There Has Always Been A Republican Wing Of The Democratic Party. In The 30s They Called Themselves The American Liberty League

Al Smith is known primarily as having been the first Roman Catholic presidential nominee (1928). He was also a 4-term governor of New York. He was defeated badly for the presidency in ’28, winning just 8 states— 6 from the Deep South + Massachusetts and Rhode Island, even losing New York. While Smith was losing New York, Franklin Roosevelt, an ally was winning the gubernatorial seat created by Smith’s run for president. Roosevelt was reelected in 1930 (in a landslide) that propelled him towards the 1932 presidential nomination. The problem was that Smith, with the support of the conservative wing of the party, wanted to run for president again. As governor of New York Roosevelt had endorsed the idea of unemployment insurance, massively popular with a working class struck by Hoover’s Great Depression, hated by Republicans and conservative Democrats. FDR beat Smith at the convention and although Smith supported him in the general, Smith opposed the New Deal in general, which he felt wasn’t cooperative enough with business interests.

Smith joined the brand new American Liberty League, an organization founded in 1934 primarily by business elites and conservative Democrats but also with a handful of Republicans. What bound them all together was intense hatred for the New Deal. They worked ceaselessly to rally public opinion against it and against Roosevelt. The League was funded by wealthy business executives and Smith became a major player. They published pamphlets and sponsored radio programs, arguing that the New Deal was destroying personal liberty and private property rights and was socialistic. As the New Deal grew in popularity, the League— and well as the Republican Party— began to shrivel and die. It was officially dissolved in 1940, only to spring back to life decades later as the DLC, the Blue Dogs, the New Dems and Third Way.

In 1936, the League was rabidly anti-Roosevelt and attacked the New Deal nearly as shrilly as the GOP did. The problem was that the general public love the New Deal and the more the League and the GOP screeched “Socialism!!” the more popular the New Deal became. The conservative Dems became objects of scorn and the Republicans were circling the drain. Roosevelt was reelected 27,747,636 (60.8%) to 16,679,543 (36.5%). He won every state but Maine and Vermont— 523 electoral votes to 8. In Mississippi, FDR took 97.06% of the vote and did even better in South Carolina (98.57%). When the dust cleared there were 334 Democrats in the House and just 88 Republicans. There were also 13 actual socialists. In the Senate, it must have seemed like the end of the world for the Republicans. Confident that their anti-socialism campaign was finally going to bear fruit, they stepped up the shrill nonsense, lost 5 more seats to the Democrats and ended up with just 17 senators to the Democrats’ 74. (There was also 3 socialists.)

Prominent conservative Democrat Jouett Shouse of Kansas was a congressman, on the executive board of the DNC and married into a fortune. He was the only president of the League and FDR noted that the American Liberty League put “too much stress on property rights, too little on human rights.” When FDR talked about “economic royalists,” he wasn’t just referring to the Republican Party but also to the League, whose leaders, beside Shouse and Smith, also included former Democratic presidential candidate John Davis, former DNC chair John Jacob Raskob, “ex”-Republican and wealthy businessman, Irénée du Post and two of his brothers, Lammot and Pierre, former NY Republican Governor Nathan Miller, Congressman James Wadsworth (R-NY), Alfred Sloan of General Motors and Howard Pew of Sun Oil. At its peak there were 125,000 members but after the FDR landslide of 1936 it began to rapidly dwindle.

It was the League that tried, unsuccessfully, to recruit Major General Smedley Butler to lead a military coup against Roosevelt. League members lost their collective shit over Social Security, which they claimed would “mark the end of democracy.” Vehemently anti-union/anti-working class, these conservative Democrats sued the government over the National Labor Relations Act and the AFL accused them of hiring thugs to infiltrate local unions to incite violence.

Other Democrats who opposed the New Deal included conservative shit heads like Senator Rush Holt, Sr (WV), Senator Harry Byrd (VA) and Senator Carter Glass (VA). Today this wing of the Democratic Party is being led by Joe Biden, although Wall Street financiers are also intrigued by McKinsey Pete (should gaffe-prone Biden self-destruct before the convention, as many expect) and both John Delaney (MD) and John Frackenlooper (CO) are trying to offer themselves up as leaders of this faction. In Congress, the worst of the current crap would be Steny Hoyer (MD) plus rabid Blue Dogs like Henry Cuellar (TX), Collin Peterson (MN), Josh Gottheimer (NJ), Cheri Bustos (IL), Dan Lipinski (IL), Tom O'Halleran (AZ), Jim Costa (CA), Joe Cunningham (SC), Jefferson Van Drew (NJ), Kendra Horn (OK), Ben McAdams (UT) and Anthony Brindisi (NY), as well as Senators Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Joe Manchin (WV), Doug Jones (AL), Jackie Rosen (NV), Mark Warner (VA) and Tom Carper (DE). Biden is trying to hide what is from Democratic primary voters, primarily by avoiding the media and counting on everyone remembering him as part of Obama. He’s counting on Democrats being willing to buy a pig in a poke. Former Obama chief strategist, David Axelrod, told the Daily Beast yesterday that Biden’s strategy isn’t tenable. “His message is that he’s the guy who can beat Donald Trump and he is viewed as the least risky choice. Over time, if the only interactions he has is around these screwups and gaffes, then he is going to start losing that message… I think that it is never a good idea to sit on a lead. That rarely works out well, and that's what they’re doing.” Biden has assiduously avoided TV or any media situation where people will realize he’s well down the senility road and no more capable of running the U.S. than Trump is.

Reactionary Blue Dogs And Wall Street-Owned Corporate Dems Want You To Know They're Not Socialists

Blue Dog Max Rose and progressive Democrat Ilhan Omar

It should be no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention that the Republicans are going to run against Democrats next year by asserting they're all "socialists" who want to turn the U.S. into Venezuela. I asked Alan Grayson about the problem that Democratic candidates will be facing as they endeavor to combat these pernicious tactics. He told me he sees it as "part of a conscious propaganda strategy in demonizing Democrats, formerly known as McCarthyism. One side of the coin is decrying real news as 'fake news,' and the other side of the coin is slinging fake metaphors as real metaphors. Republican shills have weaponized analogies, trying to play upon a cognitive bias called 'illusory correlation.' Similes aren’t always similar. Not everything is like everything else. Likes can be deceiving."

The other, day Dave Weigel's Washington Post column mentioned that conservative Democrats want their constituents to know that they're not socialists. Blue Dog Max Rose has accrued a ProgressivePunch "F" since coming to Congress. Only 12 freshman Dems have worse voting records so far. And none of them want anyone to think they're socialists. No one will. These are all corporate Dems with natural affinities to Wall Street, not to working families.

At Rose's first town hall a Republican lawyer accused the Democratic Party of becoming "a forum for anti-Semitism" and left-wing extremism, causing Rose to pivot into throwing Ilhan Omar under the bus: "I have to make a confession: I’m not a socialist. I’m not an anti-Semite. I’m the person who you all elected, and there are members of the Democratic Party who have said things I vehemently oppose. I was the first member of the Democratic Party to come out and criticize someone who, I believed, had made an anti-Semitic comment."

There was a brief and loud round of applause; Rose did not need to mention that he was talking about Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN). The congressman, who ran nine points ahead of Hillary Clinton to win the swingy 11th Congressional District, did so as a moderate [the Post and its writes purposefully term even the most conservative, right-wing Democrats "moderates'] with a military record who would not take orders from his party. Rose, who is Jewish, told the audience that he had joined Democrats in condemning "acts of hate, acts of divisiveness, no matter where they came from" but that he would criticize his peers when they deserved it.

“The Democratic Party is a big tent, isn’t it?” he asked, rhetorically. “They’ve kept it interesting for me.”

It was a nice way to describe a problem that dozens of House Democrats are confronting every time they head home. Rose, one of the 41 Democrats who flipped Republican-held seats last year, is near the top of the GOP’s list of 2020 targets. The president’s party has signaled that it will run against the Democrats’ left, represented less by its White House hopefuls than by stars like Omar and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). This week, the first real congressional recess of the year, is seeing the first test of that strategy, as new Democrats with strong local images get asked about those other Democrats-- the ones constantly on their TV screens.

