Two Charts That Help Explain Why Pelosi's Hopelessly Inept DCCC Isn't Capable Of Winning Back Congress

Just above we have the election results for two blue Miami-Dade congressional districts, FL-26 and FL-27. The Republican House incumbents, respectively Carlos Curbelo, and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, won both.

In 2012, Obama won Miami-Dade 540,776 (62%) to 332,602 (38%). This year, Hillary did even better than Obama did-- 623,006 (63.7%) to 333,666 (34.1%). Even the hapless Patrick Murphy-- the worst possible Senate candidate the DSCC could find-- won in Miami-Dade (Rubio's home base) 528,555 (54.6%) to 419,623 (43.3%).

Obama beat Romney in FL-26 53-46% and beat him in FL-27 53-47%. I don't have the final numbers for the presidential campaign by congressional district but Hillary did better than Obama did in winning both FL-26 and FL-27. Although the Democrats had a fatally-flawed candidate-- corruption mired conservative Joe Garcia-- they fought hard and the DCCC and House Majority PAC wasted $6,101,294 in the district, one of their top spends of 2016. They spent nothing at all in FL-27. That may seem odd, considering it's right next door and just as blue as FL-26, perhaps bluer now.

But that's easily explained. FL-27's Republican incumbent, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, is under the protection of Debbie Wasserman Schultz. She makes sure no viable opponent is ever nominated against Ros-Lehtinen and that no money is ever spent against her. Washerman Schultz has gotten away with this for a full decade, even though she was caught doing it and publicly chastised (or gentled wrist slapped anyway). This time the opponent was Scott Fuhrman, a worthless millionaire who self-funded $694,718 into the race but brought in only $7,488 in small contributions, and had nothing whatsoever to offer working families. But he still managed to do substantially better than the Blue Dog/New Dem-endorsed Garcia who the DCCC spent all those millions of dollars on. Fuhrman got 129,548 votes (45.1%) and Garcia got 115,348 votes (41.2%). That can of thing only makes sense in DCCC-world. The DCCC will do the same thing next cycle as well, throwing away two prime pick-ups because no one wants to get in a mud-wrestling match with a disgusting, vicious animal like Wasserman Schultz.

And here's another chart, this one showing the two sprawling congressional districts in northern Wisconsin, WI-07 and WI-08. Trump surrogate and former reality TV actor Sean Duffy represents WI-07 to the west and Reid Ribble retired, leaving an open seat in WI-08 to the east. Obama won both districts against McCain (with 53% in WI-07 and with 54% in WI-08) and then lost both districts against Romney, 51% to 48%. The DCCC decided to go for what looked like the easier district, WI-08, which had no incumbent. So they threw $551,076 for garden variety moderate Democrat Tom Nelson. They gave exactly zero to progressive Berniecrat Mary Hoeft, by every standard (except the DCCC's), the far better candidate. A half million dollars for Nelson bought him 135,648 votes (37.3%). Mary would probably have won with any reasonable amount of support. She managed to raise $105,417 from the grassroots-- to Duffy's $2,155,137. (She received a modest boost from the Working Families Party, which spent $128,528 against Duffy independently.) She got more raw votes than Nelson and a greater percentage of the vote to boot-- with zero investment from the DCCC or House Majority PAC. Her total was 137,910 (38.2%).

Clearly, something is wrong with the way the dummy-conservaDems who run the DCCC-- Ben Ray Lujan, Steve Israel, Cheri Bustos and Kelli Ward-- are recruiting candidates and funding campaigns. And that didn't start in 2015. It goes back to the way Rahm Emanuel shaped the DCCC to be a vehicle for the Republican-wing of the Democratic Party. And the Democrats have lost not dozens of seats, but scores of seats, under the Pelosi chairmen and their miserable and corrupt, failed, unaccountable staff.

Instead of trying to figure out what went wrong, they just deny anything went wrong, pat each other on the back, find someone or something else to blame and declare it could have been worse if not for their own brilliance. If they don't even recognize that going from 257 seats in 2008 to 193 seats in 2010 and to 188 in 2014 (a loss of 69 seats) is a disaster, how will they ever deal with the core philosophy, strategy and tactics that have the House Dems sink lower and lower?

2018 could be a banner year for House Democrats-- but not with this turgid DCCC that is incapable of winning. Remember, in 2010, 65,237,840 Americans voted for Democratic House candidates (and 52,249,491 voted for Republicans). This year just 35,624,357 Americans bought the DCCC's non-message, while 40,081,282 Americans voted for Republican candidates. The Democrats had a net gain of six seats this year where they needed 30 and the bar for success was a minimum of 15-20. But even where the Democrats had 4 of their most important successes in building a worthwhile team for the future-- WA-07 (Pramila Jayapal), CA-44 (Nanette Barragan), MD-08 (Jamie Raskin) and NH01 (Carol Shea-Porter), the DCCC had no involvement whatsoever and spent zero dollars. If you would like to help Blue America congressional recruiting efforts for 2018, this is the place.

Clintonism: Re-Defining Progressivism, Populism And The Democratic Party-- And Not In A Good Way

Congressman Wright Patman (D-TX), chairman of the House Banking Committee, 1963-74, led the fight in Congress to stop the manipulators of the Federal Reserve System from 1937 to his death in 1976

It flipped me out earlier in the cycle when Obama sent out numerous communications-- including radio ads-- to Democratic base voters in Florida, particularly African-Americans, that reactionary New Dem Patrick Murphy is a progressive. The only relationship that Patrick Murphy has with progressives is that he opposes their agenda and that he was running against one, Alan Grayson. But, then again, maybe it's just about how you define "progressive." After all, Murphy doesn't mind if women get abortions or gays want to get married or even if lots of undocumented immigrants come over the border. If that's how you define progressive... ok, Murphy's a progressive. A look at his voting record, on the other hand, paints a picture of Wall Street's most devoted Democratic puppet in Congress, something borne out by Wall Street campaign contributions this cycle. Murphy has gotten more loot ($2,013,462) from the Finance Sector than any other non-incumbent running for the Senate-- more than any Republican and more than many incumbents. The banksters have given more to Murphy than to embattled allies like Ron Johnson (R-WI), John McCain (R-AZ), Mark Kirk (R-IL), Richard Burr (R-NC), Joe Heck (R-NV), Roy Blunt (R-MO), men who have served them faithfully for years or even decades and are now facing defeat. But getting Murphy into the Senate is a Wall Street priority, even if they love Marco Rubio and were a significant part of his aborted presidential campaign.

In fact, more than any other Democrat running for the Senate, Murphy is seen as the not-Elizabeth Warren candidate. He's the one who has worked in the House Financial Services Committee to help the Republicans with their efforts to undo all the consumer protections Warren was able to incorporate into Dodd-Frank. But if decades old battles for gay rights and women's equality is the ultimate definition of "progressive," maybe Obama wasn't as much of a liar as he sounded and maybe I was too hasty to point out that Murphy's parents' and Saudi allies' promises to help fund his presidential library-- surely a progressive place in the making, no?-- weren't really the motivation for the lie.

