Politicians Are Taking Longer To Adapt Than Delta And United Air-- They May Not Get Another Chance

Blue Dog John Barrow (GA) is a putz. He never belonged in Congress and never accomplished anything while he was there. After his Democratic constituents saw the ad above, they abandoned him and he lost his seat, since Republicans int appealed to had their own candidate. Pelosi and the DCCC never gave up on Barrow. When he was finally defeated, the DCCC wasted $2,382,846 trying to save him. Pelosi kicked in another $194,510 from her own SuperPAC. This year, Barrow is back at it-- this time running for Georgia Secretary of State, still pretending to be a Democrat.

The outrage over the latest brutal NRA/GOP gun massacre, the one in Parkland, Florida, is finally scaring people out of complacency-- everyone but the DCCC, who continues recruiting NRA allies like Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ), Anthony Brindisi (NY) and Jeff Van Drew (NJ). The DCCC should drop them and other NRA-Dems from their Red to Blue page, which is crawling with them, and pledge to stop supporting gun nuts (tantamount to murderers; let those politicians join the GOP where their perfidy will be appreciated). Even Republicans can tell which way the wind is blowing and are jumping off the SS NRA. But not idiots like Pelosi and Lujan. They'll be the last to figure it out. They should take a lesson from corporate America, which understands it is no longer tenable to be associated with the NRA. Delta Airlines, arguably America's worst carrier, is savvier than Pelosi, Lujan and Jeff Van Drew. "Two major airlines. A cybersecurity firm. Six car rental brands. A home security company. An Omaha bank. Companies," wrote Jackie Wattles for CNN Saturday, "have scrambled to cut ties with the National Rifle Association over the past couple of days, and the list continued to grow into the weekend. But not the geniuses who do the candidate recruiting for the DCCC. Anyone talking about cutting NRA postergirl Ann Kirkpatrick loose? Not at all-- only about the DCCC undermining her progressive opponents.

Delta Air Lines announced Saturday morning that it's ending discounted rates for NRA members. "We will be requesting that the NRA remove our information from their website," the company said in a tweet.

United Airlines followed a short time later, saying the company will no longer offer discounts on flights to the NRA annual meeting.

And TrueCar, a car buying service, said late Friday that it would end its deal with the NRA as of February 28.

The companies were the latest to abandon partnerships with the NRA amid a renewed public debate over tightened gun laws following a school shooting in Florida last week that left 17 dead.

First National Bank of Omaha on Thursday pledged to stop issuing an NRA-branded Visa card. A bank spokesperson said "customer feedback" prompted a review of its partnership with the NRA, and it chose not to renew its current contract.

There was also a wave of car rental outfits. Enterprise Holdings, which runs the Enterprise, Alamo and National car rental groups, announced that it will end the discount deal it has with the NRA on March 26.

On Friday, car rental company Hertz said in a tweet that it's also ending its NRA rental car discount program.

The NRA was advertising a Hertz partnership on its "member benefits" page as recently as Friday morning, but that listing disappeared by the afternoon.

The National Rifle Association did not immediately comment on Saturday about the decisions by the various companies to sever ties.

Avis and Budget, which are owned by the same company, were also listed as discount providers on NRA's website Friday. But when reached for comment, Avis Budget Group told CNNMoney that it too was ending its partnership with the organization.

"Effective March 26, our brands will no longer provide the NRA member discount," an Avis Budget Group spokesperson said via email.

More big names followed suit.

A spokesperson for moving van lines Allied and North American, which are both owned by Sirva, said Friday that the brands "no longer have an affiliate relationship with the NRA effective immediately."

"We have asked them to remove our listing from their benefits site," the spokesperson added. The company did not describe what kind of benefits had been offered to NRA members.

Insurance giant MetLife said Friday that it's ending its discounts on home and auto insurance for NRA members.

Symantec, which makes the Norton anti-virus software and owns the identity theft protection company LifeLock, said Friday that it is severing ties with the NRA. And SimpliSafe, which sells home security systems, said the same.

None of the companies gave details about why or when they decided to cut ties with the NRA, but the news comes as the hashtag #BoycottNRA has circulated widely on social media.

After the shooting in Parkland, Florida on February 14, survivors of the massacre have protested for stronger gun laws. Students across the country have walked out of class to demand new restrictions on the sale of firearms and an end to mass shootings in the U.S.

Some survivors of mass shootings confronted NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch at a CNN town hall on Wednesday. Loesch blamed a flawed system for letting people who shouldn't be able to buy guns slip through the cracks.

Two other companies-- the insurer Chubb and Wyndham Hotel Group-- confirmed to CNNMoney Friday that they've recently ended partnerships with the NRA. However, those decisions were made prior to the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida last week.

Chubb said in a statement that it "provided notice of our intent to discontinue participation in the NRA Carry Guard insurance program" three months ago.

The NRA Carry Guard program offers coverage for certain costs associated with gun-related accidents or incidents in which the gun owner claims they lawfully acted in self defense.

Lockton, another insurance firm, continues to underwrite policies for the NRA Carry Guard program, according to the NRA's website. Lockton did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Wyndham Hotel Group said in a statement that it "ended our relationship with the NRA late last year."

Saturday we listed 12 House candidates from every part of the country vowing to vote for a ban on selling assault weapons. "It worked in 1994, and should be reinstated," said Hawaii state Rep Kaniela Ing. I grew up in Alabama, and i understand hunters," said Michigan candidate Ellen Lipton. "Assault weapons are not for hunting." Antoinette Sedillo Lopez, the leading candidate in Albuquerque: "I unequivocally support an assault weapons ban. Military weapons have no place on our streets." American companies and smart political leaders are denouncing the NRA. Lujan and Pelosi should get onboard by throwing Ann Kirkpatrick, Jeff Van Drew, Anthony Brindisi, Andrew Janz and other gun nuts overboard, very publicly, very loudly.

Smart Democrats are communicating with voters the way Katie Porter was doing in Orange County yesterday: "Since the Parkland shooting, Mimi Walters hasn't had a lot to say. And there's the reason. The NRA has bought her silence. The reason the NRA and other special interests are so powerful in this country has nothing to do with the issues or what voters want. The reason special interests own Congress is because the Citizens United decision stacked the deck against working Americans by allowing corporations and billionaires to spend unlimited sums to advance extreme agendas. We've got to pass real gun reform in this country. But we'll only be able to get Congress back to a place where its serving us instead of special interests if we change our campaign finance laws."

Austin progressive Dem Derrick Crowe took just as hard a stand yesterday, not one you're going to hear from any DCCC-Democrats, like Collin Peterson (MN), Henry Cuellar (TX), Tim Walz (MN) and Darren Soto (FL):

The NRA exists for one purpose: to serve the interests of gun manufacturers. They profit from the sale of assault weapons, and they’ll profit if the GOP starts arming teachers in response. They’ve bought our Congress and this president.

I am not for sale. I refuse all corporate PAC money, signed the No Fossil Fuel pledge, and the No NRA Money pledge.

According to Quinnipiac, 67% of Americans want a ban on assault weapons and 97% of gun owners want universal background checks. When the majority of Americans want something and we don't get it, you need to ask, "why?" The "why" is that powerful business interests have bought our political system.

The NRA. Big Pharma. Private health insurance. The Military Industrial Complex. The Prison Industrial Complex. Oil and Gas Companies.

And Omaha progressive Kara Eastman sent out a similar e-mail to her supporters in Nebraska late yesterday:

The gun lobby has far too much control over some of our elected officials. Congressman Don Bacon has taken over $18,000 from the NRA to advance their agenda. 

It’s time to listen to students, parents, and teachers, not the gun lobby. Our children’s lives depend on it.

Weapons of war such as the AR-15 should not be available to everyday citizens and sensible gun safety laws are long overdue.

Arming teachers is not the answer and not what teachers want. They want to feel safe in their schools and to know their students are safe too. "More guns" is not the answer.

The NRA And The Blue Dogs... It's Complicated

Last December I wrote that Ben Ray Luján, Pelosi's pick to head the DCCC-- the guy who would be in charge of recruiting, training and electing House Democrats-- was still one of the conservative Democrats on the payroll of the gun lobbyists. As recently as 2005 there were dozens of House Democrats who routinely sided with the NRA and who solicited NRA contributions, mostly Blue Dogs and New Dems. Almost all of them have, since then, been defeated either in primaries-- gun nut Tim Holden (Blue Dog-PA) is a good example-- or in general elections where Democratic voters just refused in come out and vote for them. Not many Democrats were still taking blood money from the NRA and other gun-nut oganizations in the last cycle. These are still current House members who were still voting with the NRA and still taking money from them and the other gun groups:

• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)- $84,500
• Gene Green (TX)- $46,750
• Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA)- $47,815
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)- $25,450
• Tim Ryan (OH)- $20,996
• Ron Kind (New Dem Chairman-WI)- $32,482
• Mike Thompson (Blue Dog-CA)- $50,379
• Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)- $2,900
• Tim Walz (MN)- $18,950
• Jim Clyburn (SC)- $9,900
• Ben Ray Luján (NM, Chairman DCCC)- $5,500
• Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog Chairman-OR)- $5,000
• Loretta Sanchez (Blue Dog-CA)- $1,500

Dan Friedman, writing for The Trace asserts in a provocatively titled piece, Meet the Last NRA Democrat, that this cycle there's just one NRA Democrat left, very right-wing Texas Blue Dog, Henry Cuellar. So far this cycle, gun rights groups have given $1,441,329 to Republican congressional candidates and just $32,951 to Democrats. Their biggest contributions went to Speaker Paul Ryan ($29,285) and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy ($26,100), but with most of their Democratic allies defeated, the only House Democrats who have received any money from any of the gun groups so far in the cycle are:

• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)- $2,000
• Gene Green (TX)- $2,000
• Ron Kind (New Dem-WI)- $2,000
• Ben Ray Lujan (NM)- $2,000
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)- $2,000
• Tim Walz (MN- $2,000)

Senators Joe Donnelly (Blue Dog-IN), Martin Heinrich (NM), Heidi Heitkamp (ND) have each taken $2,000 and Joe Manchin (WV) took $1,000.

That $2,000 to Cuellar, who used to brag he was George W. Bush's favorite Democrat, included the $1,000 that the NRA has given to any Democrat in 2016.

In his 11 years in Congress, Representative Henry Cuellar, a Democrat from Laredo, Texas, has made a habit of vexing his political party. Cuellar, one of eight children born to migrant worker parents, endorsed George W. Bush in 2000, voted against abortion funding, and called for sped-up deportation of undocumented children who cross the Mexican border.

  This year, Cuellar achieved another unusual distinction: He is, at least for now, the lone Democratic congressional candidate, incumbent or otherwise, who has received a campaign donation this election cycle from the National Rifle Association, according to data tracked by the Center for Responsive Politics. (This calculation reflects reporting through March 31.) Cuellar did not respond to a request for comment.

It is not too late for the NRA to back other candidates in the 2016 elections, of course, [and there is no doubt that they will pony up for gun-nut Collin Peterson again] but an analysis of the recent history of the gun group’s election spending suggests that the NRA will donate few, if any, other Democrats.

The NRA has leaned Republican since at least the early 1990s, but as recently as halfway through the first term of President Barack Obama, it still supported many Democrats standing for election to Congress, especially in the South and West.

For the 2010 campaign cycle, the gun group gave more than $350,000 in direct contributions to 65 Democratic House candidates. By 2014, almost all that support had disappeared: The gun group donated just $38,000 to only 12 Democratic campaigns.

Representative Filemon Vela, another Democratic Texan, received his only NRA donation in 2012, $1,000, during his first congressional campaign. In an interview, he said that he didn’t recall the contribution. NRA lobbyists visited him after his election, but, he says, “I never heard from them again.”

NRA giving to Senate Democrats has also disappeared. The last such candidate to receive an NRA donation was West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin in 2012, who received $6,500 from the group. That contribution was made before the Sandy Hook massacre, and before Manchin, along with Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey, introduced legislation to close the so-called background check loophole. (The bill failed in the Senate amid fierce NRA opposition.)

...Of the 30 Democrats who received direct support from the NRA in 2012, a dozen still hold their House seats. They include Sanford Bishop of Georgia, Kurt Schrader of Oregon, and Collin Peterson of Minnesota.

The plummet in the NRA support for Democrats highlights the group’s increasingly partisan posture, which is at odds with its past attempts to avoid party allegiances. It also highlights bigger political shifts.

Both major political parties have moved into more clearly defined ideological and regional groupings. In the 2010 election, 30 conservative Democrats, many of them members Blue Dog Coalition who tended to oppose gun regulation, lost to Republicans as the Tea Party won congressional seats for the first time.

The result has left fewer Democrats representing voters who put a premium on gun rights, and fewer Republicans whose constituents focus on issues such as abortion rights.

“Most organizations that have an ideological bent have become partisan organizations as the parties have become more homogenous,” David Wasserman, who covers House races for the Cook Political Report, tells The Trace. “It’s not exclusive to the NRA. We see it with Planned Parenthood and the Human Rights Campaign. They have become Democratic organizations almost exclusively.”

Manchin says he thinks the gun lobby has erred by not trying to work with him on background check legislation. “You would think the NRA would be reaching out to people like me that really believe staunchly in defending the Second Amendment, but also in trying to find a balance with just some common sense,” he says.

Manchin says the NRA no longer resembles the group he “grew up in … that taught gun safety and responsibility.”

If You Were A Candidate, Would You Want A Gaggle Of Corrupt DC Lobbyists Like Haley Barbour Raising Money For You?

Why is our government such a mess? Follow the money

By 2008, no one considered reactionary Georgia Blue Dog John Barrow an actual Democrat. He was voting for the toxic Republican agenda more consistently than a dozen Republicans were! That year progressives in Georgia felt they had finally found a candidate who could beat him in a primary, highly respected and accomplished state Sen. Regina Thomas, once Deputy Majority Whip of the Georgia House and in synch-- unlike Barrow-- with every issue Obama was presenting to the American people. When Obama stabbed her in the back and endorsed Barrow, recording a radio spot for black radio stations heralding the Republican-lite Barrow as a hero of working families, it pretty much ended any chance for Regina to win the primary-- the ultimate betrayal. Of course, no one who remembered Obama's fulsome endorsement of Joe Lieberman against Ned Lamont could have been that surprised.


Aside from the radio spot that was played exclusively on black radio, Barrow's spots from the primary were all repetitions of GOP talking points scapegoating immigrants, railing against the "death tax," boosterism for the Bush/McCain perspective on wars in the Middle East... Obama's ad said "We're going to need John Barrow back in Congress to help change Washington and get our country back on track." Back in Washington, Barrow voted against virtually every proposal Obama made to Congress. By the way, Hillary Clinton endorsed him too-- the NRA's top Democratic shill in Congress, against the African-American woman state senator who was campaigning on gun safety. Because of Obama and the Democratic establishment's support for the faithless Barrow, the Democratic Party lost the seat, not to a progressive Democrat but to a rabidly right-wing Republican.

Today one of the most loathed Democrats in Congress, #DebtTrapDebbie Wasserman Schultz, is being primaried by one of the best candidates for Congress anywhere. Once again, Obama stepped into the fray on behalf of the symbol of all that is worst and most hated about the Democratic Party; he endorsed Wasserman Schultz Monday-- and, as he did when he backed Barrow against Regina Thomas and backed Wall Street errand boy Patrick Murphy against proven progressive champion Alan Grayson, he just flat-out lied to low-info voters: "Debbie has been a strong, progressive leader in Congress and a hardworking, committed Chair of our national Party since I proudly nominated her to the role in 2011. She always stands up and fights for what is right for her district while passionately supporting middle class families."

In fact Debbie is progressive the way John Barrow was progressive-- not. And the families she always stands up and fights for are families like the notorious sugar barons, the Fanjuls, who have financed her rise to power. It is a tribute to Tim Canova that he has Wasserman Schultz so precariously on the ropes that she had to call in Obama for help in a primary! And it's just like Obama to back a slime-bag like Wasserman Schultz, the same way he backed John Barrow and Patrick Murphy and the same way he is sure to back Hillary and every right-of-center Democrat who needs help against a progressive. (He's got a presidential library in Chicago to build and money doesn't grow on trees; it comes from rich donors like Patrick Murphy's parents and like Debbie Wasserman Schultz's career-long backers/investors.)

Just up the I-95 from FL-23, the Broward/Miami-Dade County, district Wasserman Schultz occupies, is FL-18, the district Patrick Murphy is abandoning in pursuit of the open U.S. Senate seat. The Democratic Party establishment insists on corrupt big money plutocrat Randy Perkins over the progressive candidate in the race, Jonathan Chane. Standard DCCC operating procedure.

Many of K Street's sleaziest and most criminal lobbyists-- led by Haley Barbour's BRG Group, the shadiest of all the DC lobbyist firms-- threw a big bash for their boy Perkins a few days ago.

One logo is Romney's and one is Perkins'-- same difference

BRG lobbyists like Jonathan Mantz, Maya Seiden and Josh Lamel were yucking it up about it being a "Red to Blue" event, since, at least in theory, Murphy is no longer a Republican-- so the district is "blue" not "red," and they all know very well that Perkins is anything but "blue." Other of Washington's most corrupt lobbyists in attendance were Libby Greer of Forbes-Tate, John Michael Gonzalez of Peck Madigan Jones, and Tom O’Donnell of Gephardt Government Affairs. And 5 of the most corrupt, in-the-pocket-of-the-Wall-Street/K-Street-Axis Democrats were in attendance: Steny Hoyer, Joe Crowley, Alcee Hastings, Jim Himes, and Denny Heck. That should give any progressive an idea about what kind of "Democrat" Randy Perkins hopes to be.

Barbour, who was the longtime Chair of the RNC, and was always thrilled by the hundreds of thousands of dollars Perkins gave Republican candidates, had been hired by Perkins as his company's lobbyist. Barbour engineered $100 mlion+ in no bid contracts for Perkins from Chris Christie after Hurricane Sandy. The dirty money goes round and round-- it's what keeps the two corrupt parties in power-- Perkins hires Barbour to be AshBritt's lobbyist (AshBritt is Perkins' company), Barbour gets Perkins millions and millions of dollars in no bid contracts from Christie and Rick Scott, Perkins makes a hefty contribution to the Republican Governors Association (while Christie is chair-- more than $761,000), and gives Rick Scott $200,000 for his campaign against Democrat Alex Sink and Barbour hosts a fundraiser for Perkins' Congressional campaign... and so it goes.

Like Trump, Perkins calls buying corrupt politicians "just business." Business very much encouraged by the most corrupt of politicians, like... Steny Hoyer, Joe Crowley, Alcee Hastings, Jim Himes and Denny Heck. Not to mention Wasserman Schultz. Suggestion: step up to the plate for the progressives running against Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Patrick Murphy, Tim Canova and Alan Grayson... here at the thermometer; let's beat the bosses:

Progressives Betrayed By The Establishment... Again

As progressive champion Alan Grayson continued to pull ahead of Republican-lite Congressman Patrick Murphy in polling for the Florida Senate primary, Obama weighed in with an endorsement. He's certainly entitled to his opinion, parroting the exact Chuck Schumer talking points he hands out to all the stooges he gets to endorse his corrupt conservative little Schumercrat: "a tireless champion for middle-class families," a sad joke on the American people. It came three days after Grayson endorsed Bernie in the presidential race, but I don't think that's the primary reason. I'll tell you why in a minute, but first a little background.

We've talked about Patrick Murphy's ultra-conservative voting record and his odious role on the House Financial Services Committee as Wall Street's errand boy against the middle class for 3 years and I'm not going to rehash that again. I just want to pick out a few votes that were specifically aimed at President Obama himself.

On September 9 at 4:55 in the afternoon, the House passed a resolution condemning President Obama's rescue of Beau Bergdahl from the Taliban. It passed 249-163, every Republican plus 22 conservative Democrats voting for it. Two Blue Dog Democrats, John Barrow (GA) and Nick Rahall (WV) joined 92 Republicans as co-sponsors. Two months later, Democratic voters in their districts stayed away from the polls and both right-wing Democratic shitheads were finally defeated, although, not in primaries-- but to even worse Republicans. Among the disloyal 22 Democrats who voted to condemn Obama was, of course, Patrick Murphy. He always crosses the aisle to vote with his old pals the Republicans-- yes, he was a lifelong Republican and maxed out to Mitt Romney's campaign against President Obama-- on showy legislation like this. Three other conservaDems were defeated 2 months after the vote, like Barrow and Rahall-- Pete Gallego (Blue Dog-TX), Mike Michaud (Blue Dog-ME) and Joe Garcia (New Dem-FL); a 4th Blue Dog, Utah's Jim Matheson, wisely retired rather than face certain defeat at the polls. Murphy managed to skate under the radar, using the vote to bolster his image in West Palm Beach as an "independent."

Safely reelected, Murphy continued in his role of being one of the biggest boosters of the Keystone XL Pipeline in Congress, voting for it every single time Boehner brought it up. Many other right-wing fake Democrats did as well. But in May, 2013, he did something even many of the most right-wing Democrats in the House couldn't bring themselves to do. Long before their primary battle began this other Keystone vote-- with Murphy voting with the Republican polluters and Grayson voting with the Democrats and environmentalists-- brought the two men's approach into focus-- for those who pay attention to House votes. Grayson offered a resolution challenging the constitutionality of the GOP plan to take the decision-making for Keystone XL pipeline out of President Obama's hands. "The Keystone XL Pipeline deal is an earmark to a foreign corporation, plain and simple," Grayson said. "House Republicans claim to have been incredibly keen on ridding our legislative system of Congressional earmarks-- yet here they are-- hypocritically sneaking one in for a foreign corporation. They seem to believe that the 'no earmarks' rule does not apply to them. That’s just unacceptable." Only 19 Democrats voted with the GOP that day, Murphy, of course being one of them. No other Florida Democrat, not even paid-off sleaze bag Joe Garcia, voted to strip President Obama of his decision-making power; just Murphy-- who Chuck Schumer and Wall Street are now determined to reward with a Senate seat!

In May, 2014, Murphy was still not thinking about running for the Senate. He was just trying to show Republicans he was still one of them, despite the "D" next to his name. So on May 8 as the sun was setting over DC, the Republicans were desperate to find a few Democrats willing to make their vicious plan to establish a witch hunt to use against Hillary Clinton look bipartisan. Most of the usual suspects who vote with the GOP on everything passed on that one. It was really toxic for Democrats to vote to establish the Benghazi Committee, which was so obviously a partisan attack against the Obama Administration in general and Hillary Clinton in particular. When the vote came up, it passed 232-186, every Republican voting YES and every Democrat voting NO... except for 7 fake Democrats, Murphy included. Four of the 7-- Ron Barber, John Barrow, Mike McIntyre and Nick Rahall-- were driven out of Congress at the next election. But Murphy skated by again, along with Blue Dog extremists Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) and Collin Peterson (MN).

Obama killed Regina's political career when he endorsed his own ideological enemy John Barrow

One more thing before I get into the why of the Obama endorsement. By 2008, no one considered reactionary Georgia Blue Dog John Barrow an actual Democrat. He was voting with the Republicans more frequently than a dozen Republicans were! That year progressives in Georgia felt they had finally found a candidate who could beat him in a primary, highly respected and accomplished state Sen. Regina Thomas, once Deputy Majority Whip of the Georgia House and in synch-- unlike Barrow-- with every issue Obama was presenting to the American people. When Obama endorsed Barrow and recorded a radio spot for black radio stations heralding him as a hero of working families, it was a knife right into the heart of Regina's campaign-- the ultimate betrayal. Of course, no one who remembered Obama's fulsome endorsement of Joe Lieberman against Ned Lamont could have been that surprised.

Aside from the radio spot that was played exclusively on black radio, Barrow's spots from the primary were all repetitions of GOP talking points scapegoating immigrants, railing against the "death tax," boosterism for the Bush/McCain perspective on wars in the Middle East. Obama's ad said "We're going to need John Barrow back in Congress to help change Washington and get our country back on track." Back in Washington, Barrow voted against virtually every proposal Obama made to Congress. By the way, Hillary Clinton endorsed him too-- against the African-American woman state senator. Barrow's ads from that primary have all been "disappeared" from YouTube, but this one will give you an idea of who Obama and Hillary were endorsing:



OK, now to the why. Ready for the stench of corruption? The banksters made no secret of their fury at being targeted and held accountable by Bernie and Elizabeth Warren. They were very publicly threatening to withhold funds from Democratic senators and from the DSCC. Stories about it ran in the NY Times and Wall Street Journal.

Big Wall Street banks are so upset with U.S. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren's call for them to be broken up that some have discussed withholding campaign donations to Senate Democrats in symbolic protest, sources familiar with the discussions said.

Representatives from Citigroup, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, have met to discuss ways to urge Democrats, including Warren and Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, to soften their party's tone toward Wall Street, sources familiar with the discussions said this week.

Bank officials said the idea of withholding donations was not discussed at a meeting of the four banks in Washington but it has been raised in one-on-one conversations between representatives of some of them. However, there was no agreement on coordinating any action, and each bank is making its own decision, they said.

Their demands were simple: they wanted their own man to replace Harry Reid as head of the Senate Dems. Reid was found beaten to a pulp, nearly dead and immediately announced he was resigning and that Chuck Schumer would take over, even though he wasn't in-line for the job and there had been no vote. And they wanted pro-Wall Street Democrats (i.e.- Schumercrats) as the party's nominees in 2016 who would balance the anti-Wall Street faction. Schumer swore to deliver Patrick Murphy-- the banksters' first choice, to whom they have given more funding than any non-incumbent running this cycle ($872,350 so far). The other Wall Street-friendly crooked nominees approved by Wall Street: Chris Van Hollen (MD), Ted Stickland (OH), Tammy Duckworth (IL), Catherine Cortez Masto (NV) and Katie McGinty (PA). Here are the campaign contributions from the Finance Sector to their all-time favorite Members of Congress:

Ever wonder why the government stinks?

And then there's the question of who, exactly, is financing a presidential library being built in Chicago. A top Biden staffer has been sharing that, off-the-record, with Capitol Hill staffers and we hope to have more on that sad, sad news very soon.

In fairness, here's the statement the Grayson campaign made after the Schumer-engineered announcement was made yesterday: "These endorsements are a last-ditch effort by the DC Establishment to try to blunt our large and growing command of the race. It comes as no surprise that these moves are made just two days after Rep. Grayson became the first major statewide candidate in the country to endorse the anti-Establishment candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, for the Presidency. They come just one day after a new poll shows Rep. Grayson with a double-digit lead, winning among men and women, every age group, and whites, blacks and Hispanics. The anti-Democratic Party Establishment is desperate to drag Grayson’s opponent, their do-nothing, dirty errand boy for Wall Street, over the finish line. But Florida voters in both parties are fed up with egregious manipulation by outside forces to dictate our candidates. These arrogant Empire-Strikes-Back efforts by the Democratic politburo will be no more successful than the similar failed attempts by Republican party bosses. This is the year when the voters decide."

Obama was also manipulated into endorsing the pathetic establishment Senate candidate in Ohio, Ted Strickland, the same week that every newspaper in the state has started endorsing his opponent, PG Sittenfeld. I asked PG's communications director, Dale Butland, why he thought Obama would endorse a conservative loser like Strickland. "It’s no surprise that the Democratic establishment-- which has long been in Gov. Strickland’s corner-- would be getting mighty nervous about the momentum that’s been building around PG’s campaign. And the endorsement they engineered in Washington today was clearly designed to counter the endorsements PG’s recently received in Ohio from respected political figures like former Gov. Dick Celeste-- and respected Ohio newspapers like the Cleveland Plain Dealer and Akron Beacon Journal. "But no endorsement-- no matter who it comes from-- can change Ted’s A+ rating from the NRA-- or the fact that he voted against background checks, a ban on assault weapons, and every other common sense gun safety measure that was ever put in front of him. So when PG wins the Democratic Senate nomination on March 15, we’ll look forward to working with the President to defeat Rob Portman in November."

Back to Florida for a moment. The Democratic Progressive Caucus of Florida was aghast that Schumer and Wall Street "got to" Obama and persuaded him to back a Republican reactionary lightly disguised as a Democrat over one of the most effective progressives in our lifetimes. Caucus president Susan Smith:

"As someone who worked hard to help President Obama win Florida in 2008 and 2012, I am profoundly saddened and disappointed by his apparent lack of trust in Florida Democrats to choose our own U.S. Senate nominee. In fact, poll after poll has shown that Florida Democrats tend to prefer Alan Grayson over former Republican Patrick Murphy.

"As much as it breaks my heart to see President Obama attempt to put his thumb on the scale for Patrick Murphy, it's even more worrisome that the president seems to have done so with bad information. Patrick Murphy has said he wants to look at cuts to Social Security, and he supported the so-called Bowles-Simpson plan that would have cut benefits for the vast majority of Social Security recipients.

"Patrick Murphy was a Republican until he decided to run for office in 2011, and before he decided to run for Senate, he voted like one. It's one thing if the President is willing to look past Murphy's support for the Republican's Benghazi witch hunt and the Keystone XL pipeline, but it is another thing entirely to make an endorsement based on bad information. I hope the President will read up on Murphy's real record and reconsider his decision to throw the weight of the White House behind someone who will do Wall Street's bidding."

I contributed to Grayson, Sittenfeld and to Donna Edwards today, to show my disdain for the Democratic establishment and to do my bit, once again, to help elect a progressive and non-corrupt U.S. Senate. I hope you'll do the same... by tapping on the thermometer below:

No, Democrats Aren't Going To Win By Becoming More Like Republicans

Watch the video of Rachel above talking about what she called "a parallel universe in our politics." Towards the end she says that "Conservatives have built themselves a very popular, very successful media landscape that doesn't just tell conservatives things that they want to hear in terms of opinion; they just make stuff up. They make up news stories that aren't true. And when they are corrected in other places, they never disappear from the conservative media. And this is, increasingly, what American conservatives consume as their news diet. This is what they think news is. This is their information stream."

I don't believe that all the red-state Democrats are necessarily bad, corrupt people. I know some of them personally and I know for a fact they aren't bad people... for politicians. But they are politicians and they are fully aware that people in their states-- particularly surly, frustrated voters in their states-- are swimming in that information stream. On line, on Hate Talk Radio, on Fox, from reactionary religious hate mongers...

Sahil Kapur speculated Tuesday that McConnell may well be able to break filibusters by stretching his 54 vote majority (assuming the Republicans win Alaska and Lousiana) to 60 by picking up 6 conservative red-state Democrats. Joe Manchin (D-WV), easily the most right-wing Democrat in the Senate, was quoted all over twitter yesterday morning when he thundered, about Democrats filibustering an anti-family Republican agenda, "That’s bullshshit. … I’m not going to put up with that." Of course not; he's on the same payrolls that most of the Republicans are on. This is Kapur's take on the 6 most likely Democrats to back McConnell the most:

• Claire McCaskill (D-MO)

It took Todd Akin of "legitimate rape" notoriety to save McCaskill from electoral doom in 2012, and this second-term Missourian recognizes that she can't vote in lock-step with her party if she wants to stay in the good graces of her conservative-leaning state. Look for her to side with Republicans from time to time to appease her right flank, on issues such as the Keystone pipeline.

• Joe Manchin (D-WV)

This conservative Democrat has always looked for ways to make himself attractive to West Virginians, from literally shooting the cap-and-trade bill in a campaign ad to voting against Reid on filibuster reform. With the ranks of conservative Democrats diminished in the wake of the 2014 blowout, Manchin will look for opportunities to tout his bipartisan bona fides.

• Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND)

Heitkamp won her first Senate election in 2012 by a razor-thin 1 percent margin in deep-red North Dakota. Not shy about breaking with her party, she was one of just four Democrats who voted to block the popular gun background checks legislation in 2013 — the other three have retired or lost reelection. Expect her to hunt for issues where she can align herself with the new Republican majority.

• Joe Donnelly (Blue Dog-IN)

Donnelly largely owes his seat to Indiana Republicans who threw out an untouchable incumbent in 2012 in favor of a candidate to imploded amid a rape gaffe in the general election. One of the more conservative Democrats, he'll likely be willing to partner with McConnell's Republicans in some cases, such as reversing the 30-hour work week definition under Obamacare.

• Angus King (I-ME)

King, a progressive-leaning independent who says he'll continue to caucus with Democrats, has often looked for ways to polish his nonpartisan credentials. In two years as a senator, King has tried to play deal-maker and split with Democrats on issues like gun control and student loans.

• Jon Tester (D-MT)

Tester survived reelection in the Democrat-friendly year of 2012, but his party got wiped out this year in the race for Montana's other Senate seat. Tester has been willing to buck Democratic leaders at times, most notably when he helped kill the DREAM Act by filibuster in 2010.

Manu Raju and Burgess Everett, writing yesterday for Politico claim that the Republican take-over is empowering ConservaDems like Manchin and Heitkamp because they can "determine whether Mitch McConnell or Harry Reid prevails on any given cliff-hanger vote, making these Democrats the new power centers in the Senate."

[A]lready, a host of red-state Democrats signal a willingness to cut some deals with the GOP on the initial items atop their agenda. Donnelly wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act’s medical device tax and restore the full-time workweek of 40 hours under the law, two major GOP priorities. Several senators-- like Manchin, Heitkamp, Donnelly and McCaskill-- want to move forward on the Keystone XL oil pipeline. And Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) said he is pushing for three bipartisan bills — including overhauls of regulations, student loans, and parental and medical leave — that he hopes will get attention in the GOP Senate.

“If the Republicans have an affirmative agenda, things they want to do, they are going to need Democratic or independent votes,” said King, who caucuses with Democrats. “I remember telling people back in Maine, everybody down here thinks they’re in charge. The reality is that anything that gets done has to have bipartisan support.”

Predictably, the DC Establishment blames the defeats of conservative Democrats like Mark Pryor and Kay Hagan on "their inability to exert their independence and distinguish themselves legislatively from an unpopular White House, partly because of the perennial gridlock in the Senate" rather than on their failure to motivate enough Democrats to bother to vote for their conservative asses. But the 10 most conservative Democrats in the Senate-- the ones who have voted most frequently with the GOP on crucial votes-- don't inspire discerning Democrats because they are so conservative, not because they're not conservative enough. These are the 10 worst-- from bad to worst-- along with their lifetime ProgressivePunch crucial vote scores:

• Heidi Heitkamp- 75.95
• Mark Warner- 75.38
• Angus King- 74.68
• Joe Donnelly- 74.36
• Tom Carper- 72.32
• Claire McCaskill- 72.16
• Kay Hagan- 71.01
• Mark Pryor- 66.50
• Mary Landrieu- 65.48
• Joe Manchin- 62.15

Four of these conservatives were up for reelection last week. Pryor and Hagan were defeated outright, he by an incredible 17% (after spending $13,484,442, significantly mnore than his opponent) and she by 1.7%. Landrieu was forced into a runoff almost no one thinks she can win, with the 3 Republicans on the ballot scoring a total of 55.8% to her 42.1%. And Mark Warner-- considered untouchable, retained his seat by a tiny margin, winning 1,071,283 (49.2%) to 1,054,556 (48.4%). Voter turnout was abysmal in all their states and Democrats just stayed home rather than vote for conservatives. In the states where Democrats did well, progressive senators like Jeff Merkley (OR) and Al Franken (MN) turned out their bases and swept back into office. Oregon had a 52.0% turnout and Minnesota had 51.3%. North Carolina-- the race with the most money spent in the country-- only had a 40.7% turnout; Arkansas' turnout was 41.2%, lots of Republicans at the polls while plenty of Democrats sat on their hands and watched the conservative senator, conservative candidate for governor and 4 conservative candidates for the House all lose. In Virginia, Warner almost lost because only 36.7% of the voters bothered showing up-- and the ones who did weren't Democrats. Being more conservative and more disappointing to Democratic voters will not help save weak "centrist" Michael Bennet (CO) in 2016. He's probably the most endangered Democrat up for reelection. But Democrats never learn so watch him turn further right over the next two years.

Are any pundits going to claim reactionary John Barrow (GA) lost his seat because he wash;t conservative enough? There was no Democrat up for reelection in either house of Congress who voted as frequently with the Republicans on crucial matters than Barrow. In the current session, his ProgressivePunch score is a breathtaking 26.87, more conservative than Justin Amash (28.19) and much more conservative than Walter Jones (41.28). Democratic voters didn't turn out for Barrow because he was too Republican, not because he wasn't Republican enough.

That's all, folks

Fittingly, The GOP Is Targeting Democrats Who Vote With Republicans Against Working Families

Yesterday, when I woke up, I found that my friend Dena had sent me the above NRCC ad running in the Savannah and Augusta media markets against the most right-wing Democrat in Congress, Blue Dog/New Dem John Barrow. This session, on crucial roll calls , Barrow's ProgressivePunch score was a dismal 26.87. The only Democrat who voted more frequently with the GOP-- and only by one or two votes with a score of 26.43-- was corrupt and reactionary Utah Blue Dog Jim Matheson, who is finally retiring this year, leaving Barrow as the undisputed champion for title of the Worst Democrat in Congress. Conservative Republicans Justin Amash (R-MI), Chris Gibson (R-NY) and Walter Jones (R-NC) back progressive legislation more frequently than Barrow. Jones' Progressive Punch score for the session was 41.28. Basically, Barrow is against everything progressives want and, when push comes to shove, Boehner knows he can always count on him-- more so than on Amash, Gibson and Jones.

But now the GOP sees an opportunity to knock him out of Congress-- by targeting him for voting against the interests of working families (i.e., following the Republican line). Barrow, has favored cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits and increasing the retirement age, standard Republican Party fare. And now the GOP is using it against him-- as they should... and as a vibrant Democratic Party should have in a primary. But there is no vibrant Democratic Party and there was no primary. And, so far, the DCCC and their House Majority PAC have wasted $2,156,920 trying to save his worthless hide again-- over $450,000 this week alone.

As Lori Montgomery explained in the Washington Post yesterday, "Cutting federal health and retirement spending has long been at the top of the GOP agenda. But with Republicans in striking distance of winning the Senate, they are suddenly blasting the idea of trimming Social Security benefits." Oh that's still the immutable agenda for conservatives, of course, but now they don't talk about it publicly. And, they're attacking conservative Democrats who have "reached across the aisle" to give them a hand with that toxic agenda. Like Barrow. Other conservative Democrats who cozy up with anti-family Republicans regularly and who are now being pummeled with GOP ads for it include Kay Hagan (D-NC), Mark Pryor (D-AR) and Scott Peters (D-CA). Rove's shady SuperPAC, Crossroads, has been accusing Hagan of supporting a “controversial plan” that “raises the retirement age.” They don't mention the controversial plan is standard Republican fare that will be implemented as soon as the GOP controls the government.

Older voters typically dominate the electorate in non-presidential years, so the resort to Social Security as an issue in the Nov. 4 midterms is hardly surprising. But what has drawn attention-- and charges of hypocrisy-- is the decision by Republican groups to attack Democrats for supporting conservative ideas in a proposed “grand bargain” on the budget drafted by Democrat Erskine Bowles and former Republican senator Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming.

Once venerated in both parties as a good-faith proposal, the Bowles-Simpson plan calls for political compromise to rein in the $17.9 trillion national debt, which was dangerously elevated by the recent recession. Republicans would raise taxes, the theory goes, in exchange for Democrats cutting health and retirement spending. Among its proposals: trim Social Security benefits for well-off seniors, raise the retirement age to 69 by 2075 and adopt the new inflation measure, known as the chained Consumer Price Index, or chained CPI.

Both Crossroads GPS and NRCC, the party’s campaign arm for House races, have cited Democrats’ support for Bowles-Simpson as the basis of their charges on Social Security, though many Republicans-- including Rove-- have criticized President Obama for failing to support the Bowles-Simpson package.

The progressive approach, being pushed by people like Bernie Sanders and Alan Grayson-- and by every Blue America candidate-- is to end the cap on Social Security taxes that allows rich people to only pay on the first $117,700 of income. As The Post points out, "More than 70 percent of Republicans and 92 percent of Democrats agreed that top earners should pay Social Security taxes on their entire earnings, not just wages under $117,700. Meanwhile, three-quarters of those surveyed oppose raising the retirement age and reducing cost-of-living increases, for example, by adopting the chained CPI." Washington's conservative consensus isn't headed in that direction and conservatives of both parties are still dead set on instituting chained CPI.

Barrow Is The Loneliest Number

This morning The Economist published a Broderesque story about Georgia reactionary John Barrow, The Loneliest Man In Congress. “Will 2014,” they ask, “spell doom for the last white House Democrat in the Deep South?” I guess it depends how you define Deep South. Apparently North Carolina, Florida and Texas aren’t deep enough, at least not viewed from a British perspective. Anyway, we should only be so lucky to see Barrow, the worst and most useless Democrat in the House finally go down to defeat. His voting record is absolutely abysmal and he votes with Boehner on crucial roll calls more frequently than some Republicans! The DCCC is spending millions of dollars desperately trying to reelect Barrow, who voted more frequently against progressive legislation this session than New York Republican Chris Gibson, who the DCCC is trying to defeat for a bad voting record.

Barrow’s startlingly bad voting record for the 2013-14 session— a ProgressivePunch crucial vote score of 26.87— is further right than Justin Amash’s (R-MI), Gibson’s or Walter Jones’ (R-NC). Jones’ score is 41.28, a helluva lot better than Barrow’s.

In case you’re wondering where The Economist is coming from on Barrow’s race, please watch the 30 second video at the bottom of the page and then think about this first two sentences of their article: “The best political ad of the 2012 election involved Congressman John Barrow and his favourite guns. A Democrat who represents a conservative part of Georgia, Mr Barrow used his 30-second spot to woo two very different groups of voters, both numerous in his district: government-loathing rural whites, and blacks seeking protection against injustice.” Barrow has been successful in rolling his African-American constituents for a long, long time. They see he’s a Democrat and don’t realize how abysmal the specifics of his voting record have been for their families. Or they just figure he’s the lesser of two evils. “Thanks to tireless constituent services and a centrist record (recently he has voted about half the time with House Republican leaders), Mr Barrow has been elected five times. He is a stalwart of the Blue Dog coalition of conservative Democrats,” offers The Economist. In fact he’s the co-chairman, as well as a member of the Wall Street-funded New Dems. The Economist article keeps referring to him as a “moderate” rather than a conservative, which is what he is.

[S]ome call Mr Barrow “deceitful,” accusing him of being both for and against such laws as Obamacare. But more call him “a good guy” whose defeat— if it comes— will be a verdict on national politics. Bill Werkheiser, a Republican running for a state legislator’s seat near Reidsville, expresses heartfelt regret that, if Mr Barrow only voted “five times in 20” with the Democrats, that is enough to damn him in today’s hyper-partisan climate. He ventures that Mr Barrow “is so well-liked” that if he followed other Georgia Democrats and switched party, he would sweep all rivals aside. Asked why he does not become a Republican, Mr Barrow offers well-polished swipes at both parties, adding that a change of partisan label “wouldn’t change the way I vote.”

Jim Galloway of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is Georgia’s foremost political journalist. In a column about Sam Nunn’s latest whining about his daughter’s Senate run, Galloway mentions that Barrow was the first choice of Beltway Democrats, not his daughter.

Michelle Nunn’s father also said his daughter, the Democratic nominee for Senate, has little obligation to support Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., should Democrats maintain the chamber in November— given that Reid, in the spring of 2013, asked her not to run for Sam Nunn’s old seat.

“They said they had their eye on another candidate,” Sam Nunn said. Presumably, that other candidate would have been U.S. Rep. John Barrow, D-Augusta, whom many Democrats were attempting to lure into the contest at the time.

Michelle Nunn, her father said, rejected the advice to withdraw. Barrow declined to enter the race.

I have no way of knowing if that is true or not— if the Democrats in DC were clueless enough to imagine that a worm like Barrow could win statewide— but it does sound like a familiar story that is true. In South Dakota, DSCC Executive Director, Guy Cecil, and his boss, Reid, promised the Democratic Party Senate nomination to Barrow colleague and fellow Blue Dog Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, who was driven from office in 2010 because the Democratic base refused to turn out for her conservative ass. Knowing she had no chance of winning a primary, she told Cecil she would only run if he could guarantee her there would be no primary. Cecil and Reid immediately forced retiring Senator Tim Johnson’s son out of the race. Grassroots Democrats in South Dakota— an independent bunch— were furious. They didn’t want Reid interfering in who their nominee would be and they sure didn’t want Herseth Sandlin as their candidate. So state Democrats gout behind Rick Weiland, Herseth Sandlin demurred, Weiland got the nomination and Cecil and Reid set about bad-mouthing and sabotaging his campaign. Apparently Reid is now so feeble-minded that he would rather the Democrats lose the Senate than accept a defeat for his bossism. I don’t believe for a second that a dipshit like Michelle Nunn would be independent of Reid in the Senate— but there’s no doubt that Rick Weiland would be.

Nunn would be tantamount to having Barrow in the Senate— gutless, without core values, always second-guessing if she needs to vote more conservatively so she could keep the seat 6 years hence. Years of garbage politics, like Mark Pryor and Mary Landrieu. Weiland… just look what he’s campaigning on— a New Deal Democrat all the way, outspoken on a fair deal for working families and ending the dominance of the 1% over our increasingly facile democracy. There’s a reason Michelle Nunn is not on this page and Rick Weiland is.

What About Party Discipline?

John Barrow, from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party

Yesterday we saw that most of the 17 Democratic House Members from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party who voted for Darrell Issa's strictly partisan resolution to hold Eric Holder in criminal contempt were defeated in 2012. Among the few remaining 3-- Bill Owens (New Dem-NY), Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT) and Mike McIntyre (New Dem/Blue Dog-NC)-- picked retirement this year over certain defeat at the polls. That leaves John Barrow (Blue Dog/New Dem-GA), Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN) and Nick Rahall (Blue Dog-WV). The DCCC isn't punishing them for their vote against Holder; Blue Dog Steve Israel is rewarding each with millions of dollars in campaign ads.

• Barrow- $1,160,000 in ad reservations
• Peterson- $1,500,000 in ad reservations
• Rahall- $1,225,000 in ad reservations

And it isn't just the criminal contempt vote against Holder. All three have horrifying voting records. According to ProgressivePunch they are three of the 10 most Republican-voting Democrats in the House, each voting more frequently with the Republicans than with the Democrats on crucial roll calls. Barrow's the worst, voting in the 2013-14 session just 26.87% of the time for progressive legislation, followed by Peterson (33.92%) and Rahall (40.97%). Why not give them even more millions?

The Republicans are much more likely to discipline their members who evidence the kind of disloyalty these Blue Dogs and New Dems regularly display. Yesterday, writing at BuzzFeed, Chris Geidner, gave examples of how extreme right-wing GOP coalition organizations--National Organization for Marriage, Family Research Council, and CitizenLink-- are campaigning against Republicans they view as not right-wing enough. The funniest example is Carl DeMaio of San Diego, who's lame New Dem opponent, Scott Peters, has been endorsed by the Chamber of Commerce because of DeMaio's affiliation with Tea Party extremists. But these GOP groups find DeMaio is guilty of being too liberal gay. In fact another of the 3 Republicans they're fighting is Richard Tisei, another gay man. The third is some weird lady the Koch brothers dug up in Oregon, Monica Wehby.

“We cannot in good conscience urge our members and fellow citizens to support candidates like DeMaio, Tisei or Wehby,” the presidents of the three groups write. “They are wrong on critical, foundational issues of importance to the American people. Worse, as occupants of high office they will secure a platform in the media to advance their flawed ideology and serve as terrible role models for young people who will inevitably be encouraged to emulate them.”

DeMaio and Tisei are the only out LGBT federal candidates from the Republican Party to be appearing on the ballot this fall.

“The Republican Party platform is a ‘statement of who we are and what we believe.’ Thus, the platform supports the truth of marriage as the union of husband and wife, and recognizes the sanctity and dignity of human life,” NOM President Brian S. Brown said in a statement.

Brown called it “extremely disappointing” to see candidates supported “who reject the party’s principled positions on these and other core issues.”

Of the effort to urge people to oppose DeMaio, Tisei, and Wehby, he said, “We cannot sit by when people calling themselves Republicans seek high office while espousing positions that are antithetical to the overwhelming majority of Republicans.”

The letter was sent to House Speaker John Boehner, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Greg Walden, National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Jerry Moran, and others in Republican congressional leadership.

In it, the three conservative groups also warned that it is a “grave error” for the party to be supporting “candidates who do not hold core Republican beliefs and, in fact, are working to actively alienate the Republican base.”

The only left-leaning group that has ever done this-- at least in recent memory-- is Blue America, which ran the TV and radio ads that defeated Bobby Bright in 2010. Most Democratic-oriented groups buy into the DCCC/DSCC kool-aid that they need to support the lesser of two evils. This isn't supporting progressives against conservative in primaries-- which we do routinely-- but helping defeat bad Democrats in a general election. If we weren't so busy trying to help elect Shenna Bellows (D-ME), Rick Weiland (D-SD), Paul Clements (D-MI), Kelly Westlund (D-WI), Mike Obermueller (D-MN) and our other candidates, we'd be running ads against John Barrow in Georgia. He really needs to be disciplined and I hope Democratic voters stay away from the polls in his district in November. He certainly hasn't done anything to earn their voters… just their contempt.

Are You Surprised That The Chamber Of Commerce Is Backing Incumbents From The Republican Wing Of The Democratic Party?

Last night when we were looking at vile DC lobbyist John Breaux, formerly a very conservative Louisiana senator, I recalled that he was a New Dem, a Wall Street-funded organization of business-oriented Democrats. It should come as no surprise that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, delights in finding anti-family Democrats and endorsing them the same way they endorse anti-family Republicans. In 2012 the Chamber of Commerce attack machine spent $27,912,717 smearing Democrats with TV and radio ads. But they also spent $305,044 bolstering 2 of the most right-wing Democrats in the House, reactionary Blue Dogs Jim Matheson (UT- $202,112) and John Barrow (GA-$102,932). So far this year they already spent $12,758,084 on behalf of Republicans and nothing at all helping Democrats. But that's about to change.

In past years the U.S. Chamber has been among the top donors for New Dems and Blue Dogs willing to sell out the interests of working families and vote with Republicans on core economic issues, slimy and corrupt characters like Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX), Ed Case (Blue Dog-HI), Tim Mahoney (Blue Dog-FL), Melissa Bean (New Dem-IL), and John Barrow (Blue Dog-GA).

Last cycle one of the big races the Chamber got involved with to try to help sleazy lobbyist Brian Bilbray hold his San Diego congressional seat (CA-52). It was a very close race and conservative multimillionaire Scott Peters-- who wrote his campaign a check for $2,757,452-- outspent Bilbray $4,352,737 to $2,772,270. In the end Peters beat Bilbray 151,451 (51%) to 144,459 (49%) in the D+2 district. The Chamber was one of several right-wing outfits that spent $4,018,104 smearing Peters with Independent expenditures. The Chamber threw in $320,000 worth of TV spots.

This year the Chamber, perfectly happy with Peters conservative New Dem voting record, is backing Peters. And Peters, whose voting record has turned off many base Democrats, is in a tough race against Republican Carl DeMaio. Peters is balking at spending more of his own fortune and so far has only put $71,659 of his own into the race, out of the $2,554,980 he's raised. DeMaio is keeping up with him and has raised $2,232,048.

Thomas Donohue, the right-wing Republican nut who runs the Chamber-- and who funnels tens of millions of dollars into GOP camapigns-- wrote to Peters last week that "We believe that your re-election to the U.S. House of Representatives will help produce sustained economic growth, help create jobs, and get our country back on track. We will encourage the business community to vigorously support your candidacy."

While scores of groups offer election endorsements, “this one stands out a bit,” Peters said in a phone interview Tuesday evening.

“What this shows is that I really am the candidate that’s working across the aisles. I’m not just a member of one of the partisan armies,” Peters added.

In 2013, Peters voted with the chamber 69 percent of the time on key bills supported by the organization, according to the chamber’s website.

The DeMaio campaign said the endorsement underscored the status quo in Washington that DeMaio has pledged to change.

“We’re not surprised that a special interest group in D.C. is trying to protect members of Congress-- they like the system the way it is. They know Carl DeMaio is coming to end the perks for this crowd,” said Dave McCulloch, spokesman for the DeMaio campaign.

Rob Engstrom, chamber vice president for political affairs, said on Twitter Wednesday that DeMaio had tried to get the chamber's endorsement.

The DeMaio campaign "needs to get facts straight. The campaign actively sought our endorsement. Sour grapes," Engstrom tweeted.

And, as they do every year, the Chamber will also be endorsing Georgia New Dem/Blue Dog John Barrow, who votes with the GOP on crucial economic issues far more than he votes with Democrats.

Barrow is the fourth Democrat this cycle to receive the backing of the chamber, a pro-business group that spends millions in federal elections usually in support of Republicans. The others include Rep. Scott Peters, D-Calif., a top GOP target who was endorsed Wednesday, along with Reps. Henry Cuellar of Texas and Jim Costa of California.

These days, the Chamber hates the Tea Party Republicans-- like DeMaio-- and is happy to lend a hand to Democrats like these: