Let's All Shake Hands And Be Friends And Defeat the Real Enemy, Donald Trump And His Enablers-- Ummm... Just A Minute There

My political enemies are conservatives and reactionaries, and in Trump's case, mentally deranged fascists. The Democratic establishment will never hesitate for a moment to say "All you Bernie (and, to whatever small extent is needed) Elizabeth Warren supporters get on board the Biden for President train now." I'm not going to try to dissuade anyone from doing so-- and I wish people who discovered electoral politics 2 weeks ago would stop frothing at the mouth about me refusing to personally vote for Biden-- but Biden has a long and repulsive record going back 5 decades that has helped me form a hatred for him that's not going away. I know Trump is worse. I don't like racists and Biden only ran on one issue in his first election: racism. I don't like corporatists and he has always tried-- even harder than some Republicans-- to fellate Wall Street and the banksters and to wreck Social Security and Medicare in the name of Austerity... Yeah, yeah, you're heard it all before. But locking arms with a bunch of corrupt status quo Democrats to help elect Status Quo Joe Biden and other establishment candidates is not something I have any intention of doing. As you already know, the lesser of two evils is still evil.

Who's better? Who's worse?

My grandfather, a socialist and a devoted FDR fan, once told me, when I was very young, that there's only one thing in American politics worse than the Democratic Party-- the Republican Party. As I've written many time, Chuck Schumer went to James Madison High School in Brooklyn at the same time I did (a few years after Bernie graduated). He was as much "Little Schucky Schmucky" back then as he is now.



Writing for Too Much Information yesterday, Andrew Perez revealed that Schumer spent $15 million destroying progressive primary candidates. And now they expect us to vote for putrid conservatives like Frackenlooper (Colorado) or somewhat less putrid nothing candidates like Sara Gideon (Maine), Amy McGrath (Kentucky), Jon Ossoff (Georgia), Theresa Greenfield (Iowa), Ben Ray Luján (New Mexico), Barbara Bollier (a Kanas Republican pretending to be a Democrat), Jaime Harrison (South Carolina), and Cal Cunningham (North Carolina). I wouldn't vote for any of them. I vote for someone, not against someone who is worse. "With the help of the party, its major donors, and the Senate Majority PAC (SMP)-- a super PAC funded by labor unions, corporate interests and Wall Street billionaires-- candidates endorsed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee have won contested primaries in four battleground states," wrote Perez.

Colorado was the most emblematic example of the party putting its thumb on the scale against progressives: There, former Gov. John Hickenlooper cruised to a primary victory over former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff. In the final weeks of the race, SMP spent $1 million to boost Hickenlooper, after he spent his failed presidential campaign attacking key tenets of progressives’ legislative agenda, including Medicare for All and the Green New Deal.

At the time of the cash infusion, Hickenlooper was losing ground in the polls and engulfed in scandals: He had just been fined by Colorado’s Independent Ethics Commission for violating state ethics law as governor, the local CBS station uncovered evidence of his gubernatorial office raking in cash from oil companies, and a video circulated showed Hickenlooper comparing his job as a politician to a slave on a slave ship, being whipped by a scheduler.

With the help of SMP and the endorsement of the DSCC, Hickenlooper held off the more progressive Romanoff to win a 17 point primary victory.

SMP is led byformer top staffers at the DSCC. The super PAC has raised a staggering $118 million this cycle, pooling cash from both organized labor and business titans to promote corporate-aligned candidates over more progressive primary challengers.

Working for Working Americans, a super PAC funded by the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, has donated $5 million. The Laborers' International Union of North America’s super PAC has given $1.5 million. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers’s political action committee has chipped in $1.3 million. SMP has received also big donations from groups affiliated with labor unions like the Service Employees International Union ($1 million), the National Association of Letter Carriers ($750,000), and Communications Workers of America ($500,000).

Overall, the top donor to SMP so far this cycle has been Democracy PAC-- a super PAC that’s bankrolled by billionaire George Soros and the Fund for Policy Reform, a nonprofit funded by Soros. Democracy PAC has contributed $8.5 million to SMP.

Other donors from the financial industry include: Renaissance Technologies founder and billionaire Jim Simons and his wife Deborah ($5.5 million) and billionaire D. E. Shaw & Co. founder David Shaw ($1 million).

Some major donors have financial stakes in current and future legislation.

For instance: SMP received a $1 million donation from billionaire Jonathan Gray, an executive at Blackstone, which owns the hospital staffing chain, TeamHealth. SMP also received $2 million from the Greater New York Hospital Association.

In late 2019, Schumer helped stall Senate legislation that would have kept patients from receiving “surprise medical bills,” the hefty charges that occur when they visit hospitals that are in their insurance network but are unknowingly treated by providers who are considered out-of-network.

SMP is affiliated with Majority Forward, a dark money group focused on attacking Republican Senate candidates. Majority Forward received $450,000 in 2018 from pharmacy giant CVS Health-- which also owns health insurer Aetna. The group also received $300,000 from the American Health Care Association (AHCA), a trade association that represents the nursing home industry.

The Democratic primary candidates backed by the DSCC have expressed reservations about Medicare for All, arguing they believe people should be allowed to keep their private health insurance if they want it. Many of the DSCC’s favored candidates do support creating a public health insurance option.

Meanwhile, the Real Estate Roundtable, a trade group for real estate investors, donated $50,000 to Majority Forward. Schumer and Senate Democrats recently helped Republicans unanimously pass pandemic relief legislation that included a special, little-noticed provision that amounted to $170 billion worth of new tax breaks for wealthy real estate investors.

Schumer has also derailed progressives in Maine, North Carolina, New Mexico, Kentucky, Texas, Georgia and Iowa. He and his cronies basically ignored West Virginia-- allowing Paula Jean Swearengin to win the primary and find herself as the only progressive challenging a Trumpist incumbent in the Senate this cycle. The 2020 Blue America Senate thermometer on the right makes it easy to contribute to her campaign. It's either that or an all-Schumer status quo Democratic caucus in the Senate next year-- doing nothing but disappointing people so badly that 2022 will see a replay of 2010, when progressives didn't even bother to vote, giving the Republicans massive wins in both houses of Congress and bringing on a decade of right-wing control.

And one more thing-- a question. Do the Democratic committees, like the DCCC and DSCC get behind progressives in the general election when they manage to win primaries? Sometimes, but rarely. They want progressives to help them after primaries... but they usually refuse to help progressives.

This Senate Race Was Supposed To Be A "Sure Thing" But If Hickenlooper Wins The Primary It Won't Be

On Friday, Elizabeth Warren released a list of congressional candidates she had just endorsed. The list included progressive champions like Jamaal Bowman (NY), Mike Siegel (TX), Charles Booker (KY) and Julie Oliver (TX). I'm sure all of them are overjoyed at her backing-- even if it's a little late in the game for Bowman and Booker, whose primaries are tomorrow. But whatever goodwill and cred with the progressive netroots, the endorsements generated for Warren, it was squandered when she stepped all over herself by adding grotesque corporate whore John Hickenlooper to the list.

Widely hated by liberals and reformers for his virulent anti-progressive mania-- both as a dismally failed presidential candidate and in his current Schumeristic senatorial campaign-- Hick, AKA, Frackenlooper, has virtually nothing in common with any of Warren's other endorsed candidates and not much in common with Warren herself. I noticed that the #1 Warren-backing outside group in the country, the PCCC, quickly sent out an e-mail to their list emphasizing that they not only back Romanoff but that in their opinion Hickenlooper is "one of the worst corporate Dems" and reminded their supporters that he is "the guy who ran for president and consistently attacked Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders from the right. This is one of the most winnable Senate seats in the nation, and there's no excuse to elect a right-wing Democrat. Andrew Romanoff's running on Medicare For All and a Green New Deal. John Hickenlooper opposes those, supports police policies that encourage violence while proclaiming 'every life matters,' and is now embroiled in an ethics/corruption scandal that could hurt our chances of winning this easy-to-win race in November." BOOM!

In a spat with Warren on the debate stage, he hissed that maybe Medicare for All could be achieved in 15 years. They'll be dead in 15 years and the way to achieve Medicare for All sooner is by defeating candidates like Cory Gardner and John Hickenlooper and electing candidates like Andrew Romanoff. It isn't that complicated. Hickenlooper has finally stopped calling progressives "Stalinists," probably because he's running against a progressive who happens to be named Romanoff.

Yesterday, Politico's James Arkin pointed out that "Hickenlooper has stumbled in the closing weeks of Colorado’s Senate primary, creating openings for his opponent and Republicans that have unsettled a critical race for Democrats in their bid to recapture the Senate. Democrats acknowledge Hickenlooper has made serious mistakes on what was supposed to be a glide path to the Democratic nomination. After being cited for contempt this month for initially failing to appear before Colorado’s Independent Ethics Commission, Hickenlooper was fined $2,750 for two violations dating back to his second term as governor. He’s also apologized for comments about race, including responding to a question about the Black Lives Matter protests in a recent forum by saying the phrase means 'every life matters,' echoing a common refrain among conservatives."

Republicans are all over Hickenlooper's stumbles, pummeling him as they anticipate gleefully that he will be the easy target for Gardner in November and now, the primary has tightened considerably with all the momentum shifting towards Romanoff.

Not really that "mysterious"-- Schumer's paw prints are all over it

A sewer money SuperPAC, led by Schumer and the DSCC, Let's Turn Colorado Blue, dropped several million dollars into a jihadist-like smear campaign against Romanoff. After defying a subpoena and dodging nearly two dozen debates, Frackenlooper is now hiding behind Schumer's sewer-money attacks, claiming, deceitfully, he doesn't know who's paying for ads.

Arken explained how "Romanoff appeals to primary voters eager for his message of more radical change, including the Green New Deal and Medicare for All. He argues a middle of the road approach doesn’t meet the moment and has said Hickenlooper’s ethics issue is a problem. 'If you break the law, defy a subpoena and get held in contempt, you jeopardize our chances to hold the seat,' Romanoff said in a interview."

Schumer is trying to replace a conservative Republican Senate with a conservative Democratic Senate. With the exception of Steve Bullock in Montana, Schumer's candidates all suck shit. Democratic primary voters are largely unaware that they're voting for a pack of Kyrsten Sinemas. (Sinema was handpicked by Schumer in 2018 and has been the most consistently anti progressive Democrat in the Senate ever since, the closest thing to a Trump-enabler among congressional Democrats.) It still isn't too late to turn the tide, by supporting Andrew Romanoff, which you can do by clicking on the Blue America 2020 Senate thermometer above and contributing what you can.

Better To Declare Victory After Victory Has Come

He's young, he's probably gay and probably a murderer and definitely a fascist... but he's young

Reid Wilson isn't exactly who I look to for good electoral news for progressives, but his post at The Hill yesterday, Wins by young progressives start reshaping establishment, was almost suspiciously, if not downright prematurely, optimistic. "The left wing of the Democratic Party may have lost the war over the party's presidential nomination," he wrote, "but its members are quietly winning battles in states and cities across the country. Progressive candidates have knocked off incumbent officeholders in places such as Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., and New Mexico in recent weeks in elections that are marking the end of an older generation of the political establishment. Those elections may be a preview of the rest of the primary season, when long-serving Democrats find themselves the targets of well-organized campaigns to oust them." Hmmmm... key words: "may be."

There were a few legitimate big wins of national import (Marie Newman in Chicagoland and Kara Eastman in Omaha)-- and, yes there were some nice local races too, where progressives won but he seems to be hung up on "young" as a end-all for, perhaps forgetting that the youngest members of Congress when they were elected included not just AOC, but far right extremists like Patrick McHenry (R-NC), Aaron Schock (R-IL) and Matt Gaetz (R-FL), as well as shitbag ConservaDems Harold Ford, Jr. (Blue Dog-TN) and Patrick Murphy (New Dem-FL). In this argument, I'm afraid, "age" is over-rated.

At least four Pennsylvania Democratic state legislators lost their seats in last week's primary. Two of the winning challengers in the Philadelphia area scored endorsements from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). In Pittsburgh, Emily Kinkead, a progressive making her first run for office, ousted state Rep. Adam Ravenstahl (D), the brother of the city's former mayor.

Two other Democratic incumbents trail their rivals by margins narrow enough that they could be reversed as more ballots are counted.

"I consider myself to be a proud progressive," said Amanda Cappelletti, who beat a sitting state senator to claim the Democratic nomination in a Philadelphia-area district. "I wanted to figure out the best way that I could serve and help people, and this would be a good opportunity to use my skills."

She beat Daylin Leach, the Pennsylvania legislature's "liberal lion" and I'll be happy to see if she's half as good a state senator as Leach has been. I hope so. Because his legislative record is pretty amazing.

In New Mexico, insurgent progressive challengers ousted five moderate and conservative Democrats, including state Senate President Pro Tem Mary Kay Papen and state Sen. John Arthur Smith, the chairman of the Finance Committee.

...Advances in technology have allowed progressive candidates to make inroads in big cities once dominated by party bosses, said Waleed Shahid, who directs communications for Justice Democrats, a progressive group that backs insurgent challengers.

"The internet is defeating these political machines. Where 20 years ago you would have to have the blessing of local party leaders just to get on the ballot, now you can have a good social media operation and leapfrog the party leadership and establishment networks," Shahid said.

This year, another progressive, marketing consultant Marie Newman ousted Rep. Dan Lipinski in Illinois's Democratic primary in March.

More surprises are likely ahead. After Ocasio-Cortez upset Rep. Joe Crowley (D) in 2018, progressives have made a point to go after Engel and Clarke.

He wrote that José Serrano (D-NY) and Nita Lowey (D-NY) "opted to retire rather than face what would have been almost certain primary challenges," without mentioning that Serrano is one of the most far left members of Congress and may well be followed by either a Republican pretending to be a Democrat or a garden variety middle-of-the-road Democratic hack. There's also a chance a real progressive like Serrano could win, say Tomas Ramos-- but that will be tough. Lowey's time was up and if Mondaire Jones wins a crowded primary, there will be a real improvement... but that will be no cakewalk either.

"In September, Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA) will face off against Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse (D), who has proved an adept fundraiser," wrote. Fingers crossed. "The primary challenges are coming as a younger, more progressive millennial generation becomes a potent force in politics." I'm certain Wilson doesn't pay attention at all, but progressive stars who lost so far are almost too numerous to mention, from Jessica Cisneros (TX), Rachel Ventura (IL), Kim Williams (CA), Mark Gamba (OR), Jennifer Christie (IN) and Jim Harper (IN) to Mckayla Wilkes (MD), Nabilah Islam (GA), Michael Owens (GA), Robert Emmons (IL) and Tom Winter (MT), all of whom lost to much more conservative candidates. And that doesn't include the dozens of sad cases who thought copying Bernie's platform, finding a couple of like-minded idealists and then playing on social media all day meant you could win a congressional seat.

"Though Ocasio-Cortez has become the symbol of the rising generation of progressive officeholders," wrote Wilson, "the movement is increasingly looking to down-ballot races both as an avenue for making policy changes at the state level and as a way to build a bench for the future. 'You can feel a change in the focus that grassroots progressives have put on some of these local races, really since 2016. I think part of it came from a recognizing, waking up from the Obama years just how much Democrats had lost,' said Neil Sroka, who directs communications for Democracy for America and also won a city council seat himself. 'The Trump moment exposed the ways in which cities and local offices could be a real buttress against a government that was 100 percent in the control of right-wing Republicans. I think that there has been a real awakening.'"

I don't discount this-- and entirely encourage it all I can-- but Congress is where power to stand up to conservatives like Trump and Biden rests, not on the city council. Yesterday, the American Prospect published an essay by Alexander Sammon, Chuck Schumer’s Very Bad Week-- Corporate Democrats for Senate limp to the finish line. I doubt Schumer is crying; he won his races and we won't hear him whining unless his milquetoast establishment picks lose in Colorado and Kentucky. But so far, he's won them all with the worst slate of Democrats I can ever remember up for Senate. Sammon correctly stated that "Early on in this election cycle, things were going great for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. In nearly every contested Democratic Senate primary, Schumer and his caucus’s campaign arm, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), got the desired result, either clearing the field of competitors to his hand-picked preference before voting even began or winning comfortable victories. Bloodless centrist Cal Cunningham triumphed in North Carolina over progressive State Sen. Erica Smith to take on shaky Republican Sen. Thom Tillis; Smith had been leading in polls before Schumer made his endorsement. Real-estate developer Theresa Greenfield triumphed easily in Iowa; the Schumer-aligned Senate Majority PAC spent $6.7 million on her behalf in the primary. Schumer selection M.J. Hegar also cruised over multiple progressives in the Senate primary to take on Republican John Cornyn, though she still must finish the job in a run-off in July. Other races in Arizona and New Mexico saw the Schumer-backed candidate chase out all competition. When Schumer stamps a candidate with DSCC approval, he also marshals big money in support of them. In other words, Schumer doesn’t just get what he wants because he’s good at picking moderates with broad appeal. He just picks people who are inoffensive to the DSCC donor base, and then uses their money to stack the deck in their favor. Bob Moser documented this highly dubious and clearly anti-democratic practice, in great detail, in a recent issue of The Prospect." And now for the speculation and hopefulness we share with Sammon:

[S]everal of Schumer’s high-profile picks are starting to falter, rapidly losing ground to underfunded progressive upstarts just ahead of election day.

The most prominent instance comes from Kentucky, where Schumer intervened in the primary early. Back in February 2019, Schumer was already actively stumping for former fighter pilot Amy McGrath to challenge Mitch McConnell, the case for her candidacy predicated almost entirely on a popular TV ad last cycle that propelled her within 3 points of winning a swing House seat in Lexington.

McGrath is exactly the sort of moderate that only a Schumer could love. Her sales pitch so far has been her willingness to work with Trump once in office, which, if you believe in the Joe Biden campaign, or the Democratic Party at all, is an extremely confounding message. Of course, thanks to Schumer’s minting, McGrath was the immediate beneficiary of an incomparable torrent of cash, which initially prevented any meaningful primary challenge. She’s raised over $41 million, and spent $21.8 million to date. But last November, Charles Booker, a first-term progressive state senator from Louisville, announced a late bid for the seat.

Booker, despite having spent barely $500,000, is now ascending, racking up endorsements from national politicians like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as well as popular eastern Kentucky sports radio host Matt Jones (an important figure in the state who almost ran for the seat himself) and the Louisville Courier-Journal, Kentucky’s highest circulation newspaper. Despite McGrath outspending him an astonishing 40 to 1, the race is somehow closer than ever, with recent polling showing him within a handful of percentage points. That certainly doesn’t bode well for McGrath’s attractiveness as a candidate.

Booker has assumed newfound national prominence with his participation in Louisville’s Black Lives Matter demonstrations, repeatedly taking to the streets to protest the death of Breonna Taylor at the hands of Louisville PD, and Louisville restaurateur David McAtee by the Kentucky National Guard. McGrath, meanwhile, hasn’t turned out to a single protest. She’s instead training the DSCC’s funding firehose on television buys, hoping to extinguish the flames that are lapping up her campaign ahead of this month’s primary.

Meanwhile, another Schumer pick, former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, finds himself embroiled in a new corruption scandal. A local news investigation just uncovered millions of dollars in off-the-books donations from corporations and private foundations to Hickenlooper’s office, dating back almost two decades. The startling revelation shows that during his eight years as governor, Hickenlooper expanded the “public-private partnership” program, which took corporate donations and used them to fund departments and positions in his administration with no oversight.

The donations ran in the millions of dollars during his two terms as governor. Among the biggest donors was Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, one of Colorado’s biggest fracking operators. In one instance in 2017, the company donated $25,000 to the governor’s office, just days after a deadly explosion in the state, caused by a leaky underground pipeline owned by the company. Over the course of four years, Anadarko gave Hickenlooper’s office more than $330,000, money that was then used for government activities, but of which there is little accounting.

Hickenlooper, who already bears the handle “Frackenlooper” for his role in expanding fracking as governor, is taking on Andrew Romanoff for the chance to do battle with Republican Sen. Cory Gardner in November, in what is almost certainly the most flippable Senate seat in the country. Hickenlooper, briefly a presidential candidate, was considered a prized recruit when Schumer talked him into running for Senate. (He’d previously said, “I’m not cut out to be a senator.”) But his reputation on environmental issues, along with this new corruption scandal, has imperiled his chances. Romanoff, former speaker of the Colorado State House, won April’s Democratic Assembly vote in dominant fashion, securing top-line designation in the June 30 primary. Schumer and the DSCC knew that Hickenlooper was weak as far back as August, when they began pressuring consultants from at least five firms not to work with Romanoff, according to The Intercept. If Hickenlooper pulls it off, it will only be because of the fundraising advantage bestowed on him by the DSCC.

Want to help? The 2020 non-Schumer Senate candidates thermometer is just above. Click on it and if you see a name you like, chip in a few dollars. And the House candidates still in there, still fighting to make the House Democratic more-- not less-- progressive, which is clearly the intention of Blue Dog Cheri Bustos and the DCCC. On the right is the 2020 Blue America congressional thermometer. Here's where you'll find the candidates like Jamaal Bowman (NY), Keeda Haynes (TN), Shan Chowdhury (NY), Eva Putzova (AZ), Tom Guild (OK), Hector Oseguera (NJ), Robin Wilt (NY) still working to replace establishment hacks and conservatives in primaries-- as well as progressives like Marie Newman (IL), Jon Hoadley (MI), Audrey Denney (CA), Cathy Kunkel (WV), Kara Eastman (NE), Julie Oliver (TX), and Liam O'Mara (CA), who have already won their primaries and are up against right-wing Republican incumbents.

Will Kentucky Democrats Shut Down Boss Hogg-- I Mean Boss Schumer?

Schumer picked a slate of miserable status quo Democratic Senate candidates for 2020. Not one of them stands for any change except the superficial change of replacing a corporate Republican with a corporate Democrat. If there's an anti-red wave, some of them will win. They define why there is no blue wave. There's nothing to vote for-- just a series of less-of-two evils races:

• Arizona- Mark Kelly (a recent Democrat)
• Alaska- Al Gross (not even a Democrat)
• Arkansas- Schumer neglected to recruit a candidate against Tom Cotton
• Colorado- Frackenlooper
• Georgia- Jon Ossoff*
• Iowa- Theresa Greenfield*
• Kansas- Barbara Bollier (a recent "Democrat")
• Maine- Sara Gideon
• Montana- Steve Daines (even a clock is right twice a day; Schumer got it right once)
• New Mexico- Ben Ray Luján*
• North Carolina- Cal Cunningham*
• South Carolina- Jaime Harrison (a lobbyist)
• Texas- MJ Heger*

The asterisk (*) denotes candidates whose photos could be in the dictionary next to the phrase "born loser." and then, at least symbolically, there's the most important Senate race of the cycle: Kentucky, where majority leader and professional impediment Mitch McConnell-- the most hated man in poll after poll-- in American politics. Schumer picked a "born loser" candidate and the media, obediently accepted her as THE candidate and treated it as a fait accompli... until last week, when, despite Schumer's attempt to pretend his candidate, Amy McGrath, was the candidate Kentucky Democrats started asking themselves who some lug from Brooklyn, fully owned and operated by Wall Street, gets to pick their nominee. Especially since there's a better candidate in the race, Charles Booker.

As of June 3rd, Booker had raised $788,270, almost entirely from grassroots donors. The Schumer candidate-- with lots of help from Schumer-- brought in $40,825,989. A consultant for Schumer's candidate persuaded her to come off as a pro-Trump Democrat, something that hasn't exactly impressed Kentucky Democrats. Booker's vibrant, progressive grassroots coalition helps explain his growing appeal-- and why the state's two most important newspapers, the Louisville Courier Journal and the Lexington Herald Leader endorsed him so effusively last week.

Schumer must have been going crazy on Wednesday when someone told him the Courier Journal endorsement was going to make much harder for him to quietly slip his nothing candidate into the nomination, the way he had already done in North Carolina, Georgia, Iowa and Texas. "This," wrote the editorial board, "is a historic time in our state and nation. A time when young and old, black, white and brown are calling for change-- not just incremental change, but sweeping reform that will usher in true equality and justice for all. To get there, we need political leaders with insight and vision, who understand the challenges of our times and are willing to put forth bold ideas and fight for everyday people. Voters in Kentucky and around the country deserve the chance to consider candidates who have strident beliefs and the courage to go beyond scripted, milquetoast politics." Schumer is all about pickinging "scripted, milquetoast" hacks. "Political leaders with insight and vision" scares the hell out of him and infuriates him. They wrote that Booker "is the kind of political leader and change agent that our commonwealth needs" but that the Schumer candidate-- doing exactly what Schumer directed her to do-- "has not shown the progressive ideas and bold leadership necessary to move our state forward. She has been overly moderate, measured and cautious throughout this campaign, focusing more on her military service (which we applaud and sincerely respect) or her motherhood than offering a sweeping vision for the commonwealth-- especially in these turbulent times. Unfortunately, her message to voters has been unimaginative and uninspiring."

The Herald-Leader described her as Schumer's "anointed front-runner with a war chest of donations that might even rival McConnell’s usual corporate haul," but Kentucky Democrats have been unimpressed by a campaign that has entirely ignored them and been focussed on appealing to Republicans and independents, once even saying she would have voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court!

By February, Blue America was convinced that Booker is the candidate to beat McConnell and we endorsed him in early March. Since then, AOC and Bernie weighed in for him, as did a whole slew of progressive organizations. The headline at Politico yesterday isn't what Schumer wanted to see: Insurgent threatens to derail McGrath-McConnell showdown in Kentucky. "State Rep. Charles Booker has captured late momentum in the June 23 primary, fueled by prominent endorsements and Amy McGrath's stumbles," wrote Jim Arkin and Burgess Everett. Booker, they wrote "now has all the momentum in the closing days of the election," which takes place June 23. You can contribute to his campaign by clicking on the Blue America Senate 2020 thermometer on the right.

McGrath is the favorite of the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm and many sitting senators, and it’s hard to imagine she could lose a primary in which she’s outspent her opponents combined by a nearly 30-1 margin through early June. But there are signs it's turning into a real race: Booker is panning McGrath as a bland national Democrat who is predictably tacking to the center, while McGrath is biting back at Booker, accusing him of talking a big game on health care and voting rights but not backing it up.

"I don't really know what position Amy McGrath takes because she goes back and forth on everything depending on what consultants seem to say,” Booker said in an interview. “I know that Kentuckians can smell BS from miles away.”

...McGrath had a bumpy rollout last year, saying in one of her first interviews that she would have supported Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination, only to reverse herself later that day. More recently, Republican governors and Cindy McCain, the late Sen. John McCain’s widow, condemned ads of hers using their images to attack McConnell.

And McGrath has few substantial in-state endorsements, while Booker has been endorsed by prominent Kentucky media and close to two-dozen elected officials.

...McGrath is positioning herself somewhere in the realm of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), a moderate Democrat [a values-free conservative opportunist] elected in 2018 who works with Republicans more than her own party leaders. McConnell himself declined to pinpoint whom he would rather face.

Sanders' and Ocasio-Cortez’s backing helped boost fundraising for Booker, and he raised nearly $1 million in nine days, three times his entire first-quarter haul. Newspaper endorsements and backing from sports radio host Matt Jones gives Booker legitimate in-state boosters outside his base in Louisville.

After coronavirus stalled any effort at toppling McGrath, the protests against police brutality are sparking newfound momentum for Booker.

“How do you run your campaign when you can't go anywhere? And then these protests come around, and I think it helped Charles find his footing and find his voice,” said Jones, who considered running for the seat and criticizes the DSCC. He acknowledged that McGrath remains the favorite but predicted a close finish.

“I don't know that I’ve ever seen a race where somebody has this much money and seems to be struggling,” he added.

Most Democrats declined to criticize McGrath on the record. Even Sanders gave a guarded response when asked why he felt the need to weigh in.

“We’re going to support progressive candidates who are fighting for the issues that we believe in,” Sanders said this week.

Democratic leaders were perplexed by Sanders’ intervention. As Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) put it: “Bernie may have made some promise to someone along the way.”

“She is in the mainstream of Democratic thinking, and I think is very electable in the commonwealth of Kentucky,” said Durbin, who is from neighboring Illinois.

Despite the intrigue in the primary, Kentucky is not central to Democrats’ campaign for the majority. Party officials say that it’s one of the longest shots to flip this election, and the money soaked up by McGrath would arguably go much further in North Carolina, Montana and Iowa.

“Those polls that show it tied are real. But the composition of the undecideds should give us great pause. I am more bullish on South Carolina, Texas-- I mean, almost every other race,” said one Democratic senator familiar with party strategy.

McGrath has been squeezed on both sides down the stretch: Booker is running an ad claiming she’s not a “real Democrat” and suggesting she’s too pro-Trump, while McConnell’s campaign released a new ad attacking her support for Trump’s impeachment and calling her “extreme.”

“You can’t run against McConnell from a defensive crouch with a playbook that was obviously cooked up by consultants. You have to perform every day, drive a message and keep him on his back foot,” said Adam Jentleson, who was a top aide to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). "Only Charles will be able to do that."

Trump And His Enablers Are Headed For Historic Landslide Losses-- But There's No Blue Wave

And the winner is... Not-Trump

The Democratic candidate for president its probably the worst in my lifetime-- and I'm old. Let me think for a second. Worse than Adlai Stevenson-- check; worse than JFK-- check; worse than LBJ-- check; worse than Humphrey-- check; worse than McGovern-- check; worse than Carter-- check; worse than Mondale-- check; worse than Dukakis-- check; worse than Bill Clinton-- check; worse than Gore-- hmmmm, yeah, check; worse than Kerry-- Jesus, Democrats nominated some really bad candidates, but, yeah, check; worse than Obama-- check; worse than Hillary-- oy, but, yes, Biden is worse than Hillary. It would seem Biden is utterly unelectable-- horribly conservative to an increasingly progressive Democratic base, a little bit racist, a lot corporatist, a warmonger, perhaps more senile and incapable than Trump, a family almost as corrupt as Trump's, a reflexive liar nearly as bad as Trump... If this election is a referendum on the incumbent, all Biden has to do is keep breathing.

And the slate of DSCC Senate candidates? A whole pack of Kyrsten Sinemas... courtesy of Chuck Schumer. He's managed and continues managing to obliterate progressives in favor of corrupt, status quo establishment anti-leaders-- Theresa Greenfield in Iowa, Sara Gideon in Maine, Barbara Bollier (an actual Republican) in Kansas, Cal Cunningham in North Carolina, Amy McGrath in Kentucky, Jon Ossoff in Georgia, Jamie Harrison in South Carolina, Frackenlooper in Colorado, Ben Ray Lujan in New Mexico, Al Gross (not a Democrat) in Alaska, Mark Kelly (maybe a Democrat?) in Arizona, and MJ Heger in Texas. Oh, don't get me wrong; I think most of them-- not Heger, Harrison or McGrath-- will win. I'm just sickened at the thought of a Senate filled with conservative Democrats on a Manchin/Sinema level of garbage redefining what means to be a Democrat. Schumer has continued fixing the polls so that the firms only ask about his candidates in match-ups and ignore progressives in states with tight primaries like Iowa, Colorado, Marine and Georgia. Look what Civiqs found today, something you'd never know if you only watched the corrupt polling firms being paid off by Schumer:

The DCCC is at least as bad as the DSCC, with Cheri Bustos pushing to recruit and push incredibly bad candidates. The DCCC just saw what that got them in CA-25. The last special election to fill an open House seat is next month and though Nate McMurray came incredibly close to winning in 2018, the DCCC has decided he's too progressive and refuses to back him now, when he's likely to flip the reddest (R+11) congressional district in New York.

McMurray has raised $517,768, while the Trumpist sociopath the GOP is running against him, Chris Jacobs has "raised" $1,250,506 ($446,000 from his own pocket). The DCCC and Pelosi's SuperPAC have spent exactly zero dollars and the only outside money in the race came from Club for Growth backing another Republican even further right than Jacobs! Cheri Bustos is the worst DCCC chair since her mentor Rahm Emanuel.

Anyway, back to the point-- Dems will win by default in November... not because they have anything to offer anyone, but because they're not Trump and not his enablers. The promise is a wretched return to normalcy... the same putrid "normalcy" that allowed a profane and bigoted TV reality show crackpot to slither into the White House. His incompetence in regard to the pandemic has made him toxic in the minds of most voters. He will drag the GOP down the toilet in November and then Biden will drag the Democrats down the toilet in 2022.

CNN's Matt Egan: "The economy has gone from President Donald Trump's greatest political asset to perhaps his biggest weakness. Unemployment is spiking at an unprecedented rate. Consumer spending is vanishing. And GDP is collapsing. History shows that dreadful economic trends like these spell doom for sitting presidents seeking reelection. The coronavirus recession will cause Trump to suffer a 'historic defeat' in November, a national election model released Wednesday by Oxford Economics predicted... The model has correctly predicted the popular vote in every election since 1948 other than 1968 and 1976 (although two candidates lost the popular vote but won the presidency in that span, including George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016)."

The national election model assumes that the economy is still in bad shape this fall, with unemployment above 13%, real per capita incomes down nearly 6% from a year ago and brief period of falling prices, or deflation.

"The economy would still be in a worse state than at the depth of the Great Depression," the Oxford Economics report said.

A separate state-based election model run by Oxford Economics that incorporates local economic trends and gasoline prices predicts Trump will badly lose the electoral college by a margin of 328 to 210. That model forecasts that seven battleground states will flip to Democrats: Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Missouri and North Carolina.

"We would expect these states to experience significant economic contractions and traumatic job losses that would likely swing pocketbook vote," the report said.

I doubt they're right about Missouri, but no fears-- Trump will lose Arizona and possibly Florida or even Georgia. And if we look at the states where Trump is being judged inadequate to handle the pandemic-- in the 5am post this morning-- Trump would only get 61 electoral votes (so not even Texas, Utah or Alabama, which is, of course, absurd.) And actually 60 is the number, because Nebraska's second congressional district (Omaha) will give its single electoral vote to... not-Trump.

There's Just One Elections Pundit Who Knows What She's Talking About-- Rachel... And That's NOT Maddow

Rachel Bitecofer updated her November model this week, partially based on what she calls the mathematical inevitability of a Biden nomination. It shows a Democrat beating Trump in the electoral college 289-181. These are her projected Democratic votes in the half dozen most pro-Trump states:

• Wyoming- 29.37%
• West Virginia- 31.73%
• Oklahoma- 33.45%
• Idaho- 34.58
• Utah- 35.35%
• Arkansas- 36.64%

These are her projected Democratic votes in the half dozen most anti-Trump states:

• Vermont- 67.22%
• New York- 66.76%
• Massachusetts- 66.41%
• California- 65.76%
• Rhode Island- 62.62%
• New Jersey- 61.46%

And these are the Democratic votes in the 10 swing states:

• New Hampshire- 53.9%
• Michigan- 53.24%
• Pennsylvania- 52.47%
• Florida- 51.68%
• Wisconsin- 51.61%
• North Carolina- 50.57%
• Iowa- 49.59%
• Ohio- 49.06%
• Georgia- 48.88%
• Arizona- 48.71

"[V]oters," she wrote, "will likely see this recession as they saw the first term of Obama’s presidency, in context. No president can do much to avoid a total standstill of the global economy from an unprecedented virus. But Trump’s mismanagement of the underlying pandemic causing the economy to melt down will be judged by voters, and it’s already clear that the president’s missteps in the early days of the pandemic are exacerbating America’s economic woes."

A recession will certainly provide a potent test of the old “fundamentals” models that my research challenges. Make no mistake about it: If “the economy, stupid” still matters, it needs to matter here, and it should put the presidency completely out of grasp for Trump. Along with the state-level analysis presented here, economic fundamentals models under a recession will predict dismal electoral prospects for Trump. I assume these models have elements in them to prevent them from making forecasts akin to the Reagan/Carter map from 1980, which of course we will not see because the electorate of 1980, which was rich in liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats, and a Southern realignment hitting its stride is long gone.

Now, the parties are largely ideologically homogenous and partisanship has evolved to become a social identity, an individual’s “ride or die,” which makes the prospect of red states breaking in favor of Biden seem unlikely, especially given the salience of white racial identity in contemporary Republican politics. In an America in which partisans are willing to inflict bodily harm on each other over politics, it seems unlikely that a mere recession, even an intense one, could move them off of their preferred presidential candidate in the ways it did prior to the polarized era, when the economic-fundamentals models, like the dinosaurs once did, ruled the Earth.

...Biden, though unexciting to many millennials and Gen Z voters, is perceived by party mainstreamers as highly electable. These perceptions carry important implications for the behaviors of donors, volunteers, candidates, and tertiary actors such as the punditocracy, who hold important narrative-setting power in the electoral ecosystem. Biden will likely be pushed towards selecting fellow primary contender Amy Klobuchar as his running mate, and in the two-person debate last Sunday, the candidate shrewdly dominated the news cycle by announcing that he will select a female running mate.

Given her performance in the Democratic primary and status as a popular senator from Minnesota, Klobuchar likely leads Biden’s short list. Klobuchar’s reputation for bipartisanship and moderation will be immensely attractive to traditional Democratic strategists who will likely be looking at the VP slot via a regionalism lens, looking to solve the “Midwest problem.”

But whether this is the right lens depends on how you diagnose that 2016 loss. I don’t want to put words in the party’s mouth, but if media surrogates and candidate statements are any indication, it appears Democrats believe their 2016 losses in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, which, as a reminder, were surprise losses, were due to the failure of Hillary Clinton to win over white, working-class voters. The movement of these Obama-to-Trump voters was the decisive element in Clinton’s loss, and the recovery of them must be the central element of any plan to recapture the Midwest.

This diagnosis, that Clinton underperformed Obama among white, working-class voters, is not quantitatively wrong. This is a mathematical fact. Where this diagnosis runs into trouble is misunderstanding why Clinton underperformed Obama among white, working-class voters and what, if anything, can be done about it. Because underlying the cycle-specific trends are the realities of the long-term demographic, coalitional realignments of the two parties, where the Republican Party is becoming a rural-based party of whites, particularly working-class whites (but  more accurately, non-college-educated whites), and the Democratic Party is becoming an urban/suburban party, racially and ethnically diverse in a society that is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse, and where college education is becoming a reliable predictor of Democratic candidate vote choice (so much so that I use it to predict Democratic candidate vote share in my modeling).

What this means, of course, is that every four years, fewer white, non-college-educated voters (especially those in rural areas) vote for Democrats. And this has profound impacts in the Midwest, because the traditional Democratic strongholds were often, in more rural, heavily unionized areas of these states. Which is why Democrats look at these areas as, “I used to win here, and I should be winning here now.” Which brings us back to the Obama-to-Trump voters. Some of these voters are actually “pure” independents. They broke against the Democrats in 2016 because they were the status quo. In data I worked with from Morning Consult, about 30 percent of Obama-to-Trump voters expressed unfavorable views of Trump as of last fall. My belief is that this group is likely the pure independent chunk, voters I call “change voters,” who we might expect to swing away from Trump in 2020 now that he represents the status quo (especially under an economic recession environment).

As for the rest? As Dave Weigel observed in his analysis of the March 10 primary states, rural, white, working-class voters seem to be continuing their long-term dealignment/realignment away from the Democratic Party and to the Republican Party in the 2020 primary because Biden lost ground compared to Hillary’s performance in previous Democratic strongholds in rural areas; more evidence that the long term dealignment/realignment makes the prospects of Biden winning back white, working-class voters seem unlikely.

Instead, Democrats should be worried about their own coalition, especially given the significant ideological fractures in it, because that weakness played a critical role in their 2016 loss. And that weakness occurred in large part due to the same strategic miscalculations Democrats seem inclined to repeat in 2020-- focusing on rural/white, working-class voters rather than party unity and turnout of their own coalition. That said, 2020 is not 2016. If Biden picks a moderate like Amy Klobuchar, he’s still going to win the election in the very same way that Democrats completely ignored Donald Trump in their 2018 campaign strategies, but still picked up 40 House seats. This was true before COVID-19 came along to destroy the economy and highlight Trump’s many management shortcomings, but the pandemic and economic collapse are going to exacerbate Trump’s problems.

...Now, are there some realigning Republicans, disgusted by the Trump GOP, who are telling their liberal friends and neighbors they voted for a Democrat in 2018?  Absolutely. But I deal in data, and the data tells a different story about the forces that powered the 2018 wave. Yes, it captures a massive shift of independents moving to the Democrats after voting for Trump in 2016, but the myth of the disaffected 2018 Republican appears to be just that, a myth. Instead, the 2018 suburban transformation was largely powered by millennials and Gen Z voters, voters of color, and college-educated women, many of whom had been lazy about voting prior to the election of Donald Trump but now see their votes as America’s last line of defense. It was the surge to the polls by these voters, Democrats, but also independents, that my 2018 model anticipated and it’s these voters who power the 2020 version, too.

Of these “surge” voters, the most vulnerable to turnout failure are young voters and voters of color and the intersection of these two demographics: young voters of color. And for these voters, ideological representation matters. The argument for two moderates on the Democratic ticket is that it avoids alienating disaffected Republicans who might be willing to support the ticket so long as it’s digestible. But again, the 2018 data doesn’t offer much empirical evidence of Republican support at the ballot box for Democrats beyond the average “crossover” rates typical for the polarized era and certainly, the same strategy to court Republicans came up empty in 2016. And the strategy is not cost free. It will, to some extent, cost Democrats support among some Bernie Sanders supporters. While nominating someone on the far left is certainly not ideal, it may not be ideal for the party to go forward with two moderates on the ticket either, because it leaves their progressive flank exposed to what will be a high-tech assault from the Trump campaign and from the RNC who recognize the importance of disaffection among the progressive base plays in their hopes to retain the presidency and control of the Senate.

As the losing ideological faction from the primary, progressives are about to become the targets of a well-financed, sophisticated propaganda campaign hosted by Republicans attempt to fracture the “not-Trump coalition” and reduce the vote share needed for Trump to carry swing states to the pluralities he reached in the 2016 cycle. If 2020 plays out like 2012, 2008, 2004, or even 2000, with typically low protest-balloting rates, Trump’s path to 270 becomes not just difficult, but nearly impossible because of the president’s low approval ratings. Failing to shore up support among liberal voters, especially at a time of great fiscal calamity could prove to be the Democrats’ Achilles’ heel-- as it was in the 2016 cycle.

In addition to progressive defection, Democrats were also left exposed in 2016 when turnout among voters of color, especially black voters, receded from its Obama Era highs. For older voters of color, potential VP pitfalls lie more along lines of racial representation. The data is irrefutable: Black voter turnout increased in 2008 and 2012 for Barack Obama because black voters rallied around a candidate who represented them. In 2008, that increased turnout was part of a large coalition that gave Obama a huge victory, but in 2012, that turnout offset the loss of independents, who broke in favor of Mitt Romney that cycle. Black turnout in places like Cleveland and Columbus allowed Obama to win Ohio anyway...

Changes from the July 1, 2019, forecast

Arizona: Toss-up to Lean D With Biden winning the nomination and Mark Kelly (a former astronaut) on the Senate ballot, things are looking very good for Democrats to flip this realigning state completely blue in 2020. It’ll be quite the political transformation for the state that made Sheriff Arpaio famous. One thing to watch here in 2020-- even with the Green Party candidate withdrawing and throwing support behind the Democratic Party’s 2018 senate nominee Kyrsten Sinema, the Green Party candidate still pulled in 2.4% of the vote after significant targeting of progressives via the state’s GOP. It was a prototype of the strategy the RNC plans to deploy to support Trump and their senate candidates in 2020 outlined above. More on this when my senate and House ratings drop.

Nevada: Lean D to Likely D

Nevada looks good for Democrats. And frankly, you can’t live in a world in which Arizona is likely turning into a blue state (at least while Democrats are energized) and Nevada doesn’t end up in Biden’s column. The Nevada caucuses met the admittedly low bar for success set by their big sister, the Iowa caucuses, as votes were counted, reported, and a winner was announced all on caucus night. Nevada also beat the Iowa caucuses on turnout. Although falling a bit short of its inaugural (reorganized) 2008 participation rates, 2020 turnout well-exceeded its 2016 rates. This was an important benchmark for Democrats, because both the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary posted average turnout-- far short of the blockbuster turnout numbers seen in elections since Trump and short of what analysts, including yours truly, were expecting in these contests.

To be sure, this cycle’s Iowa caucuses faced two abnormalities that no doubt disrupted them. The caucuses were held the day after the Super Bowl, which had apparently never happened before. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the final three weeks leading up to the caucuses, including the day of the caucuses itself, were disrupted by Trump’s impeachment (show) trial in the Senate, which forced many of the candidates to leave the Hawkeye State and return to D.C. But New Hampshire’s primary, although also impacted by impeachment, should have been largely unaffected, and although turnout was fine, it certainly was not blockbuster. Seeing turnout almost reach 2008 levels in Nevada was a positive sign for Democrats, and as it turns out, it was also a harbinger of things to come as the South Carolina primary met its 2008 benchmarks, as did turnout in many of the Super Tuesday states. Turnout in the Virginia Democratic primary that day nearly doubled its 2016 numbers.

I should note: Although the correlation between primary participation and general election turnout is generally weak, especially for Democrats, presidential elections are different, and 2008’s massive turnout of the primary coalition that gave Obama the nomination heralded significant upticks in voting participation in the presidential election that fall, particularly among groups less likely to vote, such as minority voters and young voters. Failing to see a turnout increase in the Democratic primaries materialize definitely would have been a troublesome sign for Democrats and would have forced me to reassess my confidence in a Democratic victory in the fall. Please note, current turnout collapses due to COVID19 are not signals of Democratic performance in the fall.

Montana: Safe R to Likely R

With the entrance of popular Gov. Steve Bullock into the state’s Senate race, Montana is moving from Safe R to Likely R, with potential for further upgrade later. Bullock will need to demonstrate dominance among independents in polling out of Big Sky Country to truly be competitive there under a high-turnout scenario, as will his ticket-mate, Joe Biden. But more importantly, they’ll need every single Democrat and left-leaning independent in the state to show up and vote. Which is a problem, because although a great many Democrats and left-leaning independents will be inspired to vote in 2020 due to Trump fear, I assume the Bullock campaign’s resources will largely be spent on conversion. And I’m just not sure it’ll work against Steve Daines, a center-right, traditional, conservative. Regular followers will know that I’m generally bearish about conversion (although sometimes it works, most recently in the Kentucky governor’s race against controversial Republican incumbent Matt Bevin, who along with a reputation for Trump-like divisiveness also curtailed the state’s Obamacare Medicaid expansion program). Conversion in the polarized era is hard, and it is difficult to find evidence of it in polling data from the past decade. Further complicating things for Bullock is that the targets most susceptible to this type of conversion effort aren’t likely to be offended by a guy like Daines, who is already in office. And the resources spent on this effort are resources that will not be spent maximizing the turnout of people who would vote for Bullock if they could be motivated to show up.

So, Montana will be worth watching at least. A recession and COVID19 blowback might have more influence in Montana than in other red states because in Montana there are more independents (the dominant independent group there are right-leaning independents, which is why Montana usually breaks in favor of Republicans). But the race will add spending and attention to an otherwise ignored state and given the inflated polling of other long-shot Senate bids, like Tennessee’s 2018 Senate race with former Gov. Phil Bredesen, may produce enough “false flag” polling (pollsters: be sure to always put those party labels on the ballot questions!) to attract attention from the Biden campaign, or possibly Bloomberg, who will be spending on Biden’s behalf.

Virginia: Likely D to Safe D

As I mentioned, turnout nearly doubled in the Virginia Democratic primary and despite a coordinated effort dubbed Operation Chaos by Virginia’s Second Amendment groups galvanized by Virginia’s newly sworn-in Democratic trifecta passing a gun background check bill and a “red flag” law, few Republicans utilized Virginia’s open primary rules to sabotage the Democratic primary by voting for Bernie Sanders (Fun fact: I tested this in my VA primary poll and found that although yes, some Republicans indeed planned to show up and vote for Sanders, they were greatly outnumbered by others who planned to vote for either Biden or Bloomberg. Although the percent of Republican identifiers doubled in 2020 over their numbers in the 2016 primary in Virginia, Republicans still made up a paltry 6 percent of the primary electorate, a far cry from the 23 percent who indicated in our poll at least a soft intent to vote.

But I digress. Virginia’s days as a “purple” state are behind her due to the state’s atypically high rates of college education (a trait she shares with her fellow former swing state, Colorado). I’m not sure we’ll be seeing Virginia return to two-party competition in statewide contests unless college-educated voters end their long-term realignment to the Democratic Party. The way people think of suburban realignment is as a fixed pool of voters changing their affiliation from Republican to Democrat, or at least from Republican to independent. There are certainly some Republicans that left the GOP as it shifted sharply to the right, embracing populism via the Tea Party, then Palinism, which morphed into Trumpism. But this exodus largely occurred before Trump entered the picture, although his candidacy did seem to push out a final surge. And in terms of elites, since 1994, far more Democrats have left their party than Republicans (due to the Southern realignment). During the course of the Trump presidency year, although 19 Republican office holders have quit their party, 15 Democrats have done the same, most recently, a freshman House member in New Jersey who is almost surely regretting that decision today.

Instead, the political metamorphosis in America’s suburbs is largely powered by generational replacement and the coming of age of America’s two largest, most diverse, and best educated generations in history: millennials, who are at the front end of the generation, 40, and at the bottom end of the generation, in their late 20s, and Generation Z, which is currently only about half enfranchised. Millennial college grads are bucking the trend their Gen X parents followed when they became Republicans (because back in the 1980s, Greed was Good and Alex Keating was cool). Instead, some are becoming Democrats, or at least left-leaning Independents. That said, people have a high propensity to adopt their parent’s political attitudes in a process known as political socialization. Generally, 80 percent of individuals adopt their parent’s political attitudes while 20 percent end up like me, forever facing uncomfortable, stilted, small-talk conversations over their Thanksgiving turkey.

Because of this reality, generational replacement is a slow process, but several additional factors are speeding things up. Nowadays, geographic mobility is a reality of the modern economy, so today’s college graduates often find themselves settling in suburbs outside major cities in states they didn’t grow up in. And although the GOP’s race problems aren’t exactly new, the issues they have long faced with black voters over conservatives’ resistance to civil rights legislation are now spreading to other minority groups, such as Latino and Asian voters, a byproduct of the party’s increasingly strident rhetoric on policy issues that touch on race, such as immigration and social welfare programs (as the GOP’s 2012 autopsy report correctly noted: This rhetoric is isolating America’s growing minority population and, I can tell you, frustrating the Gen Z and millennial Republicans who are at the mercy of the party’s Boomer leadership).

The suburbs of today are not the suburbs of yesterday. Because millennials are entering their 30s and 40s, they are entering the suburbs and raising their children there, as their parents did before them. And like generations before them, as they have come into “real” adulthood they are maturing politically, starting to become more interested in politics and in voting. And if they were casual voters in 2016, they, and to a lesser but still important extent their college-age equivalents in Generation Z, are rabid about it now. They showed up in what was, for these age groups, huge numbers in the 2018 midterms, and will likely repeat that in the 2020 general. And their presence in the electorate, both Democrats and independents, is reshaping the political landscape of America’s suburbs.