At this stage in any congressional cycle, the party committees like to dream big. The Republicans’ target list includes not just the 31 Democrats whose districts backed the president in 2016, but also Democrats whose districts voted for Mitt Romney in 2012. After watching dozens of competent Republicans fail to separate themselves from Trump, they are betting that vulnerable Democrats will not be able to distance themselves from the party’s energized left.

The essential epithet, borrowed from the president, is “socialist”-- a press memo from the National Republican Congressional Committee last week used the phrase “socialist Democrats” no less than 21 times. And Republicans have gotten unexpected air cover from former Starbucks chief executive Howard Schultz, who has roamed the country threatening to run a centrist campaign for president because of the "mainstreaming of socialism" inside the Democratic Party.

The evidence from some of the new Democrats’ town hall meetings is that the message has broken through, with a caveat-- new members from swing districts are happy to separate themselves from the party’s left. At a Sunday town hall meeting in Virginia’s 10th District, Rep. Jennifer Wexton, one of the Democrats who flipped a seat in 2018, got questions on “anti-Semitism,” why more Democrats did not applaud the president during his State of the Union address, why Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) had not resigned over revelations that he wore blackface and had a picture of a Klansman outfit in his medical school yearbook, and even why she hung a transgender flag outside of her office instead of a flag raising awareness of American prisoners of war.

“I chose to hang the transgender flag because that’s a community that’s been under attack,” Wexton said. The man who asked the question and had been recording her answer, packed up and left in a huff.

The hot-button questions did not dominate Wexton’s town hall; the only obviously organized groups that attended represented the health-care and disability rights group Little Lobbyists and the gun-safety group Moms Demand Action, both of which she had supported in the past. The diverse and highly educated 10th District has trended strongly Democratic since it was drawn, and Wexton is not seen as one of the most vulnerable new Democrats.

Even so, the Republican plan of attack against Wexton has been to blur any differences between her and the high-profile left-wing members who dominated the last month of news about the House. An NRCC digital ad running in the district asks if Wexton would impeach the president-- not because he is popular in Northern Virginia, but because Republicans see a chance to define the low-key congresswoman before she can define herself.

“I represent the interests of my constituents,” Wexton said after the town hall. “I know that we hear a lot in the press about certain other people in our class, but each of us has our own agenda and our own constituents that we’re out here representing.”

Rose, whose constituents have voted Republican in recent elections, is in a trickier spot. He was one of the first new Democrats to draw a credible Republican opponent-- Nicole Malliotakis, a member of the state assembly who lopsidedly lost a 2017 run for New York  mayor but carried Staten Island.

In an interview, Malliotakis repeatedly called Rose a “Park Slope liberal” who had won only because a nasty 2018 primary weakened the Republican incumbent. (Rose was raised in that part of Brooklyn, but when his 2018 opponent brought it up, the Democrat said he would have moved to Staten Island sooner, had he not been serving in Afghanistan.) Sure, he criticized Omar, said Malliotakis-- but he voted with her more often than not, and he didn’t call for her to be bounced from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

“I’m running against Max and the entire crop of new progressives who have come into the Congress who are trying to move the country toward socialism,” she said. “I thought it was great when he denounced Ilhan Omar, but I was disappointed later that day when he called her a friend with whom he shares values. I think the people of this district deserve to know what values he's referring to.”

Over 90 minutes in a Staten Island church, Rose didn’t distance himself from the Democratic Party. He excoriated the president for leaving the Paris climate accords; he pledged to protect the Affordable Care Act; he stood his ground against a constituent angry that he had opposed a Republican amendment to the Democrats’ omnibus voting rights bill, which would have prevented undocumented immigrants from voting in any election, federal or local. (They already are banned.)

“A lot of people are afraid to actually vote to drain the swamp, so they decided to play games,” Rose said.

But Rose also jumped at the chance to distance himself from the party’s far left. He defended his vote for a different Republican amendment, to the Democrats’ popular background checks bill, which required gun sellers to notify ICE, the immigraiton enforcement agency, if undocumented immigrants tried to make a purchase, by saying that "if someone is buying a weapon who shouldn’t be, authorities should be notified." That did not change his opposition to some of ICE's tactics, he said.

And Rose-- like Wexton-- was dismissive toward the Green New Deal, a climate-change measure proposed by Ocasio-Cortez. Wexton called it an “aspirational” document that didn’t have enough details for her; Rose, just miles from Ocasio-Cortez’s district, said that he wanted to “transition responsibly to a carbon-free economy" and that the major left-wing project of 2019 did not work for him.

“The Green New Deal in so many ways takes a socialist economic agenda, and puts it under the veil of environmentalism,” he said. “That’s not who I am. That’s never who I was. That’s why I’m not a signatory to the Green New Deal-- but, give me a plan to tackle climate change, and I’ll be the first one to sign on.”

I hope Rose understands that it doesn't matter to the Republicans if he supports the ultra-popular Green New Deal or not; they'll blanket the airwaves implying he's a socialist-- and worse-- anyway. No mention in his town hall about the accomplishments of the last president the GOP continuously attacked as a socialist: FDR.

Weigel wrote that "To get to Congress, Rose had dispatched a number of more left-wing challengers" but didn't bother mentioning that the DCCC and Democratic establishment backed Rose and did everything they could to bury the other candidates.

Mike Siegel is a candidate running in a red Texas district, TX-10, that Obama lost both times and where Trump beat Hillary by about 9 points. Last year only 4 points separated Mike and the entrenched GOP incumbent, Michael McCaul. Rose may be afraid of his R+3 district but Siegel is in love with his R+9 district and feel confident he can flip it in 2020 with a strong populist message tailored very much for Texas voters. And he has no fear of the GOP's strategy of calling every Democrat-- the conservatives and the progressives-- "socialists."

At a campaign event with Ted Lieu last night, Mike told the crowd that "according to the GOP, Social Security is a 'socialist' program. Medicare and Medicaid, too. Basically, any program that cares for the poor, for the elderly, for those needing a little extra help to have a fair shot at success. When Jesus threw the money-changers out of the temple, and gave alms to the poor and sick, I guess that was 'socialist' too. But it's not 'socialist' when megacorporations, whether Big Tech or Big Oil, get hundreds of millions in subsidies from the American taxpayers. The good thing about this Republican fear-mongering is that at a certain point voters tune it out, and it loses its effect. My plan is to run on a strong progressive platform that serves the needs of the people of the Texas 10th Congressional District. The Republicans refused Medicaid expansion in Texas, and as a result we have rural hospitals closing and sky-high maternal mortality rates. The alternative I support is a commitment to universal healthcare, in the form of Medicare For All. The Republican budget would cut just about every essential social program to pay for tax cuts for the rich. We will campaign on a program of caring for people, not corporations."

Anyone who would like to help Mike bring this message to central Texas, please consider contributing by clicking on the Turning Texas Blue thermometer on the right.

Medicare For All vs Pay-Go?

In the piece Saturday about the Congressional Progressive Caucus idea of Pay-Go legislation rather than having opposed it as a rule, I neglected to mention how hard it would have been to go back and fight for the negotiated package the CPC had decided to prioritize-- the Medicare-For-All debate agreement perhaps being the most important part of it-- had the package been defeated. Writing for the Washington Post last week, Dave Weigel noted that previously Medicare-For-All proposals have been "typically sidelined, even when Democrats had power; in 2009 and 2010, when the House passed the Affordable Care Act, the “Medicare-for-All” package was not part of the discussion. [In 2017] for the first time, a majority of House Democrats co-sponsored HR 676."... [O]n Wednesday, Jayapal got Pelosi’s commitment to hearings in the Rules and Budget committees. The incoming chairmen of those committees, Reps. Jim McGovern (D-MA) and John Yarmuth (D-KY), support Medicare for All.

With Democrats locked out of power in the Senate and the White House, Jayapal said that supporters of universal health care were proceeding “one step at a time” and that getting the first real hearings on the bill-- for years, it has been aspirational, and not even subject to a Congressional Budget Office score-- would force a larger discussion.

  “This will ensure that Medicare for All is part of the 2020 Democratic presidential platforms,” said Jayapal.

...While Democratic leaders have pointed out that the spending rule is statutory and would remain active in the Senate no matter what the House does, a number of left-leaning Democrats have accused Pelosi of preemptively making it harder to pass major reforms. Jayapal, a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus who helped reshape the rule, said that those concerns were unfounded.

“The critical thing here is: Do we have a commitment to waive paygo on critical bills? I think we do,” she said. “I think we’ve not only got a commitment for that, but for hearings on those bills, and we’ve never had that before.”

Forget about conservatives for a moment-- we know they (now members of the GOP) will oppose Medicare-For-All the same way they have opposed all progressive initiatives starting with the Declaration of Independence. But Jayapal is far from unaware that she will have a tough battle with conservatives in her own party, the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- Blue Dogs and New Dems.

Over the weekend, Pramila told me that "Even if we had been able to get the votes to vote the entire [Rules] package down, what would have happened is that we would have then gotten into a fight over everything else that we won in the package. Don’t think for a moment that they would have agreed to simply take out Pay-Go and not lose anything else in exchange. Conservatives and moderates would have fought like hell against taking Pay-Go out (and they comprise 60% of the caucus still, remember that) and then we would have been in the position of potentially losing some of the things we won. For what?"

We often think, proudly, about how there is finally a majority of Dems backing Medicare-For-All, but it's important to remember there are plenty of tenacious opponents from the Republican wing of the party, many who will fight as hard as a Republican in opposition. A few examples of Democrats who refused to sign on to HR 676, starting with all 7 of the officers of the New Dem Caucus:

• Derek Kilmer (New Dem-WA)
• Terri Sewell (New Dem-AL)
• Gerry Connelly (New Dem-VA)
• Ron Kind (New Dem-WI)
• Kathleen Rice (New Dem-NY)
• Scott Peters (New Dem-CA)
• Jim HImes (New Dem-CT)
• Suzan DelBene (New Dem-WA)
• Debbie Wasserman Schultz (New Dem-FL)
• Cheri Bustos (BlueDog-IL)
• Tony Cardenas (New Dem-CA)
• Joaquin Castro (New Dem-TX)
• Juan Vargas (New Dem-CA)
• Kurt Schrader (New Dem-OR)
• Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)
• Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog-NJ)
• Val Demings (New Dem-FL)
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-CA)
• Pete Aguilar (New Dem-CA)
• Charlie Crist (Blue Dog-FL)
• Raul Ruiz (New Dem-CA)
• Brad Schneider (Blue Dog-IL)
• Lisa Blunt Rochester (New Dem-DE)
• Seth Moulton (New Dem-MA)
• Stephanie Murphy (Blue Dog-FL)
• Julia Brownley (New Dem-CA)
• Ami Bera (New Dem-CA)
• Tom O'Halleran (Blue Dog-AZ)
• Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY)
• Ann Kuster (New Dem-NH)
• Denny Heck (New Dem-WA)
• Bill Keating (New Dem-MA)
• Bill Foster (New Dem-IL)

To make it completely clear what this meant, Pramila continued that "Getting a stated commitment from the Speaker of the House herself to hold hearings on Medicare for All was deeply tied into the Pay-Go battle. We did have a commitment from Rep. Jim McGovern-- who is a strong progressive and supporter of Medicare-for-All-- to waive the rule for MFA and progressive legislation but I thought we needed more than that. I wanted the Speaker’s public commitment to this as well-- which I was able to negotiate as part of this discussion. This is an enormous victory! There have never, ever been hearings in the House on Medicare for All. To get the Speaker’s commitment to support holding hearings in multiple committees in the House means that we will be able to have formal, televised hearings on my bill for the first time in history-- and that helps to build the momentum even more. And if the fear around Pay-Go is that it will stop progressive legislation from moving forward, then the antidote to that fear was to ensure that it does NOT do that."

So what was the point of those of us who were frantically calling our esteemed congress members and pleading with them to vote against the Pay-Go rule-- not to mention, the massive intellectual push from Paul Krugman, Stephanie Kelton and Robert Reich and from Bernie's camp (Warren Gunnels)? Was the stunning courageousness and savvy organizing demonstrated by Ro Khanna, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Tulsi Gabbard all for naught? No, I don't think so-- although it will be really tragic if Pelosi holds it against them and refuses to put Khanna and Ocasio-Cortez on the Ways and Means Committee they would like to serve on. The good cop/bad cop strategy-- Pocan forever and ever and ever the good cop, of course-- that helped make space for the negotiations, gave the good cops some teeth and actually may be helping to make the Congressional Progressive Caucus more effective than I've given it credit for being in some time. So, there's that-- and like Gunnels pointed out after the vote:

#GreenNewDeal... Or Bust

Ayn Rand has left the building and in a few days a new Congress begins work. Many millions of Americans think there is nothing more important facing it than to start to deal seriously with Climate Change. There are now 43 members of Congress who have signed onto a framework for doing just that, the Sunrise Movement's GreenNewDeal. These 43 members asked Pelosi and her leadership team to enable a Select Committee on the GreenNewDeal. Pressured by corrupt and powerful Democrats within the caucus-- and led by deceitful (as in living a life in the closet) New Jersey scumbag Frank Pallone-- Pelosi has turned them down and instead opted for a toothless sop of a committee (the Committee on Climate Crisis) that has no power and that will no doubt be dominated by Hoyer's and Pallone's pals at Big Oil and Gas. Pelosi hopes it attracts lots of progressives so their energy will be drained in a maze that leads nowhere.

The young leaders of the Sunrise Movement have already informed their allies that they believe that "any Select Committee on Climate Change will be wholly inadequate without a clear mandate to develop a comprehensive plan to confront the climate crisis at the scale and speed that scientists tell us is necessary. We have before us an opportunity to create millions of good jobs, virtually eliminate poverty in the United States, and lift up communities that have been left behind by racism and disinvestment. Developing such a plan is a moral necessity. To our knowledge, the proposed resolution from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for a Select Committee on a Green New Deal is the only proposal on the table we know of that takes that mandate seriously."



They have asked that all committee members take the No Fossil Fuel Money pledge, which would, by the way, "inspire a historic level of support, enthusiasm, and renewed trust in the Democratic Party from young voters and potential voters. These actions are not only what are needed to ensure our rights to clean air, water, healthy communities, good jobs, and a livable future-- they are also in the party’s best interests politically, as 81% of voters support the goals of a Green New Deal."


What we are talking about goes beyond politics. This is about survival, this is about existence, this is about the world we will grow old in and leave behind for our children. Does the Democratic Party leadership stay up at night with the same fears held in the hearts of our generation, or are they just concerned with their next election?

In their badly titled Washington Post article yesterday, Elise Vierbeck and Dave Weigel, pointed out that the "committee will not have authority to approve legislation and is not expected to have subpoena power [and that] its work may not carry weight with the powerful standing committees in the House. The coming battle will test liberals' clout as tensions between the activist left and the Democratic establishment underscore the ideological and strategic rifts that will affect the party ahead of the 2020 presidential primary."

They quoted Varshini Prakash of the Sunrise Movement: "Without a mandate to create a plan and a requirement that its members don't take fossil fuel money, we are deeply concerned that this committee will be just another of the many committees we've seen failing our generation our entire lives."

Emphasizing the destructive turf war Pallone is leading, Weigel noted that "The committees still have moved to defend their turf on climate issues" and that Pallone is moving to push his own hearings-- Pallone has taken $135,689 in bribes from Big Oil and Gas interests-- and noted that "the New Jersey Democrat has not backed the Green New Deal. 'The goal of trying to reduce fossil fuels and get to a carbon-neutral economy is important and something that I agree with. The question is how long it takes to do that,' he said recently, according to the Asbury Park Press. 'The Green New Deal says you can do it in 10 years. I don't know if that's technologically feasible. . . . Beyond that, it's probably not politically feasible.' Critics of standing committees argue that they can be easily distracted from ambitious work and may be more susceptible to influence from lobbyists." Uh, huh... "not feasible", like McCaskill's "pie-in-the-sky" is what defenders of the status quo label ideas that... threaten the status quo, the way the American Revolution did, the emancipation of the slaves did, free education did, passing the Social Security Act did, the minimum wage did, rural electrification did, consumer protections did, Medicare did... all that stuff... not feasible. Just remember which side Frank Pallone, like McCaskill, is on.

Last week, Scientific American ran an interview by Anne Mulkern with California Congressman-elect Mike Levin who is the only one of the 7 California freshmen to have signed onto the GreenNewDeal and who favors making Climate a 2020 election issue. Levin flipped an Orange County/San Diego district that had been occupied by Darrell Issa campaigning on climate issues. He beat Kevin McCarthy's handpicked Republican candidate, Diane Harkey, 166,453 (56.4%) to 128,577 (43.6%, the biggest margin of any of the flipped California seats.

Levin’s an environmental attorney who also ran a clean technology trade group. He picked the title “Clean Energy Advocate” for his ballot description.

As they take control of the House in January, Democrats shouldn’t shy away from seeking action on global warming, Levin said. They can set parameters for the 2020 elections and let potential candidates know “that we do expect them to take bold and aggressive action to get us back on a course toward global leadership as it pertains to climate change,” he said.

“That’s something that I think we’ll be holding all of the presidential candidates to account for,” Levin said.

His election represents a big change for California’s 49th District, which stretches along the coast from Del Mar in north San Diego County to Dana Point in south Orange County. It includes a large Marine Corps base and several neighborhoods with median home prices close to or topping $1 million.

During the last part of his tenure, Issa said he accepted climate change but opposed actions to address it that he saw as costly. He criticized President Obama’s “Green Jobs Initiative,” a bid to fund investments in the clean energy sector and create 5 million jobs. After narrowly winning re-election in 2016, Issa joined the House Climate Solutions Caucus.

Shortly after launching his bid for the office, Levin confronted Issa about his views on climate at a town hall meeting, holding up the book “Climate Change for Beginners.” (He also mailed it to the congressman.) Levin asked why Issa supported President Trump’s agenda “to gut the EPA, to gut basic science.” He also joined protests outside Issa’s local office urging him to retire.

Here’s what he told E&E News in a recent interview:

Why did you believe running as “Clean Energy Advocate” would appeal to voters?

My background for the last decade-plus has been in clean energy and environmental protection. A lot of the work that we’ve done in California is potentially a national model for what is possible in the United States.

I ultimately campaigned on climate change and the environment because one, it was my background, and two, I think it was the right thing to do.

There was an article that was written by the Washington Examiner that said I was gambling by campaigning on climate change. I think just the opposite is true: We’re gambling if we don’t talk about climate change.

How so?

All you have to do is look at any of the recent reports [such as the fourth National Climate Assessment released by the Trump administration or the most recent U.N. International Panel on Climate Change report].

If you read even the summaries of those and the impact that global climate change will have here to our economy, to our environment, then not acknowledging the scientific consensus and taking affirmative steps to reduce our emissions footprint is a gamble that we cannot afford.

What sort of feedback did you hear from voters about your emphasis on clean energy and climate? The district is changing demographically but still has many conservatives.

It has been and continues to be a coastal district. The overwhelming feedback has been that we need to protect the quality of our air and water, and our beaches, and our oceans.

You said in a recent email that to reduce carbon emissions, “we must consider several ideas and not be afraid of bold action.” Can you give me an example of potential bold actions?

We do need to create a new select committee on climate change that can both re-educate the public on the dangers posed by climate change, as well as do stakeholder engagement with a wide variety of important organizations and industry partners in the clean energy industry.

Then ultimately we’ll draft policy... It will be a “Green New Deal.” The details are the key: what that will look like, how quickly we can transition, what type of jobs we’re creating and who will benefit economically? My hope is we’ll have a just transition from fossil fuel use to renewables as quickly as possible.

What is your strategy on how you’re going to get any of this accomplished over the next two years, with a GOP-controlled Senate and White House?

We’ve got to take the long view. Obviously we’re not going to get a “Green New Deal” with Donald Trump in the White House. What we can do is try to piece together as many elements, sort of a down payment on the “Green New Deal” over the next two years, try to work with our friends across the aisle to whatever extent possible, but also plant a stake in the ground for all those running for president in 2020.

The Sewers Will Overflow As No Labels Gets Dragged Into Court

Mr and Mrs. Shitbag plotting to turn the Democratic Party right

As I've been saying all year, there aren't any foul political groups operating in the election cycle more toxic than No Labels. They came screeching into district after district to save the necks of grotesque conservative Democrats-- like, for example, Dan Lipinski in Chicago, Darren Soto in Orlando and Ann Kirkpatrick in Tucson-- with boatloads of money from Republican billionaires (like the Murdoch family), to spread poisonous lies on behalf of their right-wing candidates. Sometime it worked, sometimes it didn't. This weekend, let's celebrate Dave Weigel of the Washington Post for his report on a lawsuit against No Labels that will shine the light on these monsters who operate in the dark. The key to this is the web of SuperPACs criminal Nancy Jacobson has set up and integrated into the conservative "mission" of No Labels. Her husband-- and co-conspirator-- it's important to remember, is another deservedly despised figure on the political landscape, Mark Penn.

The suit is all about political operatives and contractors who Mr. and Mrs. Shitbag stiffed for millions of dollars this year alone.

In the complaint, which was filed in the Supreme Court of New York this week, strategists Matthew Kalmans and Sacha Samotin say that their firm, Applecart, helped implement No Labels’s current strategy of creating PACs that can invest in primaries and general elections to boost centrist [translation: right-wing] candidates; they seek $3.7 million in damages, saying that money they were owed was shunted away from them, in breach of contract.

No Labels’s leaders and its affiliated strategists say that the lawsuit is without merit and that the charge that Penn was “calling the shots,” as the lawsuit puts it, is baseless.

“We were willing to let the cookie crumble, but if they’re going ahead with this, we’ll be doing a counterclaim," Jacobson said on Friday. "I gave them complete trust and control, and they did not deliver.”

Penn, a former political strategist for both Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has gained new national attention for criticizing special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of the Trump administration. While not affiliated with No Labels, he used a Tuesday appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight to talk up a plan-- advanced by No Labels-- to elect a speaker of the House with bipartisan support.

“There’s a problem-solvers group that is looking to have some influence, if the result is close, in terms of changing the rules and naming the speaker,” Penn said.

The 45-page complaint tells a story of political blunders that Applecart blames on Penn and that No Labels affiliates blame on Applecart. According to the complaint, it was Kalmans and Samotin, Republicans who identified as moderates, who presided over the group’s first political successes.

“It has been well reported that No Labels was a dysfunctional organization with no record of success prior to the 2016 cycle,” Samotin said. “During a time that the experts have said is hostile to centrist candidates, we chose challenging races and were successful in seven out of 11 races. We will defend that record to anybody.”

In 2016, the strategists signed a contract with No Labels that tied them exclusively to the group until 2019. In 2016, they plowed into primaries in Kansas and Florida to boost, respectively, center-right Republican Roger Marshall in a race against then-Rep. Tim Huelskamp, and state legislator Darren Soto in a seat vacated by then-Rep. Alan Grayson. It acted through super PACs, as the “No Labels” association “was thought likely to be unhelpful in a partisan primary election.” Applecart’s other high-profile work in that cycle included data for Gov. John Kasich’s (R-OH) super PAC.

“We were the last candidate to enter the race, and Applecart’s data allowed us to scale quickly despite being wildly outspent by our rivals,” said the PAC’s strategist, Matt David. "Their data helped us ID key supporters in New Hampshire, and the polling predicted the successful result of the primary to the 2nd decimal point.”

After the election, No Labels planned to up the super PAC project and spend $25 million to $50 million in 2018 to continue shaping primaries. The project was approved, and the team began identifying targets-- starting with Illinois’s 3rd District, where Democratic Rep. Daniel Lipinski would end up barely holding off a left-wing challenger.

But Kalmans and Samotin claim that later electoral efforts were undone by Penn. In July 2017, according to the complaint, “Jacobson recommended, urged, and/or instructed Kalmans and Samotin to use several vendors indirectly in which a private equity firm owned by Penn had a stake, including SKD Knickerbocker, a television advertising firm, Targeted Victory, a digital advertising firm, and PMX Agency, a mailing house. Jacobson also urged Kalmans to omit a Penn-owned entity from a conflicts disclosure made to donors.”

Penn did not comment when asked about the accusation, though he has said he has nothing to do with the operation of No Labels. The Stagwell Group, a private equity firm run by Penn, does own SKDKnickerbocker and owns a small minority stake in Targeted Victory. But Targeted Victory’s Zachary Moffatt said that Applecart suffered under scrutiny, a complaint echoed by others named in the lawsuit.

“Vendors Applecart hired and supervised on the committees' behalf were not placed under contracts,” said Margaret White, the director of the Country Forward super PAC, which was created as part of the PAC strategy. “Refunds of tens of thousands of dollars have already been recovered after we undertook to perform the due diligence that Applecart failed to do.” (Applecart says this is not true, and if it were true these refunds would show up on FEC reports.)

At the heart of the complaint was an effort in Indiana’s 4th District, which opened this year when an incumbent Republican ran for U.S. Senate. The No Labels strategy to elect Steve Braun, seen as the more moderate Republican in what would be a safe seat, was to bring down two more conservative candidates, Jim Baird and Diego Morales. One of the mailers against Baird attacked him for a gas tax increase, saying that it had cost voters “an arm and a leg"-- a line that backfired because Baird, a Vietnam veteran, had lost a limb in the war.

According to Applecart, that blunder was the pretext for a meeting that began unraveling the agreement with No Labels. “Jacobson told Kalmans and Samotin that going forward all strategic decisions relating to the No Labels’ super PAC campaign would be made by Penn, along with SKD Knickerbocker partner Bill Knapp, and No Labels’ co-founder Tom Davis,” the complaint reads.

Davis defended that decision, saying that the team that swept in to look at the Indiana results decided that Applecart had committed “political malpractice" and “needed adult supervision.” Former senator Joe Lieberman, a No Labels co-chair, said that Applecart had looked promising but wilted under inspection.

“They were charging us for things they had not even done,” Lieberman said.

“Applecart was spending 50 percent or more of the overall costs in each race on non-voter contact expenses (much of which was paid directly to themselves),” Good wrote in an email. “Applecart only won four of the races this cycle during their work with us.”

Kalmans and Samotin say the pushback is false-- that Applecart was simply not paid for 1,714 hours of completed work and that a No Labels attorney had signed off on the “arm and a leg” mailer. That debacle, they say, was “a pretext on which to hand over strategic oversight of No Labels’ super PAC campaign to Penn.” The rest may be fought out in court.

Godzilla v Rodan.

We Back Replacing Democraps But Not Primarying Good Dems For The Sake Of Identity Politics

There aren't many primaries left this cycle-- Massachusetts today, Delaware Thursday, New Hampshire a week from today, Rhode Island a week from tomorrow and Louisiana on election day in November (don't ask). Dave Weigel covered this month's primaries for the Washington Post, but from their very peculiar angle: 'Any old blue just won’t do': Insurgents seek to topple more Democratic veterans in September primaries.

A little background. Only two outside PACs did any independent spending in the New York primary in which Alexandria Ocasio Cortez ousted powerful, entrenched Machine hack Joe Crowley. One was the Sierra Club, which, of course, backed Crowley. (Their mission is great but, politically, that's who they are.) The only other PAC spending in that race was Blue America-- and we backed Ocasio. Our hatred of Crowley was more than a decade old but Ocasio convinced me that she and her team had what it took to do what no one believed possible: beat Crowley, which she did 56.75% to 43.25%.

Crowley deserved-- richly-- his defeat. It wasn't just a matter of a better Democrat defeating a good Democrat. That primary was an excellent Democrat defeating a complete piece of shit, a major danger to his constituents and to the country. The Sierra Club didn't see that... and neither did almost any of the constituent parts of the Democratic Party coalition. The entire establishment backed Crowley-- included groups (like the Working Families Party) who should have known better. Groups that generally do whatever the Democratic Party bosses tell them to do-- the AFL-CIO, the SEIU, Gabby Gifford's conservative-backing anti-gun group, NARAL, Planned Parenthood... You get the picture.

Weigel reported that "Ayanna Pressley’s rationale for unseating a 20-year incumbent was simple, starting with what Rep. Michael E. Capuano has done right. Yes, the Democratic congressman had voted the right way nearly all of the time. Sure, he’d resisted President Trump. 'A progressive voting record in the most progressive seat in the country is not enough,' Pressley said recently at a small canvass launch that quickly took over most of a coffee shop. 'This district deserves bold, activist leadership! The only way we can beat the hate coming out from Washington is not with a vote-- it’s with a movement!' Pressley, a 44-year-old Boston City Council member with a long political résumé, was long expected to make a play for higher office. Her race against Capuano, a well-liked liberal and leading antiwar voice in his party, has created an expensive and divisive race in a seat Republicans have not contested since 1998."

MA-07, which includes most of Boston, part of Cambridge and all of Somerville, Chelsea, Randolph and Everett, is not "the most progressive seat in the country," as she claims. The PVI is D+34, the most progressive district in Massachusetts for sure. But ... California 12 has a PVI of D+37, California 13 is D+40, California 34 and 44 each has a D+35, California 37 is D+37. Other districts that tie MA-07's D+34 include Florida 24, Georgia 05 and New York 09. Other that beat Capuano's district:

• IL-07- D+38
• NJ-10- D+36
• NY-05- D+37
• NY-07- D+38
• NY-08- D+36
• NY-13- D+43
• NY-15- D+44 (the actual most progressive seat in the country)
• PA-03- D+41
• DC- D+43

Some of these super-blue districts actually desperately need primaries to remove incumbents who are far less progressive than the districts. CA-12 is Nancy Pelosi's district. She used to be as progressive as the district... a long time ago. Frederica Wilson is a garden variety Democrat is a super-blue seat. Danny Davis isn't as progressive as his Chicago district. Donald Payne is less progressive than his Newark/Jersey City district. Gregory Meeks is the worst Democrat in a super-blue seat-- conservative and corrupt. Hakeem Jeffries should stop thinking about higher office and step up his game to better serve his current constituents in Brooklyn. But if you want to follow Pressley's reasoning, Democrats who might have to watch their backs would include some of the best of the best, like Barbara Lee in Oakland and Jerry Nadler in NYC.

Capuano told Weigel that "Some people want to snap their fingers and get whatever they want. So do I. But I haven’t had that experience any place in my life."

In four of September’s five primary states-- Massachusetts, Delaware, Rhode Island and New York [stae, not federal]-- efforts are underway to dismantle the party establishment, starting with long-tenured politicians who first took power when compromises with the right were more routine. Democrats who are used to locking up endorsements and rolling into November are being challenged on decades-old votes, or their slowness to embrace reform, or why they haven’t been more visible in the Trump era. The same dynamic is playing out in open seats, where candidates are often debating who can provide the brightest, loudest contrast to Republicans.

“Anyone who represents this district is going to vote the right way on what gets to the floor,” said Andre Green, 37, a Somerville city councilor who is backing Pressley. “I want leaders who will change what actually gets to the floor.”

The Pressley-Capuano race, like most of September’s primaries, is taking place in an environment where Republicans have opted not to compete.

...In New York, primaries for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and the state Senate have become referendums on the leadership of Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D).

While actor Cynthia Nixon’s challenge to Cuomo has lagged in polls, activists have forced serious contests in a half-dozen Senate races. And in the race for attorney general, law professor and activist Zephyr Teachout, a 2014 Cuomo primary opponent, has risen from fringe status to the front of a four-way race. While Republicans have picked candidates for both offices, they’ve raised around $1 million apiece, less than each of the leading Democrats.

In Rhode Island, where Democrats hold every statewide office, both Gov. Gina Raimondo and Lt. Gov. Dan McKee [both corrupt and conservative] are facing credible challengers from their left-- former secretary of state Matt Brown and 28-year-old state legislator Aaron Regunberg. As in New York, the challengers have asked why a state that votes overwhelmingly for Democrats cannot pass the sort of reforms-- starting with automatic voter registration-- that some other blue states have passed easily.

“I’ve fought to pass protections for working families in our state, like higher wages, like paid sick days,” Regunberg said in a debate recently. “My opponent sided with corporate lobbyists.”

And in Delaware, where Democrats only narrowly control the legislature, statewide races have been reshaped by liberal politics. A primary for attorney general has turned on a debate over whether to end “mass incarceration,” while the primary for U.S. Senate has found challenger Kerri Evelyn Harris asking whether incumbent Thomas R. Carper [a conservative Democrat] has answered to business interests instead of voters.

“Any old blue just won’t do,” Harris said during her sole debate with Carper.

National Republicans have not targeted the Delaware race, and none of the Republicans running for Carper’s seat has raised more than $350,000-- less than one-tenth of what the party spent in 2000, when Carper knocked off an incumbent to win.

...Democratic activists, however, have piled into races where incumbents have not faced serious competition in a decade, if ever. [Right-of-center Dems] Rep. Richard E. Neal (D-MA) and Rep. Stephen F. Lynch (D-MA) are being challenged, respectively, by Muslim civil rights attorney Tahirah Amatul-Wadud and transgender video game designer Brianna Wu. And longtime Secretary of the Commonwealth Bill Galvin, who heads the state’s elections system, is being challenged by Josh Zakim, a Boston legislator half his age.

“We need to be willing to challenge people, even in our own party, when they’re wrong,” Zakim said in an interview after a town hall at a Somerville brewpub. “When I got into this race, he was against automatic registration. Now he’s for it. What does that tell you?”

Democrats crowing about left-wing bona fides have also crowded into the race for the newly open 3rd Congressional District, which stretches between the outskirts of Boston and the state’s border with New Hampshire.

The five front-running candidates-- 10 will appear on the ballot-- agree that Medicare should become a universal program, that the minimum wage should be raised to $15 an hour, and that college should be tuition-free. None of the contenders is, like retiring Rep. Niki Tsongas (D-MA), related to a former U.S. senator. None of the front-runners is a straight, white man.

That has led to a fight about something candidates cannot change-- namely, whose biography would position them as the fiercest liberal advocate. Dan Koh, a former chief of staff to Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, has piled up $3 million for his first-ever political campaign. The son of a Korean father and a Lebanese mother-- “the most random combination in the world,” he told supporters at one rally-- Koh has argued that his roots and his record in a liberal city hall qualify him to run.

“If Donald Trump had his way, I literally wouldn’t exist,” Koh said in an interview, adding that he worked to help Boston fight climate change even as Trump spurned such efforts. “Sure, people want to hear you stand up to Trump, but they want to know how you’ve done it.”

Koh’s rivals refuse to concede the biography wars. Juana Matias, a first-term state legislator, points out that she immigrated to the United States when she was 5 years old. “I don’t need to talk to anyone about these issues; I’m living them as I speak,” she said.

State Sen. Barbara L’Italien reminds voters of her legislative service and adds that she is the only candidate to call for the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Rufus Gifford, a wealthy former ambassador to Denmark, tells audiences that he has a unique perspective on how universal health care and tough climate laws can work, but acknowledges that some voters are yearning for candidates who can reate to their life experiences.

“My story, growing up as a young gay kid, feeling isolated in communities like this-- that told me that I wanted to devote my life to service,” Gifford said after a house party in a wealthy neighborhood of Concord.

Despite Capuano’s best efforts, his primary also has been defined by identity, and not by his voting record. In his latest televised showdown with Pressley, Capuano looked on in amazement as the challenger said he should have blocked an effort to mollify antiabortion Democrats to get their votes for Obamacare-- and said she would have opposed the law unless that was fixed.

“I have a hard time with that,” said Capuano. “We won it by one vote, and you wouldn’t have voted for it, because it’s not perfect?”

Capuano, who points out that he has a more liberal voting record than Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), has gotten some reinforcements on the left. Antiwar groups have endorsed him because of his effort to end the war in Afghanistan, and because Pressley was unclear on whether she would undo the post-9/11 authorization of war that’s been used to justify 17 years of intervention.

...Pressley, with a record in local government of her own, has argued that voters could trade one congressman who votes the right way for one who would inspire and organize them. The difference was clear in a few comments Capuano made about race, said Pressley, who is black. In a 2017 town hall, Capuano said that he disliked how “Democrats had balkanized themselves,” and that former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick had “turned off half of America” by kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial injustice.

The incident was a boon for Pressley, who has outpaced other Democratic challengers with endorsements from local politicians and from Boston’s major newspapers.

Last month, as Pressley marched in the city’s Caribbean parade, Mimi Jones, 70, waved from the sidelines. Pressley, she said, would get her vote over Capuano.

“I like him, I’ve voted him, he’s done a good job,” said Jones. “But we need some changes, and we need some people who look like I do.”

Blue America has endorsed Aaron Regunberg because he has an excellent record and his entrenched primary opponent is a corrupt conservative. That was easy. We endorsed Zephyr Teachout because she's much, much better than any of her opponents. I don't believe in primarying elected officials who have done a good job just because someone else is from a different identity group; in fact, I hate that. (Note: We would have happily endorsed Brianna Wu against Stephen Lynch, but she never quite got it together to return any messages. I hope she wins today, but I wouldn't bet on it. Competent campaigns matter too, not just being better than a crappy opponent.)

Pressley's great... but so is Capuano

Will The House Democrats Ever Free Themselves Of Their Geriatric Leadership And Move Into The Future?

Would the Democrats win more votes in November if Pelosi announced she was retiring? No one doubts it. Does she care? Nope; she's obsessed. I speak with candidates and members of Congress every day. Almost no one I speak with wants Pelosi leading the party-- including people who admire her. Yesterday, after Pelosi told the Boston Globe she intends to run for Speaker again, Dave Weigel and Paul Kane looked at the numbers for Washington Post readers. And it isn't just progressive candidates who oppose another term for Pelosi, Candidates from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party oppose her as well. Take Blue Dog (and DCCC recruit) Dan McCready of North Carolina. He's quoted by The Post saying "I’ve said since Day One that I wouldn’t vote for Nancy Pelosi as speaker. I think we need a whole new generation of people in D.C. That’s part of why I’m running; we need some new blood." Yeah, yeah, but McCready is also saying he opposes Pelosi for political reasons. He doesn't want to see oceans of TV ads running constantly in Myers Park and Lionsgate in south Charlotte down through Matthews, Monroe, Wadeboro and along the border with South Carolina to Lumberton and north into Savoy Heights and Fayettesville, all equating him to Pelosi. "Democrats across the country," posits The Post, "are locked in an awkward dance in which candidates sensing a chance to win GOP-held seats are increasingly distancing themselves from the party’s longtime liberal leader from San Francisco-- at the same time that the 78-year-old congresswoman is boldly holding on to power." (Liberal? She once was, but that was quite some time ago, amigo. She long ago morphed into a centrist.)



They claim only 10 candidates have come out against her. I've counted more than double that just among people I talk to. Among the candidates endorsed by Blue America-- progressives-- I found little support for her, although several are unwilling to say so on the record. One of our best congressional candidates: "Off the record, I'll be frank and say I think we need new leadership, I'm just not sure who." Another great congressional candidate who asked for anonymity told me "Off the record, I do not want Nancy Pelosi anywhere near my campaign. Thanks, but no thanks. She is toxic." I don't know how she expects to get enough Democrats to elect her leader/Speaker.

Last November I reached out to several campaigns to ask candidates and campaign managers what they plan do about the threat from the NRCC to portray them as Pelosi clones. One of the best campaign managers in the country: "I respect Pelosi," he told me back then, "but it's time for her to pack it in-- past time. She's hurting the party's chance to decisively win the midterms and put a check on Trump. I know it's not fair, but the Republicans have succeeded in demonizing her, especially with independent voters... We're going to have to tell our voters that we don't want her or Ryan as Speaker.. We feel bad about equating them both but not even Democrats in [our district] want to see her back with the Speaker's gavel... I agree with you that Hoyer and Crowley would be much worse party leaders but most voters have never heard of either one of them and the Republicans can't use them against candidates... unless they read some obscure blog like yours." Another candidate told me that "She's pretty toxic among the independent voters here. I don't have anything against her but it isn't just Republicans who hate her. Many Democrats want to see her just move on and make room for someone else... Her time is over."

Candidates willing to go on the record back then:

James Thompson, currently running for Congress in a Kansas rematch, has a very different perspective on this than anyone else because he just went through the experience a few months ago. "I ran for Congress in the 4th District of Kansas in the very first Special Election after Trump was inaugurated," he told us. "The DCCC claims they did not help my race because they did not want to 'nationalize it.' Yet, as soon as I received the nomination from the Kansas Democratic Party to run for Congress, the Republican Party 'nationalized' the campaign by immediately tying me to Leader Pelosi, saying she hand-picked me and that I was her puppet. Ron Estes and the Republicans in Kansas, led by the KOCH brothers ultra-conservative political machine, never met a lie they didn’t like. I had never met, nor even spoke with, Nancy Pelosi and yet was being branded like a bull with her unpopularity here in Kansas. She sure never helped my race, and the mere mention of her name hurt my campaign. The same ads used against Ossoff, were used against me by simply switching out his picture for mine. The night of the special election, Leader Pelosi called and offered her condolences for my loss. She was warm, friendly and sympathetic and I greatly appreciated her taking the time out of her busy schedule to call me. While I respect her as a person and her accomplishments as Speaker of the House, her time in leadership needs to end for the good of the Democratic Party. With better leadership from the party, we may have been able to harness the progressive wave sweeping the country and possibly win some of the Special Elections. The Democratic Party needs an infusion of new progressive leadership like Keith Ellison and Ro Khanna. Regardless of whether it is true, Republicans will brand every Democrat with the Pelosi brand in hopes of sinking campaigns in 2018 with the mere mention of her name. New leadership needs to take over and lead the fight for a 50 state strategy. If Leader Pelosi is still in office when I get to Congress, I will vote for new leadership that will ensure the Democratic Party fights in all 50 states."

Tom Guild in Oklahoma City knows he's definitely going to face a barrage of ads conflating him with Pelosi. He doesn't seem worried. "Because of the extreme dysfunction in Congress today, I’m going to wait and see who the candidates for House Democratic Leader/Speaker are before deciding which person to support. It would be hard to do worse than Paul Ryan has done as the leader of House Republicans. I want a progressive who can pass an increase to the minimum wage, single payer health care, a massive infrastructure bill to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure while creating millions of good paying jobs, direct and hasten the transition to renewable energy sources, and invest in America before looking for new overseas military adventures. I will take this decision seriously and am not in anyone’s hip pocket. Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio (or his closest living iteration in Congress)? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you."

Jared Golden is running for the Maine seat held by Trump rubber stamp Bruce Poliquin. He's the Majority Whip of the state legislature and he has a clear understanding about how legislative bodies work. One of his primary opponents happens to be straight out of Pelosi's coterie of super-wealthy elites. And Golden didn't mince any words. "It’s time for a new generation of leaders in Washington. My support will go to the leader that shows me they care about and understand the priorities of working class people-- it’s got to be someone serious about rebuilding an economy that doesn’t leave small rural states like Maine behind. I want to serve with leaders that demonstrate they have the courage to fight for progressive values and the ability to work across the aisle to deliver results. We need service-driven leaders who will do what’s best for this country and I believe that’s to fight for the great majority-- working and middle class people."

Jenny Marshall, the progressive Democrat running for the Piedmont seat Virginia Foxx occupies toked us that "People are looking for a person that can relate to the everyday struggles of average Americans. They need to know that their representative is not bought and paid for by corporate interests. We are separating ourselves from candidates who do not support progressive issues like single payer health care, campaign finance reform including eliminating corporate donations to campaigns. These issues are important for our communities and they need to know that they have a strong choice that supports what they need."

Doug Applegate has a similar perspective-- as well as some creepy Pelosi candidate backed by big money in his primary. When I asked him if the GOP Machine will try to conflate him with Pelosi, he laughed and said, "You’ve got to be kidding me. Since nearly beating Darrell Issa after the DCCC came in late in the race only 67 days before election day 2016, corporate and establishment Democrats have only indicated that the last person they want to join their club is a Marine Colonel. While Dem Hill members insist they won’t endorse until after the primary, multiple conservative Democrat Congressmen endorse Mike Levin whose corporation received an 'undisclosed payment/investment' from Exxon in the summer of 2016. Despite that bump from the biggest carbon fuel producer, Levin still insists that he’s an environmental lawyer.  As a former Clinton aide and Qualcomm heiress, a crowbar couldn’t pry Sara Jacobs away from moneyed corporate Democrats and Pelosi. I’m not a corporate Democrat; I’m not an establishment Democrat. I’m a Marine Colonel who will fight for change, for a new labor movement, for single payer healthcare, for public preschool to public university regardless of parental income, for ending oil subsidies that will free market forces to reach 100% renewable energy by 2027 and for real change. The only label you will ever stick on me is 'he’s a Marine Colonel who will fight like hell for change.'"

John Rogers, the monkey the House Republicans hired to run their version of the DCCC, the NRCC, admits he's counting on benefitting from the years-long attempts to use Nancy Pelosi against Democratic congressional candidates. He admits that the NRCC's main weapon to try to hold onto the House is by making every race about her. "In reality," he said, "next fall is going to come down to whether or not you want to reinstitute Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House."

It's true that the Republicans have become a one-trick pony with that narrative and have every intention of using it again, the way they used it against Jon Ossoff in Georgia last year. Ossoff was an extraordinarily weak and pointless candidate-- a real DCCC special-- and it was predictable that he would be vulnerable to that kind of idiotic attack. The DCCC was never capable of the kind of single-minded aggressiveness it would have taken to turn the tables on the GOP by making Ryan into the kind of villain the Republicans have made Pelosi into. The irony there was that before Randy Bryce chased him off the field of battle, Ryan was already more disliked nationally than Pelosi was-- even after years of Republican slander against her!

In the last poll before he announced he would leave Congress to teach little Sammy and Charlie how to shoot rabbits with bows and arrows, Ryan's unfavorable rating was 49.3%, compared to Pelosi's 48.7%. Luckily for Senate Democrats, Mitch McConnell has a far lower popularity than either of them-- and is the most disliked politician in America. This was from last August:

Note the only leaders from either party with statistically more positive support than negativity are Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. People-- as in registered voters-- absolutely hate both Trump and Hillary, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), House minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). The public rejects these people-- yet they still are managing to control the levers of power in Washington. The whole corrupt, money-fueled system stinks to High Heaven.

The only thing that has kept Pelosi in power this long are the wretched alternatives-- Hoyer and, at one time, Wasserman Schultz, for example-- but Crowley is worse than either Pelosi or Hoyer and just as unpalatable as Wasserman Schultz.

