How Much Democratic Cooperation Is Collaboration?

Cops with attitude in Donald Trump's world (source; click to enlarge)

by Gaius Publius

A reasonably short piece, but one that poses a key set of questions for our "next six months" watch over the revival or demise of the Democratic Party. As I wrote earlier:

America is in a pre-revolutionary state. If it weren't for the DNC, its manipulation of the process, and the many closed (to independents) primaries it ran, Sanders would have won. Ask yourself, perhaps as you watch the first three minutes of the clip above, how someone who can fill football stadiums was beaten by someone who can't fill a high-school gymnasium. ...

No matter who won the general election in 2016, Establishment Clinton or faux–Change Agent Trump, it wouldn't have taken much under either administration to tip the balance toward revolt, since under either the suffering were going to keep suffering beneath the boot of the bankers and CEO class. Only a Sanders presidency would have lowered those odds significantly. It certainly won't take much to tip the balance toward revolution, with Donald Trump grinding people's gears.

Our job: Make sure when Trump voters' gears are being ground, we offer highly popular Sanders Wing policies to them, and nothing else.

I think Establishment Democrats have at most six months from now to surrender to the Sanders faction (which, as the big losers of 2016, they should do). If they don't surrender, they will make themselves an irrelevant minority party for the rest of this generation. Or until full-blown climate chaos hits and no one on the globe talks elections. Or both.

You heard it here first. Six months max for the Party to reform itself. Sinon ça, le déluge.

I said "surrender" above for a reason. Because I think if the Democratic Establishment doesn't voluntarily surrender — if they put up a big and obvious fight against Sanders forces (for example, by elevating Chris Van Hollen to DSCC Chair, which they've done, or failing to elevate Keith Ellison to DNC Chair, which both Clinton forces and Obama forces are strongly opposing) — they will be tarred forever, or into the next generation, as hopelessly corrupt, at least in Sanders supporters' eyes.

Which means that for anyone hungry for Sanders-style change, the answers to what tortures the nation will have to come from somewhere else. A Sanders wing split from the Party is possible. Much more likely, though, is chaos in the streets, a running urban mélée between the black, brown and angry white #NeverTrumpists — and Trump-branded tanks and Trump-armored "cops with attitude."

To avoid what may well look like a modern, asymmetric civil war, we need to look carefully at the Democratic Party as it adapts to Trump. Will it reform itself or continue to serve the same moneyed interest that the Republicans serve (though a different faction of it)?

In other words, how will the Democratic Party act in the Age of Trump? How should it act for the nation to avoid the worst kind of upheaval?

Bringing a Butter Knife to a Gunfight

The bottom line question for Democrats, with Trump and the Republicans in full control, can be expressed this way: How much cooperation is collaboration?

I want to offer first this meditation by David Dayen, then some thoughts of my own. The core of Dayen's piece is a look at Obama's appointment of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, and how, no matter what you think about Garland (I was strongly opposed to him), the nomination was stolen by the Republicans from Obama, who, as sitting President, rightly "owned" the appointment.

Dayen's question is similar to mine — What should the Democrats do in response to such a blatant, high-value theft? After airing the particulars of the Garland case, he writes more generally (emphasis mine throughout):

The fact that Democrats prefer to maintain governance norms, even while Republicans break them time and again, inescapably pushes the policymaking apparatus of the country to the right. ...

Keep those two concepts in mind:

• Democrats prefer to maintain (be limited by) governance norms.
• Republicans, to gain more power, break them all the time.

This is more than a Merrick Garland problem. This is a general problem, a guaranteed Democratic strategy for losing — all the time. Dayen continues:

Republicans have absolutely no problem breaking any norm in their path to power. They turned the filibuster from a seldom-used tool to a routine exercise. Tom DeLay saw advantage in doing a second redistricting in Texas in 2003 to pick up extra GOP seats, even though states normally redistrict every 10 years; he succeeded. Congress typically passes the debt limit without comment, but Republicans took the country to the brink of its first default, extracting concessions in the process. A minority of the Senate prevented the confirmation for years of any director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau simply because they didn’t like the agency. The opposition party would never attempt to conduct foreign policy that differed from the president’s, until Republican senators tried it before the Iran deal.

And, of course, the year-long blockade of Garland, who has not even received a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee, violated a long-standing norm.

He concludes:

There are consequences to one party being more aggressive about defying governing norms. If liberal legislation can’t break a Republican filibuster, but Democrats don’t offer the same resistance, the playing field is tilted to conservative policy. If Republicans use any maneuver to get appointees in place, and Democrats don’t, conservatives become more likely to be ensconced at executive agencies. If Republicans are willing to blackmail the government and Democrats aren’t, they get more concessions from that blackmail. If Republicans use gerrymandering and voter suppression and every available tool more sharply than Democrats, we get conservative government even if we vote for a liberal one.

Democrats, in short, bring a butter knife to a gunfight.

Forget the point about enabling "conservative" policy. It's now about enabling Donald Trump's policy. There are "consequences" (Dayen's word) to that as well, and they go far beyond the policies themselves, to the life or death of the Democratic Party and, as noted above, the face and shape of the inevitable resistance to Trump in this country.

Will the nation's resistance to Trump continue to be electoral? Or will the voters abandon elections (and the Democrats) and take increasingly to the streets, to be faced by Trump's "cops with attitude"? The extent to which the Democratic Party performs the role of real opposition will help determine the answer to those questions.

When Does "Cooperation" Become Collaboration? And What Should We Do About It?

In order to begin to tease out an answer, I want to make three points, raise three more sets of questions. (I'll offer an actual answer later.)

First, Democrats will show cooperation with Trump by their actions and by their inactions. Support for Trump's deeply flawed infrastructure bill, for example, is cooperation by action. Negotiating with Trump to get a "less deeply flawed" infrastructure bill, then helping Republicans pass it, is also cooperation by action.

Are these actions also collaboration, in the fully-loaded, WWII-sense of the word?

Filibustering the AG appointment of racist Jeff Sessions is obstruction by action. Not filibustering Jeff Sessions is cooperation by inaction. Is not filibustering Sessions — or any of the other horrible, filibusterable, appointments that Trump will make — also collaboration, in the fully-loaded sense of the word?

Sanders supporters who didn't vote for Clinton — will they see attempts at cooperation as collaboration, and discard the Party as useless? (Early indications are that many already do and have; see below.)

Second, there will be literally dozens, and perhaps hundreds, of Trump actions and legislation that must be opposed to the bitter end, opposed just on principle alone, opposed just because the consequences will be so bad. It's certainly true that many stalwart Democrats will oppose them all, but again, "all" is a lot of opposition. Will enough Democrats oppose them, and will enough Democrats oppose them all, to be, and look like, an effective party-in-opposition?

In other words, will the Party as a whole be willing to undertake that level of obstruction, if that level of obstruction is warranted? After all, if Trump and the Republicans are as terrible as many people anticipate, a truly obstructionist Democratic Party will soon look like Mitch McConnell's Republicans under Obama. Do the Democrats as a whole have the (unbought) stomach for that kind of fight?

More: Even if the Party "wants" to obstruct to this degree ("wants" is an odd word when you're talking about people who hoover up money like they do), can they?

Starting in 2017 the Republicans will likely control 52 seats in the Senate, plus have the vice-president's tying vote. (I'm assuming the Republican will win the runoff election in Louisiana.) This means that if only eight Democrats vote with the Republicans, any Democratic filibuster can be broken. Joe Manchin and Claire McCaskill look like they're already on board the Trump "bipartisan" train, with many others queued up. Ron Wyden wanted to work with Paul Ryan (yes, Paul Ryan) to "reform" Medicare. Thirteen Democratic senators voted to pass Fast Track, two of them in exchange for passage of the gift to Boeing known as the Import-Export Bank. Money trading favors for money. One of those two, Patty Murray, was and is still in Senate leadership.

Democrats always seem to find just enough "bipartisan" votes when both parties' bipartisan money is on the line. Corporate-funded Democrats (some call them "Schumercrats") may, for the entirety of the next four years, decide to play "whose turn is it this time to betray the working class, so the rest of us don't have to?" After all, playing that game pays very well for the Party as a whole.

Yet if the Party does continue to play this game, there will be continued electoral consequences. Betraying the working people's interests for the sake of campaign donors, time after time, not only makes the whole party look complicit, it makes the whole party vulnerable to even more of the Sanders-supporter hatred they're already subject to. Again, Democrats lost in the worker-heavy Rust Belt for a reason: voter anger. A party that brands itself as complicit with anti-worker pro-Trump policies will not be seen as a solution when the non-racist Trump voters wake up.

And frankly, Democrats are in the absolute governmental minority now. At what point do Sanders-supporting voters give up entirely on the Democrats as a vehicle for Sanders-style change and make them a permanent minority?

You read my bottom line above: "Six months max for the Party to reform itself. Sinon ça, le déluge." Democrats as a party may be on a very short leash with these voters.

Finally, how should we deal with real Democratic "collaborators," the Joe Manchins and Claire McCaskills (and Ron Wydens and Tim Kaines) of the world, should they stray from the anti-Trump reservation? Should they be left alone, to live and dine large on their high-table DC status, because someone like Manchin, for example, can only be replaced by a Republican (as one Democrat told me)?

Or should they be sent off to K Street regardless of the price, as a message to "our" new minority party to get its act together or stay in the minority forever?

I'll offer my thoughts later on all these questions, plus a much larger one, in a later piece. Keep in mind though, this reticence of mine, this willingness to thoughtfully consider, is not is shared by everyone. Others — many others — have already made up their minds, starting with the 2016 election. Here's Caitlin Johnstone, for example, with a meme that looks back at that trainwreck Clinton loss with this comment:

"We told them the choices — 'Bernie Or Bust.' They chose 'Or Bust'" (source).

That's not me smiling that evil smile. But the feeling is shared by a whole lot of others. Just to give you a taste, the title of the source piece is "Yes, We Cost Hillary The Election. You're Welcome." You don't have to share this thought to recognize it as a critical problem for Democrats. This is the crossroads they face in the Age of Trump. This is the anger the Party is up against.

When does cooperation become collaboration? How much collaboration is too much for the Sanders voters and non-voters who helped them to their defeat? The Party needs to decide soon. I give it six months, and then the book on the Party will be closed, perhaps for a very long time.

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Trump's Infrastructure Bill? It's a Trap

Refugees? Dissidents? Collaborators?

by Gaius Publius

That big infrastructure bill you keep hearing about, and Democrats are starting to come on board with? It's a trap.

Ronald Klain writing in the Washington Post (my emphasis throughout):

As the White House official responsible for overseeing implementation of President Obama’s massive infrastructure initiative, the 2009 Recovery Act, I’ve got a simple message for Democrats who are embracing President-elect Donald Trump’s infrastructure plan: Don’t do it. It’s a trap. Backing Trump’s plan is a mistake in policy and political judgment they will regret, as did their Democratic predecessors who voted for Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts in 1981 and George W. Bush’s cuts in 2001.

First, about the author. The Washington Post article tells us, "Ronald A. Klain served as assistant to President Obama and oversaw the team implementing the American Recovery and Renewal Act from 2009-2011. He was an adviser to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign."

His discussion of Clinton's plan may well be biased toward Clinton, but if so, it's moot at this point. Clinton advisor or not, he's right about Trump's plan based a look at the Trump team's underlying analysis (pdf). Here's Klain's discussion of the Trump bill's many problems.

It's a "Tax Cut for Investors" Bill, Not an Infrastructure Bill

Trump's so-called "infrastructure" bill is really just a tax cut bill for investors in infrastructure and would do nothing to guarantee that the most needed (as opposed to the most profitable) projects are undertaken. Klain:

First, Trump’s plan is not really an infrastructure plan. It’s a tax-cut plan for utility-industry and construction-sector investors, and a massive corporate welfare plan for contractors. The Trump plan doesn’t directly fund new roads, bridges, water systems or airports, as did Hillary Clinton’s 2016 infrastructure proposal. Instead, Trump’s plan provides tax breaks to private-sector investors who back profitable construction projects. These projects (such as electrical grid modernization or energy pipeline expansion) might already be planned or even underway. There’s no requirement that the tax breaks be used for incremental or otherwise expanded construction efforts; they could all go just to fatten the pockets of investors in previously planned projects.

Moreover, as others have noted, desperately needed infrastructure projects that are not attractive to private investors — municipal water-system overhauls, repairs of existing roads, replacement of bridges that do not charge tolls — get no help from Trump’s plan. And contractors? Well, they get a “10 percent pretax profit margin,” according to the plan. Combined with Trump’s sweeping business tax break, this would represent a stunning $85 billion after-tax profit for contractors — underwritten by the taxpayers.

What else would you expect from Donald Trump but an opening of the purse to builders and contractors. But jobs too, yes? Actually, no, not as the bill is written.

No New Jobs Guarantee; No American Jobs Guarantee

Keep in mind, this bill doesn't fund projects; it funds investors. Now Klain on whether it will create new jobs:

Second, as a result of the above, Trump’s plan isn’t really a jobs plan, either. Because the plan subsidizes investors, not projects; because it funds tax breaks, not bridges; because there’s no requirement that the projects be otherwise unfunded, there is simply no guarantee that the plan will produce any net new hiring. Investors may simply shift capital from unsubsidized projects to subsidized ones and pocket the tax breaks on projects they would have funded anyway. Contractors have no obligation to hire new workers, or expand workers’ hours, to collect their $85 billion. To their credit, the plan’s authors don’t call it a jobs plan; ironically, it is Democrats looking to align with Trump who have given it that name. They should not fool themselves.

Yes, there will be jobs — but new jobs? No guarantee. There's also no guarantee, zero, that projects funded by this bill would hire U.S. citizens as workers. Trump himself is notorious for trying to use (very cheap) imported foreign labor on his domestic projects.

From Fortune in 2015:

Donald Trump’s companies tried to import at least 1,100 foreign workers

Companies owned by GOP frontrunner Donald Trump have sought at least 1,100 foreign worker visas since 2000—a practice that stands in stark contrast to Trump’s self-portrayal as a presidential candidate who would create and project American jobs.

A Reuters’ analysis of Department of Labor data shows that nine Trump-majority-owned companies have applied to bring waitresses, cooks, vineyard workers, and other laborers into the country on foreign worker visas. Most of the visa applications have gained approval, Reuters says. Palm Beach, Fla., resort Mar-a-Lago Club has sought the most foreign workers of the nine Trump-owned businesses. It has submitted applications for 787 workers since 2006. This month, it sought to bring in 70 foreign workers to work as maids, cooks, and servers on H-2B workers later this year[.]

The visas the Trump companies have relied on the most—H-2B—is a subset of the H-2 visa program that covers nonagricultural foreign workers. (H-2A visas are for farm workers.) The H-2 program is often criticized for leaving workers vulnerable to employer abuses. Last month, a Buzzfeed investigation portrayed the system as one that—at times—fosters modern-day slavery.

All of these problems, by the way, can be easily exploited by any Democrat not looking to be "bipartisan" with the new president. Unfortunately, Democrats are starting to look like easy marks for this plan.

Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine on Chuck Schumer's plans:

Democratic Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer is plunging ahead with his plan to help Donald Trump pass a gigantic infrastructure plan. One apparent reason for this decision is a misunderstanding about how public opinion works — a mistaken belief that Democratic senators will get credit for working with Trump, when in reality the primary credit will flow to Trump, and the secondary credit to Republicans in Congress, even those who might oppose popular bills."

Chait goes on to discuss how Schumer is hoping to triangulate the Republicans, to put them in a box, since Republicans didn't really want to spend on massive infrastructure when Obama was president. "[Schumer's] premise is that he can force Trump to choose between a large public infrastructure plan supported by Democrats and the opposition of fiscal conservatives in the Republican Congress, who have opposed such a plan for several years. Signing an infrastructure bill, Schumer says, would mean 'breaking with the Republicans who have always opposed these things.'"

Shorter Chait: "Silly Schumer."

Here's why. Schumer, according to Chait, wants to offer a substitute infrastructure bill, a "real" one instead of this tax-cut giveaway bill, on the assumption that Republicans won't bite. If Schumer does that, Chait thinks Republicans will bite (as do I).

And here's what would happen:

To be sure, it will be slightly awkward and embarrassing for Republicans in Congress to suddenly toggle their rhetoric from denunciations of wasteful pork to support for necessary infrastructure upgrades. But this is where Schumer plans to come and rescue them. His party will supply the votes for the bill that will create the jobs needed to make Trump popular, and thus to supply the tailwind for down-ballot Republicans. Conservative Republicans eager to maintain their anti-spending purity can cast symbolic votes against the bill without preventing it from coming to the floor. Then they can enjoy the political benefits from rising wages under their party’s government. And if the deficit rises? (Which it probably will, after a debt-financed infrastructure law, debt-financed tax cuts, and debt-financed defense hikes.) Well, then Republicans can point to the big-spending infrastructure bill Democrats passed over their objections, stuffed with Democratic pork. And they can demand cuts to social spending to rectify it.

Outfoxed again, should it play out this way. And even if it doesn't, the appearance of Democratic collaboration will stain them all anyway. They should never touch this thing, in any of its forms.

It's a Trap

I can think of no better way for Democrats to validate Donald Trump's presidency — and guarantee that their own party remains in the minority throughout the lifetime of every Sanders voter who refused to pull the lever for Clinton — than to give, or even appear to give, any support to this.

It's true that individual Democrats (the self-serving "Schumercrats") may keep their own seats at the moneyed insider table. But the Party as a whole will complete its own destruction, the one that the Party accelerated during the disastrous Clinton candidacy. Protecting the Inside Game at the expense of their Party's fortunes, or worse, the nation's, will destroy both the Party and the nation.

It looks like Bernie Sanders isn't suckered into this one, no matter how many well-placed others are. That's one clear mind at least among the muddled.

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Will Pennsylvanians Let NY Greaseball Chuck Schumer Pick Their Senator Today?

Few people remember Joe Biden's Senate record. But I'm one who does. "Corporate whore" comes rapidly to mind. Biden was a right-of-center establishment Democratic who represented Wall Street interests while painting himself as a man of the people who road Amtrack. Outside of Delaware-- where he was a sentaor from 1973 'til 2008-- no one ever bought the hype back then, though Politico, which wasn't around then, does today. Biden's presidential bids never got off the ground. Biden's innate conservatism led him to the Republican Party, although his dislike of Nixon inspired him to register as an independent. The boss of his law firm was a Democrat and eventually, in his late 20s, Biden slipped into the Delaware Democratic Party. He won his first Senate election, an upset, against GOP incumbent Caleb Boggs, by 3,162 votes, running on a progressive platform. After a short time, he pivoted away from progressive stands and towards the very establishment, very status quo positions that have kept him from ever breaking through politically. His anti-consumer bankruptcy bills on behalf of predatory credit card companies are his top legislative achievements.

Now Biden is busy working with Chuck Schumer to make the Senate more Wall street-friendly, less progressive and less open to nay form of the kind of populism he's faked for his whole political career-- basically, his whole life. He's been the establishment's happy warrior in the ugly Democratic Party campaign against independent-minded Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania. Media buffoons never stop talking about how Biden is from Scranton, which is true, but he hasn't lived there since he was 9 years old. The establishment is using his status as son of Scranton in a vicious anti-Sestak campaign in favor of the Machine's worthless puppet candidate, Katie McGinty, who was recruited by Chuck Schumer when Sestak refused to pledge personal allegience to the power-mad Schumer.

The two other right-of-center Wall Street whores Biden has gotten behind this cycle are Schumercrats Ted Strickland in Ohio and "ex"-Republican Patrick Murphy in Florida, Wall Street's #1 priority for a Senate seat for 2016. As soon as Biden had given up on running for president himself, Schumer was all over him to help him elect more conservative Democrats to the Senate.

Within weeks, incoming Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) was at the Naval Observatory for breakfast, talking over the details. Not long after, he returned with Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chair Jon Tester (D-Mont.) for a 90-minute briefing on their top races.

“He was a man of the Senate, cared about the Senate, and we said, ‘We really need you to be our point guy,’” Schumer said. “And he has been.”

That's meant campaigning against progressives for Schumer's weak and corrupt batch of Wall Street-backing establishment shills. Patrick Murphy may be the worst Democrat running this year-- if you count the rich, spoiled GOP brat as a Democrat at all-- but Wall Street is all in on him and Biden got dragged into it by Schumer, promising presidential library contributions from banksters and from Murphy's crooked parents. Today Pennsylvania Democrats will pick between a man they know and respect and the puppet candidate of the machine. Obama has a generic ad he's cutting for the Schumercrats like McGinty. Paul Kane, in yesterday's Washington Post seems to be one of the only Beltway journalists to have figured out the destestable Schumer is pulling all the strings from behind the curtain. Here's how he described a scene with a criminal state Senator in Philly:

Katie McGinty has never been elected to anything, and her name is not well known to Pennsylvania voters. So last week, at a bustling transit stop in West Philadelphia, the unlikely Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate was relying on a local power broker to sell her to his dubious constituents.

A friend with a bullhorn beckoned commuters as state Sen. Vincent Hughes (D) insisted that McGinty would prevail in Tuesday’s Democratic primary on the strength of endorsements from powerful party leaders, including President Obama.

“There’s a crystallization, largely in the African American community, around Katie as they see folks like myself and others come out in support of her,” Hughes said.

...In Pennsylvania, the feud is more about personality than policy: Democratic leaders despise Sestak, who never stopped campaigning for the Senate after losing narrowly to Toomey six years ago.

“I don’t think anybody would call Joe Sestak paranoid if he said the Democratic Party was out to get him,” said John Fetterman, the mayor of Braddock and the third Democrat in the race.

The dispute has turned into a roughly $10 million brawl for the nomination that is likely to leave the victor broke and in desperate need of a strategy to unify the Democratic ranks against Toomey and his $10 million campaign war chest.

Polls showed Sestak, 64, with a large early lead. Now the race is neck and neck, but no one is sure whether McGinty, 52, can marshal her momentum and financial edge to overcome the reservoir of goodwill that Sestak has established during his years-long, nonstop campaign.

...McGinty has run in just one previous race, finishing a distant fourth in the 2014 Democratic gubernatorial primary. Her commercials tend to feature others talking about her-- in one recent ad, Obama’s voice made up almost the entire audio-- rather than the candidate explaining her policy proposals in her own voice.

McGinty has been willing to throw elbows. She has accused Sestak of contemplating cuts to Social Security benefits, because he once said nice things about a bipartisan debt-reduction plan known as Bowles-Simpson. And she has twisted his 2009 vote in favor of a proposal to tax Wall Street bonuses into an allegation that he supports unlimited bonuses for bank executives.

Still, it’s a measure of their deep dislike for Sestak that party leaders are backing such an unproven candidate in such a critical race.

In addition to helping McGinty’s campaign raise money, Democratic leaders have helped build an outside coalition of support that includes the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Emily’s List, labor unions and environmental groups. All told, the outside groups have so far spent an additional $4 million on McGinty’s behalf.

“This has become a campaign that is driven by Washington, D.C.,” Sestak said in an interview with the Washington Post.

For his part, Sestak says he tried to mend fences with party leaders. He says he considered their recommendations for his new campaign manager and fundraising chief. But he says he just couldn’t take it when he was given a direct order by a senior Democrat: “Sestak, whenever I tell you anything, the only answer is yes.”

In the interview, Sestak declined to name the party boss in question, but in earlier talks with local media, he made clear that it was Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.).

DWT has been reporting this for over a month. What we didn't know until we read Kane's piece though is that Philly political machine bosses, like Hughes and Robert Brady, are angry at Sestak because he refused to pay the traditional "walking around money" (half a million) to their machine the last time he ran. Kane implies Schumer and Biden are planning the same kind of treatment against Grayson and on behalf of Wall Street errand boy Patrick Murphy. HuffPo seems to have noticed what Schumer is up to as well, although none of the mainstream media is reporting about the explicit and aggressive threats to Bernie from Schumer to not interfere in the Senate races. In an interview, John Fetterman, the third candidate in the Pennsylvania Senate primary-- the real progressive in the race-- told Michael McAulife, the DSCC lied to him about remaining neutral in the race and letting Pennsylvania Democrats decide on their own. Schumer and his vile sock-puppet, Jon Tester, have spent close to $2 million boosting McGinty as of last night.

“They reneged on that promise, clearly, in a big, big way,” Fetterman said. “That’s the only conversation that we’ve had in Washington with the elites or the establishment.”

Fetterman is not especially surprised. He’s the sort of outsider whose ideas about inequality and belief in the need for fundamental change have long alarmed cautious, triangulation-prone party leaders who now worry that Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is making overly bold promises that he can’t possibly deliver. But Fetterman is also exactly the sort of candidate who, if he can win, would give Sanders a better chance of passing things like a $15 minimum wage, universal health care and free public college. And right now, not only are Democratic Party leaders not helping, they’re standing in the way... “I wanted to be a true progressive option in a race of more centrist and kind of traditional Democrats,” said Fetterman, who has endorsed Sanders.

...In the context of 2016, Fetterman’s policy aspirations are not that different from those of many left-leaning Democrats. He backs a $15 minimum wage, a woman’s right to choose, immigration reform and tighter gun laws, although he’s a gun owner.

It’s the way he approaches those issues that puts him at odds with party leaders in Washington who have cast themselves as reasonable compromisers against Republicans who are unyielding obstructionists.

Fetterman believes standing in the way can have its place.

“I’m the only candidate in this race that’s proud to say I have litmus tests for any Supreme Court nominee that I would vote for, and first and foremost of those is repealing Citizens United,” he said, referring to the 2010 court decision that paved the way for unlimited corporate spending in campaigns.

He also doesn’t believe in compromise for compromise’s sake when he views the other side as entirely unreasonable.

“This idea that you can compromise with crazy or unreasonable-- that’s not compromise, that is appeasement, and that doesn’t help anybody move it a long,” Fetterman said.

“When the other side is espousing these views that have no room for compromise, and they’re absurdist-- we don’t argue about the science of the camera that’s recording me, we don’t argue about the science of our iPhones, but why are we arguing about the science of climate?” he said. “It’s just because someone’s gut says if it snowed last week, I don’t have to worry about it-- you can’t really compromise on that.”

He allows that the divide in the country is especially broad right now, as seen in the rise of both Trump and Sanders. He sees both candidates as opposite sides of the populist coin, with Trump tapping into the destructive, dark side of populism embraced by so many in the tea party.

“This tea party, angry mindset-- they’ve just become performance artists. How many more dozens of times are they going to repeal Obamacare? How many dozens of more times are they going to scream and yell about transgender [people] using bathrooms, or that the world will spin off its axis if we grant marriage equality? The only marriage that I saw fall apart after [the Supreme Court upheld marriage equality] was Josh Duggar’s,” he said.

He also takes the unpolitician-like position of not claiming to have all the answers, including how to bridge the gaping divide. But he promises to try.

“[I’m] not guaranteeing an outcome other than to say I guarantee to work hard to achieve that outcome,” Fetterman said.

He especially can’t guarantee the outcome of this election.

One of the biggest hurdles he points to is the spending in the race, which makes his chances of taking the step up especially slim. Party insiders are determined to advance McGinty, and the combined spending on her behalf by the DSCC and other outside groups exceeds $4 million. That’s on top of almost $3 million spent by her own campaign. Sestak’s campaign and a super PAC backing him have spent about $3.5 million.

Fetterman has only raised about $600,000, and state news coverage of the contest has been dominated by the battle between the better-known Sestak and the party’s choice, McGinty.

“The money in my race has had massive, massive influence,” Fetterman said. “It’s not about ideas, it’s not about experience, it’s not about debates, it’s about how much money can you bring in from outside forces and just carpet bomb the airwaves with television ads.”

In a large state like Pennsylvania, the barrage has left very little room for Fetterman, whose polling numbers have ranged from the single digits to the mid-teens.

At the same time, neither Sestak, who generally leads, nor McGinty are getting support above the mid-30 percent range in spite of all their spending.

Fetterman still sees a chance to make up the difference by Tuesday’s election, in which he may be able to count on many Sanders supporters swinging his way while Clinton backers split between McGinty and Sestak.

Blue America has been rising money for Fetterman but our real hope to stop the complete conservative takeover of the Senate Democrats is in the race in Maryland today, where Donna Edwards may be able to beat establishment shill Chris Van Hollen today, and in Florida, where Grayson is still ahead of Murphy and beating him significantly in the race for small donor money. Only 10% of Murphy's campaign money comes from small contributions. Nearly 60% of Grayson's does. Please consider contributing to our Senate candidates here:

No Republican Is Going To Win The White House In November, But Which One Will Do The Most Severe Damage Down Ballot?

Some say the presidential push that Paul Ryan is making now is actually to set him up for a 2020 run after this year's GOP Dunkirk (see video above, which I found on Donald Trump's Twitter feed yesterday). After all, Bernie would be 80 when he starts his second term and Hillary would be 74. I suppose Ryan could still be presented as a "fresh face," although I suspect 4 years as Speak will tarnish him unredeemable with his own base-- or make him anathema to independents.

In recent days, we had far right pundit Charles Krauthammer predicting that the Republican Party would disintegrate if Trump is denied the nomination in Cleveland. "A parachute maneuver," a cute way of referring to Ryan's campaign to be this year's nominee, "might be legal, but it would be perceived as illegitimate and, coming amid the most intense anti-establishment sentiment in memory, imprudent to the point of suicide. Yet even without this eventuality, party suicide is a very real possibility. The nominee will be either Trump or Cruz. How do they reconcile in the end? ... And if Trump loses out, a split is guaranteed. In Trump’s mind, he is a winner. Always. If he loses, it can only be because he was cheated. He constantly contends that he’s being treated unfairly. He is certain to declare any convention process that leaves him without the nomination irredeemably unfair. No need to go third party. A simple walkout with perhaps a thousand followers behind will doom the party in November."

Yesterday, Tim Carney, a rightist, asserted outright, no frills attached, that "If Republicans nominate Donald Trump, they nearly cede the White House to Hillary Clinton. Trump wouldn't merely be an underdog in the general election. He would be the worst Republican nominee since Alf Landon 80 years ago.

The polls show Trump would be a disaster. To date, Trump's message control has been a disaster, and it would be a disaster in the general election. His political inexperience, which has hamstrung him in the primary cycle, would be a disaster in the fall.

All indications suggest a Trump versus Hillary battle would be a one-sided affair. [Those same polls show an even worse donnybrook for the GOP if Democrats wake up and nominate Bernie, who kills Hillary among independents.]

...Clinton leads Trump by double digits in most recent polls, with an average of 10.6 percent according to RealClearPolitics. She has led Trump in the RCP average for the entire campaign. That lead grew steadily throughout March, ever since Clinton and Trump became the clear front-runners for their party nominations.

Compare that to past elections. In the first half of April 2012, President Obama's lead over Mitt Romney hovered between 2.3-5.3 percent. Obama's largest lead in the RealClearPolitics average at any point in 2012 was 5.9 percent. Obama held a double-digit lead over Romney in only one poll after March 1, 2012.

Obama's largest lead over John McCain was eight points.

The problem isn't just Clinton's lead. It's Trump's apparent ceiling: His average in head-to-head national polls against Clinton has never climbed above 44 percent, and he's been hovering around 40 percent since Super Tuesday.

No Republican has ever won the White House without carrying Ohio, and Trump is looking bad in Ohio. Clinton beat Trump in all three Ohio polls conducted in March, by an average of six points.

Any review of the Electoral College looks ugly for Trump. [And they can kiss Rob Portman's Senate seat goodbye. The incompetent DCCC isn't contesting a single House seat in Ohio, but a Trump-led ticket could end in victories for Keith Mundy against Jim Renacci and for Michael Wager against David Joyce.]

The website "270 to Win" looked at polling averages and found Clinton carrying 260 electoral votes to Trump's 115 votes, with 165 up for grabs. Clinton's vote total on the site doesn't include Minnesota, Iowa, Ohio or Florida, all states where Clinton has to be considered the favorite. If Clinton carried Minnesota, Ohio or Florida-- any one of those-- she would win.

Look at every other swing state. In New Hampshire, Trump trails in every poll this year, most recently by eight points. In Florida, Clinton leads by eight in the latest poll and 2.2 percent in the RealClearPolitics average. Clinton beat Trump in the only Iowa poll. Clinton beat Trump by 17 points in the only Virginia poll this year.

Trump says he can expand the electoral map and win in places Republicans haven't won in decades, such as Michigan and Pennsylvania. The polls don't concur.

Trump trails Clinton in Michigan by double digits in two polls conducted in late March. Every Michigan poll this year has shown Trump losing to Clinton significantly, and the margin grew after the Michigan GOP Primary, which Trump won.

Clinton led Trump in every Pennsylvania poll in March, most recently by 13 points. Trump hasn't cracked 40 percent in a single Pennsylvania survey this year.

...First, we should expect Trump to flop in the debates. Trump had success in GOP primaries, but there was a reason he called them off-- refusing to participate in a post-Florida Fox News debate and ignoring Ted Cruz's calls for one-on-one debates. Trump thrived in crowded debates where all he had to do was rudely put down Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio and where he could get away with always changing the topic.

In the less-crowded debates after South Carolina, Trump looked worse. Rubio exposed Trump's utter shallowness on healthcare policy, and Trump found himself flailing in policy areas where he was way out of his depth. Recent interviews, in which television journalists Anderson Cooper, John Dickerson and Chris Matthews pressed Trump on abortion or nuclear proliferation, exposed his incompetence.

In a one-on-one debate against Clinton, Trump's lack of policy knowledge and critical thinking skills would be glaring.

There's also the boorishness problem.

Despite all the talk about equality and equity, and treating women the same as men, we don't really live that way. Men are still expected to treat women with more courtesy than men treat other men. Put another way: You can be a boorish bully toward men in ways you can't toward women.

Trump probably helped himself by interrupting, insulting and sneering at Bush and Rubio. It may have been deliberate on his part, but it's also his personality. When he behaves that way toward Clinton, he will accomplish the incredible: making Americans feel sympathetic toward her.

...He lacks the political skills, the likability, the public support and the fundraising ability to beat Hillary Clinton. That's why he won't even come close.

Here at DWT we've been warning that neither Trump nor Cruz was the likely nominee but that Ryan would be. No one agreed, until a few weeks ago when Ryan started getting pretty blatant. And now, even the last-on-the-block-for-news, the NYTimes, is-- albeit half a year late-- whispering that it could be Ryan. Why else would be be bothering heads of governments in the Middle East and Europe and trying to demonstrated his presidentialness, discussing two topics he's utterly clueless on, security and intelligence. And then the campaign video puffing him up while "deploring identity politics and promoting a battle of ideas-- set to campaign-style music."

While Mr. Ryan has repeatedly said that he has no intention of becoming his party’s nominee this year, he is already deep into his own parallel national operation to counter Donald J. Trump and help House and Senate candidates navigate the political headwinds that Mr. Trump would generate as the party’s standard-bearer-- or, for that matter, Senator Ted Cruz, who is only slightly more popular.

Mr. Ryan is creating a personality and policy alternative to run alongside the presidential effort-- one that provides a foundation to rebuild if Republicans splinter and lose in the fall. “He is running a parallel policy campaign,” said Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina.

He is shaping an agenda that he plans to roll out right before the convention, a supplement of sorts to the official party platform. He gives regular speeches on politics and policy-- particularly on poverty and economic issues-- then backs them up in the news media.

It is not a move without risks. His policy positions on immigration and trade, which have contributed to his mirage candidacy, are in great tension with the views of many Republican primary voters.

“I’m a big fan of Paul,” said Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama and one of the very few Trump supporters in Congress. “He’s a good person and he’s smart, but issues like trade and immigration are going to be important, and I don’t think anybody gets the Republican nomination that’s not in sync with a substantial majority of the American people on those two key issues.”

...“There is no question that Ryan is operating in a very ambitious way,” said Peter Wehner, a former director of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives under President George W. Bush who has known Mr. Ryan for two decades. “He is trying to set forth a path for the party with ideas and policy proposals and principles,” he said. “That is unusual for a speaker in an election year, but Ryan himself is a very different person, and this is the product of this very unusual presidential year.”

Mr. Ryan’s parallel track is intended largely to counter Mr. Trump, who stands apart from him and many of the party’s policy traditions. While Mr. Ryan is a vocal advocate of trade deals and wrote legislation that gave President Obama expanded authority to negotiate them, Mr. Trump is equally vocal in opposing free trade.

Mr. Ryan is the architect of his party’s plan to rein in spending on entitlement programs, while Mr. Trump has vowed to leave such spending untouched. Mr. Ryan has also been a leader in his party in supporting an overhaul of the immigration system; opposing this is at the center of Mr. Trump’s campaign.

...[W]hile Mr. Ryan’s positions remain popular with many Republicans in Washington, they are out of step with the white-hot populism that has fueled this year’s campaign. He remains a proponent of changes to the immigration system even though some Republican voters have been attracted to Mr. Trump’s plan to ban Muslims from entering the country and force Mexico to pay for a wall at the border.

Even within the House, Mr. Ryan’s ideas have met with resistance. He cannot get a budget passed, largely because he will not support the deep spending cuts favored by conservatives like Mr. Cruz.

Mr. Ryan has long said that he will support the party’s nominee, even as he has taken frequent shots at Mr. Trump’s comments. But many Republicans expect that if Mr. Trump prevails, Mr. Ryan will avoid directly helping him, choosing instead to shore up vulnerable House Republicans, particularly those who may be running away from Mr. Trump.

“I don’t think he would use his position as the stick in the eye of Trump or taunt him,” Mr. Wehner said.“But I don’t think Ryan would be at all shy about laying out the agenda of the Republican Party, because, remember, there are a lot of people voting against Trump out there.”

Little Chucky Schmucky and The Donald

The Democrats will probably win back the Senate in November; the big task is to bank enough seats so that when the GOP has a huge year in 2018, the Dems still hold on. That isn't how Schumer and Tester are gaming this out. A Democratic wave election could mean lost Republican seats not just in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio, New Hampshire, Florida, North Carolina (the 7 relatively easy ones), but also in Iowa, Missouri, Arizona, Arkansas, Indiana and even Kentucky, enough states to hold the GOP at bay when the electoral map makes the Republicans competitive in red-leaning states with very weak incumbents-- Indiana (Joe Donnelly), Montana (Jon Tester), North Dakota (Heidi Heitkamp), Missouri (Claire McCaskill), Virginia (Tim Kaine)-- and possibly even in Florida (Bill Nelson or his open seat if he retires), Wisconsin (Tammy Baldwin), Pennsylvania (Bob Casey), West Virginia (Joe Manchin) and Ohio (Sherrod Brown), not mention the New Jersey seat, which will depend when Robert Menendez's trial happens and if he resigns or goes to prison, etc. That's a lot of risk and the Democrats should be stocking up on Senate seats now, which makes it all the more frustrating that Schumer has blackballed Democrats who can win this year and make a difference rebuilding a tarnished brand-- like Sestak in Pennsylvania, Grayson in Florida and Edwards in Maryland-- in favor of his brand of corrupt conservatives (Schumercrats), Katie McGinty, Wall Street errand boy Patrick Murphy and Chris Van Hollen. When Obama attacked Trump last week, it was to get hyper-partisan anti-Obama Republicans to rally towards the banner of the weakest Republican candidate in anyone's memory.

Help elect real progressive, values-oriented Democrats to the Senate this year by clicking on the thermometer; no Schumercrats on this list, I guarantee you that:

I'm Embarrassed To Repeat What Blaine Luetkemeyer Told The Banksters To Do To Elizabeth Warren

Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO)-- $1,837,210 in bribes

You may recall that about a month ago we were looking at the exertions ole Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO)-- one of the less discreet bribe-takers on the House Financial Services Committee-- was making on behalf of his Wall Street financiers. He has nothing to worry about. His deep red, central Missouri district, stretching west from the St. Louis exurbs beyond Jefferson City, gave Obama a mere 36% of the vote in 2012 and he's won his reelection bids with around two-thirds of the vote. He beat back two coo-coo bird primary opponents in 2014 with 80% of the vote.

He used to be the president of the bank his family owns, the Bank of St. Elizabeth and he also owns the Luetkemeyer Insurance Agency. He could barely wait to get onto the House Financial Services Committee to work his magic (against consumers, obviously). Since getting into Congress in 2008, ole Blaine has been one of the biggest recipients of Finance Sector legalistic bribes-- $397,552 this cycle (nope; that what he had taken in when I investigated him a month ago; now that he passed H.R. 766 for them, he's up to $532,277 for the cycle, so far) and a cool $1,837,210 since being elected to the House, which ain't bad for someone who has no electoral challenges to worry about.

So, why bring up Luetkemeyer, since there's obviously nothing anyone can do about him? The Democrats aren't running anyone against him and he has no primary, just a symbolic challenge from a grad student on the Libertarian Party, Dan Hogan. Well... here's why: Wednesday morning Luetkemeyer spoke at an American Bankers Association meeting and told them that "they need to 'find a way to neuter' Sen. Elizabeth Warren, whom he described as 'the Darth Vader of the financial services world.' There isn't much Luetkemeyer can do to "neuter" Elizabeth Warren other than whining about her to banksters who already hate her. But the banksters have someone else working on that project for them: their very own Chuck Schumer.

I hope you recall Schumer's plan to "balance out" (a more polite term) Senator Warren. We've gone over it several times in the past and Wall Street's overt threat to Schumer's power/funding was very public and ran in the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal.

Big Wall Street banks are so upset with U.S. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren's call for them to be broken up that some have discussed withholding campaign donations to Senate Democrats in symbolic protest, sources familiar with the discussions said.

Representatives from Citigroup, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, have met to discuss ways to urge Democrats, including Warren and Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, to soften their party's tone toward Wall Street, sources familiar with the discussions said this week.

Bank officials said the idea of withholding donations was not discussed at a meeting of the four banks in Washington but it has been raised in one-on-one conversations between representatives of some of them. However, there was no agreement on coordinating any action, and each bank is making its own decision, they said.

Their demands were simple: they wanted their own man to replace Harry Reid as head of the Senate Dems. Reid was found in his home beaten to a pulp, nearly dead and immediately announced he was resigning and that Chuck Schumer would take over, even though Schumer wasn't in-line for the job and even though there had been no vote. And the banksters wanted pro-Wall Street Democrats (i.e.- Schumercrats) as the party's nominees in 2016, senators who would "balance" the anti-Wall Street faction. Schumer swore to deliver Patrick Murphy-- the banksters' first choice, to whom they have given more funding than any non-incumbent running this cycle ($872,350 so far). The other Wall Street-friendly crooked nominees approved by Wall Street: Chris Van Hollen (MD), Ted Stickland (OH), Tammy Duckworth (IL), Catherine Cortez Masto (NV) and Katie McGinty (PA). Here are the campaign contributions from the Finance Sector to their all-time favorite Members of Congress:

Ever wonder why the government stinks?

We mentioned when covering the vote of Luetkemeyer's latest anti-consumer legislation that Wall Street-financed Patrick Murphy was an original co-sponsor of the bill but, now that he's in a primary election, was too scared to vote for it and hid in the toilet when the roll was called. While Murphy was hiding in the bathroom trembling in fear, 10 of the worst Wall Street shills among House Democrats DID cross the aisle and vote with the Republicans on Luetkemeyer's legislation:

Brad Ashford (Blue Dog-NE)- no primary
Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA)- no primary
Tony Cardenas (CA)- last minute primary, just announced this week
Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)- no primary
Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)- no primary
Alcee Hastings (FL)- no primary
Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)- no primary
David Scott (Blue Dog-GA)- no primary/no Nov. challenger
Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ)- no primary

Primaries are important and Republicans seem to understand that better than Democrats do. Tuesday night in every congressional race where a progressive confronted a Wall Street Democrat supported by the bankster-backing trio of Schumer, Wasserman Schultz and Steve Israel, the progressive lost-- PG Sittenfeld in Ohio and both Mike Noland and Nancy Rotering in Illinois. All were outspent by their Wall Street-backed opponents. Campaign spending as of Feb. 24

• Sittenfeld- $1,064,599, Strickland- $2,201,199
• Noland- $199,256, Krishnamoorthi- $645,745
• Rotering- $988,155, Schneider- $1,482,136

So what are we going to do about it? I'd say that the especially crucial primaries coming up are Alan Grayson's and Donna Edwards' for Senate seats in Florida and Maryland and for House seats in Florida (for Tim Canova against Wasserman Schultz), Iowa (Pat Murphy against Monica Vernon), Maryland (for Jamie Raskin and for Joseline Pena-Melnyk), New York (for Eric Kingson), in Oregon (for Dave McTeague against head Blue Dog Kurt Schrader), New Jersey (for Alex Law against George Norcross' contemptible brother Donald), Missouri (for Maria Chappelle-Nadal) and the 3 reformers in California-- Lou Vince, Nanette Barragan and Bao Nguyen. Conveniently, you can find an ActBlue page with all of them by tapping the Blue America just thermometer below-- rapidly closing in on our $350,000 page goal:

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

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

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

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

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



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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You know, someone like me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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