Republicans Not Even Campaigning For Independent Voters Anymore-- For Them, It's All About Their Crackpot Base Now

GOP base strategy works with hardcore Republican voters, but not with normal people

This morning when Trump tried bragging about his magnificence, the UN General Assembly burst out in sustained, audible laughter. No, Señor T, you're not in Kansas anymore. (Ironically, even Kansas may not be Kansas anymore.)

Ugly monkey: "In less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country."

World Leaders: laughter.

Ugly monkey: "It's so true."

World Leaders: more laughter.

Ugly monkey: "I didn't expect that reaction, but that's okay," smirking as though waiting for someone to feed him a banana-- or hand him a submachine gun.

Republican Party strategists have come to realize that appealing to independent voters this year is a rabbit hole for their candidates and they are now doubling down on getting out their own base and virtually ceding the independents-- as much as a third of the vote in many places-- to the Democrats. Our election coverage here at DWT has centered on independents ability to decide the midterms. GOP strategy is to now run such vile negative advertising as to just discourage independents from voting, not to get them to vote for Republican candidates.

At Axios Monday morning, Caitlin Owens outlined a Republican strategy to save hardcore red districts and basically abandon all swing districts. "With the midterm elections fast approaching and Democrats riding a clear advantage on health care, many Republicans are nevertheless doubling down on largely unpopular ideas like repealing the Affordable Care Act and cutting Medicare," she wrote."This strategy may seem counterintuitive on its face. However, it likely reveals that the party has all but abandoned independent voters this year and instead is focused on turning out its base. Republican leaders have recently become more public about the likelihood of trying again on ACA repeal, whereas a few months ago it was largely a private assumption among the party.

• Vice President Mike Pence told reporters in Wisconsin that if the GOP candidate wins the Senate seat there, the effort will be revived, per The Hill. “We made an effort to fully repeal and replace ObamaCare and we'll continue, with Leah Vukmir in the Senate, we'll continue to go back to that," he said.
• “We need to win this election and then get more seats next year" before trying again, GOP Whip Steve Scalise told the AP.

Is that a good idea in Wisconsin, a state where independents decide elections? It may be a good strategy for Mississippi but there isn't a single poll-- including partisan Republican polls that no one takes seriously-- that shows Vukmir with a pathway to victory. FiveThirtyEight gives her a 1 in 40 chance to beat progressive Democratic incumbent Tammy Baldwin (in a state Trump won-- albeit narrowly and with Kremlin help-- in 2016.

As Owens explained, "ACA repeal only resonates well with one group of voters: registered Republicans. 'It’s all about the base, because as far as I can tell, they’ve lost the independents, there’s no one left to woo,' said conservative economist Doug Holtz-Eakin, a former campaign aide to John McCain. 'The Republicans face a very odd problem…when you ask actually registered voters what they want to do with the future of the ACA, no one wants to repeal and replace it except the Republicans, which the majority do,' said Robert Blendon of Harvard's School of Public Health. 'If you are looking at the aggregate, you can't imagine why you’d even mention it. But if you’re trying to encourage your own voters… then they're trying to say that we would come back and try to do something,' Blendon added."

Worse yet for the GOP's election hopes among normal voters, the Trump Regime is now talking about cuts to Social Security and Medicare again. Owens reminds us that Trumpanzee's top economic advisor, drug addict and crackpot TV personality Larry Kudlow, "recently said that the administration will probably look at entitlement cuts next year." She brought up 3 very vulnerable Republican incumbents-- in districts with huge numbers of independent voters-- who are going along with Kudlow and Trump are likely to lose their seats because of it. John Faso, for example, was keeping his seat in play. It is now starting to trend, ever so slightly, towards Anthony Delgado. Faso is making noises that will make independents (and seniors) see him as a threat to Social Security and Medicare. Fine for the GOP base-- but NY-19 is not some backward rural district in Oklahoma or Alabama. The PVI is supposedly a deceptive R+2 but Obama won it both times he ran and it was only Hillary's lousy campaign and flaws as a candidate that gave Trump his win there (50.8% to 44.0%).

Peter Roskam is another one the need to rein in spending on entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security. That's a bad idea in Chicagoland. IL-06 gave Obama a win over McCain, Romney a win over Obama and Hillary a 7 point win over Trump (50.2% to 43.2%). The PVI is also a deceptive R+2. The Democratic candidate, Sean Casten, isn't especially strong but it's a neck-and-neck race that Roskam's to lose by talking about cutting Social Security and Medicare.

Very similar story in Texas' 7th district (Houston), where the Democrats nominated a weak candidate, Lizzie Fletcher, but where Hillary narrowly edged Trump (48.5% to 47.1%). Incumbent John Culberson is a poor campaigner. Fletcher has outraised him, $2,312,615 to $2,007,183 and he will be committing political suicide if he embraces-- as he appears to be doing-- an all base strategy. Fletcher isn't capable of winning this race; Culberson is very capable of losing it.

Again, Owens explained the risk to Republicans like Culberson: Although the bet is that the GOP base is concerned with deficits, "as soon as the other side switches to 'you're going to cut back Medicare and Social Security,' you're on the wrong side," Blendon said. "The highest turnout rates are among people above 60." Like clockwork, the DNC blasted out an email criticizing Kudlow's comments, saying that he "admitted that Republicans will try to cut vital programs relied upon by millions of working families."

Republican Incumbents Who Voted To Phase Out Medicare Are Desperate To Hide Their Records From The Voters

Trump rubber stamp Bruce Poliquin wants to take away Mainers' healthcare... and pretend it's the Democrats

This morning I was on the phone with Mike Siegel, the Blue America-endorsed candidate in a gerrymandered Texas district (TX-10) that goes from north Austin all the way through Weimar, Brenham, Columbus and Prairie View into Cypress and Tomball in the exurbs northwest of Houston. He had just gotten back his new polling and it was the best yet. He and longtime right-wing incumbent Michael McCaul are running neck-and-neck and a big reason is their approaches to healthcare. McCaul is basically against it and would like to gradually eliminate Medicare altogether. Siegel favors a strong Medicare-for-All agenda. And when he speaks with Democrats, independents and even mainstream Republicans, they're interested. Voters tell pollsters throughout TX-10 that healthcare is their #1 issue-- and that's bad news for McCaul. (You can help Siegel's campaign here.)

It's the same up in Maine's second district, where polling shows a neck-and-neck race between state House majority whip Jared Golden and incumbent Bruce Poliquin, another Wall Street pawn and anti-healthcare Republican. Voters in ME-02, who backed Bernie against Hillary in 2016, are familiar with what Medicare-for-All means and Jared Golden is campaigning on it as one of his top issues. Poliquin, who has voted to take away healthcare from working families at every single opportunity-- even when Republican Senator Susan Collins refused to-- has resorted to lying about his-- and Golden's-- healthcare stands. And he has plenty of corporate cash to spread the lies across the broadcast networks.

His claims are preposterous and depend on uniformed, easily manipulated voters. As Ian Millhiser pointed out Monday at Think Progress, Poliquin's latest deceitful ad paints a dire, frightening picture of Golden's intentions towards Medicare-- the polar opposite of Golden's campaign platform. Poliquin falsely claims that Golden "will end Medicare as we know it" and accuses him of wanting to impose "over $32 trillion in higher costs." The climax of the ad features an image of a very stern older white lady shaking her head. He's counting on no one looking up his record-- or Golden's.

The implication is that seniors should be very, very afraid. If Golden is elected, things will happen to Medicare! And those things will be bad! For you!

This isn’t a new strategy. The GOP often appeals to older voters by suggesting that Democratic spending on some other demographic group necessarily implies fewer benefits for the Republican Party’s elderly base. In 2012, for example, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney ran an ad accusing President Obama of cutting Medicare to pay for “a massive new government program that’s not for YOU.”

Poliquin’s ad is an especially obnoxious example of this tactic because it deploys one of the most meaningless phrases in American politics-- “end Medicare as we know it.” This is both literally true and intentionally misleading.

Yes, Golden wants to end Medicare as we know it. But that’s because Golden would transform Medicare from a program that only covers some Americans in one that covers all Americans. That’s hardly a reason for seniors to sternly shake their heads at him.

...Poliquin’s claim that Medicare-for-All would lead to “over $32 trillion in higher costs” is also worth unpacking. The source for this claim is a Koch Brothers-funded study that determined  the specific Medicare-for-All plan pushed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) would cause the government to spend $32.6 trillion on health care over a ten-year period.

That sure sounds like a lot! But if the United States does nothing-- that is, if it leaves its current health care system in place-- we will spend even more money than we would under a Medicare-for-All system. In 2016, America’s total health expenditures were $3.3 trillion a year, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, when you include both public and private spending. That means that, even before you account for inflation, the United States will spend $33 trillion over the next decade on health care if it stays its present course. And $33 trillion is, of course, more than $32.6 trillion.

The idea that the United States could save money by adopting a universal, single-payer health plan that guarantees coverage to all Americans may sound counter-intuitive, but it makes sense if you understand the economics of the health industry. Under Medicare-for-All, more people would receive quality care, but that care would cost a lot less.

Currently, Medicare pays significantly less for the same medical procedure than private insurers typically do. The reason for this is that seniors account for about a third of all health care costs in the United States, and Medicare provides health coverage to the vast bulk of these seniors. That gives Medicare tremendous power when it negotiates with health providers to lower costs.

If a particular health provider charges too much, Medicare can threaten to cut off that provider-- and few providers can afford to lose so many older patients.

The entire premise of a single-payer system is that everyone (or, at least, nearly everyone) would be covered by the same government-run program. In this world, the government would have even more power to bargain down prices because hardly any health providers could afford to be cut off from Medicare-for-All patients.

For the moment, Medicare-for-All is also quite popular. A March poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 59 percent of respondents support a universal, single-payer system. In the past, however, the most potent message a politician can bring into a health care debate is often “we should keep the status quo.”

This implicit message benefited Republicans seeking to kill Obamacare in 2009, and it benefited Democrats seeking to preserve Obamacare in 2017. Poliquin’s now hoping it will save him in 2018-- even if he is being completely dishonest.

Poliquin may be one of the most bold-faced liars in Congress, desperate to hold onto his job as he watches Golden overtake him, but Golden-- who you can contribute to here-- but he and McCaul are not the only Republicans trying to hide their antipathy for healthcare and twist their opponents' proposals. Unlike Siegel and Golden, Sean Casten in Chicagoland is not a progressive at all and it not an advocate of Medicare-for-All, just of more Obamacare. But this is the maliciously misleading add his anti-healthcare opponent, Pete Roskam, has been sending out:

Politifact checked it and awarded it a rare "Pants on Fire Rating," which is usually saved for lies that are purposely false. In reality they could give that rating to the campaign of pretty much every GOP incumbent!

It’s no surprise that Roskam, a six-term Republican incumbent fighting to keep his 6th District seat in the Western suburbs, doesn’t see eye-to-eye on health care with Sean Casten, a clean-energy entrepreneur from Downers Grove.

Roskam was a key architect of last year’s congressional tax overhaul that struck the controversial Obamacare penalty for not having health insurance. Casten has made protecting and expanding health care access under Obamacare, formally known as the Affordable Care Act, a top priority of his campaign.

Republicans have been complaining about the effects of Obamacare for years, but Roskam is taking some wild swings with this attack on Casten. There’s a lot here to unpack, so to keep it simple this fact-check focuses on the ad’s unsubstantiated health care claims.

Veronica Vera, a Roskam campaign spokeswoman, said the ad connected the dots between Casten’s support for Obamacare and a federal report-- itself containing a number of caveats-- that found premiums sold to individuals on the federal health care exchange were 105 percent higher in 2017 than premiums for existing individual market plans available in 2013 before the exchange opened.

If it happened in the past it surely then will happen in the future, Vera reasoned, and so to the Roskam campaign that means Casten backs a doubling of premiums.

One obvious problem with that line of thinking is that the Roskam campaign could provide no evidence that Casten had ever said such a thing.

What’s more, experts say a major factor behind recent premium spikes on the individual market was uncertainty over the law’s future given frequent attempts by Roskam and other Republicans, including President Donald Trump, to kill or weaken Obamacare.

Even so, there is evidence in Illinois that the days of Obamacare sticker shock may be over. Illinois’ largest insurer, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, has proposed a slight reduction in its premiums for Obamacare plans next year.

It’s also important to note that most Americans obtain insurance through their employers, not Obamacare. Overall, premium hikes for work-based policies have been modest in recent years.

For those who do rely on Obamacare, just a small share have been exposed to the full brunt of past Obamacare premium increases. Of the 15.2 million Americans who in 2017 purchased Obamacare coverage through the federal health care exchange, 8.2 million qualified for federal subsidies that cushioned them from increases, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a leading authority on health care.

Another 5.4 million Americans also purchased full-price individual insurance through the off-exchange plans that existed prior to Obamacare, according to Kaiser.

"We’re really talking about maybe 2 percent of the population that’s paying full-price premiums for the individual market overall," said Cynthia Cox, a health reform and private insurance expert with the Kaiser Foundation.

"It's important to think about these people because the ACA was intended to make insurance more affordable," she said. "But putting it into perspective, it's a relatively small share of the population."

Roskam’s other health care attack on Casten is also convoluted.

The logic works this way: Obamacare shoppers had fewer options when picking plans for 2018, so that must mean that if Obamacare were expanded as Casten wants the options would narrow even further.

"Expanding the ACA would mean limiting health care options for everyone affected," Vera wrote.

That argument is riddled with holes. Obamacare plans didn’t exist prior to 2014, so any number of options offered on the exchange are a plus, even if pared back. A key reason for the reductions was uncertainty over the law’s future following the election of Trump, who demanded it be scrapped.

And Obamacare also mandates minimum levels of coverage that did not exist prior to implementation of the health care law, which vastly expanded access to coverage for millions of Americans who previously had none, including those who didn’t qualify based on their health.

"Before the ACA, if you had a pre-existing condition, there could be any number of plans to choose from, but you couldn’t get any of them," said Cox, the insurance expert with the Kaiser Foundation.

Our ruling

Roskam alleges that Casten supports "doubling premiums" and "cutting current health care plans" for Illinois families.

Casten doesn’t support doubling premiums or reducing options-- and Roskam’s campaign could point to nothing that said he did.

The crux of Roskam’s argument centers on Casten’s support for expanding Obamacare options. Premiums on the federal exchange have spiked in past years, but Illinois’ largest insurer now says it expects them to go down slightly for 2019.

What’s more, most Americans get insurance through employers, not Obamacare. But among those who do, most have been insulated from the full force of premium increases by federal subsidies.

Health care policy has more wrinkles than a Shar Pei dog, and the complexity makes it easy for partisans to demagogue. Roskam’s claims are a clear example.

They’re not just wrong, they’re absurd. We rate them Pants on Fire!

A Pleasant Surprise In Illinois' 6th Congressional District

Tony Sterbenc is a regular guy, a progressive in a Republican suburban Chicagoland district (IL-06). He grew up in a union-heavy working-class neighborhood, and told me he took Poli Sci simply because he cared about it, then settled into a white-collar corporate career and has just kept watching all his life. He wrote a guest post for us about how he sees the crowded IL-06 primary shaping up. In the last few years the district, which includes red-leaning parts of Cook, DuPage, McHenry, Kane and Lake counties, has started trending bluer and the Republican incumbent, Pete Roskam, is considered endangered. Obama won the district with 51% in 2008 but lost it in 2012 with 45%. In 2016 the district swung back towards the Democrats and Hillary beat Trump 50.2% to 43.2%. The PVI was R+4 then; now it's just R+2. Amanda Howland was the Democratic candidate then and with no support at all from the DCCC she was defeated by Roskam 208,555 (59.2%) to 143,591 (40.8%). She spent $98,179 to Roskam's $3,331,980. This year there are 7 Democrats competing for the Democratic nomination, including Howland, who by the end of December had already raised more than she raised by the end of the 2016 cycle. But 4 more establishment Democrats have raised even more than she has. And Roskam has already banked $2,475,565 this year.

Tony and his wife went to a forum that all 7 of the Democrats participated in and wrote the following form DWT readers. Tomorrow is primary day in Texas. The next state is Illinois-- March 20. He told me he considers Roskam "despicable."

IL-06

Impression: Went in wondering whether to vote for Howland or Cheney, and prepared to hate EMILY's List-endorsed Kelly Mazeski (who's been bombarding us with nearly daily postcards bragging she had breast cancer, seemingly the only thing she has a position on). Here's what we actually saw of the seven candidates on display. They sorted themselves out neatly into two serious contenders, four pretenders and a revelation.

The contenders:

Amanda Howland:
Legitimately pretty good. Calls herself "unapologetically progressive" and supports single payer. I could live with her, certainly over Roskam (remember, you can't spell "Roskam" without "skam"). A college trustee with a background in teaching, school administration and legal mediation. She was the nominee last time against Roskam and got 40.8% of the vote, actually better than other recent challengers, which she's claiming makes her a credible opponent. She does seem credible, just not terribly exciting or dynamic.

Carole Cheney:
No relation I know of, certainly not spiritually. Most of her resume is as a staffer to Rep. Bill Foster, a New Dem. Revealed last week at a local forum that Roskam not only is avoiding town halls and reporter's questions, his staffers are refusing to answer the phone OR record constitutents' calls, which may actually be illegal. She sounds like a system lifer who retains a conscience, which is a good thing. Takes pride in knowing the minutae of issues and of Roskam's record so she can answer him, and shows some real passion while doing so. Unfortunately, her byword on every issue is "incremental" (perhaps why the corporatist Chicago Tribune endorsed her), including a wuss-out on single payer because she thinks it'd be hard to pass. Overall, a technocrat who seems too timid for these times. As Michael Corleone says in dismissal of his aide before the Vegas massacre: "Tom, you're not a wartime consigliare."

Kelly Majeski:
Every bit as repellent as I expected. Embarrassingly endorsed by the pro-Democratic, union-owned Chicago Sun-Times as well as EMILY's List, and some have depressingly cast her as the favorite. Openly opposes single payer. Could be seen nakedly cribbing her answers to forum questions from other candidates at the dais. Talked about the importance of defeating Roskam and Trump and getting a Democratic House majority as the end goal, pointedly never saying why, in the great DCCC tradition Howie's articulated so often. A wealthy dilettante who's visibly dead inside.

Sean Casten:
Businessman turned Mr. Smith candidate. Good, smart guy who's a smart technocrat. Ideologically, would have made a good, respectable liberal Republican in the era before money wrenched our nation's politics to the right.

Becky Anderson Wilkins:
A well-intentioned and energetic Naperville council member. Like Casten, she's under the fatal Obama misimpression that the fascists will play nice.

Jennifer Zordani:
A regulatory lawyer who should remain one. Obviously intelligent, but wholly lacking an overarching vision for government, unable to think on her feet and visibly miscast as a candidate, to the point where she was naive enough to tell an all-Democratic crowd that Dodd-Frank should be weakened in places to ease paperwork burdens on small businesses-- unfortunately toxic to say in a campaign context, even if true.

Ryan Huffman:

The mammoth surprise of the evening, and the reason I wrote this. Huffman, 31 and unsung, describes himself as a data analyst, policy expert, and former White House intern (Obama) with a Northwestern journalism degree and a U. of Chicago master's in public policy. All those smarts were on display in a performance that never put a foot wrong. Even his opponents basically admitted out loud that he stole the whole debate (one said outright, correctly, "You're smarter than I am") with a series of brilliant, bold answers that sliced right through all the usual mealy-mouth "pragmatic" bullsh!t and went straight for the Bernie positions on campaign financing, single payer, Wall Street and the need for Democrats to declare without shame that big government can be a force for good. He reduced the whole rest of the field to a bunch of visionless incrementalists by comparison. He was so obviously superior intellectually that the others were comfortable praising him, disturbingly secure that his superior ideas didn't give him any chance to, y'know, win.

I came away feeling all my speeches to my teen son would be hollow hyprocrisy if I didn't vote for Huffman. Then I looked up the respective candidates' campaign finances. The guy, who's sworn off dark money, hasn't received any kind of money at all. He'd reported literally tens or hundreds in total funds, and admitted to $100,000 in college debt to get his obviously well-used public policy MA from the U. of Chicago. Only some love from the likes of you can give this district even a shred of awareness of the superior option available to them (whom I'd never even heard of before, itself a symptom of this broken system).

How Many House Races Will The DCCC F-Up In Illinois?

The change this primary represents frightens the establishment jackoffs at the DCCC

Monday we looked at another reason the Democratic Party needs to dismantle the DCCC and start over again. But at the same time one of the credibility-free Beltway trade magazines was running an unsigned story, Illinois House Primaries Will Be Early Testing Ground For Democrats, that I thought might be about two of the more interesting primaries, Marie Newman's and Chuey Garcia's very credible challenges to the corrupt Democratic machine in Chicago. as it turned out, neither of those races was even mentioned. That's especially odd in the case of IL-03 where Newman is on the verge of beating execrable Blue Dog Dan Lipinski. Instead the article appears to have been a p.r. piece written at the direction Steny Hoyer or by whomever writes press releases for Ben Ray Lujan. The subtitle "Democrats have several pickup opportunities, but they need viable candidates first," should have been a warning, since "viable" inside the Beltway is the world they use to describe corrupt conservatives. Pure DCCC-talk: "With early voting starting in less than a month [not really-- the primary is March 20], Illinois will be a testing ground for Democrats’ ability to nominate general election candidates they think can win out of crowded primaries." The DCCC theory, proven catastrophic for Democrats over and over and over is still the committee's top operating strategy-- force the election of Republican-lite conservatives who will play ball with Hoyer's K Street lobbyists. (If you didn't read that post Monday about how Hoyer is rigging the CO-06 primary in favor of a sleazy pay-day lending lawyer, you really should.)

In Illinois the DCCC has 4 crap candidates in targeted districts. The problem here is that what Roll Call refers to as "Democratic campaign veterans" describe the precise reason the Democratic Party has lost dozens and dozens of House seats since the DCCC strategy was put in place by Rahm Emanuel:

In two competitive districts-- the 6th and the 13th-- Democratic candidates who have won the primary before but fallen short in the general election are running again. Even though they’re not raising much money, there’s still fear among Democratic campaign veterans that they could sneak by in the primary.

In the 13th, the corrupt DCCC operatives are petrified that heroic progressive Doctor David Gill will win-- you can contribute to his campaign here-- over their garbage candidate who could only win in a massive anti-Trump tsunami and would then lose the seat in a non-wave year. Let's start by going back to 2012. The DCCC conservative candidate, Matt Goetten, lost the primary (despite outspending Gill with over $300,000 in establishment cash). In the general election Republican Rodney Davis edged Gill 137,034 (46.5%) to 136,032 (46.2%). Why did Gill fall short by 1,000 votes? A left-wing independent, John Hartman acted as a spoiler and took 21,319 votes in the general (7.2%). That year was the only time the Democrats came close to beating Davis.

In 2014 the establishment persuaded Gill not to run again, appointing him assistant director of the Illinois Department of Public Health and they slipped in one of their really dreadful crap candidates, a conservative EMILY's List Republican-lite nothing burger, Ann Callis, who lost 59% to 41%. In 2016 it was the same story: uninspiring candidate loses to Davis in a 60-40 landslide. This cycle the DCCC and EMILY's List are working towards replicating 2014 with a pointless-but-wealthy crony of Dick Durbin, Betsy Londrigan, exactly the kind of uninspiring blecccch of a candidate Davis knows how to eviscerate.

The braindead DCCC operative who helped write the story says if Gill wins the primary-- which is likely, since voters love him-- the DCCC will take the district "off the table." That's how the DCCC plays. That's why the DCCC should be shuttered and the Dems should start over again in a post-Hoyer/post-Pelosi era dedicated to winning, not losing. OK, ready to hear from one of the architects of Democratic congressional disaster?

“Illinois is incredibly important because you have the three kinds of districts Democrats need to compete in, plus the kinds they need to defend,” said Ian Russell, former deputy executive director and national political director at the DCCC. He’s working with two Illinois primary candidates backed by EMILY’s List.

Based on 2016 presidential performance, the 6th District looks like Democrats’ best pickup opportunity. Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales rates the race Likely Republican.

“It’s one of those districts where we have to perform; it’s a part of our path,” a national Democratic strategist said.

Out of the four Illinois seats on the DCCC’s target list, it’s the only one Clinton carried-- by 7 points.

But voters in this affluent suburban Chicago district also backed incumbent Republican Sen. Mark S. Kirk, who lost statewide, and easily gave Rep. Peter Roskam a sixth term.

Democrats plan to hit Roskam on the GOP tax overhaul, which the state’s Republican governor called “punishing” because of its cap on state and local tax deductions.

“It’s clear that [Roskam’s] voters wanted a conservative representative who was focused on cutting their taxes-- and that’s exactly what Roskam did,” Maddie Anderson, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in an email.

“I’m a little confused by the notion that following through on what voters asked for would lead to being voted out of office,” she added.

[That's the kind of messaging revolving door walking garbage pile Ian Russell buys right into.]

...Many national Democrats [what a loaded and stupid phase; sounds like a Trumpism] see Kelly Mazeski, a former financial adviser and local elected official, as the front-runner. The breast cancer survivor announced her candidacy the day the House voted to repeal the 2010 health care law, which earned her national attention. She raised $163,000 in the fourth quarter of 2017 and loaned herself another $100,000. She ended December with $510,000 in the bank.

In addition to support from EMILY’s List, she has endorsements from Illinois Reps. Jan Schakowsky and Cheri Bustos and several of Bustos’ closest female allies in Congress, who have been politically active across the country.

But some members of the delegation prefer lawyer Carole Cheney, a former district chief of staff to Rep. Bill Foster. She has the backing of Foster and Rep. Robin Kelly. She had $90,000 at the end of the third quarter.

Clean energy entrepreneur Sean Casten raised $335,000 in the fourth quarter, including $250,000 of his own money. One national Democrat described the primary as a race between Mazeski and Casten, both of whom he thinks would be strong general election candidates.

But [Amanda] Howland’s team thinks she has the connections to take advantage of an energized electorate since she’s run before without national backing.

Russell, the former DCCC political director, is working with Mazeski [and nothing says LOSER like being a client of Russell's]. He acknowledged that Howland probably started as the front-runner-- she led seven candidates with 46 percent of the vote in her own campaign’s poll from last August.

But he’s less worried about Howland as a primary threat now since she hasn’t amassed the resources to communicate in such an expensive media market. She had $50,000 at the end of September. End of the year fundraising reports are due to the FEC at the end of January.

Having the backing of national Democratic leaders, though, doesn’t always guarantee electoral success. When Tammy Duckworth, now the state’s junior senator, first ran for Congress in 2006, she had money and the backing of EMILY’s List, then-DCCC chairman Rahm Emanuel and then-Sen. Barack Obama.

She defeated the 2004 nominee, who had strong local support, 44 percent to 40 percent in the primary. But despite outraising Roskam, Duckworth lost in the general by about 5,000 votes.

The 12th District, held by two-term GOP Rep. Mike Bost, is the only pickup opportunity in which the DCCC is showing their cards.

The committee courted St. Clair County State’s Attorney Brendan Kelly for years. This cycle, he finally said yes and quickly earned a spot on the committee’s Red to Blue list.

Democrats failed to land a candidate in this downstate district in 2016. “Oh god, it was awful,” Russell recalled. “We went through four or five candidates in the 12th. There was a lot of skepticism about the viability of the seat.”

Kelly’s campaign launch in July prompted Inside Elections to move the race rating from Solid Republican to Likely Republican. It’s currently rated Leans Republican.

On paper, the 12th District is trending away from Democrats. Former President Barack Obama carried it by double digits in 2008 but by less than 2 points in 2012. Trump won it by 15 points in 2016.

But Duckworth carried the seat in her 2016 Senate victory, and Democrats are optimistic that Kelly, who they see as a moderate, can compete in the general election.

“I just hope the demographics don’t overcome good candidate quality,” Russell said.

The 13th District was another recruiting miss for Democrats last cycle.

The cycle before that, in 2014, GOP Rep. Rodney Davis defeated a supposed top-tier recruit who had received DCCC support in the primary.

Obama carried the district by double digits in 2008, and lost it narrowly four years later. But in 2016, the 13th swung to Trump, who carried it by about 6 points. Davis won a third term by 19 points. This year’s race is rated Likely Republican.

As in the 6th District, there’s a Democrat running who’s won the primary before-- David Gill, who beat the DCCC’s recruit in 2012. Since then, though, he’s alienated many in the local and national party establishment. He had $4,000 at the end of the third quarter.

Betsy Dirksen Londrigan has the backing of EMILY’s List, Schakowsky and Senate Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin, for whom she used to be a fundraiser. Londrigan ended the third quarter with $129,000. Erik Jones could also be competitive here; he ended the third quarter with $195,000.

David Gill is no shrinking rose and, although most candidates dislike the DCCC and recognize their incompetence, corruption and malfeasance as much as he does, he's one of the few who doesn't mind expressing it clearly and publicly. His analysis is very much worth reading. He told us that "The most ironic thing about the DCCC's lack of support is that the progressive issues that I push for and which seem to terrify the corporate-backed DCCC-- single-payer healthcare, a $15/hour minimum wage, tuition-free access to public higher education-- my support for those progressive positions is the precise reason that I'm able to generate tens of thousands of more votes than the standard Republican Lite/DCCC-backed Democrat. Voters around the district, whether they consider themselves Dems, Independents, or even thoughtful Republicans seem to like the idea of being represented by a longtime care-giving doctor who actually gives a damn about their well-being. At the end of the day, 'ironic' is actually the wrong term; when the DCCC repeatedly gets behind candidates who present a passionless bland message that loses by 20 points, that's pretty clear evidence that they just don't care much about the seat in the first place. It seems they'd rather have a Republican occupying the seat than a single-payer supporting doctor."

Trump carried the 14th District by only 4 points. The DCCC has included this exurban Chicago district on its target list, but Democratic strategists who’ve worked in the state are skeptical.

“That’s a very tough one,” Russell said. Another Democratic strategist called it “a bridge too far.” GOP Rep. Randy Hultgren won a fourth term by 19 points in 2016.

Still, national Democrats are hoping to have a candidate who makes the general election competitive. Seven Democrats are running. Nurse and former Health and Human Services official Lauren Underwood had the most cash on hand at the end of the third quarter. Engineer Matthew Brolley wasn’t far behind, with $51,000. He’s backed by Schakowsky and just secured the endorsement of the state AFL-CIO, which should boost his ground game.

But Republicans scoff at Democratic chances in the district.

“That’s Republican delight,” said one Republican from the state. “Waste your money on that one.”

In Illinois there is no party registration/affiliation other than the party ballot you pull. One of the 2 DCCC candidates, Mayor Matthew Brolley regularly pulls Republican ballots (including in 2016). Sounds like the kind of crap the DCCC always get aroused by. The front-runner in the race, despite the party establishment and the DCCC and their allies, is progressive Jim Walz, a Bernie guy and big Medicare-for-All supporter. The only way to win a district like this is to offer the voters a clear and unambiguous choice, not by muddying the water with a Republican-lite candidate that turns off the base. Walz has backing from the progressives in the district as well as from independents and even moderate Republicans who want real change. The DCCC is downplaying IL-14 but this is a winnable race-- unless the DCCC gets one of their Republican-lite candidates in.

The Democratic Party Brand Needs Some Work-- But Not By The People Who Ruined It

In his Rolling Stone essay after Gianforte beat Quist in Montana Thursday night, The Democrats Need A New Message, Matt Taibbi included a litany of excuses the DC Dems always have on hand to explain why they've been losing all the time-- even to monstrosities like Gianforte, Staten Island Mafia thug Michael Grimm, patient-raping-doctor Scott Desjarlais, and, worst by far, Señor Trumpanze.

One of the excuses Taibbi mentioned was how the GOP uses corporate cash to overwhelm less well-financed Democrats. It reminded me of a conversation I had with an exceptionally bright congressmember last November. I predicted that the Republicans would use their all-branch dominance to overreach and turn the voters against them. My congressional friend disagreed--not about the overreach but about voters turning against them. He predicted that they would leverage their power to unleash a flood of corporate money into party coffers and drown the Democrats with it. And Taibbi acknowledged that "Republicans have often, but not always, had fundraising advantages in key races.

Taibbi was talking about how much more Hillary had to spend in 2016 than Trump did. I want to reinforce that on a congressional level. A few days ago we looked at how the Rahm Emanuel DCCC's toxic candidate recruitment resulted in dozens and dozens of Blue Dogs and New Dems been swept out of Congress in the 2010 midterms when Democratic voters boycotted the elections rather than vote again for the DCCC's Republican-lite candidates. And that wasn't because of the Republicans having more corporate cash. In fact, in many cases it was the exact opposite. Republicans beat shitty Blue Dogs and New Dems who had more special interest cash than their GOP opponent did. Here are just a few random examples:

• Bobby Bright (Blue Dog-AL)- $1,435,526 vs Martha Roby- $1,240,276
• Harry Mitchell (Blue Dog-AZ)- $2,308,400) vs Dave Schweikert- $1,721,364
• Ann Kirkpatrick (New Dem-AZ)- $1,956,364 vs Paul Gosar- $1,168,287
• Tim Mahoney (Blue Dog-FL)- $2,756,453 vs Tom Rooney- $1,597,768
• Suzanne Kosmas (Blue Dog-FL)- $2,561,831 vs Sandy Adams- $1,266,664
• Walt Minnick (Blue Dog-ID)- $2,473,287 vs Raul Labrador- $686,293
• Debbie Halvorson (New Dem-IL)- $2,502,037 vs Adam Kinzinger- $1,827,192
• Baron Hill (Blue Dog-IN)- $2,167,570 vs Todd Young- $1,950,159
• Frank Kratovil (Blue Dog-MD)- $2,621,893 vs Andy Harris $2,383,184
• John Adler (Blue Dog-NJ)- $3,285,638 vs Jon Runyan- $1,518,073
• Michael McMahon (Blue Dog-NY)- $2,897,473 vs Michael Grimm- $1,249,139
• Dan Maffei (New Dem-NY)- $3,114,128 vs Ann Marie Buerkle- $758,777
• Scott Murphy (Blue Dog-NY)- $5,321,745 vs Chris Gibson- $1,734,219
• Mike Acuri (Blue Dog-NY)- $1,886,555 vs Richard Hanna- $1,260,258
• Zack Space (Blue Dog-OH)- $2,931,978 vs Bob Gibbs- $1,090,872
• Kathy Dahlkemper (Blue Dog-PA)- $1,957,701 vs Mike Kelly- $1,235,460
• Patrick Murphy (New Dem-PA)- $4,287,244 vs Mike Fitzpatrick- $2,062,733
• Chris Carney (Blue Dog-PA)- $1,657,586 vs Tom Marino- $704,457

Taibbi continued that "The unspoken subtext of a lot of the Democrats' excuse-making is their growing belief that the situation is hopeless-- and not just because of fixable institutional factors like gerrymandering, but because we simply have a bad/irredeemable electorate that can never be reached. This is why the 'basket of deplorables' comment last summer was so devastating."

But the "deplorables" comment didn't just further alienate already lost Republican votes. It spoke to an internal sickness within the Democratic Party, which had surrendered to a negativistic vision of a hopelessly divided country.

Things are so polarized now that, as Georgia State professor Jennifer McCoy put it on NPR this spring, each side views the other not as fellow citizens with whom they happen to disagree, but as a "threatening enemy to be vanquished."

The "deplorables" comment formalized this idea that Democrats had given up on a huge chunk of the population, and now sought only to defeat and subdue their enemies.

Barack Obama, for all his faults, never gave in to that mindset. He continually insisted that the Democrats needed to find a way to reach lost voters. Even in the infamous "guns and religion" episode, this was so. Obama then was talking about the challenge the Democrats faced in finding ways to reconnect with people who felt ignored and had fled to "antipathy toward people who aren't like them" as a consequence.

Even as he himself was the subject of vicious and racist rhetoric, Obama stumped in the reddest of red districts. In his post-mortem on the Trump-Clinton race, he made a point of mentioning this-- that in Iowa he had gone to every small town and fish fry and VFW hall, and "there were some counties where I might have lost, but maybe I lost by 20 points instead of 50 points."

Most people took his comments to be a dig at Clinton's strategic shortcomings-- she didn't campaign much in many of the key states she lost-- but it was actually more profound than that. Obama was trying to point out that people respond when you demonstrate that you don't believe they're unredeemable.

You can't just dismiss people as lost, even bad or misguided people. Unless every great thinker from Christ to Tolstoy to Gandhi to Dr. King is wrong, it's especially those people you have to keep believing in, and trying to reach.

The Democrats have forgotten this. While it may not be the case with Quist, who seems to have run a decent campaign, the Democrats in general have lost the ability (and the inclination) to reach out to the entire population.

They're continuing, if not worsening, last year's mistake of running almost exclusively on Trump/Republican negatives... But "Republicans are bad" isn't a message or a plan, which is why the Democrats have managed the near impossible: losing ground overall during the singular catastrophe of the Trump presidency.

The party doesn't see that the largest group of potential swing voters out there doesn't need to be talked out of voting Republican. It needs to be talked out of not voting at all. The recent polls bear this out, showing that the people who have been turned off to the Democrats in recent months now say that in a do-over, they would vote for third parties or not at all.

People need a reason to be excited by politics, and not just disgusted with the other side. Until the Democrats figure that out, these improbable losses will keep piling up.

One Democratic congressman who gets it right is California's Ro Khanna. Watch this clip of a powerful messaging interview he did yesterday with Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC. We talked to him about it after he was done with Andrea. He reiterated that "the Democrats need to be for fairer rules in the economy. But we also have to have a vision of job creation in middle America. We need to be a party that is both progressive and aspirational."



We talked to two Illinois progressives who are running against entrenched conservative incumbents this cycle. Marie Newman's Chicagoland district around Bridgeport, Canaryville, West Lawn, Midway Airport, Oak Lawn, Hickory Hills and the way out into the suburbs as far as Lockport and Homer Glen. It's a solid blue bungalow belt district with a far right-wing Blue Dog incumbent, Dan Lipinski. Newman's campaign platform has been very focused on the struggles of small businesses. "To be clear," she told us, "Trump’s budget is anti-small and mid market business. Defunding programs enabling small and mid-size manufacturing companies to retrain, scale and in turn, drive jobs, is ridiculous. Rather than taking away those programs, we should be increasing them. Small business is the fastest growing sector and where most jobs are being created, it should be supported. We need to stop favoring large corporations and start supporting small business."

Greg Petzel is also a small businessman and a Chicagoland candidate, running in a district further west. And his opponent, knee-jerk Republican Pete Roskam, is even further right than Lipinski.

I have always believed that the majority of people who enter political life do so because they want to make their community, state or nation better and improve the lives of the people they represent. Based on that concept I also believe that almost everyone shares the same values and that our elected officials have a responsibility to transfer those values into legislation. I believe this is fundamentally true. Have you ever met anyone who prefers polluted air and toxic water over fresh air and clean water? Have you ever met someone who seeks less opportunity at improving their income, or someone who would prefer to go without essential medical treatment? I think Americans have a united set of values.

Unfortunately we often divide ourselves into class, race, or party and our values get trampled on by rhetoric, money, power or special interest agendas. In my district, we have a large number of folks considering running against our radical right-wing congressman, Peter Roskam. Most will tell you they are running because they oppose the Trump Agenda and want to get rid of our congressman because he votes with Trump every time. But simply not liking our congressman isn't enough-- if it were, we would have 143,591 (votes against him in 2016) candidates qualified to run against him. This idea that we oppose an agenda and have no clear agenda or values as a party is exactly why we keep losing elections.

Democrats controlled the House of Representatives from 1955-1995 and stood firmly for strong values-- civil rights, workers rights, women's rights and environmental protection. During that time we created almost all of the nations environmental laws, we created Medicare, and we solidified civil rights legislation. The Democratic Party stood for values that most Americans believed in. And we won elections. And we made our nation and peoples lives better.

Today that Democratic Party-- the one I was taught growing up would fight for me, only exists through a minority of progressive members of Congress. I am happy to bash Democrats or Republicans who try to crush the values I am fighting for. As a party, or at least as individual candidates, we should be fighting for the values that historically drove the Democratic Party. Those values are American values- they are fundamentally ingrained in our hearts and minds and souls as Americans. We don't need the DCCC or any political party to tell us what our common values are. I believe that our fight should be one based on fundamental values that are shared by all people-- Democrat, Republican and Independent. If we can overcome the rhetoric and money and special interests and win elections on real fundamental values, rather than opposition and dislike of our opponents, we can re-establish not only the America I believe in, but the Democratic Party that once fought for us. And in that America, we all win.

Anyone Think Putin-Gate And Comey's Firing Might Be An Issue In The 2018 Midterms?

Yesterday, conservatives Barbara Comstock (R-VA), Erik Paulsen (R-MN) and Carlos Curbelo (R-FL) backed Justin Amash's and Walter Jones' demands for an independent investigation into Putin-Gate. Amash and Jones are in red Trump districts and acted out of principle and patriotism. You can decide for yourself what Comstock-- whose district went for Hillary 52.2-42.2%-- and Curbelo-- whose district went for Hillary by an even great margin: 56.7-40.6%-- and Paulsen-- whose district went for Clinton 50.8-41.4%-- had as motivations. I suspect that the dam is going to break very soon in terms of congressional Republicans-- particularly House Republicans in swing districts Hillary won-- getting behind the very popular idea of an independent investigation that neither Trump nor Regime lackeys like McConnell, Ryan nor Sessions can control. But I sincerely doubt that inveterate Trump loyalists such as Darrell Issa, John Culberson or Pete Roskam-- despite each being in a district Hillary won with a nice hefty margin-- will ever break with Trump.

Issa's Orange and San Diego county district voted against Trump 50.7% to 43.2% and gave Issa the political scare of his life, reelecting him by a tiny handful of votes against newcomer Dog Applegate. This year Applegate is back to finish the job he started in 2016. There was a similar result in the suburban district west of Chicago (IL-06) where Hillary bested Trump 50.2% to 43.2%, a district, by the way, that Romney had won against Obama by over 8 points. The DCCC, as usual, had refused to challenge Roskam in 2016. This year progressive Democrat Geoff Petzel isn't waiting around for the DCCC. He's running a strong grassroots campaign against Roskam-- and Trump.

Yesterday, Geoff told us he was "shocked by the Comey firing" and he explained why:

The firing of FBI Director James Comey may represent the worst action of the Trump Administration. Yes, worse than the refugee ban, the destruction of healthcare and rollback of our environmental laws. The Comey firing represents the worst of Trump's actions because it shows a blatant disregard for the rule of law and threatens the very essence of our fragile democracy. Regardless of my personal thoughts about James Comey, it was highly inappropriate for an American President to fire the man leading an investigation into his campaign and associates. In fact, what Donald Trump did puts him at the same level as a third world dictator.

I learned of the firing as I prepared to enter a campaign rally in my district and had the opportunity to discuss it with my audience. For the first time in the campaign I think I am viewing the 2018 election differently. There has never been a doubt in my mind that the 2018 election is important-- the most important election of my generation. It may determine the fate of healthcare for millions and impact American lives for generations. But, tonight for the first time, I realized that when I am elected with a new Democratic House in 2018, I may be faced with the grim task of participating in the impeachment of President Trump. And that thought went from unlikely to very possible this evening.

In my mind, the decision to fire the FBI Director was an admission of guilt. I believe the White House is scrambling to cover up a mess. The mess will include staffers and campaign participants at least, and the President himself may be implicated in the most serious scenario. Either way, a huge cover up is going on. As we have seen, Donald Trump isn’t the smartest guy in the room. I assume he is in a panic over the investigation, is firing Comey to cover up the mess and couldn’t clearly see the political implications of his decision because he is so blinded by the investigation and what it may reveal. And it’s not just the fact that Comey was fired-- he was fired while he was away from the office and told he would not allowed back into his office to retrieve his personal belongings. Is it possible they didn’t want him to access files or evidence of the Trump corruption?

I am fortunate enough to have been in court with the Justice Department-- although I was suing the government and they were attempting to protect the government's mismanagement and corruption. I have always believed that the career people like Sally Yates and thousands of others are dedicated public servants who do their job honorably and with little recognition. These people share a concern for doing the right and just thing and upholding the laws of this nation. When our nation's leader fires Sally Yates several days after she informs White House Counsel about possible corruption and then fires the head of the FBI, it shows a disregard for the rule of law, a disrespect for the people of our nation and puts our democracy at risk.

I have an immense respect for our institutions and our democracy including the Office of the President. The possible and increasingly likely corruption and collusion with Russian officials must break through politics. With our Democracy at risk of a very real constitutional crisis we must demand an independent prosecutor and hold President Trump accountable for his campaigns ties to Russia. This is bigger than Trump, bigger than party-- this is about America and her legitimacy as a nation. As we look to 2018 it is critical we elect serious candidates who respect our laws and institutions and will put country ahead of all others.

Mark Salter, an Iowa Republican, is best known as a long-time top McCain aide

I want to add just one more point. The once prohibitively red seat in the suburbs north of Atlanta (GA-06) has it's runoff election between Democrat Jon Ossoff and Republican Karen Handel on June 20th. Despite a GOP registration advantage and immense sums of money being laundered into the district from right-wing billionaires via Paul Ryan's shady SuperPAC, polling shows the race as a dead-heat. After Ossoff tweeted Tuesday night that "there should be bipartisan support for a special prosecutor to investigate Russian interference," Handel decided to show what an utter rubber stamp she would be in Congress, applauding Trump’s decision to fire Comey, saying in a statement yesterday that his ouster was "probably overdue."

Her support for the president’s stunning move to fire Comey came a day after her opponent in the 6th District runoff, Democrat Jon Ossoff, called for a special prosecutor to “investigate Russian interference” in last year’s vote.

...Handel, a former Georgia secretary of state, sought to sidestep Trump’s controversies throughout her campaign for the seat. But since her No. 2 finish in the April 18 vote, she has more aggressively embraced the president, who has assailed Ossoff in tweets and hosted a fundraiser for her.

Democrats hope Comey’s firing will spark more support for a probe of Trump’s ties to Russia and give them an advantage in Georgia’s special election, considered a must-win for Republicans. The race for the suburban district, for decades held by the GOP, has become the nation’s premier 2017 political contest.

Other Georgia Democrats quickly pounced on Comey’s firing. Rep. Hank Johnson, Ossoff’s mentor and former boss, said the timing suggests “an effort to cover up wrongdoing.” Fulton County Commission chair John Eaves, a candidate for Atlanta mayor, said it “reeks of tyranny, not democracy” and labeled it Watergate 2.0.

And Democratic Party of Georgia head DuBose Porter invoked Trump’s firing of Sally Yates, a former Georgia prosecutor who was briefly the acting U.S. Attorney General, in condemning Trump’s decision and echoing the calls for a special prosecutor.

“Our national security is at stake and these demands must be met immediately,” he said. “We cannot trust Donald Trump to investigate himself. We just cannot trust Donald Trump.”

Handel was among the first prominent Georgia Republicans to comment on Comey’s firing. Most of the state’s GOP establishment had no public comment on the development in the hours after it was announced.

...The decision led to widespread bipartisan criticism in Washington. Several GOP lawmakers, including Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, said they support an independent inquiry into Russia’s ties to Trump’s campaign. And Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, suggested Trump fired Comey as part of a cover-up.

IMPORTANT: Why Blue America Supports Geoff Petzel In His Illinois Race To Win A Seat Held By Peter Roskam

The first thing people tell you when you decide to run for office is that you need a 30 second statement on why you are running. I am running for Congress in the IL 6th District because, just like many people in my District, I am pissed off. I am angry, concerned and disappointed that Donald Trump is our President, that a right-wing extremist is my Congressman, and that the Democratic Party has abandoned the values that once made the party great. I am running for Congress because I believe we need to fight the establishment politics, big money and special interests that have taken our democracy away from the people. I am running because I am part of the Bernie Revolution and the anti-Trump Resistance. I am running because I want to make people’s lives better.

Last week, Illinois held local elections and we made some amazing progress. In townships in DuPage County, long considered deep red territory, progressives won seats on the College of DuPage Board, Lisle Township and in Naperville Township. In the Village of Algonquin 3 of 4 incumbents were thrown out of office and replaced by Progressives and in Elgin Township the entire Republican Board and Supervisor were replaced with a Progressive slate of candidates-- the first time Democrats have had control of the Township since JFK was President!

These local elections are important-- every one of these races occurred in the 6th Congressional District where my opponent, Peter Roskam, won by 18 points against his Blue Dog opponent last fall. These local victories were not just Democratic victories-- these were progressive candidates who won seats in historically Republican held territory.

Many local Democrats seem surprised by the victories. I’m not. Maybe it’s because I have always believed that we can win if we just show people what we stand for. After all, 15 years ago I was appointed as one of the first precinct committeemen when the local Democratic organization was formed in Dundee Township-- and by creating an active grassroots organization we elected a Democratic judge for the first time in 50 years and a state representative who later became a state senator. These victories point to something important-- that progressives can win in the 6th District and that momentum is on our side, but we shouldn’t be surprised.

The 6th District race is interesting-- I am currently running against 5 other primary candidates and I am the only true and tested progressive in the bunch. Of course, that means I will be ignored by the DCCC. The DCCC has targeted our race and they have already run ads against my right-wing opponent. The DCCC has targeted our race because even though Peter Roskam won big, Hillary Clinton defeated Trump by 8 points. They have also recruited their own candidate to run in the primary. She looks like she is straight out of central casting-- a woman and former Marine who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and then worked in the Pentagon. There is one major problem-- she doesn’t live in the congressional district and never has. She lives an hour outside the District-- and has her entire life. In order to run for office, you don’t need to live in the congressional district you want to represent, you just need to live in the State.

I was asked recently if the hand-picking of a candidate by the DCCC would make me reconsider running in this crowded field. The answer is absolutely not. In fact now I have two battles to win-- beating Peter Roskam and his anti-choice, anti-environment, Pro-Trump agenda will be incredibly gratifying, but beating the establishment DCCC non-sense that has driven the Democratic Party away from its values is an ideological fight that motivates me just as much. Ultimately it allows voters a chance to determine what they value more-- a progressive and independent candidate or an establishment candidate. From the local election results last week, it looks to me like the progressive and independent candidates have the upper hand.

I know I’m drawing some big lines in the sand when I go after the DCCC and their establishment pick and I know that political consultants may suggest I should play nice with the DCCC. I ask, WHY? They have taken sides already, and I’m not on their side of the line. I’m okay being on the opposite side of the DCCC in our primary. I was raised in a strong Democratic family. My grandfather worked a union job for 42 years. He always talked politics and he always assumed I was a Democrat-- in his mind there was no way his grandson could be anything else. Being a Democrat was as sure of a thing in his mind as turkey at Thanksgiving and church on Sunday-- there was no other option. But the Democratic Party of my grandfather, the party that I grew up with, rarely exists in our national politics these days. The Democratic Party who cared for the worker, the environment, civil rights, and justice and proudly believed that big government, when done correctly and unapologetically can lift society to new heights just doesn’t exist outside the grassroots level. The DCCC doesn’t represent the Democratic Party of my grandfather and they don’t represent me.

With the DCCC picking a candidate who doesn’t even live in the district, they are living up to what many voters believe about our political parties-- that they care only about preserving the status quo and keeping the big money donors happy. Maybe I’m a little too idealistic to be in Congress, but I don’t think I’m too idealistic for the voters in our district-- Democrats and Republicans alike who are fed up with the rigged system that has been forced upon us.

I know what I see every day-- I see a national resistance movement that is demanding accountability and demanding action. And I think people like the DCCC have missed what that movement really is. The resistance movement isn’t just a bunch of pissed off Democrats. The resistance movement is made up of millions of Americans who are poised and ready to challenge Democrats and Republicans when they don’t properly represent the America my grandfather believed in-- one where playing by the rules and working hard allowed him to move his family up the economic ladder and guaranty that his children had more opportunity and a better life than he did. Those are the things I want people in my district and across America to believe in again. And I think the voters are dialed in enough to know that when the DCCC hand picks a candidate who doesn’t know anything about our district that no real change will come by electing a party hack carpetbagger.

There is no doubt that beating Peter Roskam and defeating the Trump agenda are important. But the long term future of our Party and the nation rests in electing progressives who can restore the Democratic Party of my grandfather to a party that represents the average person who works hard, wants a fair shake and expects a government who is working for them. Personally, I think the power brokers in Washington need to be taught a lesson. They must be defeated and we must elect Progressives like me who will buck the establishment and fight for the people. We need to re-establish the foundation and fabric of America that Abraham Lincoln so eloquently spoke of in his Gettysburg address when he said "government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

With the DCCC trying to corrupt our decision making process, our primary fight just got a little harder, but it also just became more important that we win. It is critical that we begin to restore our democracy and usher in new ideas and personalities. We need candidates who will push the limits of ingenuity, ignore establishment politics and fight to makes people’s lives better every day they hold elected office.