Will Single Payer Turn Texas Blue?

Rick doesn't have the most money, but he has the best issue for Tuesday

The media tended to cover Kara Eastman's startling-- at least to them-- win of DCCC/Blue Dog Ben Ashbrook in Omaha last week as a win for Medicare-for-All versus a status quo approach. And there is no doubt that that was a part of the equation that, despite the DCCC, catapulted Kara into the Democratic Party nomination. But it wasn't just their two respective approaches to health care. Heath care is very important, but the progressive gestalt was more important for Kara, as it has been for winning candidates all around the country.

The DCCC has warned their collection of crappy status quo candidates to talk in general terms about "universal heath care" and "improving" Obamacare but to avoid anything specific about Medicare for All or single payer other than-- if they must-- bringing the concepts up as "options." The leaders of the DCCC-- whether members or staffers-- don't believe in single payer and they don't think general election voters want it. The DCCC is way too conservative for anything that changey and foward and progressive.

Yesterday Politico noted that Democratic candidates in Texas-- at least some-- are counting on single payer to get them over the hump... at least in contested primary runoffs Tuesday. True progressives in the races think it will take them all the way to Congress in November. "Democrats hoping to wrest congressional seats away from diehard repeal-and-replace Republicans are campaigning on an unlikely issue for Texas-- single-payer health care. Across the country, many Democrats are trying to minimize internal battles on health care. But Democrats in this deep red state have also watched closely races where single-payer advocates have upset centrist primary opponents. And some believe that moving left on health care will mobilize new voters in primaries-- and offer a shot at winning come November." The Texas primaries were first and the DCCC saw many iff their crappy conservative candidates miss even making it into the runoffs, like Jay Hulings in TX-23.

More than half the 22 Democratic House candidates competing in the Texas primary runoff next Tuesday openly tout their support for single-payer health care. On the Senate side, Democrat Beto O'Rourke, who handily won his March primary, will face Sen. Ted Cruz. Cruz built his reputation on shutting down down the government in a failed bid to stop Obamacare in 2013. O'Rourke says he supports strengthening the Affordable Care Act now but starting on a path to an eventual single-payer health system.

“One of the things that exists for us is a large, very large number of people who are progressive who are not participating in the ballot box,” said Wendy Davis, a Texas Democrat who unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2014. “I’ve heard the analogy before that we aren’t trying to get people to convert from Catholicism to Baptism, but trying to get people who are Baptist to come to church.”

Pulling up Texas' entrenched Republican roots is a tough task for Democrats, and the state is unlikely to lean left anytime soon. Still, the state's Democrats face a very different political climate in 2018. For starters, GOP attacks on the Affordable Care Act resonate less with voters.

“The Republican Party in Texas took a position that was more extreme than others, vilifying anything associated with the term Obamacare,” said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston. “It’s less and less effective, every year that passes from the Obama administration.”

For the first time in 25 years, Democratic candidates are running in every congressional race in Texas. Many of them, like Democrats across the country, have made health care their central campaign issue.

But Democrats in Texas believe that talking about health care gives them an even greater advantage. The state has the highest uninsured rate in the country. Its Republican attorney general is once again suing to overturn Obamacare.

And while the state remains one of 19 that hasn't expanded Medicaid, 95 percent of Democratic primary voters in March replied yes to a non-binding proposition asking if everyone in Texas should have a right to health care.

“Health care is one of our number one issues this election,” said Tariq Thowfeek, communications director for the Texas Democratic Party. “Our platform is far more progressive” than the national Democratic party's, he said.

Still, the issue of whether to support single-payer vs. the less provocative goal of expanding existing ACA protections has become divisive in the handful of races where Democrats believe they have a shot at flipping Republican seats.

That includes the 7th Congressional District, just west of Houston, which backed Hillary Clinton for president over Donald Trump. It has been represented by Republican Rep. John Culberson since 2001 and is home to many health care workers at the Texas Medical Center.

Primary voters winnowed the crowded Democratic field to Laura Moser, who embraces single-payer health care, and Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, who supports building on ACA coverage gains. They will face off again on Tuesday.

Fletcher, an attorney, believes that single-payer is too extreme a position for voters in the district.

“This is a traditionally Republican district that doesn’t think government is the solution to everything,” Fletcher said.

The DCCC published opposition research on Moser ahead of the March primary, arguing that she carries too much baggage to win the general election-- and in the process drawing national attention for its attack on the more liberal candidate. Moser, described on her website as a "working mom turned progressive activist turned candidate," promised that if she prevails on Tuesday she won’t back away from single-payer.

“I hate it when Democrats use Republican talking points,” she said. “Obviously we aren’t going to wake up tomorrow with single-payer, but we have to stake out our position unapologetically.”

Elsewhere in Texas the divide is more muddled.

In the 21st Congressional District, where Republican Rep. Lamar Smith is retiring after more than three decades, the Democratic primary runoff pits progressive Mary Street Wilson against the more centrist Joseph Kopser, an Army veteran and former Republican favored by the national Democrats.

Kopser told Politico that he would support a single-payer health system if he had to vote on a bill. But he doesn’t talk about it on the campaign trail. Nor does he tout specific ideas like “Medicare-for-all” that could alienate conservative voters in the district, which stretches from Austin to San Antonio and west into the Texas Hill Country.

On the other hand, Wilson-- a pastor and former math teacher whose first-place March finish was among the biggest primary surprises in the state-- has been touting her support for a Medicare-for-all bill, believing it will appeal to older voters who dominate the district.

“I’m not just a bleeding-heart liberal saying everyone should have health care,” said Wilson. “I believe it’s a practical solution.”

But the polling power of single-payer is unclear. More than half the Democratic challengers who won the first round of primary voting outright include single-payer health care in their campaign platforms. None of the nine Democratic incumbents do. (Democrats currently hold 11 seats in the Texas delegation to the GOP's 24, with last month's resignation of Republican Rep. Blake Farenthold leaving one vacancy.)

In the general election campaign, Republicans are sure to argue that support for single-payer amounts to a tax hike-- anathema to conservative Texans.

Even in blue California, single-payer has stalled in the state Legislature amid cost projections and worries about new taxes.

Still, a fire has been lit in Texas. Talk of single-payer health care won’t die down even if progressive candidates lose, said Jim Hightower, head of Our Revolution Texas, which is building on Sen. Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign message. Hightower is kicking off a 12-city tour this summer aimed at rallying support to introduce a Medicare-for-All bill in the 2019 state legislative session.

Many of the single payer supporters in Texas' run-offs Tuesday can be found by clicking on the ActBlue Turning Texas Blue thermometer on the right. If Single payer doesn't turn Texas blue... will Trump manage to do it himself? Well, not himself... with the whole fabulous team he's somehow managed to assemble:

The DCCC Is Still Undermining Laura Moser, The Likely Democratic Party Nominee

Tuesday is primary run-off day in Texas. The DCCC is counting on an anti-union middle-of-the-road nothing candidate to win the primary and go on to face dull Republican incumbent John Culberson in a suburban Houston district (TX-07) where Hillary unexpectedly beat Señor Trumpanzee 48.5% to 47.1%. Going into that election the PVI was R+13 and Obama had only managed 39% against Romney. Al Gore had only gotten 31%. Now the PVI is a more manageable R+7. But the corrupt rotgut conservatives who infest the DCCC have lit their hair on fire and run around for months screaming that the progressive in the runoff, Laura Moser, can't win a general election. Then they set out to make sure it will be very hard for her, wave or no wave.

Not long ago Pelosi was in Austin, telling the editors of the Austin American-Statesman if primary voters don't nominate the establishment choices, the DCCC will abandon them. That's been a DCCC tactic for over a decade when Rahm Emanuel was chair-- but no one has ever spoken about it publicly before. And I might add that when Emanuel was doing it he failed over and over again as progressives who won primaries against his conservative candidates, they then won general elections without DCCC assistance. And that brings us back to Laura Moser. The DCCC released an especially vicious hit piece on her, claiming that they had to put it out because if they didn't keep her from winning the primary, Culberson would release it and she would lose the general. The DCCC is using this ugly tactic all over the country to get their corrupt conservatives to win against progressives. what it did in TX-07, though, was guarantee an explosion of contributions for Moser and enough votes to put her into the run-off, while the DCCC-backed candidate came in a distant 4th.

Bridget Bowman, writing for RollCall, a website that usually specializes in reprinting press releases and "inside info" from the Beltway committees, asked this week if the DCCC will pay a price for what they did to Moser. "Tuesday’s result," she wrote, "could signal whether that intervention-- which prompted some backlash among liberal activists-- made a lasting impact on the race. And the runoff could be an early sign of which general election strategy Democratic voters find most viable: firing up the base or reaching across the aisle."

“When it comes to what it takes to beat Culberson in November, what sets me apart is my belief that Democrats need to stand firm for our progressive values,” Moser said in a statement. “To win this district, we must bring new voters into the process. I believe we do that by talking to people about the issues that affect their lives-- like income inequality, the spiraling costs of higher education, and the urgent threat of climate change.”

...“At this point, it’s sort of a two-month-old process story,” said Sonia Van Meter, a Texas Democratic consultant based in Austin. “I think voters are not especially concerned with who the D-trip is interested in.”

But the move did rankle local activists, who were concerned about dampened enthusiasm and the perception that the primary was not a fair fight.

“It poses a challenge to us, as the activist community, to unite the entire base under whoever it is that prevails,” said Jon Rosenthal, a founder of a local Indivisible group that has not endorsed either candidate. “From our perspective as activist leaders … we wish that they would butt the hell out so that we could have a clean win.”

“I was really, really upset with what they did,” said Rufi Natarajan, who lives in a neighboring congressional district but is active in Harris County Democratic politics and the Bayou Blue Democrats. Natarajan originally backed Moser but is now supporting Fletcher.

“In a way, it was done very badly, but I guess they were saying what I’m saying, which is, ‘Hey, she’s not electable,’” Natarajan said.

Rosenthal, who is running for the Texas House, said activist leaders are still irked by the move. But they’re telling their members not to let anger toward the DCCC affect their vote, and to support the candidate they believe could defeat Culberson.

“I am more optimistic now rather than right after it happened,” Rosenthal said of chances for unity despite the intraparty fight. “People have come to terms with the fact that either [candidate] is a huge step up and we all need to be pulling together to actually flip that seat.”

But how exactly to flip the seat is still up for debate-- and it’s a major question in the primary.

Both Moser and Fletcher are in line on most policy issues (aside from health care-- Moser backs a single-payer system). So their style and general election strategies have become stark dividing lines in the runoff.

“I’m going to win because I’m a fighter,” Moser said at a debate earlier this month. “And people in this district, including Republicans, want someone who is going to pop it to John Culberson and who will take it to the mat from Day One.”

Moser said the focus should be on energizing existing supporters and new voters. Fletcher, on the other hand, stressed reaching across the aisle.

...That debate over which strategy is best is something Democrats are talking about every day in the 7th District, Rosenthal said. And it’s a debate happening among Democrats across the country.

For some, the answer is clear.

“I like the idea of appealing to as many people on the political spectrum as possible, but right now, Democrats are pissed,” Van Meter said. “They’re angry, they’re galvanized, they’re motivated. And we just need to give them a reason to turn out.”

Like too many Democratic Party candidates, Lizzie Pannill Fletcher doesn't stand for anything at all but the status quo and her own career trajectory. Electing her is nothing but a waste of a House seat. Moser is a dedicated fighter for working families. Electing her would be meaningful on many levels. Originally, Blue America supported a different candidate who didn't make it to the run-off. Moser is at least as good a candidate and we endorsed her the day after the first round. If you'd like to make sure she goes up against Culberson, please click on the ActBlue Turning Texas Blue thermometer on the right. One thing I can tell you for sure-- she won't owe anything to Pelosi, Hoyer or Lujan... nothing to anyone but the working families who are fueling her grassroots campaign.

Can Progressives Win-- In Texas? Of Course They Can... But They Have To Overcome The DCCC First

The Texas runoffs are May 22. And as The Nation noted this week, "Insurgent populists are facing off against establishment picks in a series of high-stakes runoffs." D.D. Guttenplan wasn't deterred by a bunch of progressive defeats in Tuesday's primaries in Ohio, North Carolina and Indiana. (Exception-- Kendra Fershee won her congressional primary in West Virginia.). Maybe he thought there's more at stake in Texas--. and he should... because there is. Chances are, for example, that whomever wins the runoffs in TX-07 and TX-23 will be going to Congress. The awful DCCC picks in each-- Jay Hulings in TX-23 and Alex Triantaphyllis in TX-07-- were already defeated in the first round.

Guttenplan begins with the longest of long shots-- Rick Treviño, who miraculously beat the heavily backed and heavily financed Jay Hulings, to come in second in Round 1. Hulings, with help from the DCCC, the Blue Dogs, the New Dems and the San Antonio Castro Machine, spent $554,903 for the first round. Treviño, who was endorsed by Blue America, Our Revolution and Justice Democrats, spent $29,121. Treviño, wrote Guttenplan about the primary, "stood out from the Democratic field for his youth (he’s 33) and his Chapo Trap House rhetoric, describing Goldman Sachs as 'evil,' ridiculing corporate Democrats, and tweeting 'Neoliberalism fucking sucks.'" He told Guttenplan "I’m not a liberal-- I’m a lefty" and "My headquarters is in the cloud or whatever restaurant has good Wi-Fi."

Stretching west from San Antonio to the outskirts of El Paso and running south along the Mexican border, the 23rd Congressional District covers 58,000 square miles, making it bigger than the entire state of New York. It’s also one of the most flippable districts in the country, swinging from Republican to Democrat and back repeatedly over the last 12 years. The current incumbent, Will Hurd, a former CIA officer and one of three black Republicans in Congress, was reelected in 2016 by just 3,000 votes.

Most reporting on the March 6 primary tended to depict it as a two-person race between Gina Ortiz Jones, who served in Air Force Intelligence during the Iraq War and would be the first openly LGBTQ representative from Texas, and Jay Hulings, a former federal prosecutor who was in the same Harvard Law School class as Julián and Joaquin Castro, the twin brothers who dominate local politics. Hulings, who was endorsed by House minority whip Steny Hoyer, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the Blue Dog Democrats, and End Citizens United [a front for the DCCC], raised and spent over $600,000. Jones, backed by Emily’s List as well as LGBTQ and veterans’ groups, raised more than $1 million, three-quarters of which came from PACs and wealthy donors, and spent about $700,000.

As for Treviño, he raised a little more than $40,000, including about $3,200 from himself. “I took out all my savings and cashed in my retirement. I took the 20 percent hit,” he says. “Hopefully I don’t twist my ankle or get sick, because right now I don’t have health care.”

Instead of the consultant-crafted mailings and TV ads deployed by his opponents, Treviño relied on shoe leather and gasoline, seeking out voters in places like the unincorporated colonias along the border, where some of the poorest people in North America live without basic services. “They’d tell me, ‘I vote every year, but nothing’s changed. We still don’t have paved roads.’ Most of them had never seen a candidate before. And none of them thought Medicare for All or the right to a living wage was a crazy idea.”

When the ballots were counted, Hulings’s $92-a-vote campaign bought him a fourth-place finish with 6,600 votes. Jones led the field with 18,000, at a cost of about $39 per vote. And Treviño, who spent just $29,000, came in second, making it into the May 22 runoff with a little over 7,600, at a cost of just $3.80 per vote. “There are no established laws of political science by which this should have been possible,” noted a San Antonio Express News columnist.

"Big wave coming-- get off the beach,” said seven-term congressman Charlie Dent (R-PA), explaining his decision not to seek reelection this year. If Dent is right, then anybody on a board has a chance of catching a wild ride-- perhaps explaining why some Democrats are putting so much time and effort into pushing other Democrats off the ballot. Maybe the real fear isn’t that voters in Texas and other supposedly red states aren’t ready for Medicare for All or a $15-an-hour minimum wage or tuition-free education at public universities-- but that they are.

The same poll that put Democratic Congressman Beto O’Rourke in a dead heat in his bid to unseat Senator Ted Cruz also showed that Texans are a lot less conservative than the stereotype, favoring tougher gun laws, a process for DACA Dreamers to stay and apply for citizenship, and the legalization of marijuana possession-- all by considerable margins. Yet somehow, you never hear corporate Democrats being told, “Kid, this ain’t your night” so that a more progressive candidate can avoid an expensive primary fight over “minor policy differences.” Pragmatism “is a moral imperative,” preaches Jonathan Alter in the Daily Beast-- as if ignoring the urgent needs of the rural poor, or the criminalization of African-American men, or the terrible damage to our environment were some kind of higher wisdom.

Alter’s not alone. Lately, the airwaves and pixels have been full of centrist Democrats warning the rest of us to quit griping about health care or Wall Street corruption and take one for the team. That list includes the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), which, having decided that it can do a better job of picking “winners” than the party’s own electorate, keeps putting its thumb on the scales in contested primaries across the country. And Hoyer, who was recently caught on tape pushing a progressive challenger in a Colorado congressional race to drop out. And Emily’s List, which picked sides in a race between two equally pro-choice women here in Texas-- while refusing to back another who was the only woman on the ballot in her district, and is now in a runoff against a former Republican. All this so-called pragmatism comes from the assumption that the parameters of practical politics are already fixed-- and as narrow as the space separating Andrew Cuomo from Chuck Schumer.

But what if that’s just plain wrong? For example, Alter’s claim that only candidates whose policies are acceptable to big donors can raise enough money to compete against the “mountains of cash” coming from Republican billionaires isn’t actually true. Ever since Howard Dean out-fund-raised all his competitors-- and all of his predecessors-- Democrats have known they don’t need to rely on corporate money to win. As pollster Stan Greenberg recently warned the party, if Democrats just keep talking about Trump or Russia, let the Republicans get away with tax cuts for the rich, and ignore the fact that for most people, wages still haven’t caught up with the cost of living, that big blue wave might not happen at all. “Momentum has stalled,” Greenberg warned, encouraging the party to refocus on health care and the economy because “Democratic voters are genuinely struggling… They remain in pain.”

What if the election of Donald Trump represents not merely a rightward swing of the pendulum, requiring Democrats to do little more than wait for the inevitable counterstroke, but a wrecking ball to politics-as-usual? What if the shape of the electorate is changing, making the kind of left-populist coalition the Bernie Sanders campaign never quite managed to put together a real possibility? Insisting we can’t win-- that young people or minorities won’t turn out to vote, that what divides us is more important than our shared knowledge that the system is rigged and our shared anger at those who rigged it-- is an old stratagem. But it may not be a winning one any more.

Just ask Laura Moser. A fifth-generation Texan, Moser is part of the surge of women who reacted to Trump’s election by deciding to run for office themselves. A longtime journalist and the founder of Daily Action, a text-messaging service that sends its 300,000 subscribers one concrete call to action every day, Moser had a national profile-- and Washington connections from her husband Arun Chaudhary’s years as official videographer in the Obama White House. Although Chaudhary’s consulting firm, Revolution Messaging, had done some work for Sanders in the 2016 primary, Moser herself had rung “hundreds of doorbells for Hillary” in Houston during the fall. She even cited Clinton as her inspiration for powering through a cold on the campaign trail in Texas’s Seventh Congressional District.

Then, just over a week before the March primary, the DCCC dumped a dossier of opposition research onto its website, attacking Moser as unelectable in a move that appeared designed to bolster one of her opponents, Lizzie Pannill Fletcher. As The Intercept‘s Ryan Grim reported, Fletcher was backed by Houston megadonor Sherry Merfish, a longtime Emily’s List supporter who’d also bundled more than $250,000 for Clinton. Though both candidates are vociferously pro-choice-- Moser’s parents were active in Planned Parenthood, and her mother Jane organized the clinic defense during the 1992 Republican convention that Fletcher features in her own campaign literature-- Emily’s List came in hard on Fletcher’s behalf. Despite the attacks, Moser made it through to the May 22 runoff.

...Ironically, getting monstered by the DCCC precipitated a spike in Moser’s fund-raising; in less than a week, she raised more than $86,000. Besides falsely implying that she’d put her husband on the campaign payroll, the DCCC dug up a snarky Washingtonian piece in which Moser had written that she’d rather have her “teeth pulled out without anesthesia” than live in rural Paris, Texas. The DCCC press release left that last part out, making it sound like Moser was dissing her entire home state. The oppo researchers had even tracked down some insensitive comments she’d made as a 22-year-old freelancer after attending a gospel service in London. So Moser’s endorsement by the group Houston Black American Democrats in late April meant a lot to her.

The DCCC “tried to paint her as some kind of racist [and] totally misrepresented who she is as a person,” says Ginny Stogner McDavid, president of the Harris County AFL-CIO, which opposes Fletcher, citing her firm’s work on an $8 million lawsuit against the Justice for Janitors campaign. “Lawyers are the new Pinkertons,” McDavid continues. “Half a century ago, corporations hired Pinkerton operatives to break strikes. Now they just use lawyers-- Pinkertons with cuff links.”

Having Emily’s List against Moser hurt her, too. Not just because she’s a feminist who describes her support for Medicare for All as “a feminist issue,” but because the group’s imprimatur matters here. Norri Leder, a former Texas chapter leader of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, told me, “The Emily’s List endorsement made me sit up and take notice. I don’t think they would endorse someone unless they thought she could win.” Incensed by Republican incumbent John Culberson’s vote to repeal the Obama administration’s rule preventing people with severe mental illnesses from buying guns, she’s volunteering for Fletcher.

In a district that Clinton carried in 2016, it’s hardly surprising that the Democratic primary would be competitive. But the nastiness of the race signals there’s more going on here than personal rivalry, though that may also be a factor. When I ask Fletcher if it’s true that her father and Moser’s were once law partners, she says they were, adding: “Laura was a couple of years behind me in high school.” (Wes Anderson fans will recognize their alma mater, St. John’s, as the setting for Rushmore.)

Both candidates are formidable women with extensive connections to Houston’s Democratic establishment. Fletcher’s campaign manager, Erin Mincberg, is the daughter of David Mincberg, former chair of the Harris County Democratic Party. Both are endorsed by Moms Demand Action and by CWA Local 6222. Moser is also endorsed by National Nurses United, the Harris County AFL-CIO, the Seafarers, the Teamsters, and the United Food and Commercial Workers union. Either would be an enormous improvement over Culberson, a Tea Party drone with a A-plus rating from the NRA who co-sponsored a “birther” bill in 2009 and opposes abortion, marriage equality, and the “liberal obsession with climate change.” Yet the turnout in the Republican primary, where Culberson faced token opposition, was 5,000 votes higher than in the seven-person Democratic slugfest.

One response to that cautionary note is that, to flip this district, Democrats need to give Republicans-- people who voted for Greg Abbott for governor-- somebody they don’t feel uncomfortable voting for. In other words, a rerun of the Jon Ossoff campaign in Georgia, with no need to change the “Panera Bread strategy” of ignoring economic inequality and the party’s own dependence on corporate donors. “Democrats are winning Harris County,” Fletcher told me. “We don’t need a new approach.”

Moser disagrees. “We have tried something over and over in Texas politics which is to run to the middle and to the right, and it’s not working,” she told the Houston Chronicle. “So why not stand firm for the values that we share?” Fletcher says she’s for defending DACA; Moser says she would have voted to shut down the government to force a deal. Fletcher’s website calls for “maintaining and improving the Affordable Care Act”; Moser is for Medicare for All-- the surest dividing line between Democrats who just talk the talk and those who walk the walk.

But it isn’t only Moser’s messaging-- which stresses the need to get big money out of politics, federal aid to rebuild Houston’s flood defenses, as well as health care and immigration reform-- that sets her apart. Fletcher’s running a campaign; Moser is building a movement.

“We started [the runoff] with 1,300 volunteers and created a grassroots structure around that,” says Josh Levin, the campaign’s field director. Relying on volunteers to “grow their own” teams for phone-banking and block-walking means that, win or lose, Moser is expanding the progressive base of the party. “We are planning to flip this district whether or not we make it through the runoff,” says campaign manager Linh Nguyen. “We regularly meet with the Democratic precinct chairs, helping them with digital organizing and advising on when to start GOTV [get out the vote] efforts.” It’s an approach that has already convinced one prominent Ossoff supporter, actor/activist Alyssa Milano. She’s backing Moser this time.

Thanks to years of GOP gerrymandering, any Democrat now faces an uphill fight in Texas. (Last December, the New York Review of Books blog ran one of the best analyses I’ve seen of the classic racist techniques of “packing and cracking” voting blocs. The writer? Laura Moser.) But that fact, and the results of this year’s elections, shouldn’t obscure what’s at stake-- in Texas and across the country. Despite what you may have read, this isn’t a fight “for the soul of the Democratic Party”-- an entity whose very existence, like other supernatural phenomena, is a matter of faith, not evidence.

What’s at stake here is power: Who has it, who gets it, and how they use it. Those who believe that “America is already great”-- perhaps because they themselves have done so well-- will never deliver more than gradual change. But as Jim Hightower, the veteran Texas populist, put it to me when I stopped by to see him in Austin: “People aren’t interested in incremental change. People are being fucked.”

Travelling the state in his role as a board member of Our Revolution, Hightower got a close look at what he calls “the culmination of a two-party duopoly doing nothing for regular people.” Reminding me that the 19th-century Populist revolt first caught fire just a few hours north, in Cleburne, Hightower says his group has endorsed 29 candidates in Texas-- of whom “17 won or made the runoffs.” Yet he worries that some of the current crop “are running for the wrong races. Running too high on the ballot.” After half a century in the fight, Hightower knows that our side needs some wins.

One of the most improbable could be gathering force just on the other side of town. When Mary Wilson first entered the campaign to unseat Lamar Smith, the climate-change denier who represents the 21st Congressional District, nobody paid her much attention. Though Smith, with ample backing from ExxonMobil and the Koch brothers, had done enormous damage as chair of the House Science Committee, he had also been repeatedly reelected by 20-point margins since first winning the seat in 1986. (Smith’s 2006 Democratic challenger, John Courage, was backed by Our Revolution in his successful race last year for a seat on the San Antonio City Council.)

Yet when Smith announced last November that he wouldn’t be running for reelection, the open seat drew a crowded field, including Derrick Crowe, an environmental activist and former Nancy Pelosi staffer backed by Our Revolution and (Nation) writer and environmentalist Bill McKibben. Already in the race was Joseph Kopser, a former Republican and West Point graduate backed (surprise!) by 
Steny Hoyer and other “national Democrats.” The DCCC promptly added the seat to its target list.

Here again, the primary coverage focused on Kopser and Crowe. Wilson, when she was mentioned at all, was described merely as the “fourth Austin Democrat in the race” or, more expansively, a “gay math teacher turned pastor.” (Although it’s been largely ignored, Texas has also seen a lavender wave this year, with more than 50 openly LGBTQ candidates running for office statewide.) Kopser, who spent over $800,000 in the primary, came in second with 14,787 votes, beaten by Wilson, who spent less than $50,000 for 15,736 votes-- or about $3 each compared to Kopser’s $54.

“Being first is not always easy,” Wilson told me when we sat down over pancakes in Austin. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told I’m going to hell.” Though her campaign office looks like a converted garage, Wilson seemed determined to prove “that caring for one another is really a viable political position.” Despite her political commitments, she still spends Sundays at the Church of the Savior, the pulpit she took up while teaching mathematics for 20 years.

“I come at this whole campaign from the perspective of people impacted by policies that favor the wealthy,” she continued. “My father worked at McDonnell Douglas, helping to build the Mercury capsules. He was a ‘drop-hammer guy’-- a union machinist. At 91, he has a pension and health care. Everyone who works hard deserves that.”

Last spring, Wilson spent days at the Texas Legislature protesting, testifying, and lobbying. “I testified against the bathroom bill. Got there at 7 am; testified at 9 pm. Afterwards, I said to myself, ‘I want one of those votes.’ This felt like the next step.”

“How do you make the House of Representatives reflect the country?” she asks. “Joseph’s not a bad guy. It’s just that we have a ton of guys like him already. I’ve been in courtrooms, jails, detention centers. How many people do we have in the House who’ve lived paycheck to paycheck? Or who have listened, as I have, to a 69-year-old woman say, ‘I got sick, lost my job, and now they’re going to evict me.’ If he wins the primary, there are progressives that will stay home.”

Wilson credits her victory partly to her message and partly to “being the only woman in the race in the Year of the Woman…. I can bring together the entire party, from Our Revolution to Hillary voters. The women who dominate the crossover vote will look at me and see the mom and grandma, and see someone who does the same things they do.” Although a spokesperson from Emily’s List told The Nation that “we hope to see Mary Wilson in the general election,” the group has yet to endorse her in the runoff against Kopser.

I've never talked with Guttenplan but all of the candidates he wrote about-- O'Rourke, Moser, Wilson, and Treviño-- can be found on Blue America's Take Back Texas Act Blue page. If you click on the thermometer on the right... you'll be there. All these grassroots candidates need the bucks, especially Treviño and Wilson, who have raised next to nothing and have especially difficult districts to win on the 22nd. No one says this is going to be easy, but anyone saying it isn't going to be possible was probably positive that Hulings was going to come in first, not fourth and that Triantaphyllis was a sure bet in Houston. And, by the way, the other candidates on the page the thermometer takes you to are great as well.

TEXAS EARLY VOTING STARTS MONDAY

DCCC Tries To Shove A Blue Dog Comeback Down Democrats' Throats

Rahm Emanuel was chairman of the DCCC in 2006, the last time there was a huge Blue Wave. He had as little to do with creating it as Ben Ray Lujan has in creating the 2018 huge Blue Wave (i.e., nothing whatsoever). Infact, Lujan, like Rahm (who consults him), is keeping the wave from growing even bigger. In 2006, the Democrats picked up 30 seats from the GOP. That's good, right?

Well... kinda/sorta. Pelosi replaced Denny Hastert as Speaker and the Democrats were able to get a few consequential things done before the next midterm when Democratic voters-- the grassroots-- stayed away from the polls en masse and the GOP swept back into power with a vengeance-- beating all of Rahm's 2006 picks. In fact, that year, 2010, the Democrats lost an astounding 63 seats-- and Pelosi was swept out of the Speaker's chair and replaced by first John Boehner and then Paul Ryan.

Why did that happen that way? Emanuel had forced dozens of Blue Dogs and New Dems on the Democrats as candidates-- just as Lujan and his wretched team is doing today. They all voted the way members of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party can always be expected to vote-- with the Republicans. There was a 9.1% swing towards the Republicans in 2010 but that was primarily because the Democratic base was disappointed and disillusioned with the Blue Dogs and New Dems 2006 had delivered them.

That's exactly what's going to happen in 2022. Exactly. Luajn and his imbecile crew are making sure of that by crushing progressives in primaries in favor of Blue Dog and New Dems.

Last week Lujan was engaging in his favorite activity, plumbing sewers and feasting on shit. He added 5 cruddy candidates to the DCCC Red-to-Blue list, including lottery winner, "ex"-Republican, carpetbagger and political ignoramus Gil Cisneros, NRA candidate Anthony Brindisi (Blue Dog-NY) and anti-union attorney Lizzie Fletcher. Unions screamed so loud that the DCCC immediately removed her, calling it a "communications staff drafting error," prompting this email from Laura Moser, the progressive in the Houston race the DCCC has been working hard to destroy, pretty much ensuring reelection for Republican John Culberson.

On Wednesday, the DCCC sent out an email endorsing our primary opponent.

They later called it a “communications staff drafting error”-- which, like “mistakes were made,” is what people in Washington say when they don’t want to take responsibility for something.

But was it really an error? The DCCC already unleashed false and misleading attacks against me and my family just a few days before our primary election.

I’ll never forget that terrible moment when a staffer pulled me aside to show me the opposition research the DCCC had dumped on me on their website. As a lifelong Democrat, I was stunned. How could the party I had dedicated so much of my life to turn on me so maliciously? What would this mean for our campaign?

I still don’t know the answer to the first question. (I’ve got some ideas.)

We’ll need your help once again if we’re going to fend off any and all attacks from the DCCC before our runoff election next month... After all, we’ve had fair warning. They’re going to try to rig the runoff, too. But the folks in Washington who so often choose losing corporate clones don’t have that much influence on Texans. We’ll choose our own candidates, thank you very much. And we'll win with a strong message, a genuine commitment to democratic values, and grassroots support-- not through a party coronation.

So no matter what lies they try to spread, we'll keep talking about expanding access to health care, protecting undocumented Americans from deportation, offering every child access to affordable education, reforming our gun laws, fighting for equal rights and reproductive rights, and building an economy that offers both more growth and more equality.

We’ve shown we can overcome the DCCC attacks with an outpouring of grassroots support and by staying true to our message and platform.

The DCCC often lies and says there is no ideological impetus behind their efforts to pack Congress with Blue Dogs and New Dems. That's an utter lie that is too terrible for most DCCC-dues-paying progressives to admit even to themselves. Before you read this late March post that was published by The Hill, remember that when they use the word "centrist" (the most positive political phrase in America's politics lexicon), they are referring to the far right of the Democratic Party, the Blue Dogs and New Dems. And if anti-Choice, anti-LGBTQ, anti-healthcare, anti-immigrant, pro-NRA shitbags like Dan Lipinski and Henry Cuellar (for example) are "moderates" what are members like Jan Schakowsky, Ted Lieu, Pramila Jayapal, Judy Chu, Jamie Raskin and Mark Pocan? Left-wing extremists? Communists? I don't think so. And remember, it's always when the Democrats look ascendant that the media suddenly calls for a coalition of right-wing Democrats and the GOP as a governing coalition. The media NEVER calls for a governing coalition of right-wing Democrats and mainstream conservative Republicans when the GOP is ascendant. One more thing to remember, the right-wing group "No Labels" is financed by Republican multimillionaires and billionaires and they just spent immense sums smearing Marie Newman on behalf of Lipinski's election campaign.

Moderate lawmakers in both parties believe their influence will rise after the midterm elections no matter which party takes control of the House.

The centrists are projecting that either Democrats or Republicans could have a narrow majority, which would give lawmakers in the middle more power to drive the agenda as leaders come begging for their votes.

Coalitions of moderate lawmakers also suspect their ranks will swell next year given the political climate.

“If it’s a slim [GOP] majority, we also win,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), whip of the moderate New Democrat Coalition. “You can’t ignore us anymore. You’re going to have to cut some deals if you want to get something done.”

“The idea that you can do it alone,” he added, “is not going to work if you’ve only got a two- or three-seat majority.”

...Blue Dog Democrats, a conservative and rural segment of the party, dwindled in size from 54 in 2008 to 18. Now they are hoping for a comeback.

“We’re going to have a lot more say in policy and legislation,” said Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), co-chairman of the Blue Dog Coalition. “I certainly want the Democrat majority, but even if it’s a slim [GOP] majority, the Republicans still need some of the more moderate individuals that might be Democrats to work with them.”

“So either way,” he added, “I think we’re going to be in a good place.”

Efforts to push more bipartisan ideas through Congress have been ramping up over the past year. The Problem Solvers Caucus, which works closely with the bipartisan advocacy group No Labels, launched last year with the goal of building bipartisan consensus on key policy issues.

The 48-member caucus is evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. If 75 percent of the group and more than 50 percent of each party agrees on an issue, then the entire caucus will vote as a unified bloc.

The strategy takes a page from the book of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, which takes formal positions on issues if 80 percent of its members agree. The group of roughly 30 conservative hard-liners has been highly effective at blocking bills on the House floor.

“Any bloc of any legislators that is able to stick together is able to be kingmakers ... but the only real organized blocs in the House has been on the far right and far left,” said Ryan Clancy, the chief strategist at No Labels. “What hadn’t existed, until recently, is something like the Problem Solvers Caucus.”

The caucus has already produced bipartisan solutions on a range of contentious issues, including health care, immigration and guns-- but none of the proposals have been brought to the floor.

The group blames how legislative business is conducted in the House and has started discussing some potential rules changes that could increase their power.

No Labels has been encouraging lawmakers to withhold their support for the next Speaker unless the candidate agrees to a package of rules changes. Moderates would have even more leverage to make demands from future leaders if there is a slimmer majority.

Some potential reforms that could make moderates stronger include allowing more open rules and amendments, ensuring conference committees have members from both parties, requiring the Speaker to receive a larger majority to win the gavel and abandoning the Republican practice of only allowing a bill to come to the floor if it has a majority of the GOP’s support.

That would force the majority to negotiate with the minority and increase the odds of achieving bipartisan solutions in Congress, the group says.

Reed said he would even consider supporting a Democrat’s bid for Speaker if they agreed to certain rule reforms.

But such reforms are sure to face fierce resistance in both parties, and it’s unclear whether enough centrist lawmakers would be willing to play hardball.

“It might entail some political risks, but if they’re willing to make some asks … it could have huge rewards,” Clancy said.

While a number of Republicans in the Problem Solvers Caucus are facing tough reelection races, Reed said he is hearing more interest than ever before from “influential stakeholders” who want to help get pragmatic lawmakers elected to Congress in order to break gridlock.

No Labels is planning an aggressive effort to spend tens of millions of dollars to protect moderates in both parties from primary challenges.

The Blue Dogs are also expecting to increase their numbers next year, especially as Democrats seek to win over the blue-collar voters that fled the party to support President Trump. They recently gained Conor Lamb, who pulled off a special election victory in a Pennsylvania district that Trump carried by 20 points.

The coalition’s political arm has become a bigger player in the Democratic strategy to win back the House, which is further raising hopes they will wield more influence next year.

“The road to the majority is through the coalition... The political arm of the Blue Dogs is very active,” said Kristen Hawn, a senior adviser for the group’s political action committee. “We’re seeing a lot more interest, and a lot of fundraising is up.”

The DCCC has 38 candidates on their Red To Blue list so far. I count three who are worth voting for-- and I'm not even 100% sure about one of the three. At least nine of them are outright Blue Dogs:

• Brendan Kelly (IL)
• Paul Davis (KS)
• Gretchen Driskell (MI)
• Dan McCready (NC)
• Brad Ashford (NE)
• Jeff Van Drew (NJ)
• Max Rose (NY)
• Anthony Brindisi (NY)
• Ben McAdams (UT)

And 21 of them are admitted New Dems:

• Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ)
• Jason Crow (CO)
• Lauren Baer (FL)
• Nancy Soderberg (FL)
• Debbie Powell (FL)
• Paul Davis (KS)
• Elissa Slotkin (MI)
• Angie Craig (MN)
• Dean Phillips (MN)
• Dan McCready (NC)
• Kathy Manning (NC)
• Brad Ashford (NE)
• Mikie Sherrill (NJ)
• Tom Malinowski (NJ)
• Max Rose (NY)
• Anthony Brindisi (NY)
• Susie Lee (NV)
• Chrissy Houlahan (PA)
• Jana Lynne Sanchez (TX)
• Ben McAdams (UT)
• Elaine Luria (VA)

They also list Lisa Brown, a progressive from eastern Washington-- who supports the legitimate aspirations of working families-- and she's asked them to remove her name from their horrible list of shame, which they have refused to do. And one last thing, the New Dems and Blue Dogs have already picked who they want as the next Speaker, the most corrupt Democrat in the House... and disgracefully, there are already progressives pledging their fealty to him-- lots of them.

Which Party Hates Its Own Grassroots More?

McConnell salutes West Virginia grassroots Republican voters

Third party Super PACs spent $7,343,577 tearing apart Roy Moore in the Alabama Senate race. $6,552,448 of that came from Mitch McConnelll's Senate Leadership PAC. McConnell had so sullied Moore's reputation that when he won the primary against the establishment candidate, he couldn't win the general election. Despite Alabama's statewide PVI of R+14 and despite Trump having crushed Hillary in the state 1,318,255 (62.1%) to 729,547 (34.4%), Democrat Doug Jones still beat him 673,896 (50.0%) to 651,972 (48.3%)on December 12, 2017. Moore could not overcome all the negativity from fellow Republicans.

But it isn't just the corrupt Republican establishment waging this kind of warfare against its own Outside-the-Beltway grassroots. The Democrats do the exact something. The DCCC attacks on Laura Moser in Texas and Levi Tillemann in Colorado are examples of the same kind of ugliness. The DCCC would rather lose to a Republican than win with a progressive.

And now Alex Isenstadt reported in Politico over the weekend that Miss McConnell is up to his tricks again, this time in West Virginia. Watch:

The Republican establishment has launched an emergency intervention in the West Virginia Senate primary aimed at stopping recently imprisoned coal baron Don Blankenship from winning the party’s nomination.

Late last week, a newly formed super PAC generically dubbed the “Mountain Families PAC” began airing TV ads targeting Blankenship, who spent one year behind bars following a deadly 2010 explosion at his Upper Big Branch Mine. The national party isn’t promoting its role in the group, but its fingerprints are all over it.

The 30-second commercials, which the group is spending nearly $700,000 to air, accuse Blankenship’s company of contaminating drinking water by pumping “toxic coal slurry,” even as the multimillionaire installed a piping system that pumped clean water to his mansion.

“Isn’t there enough toxic sludge in Washington?” the narrator intones.

The assault comes amid rising fears from national Republicans that Blankenship is gaining traction ahead of the May 8 primary. The Republican hopeful has spent his own money to fund a $1.3 million TV ad blitz in which he portrays himself as the casualty of an Obama-era Justice Department bent on locking him up. He has far outspent his primary opponents, Rep. Evan Jenkins and state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, whom he castigates as pawns of the GOP establishment.

Washington Republicans have spent weeks deliberating whether to go after Blankenship, who was released from prison in May after a one-year sentence. They’re worried that he would destroy the party’s chances of defeating Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin in November.

At the same time, they’ve been concerned that attacking him would allow Blankenship to portray himself in the race as the embattled adversary of powerful D.C. interests. The scenario is similar to the one that played out in last year’s Alabama Senate race, when the party spent millions of dollars in an unsuccessful effort to stop former state Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore from winning the GOP nomination.

The national party, perhaps worried about Alabama-style backlash, is not taking credit for the attack or for Mountain Families PAC. But the connections are conspicuous.

According to federal disclosures, the commercials were overseen by several firms that in the past have worked closely with Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that openly led the assault on Moore. They were produced by GOP ad-making firm McCarthy, Hennings, Whalen and were placed on TV by the media buyer Main Street Group, both of whom were paid thousands of dollars by Senate Leadership Fund during the 2016 election cycle.

Mountain Families PAC has also paid nearly $48,000 to Targeted Victory, a suburban Washington-based GOP consulting firm, for web ads targeting Blankenship. During the 2016 cycle, the firm received over $1.5 million from Senate Leadership Fund, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Representatives for Senate Leadership Fund did not respond to requests for comment, or to inquiries about whether it had a role in orchestrating the attack.

The ties between Mountain Families PAC and the national party do not end there. The super PAC lists an Arlington, Virginia, P.O. box that’s previously been used by a number of GOP entities. Among them: a fundraising account benefiting former Republican Sen. Luther Strange, who was the party favorite in last year’s Alabama contest.

The treasurer for Mountain Families PAC, Benjamin Ottenhoff, did not respond to a request for comment. Ottenhoff has previously worked for several party organizations, including the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee.

The ads represent the GOP’s most aggressive action yet against Blankenship. Earlier this month, President Donald Trump flew to West Virginia to hold an ostensibly official event to tout his tax reform package. He was flanked by Jenkins and Morrisey-- a clear attempt to promote their candidacies. Blankenship was not there. Blankenship did not respond to a request for comment. But last month he issued a statement saying he was well aware of the possibility that party leadership could target him.

“There has been an awful lot of talk lately about who the Washington, D.C., establishment and Mitch McConnell, in particular, are supporting in West Virginia’s U.S. Senate race. Let me be clear, I don't care who they are supporting,” he said. “I know that it is not me, because we recognize that those defending the swamp do not want Republican senators who want to drain the swamp.”

In a follow up yesterday evening, Isenstadt reported on Blankenship's response to the news of McConnell's full frontal attack on his campaign. He's demanding that McConnell "stop interfering." Many Democratic candidates could use the same terminology to describe Chuck Schumer, Steny Hoyer, Ben Ray Lujan, Nancy Pelosi and Joe Crowley: "McConnell should not be in the U.S. Senate, let alone be the Republican Majority Leader. He is a Swamp captain. The Russians and McConnell should both stop interfering with elections outside their jurisdictions."

Figuring Out What Will Happen In November, But Not 2019

Alexandria Ocasio is such an underdog in her primary challenge to Joe Crowley-- one of the biggest big shots inside the Beltway-- that none of the Inside the Beltway prognosticators ever even mention her race against the Pelosi heir-apparent, one of Congress' most corrupt members. That's not because the media is lazy; it's just that they're stupid and unimaginative... and lazy. Crowley, who lives in Virginia and has virtually no connection whatsoever to a district that has rapidly changed since 1998 when he first wormed his way into the seat, is extremely vulnerable to a primary challenge. We'll discuss this later today. Now I just want to point out that out of touch congressmen are vulnerable. If that wasn't the case young and vigorous California congressmen Ro Khanna and Eric Swalwell wouldn't have beaten, respectively, 18-year incumbent Mike Honda and 40-year incumbent Pete Stark in primaries that shocked a geriatric Democratic establishment. Neither Honda nor Stark were prepared to defend themselves from what hit them. Donna Edwards and Matt Cartwright had managed to pull off the same thing in Maryland and Pennsylvania against entrenched incumbents Al Wynn and Tim Holden, horrifying sclerotic party bosses in DC.

When the 2010 Republican wave hit the Democrats hard, the GOP gained 63 seats, the biggest House swing since 1948. Some of the worn and tired old-timers were smart enough to get out of the way before being swept away. Entrenched senior incumbents like Dave Obey (WI), Marion Berry (AR), Vic Snyder (AR), Brian Baird (WA), Bart Stupak (MI) and Dennis Moore all retired voluntarily, their districts falling to Republicans in November. 52 Democrats who fought for reelection were defeated, including some very senior members who had, basically, lost the skills to fight a competitive race in a bad environment-- John Spratt (SC), Gene Taylor (MS), Jim Marshall (GA), Jim Oberstar (MN), Rick Boucher (VA), Solomon Ortiz (TX), Paul Kanjorski (PA), Baron Hill (IN), Earl Pomeroy (ND), Allen Boyd (FL), Ciro Rodriguez (TX), Bob Etheridge (NC) and Ike Skelton (MO).

Old history? Sure... but, Politico sported an interesting headline yesterday: House leaders’ biggest 2018 fear: The lazy Republican. It could have been a mirror image of 2010: Ryan freaking ou: "GOP members who haven’t had a tough race in years are being warned to start running scared." Quite a few, including Ryan, have been rumored to start running for the exits instead. Rachael Bade happened to begin her report in TX-07: "On paper, Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) appears to be a shoo-in for reelection. He‘s served nine terms in what’s been a GOP stronghold for decades, hasn’t had a serious challenger in years and sits on one of the most powerful committees in Congress. But Culberson‘s suburban-Houston district went for Hillary Clinton by 1 percentage point in 2016. And when GOP leaders found out last year that he was being outraised by Democrats and barely had a campaign staff, they were exasperated. Get your act together, they warned Culberson in so many words, according to sources familiar with the dressing-down. Culberson’s slow start to his reelection campaign is what GOP leaders fear most heading into the thick of the midterm elections: incumbents who haven’t seen a real race in years snoozing as a Democratic wave builds. Speaker Paul Ryan and the National Republican Congressional Committee are less concerned about their battle-tested swing-district members-- who face tough races every election cycle-- and more worried about complacent Republicans not prepared for a fight."

What Bade doesn't fit into her narrative it what the NRCC has been always able to count on when they're in a tough spot: the incompetence and corruption of the failed DCCC. There are two Democrats in the May 22 primary runoff-- Laura Moser, a progressive and Lizzie Fletcher, an EMILY's List creation. Fletcher, the establishment candidate, has an anti-union reputation that alienates and deflates a significant portion of the Democratic base. Meanwhile-- and for various reasons that have to do with DCCC staff corruption, anti-progressive mania and arrogance-- the DCCC has worked to make Moser unelectable against Culberson. Ironically, she probably wouldn't have even been in the runoff had the DCCC not attacked her! DCCC support is so toxic among a portion of the base that they are the same kind of kiss of death as Trump is on the GOP side. Immediately after the DCCC smear campaign began, small donors rushed to contribute over $100,000 to her campaign. And TX-07 primary voters decided to send the DCCC a lesson about not interfering in their primary. Back to Bade:

“This is a very tough environment for Republicans. If you’re getting outraised or if you haven’t started your campaign yet, you need to be scared and start today,” said Corry Bliss, executive director of the Ryan-aligned Congressional Leadership Fund. “Saying ‘I’ve never lost before, therefore I can never lose this time’ is not a campaign plan.”

It’s one of the reasons Ryan’s political team and NRCC officials have started holding a series of meetings with lawmakers from traditionally reliable GOP districts. Their message: Get ready for a roller coaster and begin your campaign in earnest now.

It’s too early to tell whether leadership’s message is registering. More than 40 GOP incumbents were outraised by Democratic challengers during the last three months of 2017, a staggering number that senior Republicans said is unacceptable and amounts to nothing short of laziness.

What the 2 establishment DC parties haven't learned from the past is that in wave election cycles money won't save the necks of incumbents. I studied ever single district outcome in the 2006 blue wave and the 2010 red wave. In 2006 Republicans who outspent Democratic challengers by five times were swept away anyone (as long as the challenger had enough money to get out his or her message). And the same thing was true in the 2010 midterms, when Democrats who outspent GOP challengers by massive amounts went down badly. Ryan and his team think 2018 will be all about money. It won't; it will be all about Trump and the congressional enablers.

“Many of our members have not been in Congress during a possible ‘wave’ election cycle, as happened in 2006 and 2010,” added a Republican campaign staffer. “Members in Republican-leaning districts should heed the warnings from House leadership and get ready for a fight.”

Rep. Glenn Grothman’s team is another office that’s received a talking-to. Ryan is personally helping campaign for the Wisconsin Republican, who hasn’t had a competitive race since he was elected in 2014. His sprawling district partly abutting Lake Michigan has been a Republican stronghold since the 1960s. But Grothman now faces a wealthy Democratic challenger who’s planning to spend hundreds of thousands of his own money on the race.

Grothman acknowledged in an interview the battle he’s in for and said he's doing "100 percent" what he can to prepare. The 62-year-old former attorney pulled up his schedule on his phone and read a list of constituent events: a fish fry, a bowl-a-thon, some St. Patrick’s Day parades and Lincoln Day dinners.

“Obviously, that’s a bigger problem than the typical year,” Grothman said of his Democratic challenger, Dan Kohl, the nephew of former Milwaukee Bucks owner and ex-Sen. Herb Kohl. “I’ll raise more money, I think, because there’s more a necessity… My opponent has a lot of money, and he’s telling people he’s going to spend a lot of money… so it’s concerning.”

Rep. Robert Pittenger (R-NC) also hails from a solid Republican district but is facing a well-funded Democratic opponent who last quarter raked in over $100,000 more than the incumbent. His staff, like Grothman’s, has been warned to be ready-- particularly because Pittenger is still introducing himself to constituents after a recent redistricting changed his district’s borders.

Another North Carolinian on GOP leaders’ radar is freshman Rep. Ted Budd. His well-connected Democratic opponent, philanthropist Kathy Manning, raised $564,000 last quarter, compared to his $183,000 haul.

Budd said he realizes “the environment is tough this year,” and he just hired a campaign manager who will start next month.

Ryan’s political executive director, Kevin Seifert, and deputy executive director, Jake Kastan, are handling many of the reality-check meetings with incumbent Republicans or their staffs. While Ryan’s team often helps incumbents, it's hosting more meetings than usual, and with a greater sense of urgency.

Ryan and NRCC Chairman Steve Stivers (R-OH) have also delivered the same message to lawmakers in conference gatherings in recent weeks: Raise money now, be active in your districts, find legislative issues that resonate with constituents and tout your accomplishments constantly. Also, define yourself and your opponent early, and label Democrats as obstructionists.

“When you have a million dollars spent attacking [GOP lawmakers] for the first time, a lot can change, and quickly,” Bliss said.

The warnings from leadership aides are also expected to extend to a handful of Freedom Caucus members who typically feel safe enough to vote with the far right of the House Republican Conference-- if they haven't already. Three Democratic opponents of caucus member Rep. Tom Garrett (R-Va.) outraised him in the last fundraising quarter, two of them by $100,000.

Garrett's district elected a Democrat to the House in 2008, before a Republican reclaimed the seat two years later. And Garrett’s conservative votes could make him more susceptible in a Democratic wave year, senior Republicans said.

Ditto, they said, for Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA), another Freedom Caucus member, who upset former Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a 2014 primary.

Brat declined to discuss his campaign with Politico; two Democratic opponents collected more than him in the final three months of 2017-- including one by nearly $150,000.

“Policy, policy, policy,” Brat said when asked about his reelection effort. “All I talk is policy.”

At least one Republican, Culberson, appears to have heeded the warnings from leadership, aides say. He has hired new staff and outraised his Democratic opponents in the last quarter of 2017, though in the first six weeks of this year, his top two competitors collected more money than him, according to campaign filings.

“I’m always ready,” Culberson in a brief interview this week, “and even more so this year.”

Yesterday, at The Atlantic, Ron Brownstein posited that Trump has already sealed the GOP's midterm fate. Brownstein focuses in on one aspect: Ryan and McConnell and their teams are "sending an unmistakable signal to voters: So long as Republicans hold the congressional majority, they will not act to meaningfully constrain, or even oversee" a moron and uncontrollable, self-centered, selfish Trumpanzee with an id run amuck. Brownstein calls it an "epic gamble... Their approach," he wrote, "threatens to persuade less partisan voters that they need a Democratic House (and perhaps Senate) to impose any limits on a president who daily redefines the words 'mercurial,' 'belligerent,' and 'volatile.' ... Some GOP strategists believe the imperative of energizing the GOP base-- which preponderantly supports Trump-- justifies the risk of alienating less partisan voters inclined to restrain him. And in some Republican-leaning places, that calculation may compute. But in almost all swing House districts, 'you can’t get to 50 percent [of the vote] with just base voters,' noted Meredith Kelly, the communications director for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. That threshold requires 'crossover support and independents'-- the sort of voters that may prefer some constraints on Trump, even if they don’t entirely reject his direction."

Every time Donald Trump breaks a window, congressional Republicans obediently sweep up the glass. That’s become one of the most predictable patterns of his turbulent presidency-- and a defining dynamic of the approaching midterm elections. Each time they overtly defend his behavior, or implicitly excuse him by failing to object, they bind themselves to him more tightly.

It happened again last weekend when Trump fired off a volley of tweets that, for the first time, attacked Special Counsel Robert Mueller by name. A handful of GOP senators responded with warnings against dismissing Mueller. More congressional Republicans said nothing. Party leaders, such as House Speaker Paul Ryan, tried to downplay the attacks by insisting that Trump would not act on them and fire Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Most important, and regardless of their rhetorical posture, Republicans almost universally locked arms to reject legislative action to protect the special counsel.

That reaction reflected a hardening pattern. Whatever the provocation-- reported payoffs to a porn star, a chaotic security-clearance process in the White House, the public belittling of Attorney General Jeff Sessions-- congressional Republicans have found ways to excuse or simply ignore behavior that would have launched a thousand subpoenas under a Democratic president.

...As American politics has grown more tribal since the 1990s, attitudes toward the president have become a decisive factor in congressional elections. In each midterm since 1994, 82 percent to 86 percent of the voters who disapproved of the incumbent president voted against his party’s House candidates, exit polls found.

That effect may be even more intense under Trump because such a high proportion of those who disapprove of him do so strongly: An Election Day poll in last week’s Pennsylvania special election, for instance, found that fully 93 percent of Trump disapprovers backed Democrat Conor Lamb, the victor. In this week’s NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 87 percent of Trump disapprovers said they intend to vote Democratic for Congress.

One group has emerged as especially alienated from the president: college-educated white women. The group ordinarily leans Democrat, but only slightly: Since 1992, Democrats have never carried more than 52 percent of their votes in House elections, and Hillary Clinton won 51 percent of them in 2016. However, this week’s NBC/WSJ poll found that 63 percent of them now disapprove of Trump and 62 percent intend to vote Democratic in November.

...For congressional Republicans, the choice to tie themselves to Trump now looks irreversible. The question remains whether they have fashioned a lifeline or a noose.