The Peculiar Relationship Between Corrupt And Vile DC Dems And The NRA Terrorists

It seemed like only yesterday.

All Democrats should have "F" grades from the NRA. And most do. So who doesn't?

• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)- A
• Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA)- A
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX) A-
• Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR)- A-
• Gene Green (TX)- A-
• Tim Ryan (OH)- C+
• Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)- C
• Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN)- C-
• Ben Ray Lujan (NM)- C-
• Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ)- D
• Joaquin Castro (New Dem-TX)- D
• Peter Welch (VT)- D
• David Scott (Blue Dog-GA)- D

How much more clueless can Pelosi be to appoint as DCCC chair a dim-witted closet case-- hey, it's 2017, closets are only for clothes and Republicans-- who is still kind of friendly with the gun manufacturers' lobbyists? And, worst of all, who is openly-- not in the closet about this-- pursuing a policy of recruiting and funding Blue Dogs to run for Congress disguised as Democrats. A couple of years before the mass murder in Las Vegas, I saw a Quinnipiac poll that showed 92% of voters favor background checks for all gun purchases-- including even 86% of Republicans! (98% of Democrats agree, as do 92% of independent voters. And on the question of preventing people with mental illness from purchasing a gun-- 89% agree, including 91% of Democrats. Why is this so hard? NRA money and perceived political clout are parts of the reason. At that time, the NRA had successfully prevented any votes on gun legislation to come to the floor of the House since early 2011, and that was an amendment by Blue Dog NRA shill Dan Boren (OK) to prevent federal agencies from even investigating gun crimes committed with semi-automatic weapons. It passed 277-149, with 41 mostly conservative Democrats joining 236 Republicans. Almost all of the Democrats voting with the NRA and GOP that day have since been forced out of Congress, but 18 are still members (16 in the House and 2 in the Senate) and I want to mention three of them.

One, Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), is, as you know, now Pelosi's DCCC chair and decides who to recruit for congressional seats and which candidates and incumbents to support financially and which to ignore. I know DWT readers sometimes wonder why the DCCC spends almost its entire budget on conservative candidates and actively discourages and sabotages most progressives. Just add this tidbit to the long list of reasons. And, by the way, the NRA sent Luján a $1,000 check for his support that year.

Another was Kurt Schrader of Oregon, currently chairman emeritus of the Blue Dog Caucus, and a proud recipient of NRA cash year after year. Voters in Milwaukie and the suburbs south of Portland, as well as in Beavercreek, Salem, Tillamook and throughout the Willamette Valley, should have reconsidered the support they've been giving Schrader in light of the mass murder at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg south along the 5 Freeway from his district. Without NRA shills in the Democratic Party like Schrader joining with the Republicans to protect and bolster the NRA agenda year after year, those students would still be alive today. As you can see in the new video from Brave New Films above, Schrader was one of the members of Congress they focused on as a recipient of NRA blood money.

And the third NRA-Democrat I want to mention is another Blue Dog, Henry Cuellar of Texas. A primary reason gun legislation never gets to the House floor is because it gets killed in committee. A roll call from June 24, 2015 shows an Appropriations Committee vote on a proposal by Nita Lowey (D-NY) to overturn an NRA legislative victory that prohibits funding for any Centers for Disease Control and Prevention research on gun violence. It was defeated 32-19. Every single Republican voted NO. And almost all the Democrats voted for it. There were two exceptions: Henry Cuellar, once routinely referred to as George W. Bush's favorite Democrat, and Sanford Bishop, a right-wing Georgia Blue Dog who gets thousands of dollars in campaign contributions, endorsements and "A" ratings from the NRA-- in a black-majority district in southwest Georgia (Macon, Albany and Columbus) which Hillary won with 55% of the vote against Trump's 43%.

Most of the House Democrats taking NRA blood money have been defeated-- either, like Tim Holden, in primaries where their NRA connection was a factor, or in general elections, like John Barrow, in which Democratic voters refused to keep backing them. The top five House Democrats still allied with the NRA: Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN), Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA), Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR), Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX) and Timothy Walz, who is currently running for governor of Minnesota.

And if you missed Libby Isenstein's NationalJournal report at the end of August, The States With The Most Gun Laws See The Fewest Gun-Related Deaths, it's something worth reading... if only so you'll have the ammo to beat your Hate Talk Radio addicted brother-in-law over the head with. And take a look at the video Cincinatti City Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld put out about the NRA. At the time P.G. was running for the U.S. Senate against two NRA shills, incumbent Republican Senator Rob Portman and Democrat Ted Strickland, both of whom have careers completely intertwined with the NRA's gun fanaticism. The DSCC and the Ohio Democratic Party did everything they could to defeat P.G. and make sure the conservative, slothful, half-dead Strickland was the party's nominee. They succeeded-- that's what the DSCC is good at-- and Strickland was an unmitigated catastrophe for the Democrats last November. His hideous and incompetent campaign wasted $22,716,182 to win just 4 of Ohio's 88 counties and win just 1,996,908 votes (37.2%) to Portman's 3,118,587 (58.0%)-- while depressing and driving down Democratic turnout, hurting Hillary's vote in the crucial state and hurting down-ballot candidates at every level. That's what you call a Chuck Schumer special!



If the Democrats continue to follow Lujan down his rabbit hole, they will start seriously offending the Democratic base. Look at this essay by David Love in the Atlanta Black Star, In a Country of White Domestic Terrorists, the NRA Wants to Make Sure They Are Not Labeled As Such. How long is it going to be before people like Love start adding corrupted conservative Democrats like Lujan to the list-- along with the NRA and the GOP-- of the bad guys? "In the United States," he wrote, "white people are the dominant group that produces homegrown domestic terrorists. The most recent mass shooting in Las Vegas, in which a white gunman named Stephen Paddock opened fire on a concert of 22,000 people, killing at least 59 and injuring 527, is a case in point. Despite the proliferation of these individuals and the extent of the massacres they create, there is a concerted effort by many not to label them as terrorists."

People who are Muslim and dark skinned typically are called terrorists, while white American men who engage in acts of carnage are dismissed as lone wolves. Thus, terrorism is rendered a racialized affair, a matter of white skin privilege. Stephen Paddock is responsible for the deadliest mass shooting in modern history, and with 23 weapons recovered from the Mandalay Bay hotel rooms where he staged the attack, and 19 recovered from his home, some would reasonably believe he was a terrorist. Yet, there is no consensus as to whether this is the case. This, as white domestic terrorism is going unchecked as white supremacists, rightwing extremists, militias and others commit a majority of the acts of terror in America--115 out of 201 incidents between 2008 and 2016, as opposed to 63 committed by Islamic extremists and 19 committed by leftwing extremists and militias. The problem is so considerable among law enforcement, if not the policymakers, that the FBI is investigating 1,000 white supremacists for suspected domestic terrorism activity, and has been investigating the infiltration of law enforcement by white supremacists, who are more likely to kill police officers.

There are certain forces in society who have an interest in not having white mass shooters labeled as terrorists. While guns are framed as a matter of constitutional rights, arms manufacturing is also a lucrative business. The gun lobby has an interest in producing more and more firearms with minimal regulation and stopping even the most moderate gun control legislation. Further, many politicians depend on millions of dollars in donations from the gun lobby have a tangible financial interest in normalizing white terrorism. In addition, policymakers who would wage war with Muslim nations also have a vested interest in making terrorism a color-coded endeavor relegated only to Islamic groups.

Once a mainstream organization for hunters, marksmen and conservationists, the National Rifle Association has become a hardline Second Amendment absolutist, and perhaps the most successful lobbying group in Washington. The NRA has enjoyed an income boom over the last few years, in 2016 the organization listed its revenue as being over $400 million-- all tax-free for the nonprofit organization with millions in assets and offshore accounts, and whose chief executive Wayne LaPierre earns over $5 million in annual salary.

As Politico reported, the NRA rewrote the Second Amendment, making millions of people believe the amendment is about an individual’s unregulated right to a gun for recreation or self-defense. They have accomplished this through strident antigovernment rhetoric, racism and advocating extremist positions such as legalizing the carrying of weapons anywhere, including streets, bars and churches, the use of cop-killer bullets and military-grade weapons.

Immediately before the Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people, LaPierre said the then-new assault weapons ban “gives jackbooted Government thugs more power to take away our constitutional rights, break in our doors, seize our guns, destroy our property and even injure and kill us.” This stance caused its former president Richard Riley to tell The Washington Post, “We were akin to the Boy Scouts of America . . . and now we’re cast with the Nazis, the skinheads and the Ku Klux Klan.”  President George H.W. Bush resigned from the group as a result.

Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, even called the NRA terrorists. When asked in 2015 if he would come to the table and negotiate with the pro-gun lobby, he said: “This is not a negotiation with the NRA. We don’t negotiate with terrorists.”  The Brady Campaign has argued NRA policies are killing cops by protecting gun manufacturers and dealers from accountability and allowing violent criminals to obtain guns without a background check.

Speaker of the House

The NRA has normalized the amassing of weapons by its white male base by arguing that “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” as LaPierre once said. After each gun massacre, the group and its surrogates claim the issue of guns should not be politicized. Yet, the gun lobby is very political, as the primary force behind the Stand Your Ground Laws used to justify the vigilante killing of Trayvon Martin and other young Black men. The organization also donated $30 million to the Trump campaign after enjoying years of painting Obama as a boogeyman–a Kenyan-born secret Muslim who was leading a plot to confiscate all of the guns-- in order to boost gun sales to historic levels.

The NRA uses fear and race baiting to make Americans believe that minorities, rather than bad policies and easy access to firearms, are the cause of gun violence. Josh Horwitz of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence said the NRA understands the racial dynamics at play. “As long as we can blame something other than guns, America will not have to come to terms with the truth that violence is a complicated phenomenon that is made far more lethal by the easy availability and killing power of firearms,” he said. “And for an organization with an overwhelmingly conservative, white base, that ‘something other’ is minorities.”

Following last year’s Orlando massacre, Chris W. Cox, executive director of NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, said gun control would not prevent attacks, but fighting terrorism would. “It’s time for us to admit that radical Islam is a hate crime waiting to happen. The only way to defeat them is to destroy them-- not destroy the right of law-abiding Americans to defend ourselves” he said. At its 2012 annual conference, the NRA selected radical Islamophobe Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin, who said there should be “no mosques in America” as keynote speaker of a prayer breakfast, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Boykin argued that “Islam is evil” and “a totalitarian way of life” that “should not be protected under the First Amendment.”

...In the wake of Las Vegas, Republicans in Congress are so far moving forward this week with the Hearing Protection Act, which would make it easier to purchase silencers by removing them from the list of items regulated by the National Firearms Act of 1934. Part of a larger package called the Sportsmen Heritage and Recreational Enhancement Act, the silencer provision is designed to protect hunters and hunting dog from hearing loss, according to the sponsors of the bill. Gun control advocates argue such legislation would enable mass shooters by making it harder to hear gunfire and locate gunmen. The original hearing for the legislation had been postponed when Majority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) was critically wounded in a shootout during baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia.

Gun control groups are opposed to other NRA sponsored legislation such as the proposed concealed carry reciprocity, which would force each state to recognize the concealed carry standards of every other state, allowing violent offenders to carry hidden handguns.

In the wake of the deadly white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, with white supremacists and Nazis intimidating people with their military-style weapons, the SPLC called for states to change their open carry laws.

Meanwhile, thanks to the NRA, Congress has now defunded the two decades old Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s gun violence research program, the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, which seeks to treat gun violence as public health issue so as to determine its causes and ultimately prevent it.

In America, where mass shootings and gun proliferation reveal a uniquely American problem, white men are a terrorist threat. But if the NRA has anything to do with it, white men will never be called terrorists.

Why Chuck Schumer Fought To Give Rob Portman Such A Weak Opponent

One of the great (so far) untold stories about the battle for the Senate involves Schumer's very explicit threat to Bernie Sanders to not interfere in primaries against his hand-picked candidates in 4 key states. The threat was loss of a good Senate committee chairmanship in 2017 if Bernie did anything to help progressives against Schumer's Wall Street-friendly picks in Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio. I saw polling yesterday-- that apparently was also seen by a Huff Po writer last night-- showing that Joe Sestak would be beating Toomey by a higher margin right now if he were the nominee instead of Schumercrat, Katie McGinty, who's in a neck-and-neck race with the odious Pat Toomey. Travis Marketing found that with McGinty ahead of Toomey 46-45%, Sestak would be ahead 48-44% right now. I don't know if Grayson would be beating Rubio now had Schumer not spent millions in Florida on Patrick Murphy's behalf (only to abandon the state as soon as Grayson was "safely" knocked out of the race and I don't know if PG Sittenfeld would be doing better than the flailing and failing Schumercrat Ted Strickland, whose campaign not got off the ground against another GOP boob, Rob Portman. I know for certain that Grayson and Sittenfeld would have run far better and more robust campaigns than either Murphy or Strickland.

Over a year ago, Jon Schwarz, writing for The Intercept pointed out a confluence of interests between Schumer and Portman to screw domestic business and regular Americans. "In today’s bitter, poisonous political environment," noted Schwarz, "there’s still one place where Democratic and Republican leaders find common ground: an abiding devotion to multinational corporations." He went on to explain the then just-proposed plan to give "corporations something they’ve always wanted: a so-called 'territorial' tax system in the U.S."

A territorial tax system would only tax U.S.-based multinationals on their profits earned within the United States-- which sounds like it makes sense, except that it’s incredibly easy for big corporations to use financial trickery to sell to a big market like the U.S. but say their profits were earned in another country. Another country that always happens to have a much lower tax rate than here. For instance, in 2010 U.S.-based multinationals claimed that so much of their profits were earned in Bermuda that these profits were 1578 percent the size of Bermuda’s economy.

According to the current law, though, U.S.-based corporations are taxed on those profits at U.S. rates if they ever bring these profits back home. So they just leave them overseas-- right now they have about $2.1 trillion stashed in other countries.

The Schumer-Portman plan would impose a tax on corporate profits purportedly earned in other countries whether they came back to the U.S. or not. But it would do so at a far lower rate than the current standard corporate tax rate of 35 percent-- President Obama has proposed 14 percent, and while Schumer and Portman haven’t come up with a specific number, Portman says 14 percent is much too high.

The obvious consequence if the Schumer-Portman scheme becomes law is that businesses based solely within the U.S. would be at a permanent disadvantage. Multinationals could earn profits in the U.S., get their armies of lawyers and accountants to make these profits appear to have been “earned” in the Cayman Islands, and get taxed at the overseas profit rate. Meanwhile, purely domestic companies would either have to pay the higher domestic rate, or turn into multinationals themselves.

There is a much simpler, fairer, more efficient way to run the tax system for international corporations, called “formulary apportionment.” With formulary apportionment, it wouldn’t matter how many subsidiaries and departments corporations had scattered all over the globe, and which “earned” their profits where. Instead, a formula (based on a combination of a corporation’s sales, payroll and capital stock) would determine what proportion of the corporation “belonged” to each country. Then the corporation’s overall profits would be allocated according to that proportion, and the corporation would pay that country’s tax rate on that proportion.

This would be good for the U.S. overall, given that we’re a huge market that accounts for a large proportion of most multinationals’ sales. It would be good for domestic business, making it possible to raise the same amount of revenue at a lower corporate tax rate. And it would make companies compete based on who made the better product, not who has the better lawyers and accountants. But it would make it far more difficult for multinational corporations to play governments off each other and evade taxes, so don’t look for it anytime soon.

A Democratic campaign staffer told me this week that this was why Schumer was so rough with Bernie about the Ohio race and why he was adamant that a tough candidate like Sittenfeld be given no oxygen against a weak and doddering Strickland who would have zero chance to beat Portman. Portman has spent $21,341,755 to Strickland's $9,537,702. (As of October 19's FEC reporting deadline Portman had $5,144,370 cash left and Strickland had just a tenth of that, $598,658.) Another $28 million has been spent of behalf of Portman by the NRSC and right-wing allies. The DSCC and it's allies have spent far less than half of that on Strickland and gave up on his race almost instantly after he won the primary against Sittenfeld. The RealClearPolitics polling average shows Portman beating Strickland with a 15.6 point spread, 50.3% to 34.7%. The most recent poll, by Quinnipiac last week, is even worse for Strickland, who Portman is beating 56-38%, an 18 point margin.

Maybe the DSCC-- and especially Chuck Schumer-- should get out of the primary business and concentrate on defeating Republicans, not progressive Democrats. This kind of tape drives Schumer insane... and the Democratic Party is made to suffer because of that insanity.

Tomorrow's Non-Presidential Primaries

The corrupt Democratic establishment has been far more successful shutting down primaries than has the corrupt Republican establishment. Primaries are usually the only way it ever challenge entrenched incumbents in gerrymandered safe districts. All Americans actually owe the Tea Party a debt of gratitude for scaring the congressional Republicans and for cleaning out some trash, particularly Wall Street whore Eric Cantor. This cycle, the most comparable action on the Democratic side of the aisle is Tim Canova's challenge to a Democrat as vile and deserving of ignominious defeat as Cantor was: Debbie Wasserman Schultz, although head Blue Dog Kurt Schrader (OR) and So. Jersey machine corruptionist Donald Norcross are also being pounded, respectively, by reformers Dave McTeague and Alex Law.

Tomorrow, though, there aren't many primaries in either party against incumbents that are likely to yield surprises. The one exception might be in northeast Ohio-- (OH-14) between Cleveland's eastern suburbs and the Pennsylvania state line west of Erie-- where dull backbencher David Joyce is being challenged by a crackpot extremist again. In 2014, Joyce fended off the very same crackpot extremist, ex-state Rep. Matt Lynch, 27,547 (55%) to 22,546 (45%). This year though, election officials in Lake, Cuyahoga, Geauga and Summit counties are expecting much, much larger turnouts because of the simultaneous presidential primary. Lynch is counting on Trump and Cruz voters figuring out that he's their man, while Joyce is counting on Kaisich backers voting for him. Lynch has been spending money on tarring Joyce as a compromiser afraid to shut down the government while making it clear that the radicals and extremists back his race against Joyce.

Unfortunately for Lynch, by the Feb. 24 reporting deadline Joyce had already spent $1,058,471 and had another $549,665 ready to deploy, while all he had managed it raise was $173,406. He's getting free airtime on Hate Talk Radio (especially on Beck's show) but will it be enough? Few think so and the establishment and all the newspapers in the area have endorsed Joyce. The DCCC is once again ignoring the race although, presumably, if Lynch wins tomorrow, they'd jump in to try to bolster Michael Wager, the progressive who ran against Joyce in 2014 and is on the ballot again. With Bernie-- or even Hillary-- at the top of the Democratic ticket in November, particularly against Trump, Wager would likely be a shoo-in.



There's also a far right extremist running against John Shimkus in the sprawling, empty southeastern district (IL-15) that skirts all cities and big towns that might have a library. It was Obama's worst-performing district in the state and the last Democrat who ran for the congressional seat, spent $24,243 and won 25% of the vote. This cycle there isn't even a Democrat running at all. Instead, Shimkus, the congressman who repeatedly allowed Mark Foley access to the underage pages he molested for years, is facing far right state Sen. Kyle McCarter, who's being supported-- to the tune of $345,650) by Club for Growth. This is the completely deceptive-- and probably ineffective-- ad they're running in the district:



Shimkus had spent $1,764,009 by Feb. 24 and reported another $995,864 in the bank, while McCarter had spent $245,018 and was getting ready to spend $106,985. American Action Network-- a Chamber of Commerce establishment group run by notorious anti-Semite Fred Malek and ex-Jew Norm Coleman-- spent $200,485 helping Shimkus. Shimkus doesn't appear to be in any real trouble.

The races where there actually could be upsets are both Democratic primaries, a Senate race in Ohio and a House race in Illinois' 10th district. The DSCC and DCCC had each mandated a candidate, the elderly and feeble conservative Ted Strickland in Ohio and the corrupt conservative New Dem Brad Schneider in Illinois. Schneider and his DCCC backers appear to be about to lose to Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering, who is strongly backed by Se. Dick Durbin and endorsed by all the local newspapers.

The Ohio race is a much bigger longshot and Blue America has strongly backed challenger PG Sittenfeld against the NRA's top Democrat, Ted Strickland. Paul Rosenberg covered the primary in great detail forSalon over the weekend. He noted that "when 78-year-old former Ohio governor Dick Celeste endorsed Sittenfeld recently, he directly invoked what was happening in the presidential race. 'What we’re seeing in the presidential campaigns across the country is a growing level of discontent with party leadership in both parties. And I think it was a mistake for the Democratic Party of Ohio, for example, to make an early endorsement in the Senate race,' Celeste said. 'PG Sittenfeld represents a fresh way of moving forward,' he said, pointing to Sittenfeld’s hands-on engagement in dealing with a multitude of urban issues. 'What we have here is a race between the future and the past,' Celeste continued. 'When I say the past, I’m talking about the Democratic Party itself. It is trying to operate in an old way. And that old way was insiders who tried to make decisions and insiders who tried to call the shots. And that’s not what people want.'"

At the most obvious level, this race pits an aging, backward-looking insider against a young, forward-thinking outsider. As Celeste said, it’s “a race between the future and the past.” But the past also means an aging candidate significantly at odds with his party’s voting base-- though with varying degrees of obfuscation-- who has repeatedly refused to debate his opponent… for good reason, it would seem.

On guns, Strickland bragged to a radio caller last year, “As a Congressman I had A and most of the time an A+ rating with the National Rifle Association.” He went on to brag that he voted against the 1994 assault weapons ban that Ohio Gov. John Kasich voted for. As governor, he signed a so-called “castle doctrine” law  that was opposed by Ohio prosecutors and police chiefs associations, who said it would provide legal cover for bad guys hurting folks who had no intention of harming them. He also supported a bill that would allow firearms in family restaurants and bars-- a measure opposed by police groups, which was blocked by the speaker of the state assembly at the end of the 2010 session. He now claims to have undergone a conversion, but even so he admitted, “My record is mixed and spotty and I could be criticized for that.”

On the environment, Strickland got a 100 percent rating from the League of Conservation Voters just one year out of 12 he spent in Congress, as opposed to seven years with scores in the 60s and 70s, and four in the 80s. He voted repeatedly for coal and fossil fuel subsidies (1993, 1994, 1997, 2001), against higher fuel economy standards (2001, 2003, 2005), and against protecting public forest lands (1999, 2000, 2003), along with a range of other anti-environmental votes.

Although Strickland calls himself “pro-choice,” his record is more multiple-choice. He did score 100 percent twice on NARAL’s scorecard, but also scored in the 30s twice, and 60 or lower five times. He cast multiple votes that would restrict abortion rights, including a 1998 vote to override a Clinton veto. As governor, he signed an abortion-ultrasound bill that drew anti-choice activists’ praise.

On all three of these  issues, Sittenfeld’s progressive positions signal a clear-cut break with Strickland. He’s pledged that he will only support a Supreme Court nominee who pledges to uphold Roe v. Wade. He’s got a comprehensive agenda to reduce gun violence: first, by closing loopholes to make background checks truly mandatory; second, by holding gun manufacturers and dealers accountable; and third, by keeping violent weapons out of dangerous hands. On the environment, Sittenfeld has a proven leadership record on the city council, chairing the committee overseeing all environmental issues. When a GOP plan was launched to defund the city’s Office of Environmental Quality (OEQ) as part of a cost-cutting plan, he alerted local activists to fight back, pointing out that “OEQ saves tax-payers more money each year than the Department costs-- so axing it would represent broken fiscal management and in no way be productive for our budget situation.” Regarding global warming, he supports Obama’s Clean Power Plan, opposes the Keystone Pipeline, and says “the need to act has never been more urgent or more important.”

But beyond these key issue positions, reflecting the vast majority of Ohio’s Democratic base, Sittenfeld has a mature sense of how intricately different issues and ideas interweave and synergize with one another, based on his own lived experience. Before being elected to city council, Sittenfeld served as the assistant director of the Community Learning Center Institute, which played a key role in dramatically transforming the city’s public schools. He described the result in a speech laying out his urban agenda last year:

Virtually all of our schools are new. But instead of using them only during the school day-- and then shooing the kids out of the building and into the streets-- we’ve turned them into bustling, round-the-clock community centers.

Co-located health and dental facilities…. adult education programs… and enhanced cultural and recreational opportunities have removed barriers to student learning, boosted academic achievement, and sparked broader neighborhood revitalization.

Rather than seeing education through the narrow lens of high-stakes testing of individual students, destroying neighborhood schools in the process, as has happened in Chicago and other major cities, Cincinnati’s approach was the complete opposite, seeing education as the process of a whole community creating a better future by investing in its children holistically, synergizing different support systems that had previously been disconnected, or even absent. Similarly, a careful reading of his issue agenda shows a constant awareness of how different pieces of the progressive policy puzzle fit together.

Under the heading of “rebuilding the middle class,” he says he will “fight for a livable minimum wage, expanded overtime pay, better child care assistance, family leave, and paid sick days,” and “reject bad trade deals that create an uneven playing field for American workers,” pledging to “always be steadfast in standing up for workers’ rights, including collective bargaining,” which Ohio Republicans have fiercely attacked since 2010. At the same time, he won’t be pigeonholed as defending dying industries of the past, saying, “We won’t rebuild the middle class by yearning for yesterday or clinging to a past that will never return. We must embrace innovation, champion change, and understand the tools of tomorrow, including ensuring fast, affordable internet for all Americans.”

His positive stance toward innovation is reflected in other issue areas he stresses as well-- most notably education and the environment. And he has a detailed urban policy agenda, encompassing four major components: ending mass incarceration, improving police-community relations and better gun safety, jobs and economic opportunity, and improving urban schools and making college affordable. This is not a laundry list of issues in his view, but a tightly interrelated set of concerns. Being grounded in the reality of that interrelation is arguably Sittenfeld’s greatest strength-- and given the nature of the Democratic Party’s diverse constituency, it’s just the sort of leadership strength the party desperately needs. “All of us want our best selves represented by who we cast a vote for,” Celeste said. “And I believe PG Sittenfeld represents the best of us.”

But the party also needs leaders who can bring people together in different ways. And that’s precisely where the outsiders excel over the anointed insiders in the other three states as well.

The state's newspapers are all disgusted with Strickland for ducking debates and have almost all endorsed Sittenfeld. Hillary Clinton, who makes believe she opposes the NRA and cares about families, is strongly behind Strickland despite his very Republican record that spans decades. Summing up months of coverage, the Columbus Dispatch closed Saturday by noting that "Ted Strickland, a 74-year-old veteran politician, has been employing a rope-a-dope strategy ... Meanwhile, Sittenfeld, a 31-year-old Cincinnati councilman, has pressed for debates, held news conferences and traveled the state." And the final Toledo Blade editorial reported that "Strickland...has largely limited his campaign appearances to friendly audiences, and even other Democrats have noted his overall lack of visibility... In a year in which voters are turning to insurgent candidates at every level, in search of new voices and fresh faces, such a contrast could work in Mr. Sittenfeld’s favor."

But Chuck Schumer doesn't want energetic and committed independent thinkers like Sittenfeld in the Senate. He wants tired old conservative hacks like Strickland who will just do what they're told. Schumer has no realistic hope that a doddering and incoherent Strickland could actually beat Republican incumbent Rob Portman and he and Tester are just gambling that November will see a battle between Hillary and Trump and that she will be seen as the lesser evil and have the coattails needed to drag Strickland's NRA carcass across the finish line. Ohio Democratic primary voters should give Chuck Schumer the finger tomorrow and nominate PG Sittenfeld. Beyond tomorrow's primaries... in Illinois and Ohio:

Why Primaries Are Just As Important As General Elections-- Sometimes More So

The SisterGiant/Blue America Progressive Candidates Forum video above features interviews by Marianne Williamson with Alan Grayson (D-FL), DuWayne Gregory (D-NY) and Alex Law (D-NJ). DuWayne is already the official Democratic Party candidate running for the Long Island seat held by Republican neocon Peter King. Grayson and Law, however, are in important primaries against conservative Democrats. Both of them are on Bernie's team and both of them challenging establishment bosses' picks for the offices they seek. Grayson, particularly, discusses that in some depth with Marianne. Also discussing the idea of these anti-establishment primaries at some depth was Paul Rosenberg, writing for Salon Saturday. Rosenberg focuses on 4 Senate races and somehow forgot to include the Maryland primary between progressive champion Donna Edwards and establishment Wall Street hack Chris Van Hollen. When he wrote of Wall Street errand boy, Patrick Murphy, Grayson's corrupt conservative opponent, that he "is a walking caricature of what’s wrong with the establishment," he could also have been as easily referring to Van Hollen.

The Democrats' DC Establishment, epitomized by fully-owned Wall Street whores Chuck Schumer, Steve Israel, Steny Hoyer and Debbie Wasserman Schultz hate, hate, hate primaries. What they really hate are people-- and primaries, first and foremost, are a political manifestation of people challenging their business model. In his introduction, Rosenberg notes that "in four key states, each among the Democrats’ best bets to take over Republican seats, upstart challengers are mounting primary contests against the candidates party leaders feel have the best chance next November. In Ohio, 31-year-old Cincinnati City Council member P.G. Sittenfeld is challenging establishment-backed, 75-year-old former Gov. Ted Strickland. In Illinois, former Chicago Urban League president Andrea Zopp is challenging another establishment candidate, Iraq War veteran Rep. Tammy Duckworth. In Pennsylvania, former Rep. Joe Sestak, whose unconventional style has consistently irritated Washington Democrats, is taking on Katie McGinty, a protégé of former Gov. Ed Rendell. And in Florida, liberal firebrand Rep. Alan Grayson is loudly attacking his House colleague Patrick Murphy, the establishment favorite, in the race for Marco Rubio’s seat."

It would be oversimplifying things to portray these races simply as reflections of Bernie Sanders’ challenge to Hillary Clinton, and nothing more. But given the dynamics of how top-down party endorsements and funding work, and the kind of grass-roots energy needed to challenge them, there is no denying that strong similarities are present.

In fact, when 78-year-old former Ohio governor Dick Celeste endorsed Sittenfeld recently, he directly invoked what was happening in the presidential race. “What we’re seeing in the presidential campaigns across the country is a growing level of discontent with party leadership in both parties. And I think it was a mistake for the Democratic Party of Ohio, for example, to make an early endorsement in the Senate race,” Celeste said. “PG Sittenfeld represents a fresh way of moving forward,” he said, pointing to Sittenfeld’s hands-on engagement in dealing with a multitude of urban issues.

“What we have here is a race between the future and the past,” Celeste continued. “When I say the past, I’m talking about the Democratic Party itself. It is trying to operate in an old way. And that old way was insiders who tried to make decisions and insiders who tried to call the shots. And that’s not what people want.”

What’s different in the different races is sometimes striking-- both on the establishment side and amongst the outsiders, who in at least two cases could plausibly have been establishment picks. The strongest establishment candidate, in terms of résumé, is former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, who lost re-election in 2010, his last time on the ballot. The weakest, Kathleen McGinty, in next-door Pennsylvania, has never won a campaign before. She only ran once, coming in fourth in the 2014 Democratic primary for Pennsylvania governor, with 7.7% of the vote. The other two are two-term congressmembers who’ve never run statewide. If it sounds like a motley crew for the establishment team, with no candidate truly in their prime, well, it is-- a further sign of how weak and ineffectual the party establishment is. That alone is reason enough to doubt the soundness of their reasoning, even on their own terms.

In contrast, party elders are spurning at least three progressive outsider candidates who have complementary strengths that could help anchor the Democratic Party’s growth in years to come. In Ohio, as already suggested, P.G. Sittenfeld is the very epitome of a fresh face, a near-perfect embodiment of the promise that millennials can bring to politics, with a strong sense of how issues that Strickland barely seems to notice are intimately interrelated. Politico noted that “National Democrats were initially excited when he entered the contest earlier this year. His youth, relatively brief career in politics, his liberal stances-- all set up strong contrasts with well-funded GOP Sen. Rob Portman,” contrasts that are strikingly absent in Strickland, who last won an election a decade ago, having lost in 2010, when John Kasich defeated him in his re-election bid. In Florida, Alan Grayson already has a national reputation as an outspoken, no-nonsense progressive, though he’s adopted a more subtle, get-things-done-incrementally approach in the current GOP-dominated House. Thus he’s been both strikingly more progressive than Patrick Murphy-- the Republican-turned-Democrat the establishment is backing-- and more effective as well.

In Pennsylvania, the party is shunning both Sestak-- a retired admiral who lost by just 2 percent in the GOP’s 2010 wave election –and John Fetterman, the Harvard-educated mayor of Braddock, whose fight to revitalize that Rust Belt town echoes powerfully with the message of Bernie Sanders, whom he has endorsed. In Illinois, though, Zopp’s long experience-- in public policy, not politics-- is the sort of thing one expects the establishment to value, and perhaps if the establishment were still at the top of its game, they would have backed her-- or at least not endorsed someone else. The common thread throughout all these races is not only the inward-looking arrogance of decision-making without public input, but also the lack of any sort of long-term vision guiding party leadership. Even if their anointed candidates all won, it’s extremely dubious they would advance the party’s fortunes in the long run—much less the people they are supposed to serve. Let’s look at each of the four states in turn, to see what sorts of lessons could be learned.

These are brief excerpts from Rosenberg on each of the candidates:

Ohio: Sittenfeld vs. Strickland

At the most obvious level, this race pits an aging, backward-looking insider against a young, forward-thinking outsider. As Celeste said, it’s “a race between the future and the past.” But the past also means an aging candidate significantly at odds with his party’s voting base-- though with varying degrees of obfuscation-- who has repeatedly refused to debate his opponent… for good reason, it would seem.

Florida: Grayson vs. Murphy

In announcing for Senate he said, “In the past two years in Congress, I’ve written more bills, passed more amendments on the floor of the House and enacted more of my bills into law than any other member of the House-- No. 1 out of 435 of us,” a claim that Politifact, after its typical long-winded analysis, finally admitted was “accurate,” adding that it “needs additional information, so we rate it Mostly True.”

The establishment doesn’t like Grayson, which is just one more reason why the base does. But the establishment pick, Patrick Murphy, 32, is a walking caricature of what’s wrong with the establishment, including attacks on the party from the right. First off, he was a lifelong Republican (donating $2,300 to Mitt Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign) until just four months before first declaring his candidacy running for Congress as a Democrat. He has won just two house elections-- the first a squeaker, the second by comfortable margin, thanks in part to spending over $5.3 million, the most of any Democrat seeking re-election. At least he has the money side of being the establishment candidate down. But he’s stabbed Democrats in the back on the Keystone pipeline and on Benghazi-- two of the GOP’s favorite sweet spots. He’d make more sense as a GOP establishment up-and-comer, not a Democratic one... The alternative is Alan Grayson, a candidate whose passion, intelligence, integrity and guts have a tendency to remind folks of what they’re missing. Of course that’s not how his opponents in the party want to put it. They argue that he’s “too liberal” for Florida voters, but as Politico noted:

Grayson’s team disputes claims that his outspoken liberalism would hurt the party’s chances in Florida, arguing that Murphy’s moderation would be more of an impediment. Kevin Franck, a senior adviser to Grayson’s campaign, notes that President Barack Obama won Florida twice, while the moderate former Republican Gov. Charlie Crist lost the 2014 gubernatorial race.

“National Democrats have a fundamentally outdated view of how to win statewide elections in swing states,” Franck said, insisting Grayson’s boldness is necessary to excite low-turnout, Democratic-leaning demographics, adding: “Which candidate in the primary is more like President Obama, and which is more like Charlie Crist?”

Pennsylvania: Sestak and Fetterman vs. McGinty

The situation in Pennsylvania is more complex. By all rights, Joe Sestak should be an ideal establishment candidate, a retired admiral, who the party originally recruited to run for Senate in the 2010 cycle, before Arlen Specter switched parties, knowing he would lose his primary fight to Pat Toomey. The party then embraced Specter-- from Obama and Biden on down-- but Sestak refused to bow out, defeated Specter, and came close to winning the seat in the Tea Party wave election of 2010.

When Sestak announced again last year, party insiders seemed to hold a grudge. “There just isn’t a really warm feeling toward him among many party insiders,” one observer said at the time, in a story that also cited a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, saying that Pennsylvania had “a lot” of Democrats who could beat Toomey. But months later, a long string of them had bailed out, and the party seemed to be moving toward accepting Sestak, before veering away again.  The fact that they settled on Kathleen McGinty-- as already mentioned, an electoral nonentity-- signals something profoundly wrong with the party.

But there’s also a very exciting outsider candidate as well. John Fetterman, the 46-year-old tattooed Harvard-educated mayor of the majority-black working class rustbelt community of Braddock, Pennsylvania, a man who despite his town’s small size has taken on enormous problems, and gained a national stage, appearing on various TV shows-- David Letterman, Bill Maher, Stephen Colbert, etc. Fetterman has polled virtually as well against Toomey as Sestak or McGinty in a recent PPP poll, and recently endorsed Bernie Sanders, explaining at Daily Kos:

Bernie Sanders and I are both running for the same reason: we believe that politics is about standing up for people instead of catering to corporate influence. We represent everyday working people who have been cut out of the political process by big money.

Illinois: Zopp vs. Duckworth

The least questionable of the establishment candidates in this bunch may be Tammy Duckworth, while her opponent, Andrea Zopp, may be the least obvious outsider. It would be relatively easy to imagine their roles being reversed. But it really helps to know a bit of recent history here.

Duckworth, like Murphy, is only a two-term representative, but a wounded Iraq War combat veteran (double amputee) who credibly fits the establishment mold, even if she is obviously being rushed. But being rushed is her Achilles heel. Duckworth lost her first race for Congress, in part because she was running in a district she didn’t live in-- just as she’s currently lacking in statewide experience. In 2006 she was recruited by the  Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) to run against a grassroots, anti-war, single-payer activist, Christine Cegelis, who was responsible for making the district competitive in the first place, with her 2004 run against long-time incumbent Henry Hyde (of the “Hyde Amendment” infamy). Cegelis ran without DCCC support (they considered the seat “unwinnable”) but with the support of Howard Dean as one of the “Dean Dozen.” Despite being outspent 3-1, Cegelis got 44% of the vote in what was still a fairly solid GOP year, and she never stopped organizing in the district. Her strong showing was credited by some with getting Hyde to retire, and with the seat now open, the DCCC then decided to recruit Duckworth, who narrowly beat Cegalis in the primary, but then lost to the Republican candidate that November. Presumably, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee likes Duckworth now for the same reasons the DCCC liked her in 2006. And they could well be making a similar mistake.

Zopp is as conservative and establishment as Duckworth, which is why Blue America hasn't gotten involved in that race. In the Pennsylvania race we like Sestak and Fetterman both, though Fetterman is the more progressive candidate and we're raising money for him on our Bernie candidates ActBlue page, which also includes Grayson. But the Blue America official Senate page is all about raising money for Grayson, Donna Edwards, P.G. Sittenfeld and Russ Feingold, all rebels who can be expected to stand up for principles and constituents regardless of what a tin-hat authoritarian like Schumer (or Trump) has to say. You can access that page by tapping the thermometer:

P.G. Sittenfeld or Ted Strickland: Climate or Coal?

Climate champion P.G. Sittenfeld is the one choice for the U.S. Senate from Ohio

by Gaius Publius

I've been watching the Ohio Senate primary contest between former governor Ted Strickland and progressive P.G. Sittenfeld with interest. I keep having to remind myself that Strickland is actually a Democrat and that the race is still in the primary phase. The first is a lie (Strickland is a "Democrat" only, not a real one), and the second is an opportunity (we can replace him on the Democratic ticket).

For those keeping count, pretend-anti-TPP Sen. Rob Portman is the incumbent Senator and a Republican. You may not know, even if you live in Ohio, that Portman was a Bush-appointed U.S. Trade Representative:

Portman spent significant time out of the United States negotiating trade agreements with roughly 30 countries, visiting Brazil, Burkina Faso, China, France, Hong Kong, India, Mexico, South Korea, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.^[32] During his tenure, Portman also helped to win passage of the Central American Free Trade Agreement.^[59] Portman utilized a network of former House colleagues to get support for the treaty to lift trade barriers between the United States and Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Honduras.

That's a lot of countries to screw over American workers with. Portman was busy. After that, he went into lawyering:

On November 8, 2007, Portman joined the law firm of Squire Sanders as part of the firms transactional and international trade practice in Cincinnati, Ohio. His longtime chief of staff, Rob Lehman, also joined the firm as a lobbyist in their Washington, D.C. office.^[73][74]

Another self-serving "public" servant who make money negotiating rotten trade agreements, then made money representing corporations that benefit from them.

Portman is considered a vulnerable Republican senator this year, which is why it's so important to defeat him. Portman is also one of the reasons that neither Obama nor McConnell will bring TPP to Congress until the lame duck. If it comes up before the election, Portman, to save his seat, will have to pretend to care about Ohio and vote No. After the election, win or lose, he can vote his wallet, his history, and aggrandize his possible future as a lobbyist.

The candidate Ohioans choose to replace Portman is the question, since the seat is winnable — thus the importance of the Democratic primary between Sittenfeld and Strickland.

Sittenfeld or Strickland — Climate or Coal?

The virtues of these candidates on a number of issues have been discussed in these pages — corruption, gun violence, and so on. Each comparison shows Sittenfeld the clear winner. (If you like, you can help him here.) But a comparison that has not been well covered is coal, the environment, and the climate.

Put simply, a vote for Strickland is a vote for coal in Ohio (and frankly, for a neo-Stone Age life for your great grandchildren, not that Strickland cares). A vote for Sittenfeld, on the other hand, is a vote for a carbon-free future.

The following piece from The Hill illustrates the first point well. As you read, note the main idea — that candidate Strickland is distancing himself from Obama's "Clean Power Plan," and instead, returning to his first love, coal (my emphasis):

Strickland’s coal policies dust up possible Senate bid

Ted Strickland, Democrats’ top prospect to take on Ohio Sen. Rob Portman (R), is facing a litany of questions about his ties to the clean-energy industry that could weigh heavily on coal-country voters.

To prepare for a possible Senate bid, the former Ohio governor quietly stepped down last week from a senior role with the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank and advocacy group that has promoted a shift away from coal.

Critics are tying him to the group’s environmental policies and to Carol Browner, the former architect of President Obama’s climate policies, who is a distinguished senior fellow at CAP. “CAP has people like Carol Browner right down the hall from him in the office, and we can’t in the industry trust someone whose ties to the war on coal go that deep,” said Christian Palich, interim president of the Ohio Coal Association, a GOP-leaning group.

Strickland tried to inoculate himself from attacks shortly before leaving by touting the think tank’s new report calling for reform of coal subsidies to help Appalachian coal compete with cheaper Western coal. He argues that Western coal producers enjoy an unfair advantage because their royalty rates have not increased in 40 years.

The apparent move to rebuff the possible damage is a sign that coal politics could figure prominently in the Ohio Senate race next year. Strickland, however, said 2016 was not a motivating factor.

“I care about Ohio. I care about coal communities,” he said, according to The Associated Press, “long before there was any talk of me entering a political race of any kind.”

If you read this too quickly, you'd think that the Strickland deception was to pretend to distance himself from Obama's plan. But that deception hides this — that Strickland has a genuine and longstanding love of the carbon extraction industry, including coal mining and fracking for oil and methane ("America's natural gas").

For example, in Congress Strickland was a strong supporter of coal subsidies, and also voted multiple times to prevent increases in fuel economy standards. He voted No on amendments like these:

• HR 2520, House Vote 337, 7/15/93 — An amendment to cut $50 million in funding for coal research and development, and to then transfer $25 million to energy conservation research and development and the other $25 million to deficit reduction.
   
• HR 4602, House Vote 271, 6/23/94 — An amendment that called for cutting $27 million from funds earmarked from coal R&D.
   
• HR 4, House Vote 311, 8/1/01 — An amendment to increase fuel economy standards by closing the light-truck loophole for fuel economy standards.
   
• HR 6, House Vote 132, 4/10/03 — An amendment that would reduce the amount of oil consumed by U.S. automobiles by five percent by 2010.

And many others like them. Strickland was quite consistent. Do Ohioans want to replace Rob Portman with Ted Strickland, a reliable coal, oil and gas industry representative? Ohio can do much better.

Sittenfeld Understands — We Must Eliminate Carbon to Survive

Sittenfeld is more than just an up-and-coming face in the strong, progressive Bernie Sanders mold. He understands that the future of America, and the future of the world, does not lie with the carbon industry. If you believe that a carbon-free future is essential for your children and grandchildren, P.G. Sittenfeld is your candidate and Ted Strickland is the opposite — your enemy.

I've reached out to the Sittenfeld campaign on this issue. Here's Sittenfeld on carbon and the climate (emphasis mine):

I have endeavored to be a leader wherever and whenever possible on climate change, including my early and unwavering opposition to the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. I firmly believe we can and should do what it takes to entirely decarbonize the U.S. economy as soon as possible.

You can't get much clearer than that.

If you believe in a carbon-free future, here are two things you can do now. First, please help P.G. Sittenfeld in his fight for the U.S. Senate. Second, if you're a voter in Ohio, by all means, vote in the coming primary.

Do it for the children.

GP
 

Is The Corrupt DC Democratic Establishment Trying To Take Over Your State's Democracy? It Is In Ohio

At tonight's SisterGiant/BlueAmerica progressive candidates forum (6pm, PT; 9pm back East), Marianne is interviewing congressional candidates Mike Noland from Illinois and Mike Manypenny from West Virginia. Last night she spoke with Rep. Ted Lieu (CA), Carol Shea-Porter (NH) and Rubin Kihuen (NV). That link just above allows you to watch the brand new interviews and the archived ones as well. Yesterday Bob Cesca brought a different race into focus in making a point Marianne has been making as well-- despite all the commotion about the presidential race and the Trumpf flying penis circus, campaigns for the Senate and House are absolutely crucial and shouldn't be overlooked. Cesca illustrates his point with a look at one of the Blue America Senate candidates, P.G. Sittenfeld in Ohio, who Chuck Schumer and the corrupt Democratic establishment have been working hard to sabotage.

In Ohio, probably the most important swing state in the country, there is also a race going on for the U.S. Senate, one of maybe four or five that will determine who controls the upper chamber of Congress. The Republican, Rob Portman, is exactly the Jeb-like stooge you'd expect. He's George W. Bush's former trade negotiator and budget guy, someone who thinks defunding Planned Parenthood, opposing a minimum wage increase, blocking universal background checks on guns and refusing to do his job as laid out in the Constitution, to put a new justice on the Supreme Court.

But the real race here right now is in the state's Democratic Primary. While I'd rather not attack a Democrat, there is just too much of a difference between the young, urban-based, future-looking campaign of P.G. Sittenfeld, and the Blue Dog-ish, uninspiring, ghost-like campaign of the one-term former governor of Ohio, Ted Strickland. The former can beat Rob Portman, the latter simply has no chance, and will lose like he did his reelection campaign in 2010.

P.G. is a progressive's progressive in the mold of former senators John Glenn and the late Howard Metzenbaum, as well as current U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown. He's for scrapping the cap on Social Security. He supports universal background checks on guns, as well as forward thinking measures like microstamping of ammunition. He's for paid family leave, a $15 minimum wage and bold measures to do all we can to ameliorate the climate crisis. He's also fully, proudly and loudly pro-choice.



The DSCC endorsed Ted Strickland attacked Rob Portman rightfully for disrespecting Article II by refusing to support a new Supreme Court Justice, while refusing to debate his primary opponent. This is not a D-rated NRA supporter, like Bernie Sanders, but an A-plus rated NRA booster, who voted against every single gun-safety measure ever placed before him. He thought guns in bars were a good idea. And Stand Your Ground. And immunity for gun companies.

Strickland fought against paid sick leave; wouldn't raise taxes on the wealthy as governor because he said it would hurt the economy (so he cut mental health funding and library funding instead); he voted to get rid of Glass-Steagall, and got a 30 percent rating from NARAL at one point in Congress (which is considered anti-choice); and recently said he'd support a Supreme Court Justice who is anti-choice. Before having his spokesperson walk it back. He wanted a "pause" in Syrian refugees, opposes a $15 minimum wage and was a friend of coal as governor, who when asked about Keystone refused to take a position because it was "controversial."



Is this what Democrats think counts as leadership? Do Ohio progressives think this kind of cautious, hide-and-go-seek approach to important issues is what will inspire people? There are also the matters of he fact that Strickland is not someone who can sit in this seat for numerous terms, as someone who would be 75 years old when sworn in. And the fact that while P.G. is vivacious and charismatic, Strickland is halting and awkward.

This might be why the only two-term Democratic governor in the past 50 years in Ohio, Dick Celeste, has endorsed P.G. It honestly couldn't be clear who will be a better Senator, and he has a chance of getting there, unlike his opponent. More of the same isn't selling this election season.

This is too important a national race to let slide by without getting engage. Progressives should support P.G. Ohio Democrats must vote for him. We should all contribute what we can. He is the ascendant Obama coalition; let's make sure he ascends right now.

Best yet, P.G. Sittenfeld received the endorsement of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul actor Jonathan Banks.

This race is another example of Schumer trying to tell locals who he and his paymasters on Wall Street want in the Senate. He's doing the same thing to Democrats in Pennsylvania, in Illinois, in Maryland and in Florida, and in every case he is dictating that THE Democratic candidate will be a less progressive, more "easily managed" inside-the-box thinker. Just this morning, Alan Grayson in Florida wrote to his supporters that the establishment in Washington doesn't want anyone else like Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders in the U.S. Senate. That's why they're trying so hard to defeat us."

Last May, as Reuters reported, big Wall Street banks-- specifically, Citigroup, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America – were so concerned about Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s call to break up the big banks that they threatened to cut off their campaign contributions to Senate Democrats.

You didn’t hear Wall Street deny the story. How could they? And you didn’t hear Senate Democrats say that they would ignore the threat. How could they? They’re hooked on Wall Street sewer money. Chuck Schumer, for instance, the would-be Senate Democratic Leader, has taken $23 million in cold, hard cash from Wall Street all by himself.

Well, Senate Democrats couldn’t get rid of unbought progressives like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren who had already won their seats in the Senate. But they could appease their Wall Street masters by making sure that no new unbought progressives joined their ranks.

You know, someone like me.

And if they could elect someone like Patrick Murphy instead-- someone who has taken more sewer money from Wall Street during his time in Congress than any other House Democrat-- well, that would be a twofer.

Let’s face the facts. The corrupt, mendacious Democratic Establishment in Washington has promised Wall Street “no more Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders types in the U.S. Senate.” That’s why they have gone all-out to drag empty-suit Wall Street errand boy Patrick Murphy across the finish line.

...When we win, it will curtail the omnipotence of the Democratic Establishment, the billionaires, the multinational corporations, and the special interests who are dominating the priorities in Congress. They know it. And they fear it. That’s why they keep coming after me and my family with ridiculous attacks that have no basis in reality. And the stenographers posing as reporters in the corporate-owned lapdog media are more than happy to act as conveyer belts for their “oppo dump.”

To hell with them. To hell with them all. Because when I have your help, they are powerless. With your help, we will win, we will wash them away, and we will make America a land of justice, equality and peace.

Grayson's description applies in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Illinois as much as it does in Florida. Schumer has gotten his bankster buddies to help finance the Schumercrats he promises them will balance out Elizabeth Brown, Bernie Sanders, Jeff Merkley and Sherrod Brown. This is what the Schumercrats have taken from the Finance Sector so far this cycle, amounts that are rapidly rising:

• Patrick Murphy (FL)- $872,350
• Chris Van Hollen (MD)- $390,807
• Ted Strickland (OH)- $365,530
• Tammy Duckworth (IL)- $274,264

Please consider be part of some grassroots power to send Alan Grayson, Donna Edwards and P.G. Sittenfeld to the Senate instead.

When Trump Talks Trade, Voters Listen

Donald Trump talking about trade during his March 8 victory speech

by Gaius Publius

Shorter Thomas Frank: It's easier for liberals to blame Trump voters for racism than to blame themselves for the job-loss and pain of the working class.

I want to share a piece about Donald Trump, racism and working class voters. It's long enough (and good enough) to ask you to read the whole thing. It's by Thomas Frank, the What's the Matter with Kansas writer, looking at the Trump phenomenon and asking why.

Before you read, though, take a moment to watch less than two minutes of Donald Trump above, from his victory speech after winning in Michigan and Mississippi. I've cued it up to start at the remarks I want to highlight, Trump discussing our trade deficit.

Now Thomas Frank, writing in The Guardian. He starts by noting the utter invisibility of real working Americans to our elite class, including our media elites, and especially our liberal media elites (my emphasis throughout):

Millions of ordinary Americans support Donald Trump. Here's why

When he isn’t spewing insults, the Republican frontrunner is hammering home a powerful message about free trade and its victims

Let us now address the greatest American mystery at the moment: what motivates the supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump?

I call it a “mystery” because the working-class white people who make up the bulk of Trump’s fan base show up in amazing numbers for the candidate, filling stadiums and airport hangars, but their views, by and large, do not appear in our prestige newspapers. On their opinion pages, these publications take care to represent demographic categories of nearly every kind, but “blue-collar” is one they persistently overlook. The views of working-class people are so foreign to that universe that when New York Times columnist Nick Kristof wanted to “engage” a Trump supporter last week, he made one up, along with this imaginary person’s responses to his questions.

When members of the professional class wish to understand the working-class Other, they traditionally consult experts on the subject. And when these authorities are asked to explain the Trump movement, they always seem to zero in on one main accusation: bigotry. Only racism, they tell us, is capable of powering a movement like Trump’s, which is blowing through the inherited structure of the Republican party like a tornado through a cluster of McMansions.

The conclusion of these writers is this:

The Trump movement is a one-note phenomenon, a vast surge of race-hate. Its partisans are not only incomprehensible, they are not really worth comprehending.

And yet...

A lot of people are racists, including those not supporting Trump. But people have other concerns as well, especially working people. They are dying faster than they used to, from drugs and despair, and they fear for their jobs and their families, for very good reasons. This economy is failing them.

They also hate — and understand — "free trade."

Trump Also Talks Trade

Donald Trump talks about more than just race and immigration. He talks about trade and the trade deficit, an issue that powered Bernie Sanders to his Michigan victory as well. From the New York Times:

Trade and Jobs Key to Victory for Bernie Sanders

No Democratic presidential candidate had campaigned in Traverse City, Mich., in decades until Senator Bernie Sanders pulled up to the concert hall near the Sears store on Friday. Some 2,000 people mobbed him when he arrived, roaring in approval as he called the country’s trade policies, and Hillary Clinton’s support for them, “disastrous.”

“If the people of Michigan want to make a decision about which candidate stood with workers against corporate America and against these disastrous trade agreements, that candidate is Bernie Sanders,” Mr. Sanders said in Traverse City, about 250 miles north of Detroit.

Mr. Sanders pulled off a startling upset in Michigan on Tuesday by traveling to communities far from Detroit and by hammering Mrs. Clinton on an issue that resonated in this still-struggling state: her past support for trade deals that workers here believe robbed them of manufacturing jobs. Almost three-fifths of voters said that trade with other countries was more likely to take away jobs, according to exit polls by Edison Research, and those voters favored Mr. Sanders by a margin of more than 10 points.

There is no question — America's billionaire-friendly, job-destroying trade policy is toxic — again, literally. That's why Obama and his bipartisan "free trade" enablers in Congress have to pass TPP, if they can, in post-election lame duck session. TPP is also toxic to political careers, and only lame ducks and the recently-elected can vote for it.

Frank again on Trump:

Last week, I decided to watch several hours of Trump speeches for myself. I saw the man ramble and boast and threaten and even seem to gloat when protesters were ejected from the arenas in which he spoke. I was disgusted by these things, as I have been disgusted by Trump for 20 years. But I also noticed something surprising. In each of the speeches I watched, Trump spent a good part of his time talking about an entirely legitimate issue, one that could even be called left-wing.

Yes, Donald Trump talked about trade. In fact, to judge by how much time he spent talking about it, trade may be his single biggest concern – not white supremacy. Not even his plan to build a wall along the Mexican border, the issue that first won him political fame. He did it again during the debate on 3 March: asked about his political excommunication by Mitt Romney, he chose to pivot and talk about ... trade.

It seems to obsess him: the destructive free-trade deals our leaders have made, the many companies that have moved their production facilities to other lands, the phone calls he will make to those companies’ CEOs in order to threaten them with steep tariffs unless they move back to the US.

On the subject more generally, Frank adds:

Trade is an issue that polarizes Americans by socio-economic status. To the professional class, which encompasses the vast majority of our media figures, economists, Washington officials and Democratic power brokers, what they call “free trade” is something so obviously good and noble it doesn’t require explanation or inquiry or even thought. Republican and Democratic leaders alike agree on this, and no amount of facts can move them from their Econ 101 dream.

To the remaining 80 or 90% of America, trade means something very different. There’s a video going around on the internet these days that shows a room full of workers at a Carrier air conditioning plant in Indiana being told by an officer of the company that the factory is being moved to Monterrey, Mexico and that they’re all going to lose their jobs.

As I watched it, I thought of all the arguments over trade that we’ve had in this country since the early 1990s, all the sweet words from our economists about the scientifically proven benevolence of free trade, all the ways in which our newspapers mock people who say that treaties like the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement allow companies to move jobs to Mexico.

Well, here is a video of a company moving its jobs to Mexico, courtesy of Nafta. This is what it looks like. The Carrier executive talks in that familiar and highly professional HR language about the need to “stay competitive” and “the extremely price-sensitive marketplace.” A worker shouts “Fuck you!” at the executive. The executive asks people to please be quiet so he can “share” his “information”. His information about all of them losing their jobs.

Frank goes to greater length, and again, please click through. But you get the idea. This is what Trump is speaking to, whether he means what he says or not, and this is what his voters are responding to, whether they like his racism or not. After all, haven't you, at least once, voted for someone with qualities you dislike because of policies you do like?

Whose Fault Is This? Both Parties, But Especially the Democratic Elites

One final point. Frank takes on the issue of responsibility:

Trump’s words articulate the populist backlash against liberalism that has been building slowly for decades ... Yet still we cannot bring ourselves to look the thing in the eyes. We cannot admit that we liberals bear some [or most] of the blame for its emergence, for the frustration of the working-class millions, for their blighted cities and their downward spiraling lives. So much easier to scold them for their twisted racist souls, to close our eyes to the obvious reality of which Trumpism is just a crude and ugly expression: that neoliberalism has well and truly failed.

I am certain, if this comes up in a general election debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, she could very likely get her clock cleaned; not certainly, but certainly very likely. First, she can only equivocate, and Trump will have none of it. (Trump: "Let me understand. You were for this before you were against it? So ... will you be for it again next year? I'm just trying to understand.")

Second, this is a change election, Trump is one of only two change candidates in the race, and Clinton is not the other one.

Here's that Carrier Air Conditioning "we're moving to Mexico" video that Frank mentioned above. Take a look, but prepare to feel some pain as you watch:

Are all of these people racists, the man walking past the camera at the 30-second mark, for example? Of course not. What these people do have in common is hopelessness, powerlessness, and creeping despair. If you were any of those people, would your response be different than theirs? And if you were any of these people, is your candidate Hillary Clinton?

My view: In a Trump–Sanders contest, Sanders gets at least half of these voters. In a Trump–Clinton contest, Trump gets them all.

Something for the "free"-trading leaders of the Democratic Party to consider as they move toward the convention and the 2016 fate that awaits them.

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GP