Does this mean there are no former Republicans who now call themselves independents voting for Democrats in the ‘burbs? Of course there are! But they play a supporting role-- they aren’t the lead actors.

Texas: Likely R to Lean R

Like in 2018, my expectation in terms of the statewide ballot in Texas is that Democrats are going to turn in a very competitive performance but will likely come up short. To actually win statewide, they need a massive turnout increase among Latino voters, and I’m not sure that the Democratic Party truly grasps that yet. Which is funny, right? Because Republicans have recognized the power of descriptive representation among Latino voters for decades, finding and promoting talented Latino politicians all across the country in the Southwest and in Florida and tapping into human beings’ innate desire for sameness. Even Beto O’Rourke, for all the improvements he made to running for statewide office in Texas (the most important of which was abandonment of what I call the “Embarrassed Democrat” platform) still didn’t quite grasp that Latino turnout is the ONLY path to victory. If he had, he would have invested less time and resources on visiting all 250-something counties and more money on Latino turnout. If the Democrats finagled $50 million dollars out of Bloomberg and spent it all on Latino turnout this cycle, Biden could potentially win Texas. Of course, that would also require effective messaging: It is one thing to talk to voters, but what you say to them matters, a lot in convincing them their vote matters.

The best asset Biden has for winning Texas is the fact that Democrats will likely believe deeply in the potential for that Senate seat to flip-- plus, there are nine (that’s correct, nine) House seats within reach deep in the heart of Texas, in the realigning suburbs around Houston and Dallas. These districts either got underinvested in or even outright missed in the 2018 wave (I highlighted these races back in August of 2019 here). Add to this an effort by Texas Democrats to pick up seats in the state legislature, perhaps enough to give them control of the state house for the first time since the Southern realignment ran its course through the state, and you have very similar circumstances to conditions we’ll be seeing in Iowa and North Carolina, where Democrats will also benefit from multiple competitive races helping to boost overall turnout. This earns Texas a lean R, for now.

Georgia: Lean R to Toss-up

And that leaves us with Georgia. The Peach State, and the state I spent six years living in as I pursued my doctorate at the University of Georgia (Go Dawgs, Woof, Woof, Woof). Although I initially rated Georgia as Lean R, and that is the rating the state warrants under the model, it has now gone from holding not one, but two Senate races! Those two Senate seats which, by the way, are likely going to be pivotal for Democrats’ hope to take control of the Senate, have certainly increased the salience of Georgia for the party. Despite their best efforts, the party was unsuccessful in convincing the state’s star Stacey Abrams to run, and indeed, her decision to sit out was a major factor in my decision to initially rate Georgia as Lean R.

But it was a strategically shrewd move for Abrams, who likely appears somewhere high up on Biden’s VP list. While coming up short, her candidacy for the state’s governorship in 2018 was impressive. For a black female to come within a hair’s breadth of winning the governorship of Georgia-- GEORGIA, for God’s sake, in a congressional midterm cycle, no less? So please, don’t @ me with the “but she couldn’t even win her own race” tweets. Georgia is an R+5 state, and as in many red states, Republicans have strategically used control of state government there to erect barriers to voting. Drop Stacey Abrams in Virginia and I’m not sure anyone would want to run against her. So important to remember that a politician’s electoral performance (and their issue positioning/ideology for that matter) is conditional on where they serve/run for office and in the polarized era, what matters for that is the party composition of the district/state. Take a 2018 loser like Claire McCaskill, whose Missouri Senate seat went from R+5 to about R+9 during her tenure, and drop her off in a state like Wisconsin (EVEN), and McCaskill is still serving in the Senate.

Back to Georgia. For the special election, well-known preacher Raphael Warnock has entered the race against incumbent Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who was appointed to the seat last fall to fill an unexpected vacancy created when the state’s senior senator, Johnny Isakson, had to retire suddenly due to illness. What you may not know, because it’s super-weird and election nerd wonky, is that this special election is like Mad Max of Thunderdome + WrestleMania, except it’s more like 20 candidates of all stripes enter, and two will leave. That’s because the state’s rules governing appointment-filled vacancies and elections require winners to exceed a 50 percent +1 benchmark to avoid a runoff. And because this election is a special election to fill out a two-year term, there will not be a primary first to whittle down the competition to a single Republican and Democratic nominee.

So, with more than a dozen candidates running in it, this election seems all but certain to end in a January 2021 runoff between the top two vote-getters. Things became far more complicated for the GOP when Rep. Doug Collins, a fervent Trump supporter and MAGA adherent, decided to challenge Loeffler, a “country club conservative,” in the special rather than conceding defeat after trying to pressure Kemp into appointing him to the seat instead of her. Despite immense pressure from Georgia’s pro-Trump base, Kemp appointed Loeffler for two reasons: broader electability in what the party knows will be a competitive Senate cycle and her ability to self-finance her race (she donated $20 million dollars to her own campaign).

A quick aside on this. Bashing the big-money biases of candidate selection from both party’s organizations is easy to do, and money is quite obviously a terrible sickness on the American political system, but I do want to point out that both the DNC and RNC are facing serious constraints due to the costs of modern campaigns that drive these decisions. With Senate races costing around $100 million dollars in the post-Citizens United environment, the parties are increasingly forced to turn to millionaires (and more recently billionaires) to run for office because they are the only ones who can come up with the type of money needed to compete. Collins, who was supported by Georgia’s vibrant Republican grassroots community, didn’t take too kindly to being passed over for the Senate seat largely due to funding potential and is willing to jeopardize the party’s ability to hold the seat over it (well that, and a dash of good ol’ fashioned ideological extremism) and will now have plenty of fodder to use against Loeffler who is one of four senators under scrutiny for selling stocks in the run-up to the pandemic.

IF Georgia Democrats can thread the needle and somehow get their field to winnow and get Warnock over the 50 percent threshold on Election Day in November, they could flip that seat. But that’s a mighty big “if,” for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that the Democrats have ideologues in their party, too, which can make coordination difficult. Having two competitive Senate seats in a state that broke for Trump by just 5 points in 2016 in a low-turnout environment makes Georgia a toss-up state for the Biden team. And because a state like Georgia is superfluous to an Electoral College victory (you only need 270 EC votes to accomplish that) this is where things like candidate quality, strategy, and VP selection can make a difference. Under a scenario where Stacey Abrams or even Kamala Harris is on the ticket, Georgia could become ground zero.

What does it all mean?

Collectively, the update reflects the consolidation of the Democratic primary around a digestible candidate decently positioned to capitalize on anti-Trump blowback constrained by polarization and hyperpartisanship, the forces that constitute the fundamentals of the 2020 presidential election. Democrats and left-leaning independents are fired up, galvanized by negative partisanship and ready to vote Trump out. But Republicans, at least as of today, are equally determined to keep him. I want to make something clear- this update largely ignore what is all but guaranteed to be a serious economic recession as well as the toll the COVID19 pandemic ends up taking on American lives.

Can a mismanaged response to COVID19 that exacerbates the death toll and economic collapse and ensuing recession further complicate Trump’s already dismal reelection picture? Absolutely. When I said “barring a shock to the system” and listed economic recession it was not because I expected such an effect would help Trump electorally. Indeed, I’m not sure Trump would be capable of benefitting from any “rally around the flag” event, which the pandemic certainly could qualify as, because it is simply not in his nature to behave in ways that would allow him to rally the public around him, at least not outside a very constrained window of time.

If I had to guess, voters will likely hold Trump largely blameless for the economic collapse but the management of the country’s response to the pandemic is another matter. That said, after watching the Trump presidency play out, with the revelations of the Mueller Report-- deftly deflected by Attorney General Barr in what I admiringly note was a brilliantly executed public relations effort-- and the stunning revelations from House’s investigation into the president’s actions in the Ukraine scandal unable to move Republican voters off of the 90/10 approval perch, until I see data that shows Trump’s Red Wall cracking, I remain bullish on his ability to remain at least competitive for reelection in 2020. In other words, it’s hard for me to imagine the political map remade and Democrats suddenly competitive in places like Arkansas, which is what we have seen historically when presidential elections have corresponded to periods of massive economic or societal upheaval. Polarization and hyperpartisanship makes such an outcome unlikely, but if signs of such a democratic reawakening were to emerge, I will be sure to tell you.

Since Bitecofer brought up the Senate... I want to point out an American Prospect report this week on knucklehead Chuck Schumer and his toxic role in screwing up the DSCC, which he used to head and now maintains a firm grip on through weak puppet Catherine Cortez Masto, who he appointed. Bob Moser began with how Schumer was able to drive the more qualified and surer statewide bet-- Maggie Toulouse Oliver-- in the New Mexico open-seat race, out of the race to make room for a centrist nothing DC establishment candidate, Ben Ray Luján.

Moser wrote that "While the DCCC, which intervenes early and often in House primaries, tends to garner more press attention-- and more howls of protest from progressives-- the DSCC is just as powerful and intrusive. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s hand-picked favorites gain an insurmountable financial advantage and the establishment stamp of approval, effectively ending most primary elections before they begin. Schumer doesn’t just choose between candidates who’ve declared their interest or started to run; he aggressively shapes the races to suit his narrow idea of “electability,” sometimes elbowing the 'wrong' candidate out of the race with strong-arm tactics. And when he’s not happy with his choices, Schumer goes out and finds his own, recruiting centrist candidates with big-donor connections who often turn out to be lackluster campaigners at best."

In the case of solidly blue New Mexico, "Toulouse Oliver didn’t want to give in. She’d fought uphill her whole life. But she and her campaign were about to get a hard lesson in exactly why, since 2010, not a single candidate endorsed early by the DSCC had lost a Democratic primary." Heather Brewer, her campaign manager, told Moser that she tried "to get DSCC Chair Catherine Cortez Masto or her boss, Schumer, to meet with Toulouse Oliver and see what she had to offer. 'They never returned my phone calls,' Brewer says. 'We were just ignored.' They had no illusions that the establishment would go against Luján, she says. 'We just wanted the opportunity to make the case that they should stay out of the primary. Two strong, viable progressives were running. Given the Democratic edge here, whoever won the primary was going to win the general election. This was the race. Why shouldn’t New Mexicans be able to decide between two worthy candidates?' Brewer knows very well that Luján is no progressive; she an dI discussed it over the phone at least a dozen times. And saying so to a reporter helps explain how Schumer is able to snow the public.

For candidates left unchosen by the DSCC and the Schumer machine, “there are so many, many, many obstacles that you wouldn’t see if you’re on the sidelines,” Brewer says. “It’s all designed to keep outsiders from even trying.” The highest, hardest hurdle is raising enough money to compete. “We were told again and again, if you can hold Luján’s financial advantage to 10-to-1, you’re doing great,” Brewer says. When the party committees decide to weigh in on a primary and pick their favorite, they aren’t just pledging to put millions behind him or her, along with other valuable campaign resources (organizers, consultants, fundraising pros); they’re signaling where other Democratic donors should invest as well-- and which candidates they shouldn’t bother with. But the party doesn’t stop there. “I understand, from what we were told, they were using their influence to get organizations who’d endorsed Maggie, or thought about supporting her, to stay on the sidelines,” Brewer says.

When the candidate met with donors and progressive organizations that would be expected to be friendly to her effort, Brewer says, “We got a lot of paternalistic reactions: ‘Are you sure you want to take on this fight? Because it might come back to bite you.’ What you couldn’t help hearing was, ‘Why aren’t you putting your pretty little dress on and waiting for another time?’”

Toulouse Oliver managed to raise enough to staff up her campaign last spring and summer. But that was just one challenge it had to meet. Top-level campaign vendors-- pollsters, field organizers, fundraisers-- have grown increasingly wary of taking on non-establishment candidates. And for good reason: Last year, the DCCC announced that it would blacklist any campaign vendor that worked on a primary challenge to a Democratic incumbent. By implication, that also meant steering clear of any challenge to party-endorsed candidates altogether. “The DSCC didn’t spell it out the same way,” Brewer says, “but they didn’t have to. If you go with an insurgent candidate, you’re done. ‘You cross us, and we’ll cross you.’ It cast a shadow over everything about how people approached Maggie’s campaign.”

One person who didn’t take Toulouse Oliver lightly was her opponent. Just two days after she bucked the DSCC and officially announced she was running, Luján-- whose voting record on the environment had been mixed-- declared he would be co-sponsoring Green New Deal legislation in the House. A month later, he said he would-- like Toulouse Oliver-- refuse to accept corporate PAC money. In June, he tacked left again, coming out for Medicare for All. And in August, he became the highest-ranking Democrat to call for an impeachment inquiry.

By that point, he’d effectively appropriated most of the big issues that Toulouse Oliver was campaigning on. And, no surprise, he was also raising big bucks. By October, Luján had $1.6 million in the bank. Toulouse Oliver had $85,000 heading into the final quarter of the year. “We did polling,” Brewer says, “and we still had a path to victory. It was an ugly, scorched-earth path, though.”

At the end of October, after six months of fighting the system, Toulouse Oliver withdrew, throwing her support behind Luján and celebrating the small-but-unsatisfying feat of pushing him to the left. For the rest of the campaign, she’d continue working as secretary of state to make voting easier-- work that will, of course, benefit Luján in November.

The DSCC had won again. Field cleared, check! Months later, Brewer, who’s been working in New Mexico politics for two decades, still hasn’t gotten over it. “You’re going 100 miles an hour trying to fight the establishment, and then-- bang, it’s over. This policy of hamstringing challengers, strong-arming vendors, warning donors not to give to challengers-- it’s completely contrary to the Democratic spirit. What they’re doing is shutting out different voices. It’s not OK.”

It used to be a rare thing for the national Democratic committees to step into-- much less step on-- party primaries. “The party’s traditional view was that you should be neutral until the states or districts picked a nominee,” says Andrew Romanoff, a former Colorado House Speaker who served on the Democratic National Committee in the late 1990s. But since the mid-2000s, under the leadership of Pelosi, Schumer, and former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the notion that voters should choose their own nominees has become an anachronism.

Schumer made his bones in the Senate by chairing the DSCC during his first term, in the 2005-2006 cycle, making good use of his home-state ties to Wall Street. From the start, he’s shown no hesitation about meddling in primaries-- and no interest in changing his ideas about what an “electable” candidate looks like, despite the fact that his handpicked recruits have regularly bombed in winnable general elections. This year, the strategy of fixing primaries has reached its logical zenith: In every single state where there’s an open Senate seat or a vulnerable Republican, the DSCC has chosen an early favorite. That adds up to a lot of states this time around—four in which Democrats are favored to win (Arizona, Colorado, Maine, New Mexico), and seven more where they have fair-to-middling chances (Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Iowa, Montana, North Carolina, Texas).

The DSCC, of course, says it’s all a matter of pragmatism. The rationale for preventing voters from choosing Democratic nominees is supposedly to avoid “divisive” primary battles that drain resources and goodwill heading into general elections. And the choice of candidates is based on cold, hard calculations of what it’ll take to win a particular state. “These are not decisions made on a whim or a popularity contest,” Dan Sena, who ran the DCCC in 2018, said when questions were raised about this year’s Senate picks. “These are decisions that are very well thought-out, take time to develop, and often they’re critical to being able to flip a seat.” DSCC spokesperson Lauren Passalacqua put it more simply: “We’re working with the strongest candidates who will help Democrats take back the Senate.”

So what does the lineup of “strongest candidates” in key 2020 races look like? Eight of the 11 are white. Six are men. Three have never run for any office. Six have never won an election. All but two oppose both the Green New Deal and Medicare for All. All but one—the Rev. Raphael Warnock in Georgia, the lone African American on the list—are demonstrably more conservative than their main rivals bypassed by the DSCC.

The list of viable contenders rejected by the DSCC is a study in contrast. The tone was set with the first early endorsement of the cycle: A couple of weeks before the committee chose Ben Ray Luján over Maggie Toulouse Oliver last April, Schumer’s blessing went to former astronaut Mark Kelly in Arizona, a political novice who only registered as a Democrat in 2018, over Rep. Ruben Gallego, a 39-year-old rising star in the progressive caucus who’d long been planning to run. (Gallego subsequently opted to bow out.)

Another Schumer recruit was rolled out in June 2019 in the state every Democrat would most love to win: Mitch McConnell’s Kentucky. Democrats there, and many progressives around the country, had gotten fired up about the prospect of an out-of-the-box challenger to the self-proclaimed “Darth Vader of the Senate,” who’s never lost in six Senate elections and also never been liked: Twice over the past year, McConnell’s approval ratings in Kentucky hit a rock-bottom 18 percent. Matt Jones, a 41-year-old Eastern Kentucky native with the gravelly drawl to prove it, started Kentucky Sports Radio after finishing Duke Law School, and has become one of the most beloved figures in the state, mixing politics into his sports talk and specializing in McConnell takedowns. “For a lot of this state, I’m their one progressive friend,” he told me last summer, when he was still considering a tilt at the McConnell windmill.

Like other Kentucky Democrats, Jones had watched with mounting frustration as McConnell demolished a series of well-funded centrists backed by the DSCC. Kentuckians mostly vote Republican now, and they gave Trump a 30-point blowout margin in 2016, but they’ve still elected Democrats to the governorship three of the last four cycles. Jones couldn’t help wondering, “What if you stand up for progressive economic values and do it with a down-home Kentucky spin?” His hope was that the DSCC, which he calls “a complete disaster when it comes to selecting candidates,” would stand back and give him a chance to test his theory. “Kentucky is a blue-collar, anti-establishment state,” he says, “The reason that people like Trump here has nothing to do with ‘issues’ per se. They like him for the exact same reason they don’t like McConnell. To beat him, you’ve got to run somebody who runs against his mainstreamism.”

The DSCC did not stand back, of course. It never reached out to Jones. Instead, Schumer wooed Amy McGrath, the ex-Marine who came up just short in a House race in 2018. McGrath is running straight down the middle, emphasizing “country over party,” and raising a ton of money-- just as the DSCC favorite in 2014, Alison Lundergan Grimes, did, before losing to McConnell by 15 points. Jones ultimately decided to stick with his radio network and channel his McConnell animus into an upcoming book, Mitch, Please. The whole thing left him, and a lot of his fans, anguished. “I was looking at this and saying, ‘I’m thinking about taking on the most powerful senator since LBJ. I’m going to do it as a radio host, and risk having people turn on me for good and ruining my career if I lose. And then there’s Schumer coming along to say that I’m going to have to run against the Democratic establishment as well.’”

Join the club, Matt. With Jones out of the running, first-term state Rep. Charles Booker of Louisville, an African American, stepped up late last year to give McGrath some competition from the left with a scrappy grassroots campaign touting Medicare for All and universal basic income.

And so it went, throughout 2019. In Iowa, where first-term Republican Joni Ernst looks eminently beatable, the DSCC came out in June for real-estate executive Theresa Greenfield, another first-time candidate, over two young progressives with broad appeal who’d been looking to run: J.D. Scholten, whose grassroots populist campaign nearly unseated the white supremacist Rep. Steve King in 2018, and Linn County Supervisor Stacey Walker, an African American Bernie Sanders supporter who’s viewed as a rising force in the party. Scholten wound up running against King again. When Walker decided to stay out of a “primary orchestrated by Washington elites,” as he put it, he was brutally honest about his reasons. “I don’t have the privilege of challenging institutional forces on this scale without incurring significant damage to my political career,” he said, “and at the end of the day, this fear won out over my courage and I’m not proud about that.”

The Iowa seat, it’s worth noting, almost surely wouldn’t be in Republican hands if the DSCC hadn’t given an early, field-clearing endorsement in 2014 to famously haughty Rep. Bruce Braley after longtime Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin retired. Soon after receiving Schumer’s blessing, Braley made headlines complaining about the shortage of locker-room attendants in the Senate gym during a government shutdown; worse, he was caught on tape poking fun at the idea that popular Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, a mere “farmer” without a law degree, might soon be chairing the Senate Judiciary Committee. Farmers, a large contingent in Iowa, took notice; Braley lost handily.

It wasn’t the first or last time the DSCC’s strategy left it to ride or die with a candidate who proved inept or downright offensive. In 2016, with Republican Sen. Pat Toomey looking like a sure loser in Pennsylvania to populist Democrat Joe Sestak, Schumer recruited Katie McGinty, who’d run for election exactly once and won 8 percent in a primary. Sestak had infuriated the DSCC by challenging and beating Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter in a 2010 primary, and he had to pay the price. McGinty, propelled into the general election by $5 million in DSCC spending against Sestak, became a laughingstock for her wooden public presence and a pariah for her deep ties to oil and gas companies. She lost a race that set spending records on both sides.

Even when Schumer’s recruits win general elections, the upshot for Democrats can be problematic. His great success story of 2018, Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, votes regularly with Republicans on judicial nominees, backed Attorney General Bill Barr’s confirmation, opposes net neutrality, and was ranked-- by one nonpartisan vote-tracking group-- as more conservative in 2019 than Mitch McConnell. The Arizona Democratic Party threatened to censure her last year for “failing to support the tenets of the 2016 Democratic Party platform.”

In newly competitive Kansas, where GOP Sen. Pat Roberts is retiring, the early DSCC nod went to longtime Republican state Sen. Barbara Bollier, who’d switched parties only one year before. In Maine, where Sen. Susan Collins’s serial capitulations to President Trump have wrecked her reputation for independence in a state that’s been trending blue, a potentially lively Democratic primary was squelched in May, when the DSCC endorsed state House Speaker Sara Gideon. “They didn’t just get in putting their thumb on the scale,” marveled progressive activist Betsy Sweet, who stayed in the race while other contenders dropped away, but struggled to raise money and find campaign vendors. “It was like the full body.” Collins, Sweet noted, has beaten Schumer picks in the past, partly because of the way the DSCC dictates they run campaigns. “What I see Chuck Schumer trying to do for all these candidates is to package them like a cookie. Their formula is to raise a lot of money and [run] a lot of negative ads, and you win.”

If anyone doubted her assessment, Schumer’s interventions in North Carolina provided ample proof. First-term senator Thom Tillis is considered one of the most beatable Republicans in the country. After trying and failing to recruit a series of candidates last year, Schumer landed on moderate military veteran Cal Cunningham, a one-term state legislator in the early ’00s who lost the Democratic nomination for Senate in 2010, despite a DSCC endorsement, and hasn’t run for office since. The DSCC was determined to block state Sen. Erica Smith, who’d been running a progressive campaign from the start. “Sen. Schumer, for whatever reason, did not want an African American running for Senate in North Carolina,” Smith said. Just before they tapped Cunningham, Smith claimed that party leaders had told her, “unequivocally that they were not, had not, did not intend to endorse in the primary.” Smith stayed in, defiant but drastically outspent.

Toward the end of the campaign, a mysterious PAC—its funding later traced to the Republican Senate Leadership Fund—spent more than $2 million on dirty-trick ads touting Smith as the “true progressive” in the race and criticizing Cunningham’s stances on LGBT rights and climate change. But PACs supporting Cunningham, which put $7 million behind him, simply ramped up their spending in response. Cunningham won 57-35 on Super Tuesday.

Schumer’s quest for a non-Smith candidate in North Carolina produced the most embarrassing, and revealing, glimpse yet into the DSCC’s criteria for selecting the “strongest” candidates. Jeff Jackson, a 37-year-old National Guardsman who’s crusaded against Republican voter suppression and gerrymandering in the state Senate, met with Schumer early in 2019 to discuss his own possible candidacy. In September, long after he’d decided not to run, Jackson revealed why in a talk at UNC Charlotte. Jackson, all gung ho, said he’d outlined his plans for the campaign, telling Schumer he wanted to start with “100 town halls in 100 days” across the state.

Schumer responded brusquely, Jackson reported. “Wrong answer … We want you to spend the next 16 months in a windowless basement raising money, and then we’re going to spend 80 percent of it on negative ads about Tillis.”

Democracy in action.

Early last year, as he laid the groundwork for a Senate campaign in Colorado, Andrew Romanoff got a call from the DSCC. “They said Sen. Schumer would like to meet with you, see what you’re putting together, see if we can recommend any consultants,” he recalls. The outreach was a bit surprising. A decade before, Romanoff, who’d been the youngest House Speaker in state history, had gotten crosswise with the Washington establishment when he’d mounted an unsuccessful progressive challenge to Michael Bennet, who’d been appointed to the Senate in 2009 when Ken Salazar became President Obama’s secretary of the interior.

Back then, Romanoff admits, his support for single-payer health care, radical environmental reforms to combat climate change, and same-sex marriage were a few election cycles ahead of their time in Colorado. Ten years later, as he tried to mount his political comeback, those views had become mainstream-- so much so that at least a half-dozen other potentially viable progressives, including two women who’d also been state House Speakers, were planning to run for the chance to unseat unpopular first-term Republican Sen. Cory Gardner. But hey, Romanoff thought: Maybe his old foes at the DSCC would give him a leg up this time.

“It turned out that it was all a ruse,” Romanoff says. “Sen. Schumer made it clear to me that he was going to recruit Hick”-- former Gov. John Hickenlooper, who was then running a hopeless campaign for president from the right, likening Bernie Sanders to Marx and Stalin--“into the race. They were very naked about this. They didn’t want to see a primary; they didn’t want Democrats to fight each other. And they didn’t seem terribly concerned that Hick had said publicly, more than once, that he’d be a terrible senator and didn’t want the job.”

Romanoff was undaunted by Schumer’s kiss-off. “If Washington were a town known for its good judgment,” he says, “I might have been more inclined to defer.” But Schumer wasn’t blowing smoke. In late August, a week after Hickenlooper put a merciful end to his presidential bid, he released a video declaring that he’d changed his mind about running for Senate. “I’ve always said Washington was a lousy place for a guy like me who wants to get things done,” Hickenlooper said. “But this is no time to walk away from the table.”

Huzzah! The DSCC endorsed him two days later.

Colorado Democrats were dumbfounded and furious. The move was especially mystifying, as candidate Trish Zornio noted, because “any Democrat running against Cory Gardner is slated to win. It’s a wonderful thing: A potted plant would probably win in November.” Six of the women running in the primary fired off a public letter to Schumer and Cortez Masto, demanding that the DSCC “reconsider its early endorsement” of Hickenlooper and accusing the party of gross gender bias. “Those of us who have run for office before have been told to ‘wait our turn’ and ‘don’t rock the boat’ more times than we care to mention,” they wrote. “Now the DSCC, by its endorsement, is implying that we should defer to a male candidate because you seem to believe he is ‘more electable.’”

This wasn’t just sexist, they said, but a recipe for losing a Senate seat that should be a gimme. Hickenlooper’s popularity had waned during his two terms as governor, as he fought against legalizing marijuana, sued two towns that tried to ban fracking, and quintupled oil and gas production in the state, earning him the nickname “Frackenlooper.” His reactionary presidential campaign hadn’t burnished his image. “We would hate to see Colorado as another state that could not take back the U.S. Senate because of poor candidate selection by the DSCC,” the women wrote, referring to Schumer’s habit of wooing older white men out of retirement to run and lose-- including former governors Ted Strickland of Ohio (2016) and Phil Bredesen of Tennessee (2018), and former senators Bob Kerrey of Nebraska (2012) and Evan Bayh of Indiana (2016). They all looked strong in early polling. And they all lost by double digits in November.

Before long, as money poured in for Hickenlooper and dried up for the others, fury gave way to resignation for most of the hopefuls. By the end of November, five of the letter writers had dropped out, along with former U.S. Attorney for Colorado John Walsh and Obama-era Ambassador Dan Baer, the lone openly gay contender. But the resentments remained fresh, especially as Hickenlooper followed the DSCC’s “windowless basement” formula and skipped 19 of 20 candidate forums and debates between September and March. On March 7, Romanoff—the strongest progressive left standing (“I’m either stubborn or slow to take a hint”)-- beat Hickenlooper in the state’s Democratic caucuses, the first step in Colorado’s long and convoluted process of choosing a nominee.

Hickenlooper remains the favorite to prevail in the June 30 primary, with a large lead in the polls and millions to spend. But the DSCC’s heavy-handed intervention on his behalf won’t soon be forgotten. If early endorsements are supposed to foster unity and quell bitter divisions in the Democratic ranks, this one backfired spectacularly.

So did Schumer’s even more unaccountable maneuvering in Texas, where demographic trends finally began to translate into Democratic votes in 2018. Rep. Joaquin Castro was expected to head up a big, impressively diverse field of Democrats hoping to topple Sen. John Cornyn, a powerful Mitch McConnell lieutenant in Washington who’s a faint presence back home. Even if Castro opted out, the contenders would include the most powerful African American in the state capital, Sen. Royce West of Dallas, and the dynamic organizer of the Jolt Initiative that’s registered hundreds of thousands of young Latino voters, Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez. No matter who won, the top of the Democratic ticket in Texas was going to look like the future. Until Schumer stepped in.

In December, before Castro made up his mind, the DSCC threw its weight behind the most conservative white candidate in the mix, M.J. Hegar. A female Air Force pilot and Purple Heart recipient in Afghanistan, Hegar had come close to knocking off a House Republican in the suburbs of Austin in 2018, largely on the strength of a viral campaign video, “Doors,” which memorably highlighted the personal and professional obstacles she’d overcome. She’s an appealing character-- a motorcycle-riding mom with tattoos and a knack for cornpone putdowns (she loves to call Cornyn “cupcake”)-- with the kind of mushy ideology that might have made her a strong candidate in the Texas of the 1980s or ’90s. Back then, Democrats needed to woo white voters back into the fold to win. Today, they can only win with record turnout from the nonwhite majority.

Even Texas Democratic Party officials were left stunned by the endorsement. Castro soon decided to keep his House seat and wait for another day to run statewide, but the others stayed in. West and Ramirez both ran against the DSCC, which he accused of “trying to block African Americans out of the process.” Ramirez spoke openly of her discussions with the national party: “I let them know that if they did endorse her, I would hate for it to backfire on her in the general election with voters of color who already felt underrepresented and ignored.” On Super Tuesday, Hegar led the field, but with only 22 percent of the vote-- an anemic showing for a candidate who spent $3 million, with an additional $3.5 million boost from VoteVets Action Fund, a dark-money group that backs Afghanistan and Iraq veterans. West, who spent less than $1 million, narrowly edged Ramirez for a spot in a May 22 runoff.

If Hegar makes it to the general election, it’ll cost millions more to get there. So much for the Schumer strategy of avoiding expensive and divisive primaries. There was no guarantee that Castro, West, or Ramirez would have beaten Cornyn in November if they emerged from a fair and unmediated primary, of course. But Texas Democrats would have had a candidate who looked like Texas circa 2020, rather than an echo of the good ol’ past.

But the past is never past, it seems, when Chuck Schumer and his brain trust play God in Democratic primaries.