Notorious bankster errand boys Chuck Schumer and Patrick Murphy

Anyway, yesterday Matt Stoller, a Bernie Sanders Senate staffer, published the article of the day, How Democrats Killed Their Populist Soul and the period he wrote about, the mid to late 1970s-- was actually just before Patrick Murphy was born. The liberal reformers who came in on the coattails of Americans' disgust with Nixonian sleaze, didn't understand that banksterism was the enemy either. And they screwed things up in a way to make it possible for Wall Street toadies like Patrick Murphy, Ann Kirkpatrick (D-AZ) and Evan Bayh (D-IN) to thrive within the Democratic Party today.

It's entirely consistent with Stoller's nature to launch right into a defense of an old racist, pro-war congressman who few people outside of obsessed political junkies have ever heard of. "One of their first targets," he wrote, "was an old man from Texarkana: a former cotton tenant farmer named Wright Patman who had served in Congress since 1929. He was also the chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Banking and Currency and had been for more than a decade. Antiwar liberal reformers realized that the key to power in Congress was through the committee system; being the chairman of a powerful committee meant having control over the flow of legislation. The problem was: Chairmen were selected based on their length of service. So liberal reformers already in office, buttressed by the Watergate Babies’ votes, demanded that the committee chairmen be picked by a full Democratic-caucus vote instead. Ironically, as chairman of the Banking Committee, Patman had been the first Democrat to investigate the Watergate scandal. But he was vulnerable to the new crowd he had helped usher in. He was old; they were young. He had supported segregation and the war in Vietnam; they were vehemently against both. Patman had never gone to college and had been a crusading economic populist during the Great Depression; the Watergate Babies were weaned on campus politics, television, and affluence."

In reality, while the Watergate Babies provided the numbers needed to eject him, it was actually Patman’s Banking Committee colleagues who orchestrated his ouster. For more than a decade, Patman had represented a Democratic political tradition stretching back to Thomas Jefferson, an alliance of the agrarian South and the West against Northeastern capital. For decades, Patman had sought to hold financial power in check, investigating corporate monopolies, high interest rates, the Federal Reserve, and big banks. And the banking allies on the committee had had enough of Patman’s hostility to Wall Street.

Over the years, Patman had upset these members by blocking bank mergers and going after financial power. As famed muckraking columnist Drew Pearson put it: Patman “committed one cardinal sin as chairman. ... He wants to investigate the big bankers.” And so, it was the older bank allies who truly ensured that Patman would go down. In 1975, these bank-friendly Democrats spread the rumor that Patman was an autocratic chairman biased against junior congressmen. To new members eager to participate in policymaking, this was a searing indictment.

...Not all on the left were swayed. Barbara Jordan, the renowned representative from Texas, spoke eloquently in Patman’s defense. Ralph Nader raged at the betrayal of a warrior against corporate power. And California’s Henry Waxman, one of the few populist Watergate Babies, broke with his class, puzzled by all the liberals who opposed Patman’s chairmanship. Still, Patman was crushed. Of the three chairmen who fell, Patman lost by the biggest margin. A week later, the bank-friendly members of the committee completed their takeover. Leonor Sullivan-- a Missouri populist, the only woman on the Banking Committee, and the author of the Fair Credit Reporting Act-- was removed from her position as the subcommittee chair in revenge for her support of Patman. “A revolution has occurred,” noted the Washington Post.

Indeed, a revolution had occurred. But the contours of that revolution would not be clear for decades. In 1974, young liberals did not perceive financial power as a threat, having grown up in a world where banks and big business were largely kept under control. It was the government-- through Vietnam, Nixon, and executive power-- that organized the political spectrum. By 1975, liberalism meant, as [Michigan's Bob] Carr put it, “where you were on issues like civil rights and the war in Vietnam.” With the exception of a few new members, like [George] Miller and Waxman, suspicion of finance as a part of liberalism had vanished.

Over the next 40 years, this Democratic generation fundamentally altered American politics. They restructured “campaign finance, party nominations, government transparency, and congressional organization.” They took on domestic violence, homophobia, discrimination against the disabled, and sexual harassment. They jettisoned many racially and culturally authoritarian traditions. They produced Bill Clinton’s presidency directly, and in many ways, they shaped President Barack Obama’s.

The result today is a paradox. At the same time that the nation has achieved perhaps the most tolerant culture in U.S. history, the destruction of the anti-monopoly and anti-bank tradition in the Democratic Party has also cleared the way for the greatest concentration of economic power in a century. This is not what the Watergate Babies intended when they dethroned Patman as chairman of the Banking Committee. But it helped lead them down that path. The story of Patman’s ousting is part of the larger story of how the Democratic Party helped to create today’s shockingly disillusioned and sullen public, a large chunk of whom is now marching for Donald Trump.

In March, we spent some time talking about Thomas Frank's new book, Listen Liberal-- Or What Ever Happened To The Party Of The People. Stoller's analysis is very much in synch with the one offered by Frank, namely that the Democratic Party no longer prioritizes the interests of working families but instead super-serves the interests of the top 10%, a professional class for whom Wall Street is not as mortal an enemy as has proven itself to be to the working class.

Stoller lionizes the contributions of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis who, he wrote, essentially formaled "the populist social sentiment of the late 19th century into a rigorous set of legally actionable ideas. This philosophy then guided the 20th-century Democratic Party."

Brandeis’s basic contention, built up over a lifetime of lawyering from the Gilded Age onward, was that big business and democracy were rivals. “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few,” he said, “but we can’t have both.” Economics, identity, and politics could not be divorced, because financial power-- bankers and monopolists-- threatened local communities and self-government.

This use of legal tools to constrain big business and protect democracy is known as anti-monopoly or pro-competition policy. This tension stretched back to colonial times and the nation’s founding. The British East India Company was a chartered corporation organized to monopolize the tea business for its corporate owners and the Crown-- which spurred the Boston Tea Party. Alexander Hamilton’s financial architecture concentrated power and wealth-- which prompted the founding of the Democratic Party along more Jeffersonian lines, promoting private small-land ownership. J.P. Morgan’s and John D. Rockefeller’s encroaching industrial monopolies were part of the Gilded Age elite that extorted farmers with sky-high interest rates, crushed workers seeking decent working conditions and good pay, and threatened small-business independence-- which sparked a populist uprising of farmers, and, in parallel, sparked protest from miners and workers confronting newfound industrial behemoths.

In the 20th century, Woodrow Wilson authored the Federal Trade Commission Act, the Federal Reserve Act, and the anti-merger Clayton Act, and, just before World War I intervened, he put Brandeis on the Supreme Court. Franklin Delano Roosevelt completed what Wilson could not, restructuring the banking system and launching antitrust investigations into “housing, construction, tire, newsprint, steel, potash, sulphur, retail, fertilizer, tobacco, shoe, and various agricultural industries.” Modern liberals tend to confuse a broad social-welfare state and redistribution of resources in the form of tax-and-spend policies with the New Deal. In fact, the central tenet of New Deal competition policy was not big or small government; it was distrust of concentrations of power and conflicts of interest in the economy. The New Deal divided power, pitting faction against other faction, a classic Jefferson-Madison approach to controlling power (think Federalist Paper No. 10). Competition policy meant preserving democracy within the commercial sphere, by keeping markets open. Again, for New Deal populists like Brandeis and Patman, it was democracy or concentrated wealth-- but not both.

...Underpinning the political transformation of the New Deal was an intellectual revolution, a new understanding of property rights. In a 1932 campaign speech known as the Commonwealth Club Address, FDR defined private property as the savings of a family, a Jeffersonian yeoman-farmer notion updated for the 20th century. By contrast, the corporation was not property. Concentrated private economic power was “a public trust,” with public obligations, and the continued “enjoyment of that power by any individual or group must depend upon the fulfillment of that trust.” The titans of the day were not businessmen but “princes of property,” and they had to accept responsibility for their power or be restrained by democratic forces. The corporation had to be fit into the constitutional order.

Remember, it was the great bankers and managers of the “money trusts,” such as J.P. Morgan, who sat astride wide swaths of corporate America through their investment and lending power, membership on boards of directors, and influence over industrial titans. Among other things, they maintained a sufficient concentration of power to keep prices up, workers disorganized, and politics firmly within their grasp.

New Deal fears of bigness and private concentrations of power were given further ideological ammunition later in the 1930s by fascists abroad. As Roosevelt put it to Congress when announcing a far-reaching assault on monopolies in 1938: “The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism.” In 1947, Patman even commissioned experts to publish a book titled Fascism in Action, noting that fascism as a political system was the combination of extreme nationalism and monopoly power, a “dictatorship of big business.”

This basic understanding of property formed the industrial structure of mid-20th-century America and then, through its trading arrangements, much of the rest of the world. Using this framework, the Democrats broke the power of bankers over America’s great industrial commons. To constrain big business and protect democracy, Democrats used a raft of anti-monopoly, or pro-competition, policy to great effect, leading to vast changes: The Securities and Exchange Commission was created, the stock exchanges were regulated, the big banks were broken up, the giant utility holding companies were broken up, farmers gained government support for stable agricultural prices free from speculation, and the chain stores were restrained by laws that blocked them from using predatory pricing to undermine local competition (including, for instance, competition from a local camera store in San Francisco run by a shopkeeper named Harvey Milk).

Competition policy was also a powerful political strategy. Democrats lost the U.S. House of Representatives just twice between 1930 and 1994. To get a sense of how rural Democrats used to relate to voters, one need only pick up an old flyer from the Patman archives in Texas: “Here Is What Our Democratic Party Has Given Us” was the title. There were no fancy slogans or focus-grouped logos. Each item listed is a solid thing that was relevant to the lives of conservative white Southern voters in rural Texas: Electricity. Telephone. Roads. Social Security. Soil conservation. Price supports. Foreclosure prevention.

Foreclosures protected homes against bankers. Farm-to-market roads allowed communities to organize around markets. Social Security protected one’s livelihood in the form of unemployment insurance and old-age benefits. Price supports for family farms protected them from speculators. And rural electrification and telephones shielded communities from the predations of monopolistic utilities. Packaged together, these measures epitomized the idea that citizens must be able to govern themselves through their own community structures, or as Walt Whitman put it: “train communities through all their grades, beginning with individuals and ending there again, to rule themselves.” Patman’s ideals represented a deep understanding that sovereign citizens governing sovereign communities were the only protection against demagoguery.

The essence of populist politics is that political and economic freedom are deeply intertwined-- that real democracy requires not just an opportunity to vote but an opportunity to compete in an open marketplace. This was the kind of politics that the Watergate Babies accidentally overthrew.

The story of why the Watergate Babies spurned populism is its own intellectual journey. It started with a generation of politicians who cut their teeth on college-campus politics. In their youth, they saw, up close, not the perils of robber barons, but the failure of the New Deal state, most profoundly through the war in Vietnam. “We were the ’60s generation that didn’t drop out,” Bob Edgar, a U.S. representative from the class of 1975, told me. The war in Vietnam shaped their generation in two profound ways. First, it disillusioned them toward the New Deal. It was, after all, many New Dealers, including union insiders, who nominated Hubert Humphrey in 1968 and who supported a war that killed millions, including 50,000 Americans their age. And second, higher education-- the province of the affluent-- exempted one from military service, which was an explicit distinction among classes.

...For younger Democrats, the key vector for these ideas was an economist named Lester Thurow, who organized the ideas of Galbraith, Stigler, Friedman, Bork, and Jensen into one progressive-sounding package. In an influential book, The Zero-Sum Society, Thurow proposed that all government and business activities were simply zero-sum contests over resources and incomes, ignoring the arguments of New Dealers that concentration was a political problem and led to tyranny. In his analysis, anti-monopoly policy, especially in the face of corporate problems was anachronistic and harmful. Thurow essentially reframed Bork’s ideas for a Democratic audience.

With key intellectuals in the Democratic Party increasingly agreeing with Republican thought leaders on the virtues of corporate concentration, the political economic debate changed drastically. Henceforth, the economic leadership of the two parties would increasingly argue not over whether concentrations of wealth were threats to democracy or to the economy, but over whether concentrations of wealth would be centrally directed through the public sector or managed through the private sector—a big-government redistributionist party versus a small-government libertarian party. Democrats and Republicans disagreed on the purpose of concentrated power, but everyone agreed on its inevitability. By the late 1970s, the populist Brandeisian anti-monopoly tradition-- protecting communities by breaking up concentrations of power-- had been air-brushed out of the debate. And in doing so, America’s fundamental political vision transformed: from protecting citizen sovereignty to maximizing consumer welfare.

The Watergate Babies began to coalesce around their own sense of this new intellectual economic philosophy to deal with the stagnating economy around them. In an early sign of where it would lead, President Jimmy Carter deregulated the trucking, banking, and airline industries, with help from economist Alfred Kahn, Senator Edward Kennedy, and Kennedy’s young aide, future Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. Democrats then popularized supply-side economics in a Thurow-influenced and Democrat-authored 1980 Joint Economic Committee report, “Plugging in the Supply Side.”

In 1982, journalist Randall Rothenberg noted the emergence of this new statist viewpoint of economic power within the Democratic Party with an Esquire cover story, “The Neoliberal Club.” In that article, which later became a book, Rothenberg profiled up-and-coming Thurow disciples like Gary Hart, Bill Bradley, Bill Clinton, Bruce Babbitt, Richard Gephardt, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, Paul Tsongas, and Tim Wirth, as well as thinkers like Robert Reich and writers like Michael Kinsley. These were all essentially representatives of the Watergate Baby generation. It was a prescient article: Most Democratic presidential candidates for the next 25 years came from this pool of leaders. Not all Watergate Babies became neoliberals, of course. There were populists of the generation, like Waxman and Miller, but they operated in an intellectual environment where the libertarian and statist thinkers who rejected Brandeis shaped the political economy.

Democrats and Republicans still fought. Neoliberals, while agreeing with Reagan Republicans on a basic view that the structure of corporate America should be as depoliticized and as shielded from voters as possible, still vehemently opposed Ronald Reagan on environmental policy, foreign policy, and taxes. But the very idea of competition policy, of inserting democracy into the economy, made no sense to them. Previously, voters had expected politicians to do something about everything from the price of milk to mortgage rates. Now, neoliberals expressed public power through financial markets. As libertarian and future Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan had written a decade before, “The ultimate regulator of competition in a free economy is the capital market.”

...When Bill Clinton took office as the 42nd president, the Watergate Babies would finally have their chance to govern... Clinton Democrats eventually came to reflect Dutton’s political formulation, more diverse and less reliant on the white working class. His administration looked like America-- with women, African Americans, Latinos, and gays and lesbians represented-- and most were educated at top universities. Thurow’s influence was also notable. Clinton stripped antitrust out of the Democratic platform; it was the first time a reference to monopoly power was not in the platform since 1880. Globalization, deregulation, and balanced budgets would animate Clinton’s political economy, with high-tech and finance leading the way.

And it seemed to work. From 1993 to 2001, GDP growth averaged 4 percent, up from 2.8 percent from 1981 to 1993. The median family income increased by $6,000, with the lowest inflation rate since the 1960s. Plus, 22 million jobs were created, 7 million people came out of poverty, America saw the highest homeownership rate ever, the national debt nearly disappeared, and interest rates came down. African Americans experienced pay increases for the first time since the 1960s. Goldman Sachs called it the “best economy ever,” and BusinessWeek lauded a “New Age economy of technological innovation and rising productivity.” The administration put this additional fat of the land toward third-world debt relief, student aid, empowerment zones, and community block grants. (When George W. Bush came into office after Clinton, The Onion’s headline read, “Bush: ‘Our Long National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity is Over.’”)

At the end of his presidency, Clinton explained his success. He praised Greenspan’s stewardship of the Federal Reserve. He said that the key to noninflationary growth was ensuring that workers did not demand raises beyond the rate of productivity, while unleashing businesses to pursue the most profitable lines of investment through deregulation and globalization. He implicitly touted the theory of capital shortage: Inflation resulted from overregulation and deficits, which took money out of the hands of businesses. Putting money and power back into the hands of businesses with deregulation and a balanced budget led to low interest rates, massive corporate profits, productivity growth, and broad prosperity. Bork and Thurow, in other words, were right.

Clinton’s policy framework diverged with that of his Republican predecessors in many ways, not just on social policy but also on raising marginal tax rates on the wealthy. In terms of concentrations of power in the private sector, however, it was more a completion of what Reagan did than a repudiation of it.

From telecommunications to media to oil to banking to trade, Clinton administration officials-- believing that technology and market forces alone would disrupt monopolies-- ended up massively concentrating power in the corporate sector. They did this through active policy, repealing Glass-Steagall, expanding trade through NAFTA, and welcoming China’s entrance into the global-trading order via the World Trade Organization. But corporate concentration also occurred in less-examined ways, like through the Supreme Court and defense procurement. Clinton Library papers, for example, reveal that the lone Senate objection to the Supreme Court nominations of both Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg was from a lurking populist Ohio Democrat, Howard Metzenbaum, who opposed the future justices’ general agreement with Bork on competition policy. And in response to the end of the Cold War, the administration restructured the defense industry, shrinking the number of prime defense contractors from 107 to five. The new defense-industrial base, now concentrated in the hands of a few executives, stopped subsidizing key industries. The electronics industry was soon offshored.

But who could argue? The concentration of media and telecommunications companies happened concurrent with an investment boom into the newest beacon of progress: the internet. The futurism, the political coalition of the multiethnic cosmopolitans, the social justice of the private centrally planned corporation-- it worked. Clinton’s “Third Way” went global, as political leaders abroad copied the Clinton model of success. A West Wing generation learned only Watergate Baby politics, never realizing an earlier progressive economic tradition had even existed.

Despite this prosperity, in 2000, the American people didn’t reward the Democrats with majorities in Congress or an Oval Office victory. In particular, the rural parts of the country in the South, which had been a traditional area of Democratic strength up until the 1970s, were strongly opposed to this new Democratic Party. And white working-class people, whom Dutton had dismissed, did not perceive the benefits of the “greatest economy ever.” They also began to die. Starting in 1998 and continuing to this day, the mortality rate among white Americans, specifically those without a high school-degree, has been on the rise-- leaving them scared and alienated.

...By 2008, the ideas that took hold in the 1970s had been Democratic orthodoxy for two generations. “Left-wing” meant opposing war, supporting social tolerance, advocating environmentalism, and accepting corporatism and big finance while also seeking redistribution via taxes. The Obama administration has been ideologically consistent with the Watergate Babies’ rejection of populism. Modern liberal political culture epitomizes Dutton’s ideas. And its accomplishments are impressive. As late as 1995, a majority of Americans did not approve of interracial marriage. Today, gay marriage is the law of the land, and intermarriage rates are high and growing. Culturally, the United States is a far more tolerant and open society.

Dealing with a financial collapse in the early years of his administration, Obama’s political-economic framework supported concentrated yet regulated financial power. From 2009 to 2010, the administration prioritized the stability of a concentrated financial system over risking an attempt to end the foreclosure wave threatening the American housing market. In the last seven years, another massive merger boom has occurred, with concentrations accruing in the hospital, airline, telecommunications, and technology industries. Progressive corporations like Google are key pillars of a cosmopolitan liberal culture. This is the world of the Watergate Babies and the libertarian and statist thinkers who shaped their intellectual understanding of it.

But what intellectuals like Thurow, Galbraith, Greenspan, Bork, and so forth didn’t foresee was political disillusionment on a vast scale. In 2014, for example, voting rates in some states dropped to levels unseen since the 1820s (when property-franchise laws were in force). Meanwhile, American soldiers once again find themselves in a quagmire; this time, in the Middle East. Despite their best efforts, U.S. institutions seem as out-of-control and ungovernable as they did when the 1975 class came into office.

For most Americans, the institutions that touch their lives are unreachable. Americans get broadband through Comcast, their internet through Google, their seeds and chemicals through Monsanto. They sell their grain through Cargill and buy everything from books to lawnmowers through Amazon. Open markets are gone, replaced by a handful of corporate giants. Political groups associated with Koch Industries have a larger budget than either political party, and there is no faith in what was once the most democratically responsive part of government: Congress. Steeped in centralized power and mistrust, Americans must now confront Donald Trump, the loudest and most grotesque symbol of authoritarianism in politics today.

“This,” wrote Robert Kagan in the Washington Post, “is how fascism comes to America.” The nation is awash in commentary and fear over the current cultural moment. “America is a breeding ground for tyranny,” wrote Andrew Sullivan in New York magazine. Yet, Trump’s emergence would not be a surprise to someone like Patman, or to most New Dealers. They would note that the real-estate mogul’s authoritarianism is not new in American culture; it is ubiquitous. It is consistent with how the commercial sphere has developed since the 1970s. Americans feel a lack of control: They are at the mercy of distant forces, their livelihoods dependent on the arbitrary whims of power. Patman once attacked chain stores as un-American, saying, “We, the American people, want no part of monopolistic dictatorship in … American business.” Having yielded to monopolies in business, the nation must now face the un-American threat to democracy Patman warned they would sow.

Americans have forgotten about the centuries-old anti-monopoly tradition that was designed to promote self-governing communities and political independence. The Watergate Babies got rid of Patman’s populism for a lot of reasons. But there was wisdom there. In the 1930s, Patman said that restricting chain stores would prevent “Hitler’s methods of government and business in Europe” from coming to the United States. For decades after World War II, preventing economic concentration was understood as a bulwark against tyranny. But since the 1970s, this rhetoric has seemed ridiculous. Now, the destabilization of political institutions suggests that it may not have been. Financial crises are a regular feature of the U.S. banking system, and prices for essential goods and services reflect monopoly power rather than free citizens buying and selling to each other. Americans, sullen and unmoored from community structures, are turning to rage, apathy, protest, and tribalism, like white supremacy.

Ending the threat of authoritarianism is not a left-wing or right-wing problem, and the solution does not reside in building a bigger or a smaller government. Restoring political stability means structuring society’s public and corporate institutions so they can be governed by human beings and communities. It means protecting the property rights of citizens and not confusing property with arbitrary tollbooths erected by tech billionaires. And it means understanding that protecting competitive markets and preventing concentrations of power are essential components of democracy.

Fortunately, Americans are beginning to remember what was once lost. Senator Elizabeth Warren often sounds like she’s channeling Wright Patman. Senator Bernie Sanders stirred enormous enthusiasm in a younger generation more in touch with their populist souls. Republicans even debated putting antitrust back in their party platform. President Obama has begun talking about the problem of monopolies. Renata Hesse, the head of the government’s antitrust division, recently gave a blistering speech repudiating Bork’s corporatist ideas. And none other than Hillary Clinton, in an October 3, 2016, speech on renewing antitrust vigor, noted that Trump, while a unique figure, also represents the “broader trends” of big business picking on the little guy.

Restoring America’s anti-monopoly traditions does not mean rejecting what the Watergate Babies accomplished. It means merging their understanding of a multicultural democratic society with Brandeis’s vision of an “industrial democracy.” The United States must place democracy at the heart of its commercial sphere once again. That means competition policy, in force, all the time, at every level. The prevailing culture must be re-geared, so that the republic may be born anew.

Note:

When he was still Chairman of the House Banking Committee, Patman once famously asked the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Arthur Burns, testifying in front of his committee, "Can you give me any reason why you should not be in the penitentiary?" A year after being deposed in a 152-117 caucus vote in 1975, Patman died of pneumonia and was replaced by an ultra-conservative Democrat, Sam Hall, who was later nominated for a judgeship by Reagan, making way for the district to turn red. It is now one of the most Republican districts in the country, Obama getting only 25% of the vote there in 2012; 24% of the population is black or Latino. When people talk about Hillary gaining on Trump in Texas, this isn't the part of Texas they're talking about. They're talking about well-off suburbs around San Antonio, Austin, Houston, Dallas and Forth Worth, traditionally Republican areas, not traditionally Democratic areas that have been left behind and have slipped into the Republican orbit. 

Mary Hoeft is the progressive Democrat running for the northwestern/central Wisconsin congressional seat (WI-07), currently held by Trumpist and former reality TV character Sean Duffy, who currently earns his campaign funds as chairman of a House Financial Services Sub-committee on Investigations and Oversight by pointedly not providing any oversight or doing any investigations of crooked (albeit generous-- at least to Rep. Duffy) banksters. Last night, after reading Stoller's article, Mary drew a sharp contrast between herself and crooked members of Congress from both parties who put Wall Street's interests above the interests of their own constituents.

I refuse to balance Patrick Murphy's advocacy on behalf of Wall Street with his advocacy on behalf of reproductive rights, gays, and undocumented workers. To do so would be naïve. Pope Francis spoke out against the naivete of those who believe good will come as droplets of water trickle down from the pool of riches our wealthiest bathe in. Americans are drowning in those droplets. My opponent Sean Duffy is an easier enemy to see coming. He advocates against reproductive rights, gays, and undocumented workers. But Murphy is equally responsible for the chasm that now divides our wealthiest from the rest of America.

Needless to say, Hoeft is one of the progressives who won her primary, only to be promptly ignored by the very conservative and very Wall Street-friendly DCCC. They're not helping her, even though her district is very swingy and was only recently held by a Democrat, Dave Obey (who is campaigning for her), and was won by Obama against McCain, 53-45%. Please consider contributing to her grassroots campaign by tapping the thermometer below:

And An Update For Capitol Hill:

Today one of the congressmembers who helped write Dodd-Frank sent me a note:

Dear Howie:

Even when we were writing the Dodd-Frank Act, in the wake of the financial meltdown, there was only mild attention to what might be done to prevent another meltdown, rather than any focus on the distribution of wealth and financial power. That latter subject is essentially verboten; instead, we scold the GOP about bathroom laws and personal indiscretions. On the contrary, Democratic candidates ritually and habitually deny any motivation to “penalize success,” especially when talking to wealthy donors.

Conservatives Rejoice At The Criminally Low Social Security Cost Of Living Increase But Want Even Bigger Cuts

AKA-- A Bitter Way

One of Chris Wallace's debate topics tonight was "Debt and Entitlements," which is how conservatives frame their arguments for cutting Social Security and Medicare. The moron who ran the VP debate last month also read a card someone gave her that implied that Social Security would "run out of mone," a falsify conservatives never tire of pushing on low-info/low-intelligence media folks like Elaine Quijano. As Social Security Works pointed out after Quijano stumbled into it, "This bogus framing sets up Social Security as a problem to be solved, not a solution to the retirement income crisis. The Republicans have used this framing to undermine confidence in the program and open the door for cuts to our earned benefits. Now we've learned that Freshman Senator David Perdue (R-GA) is working behind the scenes with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and other Republican leaders to put cuts to Social Security at the top of the Republican agenda in 2017."

What Perdue and McConnell have come up with is a plan to remove Social Security's guarantee by allowing Congress the power to vote each year on Social Security's spending, something that would allow conservatives to tie Social Security to the federal budget-- even though Social Security is independently funded by the payroll tax and has never contributed one penny to our country's debt."

At the same time, congressional conservatives are refusing to use a sensible index to decide on the annual cost-of-living-adjustments, resulting this coming year in a 0.3% increase-- last year it was zero-- even though costs for medical care and other actual expenses seniors are confronted with have gone up many times that amount. Elizabeth Warren is fighting to pass the Seniors and Veterans Emergency (SAVE) Benefits Act, which would boost Social Security and other critical benefits for seniors, veterans, and Americans with disabilities. but Republicans and other conservatives are standing in the way. Yesterday she said that "For many seniors and other Americans struggling to make ends meet on tight budgets with rising expenses, today's COLA announcement offers little relief. There is still time to help make up for the fact that there was no cost-of-living adjustment in 2016. Congress should pass the SAVE Benefits Act when we are back in session in November to give a much-needed boost to millions of Americans who have earned it."

The SAVE Benefits Act would give about 70 million seniors, veterans, Americans with disabilities, and others an emergency payment equal to 3.9 percent of the average annual Social Security benefit, about $581-- the same percentage raise that top CEOs received last year.

A $581 increase could cover almost three months of groceries for seniors or a year's worth of out-of-pocket costs on critical prescription drugs for the average Medicare beneficiary. The bill would lift more than 1 million Americans out of poverty. The cost of this emergency payment would be covered by closing a tax loophole allowing corporations to write off executive bonuses as a business expense for "performance pay." The substantial additional revenue saved by closing the CEO compensation loophole would be used to bolster and extend the life of the Social Security and Disability trust funds.

Bernie pointed out that the 0.3% increase announced yesterday amounts to an average of $4/month for the typical Social Security recipient. "Seniors and disabled veterans need more help than a few extra dollars in their monthly checks," he said. "These are the people who built this country-- our parents, our grandparents and our soldiers. At a time when senior poverty is going up and more than two-thirds of the elderly population rely on Social Security for more than half of their income, we must do everything we can to expand Social Security. Seniors and disabled veterans deserve a fair cost-of-living adjustment to keep up with the skyrocketing cost of prescription drugs and health care. Unfortunately, the increase announced today doesn’t come close to doing that."

Ryan, of course, is behind the push to to make Social Security part of the annual budget so that they have the opportunity to cut it every year. For him and his party's backers, even the meager 0.3% increase is too much.

An issue worth running on-- anywhere in America

Jeff Merkley, a co-sponsor of Warren's SAVE Benefits Act also spoke out immediately. "With today’s announcement, the Social Security Administration is saying that seniors only need about five extra dollars a month to cover rising costs for next year. To anyone who truly believes that is adequate, I invite you to come to Oregon and tell that to seniors who are dealing with skyrocketing prescription drug prices, or who face eviction due to double-digit rent increases. This so-called ‘cost-of-living adjustment’ should serve as a wakeup call that the current consumer price index is not working for Social Security benefits. Social Security is the bedrock of retirement security in our nation, and if we want to make sure that the value of Social Security benefits doesn’t become dangerously eroded over time, we need to act now to put in place a consumer price index that reflects the true costs seniors face."

Mary Hoeft and Tom Wakely, respectively running for Congress against Trump's top surrogates in Wisconsin, Sean Duffy, and Texas, Lamar Smith, spoke for all the Blue America candidates when they voiced their outrage. Mary told us, ironically, "Seniors just got the great news. With a whopping $4 a month increase in benefits, they can enjoy a monthly Value Meal at their neighborhood fast food restaurant. Thanks Seniors for your lifetime of hard work! God Forbid we get rid of the $118,500 cap on social security contributions. I would hate to think people with money would have to pay their fair share."And Tom asked, "So this is how we honor our seniors? A 0.3% increase? The extra pennies are so insulting they'd be better off not increasing it all. I say pennies because we shouldn't even be talking about this in monthly terms. Seniors aren't living month to month. They're living day to day. Think about it as an extra 13 cents a day. That's what we're so "graciously" giving to our elderly in their time of need. Republicans will hammer even this insignificant raise, but likely use it as part of a national stump speech when it's time for the midterm elections to "prove" that Social Security doesn't work. I wholeheartedly support Senator Warren's SAVE Act. This isn't a welfare program. These citizens earned their benefits. 13 cents a day is beyond a slap in the face. It's an actual disgrace." Please consider contributing to Mary, Tom and the other Blue America progressives who the DCCC is studiously ignoring.

Why Do Conservative Incumbents Always Fear Debates? Take Wisconsin...

The results of last Monday's debate between Trump and Clinton show something different than just why conservatives don't like debates. Those results-- demonstrated again just a couple of hours ago in an ABC News/Washington Post poll released this morning-- show why an ill-prepared, adderall-fueled sociopath spouting conservative talking points he could remember, should probably skip debates... or any public appearance in front of people with 3-digit IQs. The big takeaway from the ABC poll is that, post-debate, 64% of Americans now express an unfavorable opinion of Trump, up 5 points from its pre-debate level. Only 18% of respondents said they thought Trump won the debate and only 29% of respondents think Trump's responses were factual-- 32% saying he intentionally lied. What about down-ballot, where conservatives are doing their best to avoid debating challengers? In Wisconsin, the most notorious of the Trumpists is shady former TV reality actor and current congressman Sean Duffy.

Duffy has another long vacation in front of him. Paul Ryan adjourned the House a couple of days ago so that his members could go home and defend their seats. Duffy, Donald Trump's top congressional surrogate in Wisconsin, seems to be too busy campaigning for Trump to take his own constituents' concerns seriously up in a sprawling northern district that stretches from Castle Rock Lake, Marshfield and Wausau in central Wisconsin, way out into the Minneapolis suburbs and up to Superior across from Duluth in the northwest corner of the state. The progressive Democrat vying for the seat. Mary Hoeft, has asked him to join her in debating the issues in every corner of the district-- 6 open, well-publicized debates across WI-07. He has continually ducked the question of debates and turned down invitations from nonpartisan organizations offering to host them. Suddenly, last week, he peremptorily announced that debates are set for Nov. 3 and 4, when early voting has ended-- and when most weekly newspapers won't be able to report the debate results until after the election. He picked his two hometowns-- one that has no television station, and he picked his own panelists and has indicated that Mary can take it or leave it. He even decided on the debate rules (with no opening statements so Mary can't talk about the aspects of his record that are important to Wisconsin's working families nor how he mishandled the whole debate situation).

Mary, a stalwart progressive, is a Blue America-backed candidate-- you can contribute to her campaign here-- and after she won her primary, in a landslide, the district was crossed off the DCCC candidates list. They're resfusing to help her in any way at all, even though Obama won the district, 53-45% in 2008 and then lost narrowly to Romney in 2012 and even though Russ Feingold is expected to trounce Ron Johnson across WI-07 on November 8. Clinton is also doing well in WI-07 and looking like she's going to run up big margins in Douglas, Bayfield, Ashland, Washburn, Jackson, Clark, Rusk, Barron, Sawyer, Forest, Oneida, Price, Lincoln, Chippewa, Juneau, Burnett and even St. Croix and Marathon counties. This is a district the DCCC could win-- while helping Clinton clinch it-- if they would just get over their obsessive hatred for progressives.

We asked Mary to take a few minutes away from her busy campaign schedule and explain how Duffy has been able to avoid a healthy public debate of the issues.

Is Sean Duffy Still Afraid To Debate A Woman?
-by Mary Hoeft, Democratic candidate for Congress, WI-07

"You've listened to Howie rake my opponent, Sean Duffy, over the coals, and justifiably so.  I've been hesitant to go too hard on Duffy because of my Western Wisconsin Nice Girl Upbringing. But DAMN, that man's got me mad now (or maybe I've been around Howie too long). The white gloves are off.

For months, I've worked to get Sean Duffy to agree to debate me. He's scared. He doesn't want to stand in front of an audience while I tell people that he chairs the banking oversight committee and took $400,000 in "political gifts" from bankers. He doesn't want me to say he recently received the single largest donation any congressman received from Wells Fargo.  He doesn't want me to say he's praising  Wells Fargo CEO Stumpf while blaming underlings for the scandal Stumpf condoned.

To silence me, Duffy refused to respond to every nonpartisan invitation to debate we both received. And then, last week, I received a strange call. A Wausau television station called me, asking for my reaction to the debates Duffy and I had agreed to. I was dumbfounded, I asked, "What debates?" Duffy had sent out a news release announcing he would participate in two debates, on November 3 and 4, in his hometowns of Wausau and Hayward. He thanked his handpicked panelists for agreeing to participate. There was no mention of an opponent. Apparently he felt I wouldn't be participating and he would have the stage to himself.

Duffy thinks he can treat a woman this way. Two years ago, he was trounced by his opponent Kelly Westlund in their first debate and withdrew from the second two. Kelly Westlund scared him. He tasted what it was like to lose to a woman and he didn't like it.

Like Trump, Sean may think  he can pull this crap on a woman he recently labeled "radical liberal socialist university professor!" He's wrong. I've spoken to every television station in my district. Our campaign has written to every panelist who agreed to participate. I've written to every newspaper. And now, I'm writing to you. The movement has begun.

If enough people know that Sean Duffy has violated my first amendment right to freedom of speech, people may pay attention. Sean Duffy isn't only a Wall Street Water Boy, he's a deceptive, manipulative politician who is about to be exposed."  Thanks Howie and Thank You!"

In Congress Duffy has spent his time working for the Wall Street interests that underwrite his political career-- since being elected to Congress in 2010 and grabbing a seat on the House Financial Services Committee-- Duffy has scooped up a whopping $2,319,422 in bribes from the Finance sector. This cycle alone, the banksters-- grateful for his go-easy approach to their misdeeds on the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee he chairs-- have given him $823,909, more than any other member of Congress from Wisconsin other than Speaker Ryan. Mary would like to turn the congressional seat into one where the interests of working families are put forward, not just rich campaign donors. Please consider helping her get her grassroots message out. Corporate America isn't contributing to her campaign and the DCCC is ignoring her; she's counting on us:



Attack # 23,417 On Our Earned Social Security Benefits By The Republican Granny Starver

Not surprisingly, Republicans are at it again. If they're not taking food out of kids' mouths, hurting working families or taking money from the elderly, they're just not happy. It is an example of the latter we'd like to talk about at DWT this evening.

As you may know, it has taken a long time to get 100% of Democrats in the Senate behind increasing Social Security, instead of keeping it as is or cutting it. But through hard work, Third-Way shaming and Blue-Dog self demolition, we've gotten there. In the House, we haven't quite made it yet. The Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- the New Dems-- is still strong there. But it is still Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, who used Social Security survivor benefits himself to attend college, who is leading the assault. He may call it a #BetterWay, but anyone paying attention knows it's just the same old failed austerity neoliberal nonsense he's been recycling for his whole donor-serving career. As he's failed to cut the program itself, he is now applying the tried and true GOP method of attack whenever they can't eliminate something. Defund it:

The need for Social Security staff services has increased as baby boomers begin to retire. Instead, these services have been cut back since 2011. And in late July, as the American Federation of Government Employees noted, “the House Appropriations Committee cut President Obama’s proposed budget for the Social Security Administration (SSA) by $1.2 billion. If they get their way, SSA will be forced to operate on $263 million less than it does now-- even though it’s already struggling to meet public demand.”

These congressional cuts would even force workers to take a two-week furlough. Crippling Social Security’s ability to function just when it’s needed most is the epitome of what Republican public policy has become. It’s part of a familiar right-wing strategy to degrade the quality of government services, then use that degradation to argue for privatization.

Not surprisingly, they are using the dumpster fire that is this election season to try and hide that they are doing this. But their is also a way to use this as an advantage. By running against the cretinous imbeciles trying to cut one of the most popular programs in the history of the country explicitly on this issue:

[Nancy] Altman has a message for every Democrat running for federal office: "I strongly encourage all Democrats running to office to make full funding for SSA, along with expansion of Social Security's modest benefits, a centerpiece of their campaigns." Because, as she points out, "a Democratic majority in Congress is the best way to ensure that Americans receive their earned benefits in a convenient and timely fashion as a result of the first class Social Security service they have purchased and deserve."

One of Ryan's most devoted-- and devious-- devoted henchmen, Trumpist Sean Duffy, is a big fan of privatizing Social Security and Medicare and of the whole ghastly grab-bag of neoliberal horrors that would devastate working families and obliterate the middle class. The progressive Democrat running against him this cycle in WI-07, Mary Hoeft, is frustrated by the unwillingness of the media to call him out on what he actually votes for rather than on his empty and condescending assurances, "My opponent Sean Duffy is a masterful liar," she told us today. "At his website he tells the people of his district that he would not privatize Social Security. Unfortunately, people believe him. I am shouting it from the rooftop that Sean Duffy is not telling the truth. I ask myself over and over again what does it take to expose a liar? If someone has that magical answer for me, please share it." You can donate to Mary and Blue America's other progressive champions, all of whom will fight these efforts that secretly attack Social Security by clicking on the thermometer below.

In Paul Ryan's Make Believe World, Obama Paid The Iranians Ransom; He Didn't... But Ryan Passed A Resolution About It Anyway

Republicans are still embarrassed about how Reagan got caught in what came to be known as the Iran-Contra scandal. It started as a scheme to ransom 7 U.S. hostages being held in Lebanon by having Israel sell U.S. weapons to Iran and the U.S. replacing those weapons for Israel. Oliver North's twist was to have the Iranian money shipped to fascist rebels in Nicaragua (the Contras). Reagan blocked all the investiagtions although eventually 14 of his officials were indicted, including Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger. When Reagan went on TV to apologize, already suffering from the impact of Alzheimer's, he said "A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not. As the Tower board reported, what began as a strategic opening to Iran deteriorated, in its implementation, into trading arms for hostages. This runs counter to my own beliefs, to administration policy, and to the original strategy we had in mind." In November 1986 Reagan's approval rating dropped from 67% to 46%, the largest drop any president's popularity ever suffered in the history of polling. Eventually George H.W. Bush pardoned all the criminals involved-- including Weinberger, National Security Adviser Bud McFarlane, far right sociopath Elliott Abrams, Oliver North, top CIA operatives Alan Fiers and Clair George and nearly a dozen others-- as he was leaving office.

The GOP has been looking for political payback ever since. Recently Paul Ryan concotted a story that the Obama Administration paid a $400 million "ransom" to get back several detained American citizens. The $400 million was Iranian money the U.S. had embargoed over 3 decades ago (payment for jets the Iranians had paid for and the U.S. never delivered). The U.S. balked at repaying the money it had finally agreed to pay Iran for the jets while Iran was holding U.S. prisoners. So Ryan (and Trump) called it paying "ransom" when the prisoners were released and the money was paid.

Thursday the House passed a resolution by right-wing imbecile Ed Royce, H.R. 5931, implicitly spanking the Administration for paying ransom to Iran. It passed 254-163.The only Republican honest enough to vote NO was Thomas Massie (KY) but 16 of the worst reactionary and cowardly fake Democrats crossed the aisle and voted with the GOP, these:

• Peter Aguilar (New Dem-CA)
• Brad Ashford (Blue Dog-NE)
• Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA)
• Tony Cárdenas (CA)
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)
• Gwen Graham (Blue Dog-FL)
• Ann Kirkpatrick (New Dem-AZ)
• Dan Lipinski (Blue Dog-IL)
• Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY)
• Scott Peters (New Dem-CA)
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
• Raul Ruiz (CA)
• Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR)
• Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ)
• Juan Vargas (New Dem-CA)
• Filemon Vela (Blue Dog-TX)

I want to point out that very right-wing, very ambitious Florida Blue Dog Gwen Graham, who almost always votes with Republicans on contentious matters like this, plans to run for governor of Florida (unless Bill Nelson does, in which case she'd run for his Senate seat.) And right now, the DSCC is heavily backing right-wing New Dem Ann Kirkpatrick, another worthless pile of reeking garbage on two legs, for the Arizona Senate seat. Who wants to promote these kinds of trash politicians up the political ladder? Well, rote-Democratic establishment hacks of course-- and in this case, because of their plumbing, EMILY's List-- but no one who cares about the values and principles that differentiate the Democratic Party from the Republican Party. At least Loretta Sanchez, a Blue Dog who would normally vote with the GOP on this kind of crap and who's running for Barbara Boxer's open Senate seat, was smart enough to absent herself from the chamber and not vote at all. But these aren't the kind of women Americans need in our government. Wisconsin's Mary Hoeft, on the other hand, is.

Among Royce's crackpot co-sponsors was Wisconsin Trumpist Sean Duffy, a partisan worm always looking for an opportunity to create division and stoke hatred and fear. We contacted Hoeft, the progressive Democrat running for the northwestern and central Wisconsin district that Duffy operates out of. "Sean Duffy," she told us, "asked Obama Administration Officials how they could be sure this money won't go to terrorists The more important question Duffy should have asked, 'What honorable country takes more than 40 years to repay its debt for goods purchased but never delivered?' Another question, perhaps more irrelevant to Mr. Duffy, 'How can we be certain the $400,000 you accepted in campaign donations from bankers over the last few months isn't directly linked to your efforts to cripple the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau?' Another question, 'How can we be certain, Mr. Duffy, since you recently received the largest single donation from Well Fargo of any member of Congress, that you didn't play a significant role in Wells Fargo's most recent scandal to defraud Americans?'" Blue America would like to see Hoeft replace Duffy in Congress. It would be good for Wisconsin and good for America. If you'd like to help, you can contribute to her campaign here.

Another co-sponsor of Royce's and Ryan's election year GOP gibberish resolution was, predictably, Texas' most Trumpy congressman, Lamar Smith. We called his Democratic opponent in the TX-21 congressional race, Tom Wakely, and Tom told us that to his mind "those willing to politicize our President's diplomatic resolutions, especially in the Middle East, show their warmongering colors. God forbid we reach necessary nuclear solutions with Iran without senseless bloodshed. This wasn't ever an issue of ransom. It was an issue of diplomacy and peace, but that doesn't fit the narrative of war. It doesn't fit the narrative of President Obama being weak. So here Lamar Smith and the House Republicans waste taxpayer dollars and time to beat their chest in an effort to prove just how tough they are. They use a facade of strength to try to trick their constituents into thinking they can solve any conflict with brute force because they lack the intelligence to understand the nuance of diplomatic solutions. President Obama is a hell of a lot tougher than any of the Republicans who sponsored this bill, and the constituents of my district are a hell of lot smarter than Lamar Smith."

Please consider helping Mary Hoeft and Tom Wakely replace Trump-genre congressional disgraces Sean Duffy and Lamar Smith by tapping on the thermometer below and contributing what you can:

Scott Walker Exposed-- Again-- For Criminal Corruption. U.S. Supreme Court To Examine The Case In 2 Weeks

In case you missed it yesterday, here's Ed Pilkington's massive leak (1,500 pages) of Scott Walker corruption documents that The Guardian published yesterday. Think of them in terms of the Zephyr Teachout video we looked out earlier and what The Guardian termed opening "a door onto how modern U.S. elections operate in the wake of Citizens United, the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that unleashed a flood of corporate money into the political process. They speak to the mounting sense of public unease about the cosy relationship between politicians and big business, and to the frustration of millions of Americans who feel disenfranchised by an electoral system that put the needs of corporate donors before ordinary voters."

In a companion piece, Pilkington explained how Walker was able to squelch an investigation into his corruption that would have derailed his presidential ambitions (later derailed by his lameness and inability to fight off TV reality clown and buffoon Donald Trump).

In a case that is the subject of a petition currently in front of the US supreme court, five Wisconsin prosecutors carried out a deep investigation into what they suspected were criminal campaign-finance violations by the campaign committee of Scott Walker, Wisconsin governor and former Republican presidential candidate. Known as the “John Doe investigation”, the inquiry has been a lightning rod for bitter disputes between conservatives and progressives for years.

In July 2015 the state’s supreme court halted the investigation, saying the prosecutors had misunderstood campaign finance law and as a result had picked on people and groups “wholly innocent of any wrongdoing”. Highly unusually, the court also ordered that all the evidence assembled by the prosecutors be destroyed and later held under seal.

Among the documents are several court filings from the case, as well as hundreds of pages of email exchanges obtained by the prosecutors under subpoena. The emails involve conversations concerning Walker, his top aides, conservative lobbyists, and leading Republican figures such as Karl Rove and the chair of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus.

Trump also appears in the files, making a donation of $15,000 following a personal visit from Walker to the Republican nominee’s Fifth Avenue headquarters.

In addition to Trump, many of the most powerful and wealthy rightwing figures in the nation crop up in the files: from Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone, hedge-fund manager Paul Singer and Las Vegas casino giant Sheldon Adelson, to magnate Carl Icahn. “I got $1m from John Menard today,” Walker says in one email, referring to the billionaire owner of the home improvement chain, Menards.

Among the new material contained in the documents are donations amounting to $750,000 to a third-party group closely aligned to Walker from the owner of NL Industries, a company that historically produced lead paint. Within the same timeframe as the donations, the Republican-controlled legislature passed new laws making it much more difficult for victims of lead paint poisoning to sue NL Industries and other former lead paint manufacturers (the laws were later overturned in the federal courts).

The John Doe files also provide new insight into the extensive efforts made by allies of Scott Walker to help a conservative member of the Wisconsin supreme court, David Prosser, hang onto his seat in a 2011 re-election. A network of like-minded groups and campaigners channeled $3.5m in undisclosed corporate funds to pay for TV and radio ads backing the judge.

The push was seen as vital, the documents disclose, as a means of retaining the rightwing majority of the court and thereby preserving the anti-union measures introduced by Walker. “If we lose [Justice Prosser], the Walker agenda is toast,” one ally writes in an email sent around to the governor’s chief of staff and several conservative lobbyists.

In 2015, Justice Prosser refused to recuse himself from a case in which the state supreme court sat in judgment over the John Doe investigation, despite the fact that the investigation focused on precisely the same network of lobbying groups and donors that had helped him hang onto his seat. The judge joined a majority of four conservative justices who voted to terminate the investigation and destroy all the documents now leaked to the Guardian.

Prosser told the Guardian that four years had passed since his re-election before he joined the decision to close the John Doe investigation, over which time any potential conflict of interest had faded.

All this money to save Walker's hide was funneled through the Wisconsin Club for Growth. One of my favorite revelations was that Gogebic Taconite, the mining company for which Walker and his right-wing henchmen in the state legislature eased mining regulations for a proposed iron mine gave a $700,000 bribe. The prosecuteors have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the corrupted decision bribed members of the Wisconsin court. The Supreme Court is scheduled to review that decision September 26.

Mary Hoeft, the progressive Democrat challenging Walker crony Sean Walker for the 7th district congressional seat in the northwest and central part of the state, is campaigning hard on getting unrestricted corporate money and dark contributions out of American politics. We called her this morning and she told us "As I continue in this campaign I realize more and more the role money plays in an election. Sean Duffy has made it clear that he doesn't have to debate me because he has no desire to have his positions heard by the people of my district. He has enough money to buy enough commercials to say whatever lies about me that he chooses. He will have the final say before people go into the voting booth. I continue to move forward, grateful for the generous donation of people like you. But the ugly truth remains that in America, elections are bought, not won."

With Hillary and Russ Feingold at the top of the ticket, this is a perfect opportunity for the Democrats to oust Duffy and other Walker allies around the state. Unfortunately, the DCCC doesn't see it that way and they're doing nothing to help Mary at all. Please consider giving her and other progressive Democrats a hand, by tapping on the thermometer below: