Trump Has Failed America-- Badly-- So It Would Be Nice If The Democratic Party Stepped Up To The Plate For The Country

Die For Him Granpa by Nancy Ohanian

Frank Bruni's question-- Has Anyone Found Trump’s Soul? Anyone? in his Monday column seemed cheeky-- until you read it. He started by reminding his readers of how George W. Bush and Barack Obama demonstrated leadership in pulling the country together, the former after 9/11 and the latter after the Newtown murder of 28 children and teachers. Then he asked "Do you remember the moment when President Trump’s bearing and words made clear that he grasped not only the magnitude of this rapidly metastasizing pandemic but also our terror in the face of it? It passed me by, maybe because it never happened. In Trump’s predecessors, for all their imperfections, I could sense the beat of a heart and see the glimmer of a soul. In him I can’t, and that fills me with a sorrow and a rage that I quite frankly don’t know what to do with."

Americans are dying by the thousands, and he gloats about what a huge, rapt television audience he has. They’re confronting financial ruin and not sure how they’ll continue to pay for food and shelter, and he reprimands governors for not treating him with adequate adulation.

He’s not rising to the challenge before him, not even a millimeter. He’s shriveling into nothingness.

...In the Washington Post a few days ago, Michael Gerson, a conservative who worked in Bush’s White House, wrote that Trump’s spirit is “a vast, trackless wasteland.” Not exactly trackless. There are gaudy outposts of ego all along the horizon.

When the direness of this global health crisis began to be apparent, I was braced for the falsehoods and misinformation that are Trump’s trademarks. I was girded for the incompetence that defines an administration with such contempt for proper procedure and for true expertise.

But what has taken me by surprise and torn me up inside are the aloofness, arrogance, pettiness, meanness, narcissism and solipsism that persist in Trump-- that flourish in him-- even during a once-in-a-lifetime emergency that demands something nobler. Under normal circumstances, these traits are galling. Under the current ones, they’re gutting.

“I don’t take responsibility at all.” “Did you know I was number one on Facebook?” To bother with just one of those sentences while a nation trembles is disgusting. To bother with both, as Trump did, is perverse.

...And while I’m not looking to Trump for any panacea, is it too much to ask for some sign that the dying has made an impression on him, that the crying has penetrated his carapace and that he’s thinking about something other than his ratings? I watch. I wait. I suspect I’ll be doing that forever.

Different people are looking for different things from Trump. Surely, though, the Democratic Party is looking for ways to kick the shit out of him with his own actions and words and inactions. Yesterday, Politico's David Siders and Elana Schneider wrote that the party seems to have found a rallying cry: Trump tanked the economy... even if "framing a coherent economic argument that all the party’s factions can rally around is proving thorny." Yep... the ole problem of a tent too big coming to mean nothing at all. They wrote that "It’s already become a source of friction within the Democratic Party, even as some major Democratic outside groups begin pummeling Trump for the economic fallout of the pandemic. It‘s a message Democrats plan to amplify in coming months, long after the immediate health effects of the crisis subside."

The left flank is increasing pressure on Joe Biden, the party’s likely nominee, to adopt more progressive economic policies. Activists accuse Trump of prioritizing corporate America over low-wage workers, while many moderate Democrats are leery of drawing such distinctions, training their criticism of Trump solely on his initial mishandling of the pandemic.

“This is not just about saying, ‘Trump is not doing a good job,’” said Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a prominent supporter of Bernie Sanders, who remains in the presidential race. “That is absolutely a piece of it, but it's also about, what are you going to do? What is your vision? … We should be talking about a payroll guarantee, like a bold pay payroll guarantee program, we should be talking about canceling student debt. I mean, these are the things that, they're not just progressive priorities anymore, they are going to be desperate needs for the survival and the recovery of our people in our economy.”

Jayapal added that Biden, should he become the nominee, will “absolutely” come under pressure from progressives to reconsider those policies ideas in light of the crisis.

Democratic establishment SuperPACs, stinking of corruption and conservatism-- Priorities USA, American Bridge, PACRONYM and Biden's Win the West-- are highlighting unemployment statistics alongside coronavirus deaths, and Trump's inadequate response to the pandemic.

“Democrats, ever since before 2016, haven’t really had an economic profile. People couldn’t name what the Democratic economics was, and it was a major reason why Trump won in 2016,” said Celinda Lake, a leading Democratic strategist and pollster who works with Biden’s presidential campaign but was not speaking for Biden or his advisers.

In the coronavirus response, she said, “there’s a real opportunity to define … what is a people-centered economy, what is an economy that works for everyone, and we should be leaning into this.”

Robert Reich, the Clinton-era Labor secretary, said the crisis presents Biden with a unique opportunity to make policy changes that he might otherwise have difficulty explaining.

“Even if he wants to be perceived as cautious and prudent on issues like income support and health care, the pandemic gives him more room for being bold than he had before the pandemic,” Reich said. “A national trauma such as we are experiencing and definitely will experience over the next month or two enables a politician … to say, in effect, ‘I’ve now seen what the country needs in a way that the country has also experienced, and therefore I’m modifying the position.’”

While the general election is still seven months away, the effect on the electorate is likely to endure after weeks of deaths, stay-at-home orders, job losses and business closures.

“When we come out of this, millions of Americans will have a very different experience of what happened than they had at any time in their lifetimes before,” Reich said. “It’s almost like going through the Great Depression or World War II in the sense that the direct experience of a traumatic event changes attitudes towards government and public policy, sometimes in profound ways.”

In response to criticism from Democrats, Trump’s campaign has highlighted the relief measures he has signed into law, while accusing Biden of “sniping from the sidelines.” The president has suggested the economy will be moving again before the general election, and direct payments to millions of Americans-- even if late arriving-- could benefit him in November.

But the economic damage from the pandemic has already proved severe, and it is widely expected to worsen this month. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Friday for an expansion of the $2 trillion relief package Trump signed, including more money for small businesses and more direct payments to Americans.

Barry Goodman, a Democratic National Committee member and bundler for Biden, said Democrats should clobber Trump for his hesitance to embrace public health measures detrimental to the stock market, saying that “his infatuation with the stock market and keeping the economy running and humming … he believed that over the science.”

“He ended up tanking the economy worse than it ever could have been tanked,” Goodman said.

This is a brilliant video presentation. I really want you watch it so you can imagine someone playing it at the virtual Democratic Convention this year. Nevermind about that; it's as likely to be played by the Democratic Party as it is likely to be played by the Republican Party-- and that's a travesty. "Unite in solidarity with your fellow workers and press your demands" is something you could have heard at a Democratic Convention a few decades ago. "Capitalism is the root of all of today's evils and cannot solve the problems it creates." Ypu've have to go back a little further to have heard that at a Democratic Convention. "Those in power will listen to the rest of us if we can organize and really pressure them to enact our demands. Whether you make $15,000 a year of $150,000, if you sell your labor and hours of your life for a wage, you are working class. That should be a mark of pride because it's the working class that keeps this country running. The parasites at the very top don't care if you die. They would rather kill millions of Americans than lose a single percent of their wealth. It's time to remember the language of class struggle and fight for dignity and a livable future." You think you can get your garden variety Democratic Congress Member behind those sentiments? Like I've said before... the tent's too damn big. And the thermometer above? If you listen to the video, you'll know why I put that there; I guarantee it.

White House Nazi Stephen Miller Is Revamping The Department Of Homeland Security

Late Sunday afternoon, after the White House announced Trump had "accepted the resignation of " (rather than fired, a more accurate representation of objective reality) Homeland Security Secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, the member of Congress who is often the tip of the spear on progressive immigration policy, Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), released this statement:

Secretary Nielsen will go down in history as presiding over an exceptionally cruel regime that separated children from their parents and violated human rights. I welcome her resignation. But, that does not end our quest for accountability for the abuses that occurred on her watch and at the direction of this president. I hope the next Secretary uses this opportunity to reset the Department’s approach and lead with humane, common-sense immigration policies that are based on American values instead of hate.

Mike Siegel is running for a House seat (TX-10) currently occupied by the congressional architect of  Trump's "babies in cages" policy, Michael McCaul

I'm certain that Rep. Jayapal knows the Trump is likely to appoint someone even worse than Nielsen as the next head of DHS. Meanwhile, he immediately announced that Kevin McAleenan, the Customs and Border Protection Commissioner, is taking over as Acting DHS Secretary. Remember, this "resignation" Nielsen comes just two days after Señor Trumpanzee, suddenly withdrew his nominee to run ICE-- who had already been given the thumbs up by one of the two Senate committees charged with vetting him-- because he said he wants ICE to go is a "tougher direction." He's been fighting with Nielsen for not being tough enough. Perhaps the cages were too spacious?

Babies in Cages by Nancy Ohanian

Eventually her departure will be viewed as part of a total overhaul of DHS engineered by Trump's in-house neo-Nazi, Stephen Miller-- kicking Nielsen out was part of Miller's grand plan. Trump tweeted her resignation before she had a chance to resign; he's a really foul person, although I can't say she hasn't earned the abysmal treatment she's getting from him. This afternoon Miller made his move to purge mainstream conservatives from the DHS so they can be replaced with his kind of neo-fascists. Miller-- de facto immigration czar with no congressional oversight whatsoever-- ordered the ouster of Francis Cissna, the head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; Randolph Alles, the Secret Service director; and John Mitnik, the agency’s general counsel.

On CNN this morning, Jeffrey Toobin noted that Kirstjen Nielsen "is a great example of what happens when you go to work for Donald Trump. He is the great reputation killer. Here is this woman who was a reasonably admired bureaucrat. For the rest of her life people will look at her and think, 'Oh, that’s the woman who put children in cages.'"

CBS News reported that "it is unlikely McAleenan would be nominated as Nielsen's permanent replacement. It's unclear whether he would have to resign as CBP commissioner to take the job, and whether the line of succession at DHS would even allow for such a personnel move. Those legal issues would need to be sorted out." 

McAleenan has worked as CBP commissioner since the early days of Mr. Trump's administration, keeping a generally low profile. In a 2018 interview with the New York Times in the height of the concern over family separations at the border, McAleenan called Mr. Trump's attempt to halt the separations with an executive order an "important recalibration."

In recent days, Mr. Trump has threatened to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border or slap tariffs on cars made in Mexico coming into the U.S. if Mexico and Congress don't fix the situation at the border.

[After Trump publicly humiliated her and threatened to fire her] Nielsen became known for her vigorous defense of the "zero tolerance" policy resulting in family separations at the border, blaming Congress for a "loophole" in the laws that needs to be fixed. Nielsen claimed in a White House briefing last year that the administration was merely continuing a policy from "previous administrations" that mandates separating a child who is "in danger, there is no custodial relationship between 'family' members, or if the adult has broken the law."

"As long as illegal entry remains a criminal offense, DHS will not look the other way," Nielsen told reporters at the time. 

Revolving Door by Nancy Ohanian

One thing we can easily surmise is that Trump, who never had any respect for Nielsen to begin with, didn't fire her because of the horror of the admission to a court last week that his regime says it will take as much as two years to be able to identify 47,000 separated migrant children and return them to their parents. One has to wonder if the evangelicals who are a hefty majority of Trump's base can countenance even that most unholy possible action by their "president" in service to their hopes of overturning Roe v Wade. There doesn't seem to be any bottom at all to their adhesion to what is clearly-- at least to everyone else-- Satan's man on the planet.

This morning, NBC reported that the straw the broke the camel's back with Nielsen was Trump's demand-- sounds like Miller's demand-- that the child separation policy being reinstated. NBC's Julia Ainsley and Geoff Bennett reported that Trump has been carrying on about this "for months" and that it wants it reinstated in a big way. Miller has pounded it into Trump's head that the brutality of this policy has been the most effective tool they've deployed at deterring asylum-seekers.

And on CNN this morning, Frank Bruni noted that "[Nielsen] will go down more than Rex Tillerson and Jeff Sessions as what it’s like to work for Donald Trump in this administration. Your reputation is shredded. You compromise your principles, and at the end of the day, you end up paranoid... She was paranoid in recent weeks because she saw signs she was going to be canned even though the president wasn’t telling her. How do you work in this administration? It’s an acid bath, not a job... They are at [Trump's] mercy and whims."

Gina Raimondo Is Not A Moderate But Frank Bruni Sure Hates Progressives

Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse is a mainstream Democrat who was reelected in November with 231,477 votes (61.5%) against Republican Robert Flanders, who took 6 of Rhode Island's 39 municipalities. Frank Bruni's distorted puff piece on Rhode Island's right-of-center crooked governor, Gina Raimondo-- The Loneliness Of The Moderate Democrat didn't mention Whitehouse, only that Raimondo had been "reelected by a margin of more than 15 percentage points." She took 196,977 votes, significantly fewer than the normal Democrat won with. But that didn't fit Bruni's dishonest narrative. So why mention it? Bruni's whole twisted piece was deceptive, an attempt to paint the Republican wing of the Democratic Party heroic. Worst of all, he was happy to confuse "corrupt" and "right-of-center" with "moderate, saddened she isn't running for president." He bales that she "won her primary against a progressive rival by more than 20 points, then trounced her Republican opponent in the general election, 52.8% to 37.3%. No mention by Bruni that Obama won it both times he ran with over 62%-- just a little better Gore (61%) and Kerry (59.4%)-- and that even Hillary did better than her with 54.4%. 52.8% for a Democrat in Rhode island is pretty bad. Senator John Reed won his seat last time he was reelected with over 70%.

Also no mention that she spent over $7 million, to Republican Allan Fung's $2.3 million. Independent outside spending for her was at least $5.5 million more, compared to just $1.8 million for Fung. Her primary challenger, Matt Brown, was also swamped by her flood of corporate money. Last year The Intercept's Aída Chávez did a much better job of reporting truthfully than Bruni did for The Times.

Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo is working to fend off a progressive, albeit underfunded, primary challenge from the left. Matt Brown, a former Rhode Island secretary of state, is running a grassroots campaign against Raimondo, who he describes as “the most extreme corporatist Democrat in the country.”

The Democratic Governors Association has pumped in $1 million to support Raimondo, money that won’t be available for Georgia, Florida, or Maryland. EMILY’s List, which helps elect pro-choice women, jumped in as well, spending $345,000 on pre-primary mailers for the incumbent. Although Raimondo presents herself as pro-choice, she was criticized by reproductive rights advocates for passing what amounted to restrictions on abortion access during her first term in office and is listed as “mixed-choice” by NARAL Pro-Choice America.

A July survey found Raimondo with a 40 percent job approval rating among the general public and 58 percent among Democrats. That dropped to 29 percent among independents, who are legally allowed to vote in Wednesday’s primary.

Raimondo, a former venture capitalist, has raised nearly $7.8 million for her re-election, raking in much of her fundraising from the same corporate players responsible for the state’s fiscal problems. The claim of “most extreme corporatist” may sound like hyperbole, but as state treasurer, Raimondo touched off a scandal by pushing through pension reform legislation that handed a billion dollars of state worker money over to hedge funds with links to the conservative movement, which harvested eye-popping fees.

...Raimondo’s head-to-head polling calls into question the conventional argument that centrist or pro-corporate candidates deserve support because they are more electable. “She’s taken millions in campaign contributions from Wall Street, fossil fuel industry, tobacco industry, lobbyists, corporations, tax breaks, and benefits from the state,” Brown said in an interview. “And she has, I think, raised a total of $7 million dollars now for this race and yet, as you point out, still a large majority of Rhode Islanders are looking for a different candidate with a different vision.”

Throughout her political career, Raimondo has also received thousands of dollars from the family that owns Purdue Pharma, a company widely blamed for fueling the opioid epidemic.

Brown’s campaign has sworn off corporate political action committee money, relying instead on individual contributions. The campaign boasts hundreds of volunteers that knock on doors and hold phone-banking sessions. In the first two months of the campaign, he said, they held over 70 events all across the state, “in people’s living rooms, talking to their friends and neighbors.” As for his policies, he’s running on “Medicare for All,” the creation of a public bank, tuition-free college, undoing Raimondo’s cuts to Medicaid, and a “Green New Deal.”

...Raimondo has refused to participate in even a single debate with her primary opponent. “She has funded her campaign with millions of dollars from Wall Street and corporations in an attempt to buy the election, while doing no debates with me about our records and our visions for the state,” Brown said. “So, it’s really-- the kind of campaign she’s running is not democracy.” Raimondo told the Providence Journal she skipped out on debating because Brown is “not operating in good faith,” accusing him of telling lies.

The only conclusion one can come to when a candidate avoids debate, Brown said, is that the candidate has an indefensible record. “And in her case, it’s a record of always working for Wall Street and corporations at the expense of the people. It’s a record of cutting Medicaid and giving out corporate giveaways, handouts, out to handpicked corporations that are often her campaign donors,” he continued.

“It’s a record of taking money from the executives of a gas company and then turning around and announcing that we’re going to do ‘whatever we have to to make sure we’re successful here at building a fracked gas and diesel oil burning plant in Rhode Island,’ which would be bad for everyone in the state, bad for our future, bad for our children. The only one it’s good for is the corporation. The fracked gas corporation, they’d make a bundle off Rhode Islanders, and Gov. Raimondo gets campaign contributions from them in return.”

Frank Bruni looked at that pile of congealed puke and calls it "moderate" and just could not wait to bash Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in his shameless and misleading propaganda column. "She can't tweet worth a damn," he wrote, "and the same goes for Instagram. She winces at talk of a top marginal tax rate of 70 percent and cringes at the growing use of 'corporatist' as a slur against Democratic politicians deemed too cozy with business interests. She thinks that big companies often need to be prodded forcefully to do right by their employees, but that it’s bad policy and bad politics to paint them as the enemy." No one will ever confuse Gina Raimondo with an enemy of Big Business; no need to worry about that. She's an old style conservative who even hates the idea of a minimum wage for workers.

She recalled an exchange with college students not long ago. One of them said: “I get who you are. You’re one of those spineless centrists.”

“And I was like, ‘Excuse me?’,” she said. “It takes a lot of spine to be a centrist in America today. You get whacked from the left and whacked from the right. That’s my life. I get whacked.”

Moderate Democrats have certainly had their day and their sway. In fact the passions of the left arise in part from how much compromise there has been-- and here we are stuck with Donald Trump. The rage of less moderate Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is earned and righteous. And Raimondo said precisely that to me.

But Ocasio-Cortez is by no means the whole of the Democratic Party. And is the leftward lurch that she personifies the best and safest bet for 2020? I worry, because there’s no political priority higher than limiting Trump to one term. Raimondo also worries-- a lot.

“So many Democrats just assume we’re going to win,” she said. “They underestimate how hard it’s going to be.” And it might be a serious tactical mistake, she added, to nominate any candidate who seems to be at war with capitalism itself or entertains the idea of a guaranteed minimum income.

“We have become the party that is anti-business,” she told me. “We need to be the party of work.”

She acknowledged that “the system we have today is totally broken.” She cited grotesque income inequality. She noted that too many Americans have no economic security and no prospects for achieving it.

“But I fall in the camp of: Let’s fix it,” she said. “Let’s embrace business to come to the table. Someone needs to make the case that it’s in the best interest of businesses and wealthy people to be better corporate citizens. Pay for health care. Help people get their college degree. Pay for job training.”

Along those lines, she recently proposed that companies doing business in Rhode Island be taxed up to $1,500 annually for every employee who is enrolled in Medicaid because he or she can’t get health insurance through a company-sponsored plan. “I hope that they’re embarrassed,” she said.

But, she added, “Where I think we are at risk is if all we do is beat up and crap on businesses.”

Sound like a Republican to you? Even Bruni admits her right-wing bullshit is "an exaggeration of where the party is." But he forgives her instantly for it; "I take her point." He sure does. He goes on the moan that "The media attention to full-throttle progressives among newly elected House Democrats is disproportionate to their numbers, and it sometimes obscures a sizable, practical middle. Besides, their more moderate peers are the ones who wrested seats from Republicans in districts that, like America, aren’t deep red or emphatically blue. 'I don’t think the lefties can win a general election,' Raimondo said. But, she conceded, 'Who knows? I’m not running in 2020. I could have missed the boat.'"

David Segal, a former Green Party city councilman who later joined the Democrats, represented East Providence in the state House and founded Rhode Island's Progressive Caucus, told us that "Decades of neoliberal policies that assume we should outsource political decisions to 'the market' have ruined untold millions of lives and left our democracy strained. Just as a consensus is emerging that we must act to systematically reform our political economy by instituting a new, progressive social contract, implementing state programs that provide for the general welfare, and undermining the power of this generation's robber barons, my governor gains praise in the paper of record by asserting that we should solve of nation's vast problems by begging our corporate overlords for more crumbs. It's appalling, but in the context of Raimondo's record of subservience to Wall Street and the donor class, it is anything but surprising."

Did Lindsey Graham's Shameless Audition And His Hissy Fits Make You Think "Alpha Male?"

Yesterday we appended most of John Pavlovitz's short essay, "Confessions of a Proud Beta Male," to Digby's Frat-Boy McDrunkFace post. I found it odd that Pavlovitz included Graham-- a bit of a flamer-- of all people, as an example of "an alpha-male." Yesterday in the NY Times, Frank Bruni featured him as the star of the saddest story in Washington. Remember when Lindsey told Fox News viewers that Trump is "a kook, crazy, unfit for office... and opportunist?" No? Watch the clip up top.

Poor Lindsey, who lives with his male lover in a lovely DC townhouse, and really doesn't want to run for the Senate again in South Carolina in 2020. He'll be 65 by then, hoping for a 3rd term from an increasingly radicalized Republican Party. Will there be an ugly primary? Will he be completely dependent on Trump for his reelection?



Talk about an opportunist! Bruni began by reminding everyone that "The battle over Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court was an especially ugly episode of a reality-show presidency that degrades almost everyone swept up in it, and many characters stagger away from it looking worse than ever. That’s Senator Lindsey Graham you see at the head of the pack. That’s Graham you hear talking and talking and talking some more, in committee rooms and on stages and before the television cameras that he rushes to the way a toddler chases soap bubbles. His words are whichever ones guarantee a major role and a powerful patron, which means that these days he sounds like a more articulate echo of his golfing buddy: Donald Trump. That wouldn’t, by itself, be cause to dwell on him. Washington is lousy with lackeys, and not even the maddest of kings thins their ranks." Sad. Except for Trump, who just got the ultimate revenge. Poor Lindsey thinks Trump is going to kale him Attorney General. Sure he will... just the way he made Mitt Romney eat snails and then rejected him for the Secretary of State job. That audition Lindsey just did was horrific for most American... hilarious for Trump.

Graham is special. He really is. I can’t think of another Republican whose journey from anti-Trump outrage to pro-Trump obsequiousness was quite so illogical or half as sad, and his conduct during the war over Kavanaugh completed it. For the president he fought overtime, he fought nasty and he fought without nuance.

In so doing, he distilled our rotten politics-- its transactional nature, its tribal fury, its hysterical pitch-- as neatly as anybody in the current Congress does.

Has a diva at La Scala ever delivered an aria as overwrought as the one that Graham performed on the day when both Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee? I doubt it.

“Boy, you all want power,” Graham, who serves on the committee, railed at his Democratic colleagues, accusing them of ginning up accusations against Kavanaugh. “God, I hope you never get it.” Because Graham and his fellow Republicans exercise it so much more responsibly? Because they’re so principled themselves? I guess that’s why they minimize Russian interference in our elections; indulge Trump’s bromances with Vladimir Putin, Rodrigo Duterte and Kim Jong-un; and smile upon his mendacity, misogyny, racism and unchecked greed. They’re modeling integrity in government.

“You want this seat?” Graham said to them. “I hope you never get it.” No, Senator Graham, you do more than hope. You cheat. Let me introduce you to Merrick Garland, a figure far less partisan than Kavanaugh and thus much more deserving of a seat on the highest court in the land. You and your Republican colleagues in the Senate, every bit as desirous of power as Democrats are, crushed him, and the fact that it didn’t involve an attack on his reputation doesn’t diminish its ruthlessness.

“This is not a job interview,” Graham told Kavanaugh, soothing him. “This is hell.”

Interesting word choice. I remember when Graham used “hell” in a different context. This was back in December 2015. He was campaigning vainly for the Republican presidential nomination, saw Trump clearly and didn’t suck up to him.

“You know how you make America great again?” Graham said then. “Tell Donald Trump to go to hell.”

“If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed,” he tweeted, apparently referring to the Republican Party’s prospects in 2016. “And we will deserve it.” He called Trump the “world’s biggest jackass.” He said that choosing between Trump and Senator Ted Cruz, who survived much deeper into the party’s 2016 presidential primary than Graham did, was like deciding whether to be shot or poisoned. Trump returned these kindnesses by publicly divulging Graham’s mobile phone number and forcing him to get a new one.

There were sound policy reasons for Graham’s revulsion. At the risk of alienating some of the conservatives in South Carolina who routinely voted for him, he had pressed for sensible immigration reform, the kind that didn’t involve ethnic slurs, the forced separation of children from their parents and border walls. He was one of the Senate’s most ardent hawks, and Trump was dissing foreign military interventions, damning NATO, pimping for Putin and peddling isolationism.

There were also personal reasons for Graham’s revulsion. Graham’s closest ally and constant companion in the Senate, a man he claimed to revere beyond measure, was John McCain. And Trump, at the beginning of his campaign, bizarrely and grotesquely mocked McCain’s long, brutal years as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese. Trump’s belittling of McCain never ceased, and Graham took proper offense-- for a while. Then Trump became president, started inviting Graham to play golf and Graham parted ways with his nerve and his spine. What beautiful fairways you have, Mr. President. What a virile tee shot.

That’s the sad part I mentioned. And this is the absolutely pathetic twist: McCain, battling brain cancer, stopped spending much time in Washington, and as his health deteriorated, Graham’s ardor and cheerleading for Trump intensified. McCain, you see, wasn’t just Graham’s friend. He was his road to greater relevance. And Trump presented a veritable expressway. So Graham switched vehicles and directions, and pressed the pedal to the metal.

He went from defending Jeff Sessions to pushing him toward the exit, from sounding the alarm about Russia to hyperventilating about the Justice Department and the F.B.I., from calling Trump a “kook” to savaging the media for portraying him as one, from wanting to put Trump on a bed of nails to fluffing his pillows and smoothing his duvet. At times he gushes so much that he makes Rudy Giuliani look withholding.

Shocker of shockers: He now has a nearly open line to the president and the president in turn calls him. White House reporters routinely mention this and him. He has all the TV time that he could ever want. On Thursday he got a prime spot at The Atlantic Festival in Washington, where he was interviewed by the magazine’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg. On Friday he got a big profile in the Style section of the Washington Post.

He claims that he’s serving a higher purpose by softening Trump’s stances where they sorely need softening, but that certainly hasn’t happened with immigration. He notes that he does chastise Trump occasionally.

But his smearing of Christine Blasey Ford and the Democrats who championed her was so vehement that he earned public raves from Giuliani, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Eric Trump and Sean Hannity.

They and the president are his constituency now, and his agenda? According to a few people who know him well, he’s auditioning for attorney general.

Him or Sessions? It’s like deciding whether to be shot or poisoned. And to plunder a quote from a quintessential Washington hack: God, I hope he never gets it.

Good Candidates/Bad Candidates... It's Not Like Throwing Darts At A Wall Of Candidates' Photos

Another cue that someone's likely to be good

I graduated college and went to live overseas-- actually I just went for a summer vacation but stayed for almost 7 years-- traveling and living in various places in Europe, Africa and Asia.Once Nixon was removed I came home and eventually washed up in San Francisco and had to get a job in the real world, something I had never experienced. Previously I had worked as a smuggler and then in a meditation center. So I got a job, via a Sufi friend from the meditation center, working in a p.r. firm. I didn't work there long-- maybe a year or so-- but long enough to learned how to spot a lazy reporter's newspaper article that was basically written by a p.r. firm, the way the DCCC wrote the Frank Bruni, Liriel Higa feature, 13 Faces That Tell The Story Of 2018 in the NY Times Friday.

The photos are what I'd call original work. Very nice... but some of us are old enough to remember when we could expect original reporting from The Times, not hack jobs cribbed from a glorified p.r. agency on behalf of its clients. They weren't even subtle. Who do you think wrote this bit of prose?

Usually you only get to dream about a candidate like Chrissy Houlahan. People in the Philadelphia suburbs actually get to vote for her. She’s brainy: a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from Stanford, a master’s in technology and policy from M.I.T. She’s bold: service in the U.S. Air Force. She has entrepreneurial bona fides from her years as the chief operating officer of an athletic wear company but also had a top job for a group promoting childhood literacy. She's a wife and mother, with two grown daughters.

Congratulations, Chrissy! Your p.r. firm got you on the cover of the Rolling Stone... or something like that. I was talking with a congressman yesterday who wanted to contribute some money to the best candidates. He asked me who the best ones are. I asked him-- like I ask everyone who makes that inquiry of me-- what his metrics are for "best." I was so happy. His metrics were exactly the same as mine! He just wanted someone who would make a great member if he or she were to be elected. We talked for a long time about how easy it is if the candidate was in the state legislature. We both agreed that super-performers in state legislatures-- like Jamie Raskin (MD), Parmila Jayapal (WA), Ted Lieu (CA), Karen Bass (CA), Katherine Clark (MA), Bonnie Watson Coleman (NJ)-- make excellent members of Congress. Conversely horrible state legislators-- like Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Henry Cuellar (TX), Tom O'Halleran (AZ), Al Lawson (FL), Lou Correa (CA), Donald Norcross (NJ), Juan Vargas (CA-- make horrible members of Congress.

Based on that, you can deduce that sure bets this cycle would include Lisa Brown (WA), Jared Golden (ME), and Rashida Tlaib (MI). And you can also deduce that among next year's worst congressmembers will be Jeff Van Drew (NJ), Paul Davis (KS) and Anthony Brindisi (NY).

But what about the candidates who were in legislature? The DCCC certainly prefers them, since they are mystery meat candidates. Most of these years crop were in the military or law enforcement. Some of them came out great and some of them came out looking like they're going to be absolute shit in Congress-- which brings us back to Bruni's shit Times article. You learn a lot about Houlahan from Bruni-- but nothing that will give you a clue about what kind of legislator she will be. He didn't even bother to mention-- or the DCCC didn't tell him, standard operating procedure for them-- that she's part of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, already having joining the conservative Wall Street-owned New Dems. I guess she could turn out good-- but I can;'t think of any of the dozens and dozens of New Dems who ever had. They all suck. Every single one of them sucks. But Houlahan will be the first one who doesn't. Anyone want to bet me?

Another one of the 13: Katie Hill (CA)-- also a New Dem... also with nothing that Bruni thought it would be worthwhile to inform his readers about a little something that might indicate what sort of a legislator she will be. (Obviously he decided not to let anyone know she-- who was personally warned by yours truly several times-- had joined the New Dems. Maybe Houlahan and Katie will be the first two good New Dems ever. What's the chance? Very nice photo, though. Did I congratulate Damon Winter for the beautiful photographs? And there are plenty of other New Dems in the story... another hint it was fed to Bruni by the DCCC, rather than, say, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which probably would tend to include more candidates from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.

Another one where Bruni gives no clue about policy is next-- Lauren Underwood. And again, we learn all the kinds of things that would be perfect for People Magazine, but alas, nothing remotely related to how she stands on issues. I mean I can deduce she might be bipolar or schizophrenic-- I never remember which is which-- but I couldn't tell you how she'll approach Medicare-For-All, which, after all, is what over 70% of Americans want. This is a good time for me to mention that if you click on the thermometer here on the right, you'll get too a campaign page with progressive candidates who won their primaries and were then abandoned by the DCCC. I can't believe it took me this long to get to that.

Elissa Slotkin (MI) is another New Dem, but you'd never know it from Bruni. She's interested in the state of health care, he mentions. Yes? And? And? Nothing. It gets worse. There are some really superb candidates running for Congress this cycle, but the DCCC doesn't care about any of them, and, coincidentally I'm sure, neither does Bruni and his team. Actually, they couldn't resist including one-- it was the tabloid notoriety last week of Ammar Campa-Najjar (CA)-- and I can imagine the DCCC wanted to punch him for ruining their piece with him... But 12 out of 13 ain't bad. No, no... I mean they'll probably be bad, but the p.r. firm did well for the clients.

Wondering What's Wrong With The DCCC? Matt Taibbi Gets It Right... 100%

How about better congressional leadership?

In the new issue of the Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi takes issue with Frank Bruni's NY Times column-- another sour centrist reaction to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's dsiplacement of centrist standard bearer (and avatar of personal and systemic corruption), Joe Crowley. Democratic socialism frightens the establishment. It's fine with me, but... the framing scares the shit out of liberals. One leftwing member of Congress wrote to me this morning: "Do you think better way to frame progressive policy is restricting unfettered capitalism that privileges the connected and having true free enterprise where all Americans can participate. Off record I’m not for the dem socialism framing." If he's not, no one will be-- other than the ones who will get elected in November. "I'd frame the distinction as between public service and self-service," says Mike Siegel, the Democratic nominee in TX-10 who, endorsed by Progressive Democrats of America and Our Revolution Texas, won his primary and is now being ignored by the DCCC. "My district was gerrymandered to be 60% Republican, but the incumbent, Rep. McCaul, doesn't even try to serve that 60%. He gives tax breaks to mega-millionaires like himself while seeking cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. He supports $25 billion for a Border Wall but won't even get adequate funding to protect Harris County and other areas from hurricane flooding. Rural hospitals are closing while he holds fundraisers at Trump's DC hotel and accepts millions in PAC donations. In this part of Texas, the distinction between the Democrats and DSA is lost on many voters, but they understand when a corrupt politician is failing to offer even the most basic representation."

Taibbi's essay could be called Part II of Paul Glastris' "Winning Is Not Enough" article we looked at yesterday in this time slot. "Ocasio-Cortez is a Democratic Socialist," wrote Taibbi, "who worked on the 2016 campaign of Bernie Sanders. She espouses several political views-- like abolishing ICE, favoring a government jobs program and free college education-- that make D.C. thinkfluencers nervous." So, so nervous... especially the elderly who were in the 30s and 40s when McGovern had the election stolen by Nixon's little escapade.

Since she ousted ossifying Democratic Party lifer Joe Crowley in the New York primary, pundits have been scrambling to explain her win as something other than a symbolic rejection of insider politics.

They’re saying she won because of identity politics, because of clever marketing and because she’s a working-class local. We’ve seen the Washington Post argue there was no anti-insider meaning in her victory, because “the argument that there is a Democratic establishment resisting the progressive tide is a straw man.”

If the existence of an obstructionist Democratic Party is one fairy tale, Bruni now adds another: that the rise of “Democratic Socialists” and “Justice Democrats” is a sexy story.

Actually, Bruni insists, it’s centrism that’s really “dreamy.”

His argument is that you need centrist positions to win swing districts, and winning with an incremental agenda is more exciting than losing on a platform of sweeping change. Citing the special election victory of centrist wonder boy Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania, Bruni writes:

“When Lamb, a Pennsylvania Democrat, triumphed in a special election there last March, snatching a seat that had been in Republican hands, he did so with a moderate aura and an opposition to single-payer health care.” Lamb, whose aw-shucks handsomeness recalls a Band of Brothers extra, is the wet dream of new establishment Democrats. He’s ex-military, a father, flexible on guns, without a ton of political experience and with a working class background (without the working class politics).

America’s high mullah of conventional wisdom, Jonathan Chait, even breathlessly suggested Democrats “run the Conor Lamb strategy over and over.” Noting there were plenty of “ridiculously wholesome” types to choose from, Chait suggested (as if it were a new idea) that Democrats steal the Republican electoral strategy:

“[The Republicans’] strategy can be hacked. The most powerful Republican theme is that Democrats are not ‘one of us’: They aren’t tough, and they don’t love their country. A candidate with a compelling biography-- especially those with a military background-- can disarm these attacks pretty easily.”

This, ultimately is the message: In order to win, Democrats need to pull a fake-out by pushing squeaky-clean ex-vets without political histories, and hope that right-leaning voters will project their backwards-ass dreams onto these walking blank canvases.

The notion that Democrats need to look and act more like Republicans to win elections has been practically a religious tenet in Washington for more than 30 years. From the embrace of NAFTA to welfare reform to triangulation to repealing the Glass-Steagall Act to slobbering over Wesley Clark (instead of opposing the Iraq war) to hiring infamous Republican media hitman David Brock, this soul-sucking drift has been sold to voters as an electorally necessary compromise. Now we’re supposed to understand that it’s sexy, too?

This is the Democratic Party that lost the presidency in 2016 to a crypto-fascist game-show host with near-record negatives-- only ex-Klansman David Duke in 1992 was a more roundly-despised candidate than Trump-- and legislatively has for a decade now suffered mass losses on the national and state levels.

Why? Because, as noted here previously, “centrists” don’t really exist. There may be individuals who self-identify that way, but the demographic is mostly a fiction. There’s donor money to be had there, but not many votes.

When the Democrats abandoned their reliance on labor in the Eighties, and began to be funded by the same big companies that backed Republicans, our politics devolved into a contest between two employer-supported factions. Neither really cared about the numerical majority of poor or working-class voters, so they had to get creative with their politics.

The Republican pitch was an open con: the CEO sect hoovering Middle American votes by trotting out xenophobic Bible-thumpers who waved the flag and pretended to love beer, chainsaws, snowmobiles and shooting foreigners, while mostly just deregulating the economy.

The Democratic pitch revolved around social issues like choice and was far less transparently fraudulent. But the party’s proponents had one bad habit that kept putting them in a hole. Repeatedly, when asked to make policy changes favored by sizable majorities of Democratic voters (and often by majorities of all voters), party leaders said: We can’t do that: we need to win!

Remember when a majority of Democrats were against the Iraq war, but 29 Democratic Senators still ended up voting to give Bush the power to invade? Remember when, five years later, a war-weary 82 percent of Democrats wanted out of Iraq, but Nancy Pelosi said it was necessary to keep authorizing funds for the war to “support the troops” and “not leave them in harm’s way”?

Votes like this were always explained in terms of expediency, i.e., what was necessary to conquer the middle and win elections. On war issues especially, it was like Bill Clinton said: Scared people would “rather have someone strong and wrong than weak and right.” If Dems wanted to get back in power, they had to shelve conscience, at least temporarily, and embrace pragmatism.

But Iraq turned out to be a disaster, morally and politically. The party would have been better off listening to its voters. Party support of the invasion was based on fictitious pragmatic concerns, as were many positions it would take in defiance of constituents.

What actual people are against importing cheap Canadian generic pharmaceuticals? Where’s the group of people intent on protecting our thousand-headed hydra of insurers, so that doctors and hospitals can waste time and money on paperwork? What individual human being is out there who just can’t stand the thought of allowing Medicare to negotiate lower bulk prices?

For that matter, where’s that sexy vote-rich crowd of people who are hell-bent on making sure banks have easier stress tests, and don't have to increase their capital reserves? Where’s the mob that really wants to preserve the payroll-tax cutoff for high-income earners? That wants desperately to remove Malaysia from a list of human traffickers so it can join a free-trade pact?

There are no such people. These are not human positions. These are the positions of health insurers, pharmaceutical companies, job-exporting manufacturers, defense contractors and other high-dollar donors.

Nobody sits around the dinner table demanding that we keep derivative exchanges opaque, or retain the carried-interest tax break. You’re not winning independents with those positions. You’re just stroking a few lobbyists and their clients.

This is what we’re really talking about, when we talk about the “center” in America. The interests behind these positions are only the “center” in the sense that they’re a numerically tiny group of fat cats sitting between two increasingly enormous populations of pissed-off human voters.

It’s no Scooby-Doo mystery what most Democratic voters want: Stricter gun laws, stronger support of unions, reduced defense spending, a raise in the minimum wage, single-payer health care, tougher enforcement of white collar crime, an end to pointless wars and countless other relatively obvious demands.

But one of the key contentions of people like Bruni is that actually asking for these things is an electoral non-starter. He quotes a Third Way think-tanker as saying the next Democratic House majority should “primarily be focused on their oversight role and stopping Trump.”

Which isn’t bad, but conditioning people to expect less is also an old political bogeyman tactic. This sad-sack “wait til’ next year” routine is just a way to scare people away from voting their own interests. It’s not sexy. It doesn’t even work. It’s time to try something new.

I was talking about Taibbi's essay with Alan Grayson yesterday. He laughed ironically and reminded me that "We already ran that experiment once, and the resulting Blue Dog Coalition went from 54 members before the 2010 election to 14 after the 2012 election (despite a quarter of a billion dollars wasted to try to protect their seats). Nominating Democrats-in-name-only simply doesn’t work."

J.D. Scholten, the progressive going up against Steve King in western Iowa isn't a very ideological guy. Instead he's spent the last year driving an RV around his massive, sparsely populated district and asking voters what they want from a Representative in Washington. He's more interested in what they have to say than DC consultants and political pros. "People tell me all of the time that you have to be for this or for that if you want to beat Steve King. How has that worked so far? I’m running on being myself and for fighting for things that will improve my district: Medicare-for-All, raising the minimum wage, breaking the system that’s reliant of mega donors and special interests, etc..."

Blue America is in the final stages of vetting the congressional candidates for the bluest congressional seat in America held by a Republican, Miami's FL-27. Matt Haggman sure looks like the best bet so far. Yesterday, he told us that "Why I’m running, and what’s required in Congress today, is dramatic overhaul. Not incremental tweaks but deep and widespread change. The notion that we need cookie cutter candidates who will run to the center as a means to win is absurd and begs the question, what do we actually stand for? This election needs to be more than simply retaking the House but a moment of renewal in our politics in which we chart an entirely new path and practice our politics in new ways. That’s why we are running a campaign where we are not accepting contributions from PACs or federal lobbyists. Why I’ve declared that I would vote for new people to lead the party in the next Congress. That’s why I am for Medicare for All, comprehensive immigration reform that includes abolishing ICE, free college, quickly transitioning our economy to one powered by renewables. And why now, more than ever, we need new people in Congress."

The Republican Party Is About To Amp Up Its War Against The Poor In A Really Big Way

As NY Times columnist Frank Bruni noted yesterday, there isn't a core of shrewdness beneath Señor Trumpanzee's antics nor a method to his madness. "Mostly, there’s a raging, pouting child... The House passed health care legislation that blatantly contradicted his incessant promises of terrific, inexpensive coverage and betrayed the hard-luck Americans whose champion he purported to be. The Senate made clear that it was going nowhere anyway. He’s not coming to anyone’s rescue, just giving the Trump-Kushner clan a loftier status and more leverage for enriching themselves. He’s not draining the swamp. He’s globalizing it... He’s 70, but if we’re talking about deeds and not digits, psychological maturity instead of epidermal sag, he’s our youngest president ever, with the frailest ego. Aides feed him his information in easily digested bites: pictures, charts. They whisper sweet grandiosities in his ear. They devise strategies to shield him from upset and work around his ever-shifting moods. They cross their fingers and they tremble. So do I. And when I picture him at that Time magazine dinner, with a portion bigger than anybody else’s, I don’t see him on a throne. I see him in a highchair, keeping his audience guessing about just how much ice cream he’ll fling against the wall."

And Paul Ryan and Miss McConnell put up with it because he'll blithely sign all their devastating toxic agenda items without even reading them or understanding them-- or caring one way or another about what kind of misery and destruction they're likely to bring in their wake. And they have some plans to bring quite a bit.

Rachel Bade made that point Sunday in a Politico posting, Republicans plan massive cuts to programs for the poor. Keep in mind that that new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released yesterday indicates that only 23% of Americans approve of TrumpCare and that the Democrats hope to use TrumpCare as the premier issue in the 2018 midterms. Bade made the point that Ryan and his crew of slash-and-burn sociopaths "just voted to slash hundreds of billions of dollars in health care for the poor as part of their Obamacare replacement. Now, they’re weighing a plan to take the scalpel to programs that provide meals to needy kids and housing and education assistance for low-income families." Scalpel? More like an ax... or chain saw.

Trump’s refusal to overhaul Social Security and Medicare-- and his pricey wish-list for infrastructure, a border wall and tax cuts-- is sending House budget writers scouring for pennies in politically-sensitive places: safety-net programs for the most vulnerable.

Under enormous internal pressure to quickly balance the budget, Republicans are considering slashing more than $400 billion in spending through a process to evade Democratic filibusters in the Senate, multiple sources told Politico.

The proposal, which would be part of the House Budget Committee's fiscal 2018 budget, won't specify which programs will get the ax; instead it will instruct committees to figure out what to cut to reach the savings. But among the programs most likely on the chopping block, the sources say, are food stamps, welfare, income assistance for the disabled and perhaps even veterans’ benefits.

If enacted, such a plan to curb safety-net programs-- all while juicing the Pentagon’s budget and slicing corporate tax rates-- would amount to the biggest shift in federal spending priorities in decades.



Atop that, GOP budget writers will also likely include Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) proposal to essentially privatize Medicare in their fiscal 2018 budget, despite Trump’s unwavering rejection of the idea. While that proposal is more symbolic and won’t become law under this budget, it’s just another thorny issue that will have Democrats again accusing Republicans of “pushing Granny off the cliff.”

...Enraged by Democrats claiming victory after last month’s government funding agreement, White House officials in recent weeks have pressed Hill Republicans to include more Trump priorities in the fiscal 2018 blueprint.

House Budget Republicans hope to incorporate those wishes and are expected, for example, to budget for Trump’s infrastructure plan. Tax reform instructions will also be included in the budget, paving the way for both chambers to use the powerful budget reconciliation process to push a partisan tax bill through Congress on simple majority votes, as well as the $400 billion in mandatory cuts.

“The critique last time was that we didn’t embed enough Trump agenda items into our budget,” said Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.), a Budget panel member. “[Trump has] made it clear it will be embedded in this budget. … And so people will see a process much more aligned with President Trump’s agenda in this forthcoming budget.”

New spending, however, makes already tough math even trickier for a party whose mantra is “balance the budget in 10 years.” Lawmakers need to cut roughly $8 trillion to meet that goal, budget experts say. And while a quarter of their savings in previous budgets came from repealing Obamacare and slicing $1 trillion from Medicaid, Republicans cannot count on those savings anymore because their health care bill sucked up all but $150 billion of that stash, mere pocket change to play with.

Republicans’ first reflex would be to turn to entitlement reform to find savings. Medicare and Social Security, after all, comprise the lion’s share of government spending and more than 70 percent of all mandatory spending.

But while former Freedom Caucus conservative-turned-White House budget director Mick Mulvaney has tried to convince the president of the merits of such reforms, Trump has refused to back down on his campaign pledge to leave Medicare and Social Security alone. (He’s reversed himself on a vow not to touch Medicaid, which would see $880 billion in cuts under the Obamacare repeal bill passed by the House.)

Mulvaney, sources say, has been huddling on a weekly basis with House Budget Chairwoman Diane Black (R-Tenn.) and Senate Budget Chairman Mike Enzi (R-Wy.) to plot a path forward. There appears to be some common ground to consider cuts to other smaller entitlement programs: While the Office of Management and Budget would not respond to request for comment, CQ reported Tuesday that the White House was also considering hundreds of billions in cuts to the same programs being eyed by House budget writers.

The other day, we met Randy Bryce, the Democratic and union activist likely to take on Ryan in 2018. Yesterday he told me that "Aside from having complete control over every arm of the United States government, Republicans in D.C. can’t get a single thing accomplished. We are now seeing very clearly who holds the real power. It’s not the majority of voters-- it’s all special interests. We are seeing that although cats do nothing but fight, they still produce a lot of kittens. Problem is-- the 'have nots' get to take care of them while those who 'have' only seek to fill the litter box." Bryce is going to a formidable opponent for Ryan, even if the DCCC continues to pretend Ryan is invincible and not worth targeting.

In a way we are lucky. If Donald Trump had the experience or intelligence to actually sit behind the desk in the Oval Office, maybe one of his campaign promises would have been kept.

It would appear that frustration may be taking control of the legislative process. Seeing as the courts have determined that not only are corporations people, but that corporations are the only people that matter, be prepared to enjoy an abundance of less.

We saw the same thing happen in Wisconsin under Scott Walker. Just when we thought things could not get worse-- they did.

If the Republicans get their act together, we will truly be in a world of hurt. Hopefully with the legal proceedings, it will keep them weighed down and acting like a bucket of crabs-- pulling anyone back down who gets too close to the top.

2018 will be here before we know it. We need to save our Democracy. That happens by taking back Congress.

As this is being written on Mother’s Day, I just left my mother (diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis since early 80s) and my father (Alzheimer's) who probably will make it to 2018. I’d like to see them around for as long as possible. I’d also like for everyone reading this to be able to see their loved ones for as long as possible as well.

That’s going to require a government that actually looks out to “promote the general welfare.”

Neither Donald Trump nor Paul Ryan are concerned with people like you or me. They have proven that they can’t be trusted.

We need people like you or me to fill as many spots as we can.

Please join me-- save our Democracy. Let’s get momentum rolling sooner rather than later. 2018-- the year we save our Democracy. It’s not a spectator sport. If you’re reading this-- you are needed.

Please frequent this blog to find out how you can be involved no matter where you live.