If The DCCC Would Stop Recruiting Jeff Van Drew-Types, Medicare-For-All Would Win Many More Congressional Seats For Democrats

Data for Progress, Sean McElwee's outfit, has been doing an especially important-- even magnificent-- job this cycle. On Friday McElwee took on-- with data-- the most pernicious predators playing in the 2020 Democratic primary, the Partnership for America's Health Care Future, a multimillion-dollar cooperative designed to overwhelm not just the swelling Medicare for All movement, but every single Democratic proposal that would significantly expand the government's role in health care. A dark money insurance industry front group, filled with establishment dreck from the dredges of the Democratic Party, the Partnership for America's Health Care Future was created by lobbyist scum from hospital, health insurance, and pharmaceutical corporations committed to preventing anything that would lead to single payer healthcare or any kind of expansion of Medicare. The group feeds talking points to anti-health care candidates, especially Status Quo Joe and Mayo Pete while helping to finance their campaigns.

"Throughout the primary," wrote McElwee, "pundits and commentators have said that Medicare for All would be an albatross for Democrats in 2020. However, the polling evidence suggests a far more nuanced picture. Over the last several months, Data for Progress has been working to test Medicare for All in a wide range of electoral environments, using a range of different vendors and our analysis of the evidence suggests that Medicare for All will remain on net positive even after facing rightwing push-back."

In a randomized trial, the Democrat running on Medicare for All performed between 4 and 10 points better than a Democrat running on improving the ACA. In all cases, the Medicare for All Democrat easily defeated Trump.

Even after a partisan frame, it is unlikely that Medicare for All will see net opposition from voters, consistent with the fact that even after several months of negative ads and critical media coverage, the policy still has net positive support.

Democrats had strong net-positive trust on both the “expanding healthcare” (50 percent to 37 percent) and on Medicare for All (49 percent to 35 percent).

What Data For Progress' research concluded is that "a wide range of polling data as well as the electoral record of the 2018 midterms suggest that Medicare for All does not threaten the Democratic Party’s electoral chances. Even when voters are presented with arguments for and against Medicare for All, they support the policy. A hypothetical Democratic candidate running on Medicare for All leads Trump, even with three separate Trump arguments tested." The thermometer on the right leads to Blue America candidates who are campaigning on a platform that includes Medicare-for-All. Mark Gamba is the progressive mayor of Milwaukie, Oregon and he's running for a congressional seat currently held by anti-health care Blue Dog Kurt Schrader. "Statistical electoral advantages aside, the right thing, the moral thing to do is to continue to talk to folks about the possibility of Medicare for All," Mark told us. "People are needlessly suffering, going broke, becoming homeless and dying because of our corporately driven 'health care for profit system.' Yes we have outstanding doctors, nurses and hospitals, but there are gatekeepers in the insurance companies whose job it is to tell you NO! No, you may not have that test. No, your policy doesn't cover that treatment. No we don't cover that drug until you've met your $10,000 deductible. Never mind what your doctor recommends. They have all kinds of valid sounding reasons, but the real reason is that in order for them to maximize profits, they need to give you less health care." He was just getting started:

In every other industrialized nation in the world, that is not the way health care works. Health Care systems in the rest of the world are designed to give you health care, not maximize profits. Did you know that before Richard Nixon, hospitals were not allowed to make a profit? They were simply there to provide medical care and break even.

The important thing to remember is that when there are massive profits on the line, there will be congress people willing to do whatever it takes to maintain the current system for their campaign donors. Many of those congress people are also millionaires themselves, and their personal, ongoing wealth is tied to these industries. Take for example my opponent, Kurt Schrader who is a pharmaceutical fortune heir. He is well practiced at writing, or at least attaching his name to bills written either for or by the pharmaceutical industry. We pay as much as 10x what people in other countries pay for the same drugs! Congress has allowed and/or caused that to be the case. Piece by piece, little by little, the system has been gamed to make sure that the industry wrings every penny out of a person whose life depends on a particular drug. I'll give you perfect example: H.R. 938, the “Bringing Low-cost Options and Competition while Keeping Incentives for New Generics (BLOCKING) Act of 2019,” introduced by Representatives Kurt Schrader and Buddy Carter. This bill sounds like a good idea right?  Allow more generics to come to market sooner! The reality is, that the reason the current process is there, is that every time the first generic of a particular drug comes to market, there is a massive lawsuit and the only way the generic manufacturer can hope to make back their legal fees is if they have a grace period that will allow them to cover those costs. If Schrader's bill passes-- fewer generics will come to market and they will come to market much later, because no one will be willing to be the first company in, because they will lose money. As I said, a perfect example of the kind of sneaky, good sounding bill designed to maximize profits of the drug companies that are radically overcharging for their product.

It's time to remove the millionaires with deep ties to greedy corporations and replace them with proven champions for the people.

Eva Putzova is also a Medicare-for-All evangelist running against an anti-health care Blue Dog, former Republican legislator Tom O'Halleran. She's been campaigning all over her massive district, which stretches from suburbs south of Phoenix and north of Tucson to include nearly the whole eastern part of the state and most of the northern part of the state, as well as Flagstaff and smaller cities like Winslow, Tuba City, Winkelman, Sedona and... the Grand Canyon, as well as the Navajo Nation. "Voters I speak with in my district," Eva told us, "understand the benefits of an expanded Medicare-for-All healthcare plan. They know it is the answer to the ill health and early death of the 30 million Americans who are still uninsured as well as the hundreds of thousands who declare bankruptcy each year due to the inability to pay their hospital bills. Expanded Medicare-for-All is both a long overdue reform and popular among voters at the same time. It is only the health insurance and pharmaceutical companies and the politicians they bribe with campaign contributions that stand in the way of finally achieving it."

Liam O'Mara is a history professor in Riverside County. His congressman is anti-health care fanatic Ken Calvert. Liam has made sure to emphasize that "Medicare is much cheaper, increases our freedom, and encourages entrepreneurship. This is not the way it's always pitched, but it's all true, and Calvert knows it. He would prefer to keep costs high for the folks of the 42nd, because higher costs mean higher profits. The lack of universal health care pushes up everyone's premium, and affects people with employer-provided coverage, too. Employers are being over-charged, and that money is part of your compensation package. This means Medicare would put cash in the pockets of everyone with plans from work-- it would be the largest middle class pay rise in a generation. It also increases freedom, as Medicare allows you to visit the physician of your choice and covers whatever your physician recommends. We can get more consumer choice and still lower costs. The voters of the 42nd feel their taxes and cost of living are too high already, and that's true. And Calvert's opposition to Medicare will keep those prices high."

Kim Williams, former diplomat in the Obama administration, is running to represent a struggling Central Valley district represented by Blue Dog Jim Costa and also contested by a mirror image supporter of his, local politician Esmeralda Soria. Neither Costa nor Soria supports Medicare-For-All. It's one of the pillars pf Kim's campaign. "The national conversation around Medicare-for-All," she told us "mirrors the discussion here at home. Our Blue Dog incumbent stands, as always, with his rich and powerful backers while the other establishment Dem in the race, Esmeralda Soria, runs from the topic at debates and then whispers support for it after progressive voters tell her what it means. We do not. Our campaign has championed Medicare for All from the beginning and voters understand the difference. They are tired of meaningless promises of more access. Access means nothing if you can not afford it. And for the 47% of the population in my district who need federal assistance to survive, they can not afford it. If you’re not fighting for bold, progressive policies like Medicare for All, you’re not fighting for anything other than the status quo."

Rachel Ventura is for Medicare-for-All-- and her conservative New Dem opponent, Bill Foster, isn't Yesterday she told me she talks to voters "every day at events and on the doors and Medicare-for-All remains very popular. We even took a Twitter poll recently and the results overwhelmingly favored Medicare-for-All. Since some Democratic presidential candidates have started attacking Medicare-for-All and promoting 'Affordable care for a few,' we are getting more questions about the M4A proposal on our literature. The good news is it creates an opportunity to explain the legislation and how it would save people money. Our opponent, Bill Foster, takes money from big Pharma and the for-profit healthcare system. Another thing I heard today while knocking on doors in Burr Ridge, Illinois is that some Democratic voters are upset at the presidential candidates who are attacking the legislation. A nurse said that she is more concerned about the Democrats not getting on board with healthcare which is sorely needed. Even Elizabeth Warren started slipping in the polls after she backed away from Medicare for All. Our race, like many others across the country, is so important, because not only do we need healthcare but winning races like mine will show we can break the status quo without the millions of corporate PAC dollars buying politicians on both sides of the aisle. In the 11th Congressional District, Medicare-for-All remains a popular issue, especially among voters who have a personal healthcare story. Some are heart wrenching. While knocking on doors in Aurora last weekend we ran into a man who was referred by a doctor to have a knee replacement. The insurance company wouldn’t pay for the surgery and first required arthroscopic meniscus repair against the doctor’s wishes. After that surgery didn’t work, he had to go through a second surgery, experiencing twice the pain, twice the recovery time, and twice the cost. He couldn’t believe that an insurance company would force him to get two surgeries. The day is past due that we give the health choices back to patients and doctors and shut down the for profit predatory insurance companies."

Brianna Wu is another progressive Medicare-for-All champion running for another seat occupied by another anti-health care New Dem. I bet you're starting to see a pattern. "Here's the bottom line," she said," we have progressive candidates to thank for bringing Medicare For All to the forefront of our political discourse.  Polls continue to show that the majority of Americans want Medicare For All to be enacted, because it makes sense.  No more co-pays, or deductibles, or premiums, which add up to costing middle class families more than any price tag for Medicare For All. And EVERYONE gets covered. A few months ago, the Massachusetts chapter of the AFL-CIO passed a resolution at their state convention, declaring they would not support any presidential candidate who did not support Medicare For All. They get it. They are tired of having to fight for employer-based health insurance that provides security for their rank and file members and their families. They are leading the way for ALL working class families in Massachusetts. And yet, Rep. Stephen Lynch-- the former union president and my opponent-- claims that he is 'not yet convinced' on the benefits of Medicare For All. I'm sure his insurance industry donors agree with him, much to the dismay of his union 'brothers and sisters.' The progressive wave of the Democratic party is the future of the Democratic party. We will make gains in the Congress in 2020, and a progressive agenda that advocates Medicare For All, a Green New Deal, tuition-free public college, and many other initiatives, WILL get us there. Vote for progressive candidates for Congress to codify our party and FINALLY return our party to one that represents the people."

Want to see Congress actually change? Cenk Uygur's the way. He's running for an open seat in the suburbs north of L.A. and the establishment is trying to stop him with a garden variety corporate Democrat who would disappear into the back benches on day one and never be heard from again. And Cenk? "It is an unbelievable testament to the strength of Medicare for All," he said yesterday, "that it is still popular after the healthcare insurance industry, all of the Republican Party, the entire national media and 20 Democratic presidential candidates have argued against it. Maybe if the corporate Democrats stopped arguing against progressive positions it would be even more popular. The problem, as always, is that establishment Democrats like my opponent in CA-25 take insurance industry money and then serve those interests rather than the interest of their voters."

The Story Can Now Be Told: Cheri Bustos Is The Creature With The Atom Brain

Two-headed dog, two-headed dog, I've been working in the Kremlin with a two-headed dog

Good essay this week by Sean McElwee and Tory Gavito for GQ-- The Democratic Party Is Waging a War Against Its Very Own Base. Essentially, their theme is that the tent is too damn big and there are too many Blue Dogs and New Dems in it befouling the core Democratic brand and confusing voters who try to understand what the Democratic Party stands for and what values it holds dear.

Yesterday another dozen innocent Americans were randomly gunned down by some NRA crackpot in Virginia Beach. Last cycle the NRA and other pro-gun groups spent $4,261,760 bribing congressional candidates. Most of those bribes went to Republicans, of course. But not all. There used to be dozens of Democrats taking sewer money from the gun merchants and their lobbyists; in 2018 there are just 13-- 4 in the Senate (2 of whom, Heitkamp and Donnelly, were defeated) and 9 in the House. These are the House members sucking up the blood money, from worst to slightly less terrible:

• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)
• Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA)
• Ron Kind (New Dem-WI)
• Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR)
• Vicente Gonzalez (Blue Dog-TX)
• Jefferson Van Drew (Blue Dog-NJ)
• Jason Crow (New Dem-CO)
• Colin Allred (New Dem-TX)

McElwee and Gavito began by noting that "At a critical juncture before the 2020 elections, the leadership of the Democratic Party is, perplexingly, abandoning key constituencies of its base, including young people, women, and people of color, as well as the policies that fire them up. In chasing a narrow swath of white swing voters, the leadership has ignored a broader coalition of voters who have delivered blue victories time and time again. Not only that-- at times, it’s actively antagonizing them."

Even though the multiracial coalition that re-elected Obama in 2012 and stayed home in 2016 was large enough to change the outcome of the election, the Democratic leadership has focused on voters who swung from Barack Obama to Donald Trump. Party leaders have also taken to kneecapping up-and-coming progressives. Earlier this year, the DCCC-- the party’s House campaigns arm-- announced that it will blacklist firms that work with primary challengers, despite their delivering exciting new talent, reflective of its base, like congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts.

This has led them to positions at odds with the values of the Democratic electorate. In the very same week that Alabama passed a full-fledged abortion ban, in what appears to be a coordinated, Republican-led attack on women’s reproductive rights in several states, DCCC chairwoman Cheri Bustos planned a fundraiser for Illinois congressman Dan Lipinski, an anti-choice, anti-LGBT Democrat who opposed the Affordable Care Act and refused to endorse President Barack Obama in 2012. In his safe blue district, he faces a primary challenge from mainstream, pro-choice progressive Marie Newman, who lost many of her consultants after the DCCC announced its blacklist.

The backlash against the fundraiser for Lipinski-- who supports abortion bans—was, predictably, swift and furious. Facing pressure, Bustos dropped out of it, but she had already signaled to the base that she valued incumbency over protecting a woman’s right to choose from the onslaught of right-wing attacks.

Bustos also made it clear that she sees the path to victory for Democrats in white swing voters, rather than in mobilizing the base of young voters and voters of color. She, along with other members in leadership like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer routinely undermine their colleagues' bold initiatives, such as Medicare for All and the Green New Deal (though this may also be related to their acceptance of fossil-fuel industry donations), despite the popularity of these policies among Democratic voters. Leadership routinely says that they have to hold the “center” and “mainstream.”

Data for Progress, a think tank that studies public opinion and voter file data, analyzed the path forward for the Democratic Party, and the party could make big gains by a strategy that mobilizes progressives, rather than continuously undermining their base.

This orientation toward the middle instead of values and vision is demobilizing... The results of demobilization are devastating. As the chart below shows, in four key states in 2016, there were more progressives who voted in 2012 and then stayed home in 2016 than the margin of victory in each state. Many of these voters are young people of color.

The valuation of white moderate voters-- and so-called "electability"-- —over growing and reliable constituencies seems to have led the party to abandon areas where it could have won. The establishment's hostility toward the Democratic base is not new. This tension was starkly represented by Bill Clinton’s third-way centrism, with legislation like the 1994 crime bill and financial deregulation. And despite that model’s defeat in key 2016 states, its adherents, like Joe Biden, continue to push it as the sole way forward. Biden’s campaign is based around the thesis that good old boys can sit down over beers and pass comprehensive climate legislation. It’s more absurd than anything the left has proposed.

The party’s neglect of the Democratic base is reflected in the rhetoric and strategy that it employs in determining its geographic investments, too. Democrats continue to ignore the south and southwestern states, underinvesting in places where demographics are actually the most advantageous. Take Texas. Ignoring Texas’s 38 electoral votes, especially after Democrat senate candidate Beto O'Rourke lost by a mere 2 points, in 2018, is an old-world view. Democrats lost Texas in 2018 by 200,000 votes in a state with more than 6 million eligible voters—people of color and young people-- not voting concentrated in major cities. Texas is changing and Democrats can take it, if they have the imagination and the will to follow the data.

Instead, they look at past battles lost in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. They argue that these are the important states on the path to 270 electoral college votes, insinuating that these populations are moderate and white. But even in the northern states, Democrats don’t get the base math right.

In Michigan, Democrats lost by 10,704 votes while over 4 million voters, counting both eligible registered Democratic and unregistered voters, were up for grabs. In 2016, Democrats failed to recognize that the turf in Michigan no longer looked like it did when Bill Clinton ran his 1996 reelection campaign, setting up field operations in neighborhoods that no longer existed. Consider the following data demonstrating that a multiracial coalition continues to be ignored by campaigns in traditional presidential battleground states, based on Data for Progress analysis of the Cooperative Congressional Election Studies 2016 survey.

In contrast, when Democrats mobilize their base, they win. There is GA-06, which middle-of-the-road Jon Ossoff lost; congresswoman Lucy McBath won there by running a campaign on the issue of gun safety and embracing the new electorate. Or in TX-32, where congressman Colin Allred focused on mobilizing young people and people of color in addition to making the case for his values in the Dallas area, flipping his district for the first time in 15 years.

Stacey Abrams’s gubernatorial campaign in Georgia was an explicit attempt to expand the electorate. That strategy succeeded in bringing a Democrat the closest to victory in a Georgia gubernatorial race since 1998. But the campaign wasn’t starting from scratch. Abrams founded the New Georgia Project in 2014 with the explicit intention of mobilizing the black electorate in Georgia. That long-term work focused on the base will pay off.

Mobilizing the Democratic party base means standing up for progressive values, principles, and policies-- and reaching out to the people it claims to represent. In the Data for Progress and YouGov Blue “What The Hell Happened” survey, we found overwhelming support among 2018 voters for policies like Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and free college. And, in a recent report, Pew found that Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z, turning 18 this cycle, are now a bigger voting block than Clinton’s cohort of boomers and older generations-- together they outvoted older generations in the 2018 midterm elections.

The idea that the party needs to focus on the so-called center simply isn’t supported by data. The path forward for the Democratic Party is investing in the electorate of the future, not trying to win a smaller proportion of white voters that voted for Trump. This strategy will pay dividends for decades. Without a sharp pivot, Democrats risk again losing an entire generation of future Democrats who are disengaged and increasingly skeptical of the American political system.

Yes, Cheri Bustos is and has always been... The Evil One. I released that album-- and I know! I've always known. Rest In Peace, Roky, rest in peace... we'll beat those fuckers one day:

Cheri Bustos Announces Fund-Raising Efforts For Anti-Choice Fanatic Dan Lipinski Just As The Alabama GOP Declares War On Women

Yesterday the big news was that Alabama Republicans had passed a total, punitive-- and unconstitutional-- ban on all abortions in their state. The worst DCCC chair ever, the odious Blue Dog from northwest Illinois, Cheri Bustos, thought that would be a good day to announce that she's hosting a fundraiser for Congress' most anti-Choice Democrat, fellow Blue Dog, Dan Lipinski. That's the invitation above. Please do not call Jeff Larivee at 202-821-5203.

Lipinski is utterly out of step with the values and goals of the Democratic Party. He has a long ugly record opposing equality for the LGBTQ community, opposing Choice, opposing sane, common sense gun safety laws, opposing immigrants, opposing healthcare, opposing shoring up Social Security... and supporting a right-wing agenda dictated by the corporate PACs who have underwritten his political career. But none of that is stopping Bustos, another right-of-center Blue Dog, sitting in a safely blue, gerrymandered seat that she always falsely claims that only she could have won. She also claims-- falsely-- that the reason she has been trying to stop primaries is to protect a shaky Democratic majority. The majority is far from shaky and she has never been able to explain how protecting a fake Democrat like Lipinski-- in a district with a D+6 PVI, where Obama won both times and where even Hillary was able to beat Trump 55.2% to 39.9%. Legitimate Republicans don't even bother to run in IL-03. In 2018 the Republican Party had nothing to offer by an avowed Nazi, Arthur Jones. Any Democrat could have beaten him with both hands tied behind their back and Lipinski scored a 73.8% to 26.2% win. Maybe Bustos should be using her time and resources to help defend seats where Republicans actually could win. But, no, Lipinski is exactly her kind of candidate.

There are still politically involved Democrats-- liberals even-- who have been so brainwashed by the establishment that they actually believe the DCCC is their friend or ally or something. This is the stinking heap of garbage who DCCC Chairwoman Cheri Bustos-- rapidly making herself into the next Debbie Wasserman Schultz-- is raising campaign cash for:



Last year, Marie Newman was about to beat him when Mark Penn and his wife, Nancy Jacobson, laundered nearly a million dollars from wealthy Republicans-- like the Murdoch family-- and other conservatives to fund a last minute smear campaign against Marie so they could save Lipinski's scrawny neck. Earlier this week Sean McElwee's Data For Progress explained another way how it was Republicans who delivered Lipinski his narrow win in 2018. "There's no party registration in Illinois, meaning that primaries are open to any registered voter. This often leads to strategic voting, where Republican partisans vote in Democratic primaries and vice versa. Despite having no party registration, we can still get a good sense of whether someone is a Republican based on their primary voting history... [T]here were about 5,000 frequent Republican primary voters in the 2018 Democratic primary, about 5 percent of the electorate... [which] would entirely account for Lipinski’s narrow win margin."

The DCCC, under the leadership of Cheri Bustos, has implemented a new blunt force policy to box out primary challengers. They’ve told every vendor who wants to work with them they if they’re involved in a primary challenge, they’ll get blacklisted by the DCCC and won’t be eligible for any contracts from the DCCC. In addition to the damage this may do to any primary challengers, it’s a threat that requires the DCCC to be less effective at the job they’re supposed to be doing if they ever want to act on it. If the DCCC opts to not use a vendor they otherwise would have used, they’re either paying their new vendor more or giving the contract to one they believe to be worse.

Our analysis of FEC records shows something disturbing: it appears the blacklist is designed specifically to protect Dan Lipinski.

2020 may seem like an odd time to roll out this tactic. In 2018, only two primary challengers beat an incumbent Democrat in Congress, which is a pretty normal level. In 2016 it was 3, in 2014 it was 1, and in 2012 it was 2. The answer may lie in not in either challenger who succeeded, but one who didn’t: Marie Newman. Newman’s race was the marquee incumbent challenge in early 2018 before Lipinski’s Republican-aided win.

In 2018, there were a handful of primary candidates. We’ve searched through their financial records, and we it’s clear that if this ban had been in place in 2018, it would have affected Newman the most. Outside of IL-03, the blacklist would have affected three polls and a couple thousand in travel arrangements. Newman, however, would have seen roughly $132,000 in campaign investments become endangered. She employed 270 Strategies, a digital media shop, The Sexton Group, a consulting firm, and Normington, Petts & Associates, her pollster. All three also worked for the DCCC, who obviously stands as a larger client with more work to send their way.

Marie Newman is running against Dan Lipinski again this cycle. Cheri Bustos, who made the decision, is one of only two Democrats to donate to Lipinski in 2018 (in 2018, the DCCC chose not to endorse Lipinski and several Democrats outright endorsed against him). The other Democrat to donate to her this year, Henry Cuellar, has been a vocal supporter of the policy. In the race for DCCC chair, Lipinski very actively backed Bustos as DCCC chair.

January and February of 2019 saw the entry of multiple incumbent challengers who could reasonably be using traditional vendors: Kai Kahele in HI-02, Rishi Kumar in CA-18, Cristina Duran in CO-01, and Mohammad Dar in MA-08. Marie Newman started taking steps towards running in March. Two weeks after she did, The DCCC Blacklist was announced. Since then, it’s been a serious body blow to Newman’s campaign. She’s already had four resignations out of fear of the DCCC, and more firms simply refuse to work with her.

Newman has refused to back down in the face of the policy. She’s gone to the press about her experiences as an enemy of the DCCC, and hasn’t let up on her criticisms of Lipinski’s ongoing anti-gay politics. Progressives have rallied behind her, donating. In the four days after she talked about how the blacklist had affected her campaign, she received $45 thousand in small dollar donations. The next week, a coalition of five pro-choice progressive groups endorsed her in unison: Planned Parenthood, NARAL, PCCC, EMILY’s List, and MoveOn.

A final note: one defense of the blacklist that keeps popping up is that it encourages members to pay their DCCC dues. Lipinski publicly refuses to pay dues.

The DCCC is blacklisting progressive vendors to protect an anti-choice, anti-LGBT, anti-ACA man who won re-election due to Republicans.

Lipinski isn't even the worst of the Blue Dogs. Henry Cuellar's primary opponent will soon announce. And Republican-turned-Blue Dog Tom O'Halleran (AZ) already has a stupendous opponent in progressive former Flagstaff City Councilwoman Eva Putzova.

2020 Primary Challenges Could Get Pretty Ugly-- No, No... They Will Be Ugly For Sure

No one can put the Ocasio-Crowley primary in a box and sell it in other districts

Last week the New York Times published a lazy piece by Shane Goldmacher, The Ocasio-Cortez Effect: Wave of Challenges Hits Entrenched N.Y. Democrats, that defines superficial reporting. It should be lost on no one that Ocasio Cortez's stunning and successful campaign against New York's ultimate congressional insider ("the next speaker of the House"), Queens County machine boss, Joe Crowley, was utterly missed-- if not purposefully ignored-- by her hometown paper. Perhaps they're making a half-assed attempt to make up for it by covering some generally non-existent primaries in the area. "Half assed" is better described as quarter-assed... if that. The first sentence may be correct-- let's hope: "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may be just the beginning." But Goldmacher goes nowhere from the correct way to begin his piece.

Blue America has been involved, on one level or another, in every successful Democratic primary against a conservative incumbent since 2006-- Donna Edwards, Beto, Matt Cartwright, AOC... We have also been involved on a ton of them that haven't been successful. If I've learned one thing it's that they succeed when a determined and capable challenger (very, very hard to find, let alone invent) takes on an easily-defined villain with an established bad record. That was certainly the case with Edwards in Maryland, Beto in Texas, Cartwright in Pennsylvania and Ocasio Cortez in New York. Each of them is an extremely talented and charismatic politician and each ran against a corrupt, out-of-touch conservative who was supported fully by an establishment generally loathed by the grassroots.

Goldmacher generally neglected to look at any of that and instead spouts irrelevant nonsense like "Party insurgents are plotting and preparing to battle with the entrenched establishment-- targeting as many as a half-dozen Congress members in and around New York City-- over what it means to be a Democrat and a progressive in the age of President Trump. The coming New York uprising could result in a series of races that lay bare some of the same generational, racial, gender and ideological cleavages expected to define the 2020 presidential primary. The activist left, in particular, hopes that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s victory will inspire a brush fire of Democrat-on-Democrat campaigns that will spread from New York across the nation."

"Party insurgents?" Really? Grass roots activists might be a better way to describe the point he's fumbling towards. As for "generational, racial, gender and ideological cleavages," which worked in Ocasio Cortez's campaign, we'll have to look at each race Goldmacher is reporting to be a potential primary battle. He's certainly right when he claims "serious primary challengers for House seats have historically been rare, and it is almost unheard of for so many to emerge in one region so early in the election cycle." And they haven't emerged, except on the page in the Times his piece was published on.

The first member Goldmacher identifies as a potential target is Jerry Nadler-- who represents a district that includes areas of Manhattan (the Upper West Side, Soho, Chelsea, the Village, the Financial District) and Brooklyn (mostly Borough Park). His super-highly educated Manhattan constituents are not likely to be persuaded he's a villain at all. His ProgressivePunch score is "A" and has always been "A" and his voting record is ranked-- and has always been ranked-- among the 20 most perfect progressive records in Congress. I don't think Nadler or his team ever thought he could be primaried from the left. His last primary was in 2016 when the far right Hassidics who run Borough Park recruited and supported a candidate, Mikhail Oliver Rosenberg, son of a millionaire, to run against Nadler when he voted for the Iran nuclear deal. It looked like if they could order their zombie followers to go out and vote against Nadler-- in what was predicted to be a low-turn-out election, they could pull off an upset. (They even persuaded racist former comedian Jackie Mason to cut a robocall for their candidate.) Instead it was the second highest turn-out primary in the state that year and Mason and the zombies were nowhere to be seen.

Rosenberg fancied himself the new generation (and a part of a strong LGBTQ community) up against an old and tired Nadler. (Nadler has been in the forefront of every pro-gay initiative in his career and gay organizations backed Nadler.) Rosenberg campaigned on a solid green energy platform, on legalizing marijuana, and as an advocate for Israel. 85% of his campaign expenditures ($366,852) came from his own bank account and, like Trump, he claimed he wouldn't be beholden to special interests. Nadler beat Rosenberg in a landslide-- 88.78% to 10.26%.

Goldmacher reports that next year "Nadler could face a primary from Lindsey Boylan, a former economic development adviser to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who appears to want to run on a platform of "I'm a woman and he's not."

She said she was considering a run after watching the 2018 midterms, as “these women decided not to wait their turn because it was never going to be their turn.”

“I just can’t justify having my daughter watch me sit on the sidelines,” she said.

A huge X-factor in any Nadler primary would be the billionaire activist Tom Steyer, who has pushed for the impeachment of Mr. Trump. Mr. Steyer has already polled the popularity of impeachment in the district and is launching a $200,000 direct mail, television and digital ad campaign this week urging Mr. Nadler to begin impeachment hearings in his committee.

Goldmacher identified Tom Suozzi, Eliot Engel, Yvette Clarke, José Serrano, Carolyn Maloney and Kathleen Rice as likely targets. Suozzi, Engel and Rice are New Dems with relatively conservative voting records. Serrano, Maloney and Clarke are members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and Engel is rumored to be buying his way into the Progressive Caucus so he will be able to use that membership to claim he's progressive. These are the crucial vote scores for all 7 candidates identified in the piece.

• Yvette Clarke- 95.88- A
• Jerry Nadler- 94.98- A
• José Serrano- 93.71- A
• Carolyn Maloney- 86.47- C
• Eliot Engel- 85.30- C
• Kathleen Rice- 63.16- F
• Tom Suozzi- 54.05- F

"Not every challenge in New York," wrote Goldmacher, "will be run on ideological grounds. Some will be powered by more local disputes, longstanding grudges or just timely ambition. But for many progressives, the goal is to police the Democratic Party ideologically, much in the way the Tea Party pushed Republicans to the right."

“We are trying to elect more Alexandrias,” said Alexandra Rojas, executive director of Justice Democrats, the insurgent group devoted to recruiting progressive primary challengers nationally. “She is an example of what one victory can do. Imagine what we can do with more primary wins across the country.”

After Mr. Crowley’s defeat almost no one is seen as untouchable.

“They should be afraid,” Maria L. Svart, the national director of the Democratic Socialists of America, which backed Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, said of incumbent House Democrats.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez herself appeared in a promotional video for Justice Democrats and on an organizing call for the group last November during which Saikat Chakrabarti, now her chief of staff, declared, “We gotta primary folks.”

True, but targets should be carefully chosen. It amazes me, for example, that Justice Democrats and DSA have seemingly ignored, at least so far, corrupt New Dem Gregory Meeks. Nadler and Serrano may not be perfect-- but they certainly are in comparison to Meeks, who seems to exist in Congress primarily to collect bribes. A member of the House Financial Services Committee, he's taken $3,665,788 from the Finance Sector, including $564,100 in the last cycle. What's more, Meeks' likely challenger is the ideal candidate for the seat. Khaair Morrison is a 25 year old African-American attorney born and raised in the district, which, he told me yesterday "is ripe for a fresh leadership after having ineffective leadership for 20+ years. Working class neighborhoods like South East Queens, Nassau, Valley Stream, and Far Rockaway have had an up-close seat to the major issues of our time. After Hurricane Sandy, areas are still rebuilding as we see the effects of Global Warming. We were the epicenter for the foreclosure crisis and many have still not able to get their homes back. We see the brutality of broken windows and mass incarceration as our kids are constantly targeted for low-level offenses that ruin opportunities for black and brown lives to be productive members of our society. We have seen how poor infrastructure and lack of planning can ruin a neighborhood's vitality. We have seen the decrepit state of public housing and are still without creative ideas to make housing more equitable. It is time we do things differently and that we speak truth to power." True, that-- and time for a self-serving do-nothing congressman like Meeks to bow out and let a fresh can-do kind of guy like Morrison take the seat.

Meeks is one of the New York congressmembers who Goldmacher was no doubt referring to when he wrote that they "have sought to establish personal or professional bonds with Ocasio-Cortez, signing onto her Green New Deal, for instance-- recognizing the power of her megaphone. In an interview in January, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said she had 'put zero energy' into the question of primarying colleagues. She said the freshman class had 'already changed the opinions and commitments of a lot of incumbent members already. And I think that is something we should absolutely consider.' Whether or not Ms. Ocasio-Cortez gets personally involved, insurgent groups are plowing ahead."

Let me jump to Carolyn Maloney, a difficult target ideologically put perfect for a reformist challenger to take on based on ethics. Her corruption is just mind-boggling, even if her voting record is pretty good. She's not just a member of the House Financial Services Committee, she's the chair of the Subcommittee on Investor Protection, Entrepreneurship, and Capital Markets-- and exploits that to the max in her fundraising efforts. Among current members of the House, only 3 have been bigger Finance Sector money pigs than Maloney. A case can-- and should-- be made that these are the half dozen most corrupt members of Congress, at least in regard to Wall Street banksters, and that they should all be carted off to jail holding tanks before their trials:

• Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)- $8,086,692
• Steny Hoyer (D-MD)- $6,865,814
• Jim Himes (New Dem-CT)- $6,376,379
• Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)- $6,309,318
• Patrick McHenry (R-NC)- $5,627,242
• Steve Stivers (R-OH)- $5,620,077

Suraj Patel ran against Maloney in 2018 and may do it again next year. He ought to. NY-12 is a solidly blue district (D+31) that spans Manhattan (Yorkville, the Upper East Side, Midtown, Kips Bay, Gramercy Park, Alphabet City and the Lower East Side), Queens (Astoria, Long Island City, Sunnyside) and Brooklyn (Greenpoint and north Williamsburg). Interstate 278 separates Maloney's district from Ocasio's in Queens. Of the 251,604 people who voted in 2018, 190,771 were in Manhattan, 35,728 in Queens and 25,105 in Brooklyn. The district has changed-- and rapidly, as Ocasio's had-- and in similar ways. First of all, though not most important per se, the D+27 PVI in 2017 jumped to D+31 in 2019. That's a big jump and it's the other changes that account for it. The white population is smaller but still dominant, though the fastest growing demos are Asians, Latinos, Arabs and-- very significantly-- highly educated and politicized millennials. Patel: "The status quo isn’t good enough. Our values are under attack by leaders that don’t share or understand our lived experiences, and it’s going to take new ideas and louder voices to make real change... We deserve a congressperson who isn’t recklessly indifferent to the less privileged."

Patel ended up with a bit over 40% of the vote, a great accomplishment against a forever incumbent on a first try. Goldmacher interviewed Sean McElwee, who has been involved in finding primary challengers in New York and who was a co-founder of the progressive think tank Data for Progress. McElwee told him that "in deep blue states, Republicans increasingly don’t exist. We spend a lot of time thinking about why we have right-wing corporate Democrats selling out our interests." McElwee told him the push to recruit a challenger to Engel, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee and has been in Congress for three decades (and who represents the Likud Party of Israel and their lobbyists, AIPAC, far more than he does the folks who live in the 16th district (including Riverdale, Fieldston and Eastchester in the Bronx, abutting Ocasio's district, and New Rochelle, Yonkers, Mount Vernon, Mamaroneck, Scarsdale and up to Rye and Hastings-on-Hudson in Westchester.

Blue America has been trying to find a local elected official to take Engel on for years, but with not a nibble. McElwee calls finding a primary opponent for him a "top priority" and recently commissioned a poll there. The district used to be overwhelming white but now whites only make up 39% of the population. Blacks, Latinos and Asians make it a minority-majority district. McElwee is eager to find "a younger candidate of color in 2020; only about a half-dozen white Democratic men represent a more diverse district in Congress than Mr. Engel," wrote Goldmacher.

One potential challenger mulling a run is Andom Ghebreghiorgis, a Yale graduate and 33-year-old educator in Mount Vernon, who said that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez "showed there’s a hunger, especially here in New York, for representatives who reflect the changing progressive politics of their communities."

In a statement, Mr. Engel praised the party’s "new energy" and said the fact that anyone can run "is the beauty of our electoral system." But, he added, "think we’re doing the people we represent and the country a disservice by focusing on 2020 primaries when we have so much to do right now in Washington."

Yeah-- but not in NY-16. There are 4 congressmembers who represent parts of the Bronx, Ocasio, Engel, Adriano Espaillat-- a relatively new member, a progressive and a very good fit for the district-- and José Serrano (NY-15) in the center of the borough, in some ways the furthest left district in New York. The PVI is D+44, the bluest in the state and Trump only managed to win 4.9% of the vote in 2016 (slightly better than Romney did, but still Trump's worst performance anywhere in America. Only 2% of the population is white. The last Republican who won this district was Calvin Coolidge in 1924. The Bronx Machine has been eager to take Serrano out for some time but no one wants to run against him. In 2014 his primary opponent, Sam Sloan won 9% of the vote. His 2016 primary opponent, Leonel Baez won 10.8% and in 2018 there was no primary opponent. In the 2018 general election, the Republican candidate was Jason Gonzalez and Serrano beat him 124,469 (96%) to 5,205 (4%). City Councilman Ritchie Torres, a 30-year-old often described as a rising star, is weighing a run based on the whole "it's my turn, you're too old" thing.

Yvette Clarke, who won with only 53%, is facing a rematch with Adem Bunkeddeko, the Harvard-educated son of war Ugandan refugees who had been endorsed by the New York Times. "We’re at a moment of reckoning. Some people get it and some people don’t. Maybe someone’s seventh term is the charm? But most of us aren’t holding our breath." Goldmacher spoke with her and she told him that "she had reorganized her district office following the 2018 close call and is aggressively selling her progressive credentials in the more gentrified and liberal parts of the district, such as Park Slope. 'I definitely will not be caught by surprise.' She has among the dozen most progressive voting records in Congress. Bunkeddeko's point is that she's basically just a backbencher who votes well and doesn't do much for the district.

The last two likely primary races are on Long Island-- Tom Suozzi and Kathleen Rice, both New Dems who are going to be challenged from the left. I'm going to do a separate post on these two races because both are swingy districts that could, at least in theory, flip red if the incumbents are beaten.


UPDATE: Democratic Primary In Arizona

At dawn today, the Arizona Republic reported that Eva Putzova, a former Flagstaff city councilwoman, is running for the AZ-01 seat currently held by reactionary Blue Dog Tom O'Halleran.

Putzova, who announced her candidacy in January, said her top priority in Congress would be to address the process immigrants have to go through to become citizens. She said the current system takes too long and leaves people at the mercy of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers for far too long.

She also wants ICE restructured.

“Nobody is saying that enforcement in immigration is not important, but ICE as an agency is rogue,” she said. “It needs to be completely restructured.”

..."A #GreenNewDeal should be every candidates priority in 2020," she tweeted Feb. 10 in support of the "Green New Deal" environmental plan championed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).

Her campaign website lists other top issues: universal health care, tuition-free college, indigenous peoples' rights, "meaningful climate action," "no more wars," women's reproductive health and workers' rights.

...O’Halleran, the two-term incumbent, appears to have the support of national Democrats.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee recently added him to its "Frontline" program.

The DCCC's Frontline program is designed to help provide Democratic members of Congress with the support they need to win re-election. O’Halleran is now one of 44 members of Congress in the program.

“Tom O’Halleran wins tough races because he understands the concerns of hard-working Arizonans, and because he never forgot where he came from,” Rep. Cheri Bustos, the 2020 cycle's DCCC chairwoman, said in a written statement.

“We’re proud to stand with Tom as a member of our Frontline program to ensure he has the support he needs to win and keep working for Arizona,” Bustos (Blue Dog-IL) added.

Blue America has already endorsed Eva Putzova and if you'd like to see another member of Congress who supports Bernie's platform replace an "ex"-Republican Blue Dog, please click on the ActBlue Primary A Blue Dog thermometer on the right and contribute what you can.

Our Party? Their Party?

Saturday we took a brief look at a very important report written by Sean McElwee for the Justice Democrats, . The report lays out a progressive vision for a populist Democratic Party. I'm guessing that the bunch who would most benefit from reading it following its precepts closely-- those who work at the DNC (and the DCCC and DSCC)-- never even glanced at it. As Glenn Greenwald tweeted a few days ago, The DNC under Tom Perez continues showing contempt for the people it needs to vote for it: still not even pretending to be neutral in primaries, always endorsing corruption-tainted establishment hacks, insulting the left at every turn."

Greenwald was talking about the gubernatorial primary battle in New York state, where DNC chairman Tom Perez endorsed a champion of corruption in politics, Andrew Cuomo. If you're a Democrat, don't kid yourself-- the one way there really is no difference between the two parties is that each their establishments really are all about one thing and one thing only: corruption. The Democrats may be pro-Choice, pro-immigrant, pro-LGBTQ and anti-guns, etc but the Sine qua non for the party establishment, no less than for the Republican Party establishment is corruption. This describes them and I can;'t believe I buried it late on a Saturday night of a holiday weekend. If you missed it, please go back, listen to the music, watch the clips, think about the underlying message... and skip the whole part of about the fancy private terminals for wealthy airplane passengers.

Keith Ellison is the vice-chair of the DNC. He expects Perez to stick to his promise of neutrality in party primaries, not behave like some kind male Debbie Wasserman Schultz. "The Democratic Party should not intervene in the primary process," he said. "It is our role to be fair to all contestants and let the voters decide." Perez had already addressed the the NY Democratic Party convention and declared he was "proud to endorse" Cuomo, the embodiment of government corruption and Kathy Hochul, one of the party's most right-wing officials, Cuomo's choice for lieutenant governor.

"You've been delivering results and you've been delivering results that have made people's lives better. That's why Andrew Cuomo and Kathy Hochul are charter members of the accomplishments wing of the Democratic Party, and that's why I'm proud to endorse them," Perez said.

Cuomo is seeking for a third term and facing a spirited primary challenge from actress Cynthia Nixon, who is running to his left.

Party chairmen typically play the neutral arbiter role in primaries, and Perez himself has repeatedly stressed the importance of staying out of Democratic contests. He took over the party last year pledging to restore trust after controversy about DNC involvement in the 2016 presidential nominating contest.

...Perez' forceful endorsement is unusual, even though incumbents often get the automatic endorsements of other party groups, like the campaign arms of Democratic governors or House members.

On Friday, for instance, Perez told NBC News that the DNC had been "scrupulously neutral" in this weeks' Georgia's Democratic gubernatorial primary "because we think the voters should decide that."

His involvement in the New York race drew criticism from the left.

"The entire reason we hold primaries is because voters should decide who's on the ballot, and not party bosses," said Karthik Ganapathy, a spokesperson for MoveOn. "It's wrong for those in charge of official party infrastructure to put their thumb on the scales and try to influence the outcome of elections before the primary voters who form the party's grassroots base have had a chance to cast their ballots."

Perez was one just one of several bold-name Democrats who threw their support behind Cuomo at the convention, including former presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and former Vice President Joe Biden.

If Cuomo decides to run for president in 2020, the issue may come up again, since the DNC is responsible for [refereeing] the primary.

Even Indivisible, a group founded on the national level-- very different from the grassroots local Indivisble groups-- by Hillary Clinton campaign supporters, seemed put off. Ezra Levin, a co-founder (along with his wife, Leah Greenberg), tweeted "Don't be scared of democracy-- let the voters decide." Cuomo has been endorsed by Hillary too, of course.

[Note the caveat, "in a safe Democratic state," which gives the party establishment leeway to endorse its crappy conservative candidates in non-safe swing district seats, like the DCCC did in districts like NE-02, only see its Blue Dog shithead rejected by primary voters who preferred progressive Kara Eastman instead, just as they had preferred Bernie over Hillary in 2016.]

Cuomo has been rejected by the progressive wing of the party, which is rallying behind Cynthia Nixon. Nixon has been endorsed by DFA, Our Revolution, PCCC and the Working Families Party, whose state director reminded Democrats that "Cuomo represents a wing of the Democratic Party that is out of touch with what voters want right now and that people are veering away from."

Two key points that McElwee made in his report:

1- Democrats can win elections without rejecting their base.

• The general public supports key, over-the-horizon Democratic priorities, from marijuana legalization and ending mandatory minimums to a $15 minimum wage and single-payer health care.
• Medicare for All and a $15 minimum wage are popular in purple states across the country.

2- Democrats are not representing the progressivism of their constituents.

• Many Democrats reject policies supported by the general public in their states and districts.
• Ninety-two percent of Democrats in the House represent districts where modeled support for repealing the Hyde Amendment is greater than 55 percent, but only 70 percent of House Democrats support repealing the Hyde Amendment.
• Sixty-seven percent of Democrats in the Senate represent states where modeled support for Medicare for All is greater than 55 percent, but only 33 percent of Senate Democrats support Medicare for All.

Support For Job Guarantee Is Growing Rapidly-- Will It Be A Campaign Issue?

A campaign manager I've worked with on a few campaigns in the past has been asking for for the last few days to consider endorsing the candidate he's working with this time. The candidate doesn't seem bad and it's a winnable race. There are 4 Democrats competing for the nomination and the DCCC isn't involved so they all seem somewhat progressive. His candidate doesn't seem financially competitive-- but when have we ever allowed that to determine supporting someone. The newly redrawn district has counties that went for Bernie and counties that backed Hillary. In the general, Trump won-- though not by double digits.

Before agreeing to speak with his candidate-- let's call him Candidate X-- I asked him a few questions... like which primary candidate is most progressive and if Candidate X supports Job Guarantee and College Debt Elimination. His response was that "It is close, but X is more progressive-- his priorities are good jobs, better public schools and quality and affordable health care for everyone-- it is still a Republican district and he will have to pick up Independents and Reasonable Republicans-- so kitchen table issues are the way to go on the surface. Below that-- he is very strongly against gun violence and pro-choice. He put out a statement against Trump's Transgender Ban in the military and is strongly for LGBTQIA+ rights. He has signed the no money from Fossil Fuels Pledge (all four candidates have)-- but X will be signing the End Citizens United No Corporate Money pledge in the next couple of days-- no other candidate has signed it... He supports plan for a job guarantee for people that want a job-- although it is new concept to him and we spoke about it."

Not very convincing. Remember, what Blue America is looking for is courageous principled candidates-- like Kaniela Ing, Jenny Marshall, Alan Grayson and Dan Canon who are going to go to Congress and not worry about voting with conservatives in order to get reelected. Another campaign manager told me last week that his candidate will do it "the West Virginia way, like Joe Manchin does." Good luck with that. It's not what we're looking for-- not even close.

So, he didn't answer the question about College Debt Elimination and didn't have anything much to say about Job Guarantee. So what will he be like in Congress? A scardy cat? Who thinks voting for equal right for gays and willing to vote pro-Choice defines a progressive? Doesn't sound like the kind of champion we're looking for this late in the cycle. But I'll keep an open mind. And send him the Marie Solis report in Newsweek from yesterday: Can A Federal Jobs Guarantee Help Democrats Defeat Trump In 2020? How about elect a Democratic House in 2018? Bernie is about to unveil plans "that would guarantee every American worker a minimum $15 an hour position complete with health care, a retirement plan and the same paid leave benefits granted to federal public-sector employees." Even less credible would-be presidential candidates like Kirsten Gillibrand and Cory Booker are trying to jump on the bandwagon.

There’s already widespread support for a federal jobs guarantee program among voters across the country, and-- most notably-- across the political spectrum, according to Sean McElwee and his colleagues at Data for Progress, a progressive polling and analysis firm. In March, they found that a majority of voters in all 50 states supported a jobs guarantee, even in states that went overwhelmingly to Trump. The state that polled lowest was Utah, where a solid 57-percent majority still said they would favor the proposal.

When researchers at Civis Analytics, another progressive data analytics firm, narrowed the data by voting pattern, they found that 56 percent of those who went from voting for former President Barack Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016 supported a jobs guarantee, and 58 percent of non-voters looked favorably on the idea as well.

... “If we’re speaking strictly about winning campaigns, running on jobs is 100 percent a smart move, and it’s 100 percent what Democrats should be doing,” Sean McElwee, a researcher and co-founder at Data for Progress, told Newsweek. “Democrats can run on jobs without sacrificing other progressive causes.”

McElwee cautioned Democrats against getting too excited about the number of Obama-turned-Trump voters they can win over with the policy-- it’s still modest. But it’s enough to cut a path to victory in 2018, he says.

“If you can get back about one-third of Obama-Trump voters and energize non-voters, there you are,” he said. “You’ve got your House majority.”

Indeed, some who switched their votes from Barack Obama to Trump told Newsweek the idea seemed common-sense.

“If this could help the people get jobs, I support it,” said Eileen Sorokas, from Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, which went to Obama in 2012 but to Trump by 20 points four years later. “I know what it’s like not to have a job-- it’s kind of scary. If it works, I’m all for it.”

Before she retired, Sorokas, now 70, worked at a dress factory that shut down and went overseas in the mid-90s. Her husband Richard worked at Procter & Gamble for over three decades until he retired 17 years ago. He said a jobs guarantee interests him because he’d like to see fewer Americans rely on the country’s welfare system.

“I remember Trump wanted to get people off of welfare, and he said he was going to make jobs for people who want to work” he told Newsweek. “What stuck out for me was getting people off of welfare. I thought that was a great.”

Both Richard and Eileen-- who said they’d been lifelong Democrats-- said they’d consider voting for a member of their party again if they campaigned on a strong jobs platform, like the guaranteed jobs proposal.

But they’re not totally sold yet. After a beat, Richard posed what might just be a multi-billion dollar question: “Where do you get the money?”

Policy research institutes like the Center on Budget and Policy Proposals and the Center for American Progress have priced federal jobs guarantee plans similar to Booker’s and Sanders’s at $543 billion and $158 billion, respectively. The government could fund a jobs program by raising income tax on the rich-- a proposal that is controversial in some circles. But proponents of the policy in the Senate see it as a worthwhile expenditure.

...House candidates are already testing the waters for the 2020 presidential hopefuls. Dan Canon, who’s running in the Democratic primary in Indiana’s 9th District-- which went to Trump by double digits in 2016-- says he’s spoken to hundreds of voters about his proposal for a jobs guarantee, and not one of them has voiced any opposition to the idea.

“A jobs guarantee is good for the economy, it’s good for unemployment and it’s good for infrastructure,” Canon said.

In Canon’s district, home to some of the most rural parts of Indiana, he says voters have two top concerns: jobs and infrastructure. As Canon sees it, fixing the first problem with a jobs guarantee can solve the other. If people need jobs, they can take government-sponsored work fixing the district’s roads, public transit system, energy grids and broadband access, Canon says. The House candidate's proposal, and others like it, harken back to the Works Progress Administration implemented by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a program that gave some 8.5 million unemployed Americans jobs building up the country's infrastructure during the Great Depression.

“I have not found a single person in Indiana that disagrees with this idea or thinks it’s a bad one,” Canon told Newsweek. “The only pushback I ever got when presenting people with a jobs guarantee is from political theorists who think the district just isn’t ready. But those tend to be D.C. think-tank types who don’t understand the people on the ground here in Indiana."

We asked some the other candidates Blue America has endorsed how they speak about Job Guarantee to the voters. Hawaii candidate Kaniela Ing told us that "America’s promise has always been clear-- work hard and your family will prosper. Today, too many hard-working Americans feel that our leaders have gone bad on that promise. I talk to folks who tell me everyday, they grind and sweat, but struggle to get by. Wages are stagnant, unemployment and underemployment are rising, the threats of automation and globalization are becoming real, all while costs are skyrocketing. But just take a walk outside and look around at all the work that needs to be done in America. There are bridges to be built, highways needing repair, kids to be taught, aging folks needing care, oceans to be cleaned, trees to be planted. But private markets fall short. For every job opening in America, four people are gunning for it. This pits worker against worker and creates a power imbalance between workers and their bosses. It’s too risky for a worker to stand up to wage theft, inhumane working conditions, or sexual harassment, when they know there’s nowhere else to go. Our elected representatives must stop pretending that everything is okay, and that the job market will some home fix itself. It’s time for real solutions that will actually help working families across America. It’s time for a new New deal. Since the start of my campaign, I’ve been leading with a universal job guarantee, and I ask other progressive candidates to join me. Let’s remind the establishment that the ability to work for a livable wage is a human right that should be afforded to all. In these uncertain times, progressives will lead with real solutions that offer hope to the many, and just the privileged few."

Ellen Lipton is the former state legislator and progressive Democrat running for the open seat in the suburbs north of Detroit. She's interested in Bernie's Jobs Guarantee ideas and told us that "the federal government has been at the mercy of corporate-controlled lobbyists for long enough. How long are we going to allow them to offer the same tired economic policy of tax cuts for the phantom 'job-creators?' How about trying something that actually has a track record of working-- direct federal investment in people rather than profits. A guaranteed jobs program would put people to work on everything from infrastructure to IT, renewable energy to healthcare and social work-- the possibilities are endless."

Antoinette Sedillo Lopez, the Blue America-endorsed candidate running in the open Albuquerque district, is also a big fan of Job Guarantee. This is what she told us some time ago: "I believe that all human beings deserve to live in dignity, and that as part of that we build a government that ensures a well-paying job to each and every individual. Imagine if we guaranteed to all human beings a well-paying job with a livable wage that allows for healthcare, housing, transportation, food, and ultimately the dignity of work? What it would mean for our communities, poverty, racial and gender equality? Well, we've done parts of this before with the Works Progress Administration (WPA) during the New Deal era. Imagine a program that achieves delivering well-paying work to all individuals, all while overhauling our nation's infrastructure and educational systems. It has the potential to breakdown the entrenched racial and gender-based inequality that exists in our labor force, and enshrines the ideal that all Americans who want a good job will have one. It assures that the dignity of a well-paying job is not just for a plurality of Americans, but for all who seek it. In an increasingly evolving economy, it's important that our government think creatively about the future of our labor force, and ensure that people's needs are put first in the changing labor economy."

Like Dan Canon, Jenny Marshall's North Carolina primary is May 8 sees the idea of Job Guarantee as something relatively easy to explain to voters. (Maybe that's because she's a school teacher.) She's campaigning for the seat held by a multimillionaire, Virginia Foxx, who has never exhibited any interest whatsoever in giving a hand to working families. "People," Jenny told us," want to work and give back to their communities in real tangible ways. They also want to provide a decent, secure life for their family. Think of all the New Deal programs such as the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Works Progress Administration that helped put people to work and which began to pull us out of the Great Depression in the 1930's. While those programs did not lift all out of abject poverty it did jump start our economy in a way that can still be witnessed today. Frankly, our infrastructure is long outdated and our national parks and memorials need tending to. Here in the 5th district we have national forest that needs trail cleanup, buildings that need to be repaired and programs that need to be staffed. We need to repair dams, bridges and other infrastructure projects. People need jobs and ones that pay a living wage. Why not offer work that would put an investment back into our communities?"