Pramila Jayapal-- The Hope For The Progressive Agenda In Congress

This morning, at around 11:15, Pramila Jayapal is officially introducing the Medicare for All Act of 2019. You can watch the event streaming live here. Jayapal, the chairman of the congressional Medicare for All Caucus and co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, wrote that "Today’s healthcare system fails to provide quality, affordable healthcare as a right to all people living in the United States. Nearly 30 million Americans are uninsured and at least 40 million more cannot afford the costs of their co-pays and deductibles. The quality of our healthcare is much worse than other industrialized countries-- the life expectancy in the U.S. is lower than other nations, while our infant mortality rate is much higher. Yet the U.S. spends more money per capita on healthcare than any other industrialized nation. We waste hundreds of billions of dollars every year on unnecessary administrative costs, while healthcare industry executives measure success in profits, instead of patient care. The current healthcare system in the United States is ineffective, inefficient and outrageously expensive. It is time to remove the profit motive in healthcare, to resolve the inefficiencies and to guarantee quality healthcare to every person living in the United States. The Medicare for All Act of 2019 improves and expands the overwhelmingly successful and popular Medicare program, so that every person living in the United States has guaranteed access to healthcare with comprehensive benefits."

In preparation, Rachael Bade did a deep dive into how Pramila Jayapal has been running the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), We Will Only Get Stronger: Inside A Liberal Leader's Balancing Act On Pushing The House To The Left. It wasn't a typical Post team effort; it was all Bade, and she did a good job.

In 2016, when Blue America first discovered Jayapal, she was a Washington state senator in a crowded jungle primary race (5 Democrats, 2 Republicans and and 2 independents) for the ultra-progressive (D+33) Seattle congressional seat from which Jim McDermott was retiring. Pramila came in with a monstrous lead-- 42.1% to 21.3 for her closest competitor and then won the general, pitting two Democrats against each other, 56-44%.

What drew us to candidate Jayapal-- and caused us to endorse her-- was her reputation for being someone who knew how to work across the aisle to find common ground on important issues without giving up on core progressive values, the way New Dems and Blue Dogs from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party routinely do. And she hasn't disappointed. She's as good as a caucus "rising star" in 2019 as she was as a candidate in 2016-- in, fact, better.

Bade began her piece by mentioning that "some liberal groups hoped the Congressional Progressive Caucus would take an aggressive stance toward party leaders. But co-chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal, of Seattle, is picking her battles as she seeks first to work with Speaker Nancy Pelosi before throwing bombs... [she] could have tried to throw up roadblocks to Nancy Pelosi’s speakership bid. She didn’t.

She could have joined new liberal icon Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in trying to sink a House rules package some advocates warned would hinder liberal priorities. She didn’t."

Bade then did something that's much harder to do in a team post: she asserted that Jayapal is "smart enough to know that following in the dysfunctional footsteps of the extreme right House Freedom Caucus was a dead-end-- and worse." Bade's correct but how often do you read that kind of thing in Post news coverage?

For people who think "that only hard-line tactics would help liberals trigger action on issues like Medicare-for-all, the Green New Deal, free college and banishing corporate money from politics-- ideas that are a step too far for moderate-minded Democrats and the House leadership," Jayapal, says to hold off and let's take this slowly and bring people along. No one's signing any of that 'til Bernie's in the White House anyway. Bade makes the point that she's "picking her battles carefully as she seeks to first work with Pelosi to advance her causes before resorting to throwing bombs."

“We’re totally opposed to being the Freedom Caucus,” Jayapal told The Washington Post during a recent interview in her district. “The Freedom Caucus was very dismissive of leadership in many ways… I don’t like what they stand for, and I don’t like the way they implemented their tactics.”

Just before Christmas, the Freedom Caucus played a central role in pushing President Donald Trump into a 35-day partial government shutdown to try to win funding for his border wall-- a move that polls showed was unpopular except in the most secure red districts and that irritated House Republican leaders. With the same potential power in her hands two weeks ago, Jayapal said she never considered whipping votes against a funding bill to keep the government open, even though it contained provisions she opposed.

When some of her colleagues started a rumor that she was working to sink the deal, Jayapal grew angry. At a hastily arranged caucus meeting, she fought back tears as she stood before a room full of her liberal peers explaining her “no” vote. Jayapal had worked with House Democratic negotiators for days to no avail, trying to curb immigration detention beds. But she was also unhappy with the whispers suggesting she was flirting with trying to force a government shutdown to get her way.

“Don’t tell us we’re not team players,” Jayapal said, according to a person in the room. The congresswoman confirmed that account. “I’m not trying to kill this bill, but I am trying to give a voice for those in immigration detention… Please respect our differences without being judgmental.”

Jayapal’s concern stands in stark contrast to the burn-the-House-down strategy relished by conservative lawmakers in the House Freedom Caucus, who cared little for camaraderie and never worried about making enemies with colleagues. Rep. Mark Meadow (R-NC) who led the hard-core conservatives, seemed to delight in his ability to keep GOP leaders on edge.

Jayapal said she is ready to fight when needed, but argued that having good relations with leadership and fellow House Democrats will be key to liberals achieving their goals and allows the progressive caucus to use its leverage when needed.

“I am always willing to stand up for what I believe in, but I will always do it as respectfully as possible and with a goal toward building the greatest power,” Jayapal said. “My goals are not just about a piece of legislation but that we retain the House, we take back the Senate, and we take the White House.”

Her strategy is working, she argued. For instance, when Pelosi’s office was phoning outside groups, seeking to boost public support for her speakership bid after the midterm elections, Jayapal and her caucus co-chair, Mark Pocan (D-WI) persuaded their liberal allies to hold off until the caucus could secure concessions from the longtime Democratic leader. Pelosi eventually agreed to give liberal lawmakers more slots on coveted committees and in leadership. Jayapal then endorsed Pelosi and pitched her to the newcomers as a fellow liberal.

Unfortunately, Pelosi gave most of those coveted slots to members of the CPC who aren't real progressives but New Dems who were lured by Pocan into the CPC as insurance policies against progressive activists in their districts. Pocan's got to do something about that. I pretty sure he knows it's a mistake that has to be corrected.

A few weeks later, when leadership came to Jayapal for help moving a House rule that included an obscure budget provision some liberals disliked, Jayapal worked Pelosi for the promise of a hearing on Medicare-for-all, legislation Pelosi has notably steered clear of endorsing. She got it-- then helped leadership ensure Ocasio-Cortez’s protest wouldn’t upend the rules package.

Still, some liberal outside groups want to see the caucus take a harder line. They privately question whether the group would be willing to buck Pelosi to advance ideas they champion. And some advocates are openly talking about the need for a smaller, more hard-line “sub-caucus” that would vote en bloc to win concessions-- a proposal Ocasio-Cortez floated last year.

The grass-roots group Indivisible, which meets with Jayapal every few weeks, has circulated a memo to incoming liberal freshmen about how to create the “Freedom Caucus of the left,” according to one person who has seen it. Others just want Jayapal to clean house to ensure her members are truly dedicated to liberal values. [Somebody better grab Pocan; he's the one doing this so he can brag the CPC is the biggest caucus in the House.]

“It’s very smart for progressives to choose their battles, but they probably need to choose more of them, and they’re going to need to flex their power,” said Charles Chamberlain, a liberal organizer at Democracy for America. “They shouldn’t be afraid to kill a bill-- even a bill that is very important to Democratic leadership-- to make it clear that progressives are here.”

Even as Jayapal bats down suggestions that her caucus should take a page from the Freedom Caucus, she has been working behind the scenes to address the source of some criticisms. In January, she and Pocan charged a small caucus task force with brainstorming rules to bind caucus members on votes and to ensure they hold firm on liberal policies.

“We will only get stronger as we flex our muscles,” Jayapal said.

But the reality is the outcome isn’t entirely Jayapal’s decision. Her caucus includes 40 percent of the entire Democratic caucus and includes lawmakers with vastly different backgrounds. Getting everyone to agree on a position could prove difficult.

That’s why some liberal critics of the group want a shake-up. They note that some of the caucus members also belong to the moderate-minded and business-friendly New Democrat Coalition.

“There are serious questions about the CPC as a force, although I do think it is stronger now than it’s ever been,” said Justice Democrats spokesman Waleed Shahid, who said he would like to see the group vote together more often and add a requirement that CPC members back a specific list of policies.

Jayapal is working on both.

Over breakfast near Seattle’s Pike Place Market last Wednesday, Jayapal, 53, said observers shouldn’t mistake her preference for diplomacy with weakness. A carpenter has many tools, she said, and “if he tries to use a hammer on everything, he’s not going to do the job well.”

It’s a matter of time before her caucus and Democratic leaders clash over policy, she said.

“Just to be very clear, we will leverage our power when we need to,” she said. “I’m always playing a balancing game of how to best achieve [victories.] Does that mean there will be times when I am not seen as a team player? Absolutely.”

With their massive Twitter followings and their eagerness to snap back at critics on social media, Ocasio-Cortez and some of her fellow liberal freshmen lawmakers receive the most national attention. But in the halls of Congress, Jayapal is respected by colleagues as an authority on liberal policies.

...Jayapal’s résumé-- plus her three civil-disobedience arrests at protests-- have won her street cred with the incoming freshman class. Rep. Lucy McBath (D-GA) a gun-control advocate who ran for Congress after her unarmed son was shot and killed, refers to Jayapal as “the mother hen.” And the new members frequently come to her for advice.

When the bipartisan budget deal was unveiled, for example, liberal Reps. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Jahana Hayes of Connecticut visited Jayapal’s apartment to talk strategy while the Indian American cooked chana masala. During a recent House Judiciary Committee hearing, Jayapal helped several freshmen navigate panel rules in responding to their GOP colleagues.

Her ability to keep the support of the most high-profile members of the freshman class while maintaining influence with leadership will be a major factor in whether she’s a successful leader.

“She has a tremendous amount of respect from the grass roots and a tremendous amount of respect from leadership, and that’s a fine line to tread,” caucus member Ro Khanna (D-CA) said. He called Jayapal “one of the savviest progressives in Congress.”

Others, however, want more. And that tension is likely to crescendo in the coming weeks, possibly during the caucus’ rollout of its Medicare-for-all bill this week.

Pelosi promised Jayapal the single-payer idea would receive hearings on the Rules and Budget committees. But the speaker has refused to green-light a floor vote or even a hearing in the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee.

Some liberals argue the caucus should push harder for both, particularly since nearly every 2020 presidential candidate is endorsing Medicare-for-all.

Betraying her pragmatic streak, Jayapal argued that liberals need to build the case with their skeptical colleagues rather than force the issue now. That’s why she and Pocan have commissioned polls in swing districts around the country, highlighting findings she says show that even moderate districts support some liberal policies.

“Three years ago, everyone said $15 minimum wage was impossible. Now that’s a leadership-embraced bill,” Jayapal said.

Jayapal has agreed with some recent criticism of her group. The caucus recently came out against a GOP amendment that critics said watered down a resolution rebuking Saudi Arabia for mass killings in Yemen. Several caucus members backed the amendment anyway, surprising some of their colleagues.

Outside advocates point to this example to argue the caucus needs to crack the whip on its own membership-- or create what Alex Lawson, a prominent liberal advocate who leads Social Security Works, called a smaller “hard-core subset within the CPC” that votes together.

“You do get power in having a larger caucus, so the CPC framework that they have right now makes a lot of sense,” he said. But that doesn’t mean there “can’t be a subgroup that operates more as a bloc,” he continued. “I want something more powerful than the Freedom Caucus.”

But the idea of doing something similar has yet to pick up much support among caucus members.

“Look at where the House is: not in Republican control. So is [the Freedom Caucus] really effective or not?” Jayapal asked. “They’re certainly loud. And I can be loud when I want to be. But I can also be soft and understated. And those are strategies in my toolbox.”

Suggestion to Maddow and her producers: you're missing a really good-- and really important-- voice who you and your MSNBC should be having on regularly. Everyone is going to think all the Democratic women are tepid conservatives like Klobuchar and McCaskill, instead of some of the smartest and toughest fighters on the front line-- and cutting edge-- of political discourse in Washington.

OMG! The Problem Was White Evangelicals The Whole Time

It hasn't been uneducated white working class men per se who are the backbone holding top the Trumpist Regime... it's been evangelical uneducated white working class men. Keep this in the back of your mind: 45% of all white voters without a college degree self identify as evangelical Christians. Ron Brownstein revealed some fascinating exit poll data that shows the toxic role white working class evangelicals are playing in our politics. "Though Republican candidates almost everywhere registered large margins among white voters without a college degree," he wrote, "Democrats ran much more competitively among the roughly half of that group who are not evangelical Christians [and] particularly well this year among white working-class women who are not evangelicals, a group that also displayed substantial disenchantment in the exit poll with Trump's performance. Those women could be a key constituency for Democrats in 2020 in pivotal Rust Belt states such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where relatively fewer blue-collar whites are also evangelical Christians."

Nationwide, nearly three-fifths of blue-collar white women who are not evangelicals voted Democratic in last month's House races, while an equal number said they disapproved of Trump's performance in office, the analysis of exit poll results found. That was well over double the Democratic share of the vote among non-college white women who are evangelical Christians. And while Republicans last month still carried a majority among working-class white men who are not evangelicals, Democrats attracted about twice as much support from them as they did among the equivalent men who are evangelicals.

"It's another overlay to the conclusion that there are some parts of the white non-college population that are open to Democrats and can be moved a few points in your direction," says Ruy Teixeira, a long-time Democratic analyst of voting trends who now serves as a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress.

...At issue is how much emphasis the party should place on trying to recapture white working-class voters as opposed to maximizing turnout among its new base of minority, millennial and college-educated white voters, especially women and those in urban areas.

While some Democrats have come to view white working-class voters as largely a lost cause for the party in the Trump era, other party strategists, including some affiliated with organized labor, have privately argued that the large number of staunchly conservative evangelical Christians in the group has overstated Democratic weakness among them.

Strategists in this camp argue it would be a mistake for the party to downplay outreach to white working-class voters who are not evangelicals, especially the women in that group.

The detailed exit poll results provided to CNN show clear openings for Democrats with some groups of white working-class voters. But they also indicate that Democrats still face significant headwinds with most of those blue-collar whites and that white evangelical Christians look increasingly monolithic in their support for Republicans. That's a big challenge for Democrats in many southern states, where half or more of working-class whites are also evangelical Christians.

...To start, this analysis underscores how many white working-class voters are also evangelical Christians. Nationwide, the exit poll found that evangelical Christians this year comprised fully 45% of all white voters without a college degree, a substantial portion of the total electorate. By contrast, evangelicals represented only one-fourth of college-educated white voters. (In 2016, the exit polls found that evangelicals constituted slightly larger shares of each group.)

In all of the southern states where the question was asked this year, evangelicals represented a majority of working-class white voters, including fully two-thirds in Georgia and Tennessee. Evangelicals were also a majority of white working class voters in West Virginia and Indiana and exactly half in Missouri.

That's a big hill for Democrats in those states, because the exit poll results show that they face virtually monolithic opposition from all segments of the evangelical community.

At least 77% of white evangelicals without a college degree voted against the Democratic Senate candidates in Florida, Missouri and Tennessee, while 72% opposed defeated Democratic incumbent Joe Donnelly in Indiana, the exit polls found. In the Georgia governor's race, a breathtaking 89% of non-college white evangelicals voted for Republican Brian Kemp over African-American Democrat Stacey Abrams; 84% of those voters picked Ted Cruz over O'Rourke in Texas. Only Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin in West Virginia ran competitively, losing those voters by a narrow 52% to 46% margin.

In House races, the exit polls found that exactly three-fourths of white evangelicals without a college degree voted Republican, while only about one-fifth supported Democrats. Democrats lost the men in this group by 57 percentage points and the women by a still daunting 49 points.

...In Public Religion Research Institute, surveys... evangelical Christians have declined from about 21% of the total population in 2008 to 15% this year. That erosion, Jones says, has been "asymmetrical," with younger and better-educated members becoming the most likely to leave the faith. That's left behind a group that is older and more uniformly conservative.

"As this group is shrinking and aging it is just becoming more and more homogenous," says Robert Jones, author of the 2017 book The End of White Christian America. "When you have that kind of attrition, and it's coming all from the low [younger] end, and the low end is more likely to be college educated and likely to be more liberal on a whole range of cultural issues and less anti-immigrant... you start losing differences."

But if the 2018 election results highlight the solidifying uniformity of white evangelicals-- male and female, college-educated or not-- the findings simultaneously illuminate pressing reasons for Republican concern about white voters who are not evangelicals, both those with and without college degrees.

Although Democrats this year posted their best recent showing among white voters holding at least a four-year college degree, the GOP's continuing strength among such well-educated white evangelicals obscured the full extent of the party's decline.

In the national House exit poll, Democrats carried fully two-thirds of college-educated whites that are not evangelical Christians. That included not only a head-turning 71% of college educated white women who are not evangelicals but also 59% of the equivalent men. The shares that said they disapproved of Trump's performance were even higher in both groups: 74% of the women and 63% of the men.

Democrats carried about three-fifths of these non-evangelical white-collar whites in the Florida Senate race and about two-thirds of them in Indiana, Tennessee and Missouri. Even in Texas, O'Rourke carried 61% of them, while Abrams won 55% of them in the Georgia governor's race. Those geographically dispersed results testify to the breadth of the recoil from the Trump-era GOP among these well-educated white voters that Republicans in an earlier generation considered part of their base.

In a process that Trump has accelerated, Republicans in this century have instead come to see whites without a college degree as the foundation of their support. But the detailed results from Edison show some cracks in that base among the working-class whites that are not evangelicals.

In the national House exit poll, Democrats actually carried a slim 52% to 46% majority among non-college whites who are not evangelicals, though with a significant gender gap. While Democrats won the blue-collar women who are not evangelicals by 16 percentage points, Republicans won the equivalent men by 9 points.

Frank Schaeffer knows more about the evangelical community-- and the evangelical con-- than anyone I know. This is how he explained it to me this morning: "Empire builders are empire builders, and entertainers are entertainers, regardless of what they call themselves. That’s why Trump and the evangelical leaders understood each other. The average uneducated white evangelical male voter has been looking for entertainment value for generations in church. The televangelists provided it. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and the Walt Disney Company are a perfect match. Mea culpa! I only understood the reality of the symbiotic relationship between the consumer/entertainment culture and our star religious-empire builders after I quit being one myself. Judging by the many emails I’m getting from pastors who have read my Calvin Becker Trilogy of novels (which are humorous stories about a preacher’s family, seen from the inside), it seems that many a preacher is in the position of Groucho Marx. Groucho said he’d never want to belong to a club that would let someone like him join. The doubt and self-loathing expressed to me by so many pastors is amazing. Of course, they all beg me never to tell anyone what they are telling me. The con is the same one Trump perpetuates of 'success.' Go will make you rich like he made me rich is the prosperity gospel hook for the dumb. No wonder they fell for the same con from Trump."

 And evangelical women aren't the only women giving Republican leaders a headache. Republican congresswoman are too. Rachael Bade and Sarah Ferris, writing for Politico, reported that "Several Republican women are preparing their own plans to help their female colleagues, support women candidates and woo suburban women just in case nobody listens. Wagner, for example, is about to relaunch a “suburban caucus” in the House. The group will craft an agenda aimed at winning back suburban women by promoting issues like paid family leave and child care tax credits." That's Ann Wagner, who represents Missouri's 2nd district, the St. Louis suburbs. On paper, the district is still comfortably Republican-- with a nearly unassailable R+8 PVI. Obama was defeated there both times he ran and Trump beat Hillary by 10 points-- 52.6% to 42.3%. But... last month Wagner had a tough reelection campaign against Democrat Cort VanOstran. She did beat him-- 190,008 (51.3%) to 174,486 (47.1%), but in the St. Louis County portion of the district (which is over 70% of the population), the margin was razor thin, despite her spending $4,115,076 to his $2,334,726. This year the DCCC spent nothing in MO-02. That's unlikely to be the case in 2020.

Wagner isn't alone in turning her attention towards electing more Republican women to Congress. New York Republican Elise Stefanik is doing the same thing, and in primaries no less. That means she'll be backing Republican women against Republican men in primaries. In GOP-land that is an unforgivable heresy. But Republican congresswomen are angry. In the same year Congress finally got around to designating a bathroom for women off the House floor (2011), there were 76 women serving in the House. Starting in January, there will be 103. The problem is that almost 90% of them are Democrats-- more like super-progressive leaders Alexandria Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Ayssa Pressley, Deb Haaland and Katie Porter than like reactionary shrews Virginia Foxx, Diane Black, Claudia Tenney and Liz Cheney.

“I am going to keep pointing out to my colleagues that we are at a crisis level for GOP women,” Stefanik said in a recent interview. “This election should be a wake-up call to Republicans that we need to do better … We need to be elevating women’s voices, not suppressing them.”

In interviews with Politico, Republican women were divided about whether GOP leaders and their male colleagues were getting the message. In one of his first moves as NRCC chairman-elect, for example, Tom Emmer told a reporter Stefanik’s idea to help female candidates in primaries was “a mistake.”

...“I’m sorry-- Tom Emmer is wrong on this one,” said retiring Rep. Diane Black of Tennessee, who supported Stefanik in her first election and supports her primary idea. “To say what Elise is doing is a mistake? We need to applaud her. She’s filling a void.”

She added: “OK, the NRCC’s policy is that they are not going to help in the primary ... But if [women] don’t get out of the primary, what good is that?”

Stefanik, for her part, tweeted Emmer’ comments out with a bit of her own sass:

...[T]he NRCC has been on the defensive since Emmer’s comments, which come as the number of House GOP women is set to drop to the lowest number since 1994. When he takes office, Emmer plans to sit down with all 13 remaining GOP women for a candid tell-all “listening session” about what went wrong in 2018, according to an NRCC aide.

“You can’t not recognize the problem, the numbers are so terrible,” said an NRCC aide.

But it’s unclear whether that will be enough. Some women like Wagner are still frustrated that the gravity of the situation has yet to sink in, arguing that “I have seen no sign” of reflection. Even Stefanik is pushing her colleagues to conduct an “autopsy” of what happened and why they lost so many female voters and lawmakers this year.

Figuring Out What Will Happen In November, But Not 2019

Alexandria Ocasio is such an underdog in her primary challenge to Joe Crowley-- one of the biggest big shots inside the Beltway-- that none of the Inside the Beltway prognosticators ever even mention her race against the Pelosi heir-apparent, one of Congress' most corrupt members. That's not because the media is lazy; it's just that they're stupid and unimaginative... and lazy. Crowley, who lives in Virginia and has virtually no connection whatsoever to a district that has rapidly changed since 1998 when he first wormed his way into the seat, is extremely vulnerable to a primary challenge. We'll discuss this later today. Now I just want to point out that out of touch congressmen are vulnerable. If that wasn't the case young and vigorous California congressmen Ro Khanna and Eric Swalwell wouldn't have beaten, respectively, 18-year incumbent Mike Honda and 40-year incumbent Pete Stark in primaries that shocked a geriatric Democratic establishment. Neither Honda nor Stark were prepared to defend themselves from what hit them. Donna Edwards and Matt Cartwright had managed to pull off the same thing in Maryland and Pennsylvania against entrenched incumbents Al Wynn and Tim Holden, horrifying sclerotic party bosses in DC.

When the 2010 Republican wave hit the Democrats hard, the GOP gained 63 seats, the biggest House swing since 1948. Some of the worn and tired old-timers were smart enough to get out of the way before being swept away. Entrenched senior incumbents like Dave Obey (WI), Marion Berry (AR), Vic Snyder (AR), Brian Baird (WA), Bart Stupak (MI) and Dennis Moore all retired voluntarily, their districts falling to Republicans in November. 52 Democrats who fought for reelection were defeated, including some very senior members who had, basically, lost the skills to fight a competitive race in a bad environment-- John Spratt (SC), Gene Taylor (MS), Jim Marshall (GA), Jim Oberstar (MN), Rick Boucher (VA), Solomon Ortiz (TX), Paul Kanjorski (PA), Baron Hill (IN), Earl Pomeroy (ND), Allen Boyd (FL), Ciro Rodriguez (TX), Bob Etheridge (NC) and Ike Skelton (MO).

Old history? Sure... but, Politico sported an interesting headline yesterday: House leaders’ biggest 2018 fear: The lazy Republican. It could have been a mirror image of 2010: Ryan freaking ou: "GOP members who haven’t had a tough race in years are being warned to start running scared." Quite a few, including Ryan, have been rumored to start running for the exits instead. Rachael Bade happened to begin her report in TX-07: "On paper, Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) appears to be a shoo-in for reelection. He‘s served nine terms in what’s been a GOP stronghold for decades, hasn’t had a serious challenger in years and sits on one of the most powerful committees in Congress. But Culberson‘s suburban-Houston district went for Hillary Clinton by 1 percentage point in 2016. And when GOP leaders found out last year that he was being outraised by Democrats and barely had a campaign staff, they were exasperated. Get your act together, they warned Culberson in so many words, according to sources familiar with the dressing-down. Culberson’s slow start to his reelection campaign is what GOP leaders fear most heading into the thick of the midterm elections: incumbents who haven’t seen a real race in years snoozing as a Democratic wave builds. Speaker Paul Ryan and the National Republican Congressional Committee are less concerned about their battle-tested swing-district members-- who face tough races every election cycle-- and more worried about complacent Republicans not prepared for a fight."

What Bade doesn't fit into her narrative it what the NRCC has been always able to count on when they're in a tough spot: the incompetence and corruption of the failed DCCC. There are two Democrats in the May 22 primary runoff-- Laura Moser, a progressive and Lizzie Fletcher, an EMILY's List creation. Fletcher, the establishment candidate, has an anti-union reputation that alienates and deflates a significant portion of the Democratic base. Meanwhile-- and for various reasons that have to do with DCCC staff corruption, anti-progressive mania and arrogance-- the DCCC has worked to make Moser unelectable against Culberson. Ironically, she probably wouldn't have even been in the runoff had the DCCC not attacked her! DCCC support is so toxic among a portion of the base that they are the same kind of kiss of death as Trump is on the GOP side. Immediately after the DCCC smear campaign began, small donors rushed to contribute over $100,000 to her campaign. And TX-07 primary voters decided to send the DCCC a lesson about not interfering in their primary. Back to Bade:

“This is a very tough environment for Republicans. If you’re getting outraised or if you haven’t started your campaign yet, you need to be scared and start today,” said Corry Bliss, executive director of the Ryan-aligned Congressional Leadership Fund. “Saying ‘I’ve never lost before, therefore I can never lose this time’ is not a campaign plan.”

It’s one of the reasons Ryan’s political team and NRCC officials have started holding a series of meetings with lawmakers from traditionally reliable GOP districts. Their message: Get ready for a roller coaster and begin your campaign in earnest now.

It’s too early to tell whether leadership’s message is registering. More than 40 GOP incumbents were outraised by Democratic challengers during the last three months of 2017, a staggering number that senior Republicans said is unacceptable and amounts to nothing short of laziness.

What the 2 establishment DC parties haven't learned from the past is that in wave election cycles money won't save the necks of incumbents. I studied ever single district outcome in the 2006 blue wave and the 2010 red wave. In 2006 Republicans who outspent Democratic challengers by five times were swept away anyone (as long as the challenger had enough money to get out his or her message). And the same thing was true in the 2010 midterms, when Democrats who outspent GOP challengers by massive amounts went down badly. Ryan and his team think 2018 will be all about money. It won't; it will be all about Trump and the congressional enablers.

“Many of our members have not been in Congress during a possible ‘wave’ election cycle, as happened in 2006 and 2010,” added a Republican campaign staffer. “Members in Republican-leaning districts should heed the warnings from House leadership and get ready for a fight.”

Rep. Glenn Grothman’s team is another office that’s received a talking-to. Ryan is personally helping campaign for the Wisconsin Republican, who hasn’t had a competitive race since he was elected in 2014. His sprawling district partly abutting Lake Michigan has been a Republican stronghold since the 1960s. But Grothman now faces a wealthy Democratic challenger who’s planning to spend hundreds of thousands of his own money on the race.

Grothman acknowledged in an interview the battle he’s in for and said he's doing "100 percent" what he can to prepare. The 62-year-old former attorney pulled up his schedule on his phone and read a list of constituent events: a fish fry, a bowl-a-thon, some St. Patrick’s Day parades and Lincoln Day dinners.

“Obviously, that’s a bigger problem than the typical year,” Grothman said of his Democratic challenger, Dan Kohl, the nephew of former Milwaukee Bucks owner and ex-Sen. Herb Kohl. “I’ll raise more money, I think, because there’s more a necessity… My opponent has a lot of money, and he’s telling people he’s going to spend a lot of money… so it’s concerning.”

Rep. Robert Pittenger (R-NC) also hails from a solid Republican district but is facing a well-funded Democratic opponent who last quarter raked in over $100,000 more than the incumbent. His staff, like Grothman’s, has been warned to be ready-- particularly because Pittenger is still introducing himself to constituents after a recent redistricting changed his district’s borders.

Another North Carolinian on GOP leaders’ radar is freshman Rep. Ted Budd. His well-connected Democratic opponent, philanthropist Kathy Manning, raised $564,000 last quarter, compared to his $183,000 haul.

Budd said he realizes “the environment is tough this year,” and he just hired a campaign manager who will start next month.

Ryan’s political executive director, Kevin Seifert, and deputy executive director, Jake Kastan, are handling many of the reality-check meetings with incumbent Republicans or their staffs. While Ryan’s team often helps incumbents, it's hosting more meetings than usual, and with a greater sense of urgency.

Ryan and NRCC Chairman Steve Stivers (R-OH) have also delivered the same message to lawmakers in conference gatherings in recent weeks: Raise money now, be active in your districts, find legislative issues that resonate with constituents and tout your accomplishments constantly. Also, define yourself and your opponent early, and label Democrats as obstructionists.

“When you have a million dollars spent attacking [GOP lawmakers] for the first time, a lot can change, and quickly,” Bliss said.

The warnings from leadership aides are also expected to extend to a handful of Freedom Caucus members who typically feel safe enough to vote with the far right of the House Republican Conference-- if they haven't already. Three Democratic opponents of caucus member Rep. Tom Garrett (R-Va.) outraised him in the last fundraising quarter, two of them by $100,000.

Garrett's district elected a Democrat to the House in 2008, before a Republican reclaimed the seat two years later. And Garrett’s conservative votes could make him more susceptible in a Democratic wave year, senior Republicans said.

Ditto, they said, for Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA), another Freedom Caucus member, who upset former Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a 2014 primary.

Brat declined to discuss his campaign with Politico; two Democratic opponents collected more than him in the final three months of 2017-- including one by nearly $150,000.

“Policy, policy, policy,” Brat said when asked about his reelection effort. “All I talk is policy.”

At least one Republican, Culberson, appears to have heeded the warnings from leadership, aides say. He has hired new staff and outraised his Democratic opponents in the last quarter of 2017, though in the first six weeks of this year, his top two competitors collected more money than him, according to campaign filings.

“I’m always ready,” Culberson in a brief interview this week, “and even more so this year.”

Yesterday, at The Atlantic, Ron Brownstein posited that Trump has already sealed the GOP's midterm fate. Brownstein focuses in on one aspect: Ryan and McConnell and their teams are "sending an unmistakable signal to voters: So long as Republicans hold the congressional majority, they will not act to meaningfully constrain, or even oversee" a moron and uncontrollable, self-centered, selfish Trumpanzee with an id run amuck. Brownstein calls it an "epic gamble... Their approach," he wrote, "threatens to persuade less partisan voters that they need a Democratic House (and perhaps Senate) to impose any limits on a president who daily redefines the words 'mercurial,' 'belligerent,' and 'volatile.' ... Some GOP strategists believe the imperative of energizing the GOP base-- which preponderantly supports Trump-- justifies the risk of alienating less partisan voters inclined to restrain him. And in some Republican-leaning places, that calculation may compute. But in almost all swing House districts, 'you can’t get to 50 percent [of the vote] with just base voters,' noted Meredith Kelly, the communications director for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. That threshold requires 'crossover support and independents'-- the sort of voters that may prefer some constraints on Trump, even if they don’t entirely reject his direction."

Every time Donald Trump breaks a window, congressional Republicans obediently sweep up the glass. That’s become one of the most predictable patterns of his turbulent presidency-- and a defining dynamic of the approaching midterm elections. Each time they overtly defend his behavior, or implicitly excuse him by failing to object, they bind themselves to him more tightly.

It happened again last weekend when Trump fired off a volley of tweets that, for the first time, attacked Special Counsel Robert Mueller by name. A handful of GOP senators responded with warnings against dismissing Mueller. More congressional Republicans said nothing. Party leaders, such as House Speaker Paul Ryan, tried to downplay the attacks by insisting that Trump would not act on them and fire Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Most important, and regardless of their rhetorical posture, Republicans almost universally locked arms to reject legislative action to protect the special counsel.

That reaction reflected a hardening pattern. Whatever the provocation-- reported payoffs to a porn star, a chaotic security-clearance process in the White House, the public belittling of Attorney General Jeff Sessions-- congressional Republicans have found ways to excuse or simply ignore behavior that would have launched a thousand subpoenas under a Democratic president.

...As American politics has grown more tribal since the 1990s, attitudes toward the president have become a decisive factor in congressional elections. In each midterm since 1994, 82 percent to 86 percent of the voters who disapproved of the incumbent president voted against his party’s House candidates, exit polls found.

That effect may be even more intense under Trump because such a high proportion of those who disapprove of him do so strongly: An Election Day poll in last week’s Pennsylvania special election, for instance, found that fully 93 percent of Trump disapprovers backed Democrat Conor Lamb, the victor. In this week’s NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 87 percent of Trump disapprovers said they intend to vote Democratic for Congress.

One group has emerged as especially alienated from the president: college-educated white women. The group ordinarily leans Democrat, but only slightly: Since 1992, Democrats have never carried more than 52 percent of their votes in House elections, and Hillary Clinton won 51 percent of them in 2016. However, this week’s NBC/WSJ poll found that 63 percent of them now disapprove of Trump and 62 percent intend to vote Democratic in November.

...For congressional Republicans, the choice to tie themselves to Trump now looks irreversible. The question remains whether they have fashioned a lifeline or a noose.

Trumpanzee Fights To Cut Taxes On The Super-Rich

Dysfunctional GOP by Nancy Ohanian

Yesterday Ryan brought policy expert Donald J Trumpanzee to persuade the Freedom Caucus and other far right sociopaths that the Senate-passed budget is something they need to get behind. I would have loved to have been able to listen to the ignorant boob on the conference call trying to explain something he doesn't have a clue about to a pack of congressmen who tend to see him as a clown-- albeit their clown. I hope a tape gets out quickly. Pence was on the call as well, so it will definitely be leaked within 24 hours.

Remember, this budget is anything but balanced, something the Freedom Caucus still pretends to care about. And the tax cuts add $1.5 trillion to the deficit, which the Freedom Caucus are demanding be balanced out by immediately cutting Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and welfare programs. (Less radical Republicans are opposed to the whole plan because the elimination of the federal income tax deduction for state and local taxes will burn their voters-- especially in California, New York, New Jersey, Minnesota and Illinois, where there are 38 Republican congressmembers. And then there's the little matter of screwing around with middle class retirement savings plans.

This could turn out very ugly for Speaker Ryan. As Rachael Bade pointed out for Politico yesterday, this is "not the first time House Republicans have been asked to swallow a budget they dislike. In January, conservatives balked when Speaker Paul Ryan insisted they support a budget that did little to tackle federal deficits in order to advance a bill to repeal Obamacare. [He] promised at the time that the next budget bill would incorporate more conservative principles. Instead, House conservatives feel they are again being asked to accept a budget deal they disagree with, this time so that tax reform talks can move forward."

Ryan, Scalise and Patrick McHenry, who took over as chief Whip while Scalise was in the hospital, have been badgering the Freedom Caucus and Republican Study Group members that "haggling with the Senate over the fiscal blueprint would delay the tax bill by three or more weeks [and that it would be] better to just accept the Senate version and move on."

The pressure by Trump, the White House and GOP leaders to back the budget appears to be working. Even conservatives who dislike the Senate plan say they feel it has momentum.

In a Saturday statement, Walker said the “Senate ignored the House's attempt to balance the budget and reform mandatory entitlement programs” but that the Republican Study Committee “reached our decision to support the Senate Budget Resolution based on the premise of beginning markup of tax reform legislation within a couple of weeks.”

The group also got a thumbs-up from leadership on a balanced budget vote and deficit reducing legislation, which will likely die in the Senate.

It is unclear, however, whether the Freedom Caucus would make their own support for the budget contingent on House leaders publicly promising to hold a vote on tax reform by mid-November. A decision to block the budget would likely prompt pushback from the White House.

The details of the call have begun leaking out. Trump told the Republicans if they don't do what he tells them-- and when he tells them-- they're risking a 2018 bloodbath. President Gas said, "We are on the verge of doing something very, very historic."