Glad To See Conservatives Frackenlooper And Moulton Gone From The 2020 Race

Two of the worst 2020 candidate bit the dust: Moulton and Frackenlooper

As we saw last week, Seth Moulton's polling numbers are so low-- nationally, in Iowa and even in New Hampshire, which borders on his congressional district and shares media with it!-- that he was buried at the bottom of the 2020 barrel. No debates, no events, no interest, no nuthin'! All Moulton wants is to be Biden's Secretary of State or Defense Secretary. When he dropped out of the race yesterday it barely caused a stir in the news cycle. It wasn't even a blip.

So he dropped out with his head up Biden's ass: "I think it’s evident that this is now a three-way race between Biden, Warren and Sanders, and really it’s a debate about how far left the party should go," he told the New York Times. He announced he will run for reelection for the House.

He added that "I’m not going to endorse anyone right away, but the vice president is a mentor and a friend and I think he’d make a great president. Anybody in this race will be better than Donald Trump and I will enthusiastically support whoever the nominee is." But Moulton is somewhat reactionary and a member of the Wall Street-owned and operated New Dem caucus, so, of course, a Biden supporter. Funny how the whole Republican wing of the Democratic Party in Congress prefers Biden. Moulton has no following and virtually no admirers outside of his immediate circle of cronies. Perfect for Status Quo Joe.

This is how the ProgressivePunch rates the Massachusetts House delegation, by lifetime crucial vote score. Note who's at the very bottom. The number in parenthesis is the district's PVI):

• Ayanna Pressley (MA-07)- A 100% (D+34)
• Katherine Clark (MA-05)- A 97.03% (D+18)
• Jim McGovern (MA-02)- A 96.71% (D+9)
• Lori Trahan (MA-03)- A 95.35% (D+9)
• Joe Kennedy (MA-04)- B 90.75% (D+9)
• Richard Neal (MA-01)- C 85.96% (D+12)
• Bill Keating (MA-09)- D 80.52% (D+4)
• Stephen Lynch (MA-08)- F 77.98% (D+10)
• Seth Moulton (MA-06)- F 73.51 (D+6)

The Boston Globe summed his race up nicely the day before he finally dropped out: Politics is all about timing and it isn't Seth Moulton's time. For the sake of the Republic, hopefully it will never be Seth Moulton's time. Nor is it Frackenlooper's time. He polled better than Moulton, but never got to 1% either. It was good to see him go... except for one thing. He's now running for the very winnable Colorado Senate seat-- and he's been dubbed the "front runner" already.

Blue America has endorsed the progressive in the race: Andrew Romanoff. His response to Frackenlooper's announcement to leave the presidential race and try to get into the Senate as a consolation prize was classy:

We deserve-- and I pledge to run-- a campaign grounded in public policy. I know and respect both Cory Gardner and John Hickenlooper, but I disagree with them on some fundamental issues.

As Colorado’s next senator, I’ll lead the fight for a Green New Deal. They’re leading the fight against it.

I’ll champion Medicare for All. They’ve vowed to defeat it.

Cory and John have attacked these progressive priorities as socialist or Stalinist. That’s outrageous. Would they say the same of Social Security or Medicare itself?

Democrats must decide whether we want to combat the climate crisis and end our reliance on fossil fuel—or allow polluters to bankroll Congress and block reform. Whether we’ll ensure health care for all—or condemn half a million Americans to bankruptcy each year and thousands to an early grave. Whether we’ll build an economy that works for everyone—or force families to work even harder for less.

Those are the stakes in this election. They couldn’t be higher, and we can’t afford to cower now.

The best way to defeat Cory Gardner is to present a clear alternative. Echoing his talking points will achieve nothing and inspire no one.

This is no time to surrender our dreams. Let’s go fight for the world we imagine.

And meanwhile... Trumpanzee's #1 enabler in Washington just got a taste of his own foul medicine from his Democratic electoral opponent in Kentucky, Amy McGrath in the form of a super-powerful one minute TV ad. Believe me, this is very much worth watching:

Seth Moulton: Way Below Zero-- Nationally, In Iowa And In New Hampshire

Seth Moulton represents Massachusetts' comfortably blue 6th district in the northeast corner of the state. Even as weak a candidate as Hillary was able to beat Trump there 56.1% to 38.2%. The district starts in the suburbs north of Boston-- Saugus and Lynn-- goes as far west as Billerica and Tewksbury and north through Salem, Ipswich and Newbury to the border with New Hampshire. The last time the GOP seriously contested the seat was when Moulten-- an independent who switched to the Democratic Party to run-- knocked off long time incumbent John Tierney in 2014. The GOP ran Richard Tisei, a gay Republican, and tossed half a million dollars into the race. Tisei raised $2,014,234, far more than previous of subsequent Republicans running in the district. Moulton beat him 149,638 (53.6%) to 111,989 (40.2%). The GOP didn't have a candidate in 2016 and there was just a vanity candidate, Joseph Schneider, last year, who Moulton beat 65.2% to 31.4%.

So far this cycle, the only candidate to have reported raising money in the district is Jamie Belsito ($19,200), although Democrats Nathaniel Mulcahy and Lisa Peterson have also filed FEC paperwork. Moulton hasn't. He's busy running for a cabinet job by pretending to be running for president. There are 5 other Democrats trying to figure out if Moulton will run or not before declaring, including Tierney--recruited by Pelosi to run-- and former state legislator Barbara L'Italien.

Sunday, Boston Globe reporter Adrian Walker wrote about how badly things are going for Moulton, a fairly conservative New Dem. Moulton's been pretending to be a real candidate, trying too gain some traction in neighboring New Hampshire and far off Iowa. According to the RealClearPolitics polling averages, Moulton is polling so badly nationally that he doesn't show up at all-- so below the 0.3 that conservative Senator Michael Bennet is sporting. Nor does he show up in the Iowa polling. Nor even in New Hampshire! The most recent New Hampshire poll, from Gravis, shows Bernie leading the pack with 21%, followed by Biden at 15% and Elizabeth Warren at 12%. It goes all the way down to 6 candidates polling zero or below-- Cory Booker, Frackenlooper, Marianne Williamson, John Delaney, Bill de Blasio and Steve Bullock... but not Moulton. Walker wrote that America has ignored him since he announced his candidacy in April. "In poll after poll after poll, Moulton has registered at zero percent. Yes, zero. The same number your dog or cat would poll. Yet the Harvard-educated US Marine Corps veteran soldiers on. He has not approached any of the benchmarks for getting onto the overcrowded Democratic debate stage."

[H]is presidential bid always puzzled me. It came on the heels of a disastrously inept campaign to push out Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the House. He was the 20th candidate to enter the field. By then, he was, in essence, Just Another White Guy. He has garnered even less support than John Hickenlooper, who got out, or Steve Bullock, who’s on the way out, or that congressman from California whose name never sticks in my head (Eric Swalwell, who’s out.)

Just months ago, Moulton was formidable. Since the moment he was elected to Congress, rumors swirled about him. There was talk that he would demolish Ed Markey head-to-head in a US Senate race. Or that he would be a strong candidate for governor, even though he has never expressed the slightest interest in being governor.

Instead, he led a doomed crusade against Pelosi-- without actually running against her-- and now here he is, at the obvious low point of his formerly gilded political career, stuck in a race he doesn’t even register in.

Why not pack it in? Or, rather, when does he pack it in?

“My experience working with candidates is that they’re the last ones to know,” said Democratic strategist and pollster Brad Bannon. “They’ve invested all their time and energy and money into running for president, and they have a hard time admitting that they’ve failed.”

I wanted to ask Moulton about the future of his faltering campaign last week, but was told that he didn’t have time to get on the phone, given his packed schedule in Iowa and New Hampshire.

But he’s a smart man, and it isn’t as though he can’t read a poll. He has to know this isn’t happening.

With his glittering résumé, good looks, and moderate politics, Moulton always seemed to view himself as a man headed for big, big things. That soaring ambition is now part of his undoing. America simply doesn’t see what he sees when he looks in the mirror. Heaven knows, he’s not the first presidential candidate to pull into Iowa or New Hampshire and discover he isn’t as popular or as famous as he thought he was. Running for president was a premature-- make that a rash-- move.

Moulton clearly isn’t going to be our next president, so what’s next? He has always treated the job he has like a steppingstone to his true destiny, and voters tend to resent that. His time as a congressman could be done.

It certainly isn’t too late to jump into the 2020 Senate race against Markey, but will voters believe he really wants the job? He’s probably a weaker candidate than he would have been six months ago.

What happens to politicians who reach for the big brass ring and end up flailing? That didn’t seem like a question Seth Moulton would ever have to ponder. He’s soon going to have a lot of time to think about it.

Moulton has been telling his pals that what he's really running for is to be Biden's (or whomever's) Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense... or something.

Vanity Candidates For President-- Or Do They Want To Be The Next Ben Carson?

Richard Ojeda and Sherrod Brown both dropped out before they could make fools of themselves. Does anyone even remember they were once "running?" And Bloomberg and the Starbucks guy? Yesterday, Ed Kilgore, writing for New York Magazine, speculated on who would drop out first. The photo was Frackenlooper-- and he was the only guess. That's also the perfect guess since Frackenlooper continues to sink in polling, has raised a minuscule amount of money having only 13,000 donors, and has lost most of his staff (including his campaign manager, communications director, digital director and finance director). Plenty of people are wondering why the one-percenters are still in the 2020 race-- not to mention the would-be nominees struggling at or under 0.5% like these losers with their terrible, scowling Republican-lite platforms:

• Steve Bullock- 0.4%
• Frackenlooper- 0.2%
• Tim Ryan- 0.0%
• Seth Moulton- 0.0%
• Eric Swalwell- 0.0%
• John Delaney- 0.0%

Delaney, a crooked multimillionaire who spent a few years in Congress bashing progressive ideas, was the first candidate in and spent $17 million of his own cash on a race based from his new home in Iowa, only to be in last place-- and with support too low to measure. It would be fitting for him to also be the first to withdraw. The DNC allowed him to take part in the first debate but he's one of the 6 or 7 who aren't making it inti the one at the end of the month. The Democratic primary voters tolerant of conservative ideas are firmly lined up behind Status Quo Joe, leaving nothing at all for the likes of Delaney, Frackenlooper, Moulton, Bennet, etc. Right now, it looks like Bullock, Frackenlooper, Ryan, Swalwell, Moulton, Michael Bennet and Delaney won't meet the thresholds for the September and October debates.

On Saturday, Russell Berman, writing for The Atlantic, noted that for the little-known Representatives-- Tim Ryan, Eric Swalwell and Seth Moulton-- running for president may be only a stepping stone. A stepping stone to oblivion? They don't seem to think so. Berman claims they're running serious campaigns. Sad, considering none of them are gaining even the tiniest amount of traction.

Berman wrote that Ryan, Swalwell, and Moulton-- along with potentially a half-dozen or more of their Democratic rivals-- are also operating under an unstated reality of modern politics. The general election for the presidency may be a zero-sum game, where the winner gets to be leader of the free world and the loser is remembered forever as a runner-up. But the marathon party primary is more like that staple quote of high-school yearbooks: Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars. A popular, if trite, mantra for millions of American youth on the cusp of adulthood, this exhortation of ambition is also an apt (though never admitted) explanation for the long-shot campaigns of as many as a dozen Democratic presidential hopefuls. Underdog campaigns can be successful even in defeat, and the mere act of running for the pinnacle of American politics can be a stepping stone to higher office in and of itself. Just ask Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, who parlayed White House bids into positions in President Donald Trump’s Cabinet. Or Joe Biden, whose failed presidential campaign in 2008 led to his selection as Barack Obama’s running mate and eight years as vice president." Berman is being overly generous towards many of the also-rans.

“If you don’t embarrass yourself-- and I don’t think so far anyone’s embarrassed themselves-- you end up in a better place than where you started,” Scott Ferson, a veteran Democratic consultant in Massachusetts, told me. Ferson worked on the 1988 presidential campaign of Representative Richard Gephardt, a future House leader who was then relatively unknown outside Washington, D.C., and his home state of Missouri.

Senators like Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, and Michael Bennet of Colorado are currently languishing in the low single digits in 2020 polling, but they could be vice-presidential short-listers a year from now. So too, conceivably, could the governors in the race-- Jay Inslee, John Hickenlooper, and Steve Bullock-- or Julián Castro, the former secretary of housing and urban development.

All of the candidates above entered the race with resumes that checked the boxes of conventional presidential viability (at least until Trump came along): winning multiple statewide races, with years of experience either in the Senate or at the executive level managing a state government or Cabinet department.

That is not the case for Ryan, Swalwell, or Moulton, whose decisions to mount long-shot presidential bids have stumped political insiders-- even some former allies-- both in their own states and nationally, stirring suspicions that their real near-term goal is something other than the White House. The last politician to make the jump directly from the House to the presidency was James Garfield in 1881. Ryan, Swalwell, and Moulton lack the star power of Beto O’Rourke, the former Texas congressman whose near-win over Senator Ted Cruz last year made him a household name. Nor do they have the distinctive politics or personal story of Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, whose strident anti-interventionist foreign-policy stance has set her apart from her rivals.

What do they want? To run for the Senate? Governor? To get a cabinet position? Ryan is a wishy-washy guy who can never make up his mind. It took him almost a decade after he decided to stop being anti-Choice to actually stop being anti-Choice. His trial balloons for higher office always fall flat. Berman wrote that "At 45, he’s trying to win over Democrats who are looking for a younger version of Biden with less baggage, and his supporters have suggested that he could be a potential running mate for a coastal senator like Kamala Harris of California or Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts who might want to balance their ticket with a candidate who could appeal to white men in the Rust Belt. Yet they also acknowledge that the enhanced name recognition Ryan gets from even a losing national run could make him a stronger statewide candidate back home, where despite having served 17 years in the House, he is not well known across the entire state. Both DeWine and Republican Senator Rob Portman will be up for reelection in 2022." He's probably not going to make it onto the debate stage next time and I have a feeling his 0.0% polling isn't going to impress anyone back in Ohio.

Swalwell's not impressing anyone either. He tried for a viral moment with his pass the torch comment to Biden but... as well rehearsed as it was, it may have been too abstract for the average moron voter and it went nowhere. Is he running for Feinstein's-- or Kamala's-- Senate seat? Against Adam Schiff or Ted Lieu? Good luck with that. The filling deadline for his House seat is December so he still has time to get out of a presidential campaign that isn't going anywhere.

Ryan and Swalwell have struggled to break through, but the congressman running for president who’s in the most precarious position, both nationally and locally, is Moulton. The Massachusetts Democrat failed to make the stage for the first debates in Miami, and there’s no indication as of yet that he’s improved his standing for the second round of primary debates in July.

Moulton has less of a fallback option back home and a number of Democrats who are questioning his political judgment. The 40-year-old Marine Corps officer who served four tours of duty in Iraq burst to the forefront of Massachusetts politics when he toppled incumbent Representative John Tierney in a Democratic primary in 2014. He was seen as a likely statewide candidate, possibly even a strong primary challenger to Senator Ed Markey in 2020. But Moulton’s long-standing opposition to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, which continued even after Democrats regained the House majority last fall, angered voters, particularly women, in his district and the state party. “I think he’s got a better shot at being president than being a senator from Massachusetts,” said Ferson, who worked for Moulton’s winning congressional race in 2014 but is not involved with his presidential run. “He burned a lot of bridges in Massachusetts in the Democratic Party, and for statewide office you need party support.”

Moulton has plenty of time to run for reelection if he drops out of the 2020 race in the next several months, but several local activists and elected officials are considering a primary challenge. “He’s going to have an incredibly hard time getting reelected to his seat,” Mary Anne Marsh, a veteran Democratic consultant based in Boston, told me. “What looked like a bright future now looks like it could get derailed.”

Moulton has tried to distinguish himself by focusing on national security and foreign policy. He’s one of only a few military veterans in the large Democratic field, and he made headlines by talking openly about his struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder after returning home from Iraq. Given his cloudy future in Massachusetts, Moulton is seen as a possible contender for a Cabinet post if another Democrat defeats Trump-- potentially atop either the Veterans Administration or even the Pentagon.

...For Democratic candidates as well as the party’s voters, the great motivator remains Trump. “Donald Trump made everyone think, If he can do it, so can I. The barrier to entry has been lowered,” an aide to one long-shot candidate told me, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Politicians, by necessity, often think very highly of themselves. Berman suggests that an underdog campaign for guys like Ryan, Swalwell, and Moulton, even if it doesn’t end in the presidency, could still open the door to opportunities that didn’t exist before. "And while they-- and the others struggling to break out of the pack-- may genuinely not have given much thought to the potential consolation prizes of a failed presidential bid, if they don’t catch that fire soon, they may have no other choice." Being the next Ben Carson or Rick Perry though... Is that a goal? And Dick Gephardt? He wound up on K Street as a detested slime-ball lobbyist.

Pelosi Is Encouraging A Primary Against Seth Moulton While Opposing Primaries By Progressives Against Corrupt Conservative Incumbents-- She's Losing Her Mind

One month from Tuesday there's a special election to fill the empty congressional seat in PA-12. Haven't heard much about it, have you? You weren't meant to. The DCCC and NRCC have a gentleman's agreement that this one goes to Team Red without a contest. The DCCC is ignoring the district entirely. After all, it's a pretty red district and the Democrat running for the open seat, Marc Friedenberg, is a damned progressive who advocates policies Cheri Bustos thinks are detrimental to the Democratic Party-- like Medicare-For-All. Besides, the DCCC has a rough and tumble civil war of its own making to spend all it's attention on at the moment. "Why fight Republicans when there are progressives to attack," has been a motivating principle of the DCCC since Bustos' guru, Rahm Emanuel, had the position she now occupies.

If you're hung up on political consultants, you're missing the true import of Cheri Bustos' diktat about primaries and Democratic incumbents. The threat to consultants-- that if they work for anyone who challenges a Democratic incumbent, they're finished-- is dastardly and debilitating but also possible for candidates to circumvent. The real problem is that it's another signal from the Democratic establishment that rebels are not welcome; progressives are not welcome; independent minds are not welcome. It's another impediment that the DCCC can throw up against challengers in the never-ending incumbent protection racket that is at the heart of the DCCC.

Two interesting and contradictory things happened in the last few days. Star Intercept reporters Akela Lacy and Ryan Grim blew the whistle on how the DCCC, which is completely controlled by Pelosi, pressured 4 consultants to stop working for Marie Newman, the progressive challenger to anti-Choice, anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-healthcare Blue Dog Dan Lipinski in Chicagoland. The DCCC told the consultants that "if they continued working against Lipinski, their future business with the party would suffer."

Grim and Lacy wrote that the DCCC policy "will have the effect of protecting white male incumbents defending seats against challengers in an increasingly diverse party. That’s the case with Lipinski, who inherited the seat from his father in 2005 and has retrograde views when it comes to much of the Democratic agenda, including his opposition to marriage equality and abortion rights. He voted against the Affordable Care Act in 2010, the signature legislation House Democratic leaders are trying to save in their campaign against Medicare for All."

Alexandra Rojas, executive director of the Justice Democrats, told The Intercept that the way progressives are viewing this is that "The DCCC would rather stand with a so-called Democrat who has stood against reproductive, immigrant, and LGBT rights and a $15 minimum wage rather than allow a fair competition and choice for voters. The Democratic Party leadership is choosing machine politics over ushering in a new generation of leaders and the fundamental idea of democracy."

Meanwhile more than 40 official chapters of the Young Democrats-- including Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, UC Berkeley, Boston College, UCLA, Michigan State, Occidental, Texas State, University of Wisconsin, Rutgers-- are boycotting the DCCC over Bustos' anti-democratic policy. In their letter to Bustos, the Harvard Young Democrats wrote that "Primary challengers are essential to ensure that the Democratic Party is continually held accountable to the needs of our constituents. This blacklist policy is undemocratic and antithetical to our values of inclusion and diversity. As Rep. Ayanna Pressley has put it, as Democrats we 'cannot credibly lay claim to prioritizing diversity and inclusion when institutions like the DCCC implement policies that threaten to silence new voices and historically marginalized communities.' Challengers to incumbents have been essential to making the Democratic Party an institution that truly reflects the progressive values and diverse identities of the people it claims to represent. As young Democrats, we support a national boycott of donations to the DCCC until it reverses this blacklist rule and institutes policies that support, not punish, new voices in the Democratic Party. Until this policy is reversed, we urge donors to contribute to individual candidates." Good idea-- and you can do just that by clicking on the Blue America 2020 congressional thermometer on the right and contributing to Marie Newman and the other progressive candidates on the page.

At the same time that was happening, Pelosi contacted former Congressman John Tierney to recruit him to run against a Democratic incumbent she personally detests, Seth Moulton. And while it's hard to argue with Pelosi that Moulton deserves a primary challenge, the real point is that Lipinski deserves one even more. It's just that Pelosi doesn't feel the same degree of personal animus towards Lipinski as she does towards Moulton, who tried the derail her bid for the speakership.

With Moulton running around wasting his time on a DOA presidential campaign, Pelosi sees an opportunity to knock him off politically at home. I think that's great, although she did run-over the hopes of former state Sen. Barbara L’Italien, who has been planning on running against Moulton herself. And what does Cheri Bustos have to say about all this? Nothing... not a peep so far. I guess she thinks Democratic campaign donors and voters don't understand what hypocrisy looks like.

Worst Democraps Who Want To Be President: Seth Moulton

I wasn't sure if we'd have a Part VIII in this Worst Democraps Who Want To Be President series but today, after extensive focus group-testing in New Hampshire and South Carolina, Seth Moulton went on Good Morning America and declared his decision to run for the presidency (as a Democrat). Here's the announcement video that the polling firm and the advertising company he hired came up with:



The best possible outcome will be that he loses reelection to his Massachusetts House seat and that he's replaced by a progressive, like, say, Barbara L'Italien. ProgressivePunch rates him an "F" and his lifetime crucial vote score-- 74.68-- is pretty shitty, especially for someone in a district with a D+6 PVI. A member of the uber-corrupt and Wall Street-owned New Dems, he, predictably, opposes Medicare-For-All. He calls himself a Democrat but when he first considered running for Congress in 2012 he was a registered independent and didn't re-register as a Democrat until he figured out that his district wasn't going to elect anyone but a Democrat. He ran as a conservative Democrat in 2014-- replacing a tired old establishment liberal-- and served as a conservative Democrat ever since. He's also a member of Mark Penn's and Nancy Jacobson's Problem Solver's Caucus-- which has never solved a problem-- and that should tell you a great deal about who, and what, he is. A bit of a tangent but if Moulton really thinks he can run in the Democratic primary as an opponent of Medicare-For-All, maybe he should look at the Tulchin data that came out yesterday when voters in swing states Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were queried:

In a post for Alternet RJ Eskow dubbed him "a a custom-crafted biography in a suit who appears to hold no core beliefs" and reminded his readers that "has aligned with Republicans on some policy bills, ranging from a ban on the gun accessories used in last year’s mass shooting in Las Vegas to a recent legislation allowing veterans to use medical marijuana... Moulton has been well-rewarded for his ideological plasticity. During his short political career, Moulton has received a total of $1,723,870 from the investor class that comprises the so-called “FIRE” sector-- financial, insurance, and real estate. He has also received more than $160,000 from Pharma." By the way, the two other military vets trying to use their service as a reason people should vote for them are Tulsi Gabbard and McKinsey Pete.

The attempted palace coup he led to de-rail Pelosi's speakership was widely recognized as a bid to block any semblance of a progressive agenda. It failed miserably and left him in an untenable situation in the House, where Pelosi and her allies now hate his guts. Hopefully this idiotic presidential run will be his last hurrah in politics. Maybe Pete can get him a job at McKinsey.

Anyone actually believe that Seth Moulton will shake this up: Sanders Increases Lead Over Biden As Buttigieg Vaults Into Top 3? The Granite State poll released this morning shows that Biden and Buttigieg are battling it out for second place, while Bernie has continued to increase his lead over Status Quo Joe. Meanwhile, a plurality of New Hampshire Democratic primary voters agree that Bernie is:

a- the most progressive Democrat in the race, and
b- the candidate with the best chance of beating Trump in 2020

But... it's still early and you never know what will happen. After all, Amy Klobuchar has lifted herself out of the 1% Club and is now tied with Andrew Yang and Tim Ryan at 2%. It shouldn't take more than a month or two (or three) for Moulton to work his way into the 1% Club with Kirsten Gillibrand, Tulsi Gabbard, Eric Swalwell, John Delaney, Julian Castro and Jay Inslee.

Seth Moulton Had His 5 Minutes

Loser (l) and winner (r)

Tuesday evening, Liz Goodwin, writing for the Boston Globe, speculated that conservative and very ambitious Massachusetts congressman Seth Moulton was playing a risky game against Pelosi. His bid to replace her with a Wall Street-friendly shill "has been brash and bold or reckless and quixotic, depending on your point of view. But what," asked Goodwin, "will it look like if Pelosi regains the gavel? Make that, most likely, when." And, of course, she did win yesterday-- 203-32. The more daunting hurdle she faces is in January "when she likely needs to get 218 votes on the House floor to officially become speaker. That means she can only lose about 17 Democrats and still claim the gavel without some support from GOP members."

Moulton, who’s emerged as the unofficial leader of the group trying to dislodge Pelosi, may find himself in a jam, and perhaps a pariah in the party caucus, if she is able to quell the dissent in her ranks as her allies confidently predict. The question for him isn’t just how defeat will play inside the House but also what it will look like outside the Beltway, where his larger ambitions may well lie.

Much will depend on the tone he sets when this contretemps is done; will he beat a retreat or carry on as a critic? Certainly, the Marine veteran has been aggressive to this point, deploying every weapon in his arsenal against the longtime Democratic leader, prompting blowback from liberal pundits and some of his own constituents. He recruited House candidates who largely repudiated Pelosi on the trail, gathered signatures on a letter opposing her, and went on a media blitz warning of the dangers to Democrats if she’s reelected.

The two have traded barbs, with Moulton saying he was “100 percent” sure she will not be the next speaker and Pelosi dismissing his criticism out of hand. “I will be speaker of the House no matter what Seth Moulton says,” Pelosi told reporters earlier this month.

So far, Pelosi has neutralized opposition to her with carrots, not sticks. She convinced Representative Brian Higgins of New York to remove his name from Moulton’s letter by promising an effort to advance legislation to expand Medicare and by adding several new leadership positions for younger members. Moulton and Pelosi have not reached out to each other to negotiate.

Moulton’s predicament recalls a famous line from the HBO show The Wire: “You come at the king, you best not miss.” With Pelosi firmly in charge as speaker, Moulton could face consequences, from missing out on plum committee assignments to facing stony silence when it comes to his legislative agenda.

While Pelosi has made no sign that she plans to retaliate, there’s a rich tradition of speakers taking revenge on critics. After securing his third term as speaker several years ago, Representative John Boehner of Ohio kicked two Republicans who opposed him off the influential Rules Committee.

For Moulton, it’s the Transportation Committee that beckons. The congressman was the managing director of a high speed rail company before heading to Washington, and he has had his eye on a seat on the committee for several years.

When Representative Mike Capuano lost the primary to incoming Representative Ayanna Pressley earlier this year, Massachusetts lost its seat on the Transportation Committee, opening up a spot.

But that seat is looking like a long shot now that Moulton is the face of the Democratic resistance to Pelosi.

Representative Richard Neal, the dean of the Massachusetts delegation, declined to answer questions about whether Moulton will be considered for the seat through a spokesman.

“I believe it is crucial to have someone from our state serving on that important committee. And I will urge my colleagues in the Democratic leadership to strongly consider this request,” Neal said in a statement.

Moulton already sits on the Armed Services Committee.

But House speakers control far more than committee assignments. With the gavel, Pelosi can decide whom to tap to write bills and amendments, as well as whose reelection coffers get an infusion of party cash.

“If I were him or his staff, I’d be watching over my shoulder in the weeks to come,” said Jim Manley, a former top aide to Senators Ted Kennedy and Harry Reid.

One of Pelosi’s closest allies brushed off the idea she would be concerned with Moulton or any of the other rebels attempting to block her election after she became speaker.

“I don’t think she’s in the business of settling scores,” said Representative Jim McGovern, who is set to become the chair of the Rules Committee. “Nancy Pelosi is about issues and about what’s good for this country.”

Moulton’s allies hope any blowback would be brief.

“He’s going to pay a price for standing up like this, but in the past when there have been these kinds of pushes in the caucus leadership they tend to be forgotten pretty quickly,” said David Gergen, an informal adviser to Moulton.

Gergen added that he doesn’t believe Moulton is interested in pressuring Pelosi on policy issues in the way Tea Party members dogged Republican leadership. Moulton will likely continue making the case that House leadership needs to pass the torch to the next generation, but not remain a thorn in Pelosi’s side on her legislative agenda. “I think they’re fairly close together on policy,” Gergen said of Moulton and Pelosi.

“I believe once this process is over . . . Seth will be an important part of the Democratic caucus,” said Representative John Garamendi of California, who’s running for a leadership spot.

Moulton declined to comment for this article, but he argued in a statement that his push for new leadership has never been personal.

“Leader Pelosi wants to boil this down to a personal argument, but this is so much bigger than her,” he said in a statement. “It’s about the entire, stagnant, three-person leadership team and having a serious conversation about promoting leaders who reflect the future of our caucus.”

In theory, Moulton is right. In reality, he's a rightist. And, besides... you can't replace somebody with nobody. And Moulton never could drum up a candidate willing to run against her-- and knew no one would vote for him aside from freshmen he's given money to. Progressives want someone better than Pelosi; not someone worse. Moulton and his cronies are all worse... much, much worse.

How Should Progressives See The Speakership Battle?

It's time for Nancy Pelosi to go. We need someone else to lead the Democratic Party in Congress. She's part of a status quo-- like Hillary-- that voters are not happy about. IT IS TIME FOR HER TO MOVE ON and make way for someone who comes from a different, more up-to-date personal and political context. Pelosi's priorities are no longer in synch with the priorities of the Democratic base. But that does not mean throwing her out and replacing her with a cabal of Wall Street and Big PhRMA-backed corporate shills. God forbid! And the Seth Moulton #5WhiteGuys coup is exactly that. The Congressional Progressive Caucus wants nothing to do with it-- nor do the vast majority of House Democrats. Blue Dogs, New Dems and other reactionaries from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party are all that this coup is about.

Alan Grayson left his House seat to run, alas unsuccessfully, for the U.S. Senate. But when he was in the House he was a great admirerer of Pelosi. He still is and when i asked him how he feels about the current leadership battle, he told me that personally, he "found that she was the only leader in the House-- on either side-- committed to the fundamental ethic that our job was to pass good legislation that would make the world a better place, and that electoral success would (and should) follow only from that."

A few days ago Chris Hayes talked about the leadership battle on his MSNBC show with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (above), who has already participated in a Climate Change sit-in in Pelosi's office (None of the #5WhiteGuys showed up.) She said when she read Moulton's letter, her "main concern was that there is no vision, there is no common value, there is no goal that is really articulated in this letter aside from 'we need to change.' I do think that we got sent to Congress on a mandate to change how government works, to change what government even looks like. But if we are not on the same page about changing the system and that values and how we're going to adapt as a party for the future, then what is the point, then what is the point of just changing our party leadership for the sake of it."

Keep in mind that Pelosi strongly backed Ocasio's opponent while the DCCC and her House Majority PAC spent $5 million electing Anthony Brindisi (NY), Ben McAdams (UT), Max Rose (NY) and Jeff Van Drew (NJ), the dishonorable and corrupt Blue Dogs who have foolishly signed on as members of Moulton's disintegrating coup.

Prodded by Hayes to define how she sees the coup, Ocasio aded that "if anything, I think that what it does is create a window where we could potentially get more conservative leadership. When you actually look at the signatories, it is not necessarily reflective of the diversity of the party. We have about 16 signatories. 14 of them are male. There are very few people of color. There's very little ideological diversity; it's not like there are progressives signing on. It's not like you have a broad-based coalition."

Since he's always so sensible, I asked Jamie Raskin (D-MD), who currently has the single best voting record, according to ProgressivePunch, of anyone in Congress. "Practically speaking," he told me yesterday, "the alternative to Pelosi right now is chaos. But chaos is not a progressive value-- it’s the classic opportunity for opportunism and right-wing politics.  Pelosi has been an historic figure who has engineered major legislative advances on everything from Dodd-Frank to the ACA. When it’s time for a change in leadership, progressive forces within Congress and across America will be ready."


UPDATE: One Less Coup Plotter

Brian Higgins is neither a Blue Dog nor a New Dem. He's an ordinary congressional Democrat and never appeared to me to be someone who belonged on Seth Moulton's list of coup plotters. And early yesterday his hometown paper, the Buffalo News, reported that he reversed course and will back Pelosi for speaker. He told the paper that he "decided to support Pelosi after she agreed to rank two of his top priorities among the new Democratic House's priorities. He said Pelosi agreed that Democrats will advance a major infrastructure bill early in the next Congress, and that Higgins will be able to take the lead as House Democrats work to pass his proposal to allow people to buy in to Medicare at the age of 50." The paper suggested that Higgins' withdrawal from Moulton's scheming "could take the steam out of the effort to replace Pelosi."

Seth Moulton-- A Man In A Hurry-- May Be Rushing Into A Serious Primary Challenge Back Home

In trouble

When Seth Moulton first seriously considered running for Congress in 2012, it was as an independent. That makes sense because he isn't really a Democrat and he has nothing to do with Democratic Party values. He is an independent. But he knew he couldn't win as one-- not in Massachusetts' 6th district-- the northeast corner of the state, stretching from the New Hampshire border, following the coast down through Ipswich, Gloucester and Salem to Lynn and into the suburbs not of Boston. He didn't run in 2012 but started planning to take on Democratic incumbent John Tierney and announced in 2013. It was a rough primary with Moulton diligently working to hide his right-of-center perspective and right-of-center national support. He beat Tierney by 10 points in the primary. He joined the New Dems and started accruing a "centrist" voting record. ProgressivePunch gives him an overall rating of "F" and a lifetime crucial vote score of 74,24, the worst of any member from Massachusetts. In 2016, happy enough with him, the Republican Party didn't run a candidate against him.

Considered one of the most ego-centric and aggressively ambitious members of Congress, he's behind the rolling right-of-center coup against Pelosi. Yesterday he penned an OpEd for CNN, Nancy Pelosi Should Step Aside. He's a smart guy and makes a good case. "I think it's time for change. We need a speaker of the House who will harness all of the new voices in Congress to put forth a bold, progressive vision for the country -- someone who will give the great new leaders in our party a chance actually to lead. That's where current leadership falls short. In recent years, committee leaders have mostly been chosen based on loyalty and tenure, leading to a lack of diversity and new thinking in some of the most important positions in our government. There are 21 permanent committees in the House, but many of the ranking members have been there for years, and the vast majority are white. Only three ranking members are women. We can't expect anything to change if we keep putting the same people in the same positions. Newer Democratic members, fresh off the campaign trail, are the ones who are most in tune with the country, and we can't squander their leadership by sticking them all on the back bench. If we're going to tackle gun control, inequality, climate change and the other defining issues of our time, we'll need their fresh ideas and different perspectives to do it."

OK, how about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for Speaker? Or Rashia Tlaib? If that's what Moulton was fighting for, his coup would be overwhelmingly popular. But he's not and it's not. This week RJ Eskow wrote a piece for Alternet, Wall Street is leading the attack on Pelosi-- Steny Hoyer is the real barrier to the progressive agenda. To understand the rebellion, he suggests that we all "follow the money." He posits that "The anti-Pelosi insurgency is not a movement. It’s a cabal, orchestrated by the appropriately hashtagged #FiveWhiteGuys, a group of self-self-interested players with big money behind them." That's the Moulton group. "If you’re looking to change politics," Eskow wrote, "they don’t reflect you."

This ersatz rebellion’s most visible leader is Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, a custom-crafted biography in a suit who appears to hold no core beliefs. That’s undoubtedly a plus for the political operatives who recruited and promoted him. An early profile has Moulton variously calling himself “a progressive Democrat,” a “pragmatic Democrat,” and a “frustrated Democrat”-- and that was just during his first primary.

Moulton was reportedly recruited to run for Congress by “New Politics,” a group that seeks to elect both Democratic and Republican veterans. It describes itself as “bipartisan,” a word will come up again in the story of the anti-Pelosi rebellion. New Politics’ other success story is Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, who notably blamed Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, rather than the ill-advised Iraq war, for the rise of ISIS.

Moulton, who reportedly backed that tragic misadventure, enjoyed the early support of two generals who helped lead it, David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal. (Unfortunately, both are now disgraced: McChrystal for disrespecting the civilian chain of command, and Petraeus for revealing secrets to an extramarital lover as he cheated on his wife, a crime that would have likely led to criminal indictment for a less well-connected official.)

As the Washington Post reports, Moulton “has aligned with Republicans on some policy bills, ranging from a ban on the gun accessories used in last year’s mass shooting in Las Vegas to a recent legislation allowing veterans to use medical marijuana.”

Moulton had praise for Pelosi when he was asked about her last year, saying she had achieved an “awful lot.” He told Politico’s Michael Kruse that he thought much of the Republican criticism of her was “unfair,” but added, “the reality is that we’re losing.”

Well, Pelosi’s winning now. What’s his rationale for opposing Pelosi today? “If that many seats change hands,” Moulton said after the election, “that’s just all the more reason the American people are calling out for change.”

Heads, he wins. Tails, Pelosi loses.

Moulton’s given to making hazy statements like: “Congress needs a new leader. Period.”

The only concrete thing about him appears to be the money he’s raised for like-minded candidates. “Thanks to a network of donors rooted in the financial centers of Boston and New York,” reports the Post, “Moulton’s Serve America PAC and related political committees raised a combined $8 million for the election cycle.”

Moulton has been well-rewarded for his ideological plasticity. During his short political career, Moulton has received a total of $1,723,870 from the investor class that comprises the so-called “FIRE” sector-- financial, insurance, and real estate. He has also received more than $160,000 from Pharma.

...The rhetorical style of these Democratic “rebels”-- vague on the issues, big on cliches and platitudes, the rhetorical equivalent of cotton candy-- comes with a pedigree. It is the hallmark of “centrism,” the billionaire-funded political faction that serves its financial backers by selling themselves as “non-ideological,” “technocratic” architects of “bipartisan” consensus who can “break the gridlock” and “solve problems.”

For this crowd, “solving problems” always winds up meaning the same thing: cuts to Social Security and Medicare, and an unwarranted obsession with the federal deficit that always-- just accidentally, mind you!-- winds up helping corporations and the billionaire class.

The “centrist” political style claims to be “above parties and partisanship”-- which, in the end, is another way of saying it’s free of any principles except the interests of its paymasters. It often comes in the guise of patriotism, as when Seth Moulton says he places “country over party”-- a comment that, implicitly, is a deep insult to those who believe one party’s proposals would serve the country better than the other’s.

The anti-Pelosi campaign is being supported by one of the mainstays of the corporate centrist world-- the cynical political ploy known as “No Labels,” which I wrote about in 2012, and its creation, the “Problem Solvers Caucus.” If you called “No Labels” a guaranteed-employment plan for Republican and Democratic political hacks, you would not be wrong.

Besides, the Problem Solvers Caucus-- which, predictably, promised to “break the gridlock” and get things done-- hasn’t solved any problems. Given their agenda, that’s a good thing-- but it’s hardly a mandate to lead.

It’s Not About the Speakership-- It’s About Blocking Progressive Change

The No Labels crowd is throwing its public influence (negligible) and its ability to muster campaign cash (considerable) behind the anti-Pelosi effort for a reason: they see this as an opportunity to weaken the Democrats’ newfound power in the House. That’s especially urgent for the big-money crowd at a time when nearly half of successful new candidates ran on Medicare for All and more than 100 House Democrats have joined the Expand Social Security Caucus.

The “centrist” campaign may help explain why Pelosi plans to impose a new rule making it harder to raise middle-class taxes. This rule would make it harder to achieve either Medicare for All or expanded Social Security, even though any new taxes would leave the working class much better off financially than it is today.

Rep. Tom Reed, a Republican member of the Problem Solvers Caucus, has already indicated he could back Pelosi if more such changes were put in place. The caucus’ additional proposed changes, roughly outlined here, would effectively give Republicans veto power over progressive legislation.

It is noteworthy that there was no serious attempt to implement these rules when Republicans ran the House.

Even more than the speakership, this procedural power grab motivates the anti-Pelosi crowd and its backers. They might even withdraw their opposition to her if they could seize this power for themselves and their “centrist” allies in both parties.

No wonder these “rebels” are vague about their goals. Given the massive support for Medicare for All (more than 70 percent of the public, 85 percent of Democrats) and expanding Social Security, they know their agenda is extremely unpopular. If they truly believed in “country over party,” they would support programs that most of the country wants and needs.

...Here’s something else worth knowing about Democratic power in the House: Its party organizations are still deeply hierarchical, and are built on deeply embedded relationships. If the Moulton/Ryan gang succeeds in unseating Pelosi, the speakership will not go to someone the left supports. Sure, it would be great to see Barbara Lee become Speaker, but that simply isn’t going to happen. Besides, she’s not even running. (Lee is running for the House’s number five position.)

The Five Guys (not to be confused with the burger chain of the same name) and their backers are almost certainly looking for one of two outcomes: either Pelosi accedes to their demands, which will paralyze the Democratic agenda, or Pelosi is replaced with someone who will. But if Pelosi goes down, that replacement will probably not be Rep. Marcia Fudge, despite her public expressions of interest (as of this writing) and Moulton’s professed support for her.

The Five Guys may block Pelosi, but they will not choose her successor. Instead, in the chaos that would follow a Pelosi defeat, the speakership will probably go to the second-highest member of the Democratic hierarchy: Steny Hoyer.

Stephanie Murray, who covers Moulton, reported in Politico that some of Moulton's constituents are unhappy with his role in the coup. "The fight for speaker has sparked several calls for a new candidate to challenge Moulton in the next primary. Organizers are considering using Crowdpac, an online platform that raises money for Democratic and independent candidates, to support a Moulton challenger."

One of Moulton's many critics in Congress told me they may not need a CrowdPAC campaign. "There are commitments for $4 million for anyone who will run against Moulton," he told me. "25 high level California bundlers are preparing a network to take on a handful of folks like Moulton who they think are engaged in sexism and also totally out of touch with the progressive priorities of the nation. Moulton will face a very strong and well financed challenge in 2020, and its highly unlikely he survives. Currently, folks are talking with two prominent female elected officials who are likely to run."

A new poll out this morning from Morning Consults finds that "Far more Democratic voters (48%) want Pelosi to be speaker next year than say she shouldn’t be speaker (22%) [and] A majority of Democratic and Democratic-leaning independent voters (53%) would like to see Pelosi be the next speaker, according to a Quinnipiac University poll, while only 27% don’t want to see that." As for Moulton's laughable attempt to find a patsy and front man for his pernicious little coup, last night Marcia Fudge endorsed Pelosi for Speaker. Man would I love to have seen Mouton's face when he found out about that!

The Republican Party Failed To Defeat Pelosi-- So Now The Republican Wing Of The Democratic Party Will Give It A Shot

The Republican wing of the Democratic Party wants to replace Pelosi with someone far to her right. The Wall Street-financed New Dems are behind the big anti-Pelosi push. Late this afternoon, HuffPo released the signatories to a letter pledging not to support her for Speaker, primarily a real garbage heap of Democraps. I'd love to see Pelosi replaced... but not by a New Dem of Blue Dog. This is the list (the worst of the plotters are bolded):

• Tim Ryan (D-OH)
• Seth Moulton (New Dem-MA)
• Kathleen Rice (New Dem-NY)
• Ed Perlmutter (New Dem-CO)
• Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR)
• Filemon Vela (Blue Dog-TX)
• Marcia Fudge (D-OH)
• Bill Foster (New Dem-IL)
• Brian Higgins (D-NY)
• Stephen Lynch (D-MA)
• Linda Sanchez (Crook-CA)
• Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN)
• Jeff Van Drew (Blue Dog-NRA-NJ)
• Joe Cunningham (New Dem-SC)
• Max Rose (Blue Dog-NY)
• Anthony Brindisi (Blue Dog-NRA-NY)
• Ben McAdams (Blue Dog-UT)

This is not a list of good government reformers. This is a list of personally ambitious opportunists and right-of-center assholes who fear any moves towards a progressive agenda. Notice there are no progressives on the list. HuffPo reports that there are 3 ultra-right-wing Democrats-- Blue Dogs Conor Lamb (PA) and Dan Lipinski (IL) plus New Dem Ron Kind (WI)-- as well as 5 of the worst freshmen-- Blue Dogs Abigail Spanberger (VA) and Mike Sherrill (NJ) plus New Dems Elissa Slotkin (MI), Jason Crow (CO) and Haley Stevens (MI)-- and one bona fide reformer, Andy Kim (NJ) who are seen as likely to vote against Pelosi but who also are afraid to sign the letter until they can be sure Pelosi will not be in a position to get even with them.

The anti-Pelosi members are working to gather as many names as possible as quick as possible, as they believe the longer they remain in the shadows, the more likely it is that Pelosi could flip some of their members.

But Pelosi’s opponents also told HuffPost they think the actual number of Democrats who do not want to vote for Pelosi is much larger than anyone anticipates, and they remain confident she doesn’t have the votes.

Ryan, who ran against Pelosi to be minority leader at the end of the last Congress, told reporters Wednesday that he was certain Pelosi didn’t have the votes, and multiple members who support Pelosi even told HuffPost on the condition of anonymity that they believe she is in trouble.

One of the members pointed to Pelosi’s minority leader race in 2016 with Ryan in which he received 63 votes from his Democratic colleagues to Pelosi’s 134. This member said Pelosi didn’t get the message when one-third of the caucus voted for a “backbencher.”

But if Pelosi didn’t get the message before, she and her team are certainly working now to try to tamp down the revolt and swing the incoming Democrats from no to yes-- or at least to “present.”

Pelosi’s allies all readily point out that “you can’t beat somebody with nobody,” but Pelosi’s opponents are testing that idea. In fact, they seem to think their movement is strengthened without a clear alternative.

The idea is that, once Pelosi knows she can’t win, she will step aside and there would be a new race for the speaker position.

To that point, one office for a prominent Democrat already reached out to HuffPost to suggest that their boss is well-positioned to become speaker if Pelosi can’t get the votes.

Members believe-- for good reason-- that there would be a rush of candidates for the speaker job if Pelosi stepped down, potentially including Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Assistant Minority Leader Jim Clyburn (D-SC), Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM), Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY).

Ryan, in an effort to deflect criticism that the anti-Pelosi Democrats are just trying to knock off a woman from a leadership role, repeatedly said Wednesday that he’d like to see another woman become speaker, and he has pointed to four women: Marcia Fudge (D-OH), Kathleen Rice (New Dem-NY), Karen Bass (D-CA), and Cheri Bustos (Blue Dog-IL). (Fudge and Rice are both also anti-Pelosi.)

Moulton has also been strongly pushing Fudge, who is a former Congressional Black Caucus chairwoman.

The anti-Pelosi group is expected to release its letter by the end of the week, though Ryan also said they would hold the letter as long as they were still getting new signatures. Ryan, Moulton, and Perlmutter are the members loosely organizing the letter, and they’re checking in mostly with the new Democrats to make sure they won’t flip under pressure.

But Ryan also assured reporters Wednesday that there were more Democrats than just those who will be on the letter who intend to vote against Pelosi-- they just don’t want the scrutiny associated with revealing themselves.

Still, Pelosi says she is confident she can survive.

Exiting a caucus meeting this morning, Pelosi said she could stop and take questions.

“I’m a busy person,” she said. “I will be speaker of the House no matter what Seth Moulton says.”

If I thought there was a real chance Barbara Lee would become Speaker, I'd be all for this but, like I said, this is a power play by the Wall Street-owned wing of the party to get one of their own into the speaker's chair. Ironic that Pelosi's DCCC-- and the House Majority PAC she controls-- worked so hard to recruit and elect Blue Dogs and New Dems, while eviscerating progressives, all through the cycle.

But, like I've been predicting all year, the way this will probably play out is that Pelosi will make a deal to only serve 3 months at which time she will retire from Congress and help get her daughter Christine elected to her San Francisco seat, in return for being able to work on her not very exciting agenda as Speaker. A couple more points: Hakeem Jeffries has told intimates he's running. Progressive Caucus co-chair Mark Pocan is secretly behind Clyburn, who is pretty reactionary. Chuck Schumer, a male conservative Dem, was reelected to his own leadership post in the Senate today with no opposition. And... I spoke with Barbara Lee a few days ago and she told me she's running for Caucus Chair.

Why Ted Lieu Just Endorsed Randy Bryce

You want this guy fighting on your side?

One of my favorite establishment journalists called today to ask me about Randy Bryce and see if he could find out how he created his brand. (Maybe he wants to sell the "secret" to the DCCC.) We wound up getting into an argument when he asked me about the "white working class" and I refused to engage on that establishment construct and insisted on talking about "the working class." He was unconvinced and I'll let you know when his @IronStache story comes out. Meanwhile, though, Bill Scher had something to say about how the Democrats are going about trying to win back the House with their "white working-class framing." In Politico this week, he wrote that "Democrats anxious about the white working-class vote found fresh hope last week in the gangbusters campaign launch of an otherwise unknown former fighter pilot named Amy McGrath. Her video "quickly became a sensation, already scoring 1 million YouTube views-- three times the number of people who voted in the last election in Kentucky’s 6th District, where she plans to run. In 36 hours of the video release, McGrath raised nearly $200,000 in online donations" even though no one knows where she stands on key issues that face the country-- like Medicare-For-All or free college or a $15 minimum wage.

It’s not hard to understand why Democrats are sending the video around, and sending checks in her direction: 45 years after George McGovern’s bust of an anti-war campaign, 37 years after President Jimmy Carter's ill-fated hostage rescue mission and almost three decades since Michael Dukakis thought it was a good idea to take a tank ride, Democrats still believe they have to prove they’re not a bunch of national security softies. Republicans have colonized the “guns and guts” vote so thoroughly that they’ve started to see every tough-talking Democrat who comes along as the next savior of the party. Before McGrath, the working-class hero du jour was Randy Bryce, or “Ironstache,” the Wisconsin Army vet and House candidate whose introductory video melted Democratic hearts as he skewered Speaker Paul Ryan’s attempt to repeal Obamacare. He raised serious coin, too: $430,000 from 16,000 donors in about two weeks. And some Democrats already are fanning a crush on Iraq War vet Seth Moulton to top the presidential ticket in 2020, even though he’s not yet 40 years old and has only won two elections on the Massachusetts North Shore.

So no one knows what McGrath stands for. Bryce is an outspoken progressive and Moulton... well ProgressivePunch rates him an "F" and his voting record this session, the most conservative of any member from Massachusetts, is 61.11, even worse than notorious conservative Stephen Lynch who's being primaried from a progressive. A colleague of Moulton's just reminded me that he "has been one of the most self-serving members undermining progressives. He has refused to back Medicare-for-All. He attacked Pramila Jayapal, the vice ranking member [of his committee], as not fiscally responsible. He has consistently attacked Nancy Pelosi from the right and is leading the charge for the caucus to go in a more 'moderate' direction. His senior advisor is David Gergen who has advised him that triangulation and attacking progressives is his path to power. He and Jason Kander both are talking this approach to run for the White House. They are louder in their attacks on progressives than many Republicans."

They're all military people-- and they're all different. Blue America has a special ActBlue page for veterans running on overtly progressive platforms. We'd love to put McGrath on that page... but we have to find out if she's more like Randy Bryce or more like Seth Moulton. Scher wrote that the DCCC's military fetish makes sense, at least "on paper. There’s just one problem. Ever since the Iraq War, Democrats have always recruited a robust slate of military vets. And they usually lose. It might be emotionally satisfying for Democrats to see a bad-ass veteran talk about landing fighter jets on aircraft carriers while proudly wearing the Democratic badge. But the warm feeling obscures the fact that viral videos, no matter how patriotic, don’t turn deep red districts blue. Every dollar that goes to flashy pipe dreams like McGrath or Bryce-- [yes, yes, Scher can an out-of-touch, Beltway moron with his head up the DCCC's ass, but I want to make a point and he gets plenty right, even if he's behind the curve on what's happening outside of the Beltway]-- is a dollar that doesn’t go to the dozens of dull candidates with a plausible shot at flipping a seat. (And, yes, most people who win House races are dull. Turn on C-SPAN for five minutes if you don’t believe me.)"

It’s not just McGrath or Bryce. Democrats are betting heavily on military veterans to break through what political polarization and gerrymandered districts have done to their seat share in Congress, and particularly the House of Representatives, where they are down to 201 seats, versus 234 Republican ones. The New York Times reported last month that “Democratic Party leaders are aggressively seeking former members of the military” to flip Trump districts, both because they represent a challenge to career politicians, and because they take the security-toughness card away from Republicans. About 20 Democratic veterans have announced challenges in Republican House districts, with more expected before summer is out.

There’s no inherent problem with Democratic candidates who are veterans. But it’s a lazy assumption that red turf can be easily poached by a candidate who can stir some feel-good patriotism and bring a healthy dose of swagger from the “real America.” If you’re a Democrat, sharing a video of a McGrath or a Bryce affirms to your social media networks that your party isn’t made up of precious snowflakes. Donating might seem like a chance to support that vision of the party—full-throated, muscular, ready to fire the jets for 2018. (“This is the Kind of Ad that Keeps Paul Ryan Up at Night,” crowed Mother Jones, about McGrath’s video.) But the question that matters is how to identify and prioritize winnable seats. The quest for vets threatens to turn the party into a bunch of deluded Don Quixotes, chasing after districts far out of Democratic reach.

Democratic fascination with veterans as a congressional strategy began in 2006, when public frustration with the Iraq War was peaking. Forty-nine general election House candidates were branded as “Fighting Dems.” Only five won, four of whom took Republican-held seats. But putting veterans up front gave Democrats extra credibility when criticizing the war.

Since then, Democratic House strategists, and willing Democratic primary voters, have continued to lean on veterans, even though their batting average has only gotten worse. According to data provided by the Veterans Campaign and Military Times congressional reporter Leo Shane III, Democrats nominated 42 veterans for House races in 2016 and 54 in 2014. Each time, only three veterans won, and all succeeded fellow Democrats. No Democratic military veteran has defeated an incumbent House Republican since 2012, when Tammy Duckworth of Illinois took out the vitriolic Joe Walsh, who publicly complained that Duckworth talked about her service too much. (She also defeated an incumbent Senate Republican last November.)

Before Duckworth, four Democratic vets took Republican-held seats in the 2008 election, but that was hardly a model class. Two of the four were defeated in their 2010 reelection bids, and a third resigned after charges of groping and sexual harassment. Today, there are only 18 veterans in the House Democratic caucus, eight of whom were first elected in 2006 or thereafter.

To be fair, a poor electoral track record is no reason for Democrats to give up on military veteran candidates. Those who served bring valuable experience and perspective to a governmental body that funds our armed services and plays a major role in national security policy. And swiping a district across gerrymandered lines is an exceedingly difficult task, regardless of a candidate’s biography. Just because many veterans fall short doesn’t mean lawyers, business owners or local legislators would offer better odds.

But candidates with compelling bios and polished videos do create a “shiny object” problem at the national level, distracting Democratic attention from bigger problems with the party’s messaging and connection to working-class voters, and from the races that provide the most plausible path to the speakership.

Democrats need to flip 24 seats to take control of the House. According to the Cook Political Report as of late July, there are 52 Republican-held seats that are competitive, and that’s under a generous definition of “competitive,” including 23 seats deemed “likely” to remain in Republican hands. Kentucky's 6th District, where McGrath is running, doesn’t make the cut—the incumbent, Rep. Andy Barr, has won the seat by about 20 points in the past two elections, and both Donald Trump and Mitt Romney won the district by double digits. The only way McGrath wins in a district like that is if the bottom completely falls out from under the GOP. A fighter jet video is not going to tip the district over.

Nor, by the way, does Wisconsin’s first congressional district, where Bryce is challenging Speaker Ryan, make the competitive list. The district’s pinkish hue-- Obama snatched it in 2008, though Trump notched a double-digit win here in 2016-- has always given Democrats false hope that Ryan was vulnerable. But he’s never had a close race, and he’s run 10 times.

Beltway pundits like Scher who write about elections are usually worth reading the day after the election when they have a better chance to get things right. The DCCC has never contested Ryan's district because Pelosi has a policy of not challenging GOP leaders, so I'm not sure what "false hope" he's talking about. The seat is winnable because people hate Ryan in the district-- his reelect numbers predict he will lose-- and because Randy is a unique candidate with a powerful brand, of which his military service is just one part. McGrath is also in a district that can flip-- if she can connect with KY-06 voters the way Bryce is connecting with WI-01 voters. It can't just be all biography; voters want to know what candidates plan to do for them. Bryce is telling them loudly and clearly. I hope McGrath's very establishment Blue Dog campaign manager-- he ran Ben Chandler's campaigns-- and the expensive Beltway consultants she'll waste money from the inspirational video brings in on don't make her into another Ossoff, which is always what people like that try to do. Always.

Scher ends by pointing out that "There’s little about being a veteran that makes it easier to speak on the bread and butter issues that matter in elections, a lesson Democrats learned the hard way in 2004-- when former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark flamed out as a primary candidate, and then another military veteran, Sen. John Kerry, lost in the general election to a guy who’d avoided the Vietnam War, but was far more plainspoken. Weakness with the white working class certainly hampers the Democrats’ ability to take advantage of Trump’s abysmal job approval and Congress’ meager legislative output. But to solve that problem, Democrats can’t simply call in the cavalry, no matter how many times they try." He's right about that. Among Congress' very best members are veterans-- like Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Ruben Gallego (D-AZ)-- and some of its less than stellar members are as well. In fact Both Lieu and Gallego have endorsed Bryce-- Lieu just an hour ago:

"Randy Bryce is an extraordinary candidate and we're lucky to have him running for Congress. It would be a very healthy development for the House to have more members who are as committed to the interests of working families and to veterans as he is. I've spoken with Randy and, like several of my colleagues, I've gotten to know him. I can tell you that I look forward to working with him on the issues of social justice, jobs and economic equality. Climate change and national security motivated me to run for Congress, and I know Randy will champion those issues as well. Washington Democrats have a lot to learn from Randy Bryce; he has a big future in our party and for our country. I am endorsing Randy because he will do a far better job for Wisconsin and our nation than Paul Ryan."