Do You Think Professor Krugman Would Give Paul Ryan An F?

Paul Krugman hasn't been a fan of Paul Ryan's breezy pseudo-intellectual laziness for just about a full year now. Last August he warned Beltway insiders that the Wall Street Frankenstein creature from Wisconsin was nothing but a flimflam man and his much-heralded "courageousness" was, in reality, merely "the audacity of dopes." Thursday, in light of Ryan telling reporters he doesn't care if he loses his own House seat next year, Krugman poked through the Republican wreckage in western New York state and found what happens when someone who doesn't know much about economics tries to put one over on the public. He found why Ryan is "upset" and "bitter" and added "sore loser" to the growing lexicon that describes the Republican Budget Chair, reminding us that Hochul's campaign had "focused squarely on Mr. Ryan’s plan to dismantle Medicare and replace it with a voucher system." Ryan blamed his stunning loss on "Democrats’ willingness to 'shamelessly distort and demagogue the issue, trying to scare seniors to win an election,' and he predicted that by November of next year 'the American people are going to know they’ve been lied to'.”

You can understand Mr. Ryan’s bitterness. He has, after all, experienced quite a comedown over the course of the past seven weeks. Until his Medicare plan was rolled out in early April he had spent months bathing in warm approbation from many pundits, who had decided to anoint him as an icon of fiscal responsibility. And the plan itself received rapturous praise in the first couple of days after its release.

Then people who actually know how to read a budget proposal started looking at the plan. And that’s when everything started to fall apart.

Mr. Ryan may claim-- and he may even believe-- that he’s facing a backlash because his opponents are lying about his proposals. But the reality is that the Ryan plan is turning into a political disaster for Republicans, not because the plan’s critics are lying about it, but because they’re describing it accurately.

Take, for example, the statement that the Ryan plan would end Medicare as we know it. This may have Republicans screaming “Mediscare!” but it’s the absolute truth: The plan would replace our current system, in which the government pays major health costs, with a voucher system, in which seniors would, in effect, be handed a coupon and told to go find private coverage.

The new program might still be called Medicare-- hey, we could replace government coverage of major expenses with an allowance of two free aspirins a day, and still call it “Medicare”-- but it wouldn’t be the same program. And if the cost estimates of the Congressional Budget Office are at all right, the inadequate size of the vouchers-- which by 2030 would cover only about a third of seniors’ health costs-- would leave many if not most older Americans unable to afford essential care.

If anyone is lying here, it’s Mr. Ryan himself, who has claimed that his plan would give seniors the same kind of coverage that members of Congress receive-- an assertion that is completely false.

And, by the way, the claim that the plan would keep Medicare as we know it intact for Americans currently 55 or older is highly dubious. True, that’s what the plan promises, but if you think about the political dynamics that would emerge once Americans born a year or two too late realize how much better a deal slightly older Americans are getting, you realize that this is a promise unlikely to be fulfilled.

Still, are Democrats doing a bad thing by telling the truth about the Ryan plan? “If you demagogue entitlement reform,” says Mr. Ryan, “you’re hastening a debt crisis; you’re bringing about Medicare’s collapse.” Maybe he should have a word with his colleagues who greeted the modest, realistic cost control efforts in the Affordable Care Act with cries of “death panels.”

Anyway, the underlying premise behind statements like that is the assumption that the Ryan plan represents a serious effort to come to grip with America’s long-run fiscal problems. But what became clear soon after that plan was unveiled was that it was no such thing. In fact, it wasn’t really a deficit-reduction plan. Once you remove the absurd assumptions-- discretionary spending, including defense, falling to Calvin Coolidge levels, and huge tax cuts for corporations and the rich, with no loss in revenue?-- it’s highly questionable whether it would reduce the deficit at all.

What the Ryan plan is, instead, is an attempt to snooker Americans into accepting a standard right-wing wish list under the guise of deficit reduction. And Americans, it seems, have seen through the deception.

So what happens now? The fight will shift from Medicare to Medicaid-- a program that has become an essential lifeline for many Americans, especially children, but which in the Ryan plan is slated for a 44 percent cut in federal aid over the next decade. At this point, however, I’m optimistic that this initiative will also run aground on popular disapproval.

What of Mr. Ryan’s hope that voters will realize that they’ve been lied to? Well, as I see it, that’s already happening. And it’s bad news for the G.O.P.

I wonder if anyone thinks it's just a coincidence that young Ryan has taken more money from Wall Street and Big Insurance interests than any other politician in the history of Wisconsin. Wall Street selected him long ago as someone to back and push all the way up the ladder. The audacity of dopes is exactly what they were looking for and, so far, the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate sector has showered Ryan's political career with legalist bribes to the tune of $2,349,822, the kind of money usually reserved for senators. Insurance companies chipped in $713,003 and the Medical Industrial Complex put forward another $1,063,242. Big Business is financing Ryan's career because he will always pick their interests over the interests of his constituents who he doesn't care about one whit. When he says he doesn't care if he loses his seat or not, he means it. He's convinced his friends in the plutocracy will take good care of him. Hopefully, we'll see if that's true or not.

Please consider helping Rob Zerban get his message out to southeast Wisconsin voters this cycle so they can do the country a favor and defeat Ryan not just in NY-26 but in WI-1, where it will count the most. (Although, I have to admit, I love to see other progressive candidates around the country campaign on an anti-Ryan platform.)

This week Washington Post editorial writer Dana Milbank jumped into the fray as well with Paul Ryan gets a taste of his own shameless demagoguery, an opinion few Inside the Beltway were willing to consider when the full court press of the corporate propaganda machine was churning out hourly praise for Ryan's brilliance and courageousness last month. The conservative voters in the suburbs and small towns between Buffalo and Rochester defeated that meme. But what Milbank focuses on is that though a petulant Paul Ryan is bitterly complaining that Democrats are being mean to him, it was Ryan himself who was one of the GOP kings of "shameless demagoguery and scare tactics" for the last two years.

Speaking on the House floor in 2009, he said the Democrats’ health-care legislation would “take coverage away from seniors,” “raise premiums for families” and “cost us nearly 5.5 million jobs.” Later, he said the health plan would bring about government “rationing” of health care.

He also labeled the plan “a government takeover of our healthcare system,” claimed America was at a “tipping point” toward a “European social welfare state,” and gave a wink to the “death panel” allegations. His suggestion that the legislation would result in the IRS getting “16,000 agents” to police the health-care law was knocked down as “wildly inaccurate” by Factcheck.org.

...Ryan might be worthy of more sympathy if he hadn’t been one of the people clubbing Democrats with slogans about trampled liberty as they labored to explain exchanges and cost curves. Now Ryan is the one trying to define the narrow difference between “premium support” and “vouchers” while Democrats accuse him of forcing seniors into destitution.

As Central Florida Democratic congressional candidate Nick Ruiz asked yesterday, "Why is America being forced to play Ryan Roulette? Where each vote for such a misguided plan as Paul Ryan’s (WI-1), that can only be seen as the Republicans’ siren song-- the medieval Path to ‘Austerity’-- is like a blow to the head of America."

Neither Kathy Hochul Nor Jane Corwin Were All That Important Tuesday-- Paul Ryan And The Republican Agenda Were

Tuesday night we tweeted the NY-26 special election returns and, until now, there hasn't been a post-mortem at DWT. Both the New York Times and A.P. drew the correct conclusions: this election results were all about independent voters telling Republicans across the country to step on the brakes or suffer the consequences. Paul Krugman used the word "Buffalo" eight times in his Wednesday morning post-- and that was just in the headline!

The obvious point is that Republicans, having run in 2010 largely by scaring seniors with tales of death panels, are now horsed on their own pet aardvark, or something.

The difference is that whereas Democrats were not, in fact, trying to impose death panels, Republicans really do want to dismantle Medicare – and that’s the truth no matter how many times Very Serious People reach for their smelling salts when Democrats say that. And you would think that would make Medicare an even more potent weapon for the Dems than it was for the Rs (unless they go out of their way to ignore what the electorate is really concerned about.)

It’s now starting to look like a real possibility that we will have had three electoral waves in a row-- a Democratic sweep in 2006-2008, a Republican countersweep in 2010, and a countercountersweep in 2012 as voters realize that the GOP is the same as it always was, only more so.

As you may be aware, we were less than enthusiastic about Kathy Hochul here at DWT because of her willingness-- even eagerness-- to use Republican framing and to toss vulnerable minorities under the bus in her quest for career advancement. That said, I was certainly rooting for Team Blue Tuesday night, if, for no other reason, to wipe the smirk off Paul Ryan's ugly face and watch his carefully-crafted-- crafted by Wall Street puppeteers-- political career fall into a ditch.

Within hours of the disavowal of his vision for turning seniors' healthcare over to his financial backers at the predatory health insurance companies, Ryan was desperately trying to salvage what's left of his credibility-- with his own paralyzed caucus (remember Boehner and Cantor had tricked them all into backing Ryan's crazy plans). He was tweeting up a storm Wednesday morning with every kind of excuse for what a great big misunderstanding his plan to turn Medicare into an inadequate private voucher system has been. He tried ducking responsibility by blaming the Democrats... of course.


But even after Jane Corwin's approval numbers began tanking when she blundered into admitting that she would have voted for Ryan's budget, Ryan never showed up in Buffalo to defend her. The Republicans there and in DC were at least savvy enough to know that his presence in the district would have meant instant death for her campaign. Instead they invited Boehner and Cantor to defend her. That amounted to a slow drawn out death.

And as we've been explaining all month and as Steve Benen summed up so elegantly at the Political Animal yesterday, the voter revolt in Republican territory against the Republican agenda didn't begin this week and didn't begin in NY-26. As Benen explained it may have been the highest profile defeat for the Republican so far, but it was just the latest in an unbroken string of victories for the Democrats:

* New Hampshire: Last week, there was a special election in a state House district where Republicans have dominated for years. The Democratic candidate won in a landslide, even after a local town clerk illegally required photo IDs to vote.

* Florida: Also last week, Jacksonville was home to a high-profile mayoral race, and the state GOP touted the election as the first warning shot of the 2012 cycle. Instead, voters elected Democrat Alvin Brown-- Jacksonville’s first African-American mayor-- stunning the Republican establishment statewide.

* Wisconsin: Three weeks ago, there was a special election in a Wisconsin state Assembly district that has been represented by a Republican for 16 years. In this case, the Democrat won by eight points.

* Maine: Two weeks ago, there was a special election to fill a vacancy in the state Senate, in a district that has been very competitive in the recent past. In this case, the Democrat won by a crushing 2-to-1 margin.

...After a series of losses in races Republicans expected to win with relative ease, the party would be wise to take a moment to realize Americans aren’t buying what the GOP is selling.

Indeed, it looks an awful lot like buyer’s remorse is the most common public sentiment.

When pondering what happened in NY-26 Tuesday, it's important to keep in mind that Chris Lee, the last Republican elected there, just last November, won with 74% of the vote. That's how conservative the district is. Carl Paladino, who was widely viewed as a deranged joke of a gubernatorial candidate and only took 34% of the vote statewide, won NY-26 with 61%. It was McCain's strongest district in New York and the GOP and GOP front groups spent between three and four million dollars in an effort to keep from losing the seat (and destroying Ryan's career). Corwin spent another $2 million of her own on the race.

And it wasn't only about motivated Democrats and independents turning out in big numbers that propelled Kathy Hochul into Congress. Republicans, as the NYTimes ascertained, were unenthusiastic, not necessarily about Corwin, but about the direction their party has been moving:

“I have almost always voted the party line,” said Gloria Bolender, a Republican from Clarence who is caring for her 80-year-old mother. “This is the second time in my life I’ve voted against my party.”

Pat Gillick, a Republican from East Amherst, who also cast a ballot for Ms. Hochul, said, “The privatization of Medicare scares me.”

And the slap in the face to Ryan didn't exactly go unnoticed back in Wisconsin. His opponent for reelection, Kenosha County Supervisor Rob Zerban was out with a statement Tuesday night:

"Tonight it is clear that Representative Paul Ryan's plan to end Medicare is the wrong choice for our families, and we will not stand for it. Voters in New York's 26th Congressional District rejected Paul Ryan’s backward vision of America that puts our seniors at risk. If New Yorkers don’t want Medicare replaced with a voucher plan, you can be sure that families here in Wisconsin's First District will have something to say in the next election. Wisconsinites put our trust in Paul Ryan only to be sold out to special interests.

"I’d like to congratulate New York’s new Democratic Congresswoman Kathy Hochul for winning this strongly-held Republican district. We have our work cut out for us to put our nation back on track, but ordinary people have spoken up tonight to say, 'Hands off our Medicare, Paul Ryan'."

Mike Tate Chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party backed up his messaging against right-wing over reach the next morning:

"In the face of overwhelming opposition, Republicans have been stymied in their attacks on our seniors.
 
"In the Legislature, Republicans furiously reversed their own plans to gut SeniorCare only after six GOP senators now face recalls this summer and thousands of Wisconsin citizens signed petitions to save the successful program that helps seniors pay for prescription drugs. They claim that they will, for the moment, spare the program.

"And as New York's Congressional election shows, Paul Ryan's attempt to end Medicare is being rejected even by Republican voters.

"Both Republican legislators and Paul Ryan promise that they will preserve SeniorCare and Medicare, but we know these promises are an absolute sham.
 
"It's time for Scott Walker and his rubber-stamping Republicans to stop playing politics with SeniorCare, for Paul Ryan to stop his plans to end Medicare and for all of them to stop paying for tax cuts for the rich and huge corporations on the backs of Wisconsin's seniors."

Norman Solomon, one of the Blue America candidates running on a Medicare-for-all platform in next year's congressional races, looked at the race in NY-26 and said it proves that "Democrats can win uphill battles by really putting up a fight instead of splitting the difference with the extremist Republican Party. The reality is that the GOP is committed to dismantling Medicare and a wide range of other humane government programs. We should not give an inch when the lives of children, the elderly and other vulnerable people are at stake."

Paul Ryan is the biggest danger middle class families are facing to their children's future. Wall Street and Big Business will stop at nothing to get him and his toxic agenda into the White House. There is only one way to stop him-- and that's with direct action. And right now that direct action means electing Rob Zerban to the seat Ryan has been sitting in. It won't be easy, but it's not any less possible than the race in NY-26 was. In fact, President Obama won WI-01 in 2008, and the district is filled with fired up Democrats and newly awakened independents. Can you help Rob's campaign? Ryan's budget and his vision and his entire political career were inspired-- as he freely admits-- by deranged anti-Christian novelist Ayn Rand. Wall Street adores her too... and would love her simplistic and extremely dangerous ideas dominating our politics:



Late yesterday afternoon, Harry Reid forced Senate Republicans into the unenviable task of having to vote YEA or NAY on killing Medicare by bringing up the Ryan budget. It failed (57-40), of course, but Republicans Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Scott Brown and Lisa Murkowski voted against it, claiming they could not stick with their party's intentions of dismantling Medicare, while Kentucky psychopath Rand Paul also voted NO-- because Ryan's plan, in his mind, didn't dismantle Medicare quickly or thoroughly enough.

Corporate shills inside the Democratic Party, led by conservatives like Steny Hoyer and Clare McCaskill, want to "compromise" with the Republicans. Real Democrats, what we call progressives, will stand and fight. Watch:

NY-26: Kathy Hochul, The One In Blue, Ahead By A Length In The Final Stretch

Par for the course: No good choices in NY-26

Once the Rapture passed us by, it was time to get back to watching the special election in western New York that's building up to Tuesday-- and with heavy national implications. Most to lose: Paul Ryan, whose plan to destroy Medicare has become the #1 issue of the race. If the GOP can't hold onto this profoundly Republican district panic will set in among dozens of Republican congressmen who were tricked into voting for Ryan's hated, dystopian budget scheme-- "radical... right-wing social engineering," in the words of one Republican elder statesman. The latest polling-- from Siena-- was bad news for the Republicans, who have poured over three million dollars into efforts to hold onto a red, red seat.

Red, red seat? Well, yeah... even though the GOP's lunatic fringe gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino only polled 34% statewide last year, he had a landslide victory in NY-26-- 61% of the vote! And the district votes for Republicans in federal races as well. In 2000 Gore only got 44%. Kerry did a percent worse and Obama, while sweeping the rest of the state-- and the region-- was bested in NY-26 by McCain 52-46%, McCain's best performance in New York. And, Christopher Lee, the perverted millionaire teabagger, whose sex scandal forced him to resign triggering this special election, won with 74% just 6 months ago, the biggest victory for any Republican in New York state. Lee didn't fall below 70% in any of the district's 6 counties, even winning Niagara County-- where then-Democrat Jack Davis beat then-incumbent Tom Reynolds in 2004-- in a startling 25,570- 8,661 victory. The Wall Street Journal reported that Hochul is surging.

And what's different this week is the Ryan budget. Stupidly, Republican Jane Corwin, once favored to win in a walkaway, said she would have voted for it. And it turns Medicare into an inadequate voucher program that voters absolutely hate. Congress' Joint Economic Committee clearly laid out how harmful Ryan's plan would be for New York seniors. By 2022, under the current Medicare out-of-pocket expenses for the typical 65-year-old enrollee in New York would be $6,308.07, already considered high by many. Under Ryan's plan-- the one embraced by Corwin, the out-of-pocket expenses for a typical New York senior doubles to $12,826.26. That's an extra $6,518.20 annually. And what for? So the fabulously wealthy can pay even less taxes than they already do.

Earlier this month we talked about why I'm about as enthusiastic for a Hochul victory Tuesday as I am about my town's sports team winning a game or a tournament. Better the blue team than the red team... I guess. I was relieved that at least Hochul opposes the two corporate parties' NAFTA-like, job-destroying trade policies but I'll never trust any Democrat who seeks office by throwing a Democratic constituency under the bus by adopting Republican Party framing, the way Hochul has done in this campaign. If she wins Tuesday, I expect her to either be a Blue Dog or, more likely, just vote with them, pulling the Democratic caucus further to the right.

Former NY Blue Dog, Kirsten Gillibrand, was in Amherst campaigning with Hochul yesterday and Chuck Schumer is there this morning. Popular Governor Andrew Cuomo released an ad endorsing Hochul. And even the Tea Party candidate, multimillionaire Jack Davis, a lifelong Republican who brags he voted for every Republican president but who captured the Democratic nominations 3 times in the past, says his own polling shows Hochul ahead. (It also shows him in second place, beating Corwin. Watch the clip below.) Momentum is clearly in Hochul's camp, with voters determined to send Boehner and Cantor, each of whom has been to the district to campaign for Corwin, a clear message that they will not abide the Republican Party wrecking Medicare. Obama has been laying low-- either because of his own unpopularity in the district or because he doesn't want to anger Hispanic voters who know Hochul for her anti-immigrant demagoguery.



UPDATE: The Buffalo News Endorses Hochul

Virtually all the big newspapers in the district have come out for Hochul. The Buffalo News is the most influential. And, for an essentially conservative newspaper, they were brutal.

Hochul has a more rounded grasp on the role of government in the 21st century. She understands health care for seniors to be an appropriate federal issue, while Corwin does not. More conservative than even many Republicans in Western New York, Corwin holds a pinched view of Washington's role in public life, restricting it to issues such as defense, transportation and food safety.

In meeting with the Buffalo News editorial board, she didn't specifically say that issues such as health, education and the environment were inappropriate for government, but the implication was clear. She supports the Republican proposal for Medicare, which would turn it into a voucher system. To be sure, Medicare needs to be fixed to preserve it for future beneficiaries, but not this way.

...Both Corwin and Hochul have made an issue of the deficit, but Hochul's skills and record suggest a deeper understanding of the role of government in modern life. Changes need to be made, and soon. Hochul is the candidate with the best ability to push for those changes while guarding against an assault on the role of government itself.

A Chance To Make Congress Better? Tomorrow In Los Angeles, Yes; Next Tuesday In Buffalo... Probably Not

Debra Bowen, Kathy Hochul

Tomorrow voters in CA-36 go to the polls to pick a replacement for Blue Dog Jane Harman. Her own choice is sleazy City Hall political hack Janice Hahn, the worst of example of meaningless careerism in the California Democratic Party, Hahn stands for nothing... except personal ambition. And all the rot inside the party has come out to back her. The endorsement list on her website reads like a lesson in political untrustworthiness. There are two outstanding progressives running as well, Debra Bowen and Marcy Winograd, either of whom would make an extraordinary and much-needed upgrade in southern California's congressional caucus. Blue America weighed the race carefully and concluded that Bowen has the far better chance to beat Hahn-- which is why Hahn and her slick consultants lured Winograd into the race. A vote for anyone tomorrow other than for Bowen is, alas, a vote for Hahn.

And then a week from tomorrow the two tribes-- plus right-wing rogue Jack Davis-- battle it out in a primary in a New York State's reddest district in the Buffalo suburbs. Team Red has put up a multimillionaire robot named Jane Corwin who has been campaigning on her backing for the Ryan budget that other Republicans are running away from.

Newt Gingrich slammed the House GOP budget on Meet The Press this morning, telling interviewer David Gregory that replacing Medicare with a voucher system was too "radical" an approach. His words were by far the harshest of any major presidential candidate towards Paul Ryan's proposal on entitlements.

"I don't think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering," Gingrich said, calling the plan "too big a jump" for the country. "I don't think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate."

But Corwin has dug herself into a hole and isn't budging. In fact, she just keeps digging

A late April Siena poll of likely voters in the 26th suggested a majority in the district, 59 percent, do not favor that proposal. Hochul has been hammering Corwin for saying she would have voted for the Republican spending plan. Donald Trump, the TV personality and real estate mogul, opined Wednesday in the national press that Corwin’s campaign is struggling because of the Ryan Medicare issue.

Corwin did not back away from the Ryan bill in the debate.

“If we keep Medicare the same plan that it is now, we’re going to be out of money by 2029, which means nobody will receive benefits,” she said. “This (plan) does not eliminate Medicare, it protects Medicare” for future generations.

Not so, Hochul countered.

Corwin’s insolvency claim is “a scare tactic, to tell our seniors that there’ll be nothing for them in 2029; it’s not the truth,” she said.

The Ryan bill would take the country back to the early 1960s, before seniors had guaranteed health care coverage and many went without, Hochul said.

“There’s a way to fix (Medicare). ... We have to continue what’s been a very successful program,” Hochul insisted.

But as we pointed out last week, the Team Blue contestant, Hochul, is another conservative shill who we'll find cowering behind Boehner on bill after bill should she wind up, because of Davis' spoiler routine, winning the seat, a seat she probably wouldn't be able to hold without voting a pure GOP line.

Hochul gobbled up the big endorsements yesterday (the Buffalo News and the Democrat and Chronicle). She's winning in the endorsements area because she's "independent" enough to back a conservative Republican agenda, despite the blue t-shirt.

Hochul has a long history of being an independent thinker. As Erie County clerk, she defied former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, a fellow Democrat, on his plans to give drivers licenses to illegal immigrants. And she went toe-to-toe with former Gov. David Paterson, also a Democrat, until he relented on plans to increase new license plate fees.

Her election will have national implications inasmuch as it will cause a stampede of already spooked Republican congressmembers away from Ryan's toxic "cause"-- and that's a good thing-- but in terms of making Congress better... no way. Expect all the worst from a Congresswoman Kathy Hochul. Any Democrat who builds a political career by throwing a weak component of the Democratic coalition under the bus, as Hochul has, is going to be bad news. The most that can be said about her is, "but she isn't as bad as Corwin." It's true, but a Congresswoman Corwin wouldn't be inside the already conflicted Democratic caucus pulling it always further and further rightward, blurring the differences between the two parties and making it irrelevant to working families.

This is costing Jane Corwin & the GOP an easy win

Why I Might Cheer And Eat Popcorn For Buffalo Democrat Kathy Hochul But Not Contribute A Dime

There are two special elections for open House seats coming up, one in the L.A. area and one in the Buffalo area. Blue America has endorsed California Secretary of State Debra Bowen in the former and hasn't taken a position in the latter. But as the race in NY-26 tightens up-- in part because the Republican is battling a deranged, multimillionaire teabagger, Jack Davis, on the one hand, and the taint of being associated with Paul Ryan's Medicare-killing agenda on the other hand-- many Blue America supporters have asked us why we haven't been raising money for the Democrat in the race, Kathy Hochul. Yesterday, in fact, Daily Kos and PPP reported that Hochul has pulled ahead in the polling. There's no doubt in our minds that she would be a better congressmember than either Jane Corwin, the rubber stamp Republican, or Jack Davis, the dangerous fascist. That brings us back to the idea than a D or a C- is always better than an F. But... watch this Hochul ad:



The very first plea she makes to voters is bragging that she has adopted a divisive, reactionary Republican frame as her own: "I led the fight against giving illegal immigrants drivers licenses..." Blue America doesn't endorse triangulators who get bad advise from Inside-the-Beltway hacks and we don't endorse candidates who apologize for being Democrats; it sets them on a bad path if they get into Congress. She can go raise money from that set, while we raise money for real progressives who want to use progressive values to solve America's problems for working families, like Ilya Sheyman (IL), Nick Ruiz (FL), Norman Solomon (CA) and Debra Bowen (CA). Saturday we'll be introducing you to a new candidate as well, Eric Griego (NM).

Yesterday's National Journal covered the battle in upstate NY horserace style:

With a second poll this week confirming that we really have a three-way race in New York's 26th District, Republicans have the most to lose if things don't go Jane Corwin's way in three weeks - and their nervousness is starting to show. Both Corwin and the state GOP have gone after independent Jack Davis, hoping that if they can remind people of his Democratic past, he'll stop pulling votes away from them. But they have two fronts to watch now, with both Democrat Kathy Hochul and Davis hammering Corwin on Medicare.

It's clear now that the Medicare issue will be the defining issue in the race, and so far Corwin has tried to turn the message back to jobs and the deficit. This is an early test for how the Democratic message will play, but the DCCC still isn't in; though with Corwin forced to go on the attack, it could be better if they wait it out and force her hand. On the flip side, the NRCC has already begun phone-banking for Corwin, but especially if they're forced to send resources and go up on air for her, it's an even surer sign that they're worried about how a loss could play into their 2012 plans.

Meanwhile Boehner, who isn't exactly Mr. Popularity among voters, was bragging on Twitter yesterday that he was in Buffalo raising money for Corwin. I bet he didn't bring Paul Ryan along! Meanwhile, in the first big race since he was named DCCC chair, Steve Israel seems to be sitting this one out, even though Hochul is just his kind of centrist Republican-light candidate.


Yesterday Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) released this slam against contemptible immigrant-basher John Boehner. I wonder if he and other Beltway Democrats who are pushing it realize it could be applied to Hochul as well.

"Speaker Boehner should focus on controlling the level of violence in his own state before tarnishing the image of border communities that remain among the safest places to live in America. As his office asserts that Congress cannot consider reforming our broken immigration system until border violence is under control, the fact remains that the six largest cities in Ohio all have higher rates of violence and crime than every major city along the U.S.-Mexico border. In fact, the Speaker's own district in Dayton, Ohio saw more homicides in 2010 than Texas' four largest border cities combined, despite the fact that Dayton's population of 141,500 is only about one-tenth of the size by comparison. According to the most recent City Crime Rankings Survey by CQ Press, Ohio's cities have higher rates of violence and crime in every category, including murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, and motor vehicle theft than border communities.

"Tomorrow, President Obama will visit the border region when he speaks in El Paso, the largest border city in Texas and the safest large city in America. As Republicans continue to distort the facts and use border violence as an excuse to delay immigration reform and disparage the outstanding work of our local, state, and federal law enforcement professionals, I hope the President's visit will help expose Republicans' distorted rhetoric on border violence, and renew the push for much-needed reforms to our immigration system that are long overdue."

President Obama will make the point that his aggressive border, far more aggressive than Bush's ever was, is actually working. It's time for a politically mature look at immigration policy and at the undocumented Americans already here, not the divisiveness of political hacks and demagogues like Boehner and his caucus and Democrats like Hochul.

Any reasonable look at the data from the past several years makes clear that the new joint Mexican-US strategy towards the common border region is working. Deportations of criminal immigrants, southbound seizures of bulk cash and illegal guns are way up. The number of illegal migrants crossing the border, the number of undocumented immigrants in the US, crime rates all along the US side of the border are all down. By some measures cities like El Paso and San Diego are some of the safest big cities in America today. While the violence on the Mexican side of the border is still at unacceptable levels, there has been no measurable spillover of the cartel violence into the United States.  So while the things we don't want happening along the US side of the border are decreasing, the things we do want-- trade and legal traffic of people-- are increasing. The 2,000 mile border between our countries sees hundreds of millions of legal crossings each year, and is now has the single busiest border crossing in the world.  Increased trade with Mexico has made our southern neighbor the 3rd largest trading partner with the US of any country in the world, and annual trade with Mexico now equals that of our trade with China, and is about the same as our trade annually with the Germany, Japan and the UK combined.  While much more must be done, it is clear that significant advances have been made along the border region in recent years.

When Democrats start off by using GOP framing, the way Hochul is doing in her campaign, what do you think happens when they get into power? That's how we wind up with the likes of Blanche Lincoln, Dan Boren, Ben Nelson, Claire McCaskill, Joe Lieberman muddying the waters for voters and making it impossible for the Democratic caucuses in the Senate and House to ever enact any progressive legislation. That's why we don't have single-payer or even a public option now instead of the crappy healthcare reform that the Democrats, in control of both Houses of Congress and the White House, managed to pass (and even then, just barely). And that's why we had millions of Democratic voters staying away from the polls last November, sickened by the inability of Democrats to enact progressive reforms. Yesterday 75 prominent economists sent a letter to Congress imploring them to oppose plans such as GOP-framed legislation by Hochul-like Democrat Claire McCaskill, paired with reactionary Republican Bob Corker and by tepid centrist Democrat Mark Udall, paired by reactionary Dick Shelby that would endanger the social safety net and amount to nothing more than a Medicare kill switch, something very much like the Paul Ryan "cause" the public is so repulsed by and most Democrats would like to use as a campaign issue to show how the two parties diverge. But how can anyone show the two parties diverging with Democrats like McCaskill, Udall (Mark, not Tom) and Hochul?

And with Rove's thuggish PAC flooding the airwaves with anti-Hochul propaganda (a staggering $650,000 worth), she could use some help. But the people who she's trying to appeal to with her anti-immigrant framing are the ones financing her political demise and why should any progressive want to help elect a worthless, triangulating, cowardly shill that she promises to be?