA)
• Patrick Murphy (PA)
• Chris Carney (PA)
• Paul Kanjorski (PA)
• John Spratt (SC)
• Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (SD)
• Lincoln Davis (TN)
• Bart Gordon (TN)
• John Tanner (TN)
• Glenn Nye (VA)
• Tom Periello (VA)
• Rick Boucher (VA)
• Brain Baird (WA)
• Alan Mollohan (WV)- lost primary

In all, Van Hollen lost an unprecedented 63 House seats on that election day-- far more than those conservatives listed above. There's been a redistricting since then so it's hard to be precise about this but only 3 of those 47 districts Van Hollen lost are back in Democratic hands today. So when Schumer told the media that "Chris Van Hollen was our first choice for DSCC chairman because of his talents, his work ethic, and his experience," people has to stifle an impulse to laugh out loud. "He has the confidence of our caucus and will do a great job for our candidates running in 2018," Schumer continued while his caucus collectively shuddered. "The map is tough for Democrats, but I have no doubt that Senator-elect Van Hollen is up to the task." He's not-- and vulnerable Democrats like Claire McCaskill (MO), Joe Donnelly (IN), Tammy Baldwin (OH), Heidi Heitkamp (ND), Bob Casey (PA), Bill Nelson (FL), Debbie Stabenow (MI) and Sherrod Brown (OH) probably realize that. One of the top Senate staffers who I asked if he thought Schumer was on psychedelic drugs when he made the announcement answered this way:

Van Hollen in 2010: "Yes, we lost 63 seats, but at least we didn’t lose 106."

Van Hollen in 2018: "Yes, we lost 10 seats, but at least we didn’t lose 106.  Oh, wait, we only had 48 to start with.  Make that 48."

Donna Edwards And The CBC

Although the Congressional Black Caucus's 501 (c)(4) has some CBC members on it, the board is primarily a gaggle of sleazy Beltway corporate lobbyists and consultants, not quite as bad as the notorious CBC PAC board, but not on the side of the angels by any stretch of any imagination. Conservative Democrat Angela Rye is on both boards. Wednesday morning the Bernie-hating Rye (of Impact Strategies), blasted "white progressives" on her Twitter account for pointing out that the CBC is a virtual vacuum cleaner for bribes from many of the worst corporate interests in Washington. According to investigative reporter lee Fang, she was responding to Black Lives Matter calling the CBC out for too cozy a relationship with Big Tobacco, although not even Rye could actually think someone is going to equate Black Lives Matter with the "white progressives" she hates with such a passion.

By February, political activists in the black community-- like Black Lives Matter-- were already denouncing the CBC for selling out to the Establishment by tacitly backing Chris Van Hollen's Maryland Senate race against CBC member Donna Edwards. The hate-filled Rye doesn't just hate Bernie and white progressives, she harbors an intense antipathy towards Donna Edwards and has worked with the corrupt Al Wynn to undermine Edwards at every opportunity. Needless to say corporate shills like Rye weren't comfortable reading this from Color of Change:

A Washington, DC Political Action Committee (PAC) that claims to speak for Black people but is really a mouthpiece for corporate power recently made two very big announcements that could impact important upcoming elections. Two weeks ago, the Congressional Black Caucus PAC, with it's lobbyist-dominated Board of Directors, made a high-profile endorsement of Hilary Clinton and quietly decided not to endorse, fellow CBC member, Rep. Donna Edwards' historic bid to become only the second Black woman to be elected to the Senate.


The lobbyists sitting on the CBC PAC’s board represent the worst of the worst-- companies that are notorious in the mistreatment and exploitation of Black people. The depth of corporate influence over the CBC PAC is so troubling because its endorsements carry the name of the Congressional Black Caucus, trading off a name that is wrapped in the moral authority of the civil rights movement. For hours, media incorrectly reported that the Congressional Black Caucus and not the CBC PAC endorsed Secretary Hillary Clinton for President. Meanwhile, the CBC PAC's corporate board members and donors who represent private prisons, big tobacco and the anti-worker National Restaurant Association were nowhere to be seen. This is wrong and the CBC must act to stop it now.


...The day following the endorsement in the Presidential race, Politico reported that the CBC PAC would not be endorsing Rep. Donna Edwards, a progressive hero, CBC member, and one of two Black women candidates in a competitive primary vying to become only the second Black woman ever elected to the U.S. Senate. According to reports, the decision was largely driven by CBC PAC board member, Al Wynn, the Congressman-turned-lobbyist who lost his seat to Edwards in 2008. Black voters ousted Wynn for his corporate ties back in 2008 but thanks to the corporate board of the CBC PAC, he is still speaking for Black people. If corporate lobbyists on the CBC PAC's board can decide to withhold support from someone like Rep. Edwards, why are they being allowed to operate under the banner of the Congressional Black Caucus?


Bought & Bossed


Although the Koch Brothers are absent, the lobbyists sitting on the CBC PAC’s board represent the worst of the worst-- companies that are notorious in the mistreatment and exploitation of Black people. As The Intercept reported:

Members of the CBC PAC board include Daron Watts, a lobbyist for Purdue Pharma, the maker of the highly addictive opioid OxyContin; Mike Mckay and Chaka Burgess, both lobbyists for Navient, the student loan giant that was spun off of Sallie Mae; former Rep. Albert Wynn, D-Md., a lobbyist who represents a range of clients, including work last year on behalf of Lorillard Tobacco, the maker of Newport cigarettes; and William A. Kirk, who lobbies for a cigar industry trade group on a range of tobacco regulations.


And a significant percentage of the $7,000 raised this cycle by the CBC PAC from individuals was donated by white lobbyists, including Vic Fazio, who represents Philip Morris and served for years as a lobbyist to Corrections Corporation of America, and David Adams, a former Clinton aide who now lobbies for Wal-Mart, the largest gun distributor in America.

Ironically, both Democrat Presidential candidates have shunned contributions from private prison lobbyists, while the CBC PAC remains silent about its relationship with them. The CBC PAC has taken thousands of dollars from Akin Gump, the lobbying firm that has made millions of dollars lobbying to protect their private prison client, Corrections Corporation of America over the last several years. Black caucus members should be leading, not following the disastrous trend towards more corporate control over government.


In addition, the CBC PAC has taken in even larger amounts directly from the Political Action Committees of harmful companies and industries. Anti-worker groups like the National Restaurant Association have given thousands to CBC PAC while they have worked to keep worker wages and benefits at a minimum. Other corporate donors include pay day loans company Cash America, Big Tobacco front group PURO PAC, and the telecommunications companies that worked to bring an end to an open and free internet.


As if it wasn’t bad enough to use the brand of the CBC as a front for corporate lobbyists, the CBC PAC board members used the event of their Presidential endorsement to deride young Black voters who may favor a different candidate. On a stage bought and paid for by some of the biggest corporations in America, Rep. G.K. Butterfield painted a picture of naïve and uninformed voters claiming “many of them are inexperienced and have not gone through a presidential election cycle before." Young Black voters were a decisive factor in securing victory for President Obama in both of his elections but the CBC PAC would rather criticize young people than their own corporate benefactors.


We saw this type of targeted corporate influence during the net neutrality debate, with big telecom lobbyists lining up to cut checks to Black leaders willing to destroy the open Internet. In fact many of the Black elected officials who opposed net neutrality also sit on the board of the PAC alongside bad corporations. This form of “civil rights washing”-- of wrapping dangerous policies in a cloak of support from Black gatekeepers-- cannot be trusted or lifted up as the voice of Black people.


... This isn’t about Hillary or Bernie, although they both have improved their stances on racial justice issues under pressure from the Black community and our allies, they still have room to grow. This is about changing the CBC PAC to stop it from representing itself as the voice of Black communities when it is dominated by some of the worst corporations for Black people.

Rachel Bade's Politico piece about Donna meeting with CBC members last week only scratches the surface of the tension between principled and dedicated legislators like Edwards who are in it to serve their constituents, and the careerist hacks who have very different priorities.

Only four of the 46 CBC members-- Reps. Gwen Moore of Wisconsin, Lacy Clay of Missouri, Robin Kelly of Illinois and Hank Johnson of Georgia-- are backing Edwards over Van Hollen, an unusually small number for a group known for standing by fellow African-American lawmakers. Meanwhile, Van Hollen has been making hay over his growing number of endorsements from black political leaders in Maryland, including some in Edwards’ district, though he has yet to be endorsed by a CBC member.

Edwards, who won her House seat by defeating Al Wynn, a popular member of the CBC, in a Democratic primary in 2008, has had a strained relationship with many black lawmakers from the start. But with she and Van Hollen running nearly neck-and-neck in a primary that many expected Van Hollen to win easily, Edwards has been reaching out over the past two weeks to members of the CBC to ask why they’re not backing her bid to be only the second black woman elected to the U.S. Senate. She’s also pressed her case with lawmakers at the Democratic Club restaurant, where members often eat.

Sources close to the CBC and lawmakers familiar with the conversations said some of Edwards’ CBC colleagues responded to her in frank terms. Members of the CBC have long considered her abrasive and said she’s not an easy colleague to work with.

“She has not developed good relationships with the members of the CBC, quite frankly,” said a source familiar with the CBC. “A lot of people find her difficult.”

Yes, people who want to get something done for the downtrodden and disadvantaged and who refuse to be bought by the "generous" corporate lobbyists who are as much the mainstay of the CBC as they are they mainstay of the New Dems and Blue Dogs, are always considered "difficult" by the Beltway elites who just want to see the pay-off rolling in smoothly. There is no greater sin in that world than successfully challenging a corrupt member who brought goodies to the table the way Al Wynn did-- and, now one of Washington's slimiest lobbyists-- still does. The corrupt conservatives who dominate the CBC have never forgiven Donna for ending his congressional career-- and for challenging him on a package of issues that could be used against most of them.

Angela Rye

True that only 4 CBC members endorsed Donna, but we found over a dozen who had contributed to her campaign, including stalwart progressives Barbara Lee (CA), Bonnie Watson Coleman (NJ) and Yvette Clarke (NY). But so did Jim Clyburn (SC), CBC Chair G.K. Butterfield (NC), Marcia Fudge (OH), Joyce Beatty (OH), Sanford Bishop (GA), Corrine Brown (FL), Hank Johnson (GA), Sheila Jackson Lee (TX), Bennie Thompson (MS), Cedric Richmond (LA), Robin Kelly (IL), Eleanor Norton Holmes (DC), Danny Davis (IL), Lacy Clay (MO) and Gwen Moore (WI). Gwen's endorsement flew in the face of the bullshit Rye, Wynn and the other corruptionist are spreading about her on Van Hollen's behalf. "I am proud to endorse my friend and colleague Donna Edwards for the United States Senate in Maryland. Over the years, I’ve worked closely with Donna to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, tackle income inequality, and stand up to the special interests that try to dismantle the middle class and hurt our most vulnerable. I know when Donna steps into the halls of the United States Senate, she’ll continue the fight to make sure women receive equal pay for equal work and that we protect the victims of domestic abuse, not the aggressors."

Edwards’ defenders, however, say her fellow CBC members should be rallying around a black woman who stands a decent chance of reaching the Senate, where only one Democrat-- New Jersey’s Cory Booker-- is African-American. They say her fellow House members are punishing her for failing to schmooze with CBC members on a regular basis-- and because Van Hollen is known to be close to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

“Donna is about taking care of the business of governing-- and she is not particularly focused on backslapping and hobnobbing with everyone,” said Johnson. “Some members socialize, are very warm toward each other, play together, drink together and sit together on the floor-- and that’s fine. There are others who, for whatever reason, have a different trajectory, and I respect Donna for just being the person and representative that she is.”

Tuesday's the day. Van Hollen's bullying and avalanche of establishment money have worked to bolster his polling. If you know anyone in Maryland, please urge them to get out and vote for Donna Tuesday. The whole country needs her in the Senate. No one needs another cardboard cutout like Chris Van Hollen in the Senate or anywhere else.

Conservatives Are Still Working Across The Aisle To Wreck Social Security

As the Republican Party has, over the past 3 decades moved further and further right, a certain kind of conservative Democrat unenamored of a progressive world view, has moved in into to fill the void on the center-right that the GOP has abandoned for their more and more commonplace, Hate Talk Radio-driven extremism. Conservatives have always loathed Social Security and have tried to stop it and undermine it since it was first proposed. Ayn Rand Republicans like Paul Ryan are convinced from their adolescent adventures with her books that Social Security and other social safety net programs make Americans weaker and cost their wealthy political financiers too much in taxes. And Republicans have whined for decades that Democrats have used Social Security as a cudgel against them every time an election rolled around. Unfortunately, now that Blue Dogs, the DLC, Third Way and the Wall Street owned-and-operated New Dems has sullied the Democratic brand, voters are confused about which party stands for what.

Most, but not all, Democrats still abhor moving away from Social Security and conservative establishment Democrats who have tried doing it have gotten burned. Yesterday, at HuffPo, Daniel Marans wrote that conservative Dems who have backed Republican proposals to cut Social Security are being treated the way Democrats have long treated Republicans. It's stung corrupt establishment types like Patrick Murphy and Chris Van Hollen, both of whom have advocated for cuts to benefits. Murphy and Von Hollen, as well as other conservaDems have tried to dial back their support for Simpson Bowles and its proposals to wreck Social Security. Clinton has been very careful to pretend she's progressive on issues like Social Security while she's in a fierce primary battle with one of Congress' staunchest advocates for expanding it. But some incumbents from her wing of the party are finding themselves easy targets for progressives appealing to Democratic primary voters. Marans dealt mostly with Senate races, but this is playing out in the House primary battles as well.

Democratic Senate candidates in several key races are attacking their opponents for being weak on Social Security. Only this time their opponents are not Republicans-- they are Democrats in contentious primaries across the country.

Social Security is an issue of interest to voters in both parties that could play a role in this year’s elections.

But it is also a key front in a war for the soul of the Democratic Party in which the populist, progressive wing is increasingly on the march against the party’s business-friendly elite. And the popularity in this year’s primary season of running against even the slightest openness to Social Security cuts is the latest sign that the former group, sometimes nicknamed the Elizabeth Warren wing, is ascendant.

The campaign of California Senate candidate and state Attorney General Kamala Harris (D) is hinting it will soon play the Social Security card in earnest against her top opponent, Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.).

Harris’ campaign points to remarks by Sanchez expressing support for a “grand bargain” to reduce the debt modeled on the recommendations of the Bowles-Simpson commission, which was appointed by President Barack Obama. Major cuts to Social Security benefits, including raising the retirement age and cutting the cost-of-living adjustment, were among the bipartisan commission’s most controversial proposals.

“I mean, the reality is we do have to take a look at everything,” Sanchez told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly in October 2013, “as Simpson-Bowles did in their report and said, ‘Listen, you have got to put everything on the table-- entitlements, defense, everything else.’”

Sanchez added that she is “a member of the Blue Dog Coalition, that’s Democratic fiscal conservatives. And we endorse the Bowles-Simpson plan.”

Sanchez stands by her openness to broker a deal that includes Social Security cuts.

New Dems are less willing to publicly admit they're on the same page, but they are-- and that includes some of the most right-wing Democrats in the House, like Republican-lite Californians Ami Bera, Jim Costa and Scott Peters, each of whom was denied an endorsement by the California Labor Federation last week, as well as Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY) and, of course, Patrick Murphy (FL). Murphy's position on Social Security-- he's a rich spoiled Republican who recently decided to pretend to be a Democrat-- is typical of the New Dems. Watch:



"Grayson is pinning his hopes on a record of staunch opposition to Social Security cuts," wrote Marans, "and support for benefits expansion. Grayson told Politico Pro that Murphy became active as a freshman in 2013 in budget compromise efforts that would have cut Social Security." Murphy, panic-stricken, denies it and refuses to debate Grayson for exactly that reason.

Similarly Chris Van Hollen has also signaled he's willing to compromise away-- Republican style-- Social Security benefits the same way Murphy has. His progressive primary opponent, Rep. Donna Edwards, has voted against doing any such thing and her very first TV ad in the Senate race has been to remind Maryland voters that Van Hollen is no more their friend than Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell are, each of whose stated positions-- to "save" Social Security by cutting benefits-- are identical to Van Hollen's (and Murphy's).

A Pew study released on March 31 found that opposition to Social Security cuts is the only position shared by a majority of the supporters of all of the presidential candidates in both parties.

So when liberal groups first began to mobilize against cuts in the Bowles-Simpson era, they found fertile ground for changing the policy conversation. Progressives argued that Social Security should actually be expanded to address a growing retirement income deficit.

Elizabeth Warren’s impassioned November 2013 speech embracing benefits expansion became a turning point that helped move the idea into the mainstream. The New York Times editorial board endorsed Social Security expansion in January. And both Democratic presidential candidates have pledged to increase benefits, not cut them.

Alex Lawson, executive director of Social Security Works, one of the groups that led the charge to make Social Security expansion a progressive priority, called the era when Democrats flirted with bipartisan deals to cut the program an “aberration.”

Democratic Senate candidates’ punishment of opponents who were part of those efforts in any way is a vindication of the political, as well as the “obvious policy and moral” argument Social Security Works has made since 2010, according to Lawson.

Lawson said putting a political price on past support for Bowles-Simpson “is not an ideological purity thing. This is about millions of Americans somehow getting by on benefits of $14, $15, $16,000 a year and elected officials thinking they can cut benefits.”

The founder of Lawson's outfit, SocialSecurityWorks is Eric Kingson, who is running for a Syracuse-based upstate New York congressional seat held by anti-Social Security Republican-- a would-be privatizer-- John Katko. Eric also has two plodding Democratic establishment primary opponents who are versions of Van Hollen and Murphy. Kingson is in no mood to compromise away the earned benefits of working men and women in need of the social safety net. In explaining what motivated his run for Congress, he told us, "No question, I want to keep fighting powerful interest groups advocating cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, when the average benefit of today’s retirees is just $16,000, and when these benefits need to be expanded, not cut.  I want to continue the work of blocking cuts and laying the foundation for expanding Social Security as an instrument of social justice... [D]don’t believe the 'chattering class' intonations about not being able to afford Social Security, that it is going broke. Social Security has three streams of income, two of them ongoing no matter what-- contributions from the earnings of workers and income from treating some Social Security benefits as taxable. It’s an extraordinary efficient system. Less than 1% of its expenditures go toward paying for its administration (hmm… imagine what percentages Wall Street and financial managers would take if they could get their hands on our Social Security!). Today’s Social Security expenditures represent only 5.1% of GDP; and will be roughly 6.2% of GDP at the height of the retirement of baby boomers in 2035 and about the same until the end of the century. As a growing number of Democrats propose, if Congress passed legislation requiring millionaires and billionaires to make the same payroll contribution of 6.2% on all their earnings (just like everyone earning under $118,500 do today), roughly three-quarters of the projected shortfall would disappear overnight. And there are many other reasonable revenue changes that can and should provide resources for expanding benefits for today’s workers and today’s Social Security beneficiaries."

Eric promises to work for a program of Social Security expansion that includes these 7 point:

• increase monthly Social Security benefits by roughly $100;
• assure that Social Security’s cost-of-living-adjustment fully maintains the purchasing power of benefits;
• strengthen Medicare, including adding dental, hearing and eyesight protections;
• expand home and community services that support people of all ages with severe disabilities and their caregivers;
• lower the age of eligibility for Medicare;
• increase minimum wages to a living wage which will result in more income today and a larger Social Security benefit in the future; and
• add paid family leave to Social Security to support those needing time away from work to care for family members or when sick.

That's very different from what the Blue Dogs, New Dems and Republicans want. Another Blue America-backed candidate on the same page as Eric is fighting the good fight clear across the country from Syracuse. Former Oregon state legislator Dave McTeague is taking on the head of the Blue Dogs, Kurt Schrader who gives idiots like Loretta Sanchez their talking points. Last June the Northwest Labor Press exposed Schrader by reminding Oregonians that two years earlier (2013) Schrader "introduced legislation directing President Obama to follow the unofficial Simpson-Bowles recommendations. The recommendations included cutting Social Security benefits, shifting Medicare costs to beneficiaries, lowering tax rates for the wealthy and corporations, and increasing tax incentives for shipping jobs overseas." Schrader referred to AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka as "a bully" for standing up for working families and retired seniors. Last night McTeague told us that "Social Security is the most important safety net program ever enacted in the United States. It provides a minimal but base level of income for senior and disabled persons, without which millions would be completely destitute. I strongly oppose any cuts and oppose all efforts to 'privatize' the system. I support Sen. Bernie Sander's plan to lift the cap on income taxed for social security purposes. This allows us extend the solvency of Social Security for the next 50 years. With this we will be able to to expand benefits by an average of $65 a month; increase cost-of-living-adjustments; and lift more seniors out of poverty. This will help millions of people and make the underlying taxation for Social Security more progressive."

Alex Lawson from SocialSecurityWorks pointed out yesterday that "Greedy liars on Wall Street have used income inequality to build wealth and power for decades. They have used this wealth and power to attempt to dismantle our Social Security system, Medicare, Medicaid, and any regulations that stand between them and consolidating more power." The DCCC and DSCC oppose all of these candidates and are working furiously to undercut them and bolster the election efforts of the Patrick Murphys, Chris Van Hollens, Kurt Schraders and the others from the Republican-wing of the Democratic Party. Please consider supporting Alan Grayson, Donna Edwards, Dave McTeague, Eric Kingson and the other Social Security expansion supporters on the list of candidates you'll see by clicking on this lovely blue thermometer:

Maryland's Senate Race Demonstrates Exactly Why Primaries Are So Crucial

With all eyes focussed on the primaries in Wisconsin today-- although people should remember there is also a runoff for Milwaukee County Executive between billionaire/fake Dem Chris Abele and progressive champion Chris Larson-- this is also one week from the first day of early voting in Maryland, which has a crucial round of primaries 3 weeks from today. The most important House primaries are for the two seats being vacated by the two contestants for the open Senate seat. MD-08 pits progressive Jamie Raskin against two Big Money conservatives, some beer and wine billionaire and Chris Matthews' lobbyist wife. And MD-04, the seat Donna Edwards is giving up, needs to replace her with a candidate as staunchly progressive-- state legislator Joseline Peña-Melnyk. But the big one in Maryland, of course, is the classic fight-- progressive vs Wall Street-backed establishment-- for the Senate seat, pitting Donna Edwards against Chris Van Hollen. (Blue America has endorsed Donna, Joseline and Jamie and you can contribute to all three campaigns on the same ActBlue page here.)

I wanted to run the web spot above because Van Hollen and his easy-purchased allies have been running up and down the state claiming Donna doesn't care about her constituents. That's just another in the long, ugly list of Van Hollen lies and her constituents know better. Watch the clip.

The polling has been back and forth and always pretty close between the two candidates. Two weeks ago Donna was up by 10. Last week, Van Hollen released his own poll showing him up by 5. This is going to go right down to the wire. And it's one of the most important races in the country-- not if you think all that matters is D vs R, blue vs red. Donna and Van Hollen are both Democrats and either could easily win in November. But DWT readers well know that there is a difference between what is sometimes called the Elizabeth Warren wing of the party and the corporate wing that represents Thomas Frank's "top 10%" or profession class. Frank's explanation of what went wrong with the Democratic Party is a clear definition of Chris Van Hollen. Donna Edwards is the quintessential champion of working families and has been for as long as we've known her, going back years before she ever ran for Congress. Van Hollen is a garden variety Democrat who will bend with whichever wind blows strongest. He's a careerist who stands for nothing at all, except himself. Handed responsibility once before-- when Pelosi made the colossal error of appointing him DCCC chairman-- he promptly lost dozens and dozens of seats due to his own grotesque incompetence, wracked up the worst history of any DCCC chairman since James Rood Doolittle (who became a Republican), and handed the House majority over to John Boehner on a silver platter. And now, always the entitled one, he's back looking for another undeserved promotion!

Don Hazen and Jan Frel, writing for AlterNet and pointing out that, thanks to his Wall Street financiers, Van Hollen is outspending Donna ten to one, term the Maryland Senate race "a referendum on how progressive the Democratic Party will become." In that way, it's like the primary in Florida between progressive champion Alan Grayson and conservative ("ex"-Republican) Wall Street errand boy Patrick Murphy.

This Senate race has taken on national significance because Edwards, if elected, would make history as only the second African American woman ever to serve in the U.S. Senate. She has emerged as the progressive, grassroots candidate with more than 56,000 donors building on her history of knocking off entrenched incumbent Albert Wynn to make it to Congress eight years ago. And she enjoys the support of national groups like Jim and Howard Dean’s Democracy for America, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Maryland’s Working Families Party.

The race for the Senate in Maryland is about something more than the pathetic lack of diversity in the Senate. The clash between Edwards and Von Hollen is being seen as a referendum on how progressive the Democratic Party will become. The New York Times magazine quotes Neil Sroka of Democracy for America: “We view primaries like this one as a fight over the future of the Democratic Party.”

Edwards’ positions on trade, banking, Social Security and Israel, among others, differentiate her from her liberal opponent Rep. Van Hollen, who has taken on the mantle of the insider candidate after racking up endorsements from Maryland’s political establishment and large donations, increasingly from business interests. For example, Van Hollen has been the recent recipient of more than $900,000 from the National Association of Realtors...

Clearly, for many voters, there are not enough progressives, women or people of color in the Senate. Those factors, as well as Edwards’ charismatic personality and record of service, have generated a lot of enthusiasm for her candidacy.

Edwards told AlterNet why she wants to be in the Senate: "My campaign is about the grassroots stepping up and saying enough with business as usual in Washington. It’s about Maryland’s working families who deserve a progressive champion in the United States Senate. As Maryland’s next senator, I will fight for the woman who deserves equal pay for equal work, the worker who needs a living wage to provide for their family, and to hold the Wall Street banks that crashed our economy accountable."

There are many ways Donna Edwards’ campaign resembles Bernie Sanders’ surprisingly strong primary campaign against Hillary Clinton. Both Van Hollen and Clinton are the favorites of the corporate media, party insiders and the deep-pocketed donors who pump a lot of money into campaigns. Edwards, like Sanders, has established a successful grassroots funding operation. She has been speaking to the hopes of an electorate fed up with insider politics that sets the bar very low for what can be accomplished. Van Hollen, like Clinton, has tried to position himself as the practical candidate who can wheel and deal and get things done.

...[L]ike Sanders, Edwards has been marginalized and victimized by the mainstream media, particularly the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post (which published 16 negative articles about Sanders in one day). Misrepresenting Edwards as being too idealistic, the Post also constantly portrays her as an activist and single mother and in editorials suggests she does not work well with others. This sexist portrayal is quite a stretch, as anyone who knows Edwards and her work understands that she is pragmatic and far from a rigid ideologue (just as Sanders has been very successful behind the scenes in D.C. shaping legislation).

...One reason Edwards is running so strongly is that her vision is in sync with the goals and hopes of many progressives in Maryland and across the country. Jim Dean of the national Democrats for America explains it all in bullet points:

Donna Edwards is the true progressive in this all-important race. She is:

• The only candidate in the race who won’t take a dime from the Wall Street banks
• A leader in the fight against the TPP
• A strong defender of Planned Parenthood and a woman’s right to choose
• A leader on racial justice and equality
• The first member of Congress in Maryland to endorse marriage equality
• The only candidate in the race opposed to mandatory minimum sentencing
• A fighter for every family-- regardless of zip code

Dean adds: "Donna Edwards is also the only candidate in the race who has always opposed cuts to Social Security and Medicare-- and who has been a leader in the fight to expand both crucial programs."

That video just above is the new ad Donna'c campaign wants to run. If you like it and would like to help her get it up on TV in Baltimore where it can make all the difference, please consider chipping in by tapping the Donna Edwards ActBlue thermometer:

UPDATE: New Poll

Despite all the Wall Street and realtor money being poured into the race for Van Hollen, today's Washington Post released a poll showing Donna ahead of the establishment candidate among likely voters 44-40%. Her favorables are 64% to Van Hollen's 56%, in part die to the ugly, bullying campaign he has run against her.

The Case For Donna Edwards (D-MD)

The next congressional primaries we're looking at are in Maryland. Barbara Milkulski's retirement triggered 3 big races: a Senate race between two House members, progressive champion Donna Edwards and establishment shill Chris Van Hollen to replace her, and then a bevy of candidates to replace each of them. Blue America has endorsed Donna in the Senate race, Joseline Peña-Melnyk to replace her in the House and Jamie Raskin to replace Van Hollen. (You can contribute to all 3 on the same special Blue America page). The Maryland primary is on April 26... coming right up. Yesterday, Steve Phillips did a very thorough and comprehensive look at the Senate race, one of the most important anywhere in the whole country. His point is that too many progressives are on the wrong side of history in this race, although, the "progressives" he's referring to are mostly just garden variety pieces of the Democratic establishment. Aside from Blue America the other progressive groups who have endorsed Donna include DFA, People for the American Way and PCCC.

Here’s a quick, two-question quiz. First question: How many Black women have ever served in the United States Senate? Answer: One (Carol Mosely Braun of Illinois, elected in 1992). Second question: Do Democrats and progressives care? Good question. Very good question.

The current Senate race in Maryland presents the best chance in 240 years to elect America’s second Black woman senator, but many Democrats are acting like they just don’t care. In fact, several are actively opposing Congresswoman Donna Edwards’ bid to succeed retiring Senator Barbara Mikulski.

To be clear, I’m not saying that every candidate of color has to be supported over every white candidate (taking that reasoning to its logical extreme would result in backing Ted Cruz over Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton). But we have real, ongoing, contemporary racial and gender inequality and injustice in America, and the Senate-- the country’s highest legislative body-- is 94% white and 80% male. If we want more senators who can bring urgency to the issues of racial and gender inequality because they share similar life experiences and feel a deep connection with those affected by those inequalities, then we should push to make our democracy more reflective of the composition of our population. Maryland’s Senate race offers a rare opportunity to make progress on that front.

Missing the Moment

Sadly, and surprisingly, many white progressive leaders have chosen to flock to the candidacy of white male Congressman Chris Van Hollen. Just days after Mikulski announced her retirement in early 2015, Harry Reid, the Senate’s top Democrat, endorsed Van Hollen and threw his considerable clout behind Van Hollen’s campaign. Others have followed Reid’s lead. Several labor unions and Democratic members of Congress have also contributed thousands of dollars to help Van Hollen win. [Harry Reid= garden variety establishment DC Dem, worse, because his corruption is an embarrassment to the entire party.]

Now I don’t know Van Hollen personally and he seems like a perfectly nice man. His supporters cite the fact that he has been reliably pro-choice and generally supportive of progressive issues. But his candidacy doesn’t exactly make a historic statement and does nothing to make the U.S. Senate more reflective of the country’s racial and gender composition. In a true democracy, the composition of the country’s elected leaders would reflect the makeup of the population. Since the founding of this country’s government in 1787, 99% of the Senators who have made the laws of America have been white (and the overwhelming majority of them have been white men). A multiracial democracy, in which close to 40% of the population consists of people of color, demands better.

Why Maryland Matters

The case for Edwards is not just that she’s a staunch progressive who has a long track record of fighting for justice and deep personal knowledge of the realities facing women of color, but it’s that this particular race presents one of the best electoral opportunities to elect a Black woman to the Senate.

Maryland is the fourth Blackest state in America. African Americans make up 30.1% of the state’s population and they account for fully 37% of Democratic primary voters. With numbers like that, a Black candidate has an excellent chance of winning the Democratic nomination (in 2006, former NAACP President Kwesi Mfume came within 3 points of winning the state’s Democratic primary, despite being outspent by his white opponent, Ben Cardin, 4 to 1). The most recent poll puts Edwards in the lead. In presidential election years, Maryland is a deep blue state (Obama won 62% of the vote in 2012), so the Democratic nominee is the odds-on favorite to win the general election.

But a Black candidate only stands an excellent chance of becoming senator from a state as Black as Maryland if she or he has the support of the organizations, institutions, and leaders who make up the progressive infrastructure.

Congressional Black Caucus PAC Failing to Represent

It’s not just white progressives who are missing the moment. While the Congressional Black Caucus is usually one of the most progressive cohorts in Congress, its Political Action Committee is missing in action in the Maryland senate race. The CBC PAC’s stated mission is to “increase the number of African Americans in the U.S. Congress” but it has resisted endorsing Edwards, despite the fact that, should she win, she would increase the percentage of African Americans in the U.S. Senate by 33% (joining New Jersey’s Cory Booker and South Carolina’s Tim Scott (California’s Kamala Harris, who is Black and Asian, also has an excellent opportunity to win election to the Senate this year)). The advocacy organization Color of Change has investigated the surprising conduct of CBC PAC and exposed the fact that the majority of the PAC’s board is not even comprised of members of the Congressional Black Caucus but rather of corporate lobbyists whose clients are not exactly known as champions of racial justice and equality...

Moment of Truth for the Democratic Party

African Americans are the bedrock of the Democratic Party and have been so for fifty years, steadily and dependably providing votes and support for Democrats, usually white Democrats. So far, the Maryland Senate race says a lot about how Democrats reward such loyalty.

2016 presents a pivot point for the Democratic Party. As the end of the Obama era approaches, will the party revert back to the plantation politics of the past where Black voters are expected to back white candidates with little or no reciprocity in return? Or will Party leaders put their money where their mouth is and make substantial financial investments in Black candidates, leaders, and organizations? Given the centrality of the Black vote to Democratic prospects of victory, it is no longer just a question of fairness. It’s also essential to success in an increasingly multiracial electorate. Right now, too many of the progressive forces in Maryland are falling short.

Blue America made Donna her own thermometer. She needs some dough to keep up with Van Hollen's corporate cash gusher for the next three weeks.