In March Mike Allen pointed out that Pelosi could be in trouble after the Democratic wave sweeps her party back into power in November. He wrote that "Top Democrats" tell him that "if they take back the House in November, a restoration of Speaker Nancy Pelosi is no longer guaranteed."

• In fact, some well-wired House Democrats predict she will be forced aside after the election and replaced by a younger, less divisive Dem.
• Conor Lamb, 33, won his U.S. House race in Pennsylvania this week after saying he wouldn't vote for her for leader-- a new template for moderates.
• Pelosi has hung in through the minority, and remains the party's most consistent fundraiser. As for whether she'll return as Speaker, she has just said that it's up to the members. (Her allies note that she has never lost a leadership vote.)
• But others have their eye on the gavel, and many members want a younger, newer face. Her No. 2 and longtime rival, House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, 78, covets the job but is three months older than she is.
• Pelosi is more likely to be the bridge to a younger generation. A possible successor, who works the caucus behind the scenes, is Rep. Joe Crowley of Queens, N.Y., who turns 56 tomorrow.
• Another possible candidate who's getting buzz: Rep. Adam Schiff, a fellow Californian who has a sky-high profile as the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, investigating Russia's role in 2016.

One Democratic source told me that Pelosi hears footsteps: “She used to be retributional. Now she’s more inclusive.”

• Pelosi allies see some of the criticism as sexist, and say she has always been inclusive of all parts of the caucus' diversity, including newer members.
• Pelosi told the Congressional Progressive Caucus at a retreat in Baltimore last week: "Every morning, I don a suit of armor, eat nails for breakfast, and go fight inequality."
• President Trump plans to invoke her frequently in midterm speeches, and Republicans already use her image to raise funds. And in campaigns this fall, many Dems challengers will be put on the spot about whether they'd vote for her as Speaker.

One scenario, from a Pelosi ally:

• "She could win the caucus vote [for Speaker] easily but lose the floor vote."
• "[I]f Dems win the majority by, say, a 10-vote majority, and 15 newly elected Dems have committed not to vote for her [like Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania] for leader of the party, ... she could lose the floor vote for Speaker. That would give the House to the head of the Republicans."
• "She would never let that happen, and she would bow out to someone else."
• "[S]he’s the best vote counter this generation has ever seen. So she’ll know this scenario well in advance, and will figure out a way out that will preserve her legacy."

Be smart: If there's a post-election coup against Pelosi, Crowley is the likely winner because Schiff and the others would scramble the field and Joe is acceptable to all factions.

• One knowing Dem says: "My guess is Crowley is the next Dem Speaker/Leader. He’s the fresh face that the majority of the caucus yearns for ... He’s a spring chicken by congressional standards, at 55 years old."

Crowley is the most corrupt Democrat in the House. The Queens County Democrat boss who was handed his seat and never fought a real election in his entire life and the "former" head of the New Dems, is the bagman who launders Wall Street's money into the Democratic House Caucus. He's "acceptable to all factions" because he pays off all factions. Pelosi's corpse would make a better Speaker than Crowley. The thought of Crowley as Speaker is so disgusting that I'm going to go to the bathroom and vomit now. Crowley is even worse than this:



Weigel and Kane assert that Democrats refusing to back Pelosi "are following in the footsteps of newly elected Democratic Rep. Conor Lamb, who scored a stunning upset in March in a Republican Pennsylvania district after saying he would oppose Pelosi" but then go quite a bit further.

This clamor for change at the top underscores the generational tensions within the House Democratic caucus as younger lawmakers look to replace not only Pelosi but also two other septuagenarians-- Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-MD.), 78, and Assistant Democratic Leader James E. Clyburn (D-SC), 77.

Pelosi stands as the Democratic conundrum, a prolific fundraiser and skilled politician, as well as a deeply polarizing figure used by Republicans as a club against Democrats.

The dynamic sets the stage for a potential showdown-- should Democrats win the majority-- between Pelosi allies, who would relish the historic moment of returning a woman to one of the most influential positions in the country, and her critics, many of whom would have won office by promising a change in leadership.

“We will win. I will run for speaker. I feel confident about it. And my members do, too,” Pelosi told a meeting of Boston Globe reporters and editors on Tuesday. Earlier, at an event in New York City, she introduced several of her fellow House Democrats to the crowd by highlighting which committee they would lead next year, assuming a Democratic majority.

“It’s important that it not be five white guys at the table, no offense,” Pelosi said in Boston, a reference to the top leaders in the House and Senate and President Trump. “I have no intention of walking away from that table.”

There is the question of whether Pelosi would have the votes to win the job. Unlike other leadership posts, which are selected by secret ballot in the respective caucuses, the entire House must vote for the speaker in early January. The minority party never votes for the majority’s speaker-designate, so it would require Pelosi to get at least 218 votes from her side of the aisle.

So, if Democrats ended up with a caucus of 235, Pelosi could afford to lose 17 votes when the speaker vote is held on the floor.

Pelosi’s strength comes from several sources, the first among equals being her fundraising on behalf of candidates and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Her advisers attributed 45 percent of the committee’s $34 million raised in the first quarter of 2018 to Pelosi.

But there are other, beneath-the-radar reasons Pelosi feels confident in her post.

Despite GOP claims, Pelosi is not as unpopular as she was eight years ago when she was speaker. Back then, 58 percent of Americans had an unfavorable view of Pelosi, including 41 percent who held a strongly unfavorable view.

In a Washington Post-ABC News poll last month, just 44 percent of Americans held an unfavorable view, with those strongly disliking her down to 29 percent.

That played out in Lamb’s victory. Outside Republican groups spent more than $6 million on TV ads in southwestern Pennsylvania, the lion’s share of it on commercials trying to tie Lamb to Pelosi. But the 33-year-old Democrat ran an ad making clear he would not support Pelosi, calling for new leadership on both sides of the aisle.

It helped to inoculate him against the Pelosi attack line. GOP operatives now worry that other Democrats will follow Lamb’s lead and that there will be even less potency in the anti-Pelosi campaign that they have been hoping will save their majority in the fall.

Most Democrats have distanced themselves from Pelosi but have tried to avoid taking a hard-and-fast position on how they would vote if she is the Democratic nominee for speaker. Kathy Manning, a Democratic candidate here in western North Carolina, said in an interview that she would like to see an open contest for party leader.

“I would make that decision like I make all my decisions: Get as much information as I can, find out who’s running, find out what their positions are, then vote for the person who’d make the best leader,” Manning said.

This sort of nuanced answer-- she never explicitly says she opposes Pelosi-- is one that Republicans will use to try to turn her into a Pelosi clone. North Carolina Republicans have already begun highlighting Manning’s $500 and $1,000 donations to Pelosi’s political committees in 2002 and 2004.

Pelosi and Hoyer have held the top two spots in leadership for more than a dozen years, while Clyburn has held the No. 3 post since 2011. Clyburn raised eyebrows a few weeks ago when he told Politico that this year’s midterm elections were an up-or-out moment for the trio, that all three would have to step down if Democrats failed to secure the majority.

Democrats are not demanding a loyalty pledge from candidates who might flip the majority their way. McCready and Manning have been added to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s “Red to Blue” list, denoting them as candidates who can expect party support in their primaries and the general election.

In an interview, Elissa Slotkin, a “red-to-blue” candidate in a GOP-held southwest Michigan district, said she would prefer an alternative to Pelosi.

“I think it’s clear that on both sides of the aisle, people are seeking new leadership, and I’m going to be looking for someone who best represents my district and what we care about here. And I believe that’s a new generation of leaders,” said Slotkin, a former Defense Department official running her first congressional race.

Some House Democrats are openly advising these candidates to oppose Pelosi.

“If Republicans want to do the same thing to Elissa Slotkin that they did to Conor Lamb, all Conor Lamb had to do was point to the front page of the newspaper that said ‘Conor Lamb will not vote for Nancy Pelosi.’ It’s phony. It’s played out,” said Rep. Cheri Bustos (Blue Dog-IL), who traveled to Michigan this week to campaign for Slotkin.