A Quick Senate Scorecard

Chuck Schumer, your next Democratic Senate Minority Leader (source)

by Gaius Publius

I want to offer a quick Senate scorecard for the upcoming election, not just races to watch and their current status, but the effect of the races on the "final score" — control of the Senate until the wipeout in 2018 puts the Republicans firmly in control.

To do this, I want to organize the races the way basketball or football analysts look at your favorite college team's upcoming season — games grouped by Should Be Easy, Tough Call, On the Bubble, Would Take a Miracle. For this exercise, we'll ignore the baked-in results in places like California (Democratic and will stay that way), and list the races to watch by these categories:

• Washouts — four contests (IL, WI, OH, FL)
• No Change — one contest (CO)
• Possible Flips — three contests (NH, PA, IN)
• Toss Ups — three contests (NV, NC, MO)
• and one Wild Card race — Alaska

We will look briefly at these 12 races. Others may disagree, but it looks to me like these are the ones to watch.

For reference, the state of the Senate today is:

• Republicans: 54 seats
• Democrats: 44 seats
• Independents: 2 seats (caucus with Democrats)

No independent is up for reelection this cycle. Democrats need a net pickup of +4 to tie in the Senate (50-50) and +5 to take it outright (ignoring for now the "60 vote rule" that makes sure no progressive legislation gets passed). Here are races in each group, with the likeliest outcomes by group in parentheses.

Washouts (+2 D)

The "washout" states are those where one party has conceded the race by withdrawing money. All four seats are held by Republicans. Two of the Democrats have washed out, as have two of the Republicans. These are:

Illinois, currently Republican
Winner should be Tammy Duckworth (D)

Wisconsin, currently Republican
Winner should be Russ Feingold (D)

Ohio, currently Republican
Winner should be Rob Portman (R)

Florida, currently Republican
Winner should be Marco Rubio (R)

Net result: +2 Democrats.

From Electoral-Vote.com:

Democratic challenger Patrick Murphy in Florida, incumbent Republican Mark Kirk in Illinois, Democratic challenger Ted Strickland in Ohio, and incumbent Republican Ron Johnson in Wisconsin are doing badly enough that their parties either have already cut off the money (the two Republicans), or are close to doing so (the two Democrats).

I think most would call these races closed. (Note: Chuck Schumer actively interfered with progressive challengers in Florida and Ohio. The +2 Democrats could easily be +4 Democrats in this category, absent that interference.)

No Change

This category could be larger (I had the New Hampshire race here at first), but let's play it safe.

Colorado, currently Democratic
Winner should be Michael Bennet (D)

The Hill on Bennet:

Once viewed as one of the only ripe opportunities for Republicans, Bennet appears poised to sail to reelection. Republicans aren’t coming to the aid of Darryl Glenn, a county commissioner who trumpeted his conservative bona fides during the primary. But he’ll need to look beyond his base in a state that Obama carried twice and also has a large Latino population.

Michael Bennet is this guy, by the way, from 2014: "Shorter Republicans: "We forgive Michael Bennet for trying to win the Senate." Shorter Sen. Bennet: "Glad we're still friends.""

Possible Flips (+2 D, Maybe)

These are fairly close races where the Democrat could flip a Republican seat. I have three of these:

New Hampshire, currently Republican
Leader is Kelly Ayotte (R)

Pennsylvania, currently Republican
Leader is McGinty (D)

Indiana, was Republican, now open
Leader is Bayh (D)

If the current leader wins each seat: +2 Democrats, but this is iffy.

In New Hampshire, Ayotte is surging at the moment (+8 in the latest Marist poll), but she's coming from behind. Hassan could take it, but I'm not confident.

The Hill on the Pennsylvania race:

The presidential race appears to be trickling into Toomey’s reelection. Political observers in the state say he’s running a strong campaign, but his dip in the polls is largely thanks to the top of the ticket.

Toomey continues to withhold his support from Trump. But his opponent, Katie McGinty, a little-known former gubernatorial chief of staff, has been helped by Clinton’s consistent lead over Trump in the Keystone State. McGinty has maintained a lead since mid-July, though one survey has Toomey up 7 points.

RealClearPolitics has this race a wash, but I think Toomey has the edge. In Indiana, Bayh is only up by single digits, but has never trailed.

(Note: Chuck Schumer actively interfered with non-Democratic establishment Joe Sestak in the Democratic primary, who might easily have beaten Toomey. If Schumer-chosen candidate McGinty fails to win, it will be because of Schumer.)

Too Close To Call (A Wash)

There are three races here — Nevada, North Carolina, Missouri — and Republicans are defending two of the three seats. (Nevada is an open seat, but was Democratic.)

Nevada, was Democratic, now open
Joe Heck (R) has a slight lead over Catherine Cortez Masto (D)

North Carolina, currently Republican
Richard Burr (R) has a low single-digit lead over Deborah Ross (D)

Missouri, currently Republican
Roy Blunt leads Jason Kander (D), but not by much

Republicans flip one seat if all three leaders win. Most likely positive case for the Democrats is no change (two wins and one loss). If Democrats win out: +2 Democrats.

Subtotal (+2 D or +4 D)

If you're counting the total to this point, Democrats are up +2 among the Washout races, then it's a wash until the Too Close To Call races, where there's either no change (more likely) or they go up +2 (by winning them all).

In other words, our best case gives the Democrats +4 seats, and our middle case gives them +2 seats. That's not enough to take the Senate.

(Note again, that Schumer's interference in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania have reduced these totals. Instead of "+2 Democrats or +4 Democrats" so far, the call would have been " +4 or +6" — putting full control of the Senate within reach.)

Wild Card Race: Alaska

Alaska is a Republican seat at the moment, with Lisa Murkowski defending it. A pro-Sanders Democrat is in position to win the seat — and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) wants him to lose (!).

Howie has written about the Alaska race here:

[T]he populist Democratic Party in the state-- which gave Bernie a 81.6% to 18.4% landslide over Hillary and massive victories in every single electoral district (numbers that beat Trump too)-- also nominated Ray Metcalfe, a former Anchorage state Rep who was one of the state's original Bernie for President organizers. Although he won the party nomination, 15,198 to 10,074, Metcalfe is not a Schumer kind of candidate....

The DSCC (and Alaska's grotesquely corrupt Democratic Party establishment) are worried that-- with teabagger and Trumpist Joe Miller in the race as a Libertarian and tearing Murkowski apart from the right-- Metcalfe could actually win. ... That's how Schumer's reptilian mind works. So he's encouraging a proven corruptionist buddy of his, Mark Begich, to mount a last minute write-in campaign to draw votes away from Metcalfe and throw the election to Murkowski!

More from Electoral-vote.com (my emphasis)

Alaska looks like it's going to become a free-for-all. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) is running for reelection, trying to keep a seat that she last won as a write-in candidate after being primaried by tea partier Joe Miller. She could end up facing four viable opponents: Ray Metcalfe (the Democratic nominee), Margaret Stock (an independent with a very impressive resume), Miller (who's back, as the recently-chosen nominee of the Libertarian Party), and possibly former Democratic senator Mark Begich (who may run—wait for it—as a write-in candidate). 30% of the vote could very well win this thing.

Schumer has succeeded in sabotaging every race he has tried to sabotage, so I'll give Murkowski and Schumer the win.

Alaska, currently Republican
Lisa Murkowski (R) has the edge in a five-person race

Net change (if Schumer succeeds): None.

Your Most Likely 2017 Senate

The most likely 2017 Senate, the high point of the bell-shaped curve, if all current likelihoods hold, appears to be this:

• Republican: 52 or 50 seats
• Democrats: 46 or 48 seats
• Independents: 2 seats (caucus with Democrats)

By sabotaging the Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and possibly Alaska races, Schumer (a) may well have handed Republicans control of the Senate, but (b) will have assured his own personal, hand-picked control of the Democratic minority that remains. In Schumer's world, that must count has a win-win. I can't imagine any other motivation for this ... what, debacle? betrayal?

Anyway, here's a scorecard to follow as these races evolve. For the Democrats to reach 50 seats, watch the Too Close To Call races, plus Alaska.

GP

Ugghhh... Evan Bayh Is Back

Evan Bayh, son of a much admired progressive Indiana senator, Birch Bayh (1963-1981), served as governor of Indiana from 1989 'til 1997 and then ran for his father's old Senate seat. He voluntarily retired in 2010, fearful of being defeated in a building GOP wave, saying at the time "I want to be engaged in an honorable line of work" but instead he became a big time DC lobbyist (and Fox News contributor). He was one of the 2 or 3 most right-wing Democrats in the Senate, was one of Bush's biggest Democratic backers for both his attack on Iraq and for his TARP bankster bailout. Bayh the Younger served as a chair of the DLC and was one of the founders of the New Dem Coalition.

This morning the DSCC web site still had a tepid endorsement up for Indiana's even more right-wing Democratic Senate candidate, Baron Hill, who they describe as "A devoted public servant and a proud Hoosier, Baron Hill is a committed fighter for Indiana’s middle class families. We are proud to endorse him in Indiana’s Senate race." As of the April 13 FEC filing deadline, Hill had only managed to raise $978,761 compared to $3,716,924 that his GOP opponent, Todd Young, had raised. Young has approximately 3 times more cash on hand and no one thought the race would be remotely competitive.

The Indiana primary was May 3 and Hill, a former top Blue Dog, ran unopposed. His general election campaign has been a total bust and a non-starter and Schumer was able to persuade Bayh-- who is sitting on a $9,983,284 cash hoard-- to run and the hapless Hill to step aside. No one knows if Schumer wrote his withdrawal letter for him, but Hill sent out his message to his small handful of supporters this morning: "Democrats have a very real chance at winning this Senate seat, especially with a strong nominee who has the money, name identification and resources to win. I do not want to stand in the way of Democrats winning Indiana and the U.S. Senate. That would not be fair to my party or my state. And, the stakes are far too high in this election not to put my country above my own political ambitions." Bayh's two biggest career-long contributors have been Goldman Sachs and Eli Lilly. Is there anything else you need to know? Other than how Mike Pence on the Trumpy The Clown ticket plays into this.

Chuck Schumer is redefining the Democratic Party in his own image-- more conservative, more corrupt

Ready For Hillary? Or Bernie?

Recovered from losing race after race around the country, all the Ready for Hillary operatives came together at Le Souk in New York last week to celebrate their own and their candidate's fabulousness. There was Stephanie Shriock of EMILY's List, who chalked up spectacular losses all cycle, starting with two for Alex Sink (FL), two for Wendy Greuel (CA), another mindblower for Martha Coakley (MA), losses for all kinds of conservative Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party that EMILY's List is drawn to these days, from Colleen Hanabusa and Donna Mercado Kim in Hawaii to political hacks like Mary Rose Wilcox (AZ), Ann Callis (IL), Emily Cain (ME)...

And, yes, Schriock and EMILY's List were big backers of spectacular loser Amanda Renteria, but the pilot of Renteria's doomed campaign, sleazy L.A. political hatchet man, Michael Trujillo, who jumped into her race immediately after dooming Wendy Greuel again, was also in attendance (of course). Renteria enjoyed a 17 point registration advantage over conservative Republican David Valadao in a district that gave Obama a solid 55-44% win over Romney but Trujillo, eager to develop and sell a lame, unworkable proprietary field system he could profit from, hobbled Renteria's campaign with it so badly that she lost a race she should have won-- and she lost big... Trujillo big: 41,167 (58.5%) to 29,244 (41.5%)... no turn out, thanks almost entirely to Trujillo's new proprietary field program he now expects to peddle to Hillary's campaign.

The Hill covered the Friday gathering by listing the 5 fears of the Clintonites. Although Bernie Sanders wasn't one of them, Elizabeth Warren was. "If I have one big fear, that’s it," said one Clinton supporter. "She needs to present a strong message on the economy and tell people why she not only supports Wall Street but every day economic issues. She needs to unite the party." With enough coaching, she probably can-- although progressives will come along only grudgingly and sullenly. Personally, I can't imagine any set of circumstances that would get me to vote for her. Sunday, Doyle McManus posited the idea that a Bernie Sanders candidacy would actually help Hillary. He wrote about Bernie's appearance on Colbert's show last week.

“A self-described socialist!” Colbert faux-sneered. “Do you frighten people when you walk around the Capitol? Are they afraid you're going to take their tractor and give it to the whole village?”

“Hopefully we frighten the billionaire class,” Sanders replied as a youthful studio audience cheered.

Get ready to hear Sanders repeat that phrase, “the billionaire class,” a lot. It's the core of his message, the theme that makes him passionate: his conviction that the wealthy have hijacked not only the economy, but also the political system.

There may not have been a major-party presidential candidate with so blunt a populist message on the economy since Franklin D. Roosevelt ran against “economic royalists” in 1936.

“The biggest issue in the country is that we don't discuss the biggest issue in the country,” Sanders told me in his Senate office last week.

“How does it happen that today the economists tell us that 95% of all new income created in America goes to the top 1%? How does it happen that we have by far the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on Earth, where one family, the Walton family of Wal-Mart, owns more wealth than the bottom 40% of the American people? How does that happen, and what do we do about it?”

Sanders' answers on what to do come from a crisp checklist: Higher taxes on the wealthy, a much higher minimum wage, $1 trillion of new spending on roads and public transportation and European-style national health insurance (which he tries to make less foreign by calling it “Medicare for all”).

He's asking the right questions. The stagnation of middle class incomes in the midst of an economic recovery has become the central challenge for both political parties. Exit polls in this month's midterm elections found that 63% of all voters believe the U.S. economic system isn't fair to most Americans, but “favors the wealthy.”

...Challenges like these would be a good thing for Clinton.

For one thing, they would give voters a reason to tune in to Democratic primary debates; otherwise, the brawling Republican field would get hours of television time all to itself.

For another, if she has challengers on both the left and right, Clinton could conveniently cast herself as the woman in the middle, the champion of her party's broad center.

And finally, it would be good for Clinton to work through her campaign style in more friendly waters. The last thing she wants is to sail through the primaries untested and have to develop her battle skills in actual combat with her Republican opponent. “She needs to get out of the cocoon of inevitability,” former Barack Obama strategist David Axelrod said last week.

If Clinton wins the nomination, she's unlikely to thank her Democratic opponents for trying to stop her from breaking the glass ceiling-- but she should.

Yeah, we're hearing whispers of a place in her Administration for corrupt conservatives from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- like lobbyist Evan Bayh (who was busy last week trashing Obama's move on immigration reform)-- but never a hint Hillary would ask a reformer with a progressive vision for the country-- someone like Sanders or Warren, for example-- to be her running mate, a position likely to be reserved for someone as bland as pablum. These are the substantial, not-bland candidates Hillary-- and more importantly, the American people-- should be looking at. You can encourage them to run at that link.

Willard Inc. may be his father's biological offspring, but politically speaking, he's no George Romney

Michigan Gov. George Romney and his son Retard Willard look out over the New York World's Fair grounds, May 18, 1964.

"Not only was George Romney, that loser, ironclad in his ideological commitments; his vision of how capitalism should work was in every particular the exact opposite of the one pushed by the vulture capitalist he sired."

-- Rick Perlstein, in his debut rollingstone.com column,
"What Mitt Romney Learned From His Dad"

by Ken

Oh boy, I've been meaning to get back all week to Rick Perlstein's inaugural rollingstone.com column, "What Mitt Romney Learned From His Dad," and since it was posted last Tuesday, I'm thinking we're only a day away from the arrival of another one.

Rick has a theory about sons-of-pols with political ambitions of their own, specifically sons of pols who suffer traumatic electoral defeats. He starts from this premise:

Here is a truism about the psychology of politicians: there is almost nothing so soul-definingly traumatic for them as losing an election. You believe yourself a great man, a figure of destiny. You love your job, or covet an even more important one -- and then suddenly one day it's gone, all because the public decides it doesn't love you any more. The trauma shapes future ideology: if you're a conservative, say, you might become more conservative. That was the case for two pioneers of the Democratic Party's long march to the right: Joseph Lieberman, who lost a bid for the U.S. House of Representatives, and Bill Clinton, who lost his reelection as Arkansas governor, both in 1980, a year of profound reckoning for Democrats who got blindsided by Ronald Reagan and his coattails.

But there is, Rick suggests, something worse, and that is being the son of such a traumatized pol. He has two such cases in mind, starting with --

a third pioneering Democratic corporate sellout, Evan Bayh, who managed the 1980 Senate reelection campaign in which his fighting liberal father Birch Bayh lost to baby Reaganite Dan Quayle. Thereafter, as governor and senator from Indiana between 1989 and 1997, the son hardly met a right-wing idea he couldn't embrace.

