How Do Crackpot Republicans At The NRSC See The Senate Races Unfolding? -- A Non-Confidential Memo

lesser evil

All-- not some-- of the public polling show the Republicans losing the Senate in November. The newest Marist poll of Arizona voters, for example, was released yesterday by NBC News. First time candidate, Democrat Mark Kelly, is eviscerating incumbent Republican Martha McSally 53-41%-- in a traditional Republican state that Trump won 1,021,154 (49.5%) to 936,250 (45.4%) in 2016 and where Republican Doug Ducey beat Democrat David Garcia in the 2018 guberatorial election-- in the middle of the "blue wave"-- 1,330,863 (56.0%) to 994,341 (41.8%).

In Michigan, where Republicans said they could knock off unimpressive backbencher Gary Peters, a new poll by SSRS, out yesterday from CNN, their candidate, John James falls flat with 38% to Peters' 54%.

The most current poll from North Carolina, Change Research's battlegrounds survey for CNBC, shows mediocre and unimpressive Democrat, Cal Cunningham, besting equally mediocre and unimpressive Republican Thom Tillis 49-42%.

Even in a state as Trumpist as Montana-- he beat Hillary there 279,240 (56.2%) to 177,709 (35.7%)-- the most recent Senate poll shows Democrat Steve Bullock ousting Republican Steve Daines 46-44%.




On average, Democrats are ahead in Senate battlegrounds Arizona, Maine, North Carolina, Iowa, Montana, Colorado and Michigan and competitive in Georgia and maybe even in Alabama. But on Sunday McConnell's NRSC chairman, Senator Todd Young (IN) and executive director Kevin McLaughlin released a boneheaded memo to the press asserting the GOP still has a pathway to keeping their majority. It wasn't really written for the media. It was written for fat-cat GOP donors, like Stephen Schwartzman of Blackstone who just gave a McConnell-controlled PAC a $10 million check, to persuade them to keep giving. The memo is filled with ridiculous propaganda that challenges the credulity of the authors to anyone other than someone desperately hoping to be convinced. The media recognizes it as fantasy and wishful thinking. Fat-cat GOP donors don't. Enjoy:

With just 100 days until Election Day, conventional wisdom is that the Senate Majority is the Democrats’ to lose.

And judging by any commonly accepted metric-- fundraising, spending, generic ballot, right track/wrong track, etc.-- one can see why.

From 30,000 feet, things look pretty bleak.


But, as Lee Corso says, “Not so fast.”


There are currently eight Senate races that are within the margin of error.
Candidly, considering all that is going on, that is nothing short of a miracle for Republicans.

We are in, arguably, the most unsettled environment since the 1960s. Our country is facing a once in a century global pandemic. Democrats held a partisan impeachment trial and have outspent Republicans by more than $60 million in Senate races-- cycle to date-- and by significant margins in every single targeted race. People have been locked in their houses for months, schools are toying with not opening in the fall and protestors and looters have taken over many of our major American cities.

Yet, despite it all, Republicans have proven remarkably resilient and remain well positioned to hold their Senate majority.

How could that be?


Republicans have one distinct advantage: Democrats.

[This is true... but so is the converse: the Democrats have one distinct advantage: Republicans and this year the Republicans are more fucked up than the Democrats.]

Voters despise the policies championed by today’s Democrat party. Suburban voters in key battleground states loathe the Green New Deal. When asked about specific aspects of the program 78% of voters oppose the Green New Deal, and 62% oppose it strongly.

They reject calls to defund the police. Over 60% of voters in North Carolina and over 70% in Georgia oppose defunding the police. Even in Colorado nearly 60% of voters think Democrats are out to lunch on this issue.

They have no interest in forgiving everyone’s student loan debt and 54% of voters oppose efforts to make college tuition-free.

And they aren’t ready to take a risk on ethically challenged, untested Democrat candidates (we’re looking at you John Hickenlooper, Steve Bullock, Sara Gideon and Mark Kelly) whose mere presence in Washington will enable Chuck Schumer and the Squad [an idea that exists only in the minds of Fox brainwashed Republicans] to realize their dream of turning the United States into a socialist dystopia. [Sounds familiar?]

If I were a Democrat, and the road to the Senate Majority hinged on wins in Kansas, Georgia, Montana, and Iowa, I would not feel too good about it.

But, as my six-year-old daughter says, “you do you, boo.”

SIDE BAR: It’s worth noting that Maine, despite Democrats throwing everything-- including the kitchen sink and multi-million-dollar slush funds at it-- is not among those eight margin races previously referenced. The fact that Susan Collins is leading outside the margin of error is a testament not only to her deep, personal relationship with Mainers, but also to voters’ reluctance to take a flyer on a weak, untested, ethically challenged candidate like Sara Gideon. This race, however, will remain close to the end in spite of Gideon, not because of her.

I’m not going to call Senate Democrats hypocrites, but for a group of folks who claim they want to get money out of politics, they sure do raise and spend a lot of money on politics. Democrats have spent over $180 million in key Senate races, cycle to date. They’ve also reserved another $220 million between now and election day. Allegedly ‘anti-money in politics Democrats’ will end up spending north of a half billion dollars on Senate races alone. Yahtzee!!

Unfortunately for Democrats, they have a fatal flaw, and all the money on earth can’t make up for it. It is the one thing voters crave the most, and Democrats don’t have it. In a word, it’s: authenticity.

Campaign finance reform is a perfect example. Every Democrat candidate is running on it. They each claim to hate dark money. Yet every single one benefits from it...A LOT of it.

The NRSC has been doing all we can to close the money gap, consistently outraising the DSCC and laying down the largest IE buy in committee history. We have started spending earlier and more aggressively than ever, and we enter the final stretch with more lead on the target than the DSCC.

And while Democrat challengers are printing money it seems few, if any, people are paying attention to one, fairly significant, data point: cash on hand. After all, you can raise all the money you want, but if you aren’t banking any of it, what good is it? Anyone who does take the time to look would see that-- with only one quarter of fundraising left-- many Republican Senate candidates actually have a cash-on-hand advantage over their Democrat opponents going into the final 100 days.

For the first 17 months of the cycle, Democrats largely had the airwaves to themselves. That all changed when the NRSC went up in June, and it certainly will not be the case for the next 100 days.

And where we are spending, it is working. [Remember I mentioned "fantasy" above?]

In Arizona, the more voters get to know the real Mark Kelly, the less they like him. We have been informing Arizonans about Kelly’s close, personal, financial relationship with China, and his image has eroded by 12 points in just seven weeks. Additionally, China is the number one issue voters recall about him (38%).

In Colorado, John Hickenlooper’s net favorability rating has plummeted by 20 points since he entered the race. Hickenlooper’s image is now underwater in the Denver suburbs, at 42% favorable and 45% unfavorable, and when you ask what issue or action people most associate with Hickenlooper, far and away the number one answer is “dishonest and corrupt.”

Things are just as bad for Sara Gideon, whose image has also cratered by 20 points and she is now decidedly underwater with independents. Focus group respondents consider her “weak,” “naïve,” and “unprepared,” and Gideon is also struggling with the revelation that she covered up for an alleged sexual predator for her own political gain. A whopping 67% of independents are less likely to vote for Gideon after learning of her cover up, with 54% much less likely. But, hey, at least she rearranged the chairs!

In North Carolina, Thom Tillis has already been outspent by $18 million to date with much more coming. His opponent, Cal Cunningham, started this cycle largely undefined but we are already working our magic to fix that. We’re up with ads hitting Cal for his coziness with the far-left, and we’ve already seen his net favorability drop in a short period of time. This race will not be easy, and Tillis has ground to make up, but Tillis has already shown he’s ready for this fight and his record of leadership is a stark contrast to Cunningham’s habit of hiding in Chuck Schumer’s basement.

Finally, it would appear Iowans aren’t fans of people who evict mom and pop businesses for personal financial gain or support Nancy Pelosi’s death tax. Unfortunately for Theresa Greenfield, she loves both. Iowans have responded in kind and her negatives have gone up 21 points, and it is only July!

Between a favorable map and $200 million spent cycle to date, Democrats have always had a numbers advantage in the battle for the Senate majority.

Despite that, and an incredibly favorable environment, the race for the Senate majority is still dead even.

That is a testament to the strength of our candidates.

Beating incumbents is hard. In fact, Democrats have only beaten three GOP incumbent Senators in the last three election cycles.

They will need to beat at least that many to win in November.


All in, more than $500 million will be spent on Senate campaigns alone in the next 100 days.

There is a ton of uncertainty right now, but the one thing we can guarantee is that the world will look a heck of a lot different on November 3rd than it does today.

Republicans are well-positioned to defy conventional wisdom and hold our Senate majority.

I hope the Republicans lose their Senate majority. I hope McConnell, Gardner, McSally, Ernst, Tillis, Perdue, Collins, Daines, Sullivan, Graham, Loeffler, Cornyn and the rest off them all lose their seats. But there is only one Democrat I'm cheering for because of what she is offering as an alternative. That Democrat is Paula Jean Swearengin who is running to replace Trump enabler Shelley Moore Capito in West Virginia. The DSCC is ignoring that race entirely. Capito has raised $4,443,824, most of it legalistic bribery, while Paula Jean has raised $592,933. There is no outside spending in the race at all. The DSCC and 2 groups it pretends not to control-- End Citizens United and the Senate Majority PAC-- have already spent over $4 million against Susan Collins, over $8 million against Joni Ernst, about $3.7 million against Cory Gardner, almost a million against Martha McSally, and over $1.5 million against Daines. But not even enough for a poll in West Virginia. Speaking to Cathy Kunkel, a House candidate in the state, over the weekend, she noted that Republicans who have spent the last 3 years defining themselves by their support for Trump, as her opponent, Alex Mooney has and as Capito has, may be in for a rude awakening. "Here in West Virginia-- as around the country-- voters are not impressed by Trump's handling of the pandemic," she told me. "Running on Trump's coattails is not the strategy it was 4 years ago." If you want to help a long shot candidate in a state the Democrats are ignoring again, please click on the Blue America 2020 Senate thermometer above and contribute what you can to Paul Jean's campaign.

Progressive Challengers Need To Come Up With New Campaign Strategies-- STAT

Ask a progressive challenger to lay out a roadmap to beating a conservative incumbent and inevitably you will hear about a muscular voter registration drive. That becomes a lot trickier with a pandemic raging. But not impossible. In Arizona there are quite a few organizations that work to register people who are likely to vote for Democrats. Unfortunately there is far more likelihood that these voters will skip primaries and vote in general elections only. From the first time I spoke with Eva Putzova, she has always told me she is focussing on likely primary voters. Yesterday, I asked Eva, the progressive candidate taking on reactionary Blue Dog-- and "former" Republican-- Tom O'Halleran. She  reminded us that she "ran 3 successful campaigns before I embarked on this journey in Arizona's first congressional district: in 2014, I won a seat on the Flagstaff's City Council; in 2016, I lead a local initiative raising Flagstaff's minimum wage to $15 per hour; and in 2018, I successfully defended that initiative against an attempt by the local chamber of commerce and the Koch brothers' network money to repeal it. None of these campaigns were easy and there's no magical recipe for success. But in all three campaigns, I planned the strategy in advance, started early with voter outreach, stayed focused for a prolonged period of time, and intentionally pursued a consistent message platform that was authentic and rooted in facts. I took these lessons and the discipline from the last six years into my congressional campaign and recruited a very competent team. We launched the campaign in January 2019 and the long campaign cycle allowed us to learn a lot about what works and what does not in a vast district like ours. Even without the pandemic, our campaigning has looked differently because we can't physically reach a critical mass of voters by simply knocking on their doors. Because we are running a grassroots campaign without any corporate PAC money, we have to be very strategic in how we spend our lean budget. I'm not going to pretend that raising funds a few dollars at a time is not difficult but how we run our campaign is important, because it's indicative of how I will legislate: with integrity and for the people."

One candidate told me that he and his team are "still trying to figure out how we'll proceed over the coming months, honestly. We need to attract the youth and working class voters who never show up, and the team is meeting regularly via Zoom, trying to work out some ways to do that electronically, but it's in early stages. A lot of our planning was built around a massive ground game that's now impossible."

Reporting for NBC News, Alex Seitz-Wald wrote yesterday that "Presidential elections are typically prime time for bringing new people into the political process, but the coronavirus pandemic is making voter registration more difficult than ever, prompting concerns that many young Americans and other nonvoters might miss their chance to get onto the rolls before November." His concern is the presidential race. Ours is for congressional contests. There's next to no enthusiasm for Biden and unless he can get non-voters in their 70s and 80s to register, voter registration drives don't matter for him anyway. But they certainly do for West Virginia progressive Paul Jean Swearengin, who is taking on Trump rubber stamp Shelley Moore Capito, for the Senate seat Capito has basically given over to Trump. My team has been amazing during this time to expand voter outreach. "Our county captains," she told me, "are making phone calls, texting and sending postcards. We have expanded our digital marketing strategy, are hosting virtual townhalls, and expanding fundraising to air a commercial. It's challenging but it can be done." Seitz-Wald:

"This is the moment when we historically see people take action to register to vote," said Kristen Clarke, the president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. "The public health crisis has brought all of that activity virtually to a grinding halt."

Voter registration happens year-round, but the months leading up to a presidential election are crucial as interest in politics spikes and funding for registration efforts flows in.

In the runup to the 2016 presidential election, Americans filed more than 77.5 million voter registration applications, according to the Election Assistance Commission, a federal agency that helps states administer elections, and total registration topped 200 million.

That still left tens of millions of eligible Americans who are not registered to vote. And this year, millions of new Americans will become eligible by turning 18 as Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2012), the most diverse in history, is expected to surpass the silent generation (born between 1928 and 1945) as a share of the electorate.

Millions more Americans have moved and need to re-register at a different address, while others have been purged from the rolls for not voting in recent elections, including in key battleground states such as Wisconsin and Georgia.

But now, all the traditional ways of signing up voters are out the window, prompting concerns that a large swath of Americans will miss their chance to participate in this year's elections.

"Registration is going to be an issue for everyone," said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), who along with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) is pushing for emergency voting reforms to respond to the coronavirus crisis.

"Both parties typically register people at events," Klobuchar added on a call with reporters. "And if there's no events, and no way to go door to door, that's going to be a problem."

Voter registration activists typically seek out crowds, but there are none now.

Students are not on campuses. Churches are not holding regular services. Fairs, parades and community events have been canceled. And even setting up a table outside a grocery store or a shopping area on a warm weekend afternoon is questionable.

Departments of motor vehicles are the source of about 45 percent of all voter applications nationwide, thanks to the Motor Voter Act, but they, too, are closed in many parts of the country. And so are other places where registration forms are typically available, such as libraries, high schools and government offices.

Another big source of registrations in states that allow same-day registration is polling places, but many of them will be closed in upcoming primaries and it's not clear how many will be open by November as states try to shift to mail-in balloting.

Groups that would typically be sending hundreds of canvassers into the field to sign up voters right now have shut down in-person operations and switched entirely to digital organizing.

Over the last month, we noticed that small dollar contributions had dropped off noticeably for our candidates through Blue America. Yesterday we started an online fundraiser for Texas progressive Mike Siegel and we're seeing slightly more normal patterns of contributions than what we've been seeing since the financial uncertainty that was engendered by the pandemic and the stock market crash. Associated Press reporter Brian Slodysko wrote yesterday that presidential candidates have backed off aggressive asks. "What used to be a routine request for political cash," he wrote, "could now come across as tone-deaf or tacky. The two also run the risk of competing for limited dollars with charities trying to raise money for pandemic relief. With a recession potentially on the horizon, there's a question of whether wealthy donors are in a giving mood and whether grassroots supporters who chip in small amounts will still have the wherewithal to keep at it. That presents a delicate challenge as both candidates try to stockpile the massive amounts of cash needed for the general election campaign. 'It’s hard to have a conversation with someone right now to ask how they’re getting by, and then ask them for financial support in the next sentence,' said Greg Goddard, a Democratic fundraiser who worked for Amy Klobuchar's presidential campaign before the Minnesota senator dropped out of the Democratic race. To Tim Lim, a Democratic consultant who worked for both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, 'it's a world where no one has a good answer.' He said that 'on the fundraising side, we are going to take some massive hits as a party.' The task is particularly acute for Biden. The former vice president is trying to pivot from the primary to the general election in a race essentially frozen by the virus."

Biden-- and his status quo platform-- have virtually no grassroots enthusiasm anyway and he's been dependent on ultra-wealthy donors and corporately-funded SuperPACs, even more so than Trump. Slodysko wrote that "The pandemic has put all big-dollar fundraisers on hold, like all in-person political events. That's forced Trump and Biden, for now, to rely on online fundraising. Biden is holding virtual fundraisers via video conferences. But they lack the exclusivity and tactile nature of an in-person event, where donors can network, see and be seen. Biden and Trump continue to send out fundraising emails and texts."

“It isn't easy for me to ask you for money today,” Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a fundraising email Thursday, seeking contributions as low as $5. “There are so many deserving charities and small businesses in your community where your money makes a huge difference right now. And of course, your own needs and the needs of your family take precedence.”

But, she continued, "we have to keep fundraising because we have to keep campaigning. And we have to keep campaigning because it's the only way we can defeat Trump in November.”

...Sanders has earned praise for turning to his army of small-dollar donors to raise $3.5 million for virus relief instead of his campaign. The senator, whose campaign is fueled by grassroots online donors, has stopped sending out fundraising emails.

"Right now my focus is on this extraordinary crisis,” Sanders told The Associated Press on Wednesday, after declining to discuss the future of his campaign.

Bloomberg also shelved plans to leverage his billions of dollars of personal wealth to run an outside group aimed at preventing Trump's reelection. Instead, he recently promoted a $40 million philanthropic effort aimed at curtailing the spread of the virus.

While the virus has disrupted many facets of life, Democratic fundraisers are optimistic that a degree of normalcy will return eventually. That will be a benefit to Biden.

And "normalcy" is all Biden has to campaign about-- hoping that few voters realize that his version of "normalcy" is what made Donald Trump feasible for tens of millions of voters in the first place. Meanwhile... over the weekend, Michael Stipe released a demo of his new solo song, "No Time For Love Like Now."





Two weeks ago, Michael released a comforting end of the world message... that may sound familiar.

Paula Jean Swearengin-- A Coal Miner’s Daughter, Granddaughter, Niece And Stepdaughter

West Virginia was the ultimate blue state starting with FDR's first election in 1932. Two years earlier, the Democratic Party won the state House and held it, uninterrupted from 1930 to 2012. The state's voters even went for Adlai Stevenson against Eisenhower in 1952, for Hubert Humphrey against Nixon in 1968, for Jimmy Carter against Reagan in 1980 and for Michael Dukakis against George H.W. Bush in 1988. The last time a Democratic president candidate won in West Virginia, though was in when Bill Clinton beat Bob Dole in 1996. The state suddenly turned so red after that that Hillary won just 26.4% of the state's vote in 2016. The only state that was less supportive of her was Wyoming. Democrats held the state's two Senate seats from 1958 until Shelley Moore Capito won one of them-- on Jay Rockefeller's retirement-- in 2014. Capito is the daughter of former 3-term Republican Governor Arch Moore, a corrupt sack of crap who was sentenced to 6 years in prison on extortion charges to which he plead guilty.

The party registration, though, still favors Democrats, at least on paper. In November, 2016, as Hillary and Trump faced off, Democrats outnumbered Republicans 44.74% to 31.21% (with 20.91% registered voters unaffiliated with any party). Last month, the secretary of state reported that 39.62% of registered voters are Democrats, 33.76% are Republicans and 22.81% are unaffiliated. In November Capito will fight her first reelection battle. DC pundits rate her seat "safe." She has already raised $3,419,526.

Capito's most serious opponent is Paula Jean Swearengin, a strong Berniecrat who is part of the West Virginia Can't Wait movement, which seeks to rescue the state Democratic Party from the clutches of corrupt conservatives with more in common with the Top than with the FDR Democrats who were so popular in West Virginia for so many decades. Today Blue America endorsed Paula Jean and we've added her to out 2020 Senate page which you can access by clicking on the ActBlue thermometer on the right. I asked her to help us understand why she's running for the Senate as a strong progressive in a state that went so strongly for Trump. More than almost any other candidate I've spoken to, she really and truly is... one of us.


Guest Post
-by Paula Jean Swearengin

As a native of Mullens, West Virginia my coal mining roots run deep. I’m a coal miner’s daughter, granddaughter, niece and stepdaughter. As a child, I was taught to have  a deep sense of pride in our state. West Virginia's hard work powered our nation through the Industrial Revolution, and kept our factories running through World War II. America was built on our coal-- it was built, in part, on the backs of Appalachians.

Like so many other families in Appalachia, my family paid a steep price. I’ve lost family and friends to poverty and the healthcare crisis in Appalachia. I’ve watched as family members, neighbors and community members suffered with addiction, cancer and poverty.

When my stepfather lost his job at the coal mine, he moved our family to North Carolina as he tried to find a new line of work. A few years later I came back home to take care of my grandfather. What I saw when I came back disturbed me. I saw entire communities left in the dust when a mine shut down, small businesses drying up, miners and their children struggling with diseases brought on by the industry that we turned to for security. I saw a whole generation struggling to find reliable, safe jobs that would put enough food on the table. As a single mom of four boys, I had to do something about it.


I was driven to speak out for a brighter future for my family, my friends and my community. I went to town halls and confronted legislators for protecting corporations, instead of workers. I stood with families who were begging for clean water to flow from their taps. I rallied with teachers, healthcare providers, coal miners and other union members who were calling for fair wages, healthcare and decency.

Eventually I felt our calls for change were continuing to be ignored by our representatives. Something had to be done. That’s when I decided, in order to make change, I had to step up and fight from within. 

When I mounted a campaign for Senate in 2018 we rallied volunteer and support from across the state and country. We spread our message of economic diversity, healthcare and basic human rights from the Western Panhandle to the Southern coalfields and across the state.

Our race broke state records by garnering nearly 50,000 votes, the highest votes in a primary in West Virginia in 75 years.

The industrial revolution was built on the backs of coal miners, their families and our communities. I am tired of watching my state suffer after we have sacrificed so much.


West Virginia is one of the poorest and sickest states in the country. Our people have been keeping the lights for our nation for more than a century. The industrial revolution was built on the blood, sweat and tears of Appalachian laborers. While corporations have gotten wealthy off the backs of our workers and our communities, industries drained our state and left us ravaged by pollution and poverty.

I am running for 2020 to finish what I started. My first grandchild was born in January and I have to fight for his future.

Is The Democratic Party Still Something More Than A Vehicle For Politicians' Career Aspirations?

Sure, they can't all be this good-- but we should aim high... especially in primaries

For Democrats like Elizabeth Warren, Ro Khanna, Jamie Raskin, Alan Grayson, Pramila Jayapal, Barbara Lee, Ted Lieu, Randy Bryce and, of course, Bernie, the Democratic Party is, first and foremost, a vehicle for making the country a better place. These are values-rich progressives who are all about policy solutions for real problems. I'll never forget when, over dinner one evening several years ago, Matt Stoller asked then-state Senator Ted Lieu why he wanted to give up a nice life in California to run for Congress and go to the DC snake-pit. Ted didn't miss a beat and launched right into a long story about his own two young sons and the need to put the country on a course to fight Climate Change.

I'm afraid most Democratic politicians aren't as motivated by policy questions, even if they were at first. Over the years I've come to realize that many Democrats in Congress-- of not most-- see the Democratic Party more as a vehicle for their own personal career ambitions. Look at a Steny Hoyer, Joe Crowley, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Kyrsten Sinema, Dan Lipinski, Rahm Emanuel... even a hapless clown like Ben Ray Lujan. I shudder when I hear candidates for Congress talking exclusively about themselves, unaware that what voters want to hear about is how these candidates will make their families' lives better. But Pelosi and her decrepit leadership crew have been in Congress far too long-- far, far too long-- and see the party as being ll about themselves and their own aspirations. Team Democrat needs to be about grassroots voters, not about mostly-despised politicians.

Yesterday Digital Left's Daniel Kauder wrote an essay about where Democrats need to draw the line in terms of defining the party. He used West Virginia conservaDem Joe Manchin as the example, but could have picked anyone from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party instead. Manchin, he pointted out, voted to confirm Trump's worst cabinet nominees, like Scott Pruitt and Jeff Sessions.

Kauder asks "Should we, as Progressives, challenge literally everyone in the House and Senate, even if we risk a loss? Even if we risk a net loss of seats?" And he responds in the affirmative. We came to a different conclusion in regard to the West Virginia primary but tend to agree with most of what Kauder has to say about it.

Look, I’m not going to lie to you. I’m worried that Paula is going to win her Primary, and then some alt-right Trumplet is going to beat her in the General. If that one seat had been Republican this term, the ACA would have been repealed. Manchin standing with the Democrats on this particular occasion doesn’t absolve him of all the other horrible votes he’s cast, but we also can’t pretend as though this is some purely intellectual question. This isn’t a game. If we Primary conservative (“Blue Dog”) Democrats, there are going to be real world consequences.

But there are going to be real world consequences if we don’t, too. For instance, the Democrats just came out and said that there’s “no litmus test” for Democrats on the question of abortion; if abortion rights get scaled back or repealed altogether, that’s going to have an unspeakable impact on women’s health- especially women of color. Its going to impact low-income families across the country, especially when you couple this move with the Republicans’ “religious liberty” attacks on birth control and contraception.

Inevitably, we’re going to hear complaints from Democrats that we’re traitors, that we’re idealists, that we’re this or that or the other. We’re going to hear that we ought to make the pragmatic choice and accept a more conservative or corporatist option, and that any voices claiming otherwise are getting caught up with “purity tests.”

But this is all nonsense. We’d be “caught up on purity tests” if we were threatening to unseat Manchin for “only” voting in line with someone like Bernie 99.99% of the time, and that .01% was our tipping point. But that’s not what we’re dealing with. People like Manchin vote against our interests most of the time already, so why should we be shamed and silenced by the corporatists into abandoning a Primary challenge? It makes no sense.

This is going to be a tough midterm, in West Virginia and across the country. But we’re not going to improve our own lives, and the lives of our countrymen, by acquiescing to corporate stooges who shout us down. We must show the country that we’re ready to fight for our beliefs in every county, city and state.

Holding Senators Accountable For Bad Votes-- Like Confirming Neil Gorsuch To The Supreme Court

Gorsuch throws a gang sign: "thin the herd"

What do you think-- should senators be considered responsible-- by voters-- for the actions of Supreme Court judges they vote to confirm? I've always thought so. There were 3 Democrats-- Joe Donnelly (D-IN), Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) who voted to confirm Neil Gorsuch and a 4th, Michael Bennet (D-CO) , who voted with the Republicans procedurally to enable the confirmation. Donnelly, Heitkamp and Manchin are all up for reelection next year-- and in states which Trump won by big majorities-- 56.82% to 37.91% in Indiana, 62.96% to 27.23% in North Dakota and 68.50% to 26.43% in West Virginia. The electoral calculus by each senator was that they had more to lose by voting NO than to gain by voting YES, knowing Democrats in their states would be likely to ignore the bad vote for the Gorsuch-- as well, in each case, bad vote after bad vote all year.

And no one can claim they weren't warned about how bad Gorsuch was likely to be on the Court. There wasn't a good government group in the country that wasn't sounding the alarm. Ian Millhiser, the Justice Editor for Think Progress was especially outspoken and especially dire in his predictions. Over the weekend, he wrote an I told you so piece. The carefully choreographed and intentionally deceptive hearings didn't indicate the Gorsuch would likely be the worst justice on the Court-- but you had to be deaf, dumb and blind to have missed that during the process. Today, writes Millhiser, "Gorsuch is disrespectful of precedent and eager to move the law very far, very fast. His agenda is both well-thought out and extraordinarily conservative. When the Court splits into its old factions, with Justice Clarence Thomas staking out a position that no other member of the Court will sign onto, Gorsuch embraces Thomas’ view. Gorsuch spent the last day of the Court’s just-concluded term, moreover, laying out a vision that will make culture warriors bounce with glee. His ascension to the Supreme Court was the culmination of an effort to protect religious conservatives by any means necessary. And, if Gorsuch gets his way, some very basic civil rights will bow to the Christian right."

[Robert] George is probably the nation’s leading anti-LGBTQ scholar. A former chair of the National Organization for Marriage, which tried and failed to halt the spread of marriage equality in the United States, George was cited twice in a dissenting opinion by Justice Samuel Alito, which complained that the so-called Defense of Marriage Act was struck down.

George gushed about the Gorsuch nomination in an op-ed published by the Washington Post. “Gorsuch will be a hard man to depict as a ferocious partisan or an ideological judge,” George wrote of a man who tried to hobble a law protecting disabled children before he was unanimously rebuked by his eight new colleagues.

Yet, in a straightforward admission that George knew what he stood to gain from a Gorsuch confirmation, the professor also wrote that, on “abortion, same-sex marriage, gun control, campaign finance reform and religious freedom,” Gorsuch was likely to vote “pretty much the same way Scalia did.”

Indeed, if Neil Gorsuch gets his way, the hundreds of defiant conservative leaders who signed George’s Manhattan Declaration will be given broad discretion to defy the law by the Supreme Court itself.

Echoing religious conservatives who sought the right to deny birth control coverage to their employees, Gorsuch wrote as a lower court judge in the original Hobby Lobby litigation that “all of us face the problem of complicity,” and “all of us must answer for ourselves whether and to what degree we are willing to be involved in the wrongdoing of others.”

Hobby Lobby set off a doctrinal earthquake when it reached the Supreme Court, holding, for the first time, that a religious objection can be wielded to limit the rights of a third party. And now, with Gorsuch occupying a seat on the Supreme Court, the Court is preparing to hear a case that could grant the Christian right a license to engage in straight up discrimination.

Gorsuch, moreover, has already telegraphed how he will vote in this case.

Last Monday was a big day for Neil Gorsuch--  and not a hopeful day for anyone who believes that LGBTQ people are fully human and entitled to the same rights as everyone else. Gorsuch revealed himself as a hardline conservative on marriage equality and called for a broad expansion of Hobby Lobby. And he did so on the very same morning that the Court announced that it would decide whether religion is a license to discriminate.

The marriage equality case involved an Arkansas law providing that a mother’s husband will automatically be listed on a birth certificate as the child’s father, even in many cases where the husband is not the biological father, but that did not afford similar treatment to same-sex couples. Such a rule, a majority of the Supreme Court explained, violates the Court’s holding in Obergefell v. Hodges that “the Constitution entitles same-sex couples to civil marriage ‘on the same terms and conditions as opposite-sex couples.’”

Gorsuch disagreed, pointing to the state’s arguments “that rational reasons exist for a biology based birth registration regime.” Never mind, of course, that Arkansas did not have a “biology based birth registration regime,” as it often listed non-biological parents on birth certificates so long as that parent is a man married to a woman.

The conservative jurist’s use of the word “rational” here is also highly significant, as it offers a window into how Gorsuch views discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation generally. The lowest level of scrutiny the Court applies in constitutional discrimination cases-- the level it typically applies to allegations it views as dubious-- is known as “rational basis,” and it provides that the government is free to do whatever it wants so long as it can articulate a rational reason for doing so.

So when Gorsuch defended Arkansas’s law by pointing to allegedly “rational reasons” for it to exist, he suggested that discrimination based on sexual orientation isn’t something the courts should worry themselves about.

It's another factor that needs to go into calculations for voters when they decide in 17 months whether or not to vote for Donnelly, Heitkamp and Manchin. In Manchin's case, there's also a primary, which, for a progressive, should be a no brainer. There's no chance the progressive Berniecrat running against him, Paula Jean Swearengin, would have ever voted to confirm Gorsuch-- or voted to have confirmed Scott Pruitt as head of the EPA, as Manchin (and Heitkamp) did.

We're stuck with Gorsuch for life-- voters can-- and should-- remove Manchin

Paula Jean Swearengin Seems Like A Pretty Ideal Senate Candidate, Right?

There's a fantastic candidate running for the U.S. Senate in West Virginia: Berniecrat Paula Jean Swearengin. And she's running against the worst Democrat in the Senate, Joe Manchin. Under normal circumstances, we'd be urging everyone to get on board the Swearengin train immediately. Normal circumstances? Remember them? That was before we wound up with that mentally-ill, orange-hued baboon in the White House.

First a little something about Paula Jean and then I'll come back to our dilemma. Her father, her step-father, her uncles and her grandfather were all coal miners, not coal mine owners. "As a little girl," she wrote, "I was proud of my coal heritage. I was proud to know that America was built on the backs of West Virginians and by families like mine. But times have changed, and now my eyes are open. For far too long, West Virginia has been told we need to choose between clean water and jobs-- I'm here to put an end to that myth." This is from a letter she wrote to voters in West Virginia this weekend:

My state can’t afford six more years of the rudderless leadership Senator Manchin is providing. His cozy relationship with mining bosses and corporations is going to lead to more suffering like my family has endured. It will lead to more grandfathers lost to black lung, more uncles with heart disease, more children struggling with cancer-- and no access to health care. Senator Manchin lacks the vision to see the coal industry is dying. It’s time to invest in new industries with clean, safe jobs for all.

From Tennessee through West Virginia and all the way to Pennsylvania Appalachia is struggling, and leaders like Joe Manchin are content to stand idly by while the jobs dry up, leaving whole towns in the dust.

These last few months I found myself wondering: Why is Joe Manchin cozying up to the people trying to gut Medicaid coverage for his state instead of fighting to make sure coal miners don’t lose their health care? I bet the answer lies in over $330,000 he got from drug makers and insurance companies.

Well I’m not like Joe. I can’t turn a blind eye to the stagnation in our state and I can’t be bought. I’ll push for investments in infrastructure and new energy-- industries that bring in good jobs and fair wages. I will fight against Trumpcare because I won’t allow our people fall through the cracks of America’s broken health care system. I will fight for Medicare for All. I want the people of West Virginia to have the future we deserve. The future we’ve paid for with generations of hard work and sacrifice.

I tried to work with Senator Manchin as a concerned citizen. I wrote, I called, I went to his town halls. A lot of us did, but he blew us off.

I got tired of our concerns being ignored, and I decided it’s time to stop playing by their rules. It’s time to change the game. I’m running for Senate to do something Manchin won’t-- represent you. I believe in West Virginia and I think it’s worth investing in.

...When I confronted my legislators at town halls for being on the take from coal companies instead of investing in new industries that could provide better, safer jobs, I received death threats from folks who the coal companies had spread their lies and propaganda to. But they found out that Appalachian women don’t scare so easily. If you help me get elected, I will never back down from anyone in power-- I will take your fight to them.

I believe in a West Virginia where good jobs don’t have to come at the cost of clean water. I know Appalachians are determined, hard working and smart. And when we band together, there’s nothing we can’t accomplish. I’m ready to stand up for you and your family to deliver the prosperous, healthy future we all deserve.

I haven't spoken with her but she sure sounds awesome-- and we know what a villain Manchin has been. So let me lay out the problem we're trying to cope with. Given: Manchin is horrible. But he can-- and most likely will-- win reelection in the general. Even in the unlikely event that Swearengin were to beat Manchin in a high-consciousness primary, she'd probably be devoured by a Republican, something that Blue America would normally not shy away from. Remember Chris Carney? We knew if he lost, he'd be replaced by a Republican-- which is what happened-- but we were happy to help defeat him and get his reactionary, bigoted Blue Dog ass out of the congressional Democratic caucus where all he ever did was vote with the GOP anyway. But now there's the very real and very existential threats posed by Trump hanging over us like The Sword of Damocles. Imagine the Democrats win back the House AND don't lose any of their other vulnerable Senate seats. AND imagine they defeat Senators Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Dean Heller (R-NV) ... AND Ted Cruz (R-TX). That would mean Trump would be impeached and convicted UNLESS the Democrats lose West Virginia. So I'm thinking about what's the right thing to do with Swearengin. I've been losing sleep over it.

We've been discussing this at Blue America. The consensus seems to be that this is one midterm to lay out of a primary like this, this meaning one where the constituency isn't blue enough where holding the seat would be guaranteed. The thermometer on the right, for example, will take you to a page where progressives are challenging reactionary Democrats who have earned primaries-- but in districts that Democrats will hold no matter who the candidate is. Please take a look. None of us likes Manchin's politics or what he stands for and normally we would be eager to help wound him. But... we don't want to lose this seat and we don't want to give Manchin more reasons to side with Trump on anything.

The chance that the Republicans in Congress will do anything is a real long shot-- remote is a euphemism-- and clearly the Department of Justice, as Digby put it so eloquently, "might as well be working out of the White House."  The 2018 midterms may be our only chance to stop Trump and if we don't... who knows what will happen!

Some of us feel that all internecine Senate battles come down to one overriding question only-- at least until the next election: pushing the Democratic Party to obstruct Trump. We'll continue criticizing any Democrat who works with him but beyond that many of us feel that our complaints against senators and Democrats in swing House districts are on hold until November 2018. After that, all bets are off. We are feel that building grassroots energy is important. But unless Trump is stopped we're seriously not sure we'll have normal elections in the future... so it won't really matter. Meanwhile, I suggest channeling your antipathy towards the Republican wing of the Democratic Party towards culprits in blue districts like Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Kyrsten Sinema and Dan Lipinski... for now.