"Republicans Fear Losing, Democrats Fear Winning"

Bob Dylan's "Watching The River Flow," with Mick Jagger on vocals, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood on guitars, Charlie Watts on drums and Bill Wyman on bass.

by Gaius Publius

Just sitting on this bank of sand, watching the river flow.

At the start of the year I wrote:

There's something greatly troubling about what the media-fronted #Resistance has morphed into, but I'm having trouble writing about it (it's lightly touched here: "A Nation in Crisis, Again"). Partly the problem is the marshaling of pages of proof; partly the problem is the unstoppable train wreck that's coming. Perhaps I should write about the train wreck instead.

This is about the train wreck, or two of them.

The Kavanaugh Confirmation

It looks like Democrats are going to allow Brett Kavanaugh to be confirmed, that their "resistance" will be minimal, as it has been all along. To explain, let's look at this in the New York Times. Jonathan Martin writes:

Few politicians have a greater stake in Judge Kavanaugh’s fate than these 10 [red-state] senators who are trying to appeal to red-state voters back home, and whose re-election bids will determine whether Democrats win control of the narrowly divided chamber in November. [emphasis added]

According to the article, they think their problem is political, not moral; and they think the voters they have to appeal to are "red-state" (meaning conservative) voters "back home." Or at least they say they think this when talking to the press.

Which according to Martin leads to this craven calculation for Joe Manchin, Heidi Heitkamp and Joe Donnelly, whom I fully expect to vote yes when the confirmation reaches the Senate floor:

And for three of the most moderate Senate Democrats — Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Joe Donnelly of Indiana — the nomination represented an opportunity for them to vote yes on Judge Kavanaugh and demonstrate independence from their party and deny Republicans an issue in the fall campaign. The three had previously supported President Trump’s first nominee for the court, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch.

This leads the writer to this conclusion:

Democrats may not want him on the bench for a host of reasons, but Judge Kavanaugh narrowly winning confirmation would be politically tolerable to many of them...

As Ryan Grim tweeted in response to this article:

Republicans fear losing
Democrats fear winning https://t.co/R1tVmTyQcU

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) September 19, 2018

The entire Democratic caucus supports Minority Leader Schumer's effort to keep Manchin, Heitkamp and Donnelly safe in the next election, which means, in reality, protecting them from having to vote no on Brett Kavanaugh. The whole of the caucus, to a person, is in on this scheme.

There are so many actions Democrats could be taking and aren't. They could be filing for Kavanaugh's impeachment in the House, for example, for lying under oath during his 2006 Senate hearing. They could be releasing all the rest of their nearly 200,000 pages of "committee confidential" documents.

They could be aggressively pursuing the information received from this whistleblower, who says he represents federal employees willing to come forward and talk about Kavanaugh's dealings with his mentor, disgraced Judge Kozinski. Amy Goodman said, "The employees wanted to talk about Kavanaugh’s work as a clerk for disgraced former 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, who resigned in 2017 after being accused by at least 15 women of sexual misconduct. But Sanai never heard back."

But Democrats would rather protect three corrupt senators than keep Brett Kavanaugh, the "one ring to bind them," from joining and creating what will be the most radical Supreme Court in our history.

So, what to expect? Look for an accelerated schedule amid much Democratic complaining; ineffective but showy "resistance" from elected liberals; and unless Trump, the public or Ms. Blasey Ford pull their irons from the fire for them, Democratic collusion in a successful confirmation vote the week of October 1 — or faster if Republicans can manage it.

All they want is the win, and they don't care how it looks for them when they get it. Democrats, on the other hand, want to look good in defeat, since that's preferable to them all than abandoning Joe Manchin and his friends.

Also look for both parties to pay a very high price for this when the nation wakes up to what's been done to them — but not nearly as high as the price the nation will pay.

What can we do? Nothing. Watch the river flow.

Climate News

While we're looking at the flow of things, let's add in three climate stories ripped from the most recent headlines. It took less than a minute to find them.

First, this:

Miami’s Existence Is Threatened With As Little As 18″ Of Sea Level Rise

...Miami may not be a major US urban center in a handful of decades.

There are several elements in the equation, but Miami’s existence could be untenable with as little as 18 inches or as much as 15 feet of sea-level rise. The operative question is how much of the city will still exist as a working urban area with citizens, but Miami will be at high risk with only 18 inches of sea-level rise.

It's a very good piece. A number of causes are cited, ten in all. Here are just two: "50% of Miami’s population of 5.5 million lives beneath 6 ft of sea level" and "Miami-Dade County’s low-lying real estate is worth tens of billions of dollars. But it’s already lost hundreds of millions since 2000 due to sea level rise. 10% of Miami’s real estate value could be a write-off by 2045."

When the exodus occurs, it will be in a panic. Best not own Florida land when tide turns against it.

Second this, from Newsweek:

NASA Has Discovered Arctic Lakes Bubbling With Methane—and That’s Very Bad News

...In a NASA-funded study published in Nature Communications, scientists have now discovered a source of methane that has not been accounted for in climate models—methane coming from “thermokarst” lakes.

These lakes form when the permafrost thaws at a faster rate and deeper into the ground than normal. The thawing creates a depression, which then fills with rain water, ice and snow melt. The water then speeds up the rate of the permafrost thaw at the shores of the lake.

The process—abrupt thawing—could speed up the release of methane into the atmosphere.

"Within decades you can get very deep thaw holes, meters to tens of meters of vertical thaw," Katey Walter Anthony, from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said in a statement. "So you're flash thawing the permafrost under these lakes. And we have very easily measured ancient greenhouse gases coming out."

Flash-thawing methane-rich permafrost is a recipe for absolute disaster. Atmospheric methane is extremely potent as a greenhouse gas (GHG) but very short-lived — it resolves to atmospheric CO2 and water, each a greenhouse gas but bound for pound less damaging, in less than two decades. But in its first year, each methane molecule is hundreds of times more powerful than a molecule of CO2. Decades of continuous "flash thawed" methane bubbling up in volume would wreck us.

Finally, it looks like the Paris climate agreement, already behind schedule, was using too high a bar to measure against. Thanks to more sophisticated ways to incorporate methane from melting permafrost into climate models, the amount of "headroom" we have — how much GHG we can still emit and meet the Paris warming target — is even smaller than scientists anticipated:

Paris climate targets could be exceeded sooner than expected

..."Permafrost carbon release from previously frozen organic matter is caused by global warming, and will certainly diminish the budget of CO₂ we can emit while staying below a certain level of global warming. It is also an irreversible process over the course of a few centuries, and may therefore be considered a "tipping" element of the Earth's carbon-climate system that puts the linear approximation of the emission budget framework to the test," explains Thomas Gasser, a researcher with the IIASA Ecosystems Services and Management Program and lead author of the study published in Nature Geoscience.

This is the first time that such a tipping process is adequately accounted for in emission budgets, and according to the researchers, doing so shows that the world is closer to exceeding the budget for the long-term target of the Paris Agreement than previously thought.

Until we stop billionaires from controlling our world, there's not much we can do.

See what I mean? Watching the river flow, or the trains collide.

GP
 

Even In The Localest Of Races, It's All About Trumpanzee

There are 3 South Florida districts held by Republicans that are heavily Latino:

• FL-25- Mario Diaz-Balart (70.4% Latino)
• FL-26- Carlos Curbelo (69.5% Latino)
• FL-27- Ileana Ros-Lehtien 72.7% Latino)

Trump fared poorly in all three- losing with 38.9% in FL-27 and with 40.5% in FL-26 while narrowly winning in FL-25 with 49.7%. Debbie Wasserman Schultz has prevented Democrats from contesting the seats held by her old pals Ros-Lehtinen and Diaz-Balart. Ros-Lehtinen (whose district now has a PVI of D+5 and is the second bluest district in the country held by a Republican) is retiring. FL-26 is the absolute bluest district-- PVI is D+6-- held by a Republican and Curbelo is running scared and can sometimes be a former vote for progressive legislation in Congress than Blue Dogs like Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Josh Gottheimer (NJ), Henry Cuellar (TX), Collin Peterson (MN) and fellow Floridian Stephanie Murphy.

People say it would be hard even for the least competent, most badly run DCCC in recent history to lose these 3 seats this cycle. But that's exactly the kind of challenge the DCCC is best at-- losing sure things. They are entirely ignoring Mary Barzee Flores' race against Diaz-Balart. A former judge, she's too progressive for the DCCC. With no help from the DCCC, she's already raised $728,231 up against Diaz-Balart's $1,118,990. She makes sense as a candidate, being a Latina in a heavily Hispanic district. The DCCC doesn't seem to get that when they don't want to. The DCCC candidate in FL-26 is Debbie Mucarel-Powell, an Ecuadorian immigrant running against Curbelo and the 3 top Democratic candidates running in the open FL-27 seat are non-Hisapnic. The GOP will run either Bruno Barreiro or Maria Elvira Salazar. The DCCC hasn't weighed in but the likeliest Democratic candidates are David Richardson, Donna Shalala and Matt Haggman. No Hispanic-- although number 4, is Kristen Rosen Gonzalez, who had a Latino husband and is using his name for politics. Shalala seems to be way ahead of the pack for the August 28 primary. Her ethnic heritage is Lebanese. Can she win in a heavily Latino district? I didn't think so, but I may be wrong there.

The Miami Herald reported that on Tuesday Eileen Higgins-- not a Latina-- won a seat on the Miami-Dade County Commission, "defeating the better-funded campaign of the former commissioner's wife to scramble the conventional wisdom of who can get elected in a heavily Hispanic district in Miami."

Higgins, a Spanish-speaking Ohio native who adopted the campaign moniker "La Gringa," won by six points over Zoraida Barreiro, the Cuban-born wife of Bruno Barreiro, who resigned to run in a Republican congressional primary [FL-27]. With all 60 precincts reporting, Higgins had 53 percent of the vote, and Barreiro 47 percent.

...With the Democratic Party deploying money, office holders, candidates and volunteers to boost Higgins early on in the special election, an officially nonpartisan contest became a proxy battle with Republicans.


 The GOP used U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican from Miami, in robo-calls and mailers. Her husband's Republican congressional campaign also became her top donor, with at least $95,000 in contributions.

District 5 straddles parts of Miami and Miami Beach, with a heavy concentration of active voters in Little Havana and other enclaves where older Cuban-American voters are considered vital to win in low-turnout elections.


Turnout was nearly 15 percent, meaning voter interest increased after the four-person primary on May 22, when about 13 percent of the district's voters participated. For the runoff between Barreiro and Higgins, 14,023 ballots were cast, according to results posted after 9 p.m. Higgins took 7,449 and Barreiro 6,494. 
...Democrats outnumber Republicans in the district, and Hillary Clinton carried District 5 by double digits in 2016. But Republicans tend to turn out in low-profile, local elections.

Bruno Barreiro, the only Miami-Dade commissioner to openly support Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential campaign, held the seat for 20 years. He vacated it in March to run in the GOP primary to replace retiring Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Miami Republican, in Florida's District 27.


...Though running for what would be her first political office, Barreiro enjoyed financial support from Miami-Dade's circuit of lobbyists, developers and vendors who dominate fundraising for incumbents. Tuesday represented the second loss for Barreiro in as many years, after she failed to win a Miami commission seat in 2017.

Higgins drew the underdog title throughout the 10-week sprint to replace Bruno Barreiro. In the May 22 primary, she faced two well-known names in the district: Zoraida Barreiro, along with Alex Diaz de la Portilla, a former state senator who used to represent the area in Tallahassee. Higgins pulled off her first upset when she took a narrow first in that contest with 35 percent of the vote to Barreiro's 33 percent. As the top two finishers, they advanced to the June 19 runoff.

Conventional wisdom had Barreiro the favorite, since she was expected to pick up most of Diaz de la Portilla's voters, a fellow Republican Cuban American. But Diaz de la Portilla didn't endorse in the race, and the Higgins ground game appeared to narrow the traditional advantage Republicans enjoy in mail-in balloting, which accounted for six out of every 10 votes cast in the District 5 runoff. While Republicans led Democrats by three points in mail-in ballots and early voting last week, the margin shrank to just a single point by Sunday.

"This is a transformational election," said Fernand Amandi, a Democratic pollster who supported Higgins. "This is an election where you had an unknown defeat two of the titular Cuban dynasties in local politics. and it wasn't even close."


...She also sided with the liberal wing of the commission on a string of issues, including mandatory workforce housing requirements for new developments, ending the acceptance of detention requests from federal immigration authorities, and opposing the extension of the 836 expressway southwest into Kendall.

The District 5 results are a blow for Bruno Barreiro, who transferred $95,000 from his congressional campaign to his wife's election effort. That made him his wife's top donor.

By her own admission, Barrerio is not a strong public speaker. She turned in a halting performance during the single televised debate with Higgins. Her online campaigning was minimal. While Higgins posted multiple daily updates from the campaign trail on her Twitter account, @eyesonmyworld, the @ZBarreiroFL feed hasn't been updated since last August.

In remarks at her Election Night event, Barreiro linked the loss in part to her husband's congressional campaign, saying Democrats targeted her to derail him.

And by the way, there may have been some voters who were offended by the Barreiros playing fast and loose with Florida election law. You cannot move more than $1,000 freely from a federal campaign-- his-- to a state campaign-- hers-- even if both campaigns are for the same candidate, let alone for another candidate, even if it is a spouse. That may come back to but Mr. Barreiro in the ass in November.

 




Cape Town Not Alone: The Eleven World Cities Most Likely to Run Out of Drinking Water

As a result of a 20th-century project to drain nearby swamps, water from the Atlantic Ocean began seeping in to the Biscayne Aquifer, Miami's main source of freshwater. Infographic credit: YouTube (source)

by Gaius Publius

One last follow-up to the Cape Town water crisis story. As you may know, the city of Cape Town, South Africa, is experiencing a severe drought that has reduced the region's dams to 30% or less of capacity (with the last 10% unusable). This has forced the local government to declare a Day Zero, described on the city's website as "the day we may have to queue for water."

At the moment, residents are urged to use no more than 50 liters of water per day — about 13 gallons — for all purposes, including drinking, bathing, flushing the toilet, washing dishes, watering plants and gardens, and so on.

If  Day Zero is reached, the water taps will be shut off by the city and water will be strictly rationed. Residents will have to queue for water with their buckets as water is doled out to them. On Day Zero, the ration will be reduced to 25 liters per day. As of this writing, Day Zero is June 4.

The Canary in a Very Large Coal Mine

I've called this a "canary in the coal mine" for other cities around the world, and indeed, for our species' climate prospects in general.

The BBC News website has a helpful list of eleven cities that are closes to the condition of Cape Town, but not quite there yet. Here's that list; Cape Town is just the tip of the iceberg.

• Heading the list — São Paulo, Brazil:

Brazil's financial capital and one of the 10 most populated cities in the world went through a similar ordeal to Cape Town in 2015, when the main reservoir fell below 4% capacity.

At the height of the crisis, the city of over 21.7 million inhabitants had less than 20 days of water supply and police had to escort water trucks to stop looting.

It is thought a drought that affected south-eastern Brazil between 2014 and 2017 was to blame, but a UN mission to São Paulo was critical of the state authorities "lack of proper planning and investments".

The water crisis was deemed "finished" in 2016, but in January 2017 the main reserves were 15% below expected for the period - putting the city's future water supply once again in doubt.

• Next, the tech-fueled city of Bangalore, India:

Local officials in the southern Indian city have been bamboozled by the growth of new property developments following Bangalore's rise as a technological hub and are struggling to manage the city's water and sewage systems.

To make matters worse, the city's antiquated plumbing needs an urgent upheaval; a report by the national government found that the city loses over half of its drinking water to waste.

Like China, India struggles with water pollution and Bangalore is no different: an in-depth inventory of the city's lakes found that 85% had water that could only be used for irrigation and industrial cooling.

Not a single lake had suitable water for drinking or bathing.

The problem in Bangalore is exacerbated by pollution from human waste; India in general is vastly deficient in toilets and a culture of using them.

• A city that may surprise you, a world capital yet, is next on the list — Beijing, China:

The World Bank classifies water scarcity as when people in a determined location receive less than 1,000 cubic metres of fresh water per person a year.

In 2014, each of the more than 20 million inhabitants of Beijing had only 145 cubic metres.

China is home to almost 20% of the world's population but has only 7% of the world's fresh water.

A Columbia University study estimates that the country's reserves declined 13% between 2000 and 2009.

And there's also a pollution problem. Official figures from 2015 showed that 40% of Beijing's surface water was polluted to the point of not being useful even for agriculture or industrial use.

To put those numbers in perspective, 1000 cubic meters per year is about 725 gallons per day per person. That's the break point for the World Bank's definition of "water scarcity."

In Beijing, 20 million inhabitants have about 100 gallons per day, one seventh of the allotment that defines "scarcity."

• Other cities on the list include Cairo (another world capital); Jakarta in Indonesia; Moscow, Istanbul, London and Tokyo (four more world capitals!) ... and Miami.

Miami's Water Troubles

Despite its large annual rainfall, the American city of Miami is especially vulnerable to drinking water shortages. BBC News again:

The US state of Florida is among the five US states most hit by rain every year. However, there is a crisis brewing in its most famous city, Miami.

An early 20th Century project to drain nearby swamps had an unforeseen result; water from the Atlantic Ocean contaminated the Biscayne Aquifer, the city's main source of fresh water.

Although the problem was detected in the 1930s, seawater still leaks in, especially because the American city has experienced faster rates of sea level rise, with water breaching underground defence barriers installed in recent decades.

Neighbouring cities are already struggling. Hallandale Beach, which is just a few miles north of Miami, had to close six of its eight wells due to saltwater intrusion.

Even without the problem of sea level rise, Miami's water supply is vulnerable to its water table, made of porous limestone.

Jeff Goodell, writing in Rolling Stone (emphasis added):

South Florida has two big problems. The first is its remarkably flat topography. Half the area that surrounds Miami is less than five feet above sea level. Its highest natural elevation, a limestone ridge that runs from Palm Beach to just south of the city, averages a scant 12 feet. With just three feet of sea-level rise, more than a third of southern Florida will vanish; at six feet, more than half will be gone; if the seas rise 12 feet, South Florida will be little more than an isolated archipelago surrounded by abandoned buildings and crumbling overpasses. And the waters won't just come in from the east – because the region is so flat, rising seas will come in nearly as fast from the west too, through the Everglades. [emphasis added]

Limestone, a porous rock, that forms the Miami ridge also forms the floor, the region's water table:

Even worse, South Florida sits above a vast and porous limestone plateau. "Imagine Swiss cheese, and you'll have a pretty good idea what the rock under southern Florida looks like," says Glenn Landers, a senior engineer at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. This means water moves around easily – it seeps into yards at high tide, bubbles up on golf courses, flows through underground caverns, corrodes building foundations from below. "Conventional sea walls and barriers are not effective here," says Robert Daoust, an ecologist at ARCADIS, a Dutch firm that specializes in engineering solutions to rising seas. "Protecting the city, if it is possible, will require innovative solutions."

Miami has been working since its founding to stave off salt water intrusion into its freshwater aquifer.

[In] the 1950s, people started noticing their drinking water was getting salty. In South Florida, the drinking-water supply comes from a big lake just below the surface known as the Biscayne aquifer. Engineers examined the situation and determined that the combination of draining the swamps and pumping out the aquifer had changed hydrostatic pressure underground and allowed salt water to move into the aquifer. To stop this, the Army Corps of Engineers and the South Florida Water Management District built dozens of these salinity-­control structures at key points on the canals. When they were closed, salty water wasn't able to flow into the canals. But if there was a big storm and intense flooding, the gates could be opened to allow drainage.

That worked pretty well for a time. The gates were engineered so that, when they were closed, the fresh water was about a foot and a half higher than the salt water. This freshwater "head" (as engineers called it) helped keep pressure in the aquifer and kept the salt water at bay.

But in the 50 years since the structures were built, much has changed. For one thing, nearly 80 percent of the fresh water flowing into the Everglades has been diverted, some of it into industrial-­agriculture operations. At the same time, consumption has skyrocketed: The 5.5 million or so people who now live in South Florida consume more than 3 billion gallons of water every day (including industry and agriculture). Almost all of that is pumped out of the aquifer, drawing it down and allowing more and more salt water to move in. At the same time, the sea level is rising (about nine inches since the canals were first dredged), which also helps push more salt water into the aquifer.

Says Jayantha Obeysekera, the chief modeler for the South Florida Water Management District, "Here, you can see the problem. The water is only 10 inches lower on [the saltwater] side than on the [freshwater] canal [side]. When this structure was built in 1960, it was a foot and a half. We are reaching equilibrium."

The engineering to address these problems is expensive. Installing new pumps on the freshwater side of the control structures cost $70 million each. The full cost of protecting Miami from a three-foot sea level rise will be "upward of $20 billion to $30 billion."

One day that cost will be deemed just too much, and Miami will be abandoned to the world without us — along with most of the other cities on the list above.

You can find more on coming water shortages in world cities at the EcoWatch website. Most of these regional problems, if not all of them, will become severe within the next decade. By most estimates, London, for example, will have to find new water sources by 2025. Trump, or Pence, may still be president by then.

Yes, it's happening now. The last generation kicked the can to this generation. It can't be kicked further.

GP
  

Anti-Trump Tsunami Continues To Build-- GOP Wipeouts In New Hampshire And Florida This Week

Annette Taddeo, rising star

Tuesday was a big day, electorally, for Democrats-- and not because Alabama Republicans nominated a psychotic extremist, Roy Moore, in their primary runoff. (Moore will face off against moderate Democrat, Doug Jones, on December 12; every poll shows Moore winning. Count on Alabama to go for the crazy; they're still fighting the Civil War. The latest poll--this week)-- by Google Consumer Surveys shows Moore ahead 58-42%.) No, the good news for Democrats came in New Hampshire and Florida.

Last night everyone was talking about Quinnipiac's new poll finding that 57% of voters disapprove of the way Trump is doing his job and that 56% of voters-- including 57% of independents-- think he is "not fit to serve as president." (60% say he doesn't have good leadership skills; 67% say he's not level headed; and 59% say he's dishonest.) But worse for the Republicans was deeper down in the poll. Question: "Do you approve or disapprove of the way the Republicans in Congress are handling their job?" Overall 15% approve and 78% disapprove. Worse yet, among independent voters-- who will decide which party controls Congress in 2018-- only 11% approve, while 81% disapprove. 81%!

OK, let's look at Florida first. Annette Taddeo won the special election for a previously Republican-held seat in southwest Miami's 40th state Senate district by a Republican by beating Republican state Rep. Jose Felix Diaz, a former contestant on Trump's Apprentice reality show. She will be the first Democratic Latina in the state Senate, beating Diaz 22,649 (50.9%) to 20,985 (47.2%). In 2016 Republican Frank Artiles beat Democrat Dwight Bullard 100,170 (50.62%) to 80,551 (40.70%). Artiles, another Republican racist was caught calling African-American senators "niggers" and hiring hookers on the state payroll-- and was forced to resign. The 40th is a majority Latino district-- almost 70% of the voters-- but the registration numbers are about equal with almost a third of the voters neither Democrat nor Republican. Hillary beat Trump in the district last year. This time the GOP outspent Taddeo $3.5 million to $3 million in the special election. Diaz tried spreading a very typical Republican lie, this one that Taddeo was a communist supporter of Colombia's FARC guerrillas. That didn't get very far when her mother did a radio ad explaining that Annette's dad had been kidnapped by the FARC, which is why the family fled to Florida.

Darcy, Howie, Annette, Hilda

We first got to know her back in 2008 when she was running for Congress against Debbie Wassermann Schultz crony Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R). Problem was, Wassermann Schultz at the time was every bit the fully-formed corrupt sack of garbage who stole the Democratic nomination for Hillary... but on a smaller scale. She was the chair of the DCCC "Red to Blue" program, whose only job was to flip red seats blue. Instead she loudly and publicly announced she would not oppose her pal Ileana-- and even dragged other puppet candidates into her shit. Today, in one of her endless streams of spam, Wasserman Schultz claims her mom, Ann, wrote "I always knew my daughter Debbie was going to do great things. I know every mother thinks that about her children, but Debbie is special." Yes Debbie is special and her indictment is supposedly very close. Her chances of winning in tatters, Annette handled the difficult situation with grace and has gone on to holding several party jobs and now to this stupendous win at a point where Wassermann Schultz is an almost universally despised pariah in the Democratic Party.

As late as Tuesday morning, the Miami New Times was writing doubtfully that "if the Dems somehow snag back a state Senate seat in a Miami special election today, it will be big news for a party hoping against hope it can capitalize on Donald Trump's abysmal polling to swing momentum back their way in the Sunshine State." Marc Caputo reported for Politico that Trump dragged Diaz down.

Headed into Election Day, Republicans held a less than 500-vote lead following early voting. It was closer than the party hoped, but with a history of winning decidedly on Election Day, consultants and GOP cheerleaders alike had an overwhelming sense of confidence.

So, what happened?

“Taddeo got lucky. Part Trump. Part Irma. Part Arrogance,” said one dejected GOP operative... Trump is deeply unpopular in Florida's 40th Senate District, which he lost to Democrat Hillary Clinton by about 16 percentage points in November. Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, however, carried the district by about 3 percentage points and the prior state senator, Republican Frank Artiles, won by about 10 points... For Republicans looking forward, Trump's lack of popularity looms large.

Scott, who must leave office due to term limits, is considering a bid against Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson and, unlike many Republicans, has gone out of his way to embrace Trump and stand by the president. Diaz, however, was more nervous about his association with Trump and deleted a picture he posted on Twitter of Trump and him on Inauguration Day.

"Just ran into the first guy who ever fired me," Diaz said in the now-deleted tweet. "The next president of the United States @realDonaldTrump #Apprentice #POTUS #ElPresidente."

For Democrats, the SD 40 victory was filled with challenges, mainly keeping voters engaged in a campaign that got overshadowed by the massive Hurricane Irma that slammed into the Florida Keys on Sept. 10, a little more than two weeks before the election.

Heading into Election Day, Democrats were nervous. After all, Republicans were winning the number of pre-Election Day ballots cast when compared to Democrats who voted by mail or at in-person early voting sites. And a last-minute request by Democrats to extend poll hours on Tuesda got rejected by Scott.

But internal party polling and Election Day vote tallies offered Democrats encouraging news because they show ed that Taddeo had handily won the coveted No Party Affiliation voters by a strong margin.

To do that, the Florida Democratic Party and affiliated progressive groups and unions say they worked together to knock on what they said were 50,000 doors of voters in the last four days of the election.

Democrats executed a similar strategy last month at the other end of the state in the St. Petersburg mayoral race, where Republican Rick Baker has been vexed by Trump. After a last-minute endorsement by former President Barack Obama, Mayor Rick Kriseman outperformed the polls and took the contest to a run-off that will be decided in November.

"This is a referendum, first with Kriseman coming from down in the polls to a first-place finish. And now Annette Taddeo winning Election Day by 19 points and winning NPAs in every segment of the vote, according to the initial numbers," said Juan Peñalosa, a strategist for the Florida Democratic Party. "Democrats and progressives came together to win this election, we are unified, and we have the momentum going into 2018."

It also represents something Florida Democrats have not seen in a long time: a victory over the Tallahassee special interest machine.

Now let's turn to New Hampshire, which was far more of a shock than the win in the swingy 40th in Miami. Here Democrats were looking at the 4th reddest state House district in New Hampshire, a Rockingham County-- Auburn, Chester and Sandown-- district where Republicans hold a massive 2 to 1 registration edge over Democrats. In the end Democrat Kari Lerner took 901 votes (50.6%) to 862 votes (48.4%) for Republican former state Rep. James Headd. Clinton won New Hampshire but this particular House district was Trump country last November; he won it with a massive 23% margin. (Rockingham County was Bernie territory during the primary. He didn't just beat Hillary 31,080 to 22,829, he also outpolled Trump, who pulled 28,716 votes.)

It was the third time since May that Democrats flipped a House seat in a special election. Edith DesMarais won in heavily Republican Wolfeboro on May 23. Charlie St. Clair won in Laconia-Belmont on Sept. 12.

House Democratic Leader Steve Shurtleff said: "Rep.-elect Lerner deserves enormous credit and congratulations for this great victory tonight. Our Democratic family is growing bigger by the week, and Kari Lerner is another great addition. I know she'll work hard and stand up for Democratic values at the State House on behalf of the people of Auburn, Chester and Sandown."

Also, on July 25, Democrat Kevin Cavanaugh defeated Republican former state Sen. David Boutin in a special state Senate election in heavily Republican District 16.

...“There's something happening in this state and all across this country when the deepest red districts in New Hampshire are consistently turning royal blue,” state Democratic Party Chairman Raymond Buckley said. “This, our hardest-won victory so far, is the latest proof that voters are showing up when it matters to reject the dangerous and divisive agenda of Donald Trump and Chris Sununu.”

...According to the latest checklist figures provided by the secretary of state’s office, Republicans outnumber Democrats by nearly 2,600 voters in the district. Undeclared voters make up 42.6 percent of the district, while 39.7 percent of the voters in the district are Republicans and 19.3 percent are Democrats.

No one predicts that even as huge a tsunami against Trump and Ryan as what we saw in New Hampshire Tuesday night will bring the kind of national swing that will decimate the House GOP. But even half that would see the Democrats back in control and the end of arch villains like Paul Ryan (WI), Darrell Issa (CA), Ted Yolo (FL), Fred Upton (MI), Ed Royce (CA), Barbara Comstock (VA), Mark Sanford (SC), Glenn Grothman (WI), Virginia Foxx (NC), Kevin McCarthy (CA), Peter King (NY), Ron DeSantis (FL), Steve Russell (OK), Ted Poe (TX), Pete Sessions (TX), Joe Barton (TX), Lamar Smith (TX), John Culberson (TX), Pete Olson (TX), Mike McCaul (TX)... virtually all the seats DeLay stole he his infamous mid-decade gerrymander.

Carlos Curbelo Gets A Challenger: Meet Steven Machat

Like me, Steven Machat comes out of the music business. His time at Warner Bros Records, though, predated my own and it was years later that I learned who he is-- a lawyer, an accountant and a visionary who became famous working with artists at every level of their careers. He’s a a team builder-- called the “dreamers dreamer” by those who know him best. He’s always been someone who makes things happen in the entertainment business. And now-- still involved in the music business, bringing Cuban music to America-- he’s also involved with politics, though that’s hardly a new endeavor for him either.

He graduated from Law School at Vanderbilt in 1977 (a classmate of Al Gore’s), where he had spent two years working as a Nashville public defender in court rooms protecting the rights of minorities and the poor who could not afford a lawyer. He grew to like defending the underdog. During his time in Nashville, Steven met his father’s client Phil Walden, the man who created Capricorn Records. Walden got Steven heavily involved in the election of Jimmy Carter and Steven grew to love politics-- putting together teams so dreams could come true.

Steven has played almost every role imaginable in the entertainment business. Mostly on making artist dreams come true. Be it Jet Records with ELO or Ozzie Osborne or Genesis' Peter Gabriel or Phil Collins; Leonard Cohen, Phil Spector New Edition, Bobby Brown, Suge Knight, Soft Cell… many, many others. Steven helped make their dreams a reality.



Steven helped create the Music Festival WOMAD, a festival dedicated to sharing cultures from all over the world. Steven has traveled the world as a business man and has a very unique perspective in what binds people to work together and create. He has lived all over the world representing artists. Be it Manu Dibango from Cameroon. Rita Lee and Gilberto Gil from Brazil. Cerrone and Space from France. Angélique Kidjo from Benin or Franco Battiata from Italy, Steven knows and understands people.

Steven has produced movies and theatre and written four books in which he has endeavor to share his truths and visions. He believes in a dream. He believes we can create the America we all dream about. The one our Declaration of Independence speaks about-- a land where we all work together as a team to build a land, based on the American dream.

Steven ran for the Senate in 2016 as an independent in Florida. He lost to Marco Rubio. Today he’s running for Congress in Florida's 26th district as a Democrat, a blue-trending swing district, occupied by Republican Carlos Curbelo. Hillary beat Trump in FL-26 handily-- 56.7% to 40.6%. Unless the DCCC interferes to put a conservative establishment shill in as a candidate, the district will be blue in 2018. I’m pleased to introduce Steven to DWT readers. He’s truly a Renaissance man. As he says, people first… and let's make our dreams reality


Guest Post
-by Steven Machat

Thank you, Howie. And I am so pleased to announce with you my decision to run for Congress in the 26th Florida district as a Democrat.

I run to serve the people. I look forward to helping do what I can to rebuild the Democratic Party on the inside. As well as help create the awareness and attract the public to vote in Democrats in as we recreate the people's party. The party that gave America the New Deal.

My goal is to get into Congress here in Florida. Florida's 26th District to be exact. My dream is to help finish what one of my personal heroes, FDR, started. We need a second bill of rights-- an Economic Bill of Rights. We have the first bill of rights but it is political, created when most of our nation were farmers. There was no big cities. Everyone could grow their own food. Today that is not true. We need a safety net for all and even the wealthy will be happier.

During FDR's time our nation industrialized. We started trading our wares and ideas with the world on a really big scale. Instead of sharing cultures we tried to control trade, from manufacture to distribution, to whole sale and retail. We have since built an economy on war and industry. We created capitalism with banks in control of our economy and our government. The Fed comes first. And we the people allow this to continue. Our nation was built on visionaries and team work. Building communities and making life better for the living as well as their future. The only asset mankind has in truth is Our children.

We have lost our way as a community of equals. People live to pay interest. We do not own our central bank, AKA the Federal Reserve, as a nation. We let independent bankers get paid before our government gets its taxes. Between Bush the second and Obama we have socialized the losses of these bankers but privatized their wins. We today are a nation of interest slaves.

We say we understand climate change and will fix it. But the Paris accord was a basement not a ceiling. We still take fossils the earth has buried and burn the fuels to run the industries which need to be retired. Our future is renewable energy which will create jobs that can't be exported. Florida is the sunshine state, it should lead our nation in renewable energy.

We need to put people first. Not paper profits. We need to educate our people of all ages so they can help our nation grow. We do not need to create a scam where we loan people money to go to school, in reality to create profits for the banks on debts our young can not escape like the bankers did.

We need to take care of our old. The senior citizens of our land. They have so much to give to us all. We need to insure they live out their lives with dignity, health and welfare.

We need to give everyone health care in a single payeer system. This is the coach ticket to health. You want business or first class pay for it. I have lived in London. Their system works.

The second bill of rights by FDR, as I hereby modify for our time, proposed just before he died must be the following:

1. The right to a useful and remunerative job in private business or working with the local, state, regional or national community.
2. The right to a living wage not a minimum. Where everyone has a roof over their head, food to eat. Plus clothes to wear and money to discover and share culture.
3. The right of every businessman, large or small, as FDR said, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad.
4. The right to adequate medical care. The ability to achieve and enjoy good health.
5. The right to publicly financed education. This includes early education, technical training, and college.

In addition to people economics I run to protect the Environment. We must put earth first. I will protect the Everglades. I will stop Big Sugar from polluting our water. I will do what I can to stop fracking. I believe we need to create a Gross National Quality of life index so we can judge how we are living. Not just a Gross National Product that measures only what we make. We need to effectively measure what the real costs are, of what we do.

On international affairs I will help create an understanding that the whole world does not need to be just like us. We must respect diversity and different cultures. We must stop getting involved in civil wars and nation building. We must be strong and ready to defend-- but not invade so the military industrial complex can profit. We must create a world to share and build cultures.

We need term limits on all branches of our government. That is how you achieve progress and limit the establishment's corruption. Remember when our nation was created people lived to maybe forty as an average.

We must control election spending and election debates. I sued to get on the air to debate Rubio. I qualified to run but did not qualify for the debate because I did not have money for big TV adds. It is nothing but a game of political payola. We need people to run who wish to serve man. Not who wish to serve corporate powers.

I will be the people's candidate and Congressman. People are my constituency and it is to people I will communicate. I also pledge to hold town hall meetings and never run from debates where you the people can become wise about who and what is what.

Please help me to help you. Go to my website Machat4Congress.com and learn more about what I’m trying to accomplish and how you can join in what I’m doing and help the cause.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen Announces Her Retirement-- Too Bad She's Not Taking Wasserman Schultz With Her

It was just a matter of when, but sooner or later everyone knew Ileana Ros-Lehtinen-- first elected to Congress in 1989-- would retire and FL-27 would go to the Democrats. The district has long ago left the realm of purple and has been deep blue for some time now. Only the furious on-going efforts of neighboring congresswoman and crooked crony Debbie Wasserman Schultz have kept Ros-Lehtinen safely ensconced in her seat and without serious Democratic challengers. Although the ridiculous and irrelevant clowns at Cook calculate the current PVI at R+2, Obama beat Romney 53.0% to 46.3% in 2012 and Hillary eviscerated Trumpanzee 58.6% to 38.9% last November. FL-27 was Trump's worst performance in any Republican-held congressional district in America.

So today's Miami Herald exclusive by Patricia Mazzei was huge news. With the loss of Wasserman Schultz's power to protect her, it was probably inevitable but, in Mazzei's words, "Ros-Lehtinen, the dean of the Florida legislative delegation and the first Cuban American elected to Congress, is retiring at the end of her term next year, saying it’s time to move on after 38 years in elected office... Her unexpected retirement marks the end of a storied career in which Ros-Lehtinen repeatedly broke political ground as a Cuban-American woman-- and gives Democrats an opportunity to pick up a South Florida congressional seat in 2018."

Ros-Lehtinen, 64, was elected last November to Florida’s redrawn 27th district, a stretch of Southeast Miami-Dade County that leans so Democratic that Hillary Clinton won it over Donald Trump by 20 percentage points.

Ros-Lehtinen defeated Democratic challenger Scott Fuhrman, a first-time candidate, by 10 points. It was her closest reelection race in years and forced her to deplete her $3.4 million campaign account, but she said Sunday she wasn't worried about 2018.

“There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that I would not only win in this election, but I would win by a greater percentage,” Ros-Lehtinen said, adding that she would have been able to raise at least $2.5 million and win in a midterm election without a Democratic presidential candidate leading the ballot.

But she said the prospect of another two or four or more years in Congress just didn’t appeal to her anymore.

“There was no epiphany. There was no moment, nothing that has happened that I've said, “I've got to move on,’” Ros-Lehtinen said. “It was just a realization that I could keep getting elected-- but it's not about getting elected.”

She also said she’s not leaving Congress because of her differences with President Trump or with House GOP leadership, though Ros-Lehtinen has been one of the most vocal moderate Republican critics of the White House and the conservative House Freedom Caucus. Ros-Lehtinen, who said she didn’t vote for Trump last year, has disagreed with the president on deportations, transgender rights and budget cuts, and with House Republicans on health care.

“I've served under all kinds of different dynamics in all these years that I've been in office here,” said Ros-Lehtinen, who was first elected to Congress in 1989 after seven years in the Florida Legislature. “Though I don't agree with many, if not most, positions of President Trump.”


Having Republicans control the White House, House and Senate “gives me an opportunity to stand out more and have people realize that I'm a moderate,” she said. “I'm not one of those name-callers that think the Democrats don’t have a single good idea. Too many people think that way, and I think that's to the detriment to civility and of good government.”

But, she insisted, “it's not been part of the calculation of retiring.”

“I would be talking to you even if Hillary Clinton were president,” Ros-Lehtinen said.

There were already 3 Democrats running-- the wealthy Patrick Murphy-like conservaDem who she beat last year, Scott Fuhrman; a pretty weak Miami Beach Commissioner, Kristen Rosen Gonzalez; and Berniecrat Michael Hepburn. Mazzei (and everyone else) predicts that with Ros-Lehtinen out of the picture, "others are likely to become interested now." Annette Taddeo, who was very publicly sabotaged by Wasserman Schultz when "Deadly Debbie" was the chair of the DCCC's Red-to-Blue program in 2008, is a probable candidate who could win a primary and the general election, especially if she follows her own progressive instincts and doesn't run as an EMILY's List milquetoast candidate walking on eggshells.

Hillary Makes It Easy For Anti-Trump Republicans

Billionaire hedge fund manager Mike Fernandez tossed around those million dollar checks the way you might tip someone really exceptional with a twenty. He gave superPACs for Mitt Romney and Rick Scott million dollar pops-- and, more recently, put over three million in for Jeb Bush. And he's given hundreds of thousands more to the RNC and other Republican committees. Although he gives primarily to right-wing Republicans, this year he also maxed out to right-wing Democrat Patrick Murphy (a so-called "former" Republican. He's given thousands and thousands to every garden variety GOP nutcase who's ever asked for money but he's been especially generous to Mario Diaz-Balart. In 2007, though, he contributed to another former Republican, Hillary Clinton. Yesterday, in an OpEd for the Miami Herald, he made it clear that, almost a decade later, he's back with Hillary.

He has been a #NeverTrump guy and had paid for some ineffective anti-Trump ads earlier this year but now he's endeavored to explain why he's voting for Hillary, as so many Republicans are. "I am a firm believer," he wrote, "in the fundamental tenets of the Republican Party: individual freedom, small government, local control of issues, free speech, strong national defense and the broad vision that America is an exceptional country that gives exceptional opportunities to everyone." He asserted that Trump doesn't represent those values, but Hillary works for him just fine.

Of all the elections in which I have participated, none has become more transcendental to the definition of “We the people” and the very nature of our democracy than the one we face today.

No longer can we seek solace in wishful thinking or the illusion that this is just an election cycle and that by divine intervention all will be better after we vote. There is no basis in thinking that our democracy is so strong, our checks and balances so finely hedged, that no single person can lead us off the precipice. Trump can.

No longer can we hide behind the excuse that party loyalty is paramount, and that a bad candidate of our own is always better than any candidate of theirs. Blind loyalty in this case is the ultimate definition of disloyalty to our beliefs. Loyalty to our nation must be the ultimate arbiter of our choice.

I have watched this election unfold, from that first press conference where the population of an entire country was cast as insulting to our core. This led to a neverending spiral of vulgarity, intellectual dishonesty, invective, abuse, misogyny, racism, intolerance, bullying, ignorance and downright cruelty. The fact that the person unleashing these forces, reflecting beliefs and biases that we had long ago identified as at odds with the Founding Fathers’ principle of ordered liberty was a member of my party, was at first cause for irritation evolving into alarm and frustration and finally arriving at a sobering moment of embarrassment for my party, and beyond that, of profound concern for my beloved country.

We have seen him attack our institutions and receive cheering adoration. At rallies he has implied that if his wish to lead the nation is not granted by popular vote, that the national system is rigged and deserving of attack. This is insanity and dictatorial machinations at best.

As a Republican who has contributed millions of dollars to the party’s causes, I ask: Why has our party not sought a psychological evaluation of its nominee?”

This abysmally unfit candidate has unleased racist and violent acts. There has been no need for dog whistles. The call to brand entire religions and countries as unworthy and despicable, and the call for profoundly un-American practices, including asking the honorable men and women serving our country in the military to engage in the profoundly dishonorable task of torturing human beings and killing innocent families, has been open and unequivocal. The very worst in our society, the Klan and the neo-Nazis, revel in this horrific rhetoric.

I have arrived at this difficult moment. A moment that may define leaders and followers. I harbor no illusion that Hillary Clinton is perfect; none of us is. I do not see eye to eye on some issues with the former senator from New York. However, Clinton is, without doubt, a superior choice to Donald Trump.

Balancing any of her shortcomings are intelligence, experience, as well as the humility to accept that she does not have all the answers. She has delegated effectively over the decades in public service. These attributes will serve her well as president.

The republic should outlast any party. Our democratic spirit will ensure that we do and that this shining city on the hill eventually will shine even brighter.

I am equally convinced that our republic will be placed in fundamental peril if we are foolish enough to elect a person who has made it clear that he does not share in our democratic values and that the only idol in his temple is himself. And he is willing to pull down the glorious edifice of our American democracy.

And so my fellow Republicans, swallow hard, look into your heart-- and your gut. Vote for Hillary Clinton and then every single Republican on the ticket.

Do that, and rest assured that you will have served your country well.

This paragraph seemed aimed especially towards Mario Diaz-Balart, the only South Florida congressmember of either party supporting Señor Trumpanzee. (Carlos Curbelo and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen have been big recipients of Fernandez's generosity and both have said they oppose Trump and will not vote for him.):

No longer can we hide behind the excuse that party loyalty is paramount, and that a bad candidate of our own is always better than any candidate of theirs. Blind loyalty in this case is the ultimate definition of disloyalty to our beliefs. Loyalty to our nation must be the ultimate arbiter of our choice.

So far this cycle, Fernandez has been writing significant checks to Curbelo but hasn't given anything to the Trump-supporting Diaz-Balart yet. Nor has he given any money to the progressive physician who's running against Diaz-Balart, Alina Valdes. He should. You can, here. Of course, unlike Hillary and Murphy, Valdes wasn't a Republican in the past and doesn't jive with the kinds of Republican values that work against the interests of ordinary working families. We asked Alina Valdes to weigh in on how it's possible for the overwhelming majority of Hispanics in South Florida to recognize the Trumpist danger but for Mario Diaz-Balart to be blind to it. This is what she told us last night:

I am in agreement with Mr. Fernandez on many of his issues, especially lifting the embargo on Cuba, which is decades overdo. This particular ideology, which transcends party lines, shows us that we have more in common as Cuban-Americans than we have differences. Like Mr. Fernandez, I was born in Cuba and came to this country in the early 1960's. Like Mr. Fernandez, I have been fortunate to prosper in this country, becoming the first doctor in my family. Like Mr. Fernandez, I long for the day when I can travel freely in Cuba, knowing that her people have all the opportunities the Cuban Americans have had in the US. It makes no sense that Cuba, which is no threat to the U.S., remains on the same list as North Korea.

Though I am a registered Democrat and am running against Diaz-Balart in the predominantly Latino CD-25, I do not understand how the current incumbent could still support and vote for Donald Trump with all the vitriol and hatred he seems to have towards Hispanics, and specifically Cubans, a large group of his constituents and a group I am a proud member of. As a physician, I have spent my entire life serving in largely Latino communities with the uninsured, the poor, and the homeless, which are all communities that have been largely under-served not only in medicine but in many other aspects of American life. It has been my privilege and my duty to have the opportunity to help other Latinos and now it is my intention to do the same in FL CD-25, where the polling has shown a trend towards lifting the Cuban embargo since the present policy has been an abysmal failure. Many Cuban Americans still have family and friends on the island and find themselves working to help their people in Cuba, who would otherwise suffer further the injustice of this embargo.

Like Mr. Fernandez, I will also be voting for Hillary Clinton not out of party loyalty but because I must do all I can to prevent "The Donald" from taking control of a country which I love and which has given many of us the opportunity to excel and succeed. Mr. Fernandez, we do indeed have quite a bit in common and our core principles and ideology do transcend party lines for we both have an allegiance to our people and want to see our beloved Cuba free again and for her people to have choice and opportunity as the rest of us have had and it is indeed way past time.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz Still Helping Her Republican Cronies Against Democratic Candidates In South Florida

2 of Florida's most corrupt congressmembers, Mario and #DebtTrapDebbie

Debbie Wasserman Schultz got into a lot of trouble with Democratic voters in 2008 when she was head of the DCCC's Red to Blue committee. She had the temerity to announce-- and to recruit one of her puppets-- Kendrick Meek-- to join her in announcing that she would support 3 Miami-Dade Republicans, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and the Diaz-Balart brothers-- over the 3 Democrats she was charged by the DCCC with helping elect. The controversy eventually caused DCCC chair Chris Van Hollen to fire her as Red to Blue chair and sideline her with a less sensitive post. (Meek quickly bailed on her and then went on to run for the Senate, losing badly to two Republicans, Marco Rubio and "independent" Charlie Crist. But Wasserman Schultz went on to worm her way back into power within the party, ending up as the controversial and widely despised DNC head.

In 2008 Wasserman Schultz sabotaged and undermined Joe Garcia and Raul Martinez to help the reelection efforts of reactionary Republicans Mario and Lincoln Diaz-Balart. Mario's district had basically turned blue and when Lincoln decided to devote his energies to plotting to become president of Cuba, Mario skipped across the district to claim Lincoln's redder seat. Today he's been challenged in that seat by Alina Valdes, a physician and a dedicated progressive. And-- wouldn't you know it-- Wasserman Schultz hasn't learned her lesson and is up to her old tricks again... working against Valdes on behalf of Diaz-Balart! Outrageously, she still hasn't been removed as chair of the DNC.

Valdez has described Wasserman Schultz as "hateful and vindictive" towards her candidacy and has told me that the DNC chair is doing all she can behind the scenes to bolster Diaz-Balart. "When I first started this race over a year and a half ago," Valdes told me yesterday, "I did not know that I would be maligned by the DNC chair. I naively thought that she would be happy to have a Democrat challenging a career Republican who doesn't do much to help his district. What I have found out since then has been indeed eye opening. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, from what I keep hearing, has blacklisted me so I do not get the support of organizations and unions in order to support her friend Mario Diaz-Balart. How could a DNC chair, tasked with electing Democrats up and down the ticket, as she keeps saying every time she gets interviewed, do something like this?" Someone should ask Barack Obama, who has refused to fire her and has even, shamefully gone to Miami to campaign for her and help her raise money.

"If she wants to support Republicans," continued Valdes, "then she should not be the head of a committee responsible for electing their opponents... Democrats in South Florida are afraid of her and the amount of damage she could inflict on them by not supporting them. Mario Diaz-Balart has not been challenged by a Democrat in 8 years and I dared do the unthinkable.

Wasserman Schultz has aided Ros-Lehtinen in every single reelection battle & is doing it again this year

Wasserman Schultz, who originally helped the Republicans gerrymander Florida to their advantage when she was still just a corrupt state senator, tampered with the gerrymandering process again to assist Diaz-Balart, letting it be known that she wanted blue Broward County excised from FL-25, making the district a bit more GOP-friendly-- and changing the boundaries to put Alina Valdes' home just outside the new lines. "No one," she told me, "should have this much power and be supported by the very people she claims she wants to get rid of... the special interests, the lobbyists, the well connected, and the wealthy. The time has come to get them all out, especially this vindictive, spiteful career politician who is no different that the rest... They are in it for themselves only and couldn't care less about their constituents who are hurting and need help."

By having the district boundaries shifted to help Diaz-Balart, Wasserman Schultz had the Valdes household put into FL-23, her own district. Valdez will have to move a few blocks into FL-25 after she's elected to replace Diaz-Balart but meanwhile she's excited to be voting for Tim Canova, the progressive candidate running to replace Wasserman Schultz. Please consider contributing to both Alina Valdes' campaign and to Tim Canova's campaign here at the thermometer:

UPDATE: Miami's Mayor Tomás Regalado Weights In On Herr Trumpf

Who will stand up to Trump's racism in Miami-Dade? Not Mario Diaz-Balart

Yesterday we looked at how Democratic congressional candidates are running against Trump by tying their foolish opponents to Trump hate-filled messaging. Immediately on top of that reporting from the NY Times seemed to bolster exactly what FL-25 Democratic candidate Alina Valdes told us yesterday about her own campaign against Trump-supporter Mario Diaz-Balart. The Republican mayor of Miami made the point.

Had Republicans nominated Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush for president, Tomás Regalado would have hurled himself into the task of electing their candidate.

“I would have been all in,” Mr. Regalado, the Republican mayor of Miami, said in his office overlooking Biscayne Bay.

Instead, Mr. Regalado, a former broadcast journalist, intends to sit out the presidential race. He considers Mrs. Clinton untrustworthy, but views Mr. Trump as a poisonous candidate who has aggravated racial divisions. In Miami, Mr. Regalado said, Mr. Trump is seen as “a bully, as a person who despises people that don’t look like him.”

Mr. Regalado, 69, said he had been inundated with angry email, some of it mentioning Mr. Trump by name. “Sometimes they say, ‘Yeah, Trump is right, you guys have to all go back to your country,’” said Mr. Regalado, who was born in Havana and emigrated as a teenager. “This is my country. I can’t go back to Cuba.”

Since Mr. Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, he has consolidated support from national party leaders and from many in the rank and file. He has pulled nearly even with Mrs. Clinton in many polls, including in Florida.

But the southern tip of the nation’s most populous swing state has been a blazing exception to the trend-- most of all in Miami-Dade County, a densely populated bastion of diversity that cast about a tenth of the statewide vote in 2012.

If Mr. Trump has effectively staked his campaign nationwide on strong support from whites, Florida may present the most punishing test of his strategy, as Hispanics here, including conservative-leaning Cuban-Americans who twice helped George W. Bush carry the state, turn away from his candidacy en masse.

Mr. Trump has trampled local sensibilities in myriad ways, from his belittling treatment of Mr. Rubio and Mr. Bush to his personal coarseness, slashing comments on immigration and endorsement of open relations with the Castro government.

In addition to Mr. Regalado, two Republican members of Congress from Florida, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Carlos Curbelo, have said they will not back Mr. Trump, as has Carlos A. Gimenez, the Republican mayor of Miami-Dade County. All four are Cuban-American.

Early polls show voters in the area resoundingly rejecting Mr. Trump: A Quinnipiac University poll this month found Mr. Trump about even with Mrs. Clinton statewide, but losing a band of southeastern counties, including Miami-Dade and Broward, by 38 percentage points.

From a long gone era of self-serving corruption

Miami-Dade has been rapidly trending Democratic. Obama won every congressional district in the county except Diaz-Balart's and last time he came close enough in Diaz-Balart's (1%) to predict that Hillary or Bernie would win it in November. Trump's anti-immigrant/anti-Hispanic hate speech goes over very poorly there. Dr. Valdes: "As a candidate for U.S. House of Representatives in the 25th district and, more importantly, as a Latina, I find Donald J. Trump's statements about Latinos and women extremely offensive. We are a diverse group of people who made America our homes from many different countries but the vitriol and contempt the Republican nominee for president has chosen to use goes beyond reason and common sense. I give credit to the two Republican Cuban-American representatives from South Florida who have stated they could not vote for Mr. Trump for president. However, the third, Mario Diaz-Balart, who currently represents the 25th district, has given his support to the current nominee in spite of his hateful and hurtful words. He is no different than the man he is supporting in spite of the insults he has generally hurled at a large proportion of this district, which comprises from 60-70% Latinos. He has no consideration for the constituents that make up the majority of this part of Florida and I believe it is time for him to go home and retire from politics. Maybe then, he will learn a valuable life's lesson he should have been taught a long time ago... generalizations about a group of people should not be condoned and should definitely be exposed as the lies they are. Mr. Diaz-Balart is just as guilty for those insulting words as if he had spoken them himself."

Like Alina said, Diaz-Balart with his support for Trump makes him the odd man out. If she can hammer that message home, she will be the next congressmember from FL-25. If the DCCC wasn't run by venal little fiefdom chiefs like Israel, Lujan, Pelosi and Wasserman Schultz, it would be coming to the aid of Valdes, who is being lopsidedly outspent by the PAC-backed, lobbyist-supported Diaz-Balart. But Valdes is way too progressive, way too independent-minded and way too ethical for a DCCC that consciously sets about to elect conservatives willing to mindlessly take orders from party bosses and who are amenable to the kind of systemic corruption that makes Capitol Hill into a universally despised den of iniquity.

Ready to stand up and slap down the DCCC and the corrupt party bosses who control it by electing anti-corruption progressives like Alina Valdes? Please contribute what you can at the thermometer below: