No, Montana Is NOT Irretrievably Lost To Democrats-- Not By A Long Shot

There was more blue in this gubernatorial map than in the presidential map

As we mentioned last night, flabby neo-Nazi Richard Spencer, is thinking about running for Congress-- the at-large seat Ryan Zinke will give up when the Senate confirms him as Donald Trump, Jr's Interior Secretary and animal-shooting pardner. Montana was one of the biggest of all the Trump states or, more likely, anti-Hillary states. He took 279,240 votes (56.5%) to her 177,709 (35.7%), The only states she did worse in were Wyoming (21.9%), West Virginia (26.5%), North Dakota (27.2%), Idaho (27.5%), Utah (27.5%), Oklahoma (28.9%), South Dakota (31.7%), Kentucky (32.7%), Arkansas (33.7%), Nebraska (33.7%), Alabama (34.4%) and Tennessee (34.7%)... some great company! She only won 6 of Montana's 56 counties, and only one-- practically unpopulated Glacier-- convincingly.

Four years previous, Montana took 8 counties and won 200,489 votes (42%) to Romney's 264,974 (55%). Steve Bullock was first elected governor that day as well and he did substantially better than Hillary or Obama. He won with 234,980 votes (49%) to Rick Hill's 226,555 (47%)-- and 12 counties. This year Bullock ran for re-election and won... with more votes than in 2012: 250,845 (50.2%) against a very rich but very certifiably insane Greg Gianforte, who walked away with 232,080 votes (46.4%). Trump's coattails, largely non-existent anywhere in the country, didn't do Pianoforte any good. In fact, Bullock won 2 counties that he lost in 2012: Lake and Park and upped his game in Missoula, Bozeman and Billings.

More Montanans voted to expand the state's medical marijuana law than voted for Bullock or for Trump. It passed 284,531 (57.6%) to 209,188 (42.4%). In fact, more people turned out to vote in the marijuana referendum than in the presidential race! I wonder if anyone is going to mention that to soon-to-be Attorney General Sessions.

So what about Zinke's soon-to-be former seat? If Herr Spencer is the candidate... well, can Montana Democrats get that lucky? But even if, as is likely, Spencer is defeated in a primary by a more garden variety Republican or chickens out entirely, Montana shouldn't be off-limits to a good Democrat. Although Tester has transmogrified into corporate shit, he first ran as a progressive and populist and beat a sitting senator. This time Zinke beat moderate Democrat Denise Juneau 285,358 (56.2%) to 205,919 (40.5%). Zinke won more votes than Trump and Juneau won more votes-- a lot more votes-- than Hillary. But Zinke had to spend big to win-- $5,824,421 to Juneau's $2,603,797. Although the DCCC didn't help at all, Pelosi's House Majority PAC spent $735,251 in Montana on Juneau's behalf.

Is it too much of a stretch to imagine that Trump screws up royally-- and fast-- and that Paul Ryan starts the process of taking away people's health insurance and threatening their Social Security and that Montana voters turn sour on Trump and the GOP-- and vote for a Democrat? It shouldn't be andmy first instinct is to say that it's worth an effort by a solid progressive... like Franke Wilmer. It's certainly worth remembering that in their primary, Montana picked Bernie over Hillary 51.5- 44.6% and that Bernie won 40 of the state's 56 counties. But to have any chance of winning that seat, the establishment and progressive wings of the Montana Democratic Party would have to get on the same page-- and with enough gusto to even be willing to write checks. The only candidate who could bring the party together and win the seat would be former Governor Brian Schweitzer. Montanans would love that. And if Schweitzer really wants to run against Trump in 2020...

Although Montana has a law allowing the governor to appoint an interim congressmember to fill a vacancy before a special election, Bullock has indicated he won't be doing that. (There will be no primaries in either party. County central committee members will select each party's nominee and there's likely to be a special election in May or June.)

Will The DSCC Try To Force A Weaker Candidate On Montana Democrats Again?

Having been mercilessly smeared for 6 years by right-wing media, Obama is now profoundly unpopular in red states. The ultimate "gotcha" moment for Republicans was when they were able to paint the president as dishonest in the "you can keep your healthcare if you like it" statement. Anyone who ever wanted to hate Obama now has all the reason they ever wanted. In Montana, his approval rating has sunk over 10 points since Tester and Obama were running for reelection last year and is now a dismal 34%. Democrats in red states and red districts aren't mentioning him. Smart ones, like former Montana Lt. Gov. John Bohlinger, an ex-Republican now running for the Senate as the progressive in a 3-man primary, are following the lead of progressive thinkers like Elizabeth Warren, Jeff Merkley, Sherrod Brown and Bernie Sanders. Watch that video up top: "The first bill that I will sign onto," promised Bohlinger, "is S 897, Senator Elizabeth Warren's bill, titled 'the Bank on Students Loan Fairness Act'."

Bohlinger, who is running on a platform that highlights core progressive values-- from single payer universal healthcare (basically, Medicare for anyone who wants to buy it) to a tough position against unconstitutional domestic spying, is slightly ahead of the Baucus machine candidate, John Walsh, in head to head match-ups against likely Republican nominee Steve Daines. Daines leads both but his margin over Walsh is 52-35% but only 51-36% over Bohlinger. Ironically, it is progressive Democrats-- self-described liberals-- who are most wary of Bohlinger, knowing only that he's an ex-Republican and not that he's the progressive in the race while Walsh in the conservative corporate Dem with a cozy relationship with sleazy lobbyists and entitled Big Business executives.

Bohlinger would like the DSCC to stay out of the primary and let Montanans decide for themselves who their nominee should be, the way they did when they picked Tester over a Wall Street-oriented schnook named Morrison the DSCC tried dumping on them in 2006. As Gov. Schweitzer said last week, "Don't listen to the bullshit you hear in Washington, D.C. If the election were held today, John Bohlinger would win 2-to-1 over John Walsh. He's not going to raise the money Walsh is because D.C. has selected Walsh as their candidate. ... But the election isn't right now, it's next year, and the Democratic Senate machine in Washington, D.C. has their sights set on John Walsh, so he'll have a lot more money than John Bohlinger."

Yesterday Bohlinger launched a petition at MoveOn urging the DSCC to stay neutral until after the primary.

Montana Democrats should decide our senate nominee, not Washington, DC party bosses.

We believe the DSCC should abide by the Montana Democratic Party's ban on party intervention in the primary.

Philosophically, it makes no sense for political parties to boss political primaries.

But the objection is not just philosophical, it is pragmatic: DC usually backs the wrong candidate.

Here in Montana, our state party rules ban intervention in primaries. We let the voters decide and it is a smart policy.

But the Washington, DC based Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) is trying to boss our 2014 senate nomination. The Senate Majority Leader even tried to prevent voters from even having a choice.

Adding insult to injury, new Public Policy Polling results show the candidate the DSCC is backing has *worse* poll numbers for the general election, in a race that could decide control of the US senate.

Washington, DC wants somebody who won't rock the boat. Washington, DC wants somebody who won't mention "single-payer" and talk about health care as a fundamental right. Washington, DC wants somebody who won't mention "Snowden" and talk about the need to restore the Fourth Amendment. Washington, DC wants somebody who will follow orders, not fight to fix the filibuster.

Montana voters deserve a choice. And Montana Democrats should be the only ones deciding who will represent us in the November general election.

Does Max Baucus Get To Choose His Senate Successor?

Brian Schweitzer: "Don't listen to the bullshit you hear in Washington, D.C. If the election were held today, John Bohlinger would win 2-to-1 over John Walsh."

-by Bob Brigham

The last time there was on open US Senate seat out here in Montana was in 1978. As your author was in diapers, I didn’t get a choice. Those who did sent Max Baucus to Washington, where he’s remained to this day.

With poll numbers that have been in the toilet since he let health insurance lobbyists write his health care bill, Max Baucus announced this spring that he would not running for reelection. This set up the first open senate race in Montana since the one Baucus won thirty-five years ago.

It looked like popular former Governor Brian Schweitzer would run. Progressives were thrilled that a single payer supporter was the frontrunner to replace Baucus. But alas, the good guv didn’t run.

There are now two main candidates in the Democratic Party primary. John Bohlinger, who was Schweitzer’s Lt Gov for all eight years. And John Walsh, who since January has been the current Lt Gov under Governor Steve Bullock.

Max Baucus is backing John Walsh and bankrolling his campaign.

The DSCC is going along with Max Baucus, publicly backing John Walsh as senate leadership’s chosen successor to Max Baucus. Harry Reid even tried to get Schweitzer’s Lt Gov to drop out.

Unfortunately, the DSCC and DCCC have been all too successful at clearing primaries and denying grassroots Democrats a say in the direction of the party. They just assumed that Max Baucus’s chosen successor would be fine so there was no need to even have a vote.

Their scheme might have even worked, were it not for one critical flaw: John Bohlinger thought it an affront.

This came as no surprise to Montana political observers. David Sirota worked with Bohlinger and Schweitzer, he tells this story:

That’s the John Bohlinger that Montanans are familiar with. The last two decades of Montana politics are but a series of stories of political adversaries assuming that because he wears a bow tie and has a grandfatherly smile, John Bohlinger must be a pushover. Every single time they’re proved wrong. He was the only guy in Montana tough enough to be Brian Schweitzer’s second in command.

So when the consultants came up with a scheme to keep the Baucus gravy-train rolling despite his retirement, it should have surprised nobody that John Bohlinger did not abide.

And by the mere fact that Bohlinger is willing to stand up to the DSCC and Harry Reid, he’s won what Matt Stoller called, “the bar fight primary.”

So there’s going to be a primary. A Democrat named John facing a Democrat named John. This might sound familiar, in 2006 there was also a contested Democratic Party primary in Montana with a guy named John running against a guy named Jon.

In 2006, DC also lined up behind a candidate and ensured he had vastly more money. And DC’s candidate lost in a 25 point landslide.

While the DC power brokers have been very successful at minimizing the number of primaries, when they do occur, there may be no worse turf for them in the country than Montana. In Montana, there is an extremely low point of saturation after which spending even more money has returns diminished to the point it’s no better than just setting it on fire.

In Montana, the ante to compete against DC is very low.

Back in 2004, a full 23 months before Conrad Burns, Markos started pushing Jon Tester (although he spelled his first name wrong in his national introduction). In that piece, Markos quoted me saying:

Westerners want candidates with spine. You could probably run on gay marriage in Montana if your campaign plan was to bar-fight your way across the state-- people would respect that.

Liberals have been portrayed as pencil-necked spinless wimps for too long. Montana Democrats are showing the benefits of running with a spine, and while their state-level success doesn't translate to federal success, the potential is clearly there.

Nine years later, we have a chance to translate the bold populism of the Schweitzer administration to the federal level. And the success of the Schweitzer administration has made the state much friendlier territory for Democrats. And while the poll numbers may not be there yet for marriage equality, nobody thinks John Bohlinger and Brian Schweitzer’s support for marriage equality is going to hurt much in the general.

And already, progressives should be delighted by the two major fault lines have accented how this rare senate primary is going to be a battle for the soul of the Democratic Party.

HEALTH CARE

For the last decade, Brian Schweitzer has butted heads with Max Baucus over health care. Schweitzer made a name for himself pioneering the bold campaign tactic of taking busloads of seniors to Canada to get their prescriptions filled cheaper. Baucus on the other hand, is PhRMA’s top guy in the senate. Brian Schweitzer has been one of the country’s leading voices for single payer. Max Baucus took out the Public Option and replaced it with the Individual Mandate. And in this senate primary, Baucus’s hand picked successor is sticking with Baucus while John Bohlinger is changing the dialogue to health care as a right and trumpeting the success of the Schweitzer state health clinics for public workers.



Health care isn’t the only major fault line in deciding the future direction of the senate caucus.

CAMPAIGN FINANCE

Another big issue is the role of money in politics. Here again is a major split between the visions of Schweitzer and Baucus. Hilltop Public Solutions, the consultants trying to keep the Baucus Culture of Corruption going, are notorious purveyors of Dark Money (seriously, you must read this expose). In a separate bizarre scandal that came about by not using Free Conference Call dot com, last year’s Bullock/Walsh campaign listed on their finance reports, expenses for conference calls with Hilltop. While Hilltop was doing a ton of supposedly independent expenditures. There’s an complaint at the Commissioner of Political Practices on the scandal.

That’s quite the contrast with John Bohlinger. Last year, Brian Schweitzer and John Bohlinger lead on a grassroots citizens’ initiative, I-166. The initiative went after the legal fiction of corporate personhood, charging Montana’s congressional delegation with amending the US Constitution to clarify that corporations are not human beings entitled to constitutional rights. The initiative passed with over 74% of the vote. And Bohlinger is now running to go to DC and part part of the amendment fight.



It’s not often that we get a contested primary for a winnable senate seat. These truly are where we decide the direction of the party. And the fact this primary is occurring in Montana means progressives could give this fight the resources necessary to beat DC. It’s one to watch. And if every week is as exciting as the first week was, it’s going to be the most exciting Democratic primary of the cycle for political junkies.

If you want to keep up with how Schweitzer’s Lt Gov is doing, John Bohlinger’s campaign is on twitter and Facebook and has a website to sign up for emails: BohlingerForSenate.com.

NRA And K Street Lose A Powerful Senator-- Max Baucus Won't Run For Reelection

Helping the GOP filibuster background checks for the NRA made his reelection untenable

Max Baucus was certainly planning to run for reelection. His Glacier PAC has been collecting money from the special interests he serves and his campaign warchest already had $3,594,923 on hand by January 1 this year. Known as the Senator from K Street, last time Baucus ran (2008), special interest PACs contributed $4,959,391. Since then, he's further ingratiated himself to the big money groups that give the most, particularly the Medical-Industrial Complex and the banksters, who have contributed, respectively, $3,837,102 and $5,715,734 towards Baucus' shady career in politics.

And then came the vote on Manchin-Toomey, the very mainstream, very moderate commonsense background checks bill opposed by the NRA but favored by 91% of Americans (and 79% of Montanans)-- as well as by most NRA members and most gun owners. Bachus slipped... or his mask did. He voted wrong and ended his career in politics. There's nothing left for him now but the disgrace of working as a paid whore on K Street.




The last polling in Montana had already shown him losing popularity-- and vulnerable.

PPP's newest Montana Senate poll finds that the seat could be competitive next year...but Republicans are probably going to need a stronger candidate than Corey Stapleton or Champ Edmunds.

Max Baucus has a 45/48 approval rating, upside down numbers that reflect what we've found for him over most of the last couple years. Nevertheless Baucus would start out with pretty large leads over both Stapleton (45/38) and Edmunds (47/37) who have shown the greatest interest in the race to date.

Baucus would be in trouble if a stronger Republican candidate got into the contest though. He would trail by 5 point margins to both Congressman Steve Daines (49/44) and former Governor Marc Racicot (47/42). He would have a small lead over Attorney General Tim Fox (46/43).

The biggest threat to Baucus might actually be in a primary. Former Governor Brian Schweitzer would lead him 54/35 in a face off. Democratic voters like Baucus (76/18 approval) but he can't match up to Schweitzer's popularity with the party base (86/9 favorability). Schweitzer's up across the ideological spectrum of the party, leading by 34 with 'very liberal' voters, 17 with 'somewhat liberal' ones, and 15 with moderates.

Schweitzer would be a stronger general candidate than Baucus. He leads Stapleton by 10 at 49/39 and Edmunds by 15 at 52/37. It would still be competitive even with Schweitzer as the nominee if a top tier Republican ran though- he would lead Daines only 48/45 and start out just behind Racicot at 46/45. He leads Fox by 6 points in a hypothetical match up at 49/43.

Baucus, the ConservaDem best known as the person who wrecked Obamacare by killing the public option, could have never faced Schweitzer-- a single-payer populist-- in a primary. Perhaps he was aware Schweitzer was going to run-- even if Schweitzer is being publicly coy right now and allowing Baucus to save face. The Missoulian ran a story Baucus couldn't have missed about how Montana voters overwhelmingly prefer Schweitzer to him. Schweitzer came out as the most popular political figure in the state and Baucus came out as the least popular figure.

Schweitzer is helping make it easier for Baucus to retire from the Senate. "Max has served in the U.S. Senate longer than any other Montanan in history," he said yesterday. "Every Montanan would like nothing more than to spend another day in Montana and the sacrifice he's made with all that time in Washington...  If someone said, 'Well, I want to spend more time in Alabama; I want to spend more time in the Bayou.' What are you crazy?' But if they say to you, 'I just want to spend more time in Montana,' they mean it. It's real... God bless him for all his years of service... I'm the kind of guy that, when I see a broke-down pickup, I'll get out with my tools and try to fix it, and I can tell you looking at Washington, D.C., from Montana, there is no bigger broke-down pickup than the Senate in Washington, D.C."

Those polled were asked to rate the job performance of top Montana politicians and President Barack Obama in one of four categories: "excellent," "pretty good," "only fair" or "poor." The "excellent" and "pretty good" scores generally are combined to provide a positive job-performance rating.

Schweitzer, a Democrat, had a 60 percent job performance rating, followed by Democratic Sen. Jon Tester at 50 percent and Republican U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg at 48 percent... Baucus was last at 38 percent. His job performance rating has plunged from 67 percent in the last Lee Newspapers poll in May 2009, when he led the pack.

Polls by other groups have shown that Baucus' job performance scores have fallen drastically since his role in passage of the federal health care reform law in 2009 and 2010. The Montana senator was a leading architect of that bill.

Republicans hate Baucus because, among other things, they view him as having helped pass Obamacare. Democrats dislike him because he ruined Obamacare at the behest of his corporate allies. He's widely seen as one of the Senate's most corrupt members, more like a Republican in that regard than a Democrat.

Health Care Reform-- Prairie Populist Style: Montana

In the midst of the right-wing jihad to do away with the social safety net and turn America into an-only-the-strong-survive kind of Jungle, you may have heard the presumptive GOP presidential nominee whining to Sean Hannity this week about how the individual mandate in the health care reform bill was not just his idea, but a conservative idea. It's certainly the least popular piece of the fatally compromised legislation-- especially among conservatives and teabaggers-- and needs to be replaced with a sane, single-payer approach.

Mitt Romney described the individual health mandate as a “conservative idea” yesterday afternoon on Sean Hannity’s radio show, just as the federal government asked the Supreme Court to review the constitutionality of the provision in President Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

“The idea for a health care plan [in Massachusetts] was not mine alone,” Romney explained. “The Heritage Foundation-- a great conservative think tank-- helped on that. I’m told Newt Gingrich, one of the very first people who came up with the idea of an individual mandate, did that years and years ago.”

It is a conservative idea, a crappy conservative idea that Obama and pathetic and weak conservative Democrats used to compromise away working families' futures. Many progressive state governments have already started moving beyond this foot-dragging, fifth rate approach to health care. And yesterday the Billings Gazette announced that Montana may be the next in line. Governor Brian Schweitzer has gotten the ball rolling with a universal health care proposal for the state.

Like Republicans who object to the federal health care law, the Democratic governor also argues it doesn't do enough to control costs and says his state should have more flexibility than the law allows. But Schweitzer has completely different plans for the Medicare and Medicaid money the federal government gives the state to administer those programs.

The popular second-term Democrat would like to create a state-run system that borrows from the program used in Saskatchewan. He said the Canadian province controls cost by negotiating drug prices and limiting nonemergency procedures such as MRIs.

Schweitzer said the province's demographics and economy are similar to Montana in several ways - yet its residents live longer while spending far less on health care.

...Schweitzer told a federal official Wednesday that he will be asking for a waiver allowing the state to abandon the federal programs in favor of one the state will design itself. Schweitzer said details would be coming in the next few months when the request is complete.

State Rep. Franke Wilmer is running for the congressional seat being abandoned by Tea Party Caucus member Denny Rehberg and part of her populist campaign is based on her strong support for universal health care. She's consulted with Gov. Schweitzer on this and is very enthusiastic about Montana finding a better solution than Congress did. This is what she told me last night:

Americans pay 100 percent more for health care-- twice as much-- than any other industrialized country. We still rank 37th in quality and outcomes. An estimated 14,000 Americans lose health insurance coverage every day. In the big economic picture, overspending on health care is siphoning off capital that could be put to more productive use. Wages and income flat-lined in the 1990s mostly because employers who offer health insurance benefits faced skyrocketing costs. Studies show that our overly complex and fragmented payer system weakens the demand side of the market and inflates administrative costs. Walmart's vision center tells insured customers that "we accept over 1,800 plans." It doesn't make market sense; it doesn't make capitalist sense. Absolutely states should be allowed to set up their own universal health care systems.

Her two Republican opponents-- the job exporter and the KKK organizer (they have a primary)-- both oppose Medicare, Medicaid and, in a general sense, health care for the non-wealthy. If you'd like to help her get elected, you can do it here