As far as I've been able to ascertain, the "lesson" learned in the Bayh family was exclusive to young Evan. Apparently Birch Bayh -- who was, as I've written, a political hero of mine -- has never made any such rightward move. And neither, I gather from what Rick tells us, did his other famously traumatized pol: Michigan Gov. George Romney, who came within a washed brain of riding a wave of almost unblemished popularity to the 1968 Republican presidential nomination. As you may know, George Romney had a bunch of sons, one of whom has long entertained delusions of presidential fitness.

I really don't want to preempt Rick's narrative, which as usual is laid out in rich, elegant, and ultimately eloquent detail. I just want to offer three blindingly stark contrasts he establishes with overwhelming eloquence between the Romney father and son.

1. THE "SHOCKINGLY AUTHENTIC"

GEORGE ROMNEY ON CIVIL RIGHTS

Rick writes about George Romney's "shocking authenticity."

[H]is courage in sticking to his positions without fear or favor was extraordinary. In January of 1964, for example, the second-year governor received a letter (downloadable here) from a member of the top Mormon governing body reminding him of the "teachings of the prophet Joseph Smith" that "the Lord had placed the curse upon the Negro." Drop your support for the 1964 civil rights bill, the elder warned, arguing that God might literally strike Romney dead for his apostasy: "I just don't think we can get around the Lord's position in relation to the Negro without punishment for our acts," the letter said. Romney only redoubled his commitment -- leading a march the next year down the center of Detroit in solidarity with Martin Luther King's martyrs for voting rights' in Selma, Alabama. In 1966, the Republican Party staked its electoral fortunes on opposing open housing for blacks. Romney begged them, unsuccessfully, not to. "This fellow really means it," an amazed Southern Republican said when Romney toured Dixie pushing civil rights in his presidential campaign; after America's worst riot broke out in Detroit under his watch, the governor said that America could respond with a crackdown on law and order – "but our system would become little better than a police state."

2. GEORGE VS. WILLARD ON

THE NATURE OF CAPITALISM

George Romney, a Republican governor who had of course been a fantastically successful corporate chief executive, had a "vision of how capitalism should work" that --

was in every particular the exact opposite of the one pushed by the vulture capitalist he sired. (If George Romney's AMC was around now, Mitt Romney's Bain Capital would probably be busy turning it into a carcass.) A critic once said he was "so dedicated to good works his entrance into politics is like sending a Salvation Army lass into the chorus at a burlesque house." As a CEO he would give back part of his salary and bonus to the company when he thought they were too high. He offered a pioneering profit-sharing plan to his employees. Most strikingly, asked about the idea that "rugged individualism" was the key to America's success, he snapped back, "It's nothing but a political banner to cover up greed." He was the poster child for the antiquated notion that corporations have multiple stakeholders: the workers that breathe them life, the communities in which they are situated, and the nation to whom they owe a patriotic obligation -- most definitely and emphatically not just stockholders, as Mitt and his defenders say.



In the video above, today's Romney insists there is no reason to question the distribution of wealth in America except for envy of the rich -- did his rich dad question the distribution of wealth in America out of envy for the rich? -- and that it was a subject only appropriate for discussion in "quiet rooms." (His dad didn't talk about it in quiet rooms; he talked about it at a Sunday worship service at the 1972 Republican convention, praying, "Help us to help those who need help.") Even if Mitt Romney is not the most right-wing candidate for the nomination, when he wins it, in a Republican Party becoming more extreme with every passing day, he may still be -- because the party won’t have it any other way -- the most right-wing nominee in the history of the country.

Rick draws a painful contrast between the signature "shocking authenticity" of George Romney and the palpable inauthenticity of Willard --

with, I think, an exception. Every time he opens his mouth on the subject of capitalism, he says what he sincerely believes, which happens to fit neatly with present-day Republican ideology: that rich people deserve every penny they have, and if people complain about anything rich people do, it's only because they're envious.

3. GEORGE ROMNEY ON THE LIES AMERICANS ARE
TOLD ABOUT OUR FOREIGN ENTANGLEMENTS

I've left for last the issue that cost George Romney not just his shot at the presidency but his political career: the Vietnam war, which he had supported through a visit to Vienam in 1965 but found himself beginning to question following a second trip in 1967. Asked in a TV interview about his apparent change of heart (Rick has the video posted with the column), he gave the answer that undid him: "When I came back from Vietnam in 1965, I just had the greatest brainwashing anybody can get when you go over to Vietnam." That, says Rick, is the line that everyone remembers.

But he continued with a devastating, prophetic, and one-thousand-percent-correct assessment: that staying in Vietnam would be a disaster. The public, and certainly the pundits, weren't ready to hear it. All they heard was the word "brainwashing" -- not in the colloquial sense in which Romney obviously intended it, but as something literal. Here was this weird dude accusing our generals and diplomats of Svengali-like mind control. The mockery was swift and furious. ("I would have thought a light rinse would do," William F. Buckley said -- hilarious! Only an idiot would criticize the Vietnam War!) Romney nose-dived sixteen points in the next Harris poll. As I wrote in my book Nixonland, on Vietnam a national brainwashing continued apace.

The gutter-brawling Richard Nixon didn't have to lift a finger to destroy Romney; the man had done it to himself. But as Rick underlines, amid all the mockery, Romney stuck to his guns (as it were), telling New Hampshire voters "that LBJ was 'spinning a web of delusion,' and that 'when you want to win the hearts and minds of people, you don't kill them and destroy their property. You don't use bombers and tanks and napalm to save them.'" And Nixon would proceed to get himself elected by: (a) conspiring to make sure that the Paris peace talks wouldn't produce, you know, peace, and (b) flat-out lying, saying that he had a "secret" plan to end the war -- so secret that he couldn't tell us what it was. In fact, when he became president, he didn't end the war, he escalated and widened it.

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, the "brainwashing" that Romney diagnosed would become a fixture of American political discourse, not just on the Right, but ultimately among self-serving pols almost across the increasingly narrow American political spectrum.

Rick has this shocking notion that understanding the past may actually enable us to see where we are and figure out where we may be heading. It is, in other words, the exact opposite of Newt Gingrich's perverted notion of "history," which consists of cherry-picking the past for bits and pieces that can be used to buttress your ideological prejudices and delusions. I can hardly wait to see what the next column brings.

#

Two More Slimy Self-Serving Conservatives Headed From Congress To K Street

Earlier in the week many of his were chuckling in resignation when it was announced that Indiana corporate shill and reflexive reactionary Evan Bayh-- also well as paid Fox contributor-- is going to work for a long-time fascist organization as a lobbyist.

Not long after announcing his plans to retire in 2010, then-Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) offered this bit of commentary on why he'd opted to leave Congress after two terms in office: "I want to be engaged in an honorable line of work." It was taken as a biting critique of the increasingly polarized and dysfunctional Senate, and a hint that Bayh's post-Senate plans might include a quiet career in academia, away from politics.

Now Bayh is eating his words. As iWatch News' Peter Stone reports, Bayh has signed on with one of the most corporate-friendly, anti-environment shops in all of Washington, DC: the US Chamber of Commerce. According to an internal memo penned by Chamber president Tom Donohue, Bayh, along with former Bush White House chief of staff Andy Card, are now part of the Chamber's anti-regulation messaging team, doing "speeches, events, and media appearances at local venues."

The Chamber's hiring of Bayh, a big name in Washington circles, will only help its efforts to delay or kill new regulatory legislation in Congress. Indeed, Donohue's memo touts how the Chamber has filed legal briefs to challenge the validity of President Obama's health care reform bill; successfully delayed a new Securities and Exchange Commission rule on giving shareholders a say on corporate directors; unveiled plans to undermine the clout of the fledgling Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; and delayed a rule forcing companies to disclose when they use conflict minerals from the Congo in their products. Bayh and Card, the memo says, will help the Chamber push this pro-corporate agenda in Washington and beyond.

But just as we were hoping Bayh's revolving door would hit him in the butt on the way out, news broke that an even worse example of a right-wing Democrat would soon be scurrying from Capitol Hill to K Street. This year-- as almost every year-- spoiled child of privilege and scummy dishonorable Blue Dog Dan Boren was the Democrat who voted most frequently with the Republicans on key substantive issues before the House. His ProgressivePunch Crucial Votes score for the current session is a dismal 17.43, not just the worst for any Democrat, but worse than 16 Republicans. Boehner and Cantor have been able to count on his support as much as George Bush always did. The Democratic caucus will be infinitely better off without him, even if fellow Blue Dog Brad Carson, the district's former congressman, wins the seat.

With Boren gone the once-mighty Blue Dog caucus of rightists and racists will have been cut down from 54 to 23. That's 23 too many. As Politico reported, former Tennessee Rep. John Tanner, a leading conservative Democrat who helped found the coalition in 1995, acknowledged that the Blue Dog wing is, for the time being at least, struggling for survival.

“It ought to concern us from the standpoint that we need to put aside strongly held philosophies,” said Tanner, who retired last year.

Former North Dakota Rep. Earl Pomeroy, a Blue Dog who lost his seat last November, put it more directly: “I think you could say this was the most disastrous House election that Democrats ever had, and those who paid the highest price were those in swing districts and those who were Blue Dogs.”

While Boren didn’t announce his plans, many in the growing ranks of former Blue Dogs have beaten a path to the lucrative environs of K Street, where they aren’t regularly berated by progressives who resent their departures from party orthodoxy or Republicans insisting they are tools of a liberal national party. In just the past few months alone, former South Dakota Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, former Tennessee Rep. Bart Gordon, Pomeroy and Tanner are among those who have taken the lobbying path.

I was on the phone with a senior progressive Democrat when the news of Boren's retirement hit the transom. I asked her if she had heard the news about Boren. And she shot back, "Did he finally make if official and switch parties?" I told her he was retiring and she asked me if I knew he was related to Paul Ryan by marriage. Boren, who's on the Board of Directors of the NRA, didn't endorse Obama in 2008 and voted against healthcare reform and was always strictly anti-Choice.

Last November Blue America helped defeat the only Democrat with a worse voting record than Boren: Bobby Bright, an Alabama Blue Dog. This year our ActBlue page, Send The Democrats A Message They Can Understand is assisting progressives who fighting for nominations against Blue Dogs and other conservative Democrats. We have three on our list so far and if you'd like to help them in their struggle we'd be most appreciative.

A Rick Worse Than Scott Walker-- And I Don't Mean From Texas Or Florida; Meet Rick Snyder (R-MI)

You can't say he didn't warn you

Last week E.J. Dionne did an important column on Reagan Democrats and how extreme right wing overreach (the anti-union jihad in a dozen states) is sending these working class ex-Dems back for another look at the Democratic Party. Were that to really happen, the GOP would wind up as a rump Confederate party with branches in Utah, Idaho, Alaska and Arizona. Maybe that's why Roger Ailes was so quick to hire quasi-Democrat-turned-lobbyist Evan Bayh as a Fox News commentator. Being able to signify that egregious corporate whores and anti-family conservatives like Bayh, Bob Beckel, Lieberman, Lanny Davis, Doug Schoen and Harold Ford are "Democrats" serves one very important purpose: further muddying up the difference between the two parties and turning off as many grassroots Democrats as possible.

Consider the contrast between two groups of Democrats, in Wisconsin and in the nation's capital.

Washington Democrats, including President Obama, have allowed conservative Republicans to dominate the budget debate so far. As long as the argument is over who will cut more from federal spending, conservatives win. Voters may think the GOP is going too far, but when it comes to dollar amounts, they know Republicans will always cut more.

In Wisconsin, by contrast, 14 Democrats in the state Senate defined the political argument on their own terms-- and they are winning it.

By leaving Madison rather than providing a quorum to pass Gov. Scott Walker's assault on collective bargaining for public employees, the Wisconsin 14 took a big risk. Yet to the surprise of establishment politicians, voters have sided with the itinerant senators and the unions against a Republican governor who has been successfully portrayed as an inflexible ideologue. And in using questionable tactics to force the antiunion provision through the Senate on Wednesday, Republicans may win a procedural round but lose further ground in public opinion.

And it's not like Scott Walker is some kind of outlier in an otherwise, sane and patriotic party. What images do you conjure up when I say "Rick Scott," "Rick Perry," "John Kasich," "Jan Brewer," "Tom Corbett," "Paul LePage,"... to name just a few of the most extreme?

In fact one I didn't mention, the third reckless Rick-- Snyder of Michigan-- could turn out to be the most destructive of all. Like the others, he's in the process of "placing the brunt of deficit reduction onto the backs of their state’s public employees, students, and middle-class taxpayers, while simultaneously trying to enact corporate tax cuts and giveaways."

Gov. Rick Snyder (R-MI) has proposed ending his state’s Earned Income Tax Credit, cutting a $600 per child tax credit, and reducing credits for seniors, while also cutting funding for school districts by eight to ten percent. At the same time, as the Michigan League for Human Services found, the state’s business taxes would be reduced by nearly $2 billion, or 86 percent, under Snyder’s plan:

Business taxes would be cut by 86 percent from an estimated $2.1 billion in FY 2011 to $292.7 million in FY 2013, the first full year of the proposed tax changes…Taxes on individuals from the state income tax would rise by $1.7 billion or nearly 31 percent, from an estimated $5.75 billion in FY 2011 to $7.5 billion in FY 2013, the first full year of the tax changes.

As the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found, the practical upshot of Snyder’s tax increases is to place even more of a burden on Michigan’s poorest residents, who will see a bigger hike than those at the upper end of the income scale.

These are two really smart people explaining this better than any elected Democrat I've ever heard:



And, in case you haven't had a chance to read it yet, this is the letter Michael Moore sent out to his fellow Michiganders Monday:

Friends and neighbors,

The call has gone out and I'm asking everyone who can to take Wednesday off and head to the State Capitol in Lansing to protest the cruel and downright frightening legislation currently being jammed down our throats.

What is most shocking to many is that the new governor, who ran against the Tea Party and defeated the right wing of his party in the primaries-- and then ran in the general election as "just a nerd from Ann Arbor" who was a moderate, not an ideologue-- has pulled off one of the biggest Jekyll and Hyde ruses I've ever seen in electoral politics.

Governor Snyder, once elected, yanked off his nice-guy mask to reveal that he is in fact a multi-millionaire hell-bent on destroying our state and turning it over to his buddies from Wall Street.

In just 8 short weeks he has:

* Gotten the House and Senate to pass bills giving him "Emergency Management" powers such as the ability to appoint a corporation or a CEO who could literally dissolve town governments or school boards, fire the elected officials, nullify any local law and run your local governmental entity. That company then would have the power to immediately declare all collective bargaining contracts null and void.

* Proposed giving business a whopping 86% tax cut while raising everyone's personal taxes by 31%! And much of that tax hike he believes should be shouldered by -- I kid you not -- senior citizens and the poor! He says these two groups have not been "sharing the sacrifice" the rest of us have been burdened with. So his budget proposes a $1.8 billion tax CUT for business and a $1.75 billion tax INCREASE for the rest of us, much of it from the poor, seniors and working people -- even though the top 1% in Michigan ALREADY pay a lower state tax rate than everyone else does!

* Together with the legislature, introduced over 40 anti-labor bills in just the first two months of this session! They have wasted no time and have caught most people off guard. Much of this is being rushed through right now before you have a chance to raise your voice in objection.

These actions are breathtaking when you realize they will drive our already battered state straight into the ground. What we needed right now was an inspiring leader to help us reinvent Michigan and to find creative ways to create new jobs and lift us out of our economic depression. The rest of the country may call what they're experiencing the "Great Recession," but few argue that Michigan is suffering a "one-state Depression."

I know many of you are filled with a great sense of despair and a justifiable loss of hope these days in Michigan. But you must not let things get even worse. You must stand up against these Draconian measures and this outrageous attempt to rip our democratic rights from us by turning our state over to well-paid hacks from Wall Street and corporate America. They see our state as one big fire sale-- and they are licking their chops to get their hands on what is still a state rich in natural resources and industrial infrastructure.

Please show up at noon on Wednesday for our first mega-rally against this insanity. Hundreds of groups are already organizing car pools and buses. You can right now just declare yourself an organizer and get your friends and neighbors committed to being in Lansing. If ever there were a day to call in sick, Wednesday is it (because this IS sick). Students, if ever there were a day to cut class and become a participant in your democracy, Wednesday is it. This event needs to be HUGE-- and I believe it will be if you will simply be there and take a stand.

Much attention has been paid to Wisconsin in recent weeks. Well, they got nothing on what's going on here in Michigan. Rick Snyder is Scott Walker on steroids. There's never been what even the AARP calls "an all-out attack" like this on us. Trust me, you will rue the day you sat home and did nothing while thieves posing as politicians stole your Great Lakes State from you.

Don't let it happen. Be at the capitol by noon on Wednesday for the largest demonstration the state has ever seen.

UPDATE: Lance Enderle On Air With Nicole Sandler Today

Lance Enderle, who ran against Republican bandit Mike Rogers last year, will be facing him again in 2012. Meanwhile he's been busy organizing against Snyder's anti-family mayhem. He'll be on Nicole Sandler's show this morning at around 7:30am PT (10:30 back East). You can listen here.

Unlike Bayh And Conrad, Not Every Democrat Thinks The Message From Last Tuesday Is To Surrender To The GOP & Dismantle Social Security

Republican reactionaries and Democratic conservatives should keep in mind what happened to her and her ilk when they pushed people too far

I'm pretty sure that the very first Senate candidate ever endorsed by Blue America was then-Congressman Ben Cardin in 2005 when he was running for the Maryland seat Paul Sarbanes was retiring from. Cardin struck me as a levelheaded and committed progressive and 738 Blue America supporters donated a modest $8,128 towards his 2006 election. At the time, I wrote:

If you read Ben Cardin's record as a congressman you'll understand how important it is to get a guy like this into the U.S. Senate. But it was really meeting Ben in person and seeing what he was like as a human being that inspired me to start an Act Blue page for him. The Republicans are targeting Maryland as a place where they can make an inroad. I think they're barking up the wrong tree. If Ben has the money to get his message out, he'll be sworn in as a U.S. Senator next January, where he'll be a voice of conscience in a time when Bush/DeLay/Frist/Abramoff ethics and Robertson/Falwell/Dobson/Phelps morals have replaced genuine American values.

And Cardin hasn't been a disappointment. In the current Congress, his ProgressivePunch score has been a robust 96.72, even more progressive than Bernie Sanders, Jeff Merkley or Barbara Boxer!

Yesterday Senator Cardin publicly ruminated about the meaning he was drawing about the message from last week's electoral drubbing his party took at the polls (though, basically, not in his state, where normal Democrats were all successful and -- at least federally-- the only casualty was an especially bad Blue Dog, Frank Kratovil, one of the extremely conservative members of that caucus who voted with the Republicans far more than with the Democrats on contentious, substantive issues). Cardin's conclusions are at odds with the conclusions of many conservatives in the media, in the Senate, in his own party.

"Now that we’ve had a little time to digest the results of Tuesday’s mid-term elections," he began, "its story is glaringly clear: American voters are angry and frustrated. Too many Americans are still out of work; too many American families are still losing their homes; and too many small businesses are struggling to survive in this tough economy. Voters are angry that we have not done more to help working families keep faith in the American Dream." Exactly right. Too many Democrats have strayed in the direction of Frank Kratovil and the Blue Dogs. The tragedy isn't that Kratovil and 29 other Blue Dogs were obliterated-- they earned that-- but that because they managed to muddy (and sully) the Democratic brand in the mind of so many voters, several Democrats who have been champions of working families-- Members like Carol Shea-Porter, Mary Jo Kilroy, John Hall, Phil Hare and, more than anyone, Alan Grayson-- were also swept away with the garbage like Bobby Bright, Travis Childers, Gene Taylor, Walt Minnick, Glenn Nye, etc.

The election is now over and we all have a responsibility to govern together. As a public servant in the Maryland General Assembly, U.S. House of Representatives, and now the U.S. Senate, I have experience crossing party lines in order to do what is right for Maryland and America.  At the same time, I will stand up for what I believe in and disagree when necessary.

Apparently Senators Conrad and Bayh, two far more conservative and corporately-inclined members of the Democratic caucus, didn't take away the same message as Senator Cardin. Bayh and Conrad see the drubbing the exact same way Republicans do-- as an opportunity to further concentrate the nation's wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people. They both see an opportunity to begin the process of dismantling Social Security. This what happens when Big Business owns all of one party and a substantial piece-- the Bayh-Conrad piece-- of the other. Sam Stein tackled the thorny-- or electrifying-- question Tuesday evening at HuffPo:

In what may be the first major move of the forthcoming Social Security debate, the Peterson Foundation launched on Tuesday a $20 million TV ad campaign to promote the need for a major discussion on debt and deficit reduction.

...Perhaps the most frightening part of the unveiling, however, is that Peterson-- long a scourge of progressives for having earned hundreds of millions in the hedge fund business while preaching financial sacrifice for others-- has prominent Democrats backing his latest campaign. Appearing alongside him at the Newsuem on Tuesday morning was outgoing Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and Budget Committee Chair Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.).

"People on the left who don't want to touch entitlements, that is just unrealistic," said Conrad. "I would say to my friends on the left it is unrealistic, Medicare and Social Security are headed for insolvency. The idea that nothing has to be done is divorced from reality. On the right, those who say no new revenue, I believe, are also in denial."

"The election a week ago today would have been a lot more edifying if we had more commercials like that then the ones running out there in the various states," Bayh said of the ad campaign. "Very impressive."

If you're a corporate shill dedicated to destroying the middle class. Bayh is thankfully leaving the Senate in January, although I fear he (and his lobbyist wife) won't be disappearing from the political firmament. Conrad, a member of the Cat Food Commission, will still be around tugging the Democrats into more and more Republican Party directions, directions fatal for the Democratic Party, which needs to jettison these conservative ideas and take stock in what their big tent is supposed to actually represent. Along those lines one of the country's most respected economists, Dean Baker, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, sent Conrad a letter which he gave me permission to reprint:

November 9, 2010

The Honorable Kent Conrad
702 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator Conrad:

You were quoted as saying at a press conference today:

“People on the left who don't want to touch entitlements, that is just unrealistic. … I would say to my friends on the left it is unrealistic, Medicare and Social Security are headed for insolvency. The idea that nothing has to be done is divorced from reality.”

This struck me as a very peculiar statement for two reasons. First, I literally cannot identify a single person on the left who working on Social Security who has not suggested many ways to close the projected long-term shortfall. The list of items they have put forward has included raising or eliminating the payroll cap, applying estate tax revenue to financing Social Security, and applying the revenue from a financial speculation tax to Social Security.

Many have also suggested phasing in modest increases in payroll taxes at a gradual pace, which would still allow after-tax wage growth to substantially outpace the rate of inflation. As I’m sure you know, polls have consistently shown that payroll tax increases are unpopular, but nonetheless preferred to benefit cuts.

I mention this list of ways to deal with the shortfall because it is simply not honest to claim that people on the left have not put forward suggestions for dealing with the shortfall. You may not
consider these suggestions to be good ones, but that doesn’t mean that they do not exist.

The second reason that your statement is peculiar is that it is quite literally wrong in the case of Social Security. None of us know the future, but if we rely on the Social Security trustees projections the program will be fully solvent until the year 2037. (The Congressional Budget Office projects that it will be fully solvent until 2039.) This means that we certainly can wait before taking any action on the program.

For example, if we waited until 2020, and then implemented a fix comparable in size to the Greenspan Commission’s proposals, then the program would be fully solvent through the rest of the century. In fact, this would be true even if we waited until 2030 to implement the fix.


In short, it is simply not true to claim that we cannot wait to address the program’s projected shortfall. There are reasons why you may think it is better to move quickly, but the reality is that the
projections show that we have the option to wait.

I would be happy to discuss this issue with you further if it would be helpful.

Regards,

Dean Baker
Co-Director, Center for Economic and Policy Research

Meanwhile, over on the House side, the crap that's left of the Blue Dog Caucus, is running around chasing it's collective tail trying to wreak revenge on Pelosi for... not being Republican enough or something. According to Roll Call the reactionary corporate wing of the House Democratic caucus feels it can best serve its masters by some of these proposals its considering:

• Holding Blue Dog meetings at the same time as Democratic Caucus meetings, under the logic that if Pelosi isn’t going to listen to them, they don’t need to listen to her.

• Taking down a rule during the lame-duck session to express their displeasure with the Speaker and embarrass her on the floor.

• Pushing to make the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee an elected position to weaken the Democratic leader’s power.

• Getting members to sign letters expressing their displeasure at the Speaker and threatening not to run for re-election if she remains.

• Making a push to enforce term limits against Reps. George Miller (Calif.) and Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), Pelosi’s closest allies, in their roles as co-chairmen of the Steering and Policy Committee.

• Opening formal negotiations with Republicans on budget cuts or other issues and cutting Pelosi out of the talks.

Please keep in mind that this past cycle, Blue America TV and radio ads were responsible for ridding Congress of the single most reprehensible Blue Dog, Bobby Bright (AL). Our Blue Dog page is still open for business and we promise to work on getting rid of more Blue Dogs in the primary season next year. Please consider giving us a hand.

UPDATE: Finally A Democrat Who Isn't On The Board Of MorganStanley Praises The Cat Food Commission-- Conrad, Of Course

Though not for lack of trying, Erskine Bowles has never been elected to anything, not by real people. But the shameless corporate hack-- Obama's second worst pick for his Cat Food Commission-- was selected for a very lucrative position on the Board of Wall Street financial predators MorganStanley. That Board is his constituency and he is representing their interests with his viciously anti-family proposals. One of the most corporate-oriented Democrats on the commission other than Bowles, is North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad-- and he thinks Democrats should sacrifice their political careers on the alter of concentrating more of the nation's wealth in the hands of his campaign donors. This garbage will wind up on history's trash pile in two years, when his corporate donors abandon him for a teabagger and Democratic voters decide there's no reason to bother to go to the polls.

So Have The Democrats Decided To Just Cede The Indiana Senate Seat To The GOP?

Expect a letter or e-mail-- probably both-- from the DSCC urging you to save Evan Bayh's Indiana Senate seat for the Democrats. First of all, did the Democrats ever even have a Senate seat in Indiana occupied by a Bayh since Birch Bayh left? Since Obama was elected president, Birch's ConservaDem son Evan has had the second worst voting record, according to ProgressivePunch, of any Senate Democrat other than Ben Nelson, who makes a point of being able to brag that on tough, close, substantive votes he votes more frequently with the GOP than with the Democrats! Bayh isn't as bad-- but he's almost as bad, and his voting record (55.07% with Dems) is worse than Blanche Lincoln's, Arlen Specter's, Joe Lieberman's, Mary Landrieu's and, so far... Scott Brown's!

But there is another Democrat whose voting record is worse than Bayh's. He's just not in the Senate. Yet. Bayh's retirement announcement was timed to stick the Republicans with a third-rate candidate, sleazy lobbyist Dan Coats, and stick Indiana Democrats with a hand-picked bosses' delight. Bayh and his political machine have chosen right-wing Democrat Brad Ellsworth-- an original Rahm Emanuel vintage Blue Dog from 2006. He's being shoved down the throats of Indiana Democrats without a primary his conservative ass could never win.

One of the House's vilest and most repulsive and aggressive homophobes-- and a political coward catering to Republican framing as his standard default position-- Ellsworth's score for the 111th Congress on close, crucial votes was an astonishing 35.82, one of the worst of any Democrat who doesn't represent a former slave-holding area. Yesterday, for example, the House agreed to just consider voting on an appropriations bill for the U.S. Intelligence services. It passed 237-176. All 166 obstructionist Republicans who are against every single Democratic proposal voted no, and so did 9 super-reactionary Blue Dogs who regularly make common cause with the GOP. Of course Ellsworth was one of them.

Democratic Party activist Bil Browning has been warning Indiana Democrats that by forcing Ellsworth on the party they will be following in the footsteps of the catastrophic Creigh Deeds strategy and handing the seat to even the weak GOP candidate.

Stan Greenberg, the noted pollster who served as an adviser to President Clinton just before the disastrous 1994 midterm elections, has a new piece out in the New Republic. In it, he describes how to avoid a repeat in 2010:

If I were writing a memo to the Democratic leaders, this is where I would begin. Put aside the rancor and gridlock and show a very different face. Take Paul Krugman's advice and quickly pass a version of the Senate health care bill. That will raise presidential and congressional approval ratings, just as Clinton bucked up Democrats by passing nafta and tax increases for deficit reduction--neither of which were popular at the time.

They must put the Republicans on the defensive. Make them an offer they can't refuse on bipartisan legislation they dare not oppose--jobs measures that help small businesses and energy-independence legislation. Then, force Republicans to cast tough and defining votes--on Wall Street bonuses and bailouts and limiting corporate spending on elections.

This seems like good advice to me. The problem is, Brad Ellsworth has been on the Republican side on all of it. Health care? He voted for the House version of the health care bill, but only after becoming the only Indiana Democrat to vote for the GOP's motion to recommit, which would have killed the bill. He even threatened to vote against the entire bill unless he got his way on his pet anti-choice proposal, and it's no guarantee he'll vote for a bill again.

Energy independence? Ellsworth voted against the American Clean Energy and Security Act bill. Jobs? Ellsworth was just one of 11 House Democrats to vote against the President's own stimulus bill-- a bill that created jobs for Indiana, only reluctantly backing a smaller version later. Bailouts? He voted to bail out Wall Street-- twice-- in late 2008. Foreclosures? He voted against the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act of 2009, which allows bankruptcy judges to modify mortgage loans to help families stay in their homes, among other means.

In other words, not only has Ellsworth tried to defeat legislation that would help middle-class Hoosiers who are struggling with their health care bills and mortgage payments, he's following exactly the opposite of Greenberg's advice-- casting the kind of votes that will sink a candidate for the Senate... But that's not the only thing. Another reason Ellsworth is a bad choice to be the Democratic statewide candidate is because it's hard to find Democrats who like him. One of the many missed lessons of 1994 was that Democrats that year had a base problem.

Core Democratic constituencies may not vote for Republicans, but it would be insane to expect them to turn out and vote for a reactionary like Ellsworth. He's been a demagogue on Latino issues, a disaster on LGBT issues, a disaster on women's issues, environmental issues, issues of vital importance to low-income groups, young people, unmarried women... If he expects to be elected-- as a Democrat-- without big support from these groups because he's spent the past few years kissing up to conservative Republicans, he's as stupid as he is conservative. Conservatives will vote for a Republican, not for a Democrat. Ellsworth will lose the Indiana Senate seat for the Democrats. Will Rahm Emanuel take responsibility and commit seppuku on the White House lawn? If so... it would be worth the loss of the seat.

So... when the DSCC gets in touch and asks you for some money, tell them you support progressive Democrats who are toiling for working families, not ConservaDems working for special interests and corporations. Tell them Brad Ellsworth was a crappy Blue Dog in the House and that the last thing we need in the Senate is another right-wing Democrat working with the GOP to prevent change. And tell them you'd rather give your donations to progressives running for the Senate, like Jennifer Brunner (D-OH), Elaine Marshall (D-NC) and Roxanne Conlin (D-IA) and Joe Sestak (D-PA), rather than their pack of sellout shills.

Did You Think Things Could Only Get Better With Bayh's Retirement? Think Again: Brad Ellsworth Will Be The Democratic Anointee

There's good news and there's bad news coming out of Indiana: Blue Dog shithead Brad Ellsworth is running for the Senate seat being vacated by ConservaDem Evan Bayh. No one would ever know Bayh left if Ellsworth gets the seat, although Ellsworth may be slightly more right-of-center and, primarily because he's newer to Beltway politics, not nearly as steeped in the kind of ungodly corporate corruption that defines Evan Bayh. Many think Bayh's announcement was timed to allow the Democratic Party to pick Ellsworth without a primary and to leave the Republicans with a gaggle of weak and ridiculous candidates (with no ability for any of their strong and ridiculous candidates, namely Mike Pence and Mitch Daniels, to get in on the action).

Ellsworth, handpicked and nurtured by Rahm Emanuel, was first elected in 2006, in a landslide victory over longtime incumbent, the certifiably insane John Hostettler, not just one of Congress' worst extremists but widely considered to be so obsessed with homosexuality that his mind has been warped beyond repair. Ironically, he's a candidate-- albeit a minor one-- in the GOP primary for the Senate seat as well.

IN-09, all of western Indiana save the heavily Democratic northern, industrial part of the state, is very Republican. The PVI is R +9. In 2004 Bush beat Kerry with 62% of the vote and 4 years later when Obama was winning statewide, IN-09, which includes Evansville, Vincennes, Greencastle and Terre Haute, only gave him 47% of the vote, while re-electing the unabashedly conservative Ellsworth with 65%. Ellsworth, in fact, is about as socially conservative as Hostettler! And he has one of the most unabashedly homophobic voting records of any Democrat anywhere. Hostettler rested his whole career, other than opposing aid to Katrina-stricken New Orleans, on religionist buffoonery and homophobia-- sponsoring a bill passed by the House to repeal a D.C. law that allowed city workers to register domestic partners for health benefits, sponsoring a bill to permit churches to engage in political campaigns without losing their tax exempt status, sponsoring the so-called "Marriage Protection Act" to prevent federal courts from ruling on same-sex marriage licenses, etc. Could Ellsworth really be as bad? Yesterday at Huff Po Indiana Democrat and gay activist Bil Browning went into Ellsworth's disgraceful record.

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation's largest LGBT political organization, ranks Ellsworth as one of the ten worst Democratic Congress members when it comes to LGBT issues; he scored a meager 30 out of 100 possible points.

...Ellsworth's schizophrenic voting record on LGBT issues indicates that he is not a reliable friend to the LGBT community. In 2007, he voted against a Republican attempt to kill hate crimes legislation, but then voted against the hate crimes bill when it came to the floor... When I questioned Ellsworth about it later that year, his candid response took me by surprise. He admitted that he voted against the bill because he knew there were already enough votes to pass it and anything seen as pro-gay would be unpopular to a large part of his conservative and rural district.

At the same time, Rep Ellsworth confirmed to me and the crowd gathered around that he would vote in favor of ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would outlaw workplace discrimination against LGBT people. Ellsworth cited his record as Vanderburgh County sheriff, where he implemented a non-discrimination policy that included sexual orientation.

While he did eventually end up voting in favor of a version of ENDA that stripped out transgender people, he also voted in favor of a Republican-led attempt to kill the legislation before the final vote by sending it back to committee for further study. Ellsworth hasn't co-sponsored the trans-inclusive version of ENDA currently sitting in committee and is one of only a few House Democrats not to publicly support the measure.

A member of the House Armed Services Committee, Ellsworth has also refused to state his position on repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." The Representative isn't co-sponsoring any other LGBT-positive legislation nor has he put out any statements indicating he would support any of the current pro-LGBT legislation awaiting action in the House.

Obviously this race isn't going to rest on which candidate is more homophobic, especially since they are both very anti-gay. But on the tough, substantive votes when he was most needed by Democrats, Ellsworth has been a dependable vote-- for John Boehner. The GOP may will try to paint him as a rubber stamp but he's only been with the Dems 35.82% of the time on these tough votes in the 111th Congress, just slightly better than fellow reactionary Blue Dogs Baron Hill (33.33%) and Joe Donnelly (26.87). All three, for example, voted for the anti-Choice Stupak Amendment, which may make it difficult for Ellsworth to muster much enthusiasm from women or progressives. Last year he also joined the Republicans to vote against the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act and lots of other populist legislation that would play well in Indiana this year.

It looks like, for progressives, this will just be about having to decide whether or not to vote for someone with a "D" to prevent someone with an "F" getting into office. It sure didn't work in Virginia or Massachusetts! Here's his uninspiring, dull, it's-all-about-me statement on his decision to ascend to Bayh's seat.

"After many conversations with Hoosiers this week, and with the love and support of my family, I have decided to run for the U.S. Senate.

"The best years of my life are the more than two decades I spent in the local Sheriff’s department. Sheriff is a job that comes down to protecting families from harm, helping folks solve their problems or resolve their disputes, and just being willing to put your fellow citizens' best interests ahead of your own. When I look at the U.S. Senate these days, I sure think they could use more folks with those same qualities. And that's something I hope I could bring to the U.S. Senate – an independent voice to help Indiana through these tough economic times, and get things done for everyday folks who are really struggling."

Forget Democrats vs Republicans-- It's A False Dichotomy-- Think Progressives vs Reactionaries

Monday when the self-proclaimed leader of the Senate ConservaDems-- a small, corporately-sponsored faction that has worked assiduously to thwart President Obama's legislative agenda-- declared that he couldn't stand the gridlock (that he has been so key in creating) and would leave the Senate when his term expires in January, the first note I got was from an Indiana Democratic Party activist entitled "Uncork The Champagne." He mentioned that Indiana progressives within the party had been waging "a stealth campaign... to withhold their active support from him this year [and that that] probably had a lot to do with" his decision to retire from the Senate.

The first comment to our post came from a progressive poster named Carter who accused me of not thinking through the ramifications of Bayh's decision to pull a modified Sarah Palin and leave the Senate behind as he pursues his dream. His missive is typically well-intentioned, if also typically fraught with factual error and strategic miscalculation. You can read it if you like (at the link), but, like most people, he can't get beyond the simpleminded narrative that pits the guys and gals in the blue jerseys against the guys and gals in the red jerseys.

Americans have to go beyond thinking in terms of that narrative and focus on the real struggle between the ordinary working folks who make up 95% of the country and the 5% who own most of it. Classically, this is the struggle between progressives and reactionaries (or progressives on the one side and reactionaries plus morons on the other side). Even on his way out, Bayh is screwing working folks and trying to bolster his big money pals. Yesterday: "Two days after he announced he wouldn't seek reelection, Sen. Evan Bayh is throwing a wrench in the works of a signature administration initiative, expressing reservations about the plan for the government to eliminate private-sector middlemen and make student loans directly... Bayh's stance could be a look toward either of two next moves for the senator: If, like his predecessor, he becomes a lobbyist, warm relations with the financial industry won't hurt. And if he runs for governor, he's standing up for Hoosier jobs."

Is it just that? Maybe-- at least among Republicans, the overtly conservative party that exists to protect the status quo on behalf of the ownership class, as is the case with all right-wing political parties. Right now the GOP is a narrowly based ideological party, very much in contrast to the Democrats' all-things-to-all-people "big tent." But if the Republican Party is the overtly conservative one, the Party of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt has degenerated into a covertly conservative party, almost as thoroughly owned by the same anti-worker, anti-consumer, anti-human special interests that own the GOP. Almost. With innumerable corporate hacks beholden to Wall Street and other powerful special interests-- the same special interests that Republicans are beholden to-- what, aside from jersey color, differentiates notoriously corrupt Democrats like Rahm Emanuel, Harold Ford, Blanche Lincoln, Joe Lieberman, Arlen Specter and Max Baucus from even the most blatant of the Republican whores-- the likes of John McCain, Mitch McConnell, Dick Shelby and John Cornyn on the Senate side and top House criminals like Tom DeLay, Duke Cunningham, Roy Blunt, Eric Cantor, Spencer Bachus, John Boehner and Pete Sessions?

I remember a friend of mine telling me how he arrived at a job at the DSCC, all fresh and fired up with idealism. After a routine discussion in which he brought up someone's propensity to vote more frequently with the Republicans against working families than with the Democratic Senate caucus, one of the money men looked at him with contempt and said something to the effect of "Oh, don't tell me you're one of those ideological dorks!"

Last night I heard extremely corporate ConservaDem, DLC leader and Senate Democratic assistant whip Tom Carper making a half-hearted and utterly failed attempt to communicate on NPR. Listening to him-- even just his inability to frame a cohesive thought or sound vaguely interested or just his repulsive manner of speaking as though he were also eating at the same time (which he may have been)-- made me physically ill. Could I possibly be in the same party that this doofus in a leader of? He was supposedly on the show to represent the side that wants to reform the Senate by changing the filibuster rules that allow 40 senators to hold up every nomination and every piece of legislation passed by the more representative lower House. (England took care of this throwback from Divine Right and aristocracy in 1911.) And Carper had a solution as well. He said that if we just wait until there's a Republican President and a GOP majority in the Senate, we'll be able to scrap the filibuster. And from the corporate point of view, that makes perfect sense and is certainly worth waiting for.

Yesterday's Washington Post reported on a poll that shows nearly 80% of Americans agree that corporations shouldn't be allowed to buy American democracy. In other words, there is overwhelming public consensus against the single most important conservative initiative, diluting the power of the voters and tilting the balance of power into the hands of the rich and powerful. Will our political class do anything to serve this expression of populist desire? Don't count on it-- especially not on anything definitive.

The results suggest a strong reservoir of bipartisan support on the issue for President Obama and congressional Democrats, who are in the midst of crafting legislation aimed at limiting the impact of the high court's decision. Likely proposals include banning participation in U.S. elections by government contractors, bank bailout recipients or companies with more than 20 percent foreign ownership.

But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and other Republican lawmakers have praised the ruling as a victory for free speech and have signaled their intent to oppose any legislation intended to blunt the impact of the court's decision... Republicans and business groups have rallied around the ruling, arguing that the decision merely levels the playing field with free-spending unions and other liberal interest groups. The new poll, however, suggests there may be political risks for the GOP in opposing limits that appear to be favored by the party's base.

The Democrats have overwhelming control of the House and Senate and they occupy the presidency. But because they are nearly as sold out to the powerful special interests as the Republicans, it is unlikely that the handful of progressives within the party caucuses will be able to do anything effective at all.

When it came time for the Establishment to end the virtual state of war with China, the world's biggest market and an economic powerhouse of the (very immediate) future, it was lifelong anti-Communist firebrand Richard Nixon who could do it without damaging his political standing much. Now that the Establishment has determined it's time to ditch Social Security, they've tasked Barack Obama to do the job for them. Yesterday we saw how very ready he was to do the job for them with his selection of two mainstream conservatives to head up his deficit commission, Erskine Bowles (the Democratic Party conservative) and Alan Simpson (the Republican Party conservative), who the White House claims was picked to provide some levity for the gruesome task. He'll also provide the butcher's cleaver. Economist Dean Baker: "Simpson is not just your run of the mill Republican. He is an extreme foe of Social Security... [As a Senator] his agenda was cutting Social Security. And that is who President Obama picked to co-chair his deficit commission."

I don't want to sound like a Naderite-- I actually held my nose and pulled a lever that included the detestable Joe Lieberman on it in the fear that Bush was surging in California-- but I have so little faith in the Democratic Party as it stands that the only efforts I want to undertake are involved with helping it find its roots as the party that sticks up for working families and fights against the entrenched wealth and power that has taken control of it. That, of course, is why Blue America is concentrating on Sending Democrats A Message They Can Understand right now. And that's why, if I were a drinking man, I would have indeed popped the cork of a bottle of champagne when I heard Evan Bayh was going bye-bye.

Bayh Bayh Bayh-- And Good Riddance

The Confederate flag tie & the eagerness to listen to any lobbyists with open checkbooks indicates he may run for presidnet against Obama

Last week polls showed ConservaDem Evan Bayh with a nearly insurmountable lead over lobbyist Dan Coats for the Indiana Senate seat. And this morning Chris Cillizza broke the news that Bayh had decided not to run for re-election. That must have been kind of sudden since he spent the last 6 years sucking up to every lobbyist on K Street, raised $8,911,690 and has a hefty $13 million in his campaign account. Beloved of Goldman Sachs, Eli Lilly, Allianz and dozens of corporations with anti-working family agendas, Bayh's fundraising looked extremely... Republican. But then, so does his voting record. Since Obama was elected president only Ben Nelson was a less dependable vote for Democrats when they were needed most-- on crucial, substantive roll calls where Democrats either lost or almost lost. The 3 worst scores among Democratic senators for the 111th Congress:

Ben Nelson- 47.76
Evan Bayh- 53.73
Blanche Lincoln- 59.70


The IndyStar, which earlier today highlighted Dan Coats' disgraceful record as a sleazy K Street lobbyist, writes that Bayh's decision-- just 4 days before Indian's filing deadline-- will shock Democrats and Republicans alike. He claimed "excessive partisanship that makes progress on public policy difficult to achieve as the motivation for his decision."

Only days ago, Bayh’s staff, close associates and Indiana Democratic Party Chairman Dan Parker, who was manager of Bayh’s re-election campaign, had assured an Indianapolis Star reporter hat he would definitely seek a third term in the U.S. Senate. And Democrats recently released a poll showing Bayh easily ahead of both former Sen. Dan Coats and former U.S. Rep. John Hostettler, two of the four Republicans seeking the GOP nomination.

When I got the news from an Indiana Democratic activist under the subject line "Uncork the Champagne," he pointed out something the mainstream media will never report: "a stealth campaign amongst Democrats in Indiana to withhold their active support from him this year probably had a lot to do with it."

There are a whole slew of equally awful Democrats who could run for Bayh's seat-- Blue Doug Baron Hill was almost guaranteed to lose his House seat this year so he could go for a Hail Mary pass. Blue Dog Brad Ellsworth is being talked up as the one most like Bayh. The GOP is stuck with Coats because it's too late for Pence or Daniels to file. But because Coats and Bayh did file, the state Democratic Party gets to pick a Bayh replacement. Early speculation is that Ellsworth can have it if he wants it and if he doesn't, it'll go to Evansville Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel or ex-Rep Tim Roemer, Ambassador to India. It has now been confirmed that Harold Ford hasn't flown around Indiana in a helicopter or filed to pay taxes there.

If you click on the image of this mess o' tweets, you'll be able to read them

Ya hafta call Evan Bayh "bipartisan" on account of he sometimes votes with the Dems

Write if you get work: In just a few years the guy on the left should be job-hunting, with the other guy following a couple of years later. What kind of work do you suppose they might be suitable for?

"[T]he onetime national rising star has reached a crossroads in a political career that many expected to end in the White House."

-- Washington Post political blogger Chris Cillizza,

in an item in today's paper

by Ken

Obviously Chris Cillizza's perspective on the career of Evan "This Bulb Is As Dim As It Gets" Bayh isn't exactly identical to that of most DWT readers. As he notes, "A check of aisle-crossing votes in The Washington Post's congressional voting database shows that Bayh is the most conservative Democratic senator in the 111th Congress." (It turns out he actually voted with his fellow party members 72 percent of the time. That's higher than I would have guessed.) I just wonder if those "many" who expected his rising star to end in the White House have ever listened to him speak.

If anything, however, our Chris's sympathetic outlook on Indiana'a famously dim-bulb senator makes his observations on our Evan's career "crossroads" more credible. Without further comment, then --

An uncertain future for the bipartisan Bayh

By Chris Cillizza
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 14, 2009

Sen. Evan Bayh's vote last week in favor of an amendment to the health-care bill that would have strengthened restrictions on how federal funds could be spent for abortions is the latest sign that the onetime national rising star has reached a crossroads in a political career that many expected to end in the White House.

Bayh (D-Ind.) was one of seven Democrats to cross party lines on the abortion-funding measure, a vote that many liberal interest groups cast as an open attempt to erode the legal rights of women. It's one in a series of Bayh votes that have drawn the ire of the party establishment -- he was one of three Democrats to vote against the omnibus spending bill Sunday and has been an outspoken critic of President Obama's "cap and trade" climate bill -- and it cemented his status as an apostate in the eyes of the Democratic base.

A check of aisle-crossing votes in The Washington Post's congressional voting database shows that Bayh is the most conservative Democratic senator in the 111th Congress, voting with the Democratic majority 72 percent of the time. (By comparison, Bayh voted with his party nearly 84 percent of the time in the 110th Congress, when he was being considered as a vice presidential nominee, and nearly 91 percent of the time in the 109th Congress, when he was considering a presidential run.)

While Bayh appears to be embracing a checks-and-balances role in the majority party -- he helped form a group of moderate-to-conservative senators earlier this year -- it is a role that virtually ensures he will not be a serious candidate for national office. Moderates don't tend to win presidential nominations -- see Joe Lieberman or Rudy Giuliani -- and, given that Bayh has been seriously considered as a running mate and then passed over twice in the past eight years, it's hard to see the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee putting him on his or her shortlist.

The seeming end of Bayh's national ambitions marks a fascinating turn of events for a man born into electoral politics. The only son of Marvella Bayh and Sen. Birch Bayh, a presidential candidate himself in 1976, Evan Bayh was governor of the Hoosier State by age 32 and effortlessly moved into the Senate in 1998. That fast rise -- Bayh is 53 years old -- is a blessing and a curse. He has achieved more than most politicians do in a lifetime, but he also has already risen and fallen as a potential national candidate well before most politicians ever begin to be talked about for those highest office.

All of which means that Bayh doesn't have an obvious next step in politics. It's why he seriously considered retiring in 2010 -- senior Democratic officials acknowledge they were genuinely concerned he might step aside -- before ultimately deciding to seek a third term next fall.

Bayh will, as he has throughout his political life, coast to victory next November thanks to his popularity, the weakness of his Republican opponents and his $13 million campaign war chest. But his political future is cloudier than ever before.

So the question now is --

ASSUMING HE LEAVES THE SENATE AFTER 2016,
WHAT KIND OF WORK IS OUR EVAN SUITED TO?

10. Good Humor Man (or other truck-centric ice-cream vendor)

9. WWF contender (with some nom de wrestling mat that includes the words "The Great White")

8. "Fries with that?"

7. Think-tank fellow (at low-capacity tank)

6. "Make money addressing envelopes in your spare time."

5. Mystery shopper

4. Live-action furry-animal mascot, Democratic Leadership Council

3. "Liberal" commentator on Fox Noise

2. C Street fellow

1. K Street fellow

#