What Has The DCCC Learned From A Decade Of Abject Failure? Absolutely Nothing

This week I've been getting to know/vetting a Democratic congressional candidate running against a GOP arch-villain. I really, really, really wanted to candidate to be good-- or at least as good as Jon Ossoff. Not everyone is going to be as stellar as Elizabeth Warren or Bernie or Grayson or Ted Lieu. It's an unfair standard. But at one point I asked the candidate if there are any current members of Congress he admires. H e didn't hesitate for a moment: Jim Costa, he said. My heart sunk. I had just completed a post that mentioned Costa-- as one of the 7 right-wing Democrats who voted for the Republican attempt to kill the Estate Tax.

Until fake Democrat Lou Correa was elected in November, Costa was easily the worst Democrat in the California congressional delegation. ProgressivePunch's algorithm rates him the 8th worst Democrat in the House, with an "F" and a lifetime crucial vote score of 43.60. He votes significantly more with the GOP than with the Democrats on substantive matters. This cycle, he score is even worse than usual-- 38.46. Blue America ran a mobile billboard campaign against him last year. How could we possibly support someone aspiring to be like him?

Sean Patrick Maloney, also rated "F" by ProgressivePunch, is ranked as the 9th worst Democrat in the House-- one up from Costa with a lifetime crucial vote score of 45.00. He's openly gay and-- surprise, surprise-- he's good on gay issues and other social issues. But he's a complete corporate whore a shill for Wall Street and his agenda seems to be to coddle the very wealthy and impoverish everyone else. So who better for the DCCC to task with figuring out what went wrong in the 2016 congressional races? (Um... almost anyone?) Ben Ray Lujan gave the job to Maloney. And now, according to Politico, his report is Top Secret. "Some Democratic lawmakers and staffers complained that the cloak-and-dagger secrecy was overblown and actually makes the findings look worse than they are. But the DCCC is sticking by its strategy."

After nearly five months, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) presented his investigative report to lawmakers during a members-only gathering at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee headquarters Thursday night.

Only about two-dozen lawmakers showed up for the presentation, which sources described as "dense but thorough." But members were not allowed to have copies of the report and may view it only under the watchful eyes of DCCC staff.

The presentation didn't focus on Democratic messaging and instead was heavily skewed towards money-- how much the DCCC brings in, from where and how those funds are spent.

...The report provides recommendations on how the DCCC should modernize its data collection and overhaul its media operation, according to sources who were briefed on it. The document is also said to criticize the organization for the lack of diversity in consultants whom the DCCC employs.

Maloney offered suggestions for how DCCC should regroup ahead of the 2018 midterms, including hiring someone specifically in charge of diversifying the group's consulting ranks.

Lawmakers have privately criticized the way the DCCC operates for years, saying party leaders are too heavy-handed behind the scenes. Finger-pointing reached a fever pitch after the election: Democrats picked up just six House seats despite predicting far higher gains, prompting rank-and-file members to demand immediate changes.

The Maloney report did not criticize specific members of leadership, according to sources.

I guess accountability-- let alone messaging-- is too divisive even for closed door meetings. After all, with members like Costa and Maloney regularly shitting on the Democratic brand, what is there to say anyway? That members should stand for something. Alan Grayson explained what they should stand for-- in the simplest possible terms-- in this video well worth watching again, especially if you're a Democrat hoping to run for office.

Trumpy-the Clown And Paul Ryan Aren't The Only Problem Progressives Have To Confront-- First There's The DCCC

Right on the heels of the election, Pollfish did a survey of Trump voters, some of whom were already suffering buyer's remorse. Almost a third of his voters said they didn't think he had a real chance to win and fully 11%-- that's about 6.8 million people-- said if they had it to do all over again, they wouldn't vote for him. They don't have it to do all over again-- although they can check him by helping elect a progressive House in 2018. Many voters, enough to take a chance on a deranged narcissistic clown, wanted change-- and Hillary was the candidate of the status quo-- aggressively so.

Yesterday in this time-slot we looked at the "changes" House Democrats are instituting at the DCCC. Unlike the change-for-the-worse agenda Trump, Pence and Paul Ryan are ushering in at breakneck speed, is there even a glimmer of hope that DCCC change will be for the better? DWT has advocated replacing the Pelosi/Hoyer regime among House Democrats for years. Yet this week, the only alternative offered was Tim Ryan who, on no conceivable level, was a better option than Pelosi. Even members disenchanted with her leadership voted, some with trepidation, for her again over the woefully unaccomplished Ryan.

One of the reforms we discussed is that finally Democratic members will get to vote for a DCCC chair, just the way the Republicans vote for their NRCC chair. Pelosi was reluctant but caved in the end. She nominated the hapless and totally inadequate Ben Ray Luján for another term. As Simone Pathé put it succinctly for Roll Call readers Thursday, "the House Democrats’ campaign arm is under scrutiny from members who are demanding change after the party netted just six seats this year-- below even the most pessimistic projections of how many seats the party could gain in a presidential year." A vaguely competent DCCC could have netted double that and a really together and functional DCCC would have won back the majority. Luján and his dysfunctional and self-serving careerist staff are programmed to lose. It's in their DNA. They can't win; they can only lose. They can't be reformed-- only fired and banished from ever setting foot in the building again. All DCCC phone numbers should be changed and it should be a firing offense for anyone to ever give out a new number to Kelli Ward or anyone she ever employed.

Luján is running again and an awful lot of vision-free Democratic members are happy to reelect him. Progressives, as usual, are an incoherent mess and a thoroughly ineffective voice of opposition. The only opposition to Luján appears to be coming from the Wall Street-owned and operated New Dems, who are getting behind one of Congress' slimiest Democrats, Sean Patrick Maloney. Luján is offering some "reforms" to boost enthusiasm for his reelection bid.

If re-elected, Luján said he plans to increase member involvement in the committee’s operations, including upping lawmaker-driven recruitment of Democratic candidates. The New Mexico Democrat said he’d also make the DCCC more transparent-- a long running complaint of members who say the committee staff is only beholden to leadership-- and look at overhauling polling operations.

Probably not going to win any extra seats but it will flatter some members. Luján wrote in a letter to all members that "We have honed in on critical improvements that can be made to form a more inclusive messaging strategy, the need for more member-driven recruitment, and an interest in setting up a regional structure to better tap the expertise of our members." Yeah, yeah, yeah... They'll never win back the House with this kind of bullshit.

We've been covering corrupt conservative Sean Patrick Maloney since he was first elected in 2012. Aside from doing his call-time from the offices of a hedge fund, the bankster-oriented Maloney-- who's taken an astronomical $2,092,300 from the Finance Sector in the past 4 years-- has consistently voted against the best interests of his own constituents to back Wall Street and corporate special interests. He's gay and votes well on LGBT issues, but that's about it. ProgressivePunch grades him an "F" and his crucial vote score is a realy dismal 45.19, indicating that he votes most of the time with the Republicans against progressive solutions. In January-- until right-wing Democrats like Lou Correa start voting-- Maloney will rank as the 5th worst Democrat in the House. The only Democrats with worse scores are 4 really execrable Blue Dogs who should be unceremoniously kicked out of the party: Jim Costa (CA), Collin Peterson (MN), Henry Cuellar (TX) and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ). Maloney should be too but instead the New Dems are organizing an effort to use him to capture the DCCC... back to my earlier thought about how when you want change, you better hope it's change for the better, not change for the worse.

"[R]umors of his bid, reported Heather Caygle for Politico, "have been swirling since he spoke about the importance of the campaign committee during a morning caucus meeting on Thursday... He was seen working the floor during a series of House votes Thursday evening and huddled with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi for a long time after. Pelosi and Maloney were the last Democrats seen leaving the chamber."

[O]ne Democratic aide said Maloney might have a hard time convincing members to vote for him considering how competitive his district is to win and what that would mean for the time commitments required to lead the DCCC.

“He has spent his entire career in Congress telling his colleagues how difficult his district is to win,” the aide said. “He’s undermined himself over the years because I think people will be hesitant to put someone at the helm of the DCCC who has a hard time holding their own seat.”

Arizona liberal Ruben Gallego, who voted against reelecting Pelosi this week, has been backing Luján, who he insists "is a strong candidate and despite the outcome, a lot of things were out of his control... I like the idea of having somebody who’s from a rural area, who understands what it means to live in rural America, where we need to pick up more votes. I like the fact that he understands also the Latino voter, which is a growing electorate. I think those two combinations make him a very strong DCCC chair candidate and I think he should do it again."

Sad. And Gallego isn't the only one. The first corrupt slimy New Dem to back Ryan against Pelosi was Long Island conservative Kathleen Rice and she's fine with Luján but isn't happy about what she calls the DCCC's lack of accountability. "We’re here now, three weeks post-Election Day, and we have not done a post-mortem on what went wrong." She should read DownWithTyranny's recent DCCC posts if she wants to know what went wrong. Pathé reported that Rice and other Democrats coming out of Wednesday’s leadership election said they know of members who already don’t pay their dues out of frustration with the way the DCCC is run. 

“I paid my dues, but I didn’t give a penny more,” Rice said.

“I’ll tell you, it bothered me to have to write a six-figure check to an organization that I didn’t know where they were going to spend that money,” Rice said. She preferred to give directly to vulnerable members and Red to Blue recruits.

Sitting in what was rated a safe Democratic seat before the election, Minnesota Rep. Tim Walz had one of the closest elections of any incumbent Democrat this year. He won by less than a point. What’s striking to him is that no one at the DCCC or in leadership has asked him how he won a district that Hillary Clinton lost.

“I think they’re doing as a good a job as you can do,” Walz said of the DCCC. “But the point is, we just kind of hope they do a good job. There’s no feedback.”

He opposed Pelosi for leader and supports electing the DCCC chairman to increase transparency and member engagement.

“I don’t think there’s the buy-in,” Walz said of members who don’t pay dues because they feel they don’t have a say.

Oregon Rep. Kurt Schrader, co-chairman of the Blue Dog Coalition, echoed that members won’t want to pay their dues if they don’t feel they’re being represented at the DCCC.

“The people that are chosen to run the DCCC don’t represent the Blue Dog districts we need to win,” he said.

Much of the angst toward the DCCC that has emerged from frustrated members seems to be with a staff they think is handpicked by Pelosi, too. Gallego said that’s been one of his main complaints to Luján.

Asked what specifically needs to change at the DCCC, whether with the structure or the staff, Rice said she’d like the decision-making to be more transparent.

“Look, if a private company were run this way, the head of that company would have been out six years ago,” she said.

The interview HuffPo published this morning by Jennifer Bendry with Pelosi was a little disingenuous-- or delusional. Dusting off a decade old "playbook" isn't going to win back the House-- unless they have the dirt of some Republican congressman fiddling with underage congressional pages the way they did in 2006. I have no doubt, though, that the DCCC will once again do in 2016 what they did in 2006-- and every year since-- namely recruit a bunch of Republican fence-jumpers and Republican-lite candidates to masquerade as Democrats, win some seats, vote with the GOP and lose the seats two years hence. It's the only trick Pelosi DCCCs know how to do. And they can't seem to learn it's a fucking disaster every time they do it.

The one aspect I think Pelosi has about right is that they can expect Trump to cock things up for the GOP-- bigly-- as badly as Bush did between 2004 and 2006. But that isn't a strategy for winning back House seats. The Democrats have to have something to offer voters that will improve their lives or voters will continue hating their guts. Luckily for the Democrats, Ryan is likely to go into major overreach mode and if he does it in terms of Social Security and Medicare, not even Pelosi, Luján and their incompetent DCCC staff will be able to prevent the Democrats from winning some seats-- or, more precisely, their incompetence will fail to keep the Republicans from losing seats.

By the way, right-wing nut and Blue Dog chairman Kurt Schrader, speaking to reporters after Pelosi was reelected, said "I’m very concerned we just signed the Democratic Party’s death certificate." Bernie won his district in the Oregon primary-- by a lot-- but the Bernie voters didn't bother voting for Dave McTeague, the Berniecrat primarying Schrader, who lost 72.6% to 27.4%. You go, you awesome Berniecrat geniuses! Tulsi Gabbard is your gal!

Notice that almost all of the public complaints about the DCCC are coming from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- the Blue Dogs and New Dems who have muddied up the party's brand with their support for the NRA, their opposition to women's Choice, their zombie-embrace of the Wall Street agenda and their political cowardice in standing up to Republicans. Where's the Progressive Caucus? Oh, yeah... I forgot: installing Wall Street puppet Ro Khanna as one of their vice chairmen. (Khan, who isn't remotely a progressive but now represents a progressive district, was heavily financed by the banksters who hated Mike Honda. Khanna and Blue Dog Josh Gottheimer (NJ) got more money from the Finance Sector than any other non-incumbents running for House seats, $865,512 for Gottheimer and $860,451 for Khanna-- way more than most incumbents, let alone challengers. I don't think the Progressive Caucus members who allowed Khanna to join their caucus asked themselves why he got more money than any of them. After Gottheimer and Khanna, Wall Street's next big investment in a non-incumbent was Republican John Faso's race against Zephyr Teachout ($626,540). No other challengers from either party got half a million from the banksters. They know what they're doing and what kind of scumbags and garbage they're buying. And now Ro Khanna is a vice chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Go figure! This mailer was sent out by the new Progressive Caucus vice chair to denigrate Mike Honda:

Inside The Beltway It's Très Visqueux, Très Louche... But Last Week's Gay Equality Amendment Passes Anyway

I don't mean to brag but when I saw Sean Patrick Maloney's last minute amendment to the Veterans and Military Construction Appropriations bill I was happy and I wondered why the Republicans allowed it through. At the time, I wrote that Maloney had "managed to trick the tired and weary Republicans into letting him add a last minute amendment to the Veterans and Military Construction Appropriations bill the House was debating. The Republicans could have ruled it out of order but they missed the chance and it made it onto the schedule and got voted on Thursday morning. The purpose was be to prohibit federal contractors from discriminating against LGBT people and the vote was such a squeaker that the GOP almost had to drag Paul Ryan into voting."

Well, Ryan struck back. According to a report in The Hill he's changing the rules to keep that kind of embarrassing amendmenting from happening again. (Someone should remind him that Pelsoi and Hoyer would control the DCCC chair forever and that the moment they're gone, if the Democrats have learned a lesson from the last decade of failure, the Republicans will be the House minority party again-- and bound by Ryan's petulant new rule.

Ryan laid out plans at a House GOP conference meeting Tuesday morning to require that members submit their amendments ahead of time so that they are printed in the Congressional Record, according to leadership aides.

...By requiring amendments to be made public in advance, GOP leaders would be able to anticipate difficult votes and figure out a strategy before the last minute. Specifics of the revamped process, such as the deadline for members to file their amendments, haven't been determined by leadership yet.

Upon winning majority control five years ago, House Republicans, led by then-Speaker John Boehner (Ohio), brought back the use of a freewheeling process known as an "open rule" to consider annual appropriations bills.

Under that procedure, members of either party can offer unlimited amendments without having to give advance notice to their colleagues or the public. On most other bills, the majority party's leaders control which amendments get floor time.

Top Republicans have touted the use of open rules as a return to "regular order" and a way to empower individual members. But it has backfired spectacularly on House Republicans twice in the last year.

The most recent example occurred last week when Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) offered an amendment to a Veterans Affairs spending bill that would enforce an executive order President Obama issued two years ago prohibiting federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

The amendment was set to pass with 217 votes in favor. But members of House GOP leadership could be seen on the floor persuading Republicans to change their votes to sink Maloney's measure. They held the vote open for seven minutes until the amendment failed on a 212-213 vote.

...A spokesman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) blasted Ryan's proposed rules change.

“This is the second time in less than a week that Speaker Ryan has abandoned regular order in the name of furthering LGBT discrimination in this country. Obviously, we are deeply disappointed that the House Republican leadership has apparently decided that discriminating against LGBT Americans is a top legislative priority," spokesman Drew Hammill said in a statement.

Last night the regular order rules the GOP was always crying about and that Ryan wants to gut, allowed Maloney to reattach his amendment to H.R. 5055, the Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act, and this time the cowardly Republicans who switched their votes at the last minute and under pressure last week, voted in favor of LGBT equality under the law. Instead of losing by one vote, it passed 223-195, even Darrell Issa, who had previously lied and claimed he hit the wrong electronic voting button last time, voted in favor this time. The vote switchers who switched again were electorally vulnerable California Republicans Issa, Jeff Denham, David Valadao, Mimi Walters, plus Bruce Poliquin (R-ME), Greg Walden (R-OR) and David Young (R-IA). Susan Brooks (R-IN), Jim Renacci (R-OH), Tom Rooney (R-FL) and 3 Illinois Republicans-- Rodney Davis, Adam Kinzinger and John Shimkus also switched their votes to YES. (This morning the GOP killed the whole Energy and Water bill-- which they wrote-- rather than see it pass with a sentence about LGBT equality. What a bunch of clowns and jerks!)

Ryan is now ready to hop on board the Trump Train to Nowhere. Bloomberg reports that he's "begun telling confidants that he wants to end his standoff with Donald Trump in part because he’s worried the split has sharpened divisions in the Republican Party... Paul Manafort, told a small group of Republican lawmakers Thursday that he expects Ryan to endorse the party’s nominee as early as this week, according to two people in the meeting." I wasn't sure where this story was going, although I haven't mentioned Herr Trumpf all day today... and then it came to me. You want to talk about slimy Republicans? What could possibly beat this-- and I'm not talking about the Bush's ambassador to France who can't speak French:

House Republicans Take A Stand: For Bigotry Against LGBT Families

Paul Ryan needs to understand bigotry is not wonky

Sean Patrick Maloney, a New Dem from New York's Lower Hudson Valley (parts of Orange, Dutchess, Putnam and Westchester counties) has two functions in Congress: to slavishly serve the interests of the Wall Street banksters and to push LGBT equality; he's a gay conservative. Generally speaking, he's one of the most right wing Democrats in Congress, except where it comes to bills relating to his own sexuality. Kyrsten Sinema is even worse, but Maloney is, in general, pond scum. Wednesday night around 1am, though, he was awesome... for him. He managed to trick the tired and weary Republicans into letting him add a last minute amendment to the Veterans and Military Construction Appropriations bill the House was debating.

The Republicans could have ruled it out of order but they missed the chance and it made it onto the schedule and got voted on Thursday morning. The purpose was be to prohibit federal contractors from discriminating against LGBT people and the vote was such a squeaker that the GOP almost had to drag Paul Ryan into voting. (He's trying to not vote like a bigot when he can get away with it and that's part of the prerogative of being Speaker.) After holding the amendment open way after it was within the rules of the House to do and twisting several Republican arms to switch votes-- Republican southerners were running round like their wigs were on fire and the world was ending, screeching how they had to defeat Maloney's amendment-- it finally went down. But it only lost BY ONE VOTE: 212-213. Whew... contractor bigots are safe to discriminate against the gays! Steny Hoyer's office exposed the Republicans who voted NO and then weakly switched their votes when they were pressured by the extremists: Jeff Denham (CA), David Valadao (CA), Mimi Waters (CA), Darrell Issa (CA), Greg Walden (OR), David Young (IA), and Bruce Poliquin (ME).

For once there were no Democrats joining the GOP on this-- 183 Democrats voted NO... and so did 29 Republicanos, many of them in blue and purple districts where their constituents don't go for the bigotry thing the way people in Mississippi and Alabama do. These are the Republicans who voted with the Democrats and against bigotry:

• Justin Amash (MI)
• Mike Coffman (CO)
• Ryan Costello (PA)
• Carlos Curbelo (FL)
• Charlie Dent (PA)
• Mario Diaz-Balart (FL)
• Bob Dold (IL)
• Dan Donovan (NY)
• Tom Emmer (MN)
• Mike Fitzpatrick (PA)
• Rodney Frelinghuysen (NJ)
• Chris Gibson (NY)
• Richard Hanna (NY)
• Joe Heck (NV)
• Will Hurd (TX)
• David Jolly (FL)
• John Katko (NY)
• Leonard Lance (NJ)
• Frank LoBiondo (NJ)
• Tom MacArthur (NJ)
• Martha McSally (AZ)
• Pat Meehan (PA)
• Erik Paulsen (MN)
• Tom Reed (NY)
• Dave Reichert (WA)
• Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL)
• Elise Stefanik (NY)
• Fred Upton (MI)
• Lee Zeldin (NY)

The bolded names are vulnerable Republican incumbents who have relatively together opponents in November capable of making bigotry into an issue. Other vulnerable Republicans were just unable to get beyond the homophobia that's been ingrained in them for so long. Long Island Congressman Peter King represents a normal, decent area of Suffolk and Nassau where people are not prone to discriminate against groups of people. King's hate-filled vote yesterday isn't something DuWayne Gregory, his progressive opponent, is likely to let go unnoticed. Gregory was an Army officer who led a platoon of soldiers and prejudice isn't something that works in the military. This morning he told us, "My son, Julian, is gay so I understand the impact of today's vote all too well. For the life of me I can not understand how an elected member of Congress would vote to allow discrimination of any worker regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation to exist."

We asked Carol Shea Porter about Frank Guinta's vote to allow discrimination and bigotry in a state, New Hampshire, where people don't go for that kind of thing. This morning she told us "Congressman Frank Guinta can add still one more shameful and dscriminatory vote to his already very long record. Forcing people who don't hate to send their tax dollars to those who practice hate at work is disgusting and immoral."

Madison Congressman Mark Pocan told his constituents yesterday that after Maloney had initially secured enough votes for passage, the "GOP leadership cajoled several of their members to switch their votes to defeat the amendment. In an unprecedented move, House Republican Leadership refused to release the names of the individuals who switched their vote." He pointed out that Paul Ryan's "image of inclusion was shattered as he, not once but twice, led his majority to deliver bigoted votes against the LGBT community in America. Apparently, Ryan thinks it’s OK to fire someone simply for who they are or who they love. The actions this week show why the GOP majority under the leadership of Ryan and Donald Trump are clearly out of touch with the majority of American people. I personally was sad to see Ryan’s leadership show its true face. I’ve always had a cordial relationship with the Speaker, but when he so easily is willing to see people be discriminated against and fired simply because of who they are shows what Paul really thinks of me and so many of his own constituents. If he thought differently, he could have stopped the actions that occurred. The GOP majority’s willingness to so openly discriminate against the LGBT community underscores why the fight for equality in America is not over. We must continue to fight to ensure everyone can go through their daily lives without facing the threat of discrimination, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity."

Antelope Valley Congressman Steve Knight represents a normal, suburban area of L.A. and Ventura counties where people are not prone to discriminate against groups of people. Knight's hate-filled vote today isn't something Lou Vince, his progressive opponent is likely to let go unnoticed. Vince was in the U.S. Marine Corp, where prejudice isn't something that functions well. This morning he told us that Knight's "vote is absolutely disgraceful. It's un-American to allow discrimination to take place in this country anymore, especially towards our LGBT brothers and sisters. Two of my three staff members are part of the LGBT community and it is simply wrong that we don't have a federal law protecting them from discrimination. This is one of the major reasons I decided to run-- Congressman Knight is so out-of-touch with our district, he consistently votes against common-sense measures that are supported by a majority of people here. One of the very first things I plan to do once elected is to sign on as a co-sponsor of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) as Congressman Knight had promised to do when he was running in 2014. This is just one of the many empty promises Congressman Knight hasn't kept. It's time to get a progressive elected."

If you want to contribute to Mark's re-election campaign, you can do it here and you can contribute to our progressive challengers like Carol Shea Porter, Lou Vince and DuWayne Gregory at the thermometer:

UPDATE: From The Lone Star State

Lamar Smith represents a central Texas district that includes parts of Austin and San Antonio, areas where homophobia and bigotry don't go over all that well. Our new friend Tom Wakely, a Berniecrat running for the seat, doesn't countenance votes like the one Smith took yesterday. "Once again the majority of House Republicans are using social wedge issues to distract from the fact that their platform has all but evaporated," he told us. "Congressman Smith is more concerned with being on the wrong side of history than the right side of his constituents." 

A New Breed Of Conservatives Who Aren't Anti-Gay

Gay conservative Republicans like Aaron Schock (R-IL), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Miss McConnell (R-KY), and Trent Franks (R-AZ) and Patrick McHenry (R-NC) have traditionally locked themselves in closets and voted against LGBT equality in the hope they would fool someone. Gay conservative Democrats have usually been less hypocritical. Maine Blue Dog Mike Michaud stayed in the closet until he came out when Paul LePage started the GOP rumor machine whirling in time for the gubernatorial election. His LGBT record has been so-so, better than most conservatives but not great. Most gay conservative Democrats just come out of the closet these days-- Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ) and Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY) are good examples.

They are two of the worst Democrats in Congress-- they both tend to vote with Boehner and the Republicans on most core issues-- except on LGBT and women's health issues. Both have excellent voting records on LGBT equality, although working class gays might find minimal solace in that, given the two Democrats' anti-working family perspective on everything else. I often run into Democrats who refuse to believe that gay Democrats can be described as "conservative." That's not only silly, it's getting even sillier and soon we will have gay Republicans voting horribly on everything but gay issues. Carl DeMaio (R-CA) is openly gay and conservative and likely to beat conservative New Dem multimillionaire Scott Peters in San Diego this November. (Polls show DeMaio leading, probably because plenty of disillusioned Democrats have no intention of bothering to come out and vote for a disappointing conservative like Peters.) You don't have to be anti-gay to be conservative. You just have to be for conserving the wealth and power of the wealthy and powerful. That's always been the name of the game. The bigotry and hatred was just convenient to get 2-digit IQ voters to betray their own economic self-interests.

The wonderful Salon article by Tim Donovan I keep referring to Clueless rich kids on the rise: How millennial aristocrats will destroy our future, makes it clear that the next generation of disgusting Republicans won't be anti-gay, just anti-working class. Sinema and Maloney are ahead of the curve. And so is freshman Republican David Jolly, who won the special election to replace Bill Young in Pinellas County and is, as far as I know, straight. And not anti-gay. In fact, he's pro-gay and says he has been since college.

“Republican David Jolly (Fla.) announces support for gay marriage” reads the headline of the story written by the Washington Post's Sean Sullivan, who covered Jolly during his campaign for Florida’s 13th Congressional District. Jolly, when asked by the Post if he supports gay marriage after a Florida judge overturned the state’s ban, said that his personal views on marriage are that it should be limited to one man and one woman. But, he added, states should not be defining the “sanctity” of marriage.

From there, the story quickly went viral. And in almost every article, blog post, story, and tweet, Jolly is portrayed as “coming out” for gay marriage.

Jolly says this has been his viewpoint all along. And not since his campaign, but from his days at law school.

“I can tell you exactly where my thinking began to change,” said Jolly. “It was my constitutional law class in 1998. That began a year of soul-searching on this issue.”

Jolly position on same-sex marriage, he insists, “is not an evolution.” Actually, Jolly’s position is shaped by a libertarian belief that government is not key to the sanctity of marriage.

“To me, that means that the sanctity of one’s marriage should be defined by their faith and by their church, not by their state,” Jolly explained in a statement to the Washington Post. “Accordingly, I believe it is fully appropriate for a state to recognize both traditional marriage as well as same-sex marriage, and therefore I support the recent decision by a Monroe County Circuit Judge.”

...Now that Jolly is talking about the issue, he’s not pulling any punches. He says the state’s constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages goes against the U.S. Constitution and should be overturned.

Asked if he thinks Attorney General Pam Bondi should abandon her legal efforts to uphold the ban, Jolly reiterated his position that the amendment should be overturned but said he was unclear what the charter of Bondi’s office requires her to do to uphold Florida law.

Jolly also made it a point to say that he thinks one of the great “upcoming fights” is over religious liberty. He said he’s worried that the government will overstep its authority and force religious-based schools to teach about matters that go against their beliefs.

But that fight is for another day. Today, Jolly is making headlines for all the right reasons. The only issue is they should probably have been written months ago.

That doesn't mean Jolly is a liberal or a progressive by any stretch of the imagination. He's a conservative, albeit a new breed of conservative who feels secure enough that he can win reelection without catering to the redneck homophobic hatemongers who so many conservatives are always peering over their shoulders for. A couple of weeks ago, Jolly joined all the Florida Republicans to vote of a crazy amendment by coal industry shill David McKinley (R-WV) denying Climate Change and insisting that the government spent no money on it. Jolly voted for it despite the fact that every single inch of Pinellas County will be uninhabitable, mostly underwater in fact, by the end of the century. Now, that's a conservative!

Jolly's Democratic district-- which Obama won in 2008 and 2012 and which voted against Bush both times as well-- is socially moderate. Jolly is smart enough to know that someday the Democrats won't have a bumbling moron and incompetent like Steve Israel running the DCCC and that he'll have a real race on his hands. He's preparing now-- even though, thanks to Israel's startling arrogance and willful stupidity, he has no opponent in November. His voting record is conservative without being too overtly hateful. His 13.43 ProgressivePunch crucial vote score is even better than Ileana Ros-Lehtinen's 9.06 and she's in an even bluer district, although, again thanks to Israel (and Debbie Wasserman Schultz) she has no Democratic opponent this year. And she isn't anti-gay either and she voted to allow her entire district to sink beneath the waves as well.

Prediction: Aaron Schock will come out of the closet and marry his congressional heartthrob Adam Kinzinger and both will start voting relatively well (you know, "for a Republican") on LGBT issues, while still voting horribly on everything else. And they will be called "moderates."

Will Steve Israel's PA-08 CIA Agent, Kevin Strouse, Withdraw From His Congressional Race Over The Weekend?

I wondered why Steve Israel and his corrupt operatives at the DCCC didn't jump all over the story about Republican crooks Michael Grimm and Aaron Schock illegally trading maxed out donors to circumvent campaign finance regulations. Was Israel too busy chasing Pinellas County NAACP President Manuel Sykes out of the FL-13 Democratic primary so he could run a sleazy Republican crony instead? That wasn't it and now I do know why Israel ignored that scandal-- he was directing a nearly identical scheme among-- even more shady-- his own stable of worthless corrupt recruits. Pelosi is now countenancing criminal activities from her DCCC chief, It's not just about losing House seats-- an Israel forte-- but about unethical behavior that rivals the GOPs.

Let's start with a look at a widely sourced article in the Philadelphia Inquirer by Chris Palmer and Jonathan Tamari, who fingered Israel recruit and "ex"-CIA agent Kevin Strouse as the source of the scam.

As Kevin Strouse jumped into a high-profile congressional race in Bucks County, his parents sent $10,400 last June to the campaign of U.S. Rep. Ami Bera, a California Democrat in another closely contested district.

Two days later, Strouse's campaign got the same amount, $10,400, from Bera's parents.

The pattern was repeated at least three other times last year, campaign finance records show. In each, Strouse's parents-- who had never before donated to federal candidates beyond Pennsylvania-- sent money to Democrats in tight congressional races in Colorado, Florida, and Illinois.

Days before or after, those candidates' parents sent nearly identical contributions-- usually for the maximum allowed-- to Strouse's campaign.

What Palmer and Tamari have no way of knowing is that the candidates involved in the scam are all Israel New Dem "mystery meat" recruits, more of his fatally flawed, conservative candidates like Ed Jany and Kevin Strouse-- Patrick Murphy (FL), Andrew Romanoff (CO) and Ann Callis (IL). "Exactly how," the two reporters ask, "the parents of candidates in far-flung congressional races aimed nearly matching donations at one another's children is unclear." Maybe Pelosi should clear it up for us? Is this what she meant when she admiringly called him "reptilian" when she was truing to defend appointing such a corrupt character to a high position? Israel and his den of crooks at the DCCC are, needless to say, stonewalling.

Strouse, his campaign and his parents did not respond to multiple requests for interviews, including two left at Robert and Norma Strouse's home in Glenmoore. Parents of two other candidates-- one in Illinois and the other in California-- hung up when contacted by the Inquirer. Two others did not return calls left for comment.

The only clear link between the parents is that their children are each running in House districts deemed priorities by national Democrats.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee on Monday declined to discuss the contributions or say if the party had a role introducing the parents or directing their donations.

Instead, it released a two-line statement that said: "Our Red to Blue and Emerging candidates are on the vanguard of the fight to put solutions ahead of reckless brinkmanship and fight for middle-class families. As the top tier pickup opportunities in the country, these races generate tremendous enthusiasm from our allies and candidates' own networks."

Strouse, 34, a handpicked DCCC candidate who moved to the district from the District of Columbia last year, is locked in a fight with businesswoman Shaughnessy Naughton, 35, to be the party's nominee in the Eighth District.

…Strouse's parents have given $49,400 to eight Democrats running in priority House races this year - not counting $10,400 to their son. The parents of at least four of those candidates donated $28,400 to Strouse.

In almost every case, the donations were dated just days before the campaigns were scheduled to file finance reports to the FEC-- a time candidates and committees traditionally ramp up fund-raising so they can boast about swollen war chests.

In June, Robert Strouse sent $5,200 to the campaign of U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy (D., Fla.). (The Floridian is no relation to the former Bucks County congressman with the same name.) Four days later, Murphy's father, Thomas P. Murphy Jr., sent an identical campaign contribution to Kevin Strouse.

In September and December, Strouse's parents sent checks to the campaign of Ann Callis, a Democratic challenger in Illinois. Within days, Callis' parents sent nearly identical amounts back to Strouse's campaign.

Reached at home Sunday night, Lance Callis at first explained the donation by saying Strouse might have sent him political information he agreed with. But he declined to elaborate and hung up.

Robert Strouse also gave $5,200 - again the maximum-- to House candidate Andrew Romanoff of Colorado on Oct. 3. That was sent four days after Romanoff's mother had contributed $2,600 to the Strouse campaign.

For Romanoff's mother, Gayle Caplan, it was the first time she had given to a federal candidate other than her son and President Obama. When contacted at home in California on Sunday, Caplan said, "I don't talk to reporters," and hung up.

Bera's parents were not home and could not be reached. The Bera, Callis, and Romanoff campaigns did not respond to requests for comment Monday. Murphy's campaign declined to comment.

Strouse's parents have also donated to four other top-tier Democrats who, according to FEC records, do not appear to have given back to Kevin Strouse.

The other parents have also been generous. Like the Strouses, the Beras and Lance Callis have also given to multiple campaigns this cycle, usually helping candidates named as Democratic priorities for 2014. All three families, for example, gave to U.S. Rep. Raul Ruiz (D., Calif.).

The other gained candidates include Israel recruits Rocky Lara (NM), John Lewis (MT), and Sean Patrick Maloney (NY). The anti-fracking candidate in the Bucks County race whose campaign Israel is trying to sabotage, Shaughnessy Naughton, has asked Strouse to explain how these shady contributions were coordinated. "Was there a quid pro quo?" she asked. She also called on him to return the roughly $28,400 in parental contributions if they were part of a plan to get around donation limits. "Frankly," she said, "if it's not illegal, it certainly seems like it should be." And if it was unethical for Grimm and Schock, this looks 10 times worse. There were so many shady contributions from Strouse's parents-- one see why he became a spy now-- that I couldn't even capture them all on aq sceenshot. Here are a sample:

no progressives on this list

3 Wall Street-Owned New Dems Face Rematches

Teabagger Robert Lowry poses with realistic Ted Cruz blow-up doll

Everyone is probably relieved there won't be a Patrick Murphy-Alan West rematch, but next year a handful of New Dems almost as bad as Murphy are going to have to face the Republican ex-congressmember they beat in 2012.
Actually, Sean Patrick Maloney has an even worse voting record than Murphy. In fact, Maloney, who does his call-time from the office of a sleazy hedge fund in Manhattan, has the single worst voting record of any Democratic freshman-- yes, generally worse than Sinema and Gallego. He votes even more conservatively than the DCCC recommends. Not a very astute man, he thinks conservatives will vote for him because he's almost as conservative as a Republican. That won't happen and now that Democrats know he isn't really one of them, the base that elected him in 2012 isn't likely to turn out for him next year. Maloney's district, NY-18-- all of Orange County, all of Putnam County and parts of Dutchess and Westchester counties-- has an even PVI (one of only 9 in the nation) and he beat incumbent Nan Hayworth last year (143,845 to 133,049) largely because Obama turned out the voters. Obama beat Romney in NY-18 149,610 to 137,144. In the last race Maloney spent $2,246,008 to Hayworth's $3,254,072 (which included $110,033 from her personal fortune). This cycle she's expected to spend a lot more of her own cash, although she hasn't reported raising anything yet and Maloney, a notorious Wall Street whore, has already brought in $1,362,653 (64% from big donations and 28% from PACs). And he's already taken $76,050 from Wall Street, which is reflected in one of the most pro-Wall Street voting records of any Member of Congress. Last week, for example, he voted with the Republicans to exempt private equity fund investment advisers from its registration and reporting requirements. His sole claim to being "progressive" is that he's gay and married with adopted children. It's a profoundly false claim on progressivism and the only thing that could possibly keep him in office is what a horrible candidate Hayworth is.

Another really bad New Dem facing the Republican he beat in 2012 is Brad Schneider (IL-10, a carefully gerrymandered district north of Chicago that was redrawn specifically to elect Democrats). Like Maloney, Schneider is a Wall Street whore who also voted last week with Republicans for that same dreadful exemption for private equity fund investment advisers. Last year, Obama won IL-10 157,400 (58%) to 112,552 (41%) but Dold nearly held onto the seat anyway. Schneider was clearly saved by Obama's coattails, barely beating Dold 133,890 (51%) to 130,564 (49%). Last year Dold outspent Schneider $4,543,049 to $3,029,605. So far Schneider has raised $1,144,430. At the end of September, Dold reported he had $819,000 in the bank, slightly more than Schneider's $767,000 cash on hand. This is a real toss-up.

Another extremely conservative New Dem-- and Blue Dog-- is Pete Gallego and he may or may not face the very flawed Republican he beat in 2012, Francisco “Quico” Canseco. I'm sure he hopes he does. The Republican Party Establishment, on the other hand, opposes Conseco and is reluctantly backing an ex-CIA agent, Will Hurd (after failing to recruit a more plausible opponent to Gallego).

TX-23, the biggest district in the state (23% of Texas, 29 counties), is a long stretch of border country between San Antonio's western suburbs and El Paso. 70% of the people there are Hispanic, although last year Romney won 51-48%, around the same margin that Obama won it in 2008. The PVI is R+3, but that index is backward-looking and the district is getting bluer. Last year Gallego actually outpolled Obama, winning against Canseco 96,676 (50%) to 87,547 (46%). Canseco beat Hurd in 2010 but the NRCC didn't want him to run again and trued recruiting Rolando Pablos, a Rick Perry crony who declined to run. But the GOP doesn't acknowledge that what makes Canseco so weak in this Hispanic and military-oriented district-- even against an incumbent as lame and incompetent as Gallego-- is that he opposed both comprehensive immigration reform and the Dream Act and voted for sequestration that caused unpaid furloughs and hundreds of millions of dollars in lost wages for defense employees, a much bigger deal in the San Antonio area than almost anywhere else in America. The third GOP loser in the primary is a fringy Ron Paul backer who is being backed by the Tea Party (and potheads), Robert Lowry.

The Gays Won

Someone's got to have the best voting record in Congress, might as well be Mark!

Wednesday I got an e-mail from the Gay And Lesbian Victory Fund with the subject line "What a Night!" And what a night it was for them! They had helped 56 candidates from the LGBT community win their races, including 2 crucial women in Texas, Annise Parker, who won a third term as mayor of Houston, America's fourth largest city, and Celia Israel, who advanced to a run-off in North Austin to replace our old pal Mark Strama, giving voters the chance to elect a second LGBT voice in the state House.

They celebrated these two wonderful candidates with the same enthusiasm they expressed for the new mayor of Seattle. "Ed Murray," they wrote, "will become the next mayor of Seattle, defeating a well-funded incumbent and shattering a historic barrier." Down with the bad guy and up with the good! Right? Well, no, not exactly. As Paul Constant explained in The Stranger, Murray was very upfront about running as the anti-progressive. "I am not running," he boasted, "to be a progressive mayor of Seattle." Constant wrote that he was "disappointed that Murray would use the words progressive and liberal like they're pejoratives" in his victory speech.

Last night, in his halting, stiff victory speech at the Crocodile, Ed Murray said two things that I found to be very troubling. First, he announced that to make Seattle work, "we need to bring liberals and moderates together." Second, his speech's big money shot was this line: "I am not running to be a gay mayor of Seattle. I am not running to be a progressive mayor of Seattle. I am running to be an effective mayor of Seattle." I want to be perfectly clear, right up front, that what I'm about to write has nothing to do with Mike McGinn. This post is about the fact that I feel that Murray's speech profoundly misjudged the character of Seattle politics. And that speech made me feel disappointed in Ed Murray.

Seattle is the liberal heart of a state that last year led the nation by voting to legalize marijuana and legalize same sex marriage. Could anyone seriously tell me that those are not progressive causes? Last night, roughly a third of all primary voters decided to send a socialist to the general election vote for city council. Let me ask you again, in a slightly different way: Do you really think that this is a moderate city?

We don't live in Old Seattle anymore; this is not a city for NPR tote-bag liberals who put the Clinton/Gore bumper stickers on their cars and then quietly vote down every property tax that crosses their ballots. This is not a city that can continue to wait patiently for conservatives to come around to our way of thinking on transit. Seattle is—Seattle wants to be—the progressive testing ground for the rest of this country. We're sick of kowtowing to moderates, the craven imbeciles who tell us to wait on gay marriage until the national mood deigns to approve of it. We want to lead the way, and force the national mood to change. We start debates on the minimum wage and fast food workers' rights here in Seattle that inspire conversations around the rest of the country. We are the bluest of blues, and we're not likely to change any time soon. We're tired of having to wait for the dumbest kid in the class to catch up to us so that we can move on to the next lesson. We want to write our own goddamned lesson plans. We want to make our own world. And to do that, we need a mayor who doesn't shy away from the word "progressive," and we definitely don't need a mayor who insists that liberals have to capitulate to "moderates" in order to get stuff done. That may have been Seattle fifteen years ago. It's not Seattle now. It's not the city that Seattle's going to be.

I follow politics carefully and by 2008 I and already met Barack Obama several times and knew exactly what he was, economically a neoliberal and ideologically a moderate. I voted for him anyway, primarily for two reasons: better of two evils and for the symbolism and inspiration of electing an African-American president. (That's why I also would have voted for the equally-- if not even worse-- Hillary Clinton: the symbolism and inspiration of electing a woman president. In 2012 there was no chance I would have voted for Obama again. And a lot would have to happen-- none of which I expect-- before I would consider casting a ballot for Hillary Clinton.

On the ProgressivePunch page that shows the relative lifetime voting records of every Member of Congress, the #1 most progressive is Mark Pocan, a gay man from Madison, Wisconsin. Gays can feel proud of that if they want to. But if you surf down the the bottom of the Democrats, to the place where conservative Democrats and even worse Republicans compete for rankings, you find the Democrat with the worst voting record. It isn't homophobic reactionary Blue Dogs Pete Gallego (TX), John Barrow (GA) or Mike McIntyre (NC). Nope, the worst Democrat in Congress has a perfect progressive record on LGBT issues. He's just atrocious on everything else, especially economic justice. And that's Sean Patrick Maloney, a gay man. The third-worst is a self-described bisexual, Kyrsten Sinema. She has a great record on LGBT issues too (and women's issues). But on all the other issues that separate the progressives from the conservatives, Sinema, like Maloney is an embarrassment.

In his first book, Crashing the Gate, Markos Moulitsas warned of the danger of narrow identity politics. It took me a few years to fully, viscerally, understand what he was talking about. When E.J. Dionne looked at the results of Tuesday's election and wrote America Shifts Left, it wasn't to celebrate identity group politics. It was to celebrate the election of politicians who stand for progressive values and principles. We need more Mark Pocans and fewer Sean Patrick Maloneys and Kyrsten Sinemas. Evana corrupt corporate hack and machine politics bagman like Terry McAuliffe has a place in that shift.

Terry McAuliffe may have won in Virginia as a middle-of-the-road, business-friendly champion of “jobs.” But he was also firmly liberal on gay marriage and abortion, and cast Ken Cuccinelli, his opponent, as a social troglodyte.

More than that: McAuliffe was outspoken against the National Rifle Association and in favor of a variety of gun-safety measures, including background checks. McAuliffe did not shrink from his F-rating from the NRA. He boasted about it.

His outspokenness was rewarded. He won the suburbs outside of Washington, D.C., overwhelmingly and built a large margin among women. The power of the gun-control issue should not be lost in the sometimes foggy talk about centrism. This should embolden supporters of sane gun laws.

…Republicans would be wiser to pay attention to the fact that McAuliffe recreated the coalition which twice elected Obama. When Democrats lost Virginia in 2009, Obama supporters stayed home in large numbers. This time, the electorate was significantly more Democratic, and the African-American share of the vote rose sharply. In next year’s midterms, Republicans cannot count on the sort of Democratic demobilization that was so helpful to them in 2010.

To say that this election nudged the nation leftward is not to claim a sudden mandate for liberalism. But it is to insist that the center ground in American politics is a long way from where it was three years ago-- and that if there is a new populism in the country, it is now speaking with a decidedly progressive accent.

I'm Willing To Bet That Kyrsten Sinema And Sean Patrick Maloney Will Never Be On A Postage Stamp

I have credits on a lot of films and albums but none thrill me as much as when the end credits on the 1984 documentary, The Times of Harvey Milk roll and I see my name. I wasn't in the movie and I was shocked to see my name in the credits. It was there because the filmmaker had used some stills I had taken of Harvey over the years. I had been unable to bring myself to watch it-- too distraught-- for over a decade and had no idea my name was attached to it.

Harvey was an important person in my life when I first moved to the West Coast after having lived in Europe for nearly 7 years after college. I was penniless when I got to San Francisco but I had been teaching darkroom technique (as a form of meditation) at The Kosmos in Amsterdam and was eager to ditch a 9-5 job and work as a photographer. Harvey ran a camera shop right next door to my favorite record shop and hang out, Aquarius, on Castro Street. We got to know each other and he eventually staked me with the equipment I needed to set up my own darkroom. In return, I became the "official" photographer for his election campaigns. It was fun and, obviously, I had no idea Harvey would go on to become an icon for the LGBT community.

I'll never forget a day at the camera shop soon after he was finally elected Supervisor-- the first openly gay man in California to ever be elected to office. His victory was national news, even in Time and Newsweek-- which were meaningful back in those days-- and he was getting bagfuls of mail. He read me some of them, one from a high school kid in Kansas or Iowa or Nebraska... I can't recall, one of those traditional farm belt states. The kid just wanted to say thank you to Harvey for giving him hope, hope that he didn't have to kill himself. Harvey and I were both weeping when he read it. I'm weeping again right now writing about it.

After right-wing assassin Dan White got what was coming to him, despite the criminal justice system, I moved to Los Angeles. SFO is such an inconvenient, hassle-guaranteed airport-- like LAX-- that whenever I fly up to the Bay Area I fly into Oakland Airport. But if San Francisco goes through with Supervisor David Campos' bill to rename SFO the Harvey Milk-San Francisco International Airport, I will definitely fly into it-- at least once. For now, we'll have to settle for a postage stamp.

"Thirty-five years after Harvey Milk made history as California's first openly gay elected leader," wrote Kurtis Alexander, "he's closing in on another historical first. The U.S> Postal Service said Friday that the late San Francisco supervisor and civil rights leader will join the likes of John F. Kennedy, Rosa Parks and Jackie Robinson by being recognized with a commemorative stamp-- and honor that had apparently never before gone to an openly gay politician… While gay rights was always a priority for Milk, his agenda included a variety of issues, from affordable housing to public transportation to expanded child care."

Obviously he was nothing like today's sorry crop of gay Democratic conservatives like Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY) and Kyrsten Sinema (New Dem-AZ), who are good on gay issues but terrible on the kinds of crucial economic justice issues which had Milk a beloved and respected figure outside the LGBT community.

Yes, There Are Gay Democrats Who Vote GOP On Everything But Specifically Gay Issues

Don't assume from this picture of Sean Patrick Maloney's lovely family that he isn't a conservative

Friday Michaelangelo Signorile picked up on the theme we've been discussing here at DWT about the disappointments inherent in identity politics. He singled out anti-progressive gay congressmembers, specifically Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY) and Kyrsten Sinema (New Dem-AZ).

Both, though Sinema even more so, campaigned for Congress as progressives and both were very upfront about being gay and seemed to hope voters would assume because they are openly gay, they would also back a progressive agenda. Each has accrued voting records that are among the half dozen most conservative among House Democrats. According to the ProgressivePunch crucial vote score Maloney has the worst record of any freshman (31.25) and Sinema has the third-worst (38.46). Both vote against progressive initiatives twice as often as they support them. And both voted with the Republicans in their shut-down-the-government agenda. "Think about this," suggests Signorile, "On what is arguably the most important debate in Congress, two of nine Democrats who voted with the tea party-led blackmailers are openly gay or bisexual. Two of only five openly gay or bisexual members of the House voted with the extreme far right to undermine the president."

The newest iteration in the GOP strategy to undermine the country by continuing their policy of anarchy, nihilism, blackmail and delegitimization of Obama and of government itself, is the piecemeal approach to funding we talked about last week. Sinema and Maloney were among the very first Democrats to break ranks with their party and embrace the Republican strategy-- but only when it suited their conservatism.

The first round of votes required enough Democrats to pass the GOP bills with 2/3s and they all failed last Tuesday-- but not because of Maloney and Sinema. First bill up was to fund veterans benefits and 33 Democrats crossed to the Dark Side, including both of them. A few minutes later, when the GOP tried passing a bill to fund the national parks, 22 Democrats backed them, including Sinema and Maloney. The third bill was interesting because it funded District of Columbia government operations and a lot of progressive Democrats just couldn't vote no. 34 Democrats crossed the aisle on that one though, tellingly, not the corporate-minded Maloney (who does his call time from the offices of a shady hedge fund).

Cantor announced he would bring the bills up again under regular order when only simple majorities would be needed to pass them. So, on Thursday when the GOP passed a bill to pay the national guard, Sinema and Maloney were among the 36 Democrats to cross the aisle to undermine Democratic strategy to end the government shut-down. Next up was a bill to pay veterans benefits and Sinema and Murphy again joined 35 Democrats who crossed over to the GOP. Keeping the national parks open-- Sinema and Maloney were among the 23 aisle crossing Dems. National Institutes of Health… Sinema and Maloney were among the 25 Democrats who collaborated with the GOP on that one. Both voted for all the rest of the piecemeal funding bills this week.

So here you have two very conservative Democrats-- albeit gay very conservative Democrats-- voting with the Republicans to, in effect, pressure the Democratic Senate and Obama to buckle to GOP blackmail that Obamacare be dismantled before the government be allowed to open.(Again, it was telling that the only bill in the two days of voting that didn't have support from Maloney was the one to fund DC. I guess that's why he's the worst freshman and Sinema is just the third-worst.)

We'll end this discussion with another look at what Signorile had to say about these two at HuffPo:

Since taking office, Sinema has voted with the GOP against economic justice issues that progressives, including LGBT activists, view as crucial. Both she and U.S. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), an openly gay former Clinton aide, also elected for the first time in 2012, have voted with big banks and Wall Street time and again. Right out of the gate, Maloney, who took a lot of Wall Street money, voted with the GOP on the debt ceiling early this year, and actually co-sponsored a bill that would roll back reforms of the very Wall Street practices that led to the economic collapse. He even voted with the GOP to take authority over the Keystone XL project from the president. Like Sinema, he also voted to jeopardize Obamacare or shut down the government. And he too was supported in his election campaign by the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, the Human Rights Campaign, and other gay and progressive groups, touted as a progressive.

…Some say it's better to have Democrats like Sinema and Maloney than to possibly have a Republican in the seat. If it means they have to vote with the GOP, especially if the vote isn't pivotal, then so be it, the thinking goes. But that breeds the most cynical kind of politics and drives people away from participating when we need to bring them in. It only furthers the disgust with Washington. It's dishonest too, as these candidates are promoted as progressives and sold as such to LGBT and progressive donors, disingenuously using their queerness during Democratic primaries as a way to give them street cred with progressives while their records and intentions are otherwise. (And they're continuing to do it: The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is hosting an "Equality Reception" next week in D.C. for them, once again using their being gay or bi to raise money.) President Obama comfortably won both Sinema's and Maloney's swing districts in 2012, and a real progressive could win them as well.

…Klein believes it's healthy to debate whether or not it's enough today for a candidate to simply be gay, lesbian, bi or trans, and I agree. The quicker that progressives learn that just being LGBT doesn't make someone progressive, the better. And the quicker that LGBT people (donors and voters) realize that just because a candidate is LGBT, it doesn't mean that he or she is looking out for many interests that are important to us, the better. As with the rejection by LGBT voters of New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn in the city's Democratic mayoral primary-- and the dismissal of simplistic identity politics--  it's a maturing of the LGBT electorate.