Worst "Democrat" In America... Think Florida, Of Course

Exorcist and state Rep Kim Daniels (D-FL)

You may not be a fan of Democrats like Joe Biden, Kyrsten Sinema, Debbie Wasserman Schultz or Joe Manchin, but it would be hard to find a worse example of a "Democrat" than the Bronx's Rubén Díaz, Sr., but we've come up with... well someone at least as bad: Jacksonville, Florida state Rep. Kim Daniels. Another anti-choice, Trump-loving, homophobic crook, Daniels is a "former" Republican, supported by Republicans in an all-blue district.

Where to start? How about the infamous, blacks were lucky to have been slaves remark? Snopes checked this one out and has all the proof crazy-lady said it. Did I mention that-- like Díaz, Sr.-- this delusion psychopath and fountain of hatred is a pastor? She "preached about demonic possession, claimed that Halloween candy was 'prayed over by witches,' and virulently opposed inclusiveness towards the LGBT community. In March 2018, the website Patheos drew attention to one explosive proclamation of Daniels’ in particular, reported in an article headlined “Black Florida Lawmaker Thanks God for Slavery”:

Florida State Rep. Kimberly Daniels thanks God for slavery, claiming “if it wasn’t for slavery, I might be somewhere in Africa worshiping a tree.”

State Rep Daniels-- like I said, a Republican through and through despite the "D" next to her name-- is no fan of Obama's. That slavery remark in context: "I would love to see a black president. I would love to see a black president, but not one that’s going to cost me my soul. And let me add this-- my babies, my boys, they don’t have to see a black man sitting in the president’s seat to know who they are. It’s in Him that I live and move and have my very own being, and if a black man [never becomes] president, Jesus is Lord and the Greater One is [inside] me. And what black people need to do is get back what the devil has stolen from them, and stop making it worse by working with unrighteousness… And let me say this to you-- I thank God for slavery. I thank God for the crack house. If it wasn’t for the crack house… God [would never have been able] to use me [as] he can use me now. And if it wasn’t for slavery, I might be somewhere in Africa, worshipping a tree."

Needless to say, someone with this kind of a diseased brain is also an anti-Semite. "And you can talk about the Holocaust, but the Jews own everything. We go through some things, but let me tell you something-- when you go through, you qualify to get paid back. You don’t need the government to give it back, God will give it back." And, apparently, no fan of reparations, Social Security or Medicare... let alone UBI.

Aside from Republican money, how does this crazy wing-nut remain in the state legislature representing a district whose electorate is made up almost entirely of Blacks (53.4%) and Hispanics (35.6%)? The Florida Democrats are apparently happy enough with her, having made her the ranking member of the Oversight, Transparency & Public Management Subcommittee. Last year Florida Times-Union columnist Nate Monroe-- in a piece titled Please, deliver us from Kimberly Daniels-- remarked on Daniels' staying power. "She rose to public office under the Jacksonville Democratic political machine run by ex-U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, who is now in federal prison. That machine made it a priority to elevate mediocrities like Daniels so Brown would never need to worry a competent rival might one day emerge. That strategy worked well for Brown for years, though it ultimately proved disastrous for the local party-- which now has a small bench of talented politicians and multiple former ones disgraced by high-profile scandal. And like Brown, Daniels pads her blighted political career with money from fixtures in Jacksonville’s Republican donor class, who are perfectly happy to look the other way for yet another stooge in Tallahassee who will support a pet cause or two."

Enough of this shit? Duval County Democratic Party vice-chair, Angie Nixon, a full-on progressive (a Bernie supporter) resigned from her party position to run for the seat Daniels is occupying. The primary is August 18. Blue America just endorsed Angie and we'll be offering you more information about her this week. But isn't this post enough to make you want to support her already?

A Worse Democratic Candidate For President Than Biden? Let Me See-- Well, He's Not A Really Candidate, But There Is John Delaney

When I was on the air with David Feldman this week, he asked me if there are any candidates worse than Biden. I mentioned that there are a few on the right-fringe of the Democratic Party who have no traction and no chance to win but that certainly John Delaney would be almost as bad. Delaney, a slime ball multimillionaire, was one of the most virulently anti-progressive members of Congress, who sold his seat to an even richer dork, David Trone, the only member of Congress to have endorsed Delaney's hopeless presidential campaign. I don't even think I bothered doing a Worst Democraps Who Want To Be President piece on him because his bid is so pathetic and so under the radar. I did mention over a year ago, though, that he is functioning as someone making Biden look less reactionary by comparison.

In Congress, Delaney, a New Dem and devoted Wall Street ally, served their interests as a member of the House Financial Services Committee. He was always an outspoke anti-Bernie partisan and as soon as he bought himself a House seat he immediately became a fount of Republican ideas-- like forbidding the EPA from protecting clean drinking water in streams and lakes, raising the retirement age for the working poor and forcing chained CPI down the throats of Social Security recipients. Delaney has been the perfect Democrat for Fox News, always eager to blame progressives for everything, always eager to equate progressives with the extremists, Confederates and fascists that dominate the Republican Party. He's an advocate of the "both sides are equally wrong" simplemindedness. "Washington," he wrote in a Washington Post OpEd in 2015, "is paralyzed by extreme political rhetoric that creates powerful sound bites but poor policy... With Washington already broken, the last thing we need is a left-wing version of the tea party. But I am worried about where some of the loudest voices in the room could take the Democratic Party." Delaney is worried. Why doesn't he hop the fence and join the GOP officially? He continued, in a barely veiled critique of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie, Sherrod Brown and other progressive stalwarts that "some in our party continue to engage in time-consuming rhetoric attacking banks that has little chance of producing more financial reform and distracts from far more consequential areas of economic risk, such as climate change Climate Change..."

Oh, so he's interested in the climate crisis now? The anti-environmental fracking guy is concerned about climate Who knew? Is he talking about it in his fantasy campaign for president? Yes! Just yesterday he denounced the Green New Deal! Politico, desperate for "news" on a slow day, even covered it. On a hate-talk radio show hosted by Hugh Hewitt-- and sounding like he is auditioning for Fox News-- he denounced progressive policies, singling out the Green New Deal and Medicare-For-All. Hewitt goaded him by asking how he "planned to stand apart from those on the Democratic field's left flank on a debate stage."

"I'm just going to point out: Their policies are bad policies. Medicare for All-- in terms of the bill that’s been introduced in the Senate-- is fundamentally bad health care policy. Putting aside we have no way of paying for it, even if we were able to pay for it, it still would be bad policy... There’s a much better way to deal with climate change than the Green New Deal, which will in many ways crush working families... So I’m going to take them on hard on their policies, which I think are fundamentally flawed and are not going to move this country forward in the right direction and are going to hurt a lot of people. [If Democrats take on Trump with] "bad policy, we're not gonna win... The Democratic Party needs someone like myself who can actually go toe to toe with the president on the economy and where voters will believe with a Delaney administration that the economy’s not going to go off the rails by embracing some half-baked socialist policies."

Sounds like if he doesn't get the job at Fox, maybe a President Biden (God forbid) will give him a minor job for helping slander Biden's opponents in the primary.

By the way, Delaney wasn't the only right-of-center Democrat Politico showcased yesterday. Sarah Ferris highlighted the Velvet Hammer, Stephanie Murphy, head Blue Dog. I don't want to call anyone (other than Trump and everyone who enables him) a worthless piece of shit, but... Murphy is pretty worthless. She exists in Congress-- just as Delaney did-- to prevent the Democratic Party doing anything to help working families. As head of the Blue Dogs she can get them all 27 of then barking at the same time and get a little attention for the far right of the Democratic Party and their Republican perspective on issues. But that's it. She's never accomplished anything that helps her constituents-- and never will-- and is likely to lose her Orlando-area seat in 2022.

In a closed-door meeting about immigration policy recently, Pelosi chastised her for helping the GOP exploit fissures in the Democratic Party. She brags that she was able to stop a $15 minimum wage bill from going forward. I wonder if voters in her district know that; I hope so.

“She’s a low-key negotiator and power broker but don't mistake that for not having a lot of power,” said Rep. Ben McAdams, a Blue Dog Democrat from Utah. “As long as we’re organized and willing to say no to legislation that doesn’t advance good policy, legislation doesn't go forward without us being willing to support it.”

...McAdams, who won one of the closest contests last November, said he privately approached Murphy even before the Democratic whip team with his qualms about the caucus’s marquee campaign finance and anti-corruption bill, H.R. 1.

McAdams, like roughly a dozen other moderates DINOs, had issues with the idea of public financed campaigns, with taxpayer money going toward TV ads.

Within days, Murphy worked with the bill’s chief authors, Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and John Sarbanes (D-MD), to come up with a workaround so that all the money came from fees, not tax dollars. The tweak went almost unnoticed until a reporter noticed that a group of Blue Dogs had all become co-sponsors on the same day.

Back in the fall, Murphy withheld her vote for Pelosi as speaker until she and a band of moderates DINOs-- including some Republicans-- secured a promise from leadership to make it easier for bipartisan legislation to receive floor votes.

...And unlike many of her Democratic colleagues, Murphy has been happy to accept invitations to the White House. It has paid off: On one visit, she pitched Vice President Mike Pence to support loosening restrictions for federal funding on gun research, and she says that moment-- which came in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting in her home state-- helped get the provision ultimately signed into law.

Murphy has largely avoided direct clashes with the progressive firebrands who have dominated discussion of the new Congress, but she recently made something of an exception by publishing an op-ed condemning socialism that some on Capitol Hill saw as a rebuke to members of her own party.

I would pay real money to see Delaney and Murphy perform that lovely Garfunkel and Oates song up top together. And certainly either one of them would fit in perfectly in a modern day version of this scene from The History of The World in the Roman Senate:

The NRCC Wants Everyone To Know Who Their Weakest Incumbents For 2020 Are

The GOP defeat was so stunning and so overwhelming that HALF of these 10 random losing incumbents didn't even get into the NRCC Patriot Program

The NRCC Patriot Program-- which is charged with protecting vulnerable Republican incumbents-- was a total hot mess last year. Of the 30 members included in the program, 20 were defeated. These were the victims of the Patriot Program's inability to fight an anti-red/anti-Trump wave (the is bound to remain strong, or even strengthen, in 2020):

• Mike Bishop (MI)
• Rod Blum (IA)
• Mike Coffman (CO)
• Barbara Comstock (VA)
• John Culberson (TX)
• Carlos Curbelo (FL)
• Jeff Denham (CA)
• John Faso (NY)
• Steve Knight (CA)
• Jason Lewis (MN)
• Tom MacArthur (NJ)
• Erik Paulsen (MN)
• Bruce Poliquin (ME)
• Dana Rohrabacher (CA)
• Keith Rothfus (PA)
• Scott Taylor (VA)
• Claudia Tenney (NY)
• David Valadao (CA)
• David Young (IA)
• Kevin Yoder (KS)

On Friday the NRCC announced the first 8 members they added to the doomed program. It's a nice roadmap for Democrats to check who the opposition party thinks their weakest incumbents are. No surprises at all though:

• Fred Upton (MI)- won re-election with 50.2%. Trump carried the 6th district by 8.4 points.
• Don Bacon (NE)- won re-election with 51.0%. Trump carried the 2nd district by 2.2 points.
• Lee Zeldin (NY)- won re-election with 51.5%. Trump carried the 1st district by 12.3 points.
• John Katko (NY)- won re-election with 52.6%. Trump lost the 24th district by 3.6 points.
• Brian Fitzpatrick (PA)- won re-election with 51.3%. Trump lost the 1st district by 2 points.
• Michael McCaul (TX)- won re-election with 51.1%. Trump carried the 10th district by 9.1 points.
• Pete Olson (TX)- won re-election with 51.4%. Trump carried the 22nd district by 7.9.
• Will Hurd (TX)- won re-election by less than half a point (49.2%). Trump lost the 23rd district by 3.4.
• John Carter (TX)- won re-election with 50.6%. Trump carried the 31st district by 12.7.
• Jaime Herrera Beutler (WA)- won re-election with 52.7%. Trump carried the 3rd district by 7.4.

The DCCC and the NRCC are two of the lamest and most incompetent organizations in American politics-- and every year they battle it out, wasting tens of millions of dollars with their lame and ineffective strategies. One of the ugliest dances I see them doing every year is for the DCCC to warn their swing district candidates to trying to sound like Republicans as much as possible and to even vote like Republicans when they can. Two great examples are Blue Dogs Joe Cunningham (SC) and Charlie Crist (FL). Both have extraordinarily low "F" grades from ProgressivePunch. In fact, Cunningham has the single worst voting record of any Democrat this session-- a 30.77 lifetime crucial vote score. Two Republicans-- Justin Amash (MI) and Brian Fitzpatrick (PA)-- vote more progressively than Cunningham! Crist's lifetime crucial vote score is 56.77, indicating he votes slightly more frequently with Democrats than with Republicans. The DCCC tells them that will make them safer. But does it? Do they attract Republican voters? Not many, but that strategy sure turns off progressives and other Democratic base voters. And, instead of staving off criticism from the Republicans (and their right-wing media allies), it attracts it. Which Democrats do they put the most money and energy into attacking? The 3 most recent posts on the official NRCC blog were all posted on Thursday by Camille Gallo-- one on North Carolina Blue Dog candidate Dan McCready which also allowed them to sling some mud at Ilhan Omar:

Last night Dan McCready tried to thread the ol’ anti-Semitism needle, tweeting that he refused racist Ilhan Omar’s donations because he disagrees with any anti-Semitic comments.

But then he oddly stood up for the anti-Semite in his very next tweet.

Democrats were not happy, as one state Senator slammed McCready’s wish-washy decision to refuse Omar’s money.

Looks like McCready can’t have it both ways.

NRCC Comment: “Dan McCready’s faux condemnation of anti-Semite and racist Ilhan Omar is pathetic. If McCready is this feckless now, how can North Carolinians expect him to stand up to the socialist Democrats in Congress?” -NRCC Spokeswoman Camille Gallo

And the other two posts? Crist and Cunningham. No matter how many times they vote with the Republicans, the will always be attacked by the Republicans-- until they flip their registrations and become Republicans. Cunningham:

On the campaign trail, Joe Cunningham couldn’t stand lobbyists.

...He even said, lobbyists have had “a stranglehold over American politics for far too long.”

But now that he’s in the swamp, he’s fallen in love with them. The Charleston Post and Courier reports that Cunningham has hired THREE DC lobbyists to work for him.

That "stranglehold" is strong in Joe’s office.

NRCC Comment: “One of Joe Cunningham’s first decisions after being elected was to hire a bunch of DC lobbyists-- the very same thing he railed against on the campaign trail. Joe Cunningham is a joke, period.” -NRCC Spokeswoman Camille Gallo

The title of the post about "former" life-long Republican Charlie Crist is hilarious, especially since it beckons back to when he was the Republican governor of Florida: Charlie Crist-- The Socialist Democrats' Congressman. See? No matter how right-wing the voting record-- and Crist's is pretty right-wing-- the NRCC has a formula they'll stuff you into anyway: "Socialist! Socialist! Socialist! Venezuela!"

When Charlie Crist was Florida’s governor he ran as "The People’s Governor" and now proudly refers to himself as "The People’s Congressman." Through his long political career he’s claimed to put "people over politics," and that being loyal to a political party over the people is wrong.

But it looks like Charlie has ditched this conviction quicker than he’s switched political parties by joining the DCCC’s leadership team with the main goal of electing more socialist Democrats to Congress.

So much for putting people over politics, right?!

NRCC Comment: “Charlie Crist is going to need a new catchy campaign slogan. By joining the DCCC’s leadership team, Charlie has proven he’d rather be a party boss for the socialist Democrats than represent the people of Florida.” -NRCC Spokeswoman Camille Gallo

Democrats-- like Crist and Cunningham-- would be better off to stop dancing with the GOP and go for the jugular-- like like the Republicans do. The Democratic Establishment is whispering already about abandoning the state of Ohio because it's just "too red" for them to deal with. Bernie's having none of that bullshit. Last year Sherrod Brown, an unapologetic progressive, was reelected convincingly, beating multimillionaire Trumpist congressman, Jim Renacci 2,358,508 (53.4%) to 2,057,559 (46.6%), despite Renacci dumping over half a million dollars of his own it his failing campaign. Likewise, Obama beat McCain there is 2008 and then beat Romney in 2012. So why is it too red to contest for the establishment goof-bags? They all come from Hillary's failed campaign and she lost badly, after not seriously contesting the state anyway. Bernie's response? Watch this video his campaign released yesterday; this is how it's done-- right in their faces:

Patrick Murphy And David Jolly Want To Insert Third Way Into The Florida Governor's Race

Patrick Murphy's papa bought him a congressional seat in the West Palm area (FL-18) in 2012. It was incredibly close but Murphy had a perfect foil-- lunatic fringe neo-fascist Allen West. Even Murphy looked almost like a lesser of two evils. Murphy's father started a PAC, American Sunrise, and financed his ne'rer-do-well son with $118,578. Sensing thew kind of DINO they love, the DCCC put in another $548,517. The final score was 166,257 (50.3%) to 164,353 (49.7%). Murphy went on to be lazy, incompetent backbencher with no achievements at all except to raise Wall Street cash by backing the banksters (along with Republicans and his fellow corrupt New Dems) on the House Financial Services Committee. In 2016 Schumer and Reid picked him to run for the U.S. Senate and Rubio beat him 52-44%. He drew 4,122,088 votes while Hillary Clinton was getting 4,504,975 votes on the same day. Nearly 400,000 Democratic voters decided to not cast a ballot for Murphy. Maybe his "F" rating by Progressive Punch helps explain why.

There is a lively election to replace Rick Scott as governor now. And Murphy is back, rearing his ugly drunken heard again. Now he's the "bipartisan candidate," offering to run on a ticket with with former Congressman David Jolly, who was ousted in 2016 by flip-floppy conservative Charlie Crist from his Pinellas County seat.

There are already 4 serious Democrats in the race, a female version of Murphy, DINO Gwen Graham, plus two other wretched conservaDems, former Miami Beach mayor Philip Levine and random rich businessman Christopher King, and one progressive, Tallahassee mayor Andrew Gillum. (There are also a dozen of so Republicans running for their party's nomination, though the top two are mainstream establishment conservative Adam Putnam and neo-fascist Trumpist Ron DeSantis.)

Monday evening Alex Leary broke the news in the Tampa Bay Times that Murphy and Jolly had put together a DINO/RINO ruse to attract attention. Their theory of the race is that a "split ticket idea recognizes growing dissatisfaction with the polarization of both parties and a possible third way."

"Working across the aisle was a hallmark of my two terms in Congress, and the relationships I formed with members of both parties were invaluable," Murphy said at the outset of the town-hall tour last summer. "I look forward to joining my former colleague as we share our perspectives on ways we must work together to improve our broken political system."

Jolly added, "Even in times of great disagreement there are ways of finding common ground, there are opportunities for bipartisan leadership to solve some of our country's toughest issues."

Geoff Burgan, Gillum's communications director, had a riotous response: "We welcome anyone who wants to talk about Florida’s future. The contrast in vision and background between the three millionaires running against Andrew Gillum couldn’t be more clear." Meanwhile, one of Murphy's former congressional colleagues laughed and told me that "it's sad but true: being unprincipled and unscrupulous, zero accomplishments to your name, and standing for nothing except self-promotion, now qualifies as 'bipartisan.'" Another of his former colleagues (from the House Financial Services Committee) referred to him as "a smarmy jerk-boy" and that was really the only think I can repeat about what she had to say about Murphy.

Trump And The Republicans Are Far From The Only Candidates Taking Big Money With Plenty Of Strings Attached-- Let's Look At Raja Krishnamoorthi

Kim Davis and Ro Khanna-- kind of "Democrats"

Hopefully Steve Israel won't figure out that Kim Davis, the crackpot religionist fanatic clerk in Kentucky's Rowan County, is a Democrat. No doubt, if he did, he'd want to recruit her to run her against Hal Rogers. Something attracts Israel to Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. And there are lots of them, although fewer and fewer as unhinged as Davis, who is on her fourth marriage. Most of these Republican-lite Democrats are just economic Republicans, like the New Dems and Blue Dogs-- from Patrick Murphy (FL), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Sean Maloney (NY), Dan Lipinski (IL) and Jim Costa (CA) to Gwen Graham (FL), Henry Cuellar (TX), Cheri Bustos (IL) and Scott Peters (CA).

Last cycle, Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- with the help of outright Republicans-- tried defeating California progressive icon Mike Honda. Ro Khanna spent $4,427,101 smearing Honda, and his SuperPAC, Californians for Innovation, spent another $662,259 on the race. Honda beat the atrocious crooked corporate Dem Khanna 68,001 (51.8%) to 63,293 (48.2%). And this cycle Khanna is back for another try. (You can help defend Mike Honda here.)

Meanwhile, there's a very similar shady character, another corporate Dem with a Republican perspective, running for the open seat in IL-08, west of Chicago. Raja Krishnamoorthi is running against progressive state Senator Mike Noland, and many of the same people who spent lavishly to defeat Mike Honda are funding Krishnamoorthi. Over 20 of Khanna's biggest donors have already given tens of thousands of dollars to Krishnamoorthi's campaign, in just the first three months of fundraising. 

John Rogers, founder and CEO of Ariel Capital Management/Ariel Investments in Chicago maxed out ($5,400) to defeat Honda last year. His first contribution to Krishnamoorthi is $1,000. Another maxed-out Khanna donor, Navin Thukkaram, founder and CEO of NT Capital Partners (who reports to the FEC as a resident of Park City, Utah; Seattle; Northbrook, Illinois; and New York City) was a Romney donor as well as a Ro Khanna donor and has already given several contributions to Krishnamoorthi-- as well as to the Republican National Committee. Same pattern again and again. Mark Ferguson, an attorney with Barlit Beck Herman Palenchar and Scott, generally gives to conservative Democrats like Cheri Bustos, Bill Foster, Ann Callis, Brad Schneider, Evan Bayh, Jim Webb. He contributed $2,600 to Khanna and now $2,600 to Krishnamoorthi. Without exerting too much effort we found 15 other Khanna donors who together have given over $50,000 to Krishnamoorthi in the past three months. Like Ann and Kanwal Rekhi of Monte Sereno, a small, very wealthy bedroom community for Silicon Valley executives. Kanwal is a managing director and partner at Inventus Capital Partners, a venture capital firm. The Rekhis have given many thousands of dollars to conservatives in both parties and maxed out to  Khanna ($10,800), the same amount they just gave Krishnamoorthi.

Noland is a working-class union guy who doesn't have these kinds of strings-attached multimillionaire donors. He's always depended on working men and women who want to elect progressives to help him out in the fundraising department. If you'd like to help, you can find a slot for Mike Noland here. And look who else is backing Krishnamoorthi, predictably:

Inevitably, Steve and Raja found each other