Team Sport Day, Kids-- Do You Want A Blue Uniform Or A Red One?

Ro & Beto, 2 charismatic Democrats-- both refuse to give blanket endorsements to just anyone in a blue uniform... but for very different reasons

According to a CNN report last night, a Democratic Party robot in New Hampshire, Deb Nelson, the chair of the Hanover/Lyme Town Democrats, asked Beto to take the "Any Blue Will Do" pledge. That's because during his recent Senate race he probably caused the defeat of a mediocre Democratic candidate, Gina Jones, in a district , TX-23, he himself won. Beto, a middle-of-the-road, Democrat, is pals with the Republican incumbent, Will Hurd, a middle-of-the-road Republican. Jones, also a middle of the road nothing candidate, ran for Hurd's seat. There was a big to-do down in Texas because Beto was busy endorsing other Democratic candidates-- and helping them win-- but very pointedly and publicly refused to do so for Jones. And not because she was a worse candidate than the candidates Beto was helping.

Beto beat Ted Cruz in TX-23 but Hurd scraped by with a narrow 103,285 (49.2%) to 102,359 (48.7%) win. The biggest county in the district, Bexar, is Beto country. He beat Cruz there by over 100,000 votes and by 20 points. But Jones fell seriously short of what she needed to win in the super-crucial Bexar portion of the district. And although Jones won in the El Paso part of the district, the second biggest county and Beto's home (where he eviscerated Cruz 74.4% to 25.0%), it is thought that had he pumped for Jones, she would have won the extra thousand votes there and in Bexar that would have put her over Hurd.

Blue America didn't back Jones either, not because she wasn't better than Hurd-- she is-- but because she's isn't an especially good candidate. With a concerted push from the DCCC and establishment Texas Dems, Jones had beaten the progressive candidate, Rick Treviño, in a run-off primary. But Beto didn't not back her because she wasn't any good; he didn't back her because he preferred Hurd, his buddy. That's what robot Dems like Nelson are upset about-- which is understandable. Henry Cuellar, a Texas Blue Dog, who Nelson would insist Beto endorse-- and Beto would anyway-- is not just a Trump-Democrat who votes with the GOP on crucial issues, he endorses Republicans and even gives them campaign contributions! Should there be a pledge that forces Democrats to endorse someone like Cuellar? 

After she pestered him about his refusal to support Jones, he responded to Nelson that he "can't take a pledge to support every single Democrat in the country. I need to know about them first, right? Would you want me to make a blanket commitment about people I know nothing about, who I've never met?" Yes, Nelson would. Any blue will do-- whether a real Democrat with real Democratic values running on strong Democratic issues, or some fake Democrat-- a Blue Dog or a New Dem or any kind of stinking, corrupt right-wing garbage in a blue uniform.

Beto's right on this, for the wrong underlying reasons. Gina Jones would have been an unoffensive and worthless New Dem back-bencher in Congress-- pretty much, unfortunately, what Beto was. On the partisan margins, Beto was a better member than Hurd. On the partisan margins, Jones would have been too. Beto helped worse candidates than her. He more-or-less admits why he preferred Hurd over her. "Will Hurd, Gina Ortiz Jones' opponent, the incumbent member of Congress and a good friend of mine, was someone who, in my day job as a member of Congress representing El Paso, I was able to work with," he told the New Hampshire Democrats, referencing a showboat, but otherwise meaningless, bipartisan road trip the two of them took, driving together from Texas to DC on Facebook.

Nelson wasn't having any of it. "I get friendships, I do, but I think in this day and age where somebody befriends a Republican and legislation that we think is important doesn't get passed," she told reporters after he encounter with Beto. "And I think that's a concern. I know Gina Ortiz Jones was very close to winning in her district, and I know he made a decision not to endorse her, and he could be a friend and still endorse a Democrat who's an Iraq War veteran and a strong candidate. And I'm concerned about that... I think you can be friends with Republicans, I think you can be -- you can drive across the country with Republicans, but I think when it comes to actually effecting legislative change, I don't see it in this Republican Party." It's debatable whether or not being an Iraq War vet makes someone a good member of Congress-- right-wing jerks like Doug Collins (R-GA), Don Bacon (R-NE), Greg Steube (R-FL), Steve Watkins (R-KS), Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), Max Rose (Blue Dog-NY), Duncan Hunter (R-CA and Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) are all Iraq veterans and all totally ghastly members of Congress who do not belong anywhere near Capitol Hill. And as far as Gina Jones having been a "strong candidate"... she wasn't anything more than a generic, garden variety DCCC pick.

I agree with Nelson that Republicans are part of the problem, not part of the solution. The Republican Party sucks. So do their candidates who are, one and all, confirmed Trump-enablers and ready to sell their country out-- including the Iraq War vets, apparently-- for partisan gain. Will Hurd is terrible, not as bad as some, but terrible. Directly below is a list of a dozen incumbents with their 2019 ProgressivePunch crucial vote scores. Justin Amash's score is the best of any Republican in the House, although still horrible and rated "F." But look at the scores of those directly below him:

• Justin Amash (R-MI)- 42.86%
• Kendra Horn (Blue Dog-OK)- 42.86%
• Xochitl Torres Small (Blue Dog-NM)- 42.86%
• Anthony Brindisi (Blue Dog-NY)- 35.71%
• Joe Cunningham (Blue Dog-SC)- 35.71%
• Ben McAdams (Blue Dog-UT)- 35.71%
• Jeff Van Drew (Blue Dog-NJ)- 35.71%
• Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog-NJ)- 28.57%
• John Katko (R-NY)- 21.43%
• Elise Stefanik (R-NY)- 21.43%
• Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA)- 21.43%
• Will Hurd (R-TX)- 21.43%

[Neither Cheri Bustos, Steny Hoyer, Nancy Pelosi nor anyone else involved with the DCCC would even blink when asking you to write a check to support Josh Gottheimer or to defeat Justin Amash.]

If Beto wanted to differentiate between Democrats he supports and Democrats who he refuses to support based on policy, based on records of accomplishment, based on character... he'd be a hero... like Ro Khanna, who recently wrote a thousand dollar check to the primary campaign of progressive Democrat Marie Newman. Marie is running against right-wing, crooked Blue Dog Dan Lipinski, one of Khanna's own fellow incumbents. Khanna was also the only member of Congress to endorse AOC when she was running against corrupt conservative Joe Crowley, then an almost sure-thing-winner and extremely powerful and almost guaranteed-to-be-the-next-Speaker-of-the-House. Please think about the difference between what Beto did and what Ro Khanna did. And then think about this video below that compares and contrasts two very different Democrats in real time, each of whom is currently campaigning for president:

Do You Like A Right-Wing, Mostly White Old Male Government Telling You What To Do-- Or Do You Prefer Choice?

On May Day we looked at how Alabama plans to reshape laws to change the way women interact with 21st century society... make it more like 18th century society or, among the hard-core, first century society. Since then, Georgia one-upped them with an even more draconian anti-choice bill, probably ruining the state's burgeoning and carefully nurtured film production business in the process.

GA-07 congressional candidate Marqus Cole was the first to alert me, writing me that "This morning, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed H.B. 481 into law-- the most restrictive anti-abortion law in the country. The new law limits the window for legal abortions in Georgia to just six weeks-- before most women even know they’re pregnant... I’m sick of Republicans trying to turn back the clock on reproductive rights. As a lawyer, this is just the latest affront to the sanctity of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade. Even worse, it’s part of an overarching GOP strategy to start a chain of appeals that ends with Roe v. Wade being overturned by Brett Kavanaugh and Trump’s handpicked Supreme Court.  And more importantly, it’s a direct attack on the women of my family and my community. My daughters-- and all women-- deserve agency over their own bodies. Women know better than the government what’s best for themselves and their families. It’s not complicated: All medical decisions should be between women and their doctors."

That's pretty much what all Democrats say, right? Well... it sure isn't what Congressman Dan Lipinski is saying-- you know... the guy being protected by Cheri Bustos and the DCCC. He's being primaried by a progressive Democratic woman, Marie Newman, but instead of supporting Marie-- or at least staying neutral-- the DCCC is threatening to blacklist any firms that work with Newman's campaign. I guess Pelosi and her nasty DCCC chairwoman are pro-Choice... unless it's politically inconvenient.

Three reproductive justice organizations collaborated on an effort-- Intersections of Our Lives, a national survey looking at the perspectives of women of color voters in the 2018 midterm election. I'm sure you recall that last cycle this was the voting bloc that blew the doors off Paul Ryan's and Kevin McCarthy's GOP House by turning out at historic levels. The Intersections of Our Lives polling was seeking insights on what women of color voters think and what their policy priorities are, following the midterms and going into the 2020 election cycle. These were the key finds of their research:

• Women of color were motivated to vote because they thought the stakes were too high not to. 88 percent of women of color voters said the stakes in the 2018 midterm election were too high not to vote. 75 percent expressed serious concerns about the trajectory of the country, noting they were angry, disgusted, scared, sad or nervous.
• Women of color supported Democratic candidates for federal and statewide races. Three-quarters of women of color voters supported the Democratic candidates in statewide and federal races. 74 percent of the women of color who voted for Democrats said Democratic candidates earned their vote.
• There is common ground on the policies that women of color believe are extremely important for Congress to address:

◦ Ending racial/ethnic/cultural discrimination (62 percent)
◦ Ensuring people with pre-existing conditions can still access health insurance (62 percent)
◦ Ensuring access to clean water (62 percent)
◦ Ensuring everyone has access to affordable health care (60 percent)

• Women of color will be watching their representatives in Congress more closely than previous elections (62 percent).
• Looking ahead to 2020, women of color would prefer to see more women candidates (88 percent) and candidates of color (85 percent). And 70 percent said candidates running for office fail to acknowledge the issues that matter most to them.

Yesterday, AOC communicated with her supporters about the Georgia Republican Party abotion bill. "Last year, Brian Kemp stole an election from Stacey Abrams by abusing his position as Secretary of State, spreading lies about hacks by Democrats, and brazen voter suppression with his 'exact match' rule, which prevented tens of thousands of voters from accessing their fundamental right to participate in this democracy. Now, he’s using his disgracefully acquired power to functionally ban abortion. Georgia joins Ohio, Kentucky, and Mississippi in passing a 'fetal heart beat' abortion ban, capping the procedure at 6 weeks. For those of us who understand women, that 6 weeks might as well be 0."

"Being pregnant for 6 weeks can look a whole lot like a 2 week late period-- something not uncommon for millions of women across the country. But Brian Kemp doesn’t care. He, and Republicans like him, just want to mask their war on women in a veneer of moral outrage about the abortion care that Roe v. Wade enshrined as a right... The insidious nature of this ban doesn’t stop there either. In 2013, North Dakota passed a nearly identical version of this fetal heartbeat ban-- which was then stuck down by a federal court, with a concurrence by the Supreme Court. Ask yourself one question: why do you think Republican governors across the country are now suddenly emboldened to brazenly violate Supreme Court rulings? What’s different between the Court in 2016, and the Court today? Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. That’s the difference. One justice sitting in a stolen seat, and another whose life of privilege masked him from ever facing a single consequence for his actions, no matter how heinous they were. Today, they serve as the vanguard of Mitch McConnell’s assault on our justice system, as well as the Republican war on women."

I hate to be a downer, but the Republican Supreme Court justices waiting to strike down Roe v Wade didn't get into this position without help from shit-eating Democrats, starting with Joe Biden, who almost single-handily got Clarence Thomas confirmed too the bench. (He's sorry now. Screw that! He's just plain sorry and should have retired 3 decades ago.)

Other than Biden, most of the Democrats who helped get Thomas onto the bench are dead or retired, except for Richard Shelby, who is still serving as the senior senator from the state of Alabama-- although he switched to join the GOP some years ago. There were 22 Democrats behind John Roberts, including 4 still serving in the Senate: Tom Carper (DE), Ron Wyden (OR), Pat Leahy (VT) and Patty Murray (WA). Carper, a Biden protege, won't give a rat's ass but imagine how embarrassed Wyden, Leahy and Murray will be if the Court overturns Choice. Should they be dragged out into the street for a tar-and-feathering? Make up your own mind if they should be held accountable-- along with Joe Manchin (WV), who helped Trump confirm Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. Conservative asshats Heidi Heitkamp (ND) and Joe Donnelly (IN) also voted to confirm Gorsuch and their Democratic base responded by sitting on their hands and letting Republican voters defeat them during last year's "blue wave." That should be the fate of all traitorous Blue Dog and New Dem scum who want to compromise away our fundamental right for their careers. Don't buy into the Democratic Party establishment's "lesser-of-two-evils" strategy. Don't vote for crap candidates just because the Republican is worse.

In fact, just a Wednesday, Auditi Guha, writing for Rewire News, noted that there are Democrats on the state level who are working with the Republicans to overturn Roe v Wade. Lesser of two evils? [Insert your favorite expletive.]

After 6 Louisiana Democrats voted with the Republicans on Monday for the extremist (insane) anti-Choice bill, most people felt that Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards would sign it.

SB 184 passed the state senate in a 31-5 vote on Monday. It prohibits abortion around the sixth week of pregnancy, before most people know they’re pregnant, making it a near total abortion ban. Similar bans, designed to challenge the legal underpinnings of Roe v. Wade now that conservatives dominate the U.S. Supreme Court, have been proposed in 14 other states. A near total abortion ban was signed into law Tuesday in Georgia.

The Louisiana bill includes exceptions when abortion is necessary to prevent the death or serious injury of the pregnant person. Apart from those exceptions, a physician who performs or induces an abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected would have their medical license revoked, be fined up to $1,000, and face up to two years in prison. The ban would not apply to abortions performed when a pregnancy is diagnosed as medically futile.

Six Democrats joined Republicans on Monday to pass the bill, which will head to a committee hearing in the house, where Republicans hold an outsized advantage. Advocates told Rewire.News that they believe Edwards, who has long supported anti-choice policy, will sign the measure...

Last year Edwards signed a 15-week abortion law, and in 2016 he approved laws requiring people to wait 72 hours to get an abortion and banning abortion facilities from receiving taxpayer funds. Those laws are being challenged in court and are not in effect.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Whether it's comets, asteroids, meteors, climate change, or pollution, paying the cost of saving the planet is relatively easy compared to doing nothing. Just go back to the tax codes we had a few decades ago. But, at the current tax rates, by 2033, we serfs will have several trillionaires that could pay the cost all by themselves. Of course, they will demand a very steep price in return as they zoom off to their Martian Mar-a-Lagos.

As for the goons of the GOP doing anything about the meteor depicted in tonight's meme, they will see that it's headed directly for Africa and smile.

There IS A Difference-- But It's Not A Difference Between The Parties As Much As It Is A Difference Between Progressives And Conservatives

Pramila Jayapal and Eric Swalwell are both sponsors of Medicare For All and the Green New Deal. I bet voters all over the country would love to talk with them about those bills

Former Florida congressman Alan Grayson (D) was one of the people I consulted with when I was writing posts in the last few days about the GOP socialism malarkey and their campaign tactic of smearing the Democratic Party-- the McCarthyism Trump learned from his favorite lawyer, Roy Cohn-- with some kind of "new" red scare. "The remarkable thing is that anyone listens to it in the first place," Grayson told me. "We’re for universal healthcare, progressive taxation, free higher education and the right to choose, and against pollution and discrimination. They’re against 'socialism,' whatever that is."

Voters may have an idea of what it is-- accurate or not-- but gushers of GOP money will make sure every voter in every swing state is bombarded with a Trumpified version of what it is. Voters are too smart for that? OK, some are... but those voters are already supporters of Bernie's or of Elizabeth Warren's. Alexi McCammond, a reporter for Axios, looked at focus group results from swing voters in Wisconsin. Short version: voters don't know anything about what you read here at DWT. Basically, the participants-- eight Barack Obama/Donald Trump voters and four Mitt Romney/Hillary Clinton voters-- in Appleton, Wisconsin had never even heard of Medicare-For-All or the Green New Deal-- never heard of either! As McCammond explained: "These are Democrats' biggest policy staples heading into the 2020 presidential election. They're talking about them all the time, and the ideas are even being weaponized by the right to label the entire Democratic Party as socialists. But none of that is breaking through in this key battleground state."

Not a single person had heard of-- or could explain-- the Green New Deal.

...Nine of the 12 people said they'd heard almost no news at all about "Medicare for all" in the past several months.

Half of the participants had never even heard the phrase "Medicare for all" until they walked in the room that night in Appleton, Wisconsin... A majority of these swing voters have no idea which party is pushing the plan. Because of that, they don't view either the Green New Deal or "Medicare for all" favorably or unfavorably.

They're also unfamiliar with most of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates. In fact, these swing voters know Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez better than all of the 2020 Democrats except for Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders.

The bottom line: Democrats might have an opportunity to capitalize on Trump fatigue in 2020 in this critical battleground state-- but they're a long way from winning over swing voters on the ideas that will define their campaigns.

The other day, a friend of mine was telling me he isn't feeling the Bern any longer. "All he says is the same stuff over and over," he complained. (He's leaning towards Kamala Harris.) Bernie is talking more about himself this cycle than he ever had before. Voters want that, want to know who they're going to consider voting for, what they have in common and if they can trust what the person is saying and advocating for. As far as talking about the same policies over and over and over. He can't do that enough. He can't stop. My friend is very smart and understands the Green New Deal and Medicare For All and supports both. Both he's far from typical of a Upper Midwest swing voter.

There are 106 members who have signed on as co-sponsors to Pramila Jayapal's new and improved Medicare-For-All legislation. They should all be holding town halls to discuss the bill with their constituents, especially in districts where the balance of power rests with swing voters. Examples of districts that fit that description with co-sponsors of the bill: PA-08 (Matt Cartwright), OR-04 (Pete DeFazio), CA-10 (Josh Harder), CA-25 (Katie Hill), AZ-02 (Ann Kirkpatrick), CA-49 (Mike Levin), CA-45 (Katie Porter) and PA-07 (Susan Wild). It's hard work. But if they are serious about the legislation and want to see the bill pass the House-- which is far from guaranteed-- they need to help their own constituents understand why they support it, assuming they all actually do support it and aren't just signing on as a co-sponsor to shut left-wing activists up, right Ann?

It's the same with the Green New Deal, AOC's resolution. Many independent voters don't know what it is-- if they've even heard of it. Trump has signaled clearly that the GOP has every intention in the world of demonizing its congressional supporters. Members in swing districts should be out talking with their constituents now not after GOP ads funded by the oil and gas industry start blanketing the airwaves. There are 90 co-sponsors and the ones in districts they need the most work are CA-49 (Mike Levin), FL-26 (Debbie Mucarsel-Powell), NY-18 (Sean Patrick Maloney), OR-04 (Pete DeFazio) and NY-03 (Tom Suozzi). What about the 85 co-sponsors? Maybe they should spread out. I'm sure candidates running in red districts would love to be events with them about the Green New Deal in their districts. Mike Siegel, a candidate running against Climate Change denier Michael McCaul, told me he would welcome Green New Deal supporters to his sprawling Texas district to explain the ramifications of the legislation to his voters, since the Green New Deal is one of Mike's top 4 platform planks. Eva Putzova (AZ-01), Audrey Denney (CA-01) and Kara Eastman (NE-02) would welcome the same kind of help in their districts. If we're serious about this stuff we've got to work to pass it, not just inside the marbled halls of Congress, but out on the hustings as well. 

As The Republicans Shift Further Right, The Democrats Follow Them And Are Now Your Father's GOP

"The Republicans," explained Kyle Kulinski last week, "have shifted further right to some weird brew of theocracy and authoritarianism and fascism and outright oligarchy." He forgot kakistocracy and kleptocracy but no need to quibble. "The Democrats," he continued, "are acting like the Republican Party." In a simple, straight-forward tweet over the weekend, Ro Khanna laid out an economic platform the Democrats need to be running on, something that Pelosi's and Hoyer's PAY-GO bullsit would largely negate: Medicare-For-All, Job Guarantee, debt free public college, and tackling climate change for real. Their ideas on being "fiscally responsible" are according to economist Stephanie Kelton,  "oldthink." Kelton was the Democrats' Chief Economist on the Senate Budget Committee in 2015 and then Bernie's top economic advisor during his 2016 campaign and she regularly preaches against the kind of austerity the establishment of both parties seek to impose on the country. In January she suggested I read Josh Mound’s piece from last July, The Democrats Are Eisenhower Republicans. It sounds like Kulinski may have read it as well.

For the last fifty years, the Right has waged a war on “objective” fiscal analysis in order to further their goal of upward redistribution. Republicans and their conservative allies invoke mainstream studies when they undermine progressive policy ideas, then discard those same analyses when they get in the way of their agenda.

In contrast, Democrats have touted themselves as denizens of the “reality-based community” and “the party of fiscal responsibility,” as Bill Clinton often put it.

The result is that, for decades, the parties have operated according to completely different rules on taxing and spending.

When Republicans put forward unrealistic tax and budget proposals, they waive away projected deficits by improbably claiming that economic growth will cover the massive shortfall. When Democrats are in power, they treat “pay fors” and budget balancing as paramount and CBO analyses as sacrosanct. And whenever a progressive figure like Bernie Sanders steps outside the neoliberal budgetary consensus, elected Democrats and liberal pundits join conservatives to smack down their proposals as “unrealistic.”

The predictable upshot of this policymaking asymmetry is that Democrats have spent the last forty years trimming their sails, inadvertently underwriting the GOP’s next tax cut.

Jimmy Carter’s austerity funded Ronald Reagan’s top-heavy tax cuts. Bill Clinton’s austerity funded George W. Bush’s top-heavy tax cuts. And now, the deficit reduction Obama worked so hard to achieve in the second half of his presidency will likely help fund Donald Trump’s top-heavy tax cuts.

Throughout the 1950s and ’60s, members of the incipient conservative movement bristled at the GOP’s balanced-budget orthodoxy, as embodied by President Dwight Eisenhower. Republicans’ fear of inflation, they argued, drove the GOP to balance the budget at all costs, unwittingly helping Democrats grow the size of government.

Some on the Right-- advancing what would become known as the “starve the beast” strategy-- began insisting that Republicans put all their focus on slashing taxes, rather than balancing the budget. Any deficits that resulted from tax reduction, these conservatives argued, would serve as a check on Democrats’ spending plans.

“I honor the Republicans for putting what they regard as the national interest ahead of partisan considerations. But I believe that they have been shortsighted in judging the national interest,” libertarian economist Milton Friedman wrote in a Newsweek column in 1968. “True fiscal responsibility requires resisting every tax increase and promoting tax decreases at every opportunity. That is the only way to put an effective ceiling on Federal spending.”

…President Jimmy Carter-- despite calling for a higher capital gains tax while running for president in 1976-- was, in many ways, the personification of this new centrist neoliberalism. And many conservative Democrats in Congress were sympathetic to lowering taxes on investment income. The combination of the Republicans’ “Tax Blitz” campaign and a concerted lobbying effort from business groups like the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the American Council for Capital Formation made the passage of Steiger’s bill a fait accompli.

The conservatives backing the capital gains reduction weren’t shy about its distributional effects. “Who will benefit from my amendment? Taxpayers in the upper bracket would benefit,” Steiger frankly admitted. He wasn’t kidding. The final version of Steiger’s plan, which was signed into law by Carter, gave a four-person family making $20,000-- just above median income-- approximately $100; a taxpayer making over $200,000 saw a tax reduction of more than $25,000.

By the 1980 presidential campaign, Carter had assumed the role of “green eyeshade” fiscal scold and Reagan the role of sunny spendthrift.

In late 1978, Carter had told the nation that the country was facing a “time of national austerity” that would require “difficult and unpleasant” belt-tightening. Throughout the rest of his presidency, Carter made clear that he believed his role as a president in a time of high inflation was to be “fiscally responsible in reducing the Federal deficit.”

He opposed any spending increases or further tax cuts, including indexing federal income tax brackets to inflation-- one of the few tax changes that would’ve disproportionally helped low- and middle-income taxpayers.

Reagan, in contrast, not only pushed a version of the Kemp-Roth rate cuts during his presidential campaign, he also favored indexation. He denied that his tax cuts would cause the deficit to balloon or that additional austerity was needed to fight inflation. Instead, he promised to replace the “eerie, ghostly silence of economic stagnation, unemployment, inflation, and despair” with the “confident roar of American progress and growth and optimism.”

Ironically, the only area in which Carter claimed to support more generous provisions than Reagan was in tax cuts for business. The inversion of the parties’ fiscal roles was complete.

Once in office, Reagan used language nearly identical to Friedman’s to justify tax cuts that would send the deficit spiraling.

“Over the past decades we’ve talked of curtailing government spending so that we can then lower the tax burden. Sometimes we’ve even taken a run at doing that,” Reagan told the nation in a televised address one month after taking office. “But there were always those who told us that taxes couldn’t be cut until spending was reduced. Well, you know, we can lecture our children about extravagance until we run out of voice and breath. Or we can cure their extravagance by simply reducing their allowance.”

When the CBO predicted huge deficits from Reagan’s cuts, the White House reacted just as the GOP is today. “That’s them practicing what they’ve been preaching for the last thirty years,” Reagan groused. “Their figures are phony.” The administration even attempted to oust CBO director Alice Rivlin and replace her with someone more pliable.

Despite the bill’s regressive effects, a majority of Democrats in the House and the Senate voted for Reagan’s Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981. It was the largest tax cut in post–World War II history, and it exploded the deficit. Yet it did little to spur the growth that supply-siders had promised. As studies by the CBO, the Joint Committee on Taxation, and the Joint Economic Committee all found, Reagan’s cuts made the federal tax system less progressive and worsened income inequality. Between 1980 and 1983, the bottom half saw their after-tax incomes fall while the top 1 percent enjoyed a more than 20 percent increase.

In the end, Carter’s legacy was laying the fiscal groundwork for Reagan’s giveaway to the rich.

The next Democratic president, Bill Clinton, would make the same mistake.

…[I]n typical “supply-side” fashion, the tax windfall for the rich blew a hole in the budget. By this time, the idea that there was no political downside to growing the deficit had become the Republican conventional wisdom. As Vice President Dick Cheney told Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.”

The Bush deficits had the intended effect on Democrats, too.

When Barack Obama took office, the deficit was enormous and the country was entering the deepest recession since the Great Depression. Obama initially pursued a more ambitious agenda than either Carter or Clinton, but both his stimulus package and the Affordable Care Act were scaled back in an effort to avoid sticker shock. And after his health care law passed, Obama shifted into deficit-reduction mode. He appointed a “bipartisan” National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform that only heightened deficit hysteria, and he worked to strike a deficit-reducing “grand bargain” with John Boehner that would’ve slashed Social Security.

Now, Obama’s fiscal probity is likely to be undone by Trump and the Republicans in Congress.

…[T]he the top-heavy tax cuts contained in the GOP’s ACA repeal bill and Trump’s tax plan would mark yet another “Two Santas” victory for the Republicans.

And this time they’re pulling out all the stops.

The Republican ACA repeal plan is essentially a tax cut for the rich disguised as a health care bill. The richest 1 percent would enjoy a more than 2 percent bump in their after-tax incomes, while few in the 99 percent would see any tax benefits. Translated into dollar terms, the most recent Senate GOP bill would provide a tax cut of a few hundred dollars for most people and a quarter of a million dollars for the top one-tenth of 1 percent. And the price? Tens of millions of people losing their health insurance and the virtual destruction of the Medicaid program.

…Republicans have made clear time and time again that they don’t care about the deficit. And Democrats shouldn’t either. Rather than fixating on the GOP’s shaky math, Democrats should highlight the cruelty of shoveling money to the rich at a time when inequality is soaring and millions languish in poverty.

Fiscal policy is ultimately about distribution, not growth or deficits. Republicans understand this. Unfortunately, Democrats don’t.

Instead of worrying about crafting practical, deficit-neutral proposals, Democrats should be bold and single-mindedly focus on downwardly redistributive taxing and spending. Go for Medicare for All, public child care, green jobs. Propose popular programs, and don’t worry about the cost. If the GOP raises deficit concerns, waive them away by predicting fabulous economic growth, just like Republicans do.

And if, once enacted, the progressive programs do end up increasing the deficit? Let the next Republican president worry about balancing the budget.

This morning Alan Grayson put it more succinctly for us: "Pay-Go is a good example of self-hating Democrats trying to be the 'fiscally responsible' Republicans that the Republicans themselves never are. The GOP just passed a $3 trillion tax cut for the rich, with no offsetting revenue or budget cuts whatsoever. A Pay-Go rule means that all we’ll ever see is GOP tax cuts for the rich, never Democratic tax cuts for the middle class and seniors. The Republicans figured this out a long time ago: there are exceedingly few 'fiscal responsibility' voters, and they’re going to vote Republican no matter what."

Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) is the most recent candidate endorsed by Blue America. More on her tomorrow; I promise. I asked her about this whole PAY-GO scheme. She gets it... in a big way: "Our families in MI-13 reside in the second poorest congressional district in the country, and they need real help from the federal government. House Democrats insisting on paying for progressive legislation that elevates working families with budget cuts elsewhere needlessly ties our hands before we even begin to fight. If Democratic leadership is going to buy into right-wing talking points and stand in the way of progress for our families, we will replace them with representatives more in touch with the families we represent."

Kelton also told me she thinks Hawaii's junior senator, Brian Schatz, has demonstrated a more astute read of the political game than, perhaps, any other Congressmember. "The GOP," he said, "is skillful about never talking about paying for what they want and Dems are always trying to satisfy the 13 people who are doing Third Way work on K Street. It’s a game that disadvantages Democrats. I don’t want to play it anymore.

Attention Nancy Pelosi: Kelton added that "PAYGO is a self-imposed, economically illiterate approach to budgeting. Republicans know this. They understand that deficits pose no risk to our national solvency and that the budget can be used to improve the financial well-being of the donor class. So they have unabashedly used their power to expand deficits and, hence, deliver windfall gains for big corporations and the already well-to-do. Instead of vowing budget chastity, Democrats should be articulating an agenda that will excite voters so that-- when the time comes-- they can unleash the full power of the public purse on their behalf-- a cleaner planet, good jobs, a secure retirement, affordable child care, debt-free college, and Medicare-for-All."

Who Would You Rather Follow-- Katy Perry Or Rick Perry?

Followers of which of these two would you define as a moron?

Democrats are worried that base voters aren't going to turn out in November-- and they should be worried. The collection of atrocious corporate shills and conservative shitheads Steve Israel recruited isn't going to inspire any base voters I ever heard of to go vote. Israel tells donors he plans to win the 17 seats the Democrats need to win back the House. It's more likely the net outcome will be a stinging loss. Elizabeth Warren beat a popular incumbent Republican senator in 2012, Scott Brown, the biggest recipient of Wall Street campaign funds for the cycle. And she beat him by a lot-- 1,678,997 (54%) to 1,450,044 (46%). That same day, Brown got 271,799 more votes than former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney in his presidential run. Elizabeth Warren won because she stood for something-- something big and bold and something ordinary working people could relate to. The turnout was 73%-- which is gigantic. The Democratic Party would turn out a lot more voters-- and win a lot more races-- if they recruited candidates like Liz Warren instead of the human garbage Steve Israel(in an obvious attempt at self-replication) specializes in.

Yesterday Aaron Blake, analyzing data from a Pew survey for the Washington Post asserted that people who would otherwise vote for Democrats don't care about politics. The Pew study claims that 10% of Americans are politically so disengaged that they can be referred to a "bystanders" and points out that "[n]one of this cohort say they’re registered to vote, and none say they follow government and public affairs most of the time (this compares with 48% of Americans overall). Virtually all of this group (96%) say they’ve never contributed money to a candidate running for public office."

Neither party has been able to motive them to buy into the system-- apparently more of a problem for Democrats than for Republicans, although the cohort has a mixture of liberal and conservative attitudes.

They are sympathetic to the plight of the poor, but as many say that government aid to the poor does more harm than good as vice versa. They express fairly liberal views on homosexuality and same-sex marriage, but 54% say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases.

Bystanders are young (38% are under 30), and nearly a third (32%) are Hispanic. A third of Bystanders are foreign born, a higher share than any of the other typology groups, including 29% total who are not citizens.

Asked about their interest in a number of topics, 73% of Bystanders say they have no interest in government and politics, and two-thirds (66%) say they are not interested in business and finance. So what topics do interest them? Health, science and celebrities: 64% of Bystanders are interested in celebrities and entertainment (vs. 46% of the public). And, in a sign of their youth, they are drawn to video games: 35% call themselves a “video or computer gamer” (vs. 21% of the public).

Blake wrote that "If Democrats could get these groups to care a little less about Tom Cruise and a little more about Ted Cruz, maybe they'd have a better voting coalition for the midterms." But he never asks why they should? So the Democrats can slip in the shitty array of candidates and incumbents to vote against their interests? Debbie Wasserman Schultz is the chair of the DNC and she not only voted against a sane marijuana policy in Congress, she's campaigning against a Florida medical marijuana initiative immensely popular with the Democratic base. Steve Israel has recruited anti-Choice, antigay, anti-environment candidates to run for Congress-- not to mention NRA shills galore-- and is spending the vast majority of money the DCCC rakes in from their idiot donors on incumbents with voting records often as bad as Republicans'.

It's easy to denigrate non-donors and unregistered citizens as "bystanders" and imply they are empty-headed fans of Tom Cruz and Katy Perry-- which is precisely what Blake did in the Post-- but might take a little tiny bit more analysis to see why at least some of these men and women find politics so totally unrewarding and worthless. Donate to the DCCC and you have just given money to Jennifer Garrison who's entire career is premised on being the most viciously anti-gay politician in Ohio, as well as vehemently ant-Choice and a big NRA backer. As if that wasn't enough to turn off the entire Democratic base, she makes her living by tricking her neighbors into signing away their property rights to avaricious fracking enterprises.

Chuck Todd and his colleagues at NBC were kvetching the Democrats have no defining issue for the midterms, right after the powerful Republican wing of the Democratic Party demanded they not run on economic populism.

We still don’t know what the fall campaign is going to be about. Is it health care? (Premium increases could be news in fall; then again, health care hasn’t received much national attention in the last two or three months). Will it be about the economy? (Maybe, maybe not -- see below for more on its limited midterm impact in the past.) What about immigration? (Possibly, but we haven’t seen Democratic or GOP campaigns eager to run on this subject, especially Democrats in the red states) Foreign policy? (Remember Ukraine or Bowe Bergdahl? Or the debacle that is America’s Syria policy?) Will the midterms be about President Obama and Democrats suffering from a thousand different cuts? (Perhaps.) Or will it simply be about the red-leaning map and the fact that key parts of the Democratic base just don’t turn out in midterm elections? (Could be.) Bottom line: Election Day is a little more than 100 days away, and it’s hard to come up with a defining issue, even as so many folks are so sure about the outcome.

And Blake responded by quoting yet another poll, one that shows the Democrats' best chance to win is by focusing on economic populism. As he points out, "the most popular description for the GOP is 'supports wealthy/business/not for the people.' This is the prevailing view of the Republican Party, far outpacing any other description. The top description for Democrats is pretty much the inverse -- that they are 'for the people' or 'for working people.'" This scares the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- your Steny Hoyers, Debbie Wasserman Schutzes, Jim Himes, Steve Israels, Ron Kinds… all the New Dems and Blue Dogs-- as much as it scares the Republicans. Maybe that's why-- and why Blake ended his column with a well known Elizabeth Warren quote: "people of all political stripes think the economic system is rigged."

Why Exactly Does Steve Israel Insist The DCCC Fight With One Arm Tied Behind Its Back?

In 1994, the Republican slime machine went after the wrong Foley-- purposefully

Tom Foley, age 84, died Friday at his Washington, DC home. He was elected to Congress in 1965, succeeded John Brademas as Majority Whip in 1981, then Jim Wright as Majority Leader in 1987 and then Wright in 1989 as Speaker of the House. He is survived by his wife of 45 years, Heather, who was at his bedside when he died. Wife, you ask? Don't be stunned. As part of the GOP plan to take over the House in 1994 and install Newt Gingrich as Speaker, RNC Chairman Lee Atwater, started a baseless and vicious whispering campaign that Foley was gay. (How ironic that 1994, the year of that smear and Foley's shocking reelection defeat-- first Speaker since the Civil War to be defeated in his district-- the Republican Party elected another Foley, Mark Foley of Florida.)

President Obama remembered him yesterday by remarking that "For thirty years, Tom Foley represented the people of Washington’s 5th district with skill, dedication, and a deep commitment to improving the lives of those he was elected to serve.  Tom’s straightforward approach helped him find common ground with members of both parties, eventually leading to his election as the 57th Speaker of the House." Anyway, the Republican campaign against Tom Foley was vicious and determined and got so out of control that Foley actually had to publicly deny he was gay. It didn't do any good in a small-town, rural, Church-going district like his. He lost. And Newt Gingrich, one of the most divisive, small-minded Speakers in history, followed him to the big chair.

Compare that to the way the DCCC coddles GOP leaders. When a clean cut, all-American West Point graduate came back from serving in Iraq and Afghanistan and ran against Boehner, the DCCC not only refused to support him, they worked to defeat him and publicly humiliated him. No one has dared run against Boehner since. Mission accomplished. Steve Israel refuses to run candidates-- or back candidates who are running anyway-- against any top Republican leaders or committee chairmen, even though several of them are in districts Obama won, like Fred Upton (Energy and Commerce), Buck McKeon (Armed Services), Paul Ryan (Budget), John Kline (Education and Workforce), Darrell Issa (Witch-Hunting), Mike Rogers (Intelligence). These should be easy two-cycle pick-ups but you never get to a second cycle without a first. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen's district is now so blue that Obama beat Romney last year 130,020 (53%) to 114,096 (47%)-- his best performance in any "red" district anywhere in America. Steve Israel's (and Debbie Wasserman Schultz's) reaction is to make sure that there is no Democratic candidate running against her.

It is mathematically impossible for the Democrats to take back the House as long as Pelosi insists on keeping Israel as DCCC chair. It can't be done as long as he grants immunity to the likes of endangered Republican incumbents like Ros-Lehtinen, Paul Ryan, Fred Upton, Buck McKeon, Darrell Issa, Joe Pitts, Mike Rogers, Jaime Herrera Beutler, Charlie Dent, John Kline, Pat Meehan, Erik Paulsen, Peter King, etc-- all of whom are in districts Obama won in 2008 and/or 2012-- and all of whom have no 2014 DCCC effort towards unseating them. I ran a large corporation that was pretty lenient with employees. A congenital failure like Steve Israel wouldn't have lasted there for a week.

Instead of going after GOP policy-makers, he spends his time-- and wastes DCCC money-- on pushing centrists like the freshmen who joined the United Solutions Caucus, founded by two Republicans, Bob Pittinger (R-NC) and Patrick Murphy (D-FL). This week, Murphy, was happy to send out a press release giving cover to some of his Republican colleagues-- ALL of whom had voted to shut the government down and who voted to keep it shut down for over two weeks-- because a few of them didn't vote to throw the country into default. Is that what passes for a GOP moderate these days? That's some accomplishment, Patty boy!

As co-founder and co-chairman of the bipartisan United Solutions Caucus, Congressman Patrick E. Murphy (D-FL) joined with 15 fellow caucus members to release the following statement in regards to the bipartisan budget deal reached in the Senate to immediately reopen the federal government and avoid default. The United Solutions Caucus has been meeting regularly during the shutdown to engage in bipartisan discussions on possible solutions to the crisis. Joining Murphy in sending this statement were Reps. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), David Joyce (R-OH), David Valadao (R-CA), Joe Garcia (D-FL), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Beto O'Rourke (D-TX), Ann McLane Kuster (D-NH), Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), Scott Peters (D-CA), Daniel T. Kildee (D-MI), Grace Meng (D-NY), Ami Bera (D-CA), and Joaquin Castro (D-TX).

"We the undersigned, as Members of the bipartisan United Solutions Caucus, endorse the plan announced today by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and urge it come to the House Floor expeditiously.

"The United Solutions Caucus is composed of first-term Members of both parties, determined to work together across the aisle to solve problems. During the current crisis we have kept these lines of communication open and discussed possible ways forward.

"The legislation announced by Majority Leader Reid and Minority Leader McConnell is supported by both Democrats and Republicans, and it would end the current crisis. No legislation can be all things to all people, but we cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Passing this bill today also will not stop the honest debate between Members of Congress about important budgetary issues.

"Therefore, it is in everyone’s best interest for the legislation authored by Majority Leader Reid and Minority Leader McConnell to come to the House Floor without delay. Let the House work its will and provide our country an opportunity to move forward."

Murphy somehow forgot to mention that most of the Republicans in his United Solutions Caucus actually voted against the deal and were more than willing to see the U.S. default and the economy collapse. These are all Republicans in Murphy's little caucus he tried sweeping under the rug so no one would notice:

• Andy Barr (R-KY)
• Mark Meadows (R-NC)
• Tom Rice (R-SC)
• Luke Messer (R-IN)
• George Holding (R-NC)
• Randy Weber (R-TX)

I ran this by a few Democratic congressmen who did actual work trying to solve the problem Murphy's caucus helped create. One was fuming and reminded me that the list of half a dozen Murphyites was only a small piece of a terrible story. "It’s worse than that," he said. Every Republican 'Solutioner' voted to cause the shutdown, and to perpetuate it for two and a half weeks. They all deserve the blame. Those six below are just the bitter-enders." He then sent me a copy of Murphy's latest fundraising letter, blaming "both sides" for the Republican government shutdown.

I am thankful that we found common ground and were able to reopen the government, avoid a default, and get back to the business of the American people.

  Our economy, almost a million government workers, and the seniors, veterans, and other Americans who count on them all paid a high price for this shutdown. One of the reasons I ran for Congress was because I saw too much of the blind partisanship and brinksmanship that took place in the last few weeks, leading to the federal government being shuttered for 16 days and taking our country to the brink of default.

  I am hopeful Congress will come together to reach a long-term, responsible budget deal-- we cannot afford more manufactured crises. Please join me in urging all members of Congress to put partisanship aside in the coming long-term budget negotiations-- we need common sense solutions to avoid another harmful shutdown.

"This is Patrick Murphy’s pathetic take on the shutdown," wrote his colleague. "Nevermind the facts that every single one of his Republican 'United Solutions Caucus' friends voted for the shutdown, and every Democrat voted to end it." That's calling out a false equivalency, a specialty of United Solution quasi-Democrats like Murphy, Kyrsten Sinema, Anne Kuster, John Delaney, Pete Gallego, Scott Peters, Tulsi Gabbard and Ami Bera.

Is It Worth It For The Democrats To Try Winning The Deep South?

Proud Southerner

Over the weekend, Molly Ball, writing in The Atlantic made the case for Democrats winning back the Deep South. When I was just becoming aware of politics as a kid, everything that made me hate the Democratic Party stemmed from the fact that it owned the Deep South-- and was owned by the Deep South. I remember how all the reactionary committee chairs in both Houses were Southern racists. Now Southern racism, bigotry, and overall backwardness has taken over the Republican Party and made it anathema to normal Americans. Let them keep it; let them continue to choke on it. "In 2012," writes Ball, "Republicans took over the Arkansas state legislature, and Democrats now do not control a single legislative chamber in the old Confederacy."

Many Southern Democrats-- and a lot of national Democratic strategy for winning in the South-- think the way to do it is to mimic Republicans, if not always with the reactionary social policies, certainly always with the reactionary economic and fiscal policies. Screw that. The Democratic Party would be much better off without reactionary politicians always tugging it to the right, the way, for example, John Barrow (Blue Dog-GA) does. If the Democrats want to make the case that a progressive, family-friendly agenda is better for Southern voters, let's go for it. If the Democrats want to make the case they they're almost as conservative and backward as the Republicans... it's a waste of time and effort. Here's Ball's case:

The demographics of the South are changing fast. Quite simply, all of the states of the old Confederacy are getting less white, said Chris Kromm, director of the Durham, N.C.-based Institute for Southern Studies, a research center founded by civil-rights-movement veterans. "I don't think there's any question there is a lot of potential [for Democrats] there given how rapidly the landscape of the South is changing," he said, calling it a "highly volatile moment in Southern politics."

The Southern states have America's fastest-growing Latino populations. Of 11 states whose Hispanic populations doubled between 2000 and 2011, nine-- Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas-- were in the South. Black populations are also growing, thanks in part to a new migration of African-Americans back to the South. At current rates of growth, Georgia and Mississippi could be majority-minority states within a decade. South Carolina's Republican governor, Nikki Haley, won in 2010 by 60,000 votes; demographers estimate there are as many as 100,000 eligible but unregistered African-American voters in the state.

Other forces are changing the region's culture. Though the South remains more rural than the rest of the country, its cities and suburbs-- from the North Carolina Research Triangle to the Atlanta exurbs-- are booming thanks to an influx of white-collar professionals. "The urban centers in the South are becoming centers of political power, and that's what's going to change politics," Kromm said.

...Since the days of Arizonan Barry Goldwater, the Southwest had been solidly Republican. But that changed in the last decade. Western Democrats like Brian Schweitzer and Harry Reid won by emphasizing quality-of-life issues like education and the environment, neutralizing the culture war (often by professing love for the Second Amendment), and mobilizing the growing Hispanic vote. Far-right Republicans like former Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo helped Western Democrats make the case to moderate suburbanites that the GOP had gone off the ideological deep end. Now, New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado have voted Democratic in two straight presidential elections, and the party has even managed to win statewide elections in Montana and Arizona.

"We moved into the Southwest on the theory that the demographics were changing and Republicans had gone too far to the right," [Jill] Hanauer told me. Two years ago, she detected the same thing starting to happen in the South. She changed her firm's name to Project New America and quietly began to research a new region.

In the coming weeks, Hanauer and Loranne Ausley, a former member of the Florida House of Representatives, plan to launch something they're calling the Southern Project, which will conduct research and formulate messages that can help Democrats win over Southern voters. A pilot study conducted in North Carolina in February, for example, concluded that under the state's Republican governor, Pat McCrory, "there is a clear sense that hardworking taxpayers are getting the short end of the stick at the expense of big corporations and the wealthiest." The set of talking points advises progressives to make arguments "focused around fairness and accountability," whether the issue is tax reform or charter schools. The Southern Project will equip Southern Democrats with similar examples of messages that have been poll-tested to resonate with voters.

Obama lost North Carolina by just 2 percentage points in 2012, but Republicans took the governor's mansion and a supermajority in the state legislature, helped by a multimillionaire named Art Pope who poured money into the party and its candidates. After the election, McCrory put Pope in his administration's budget department and began pushing a highly ideological agenda through the state legislature, sparking a backlash that has resulted in weeks of protests at the statehouse in Raleigh .

Ausley, who ran unsuccessfully for statewide office in Florida in 2010, said Republicans across the South risk alienating voters with their hard rightward turn. Every Republican-led Southern state has rejected the federally funded expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare, she noted; in Florida, Governor Rick Scott tried to accept the funds, but his own Republican-dominated legislature blocked the move. Southern Republicans have recently decried women's entry into the workforce and advocated teaching schoolchildren about proper gender roles.

"Republicans are doing the same thing over and over again to appeal to their base, and at some point it has to come back to bite them," Ausley said. Southern voters are generally conservative, but they're not extremists, as Mississippi showed in 2011 when it overwhelmingly rejected a constitutional amendment that would have declared a fertilized egg to be a "person" with rights. Genteel Southern moderates like Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia find themselves increasingly endangered by Tea Party primary challenges; Chambliss has chosen not to run for reelection next year, setting up a race that will test Democrats' ability to win in that state.

Lately I've been criticizing the DCCC for only focusing on the current cycle and never thinking about building a long-term plan to beat vulnerable Republicans in purple districts. If the DCCC had worked against powerful committee chairmen Paul Ryan, Mike Rogers, Darrell Issa, Fred Upton, Buck McKeon, Dave Camp in 2010 and 2012, at least 5 of them would be dead ducks going into 2014. McKeon, in fact, sees the writing on the wall already-- after being beaten by Lee Rogers with ZERO help from Steve Israel's DCCC and Wasserman Schultz's DNC-- and is on the verge of retiring. He's already told top GOP officials in the district he won't run again in 2014 if Rogers runs against him. (And Rogers is about to make a big announcement; I doubt it will be that he's not going to run.) I was interested that some of the Southern Democrats are, unlike the DCCC, taking a long-term approach. Former Mississippi Governor Ronnie Musgrove told Ball that his goal is "to lay the groundwork long-term for the South once again to be a Democratic stronghold," by "building a strong bench of up-and-coming Democratic leaders."

South Carolina-based Republican consultant Chip Felkel makes a good point, though. "It's still a place that, to borrow a phrase, clings to its guns and religion, and I think it will continue to do so. As long as the Democratic Party still seems to be the party that's opposed to religion and guns, a large segment of the Southern population is going to have trouble with that, especially at the federal level." The Democratic response has all too often been to present this kind of garbage in response:



It's the wrong road for Democrats to go down. Barrow himself is likely to be defeated in 2014, unless Republicans nominate a crackpot extremist. Same goes for another reactionary white Democrat in North Carolina, Blue Dog Mike McIntyre. They come from an old school of thought that says that Democrats can only win in the South by acting like Republicans. Barrow and McIntyre routinely vote with the Republicans in the House on almost every crucial roll call. This year, for example, both voted with the GOP against raising the minimum wage and both voted with the Republicans for CISPA. Both voted for a GOP Farm Bill that would have gutted the food stamps program for the Democratic base in their own districts. Just minutes before that vote, both voted against Ron Kind's amendment that would have cut farm subsidies to wealthy farmers. And the day before, both voted against Jim McGovern's amendment to keep the SNAP (food stamp program) funded. 175 Democrats opposed the GOP plan to remove President Obama from the Keystone XL process and only 19 Democrats crossed the aisle and voted with the GOP. Of course Barrow and McIntyre were among them as were fellow mostly right-wing Southern Democrats Patrick Murphy (FL), Jim Cooper (TN), Henry Cuellar (TX), Sanford Bishop (GA), Al Green (TX), Gene Green (TX), Ruben Hinojosa (TX), Terri Sewell (AL), and Filemon Vela (TX). Who needs them if they're going to vote like Republicans, oppose LGBT equality, oppose women's Choice, and work to water down reforms? Monday morning, the National Journal outlined once again how backward elements inside the GOP (read: unreconstructed Confederates) are destroying the party from within. Who wants them in the Democratic Party, which is a party that stands for something-- or at least still has a segment that stands for something.

Alan Grayson also represents a formerly Republican district in central Florida and he doesn't ever adopt Republican positions in some kind of idiotic electoral calculus. That's why his constituents-- and progressives statewide and nationally-- admire him. If we're going to win back the South with Alan Graysons, I say let's go for it. If winning back the South means more John Barrows and Mike McIntyres, let the Republicans keep it... while they alienate the rest of America.

Fetal masturbation. Rape doesn’t usually result in pregnancy. Grade-schoolers should be taught traditional gender roles.

A handful of House Republican lawmakers seem unable to stop making headlines on abortion and gay marriage. And Republicans on and off the Hill know who’s to blame:

House Speaker John Boehner.

GOP lawmakers, strategists, and insiders say Boehner and House leadership are enabling foot-in-mouth disease by allowing divisive social issues to reemerge at a time when Republicans were finally winning the daily messaging war against a controversy-plagued White House.

Republicans say they want leadership to start calling out the fringers, distancing the party from the lawmakers’ remarks. And they want leaders to stop bowing to interest-group pressure to put risky social issues on the House floor.

Good luck with that, boys. This is your base now: