The Peculiar Relationship Between Corrupt And Vile DC Dems And The NRA Terrorists

It seemed like only yesterday.

All Democrats should have "F" grades from the NRA. And most do. So who doesn't?

• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)- A
• Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA)- A
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX) A-
• Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR)- A-
• Gene Green (TX)- A-
• Tim Ryan (OH)- C+
• Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)- C
• Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN)- C-
• Ben Ray Lujan (NM)- C-
• Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ)- D
• Joaquin Castro (New Dem-TX)- D
• Peter Welch (VT)- D
• David Scott (Blue Dog-GA)- D

How much more clueless can Pelosi be to appoint as DCCC chair a dim-witted closet case-- hey, it's 2017, closets are only for clothes and Republicans-- who is still kind of friendly with the gun manufacturers' lobbyists? And, worst of all, who is openly-- not in the closet about this-- pursuing a policy of recruiting and funding Blue Dogs to run for Congress disguised as Democrats. A couple of years before the mass murder in Las Vegas, I saw a Quinnipiac poll that showed 92% of voters favor background checks for all gun purchases-- including even 86% of Republicans! (98% of Democrats agree, as do 92% of independent voters. And on the question of preventing people with mental illness from purchasing a gun-- 89% agree, including 91% of Democrats. Why is this so hard? NRA money and perceived political clout are parts of the reason. At that time, the NRA had successfully prevented any votes on gun legislation to come to the floor of the House since early 2011, and that was an amendment by Blue Dog NRA shill Dan Boren (OK) to prevent federal agencies from even investigating gun crimes committed with semi-automatic weapons. It passed 277-149, with 41 mostly conservative Democrats joining 236 Republicans. Almost all of the Democrats voting with the NRA and GOP that day have since been forced out of Congress, but 18 are still members (16 in the House and 2 in the Senate) and I want to mention three of them.

One, Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), is, as you know, now Pelosi's DCCC chair and decides who to recruit for congressional seats and which candidates and incumbents to support financially and which to ignore. I know DWT readers sometimes wonder why the DCCC spends almost its entire budget on conservative candidates and actively discourages and sabotages most progressives. Just add this tidbit to the long list of reasons. And, by the way, the NRA sent Luján a $1,000 check for his support that year.

Another was Kurt Schrader of Oregon, currently chairman emeritus of the Blue Dog Caucus, and a proud recipient of NRA cash year after year. Voters in Milwaukie and the suburbs south of Portland, as well as in Beavercreek, Salem, Tillamook and throughout the Willamette Valley, should have reconsidered the support they've been giving Schrader in light of the mass murder at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg south along the 5 Freeway from his district. Without NRA shills in the Democratic Party like Schrader joining with the Republicans to protect and bolster the NRA agenda year after year, those students would still be alive today. As you can see in the new video from Brave New Films above, Schrader was one of the members of Congress they focused on as a recipient of NRA blood money.

And the third NRA-Democrat I want to mention is another Blue Dog, Henry Cuellar of Texas. A primary reason gun legislation never gets to the House floor is because it gets killed in committee. A roll call from June 24, 2015 shows an Appropriations Committee vote on a proposal by Nita Lowey (D-NY) to overturn an NRA legislative victory that prohibits funding for any Centers for Disease Control and Prevention research on gun violence. It was defeated 32-19. Every single Republican voted NO. And almost all the Democrats voted for it. There were two exceptions: Henry Cuellar, once routinely referred to as George W. Bush's favorite Democrat, and Sanford Bishop, a right-wing Georgia Blue Dog who gets thousands of dollars in campaign contributions, endorsements and "A" ratings from the NRA-- in a black-majority district in southwest Georgia (Macon, Albany and Columbus) which Hillary won with 55% of the vote against Trump's 43%.

Most of the House Democrats taking NRA blood money have been defeated-- either, like Tim Holden, in primaries where their NRA connection was a factor, or in general elections, like John Barrow, in which Democratic voters refused to keep backing them. The top five House Democrats still allied with the NRA: Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN), Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA), Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR), Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX) and Timothy Walz, who is currently running for governor of Minnesota.

And if you missed Libby Isenstein's NationalJournal report at the end of August, The States With The Most Gun Laws See The Fewest Gun-Related Deaths, it's something worth reading... if only so you'll have the ammo to beat your Hate Talk Radio addicted brother-in-law over the head with. And take a look at the video Cincinatti City Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld put out about the NRA. At the time P.G. was running for the U.S. Senate against two NRA shills, incumbent Republican Senator Rob Portman and Democrat Ted Strickland, both of whom have careers completely intertwined with the NRA's gun fanaticism. The DSCC and the Ohio Democratic Party did everything they could to defeat P.G. and make sure the conservative, slothful, half-dead Strickland was the party's nominee. They succeeded-- that's what the DSCC is good at-- and Strickland was an unmitigated catastrophe for the Democrats last November. His hideous and incompetent campaign wasted $22,716,182 to win just 4 of Ohio's 88 counties and win just 1,996,908 votes (37.2%) to Portman's 3,118,587 (58.0%)-- while depressing and driving down Democratic turnout, hurting Hillary's vote in the crucial state and hurting down-ballot candidates at every level. That's what you call a Chuck Schumer special!



If the Democrats continue to follow Lujan down his rabbit hole, they will start seriously offending the Democratic base. Look at this essay by David Love in the Atlanta Black Star, In a Country of White Domestic Terrorists, the NRA Wants to Make Sure They Are Not Labeled As Such. How long is it going to be before people like Love start adding corrupted conservative Democrats like Lujan to the list-- along with the NRA and the GOP-- of the bad guys? "In the United States," he wrote, "white people are the dominant group that produces homegrown domestic terrorists. The most recent mass shooting in Las Vegas, in which a white gunman named Stephen Paddock opened fire on a concert of 22,000 people, killing at least 59 and injuring 527, is a case in point. Despite the proliferation of these individuals and the extent of the massacres they create, there is a concerted effort by many not to label them as terrorists."

People who are Muslim and dark skinned typically are called terrorists, while white American men who engage in acts of carnage are dismissed as lone wolves. Thus, terrorism is rendered a racialized affair, a matter of white skin privilege. Stephen Paddock is responsible for the deadliest mass shooting in modern history, and with 23 weapons recovered from the Mandalay Bay hotel rooms where he staged the attack, and 19 recovered from his home, some would reasonably believe he was a terrorist. Yet, there is no consensus as to whether this is the case. This, as white domestic terrorism is going unchecked as white supremacists, rightwing extremists, militias and others commit a majority of the acts of terror in America--115 out of 201 incidents between 2008 and 2016, as opposed to 63 committed by Islamic extremists and 19 committed by leftwing extremists and militias. The problem is so considerable among law enforcement, if not the policymakers, that the FBI is investigating 1,000 white supremacists for suspected domestic terrorism activity, and has been investigating the infiltration of law enforcement by white supremacists, who are more likely to kill police officers.

There are certain forces in society who have an interest in not having white mass shooters labeled as terrorists. While guns are framed as a matter of constitutional rights, arms manufacturing is also a lucrative business. The gun lobby has an interest in producing more and more firearms with minimal regulation and stopping even the most moderate gun control legislation. Further, many politicians depend on millions of dollars in donations from the gun lobby have a tangible financial interest in normalizing white terrorism. In addition, policymakers who would wage war with Muslim nations also have a vested interest in making terrorism a color-coded endeavor relegated only to Islamic groups.

Once a mainstream organization for hunters, marksmen and conservationists, the National Rifle Association has become a hardline Second Amendment absolutist, and perhaps the most successful lobbying group in Washington. The NRA has enjoyed an income boom over the last few years, in 2016 the organization listed its revenue as being over $400 million-- all tax-free for the nonprofit organization with millions in assets and offshore accounts, and whose chief executive Wayne LaPierre earns over $5 million in annual salary.

As Politico reported, the NRA rewrote the Second Amendment, making millions of people believe the amendment is about an individual’s unregulated right to a gun for recreation or self-defense. They have accomplished this through strident antigovernment rhetoric, racism and advocating extremist positions such as legalizing the carrying of weapons anywhere, including streets, bars and churches, the use of cop-killer bullets and military-grade weapons.

Immediately before the Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people, LaPierre said the then-new assault weapons ban “gives jackbooted Government thugs more power to take away our constitutional rights, break in our doors, seize our guns, destroy our property and even injure and kill us.” This stance caused its former president Richard Riley to tell The Washington Post, “We were akin to the Boy Scouts of America . . . and now we’re cast with the Nazis, the skinheads and the Ku Klux Klan.”  President George H.W. Bush resigned from the group as a result.

Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, even called the NRA terrorists. When asked in 2015 if he would come to the table and negotiate with the pro-gun lobby, he said: “This is not a negotiation with the NRA. We don’t negotiate with terrorists.”  The Brady Campaign has argued NRA policies are killing cops by protecting gun manufacturers and dealers from accountability and allowing violent criminals to obtain guns without a background check.

Speaker of the House

The NRA has normalized the amassing of weapons by its white male base by arguing that “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” as LaPierre once said. After each gun massacre, the group and its surrogates claim the issue of guns should not be politicized. Yet, the gun lobby is very political, as the primary force behind the Stand Your Ground Laws used to justify the vigilante killing of Trayvon Martin and other young Black men. The organization also donated $30 million to the Trump campaign after enjoying years of painting Obama as a boogeyman–a Kenyan-born secret Muslim who was leading a plot to confiscate all of the guns-- in order to boost gun sales to historic levels.

The NRA uses fear and race baiting to make Americans believe that minorities, rather than bad policies and easy access to firearms, are the cause of gun violence. Josh Horwitz of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence said the NRA understands the racial dynamics at play. “As long as we can blame something other than guns, America will not have to come to terms with the truth that violence is a complicated phenomenon that is made far more lethal by the easy availability and killing power of firearms,” he said. “And for an organization with an overwhelmingly conservative, white base, that ‘something other’ is minorities.”

Following last year’s Orlando massacre, Chris W. Cox, executive director of NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, said gun control would not prevent attacks, but fighting terrorism would. “It’s time for us to admit that radical Islam is a hate crime waiting to happen. The only way to defeat them is to destroy them-- not destroy the right of law-abiding Americans to defend ourselves” he said. At its 2012 annual conference, the NRA selected radical Islamophobe Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin, who said there should be “no mosques in America” as keynote speaker of a prayer breakfast, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Boykin argued that “Islam is evil” and “a totalitarian way of life” that “should not be protected under the First Amendment.”

...In the wake of Las Vegas, Republicans in Congress are so far moving forward this week with the Hearing Protection Act, which would make it easier to purchase silencers by removing them from the list of items regulated by the National Firearms Act of 1934. Part of a larger package called the Sportsmen Heritage and Recreational Enhancement Act, the silencer provision is designed to protect hunters and hunting dog from hearing loss, according to the sponsors of the bill. Gun control advocates argue such legislation would enable mass shooters by making it harder to hear gunfire and locate gunmen. The original hearing for the legislation had been postponed when Majority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) was critically wounded in a shootout during baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia.

Gun control groups are opposed to other NRA sponsored legislation such as the proposed concealed carry reciprocity, which would force each state to recognize the concealed carry standards of every other state, allowing violent offenders to carry hidden handguns.

In the wake of the deadly white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, with white supremacists and Nazis intimidating people with their military-style weapons, the SPLC called for states to change their open carry laws.

Meanwhile, thanks to the NRA, Congress has now defunded the two decades old Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s gun violence research program, the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, which seeks to treat gun violence as public health issue so as to determine its causes and ultimately prevent it.

In America, where mass shootings and gun proliferation reveal a uniquely American problem, white men are a terrorist threat. But if the NRA has anything to do with it, white men will never be called terrorists.

Why Chuck Schumer Fought To Give Rob Portman Such A Weak Opponent

One of the great (so far) untold stories about the battle for the Senate involves Schumer's very explicit threat to Bernie Sanders to not interfere in primaries against his hand-picked candidates in 4 key states. The threat was loss of a good Senate committee chairmanship in 2017 if Bernie did anything to help progressives against Schumer's Wall Street-friendly picks in Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio. I saw polling yesterday-- that apparently was also seen by a Huff Po writer last night-- showing that Joe Sestak would be beating Toomey by a higher margin right now if he were the nominee instead of Schumercrat, Katie McGinty, who's in a neck-and-neck race with the odious Pat Toomey. Travis Marketing found that with McGinty ahead of Toomey 46-45%, Sestak would be ahead 48-44% right now. I don't know if Grayson would be beating Rubio now had Schumer not spent millions in Florida on Patrick Murphy's behalf (only to abandon the state as soon as Grayson was "safely" knocked out of the race and I don't know if PG Sittenfeld would be doing better than the flailing and failing Schumercrat Ted Strickland, whose campaign not got off the ground against another GOP boob, Rob Portman. I know for certain that Grayson and Sittenfeld would have run far better and more robust campaigns than either Murphy or Strickland.

Over a year ago, Jon Schwarz, writing for The Intercept pointed out a confluence of interests between Schumer and Portman to screw domestic business and regular Americans. "In today’s bitter, poisonous political environment," noted Schwarz, "there’s still one place where Democratic and Republican leaders find common ground: an abiding devotion to multinational corporations." He went on to explain the then just-proposed plan to give "corporations something they’ve always wanted: a so-called 'territorial' tax system in the U.S."

A territorial tax system would only tax U.S.-based multinationals on their profits earned within the United States-- which sounds like it makes sense, except that it’s incredibly easy for big corporations to use financial trickery to sell to a big market like the U.S. but say their profits were earned in another country. Another country that always happens to have a much lower tax rate than here. For instance, in 2010 U.S.-based multinationals claimed that so much of their profits were earned in Bermuda that these profits were 1578 percent the size of Bermuda’s economy.

According to the current law, though, U.S.-based corporations are taxed on those profits at U.S. rates if they ever bring these profits back home. So they just leave them overseas-- right now they have about $2.1 trillion stashed in other countries.

The Schumer-Portman plan would impose a tax on corporate profits purportedly earned in other countries whether they came back to the U.S. or not. But it would do so at a far lower rate than the current standard corporate tax rate of 35 percent-- President Obama has proposed 14 percent, and while Schumer and Portman haven’t come up with a specific number, Portman says 14 percent is much too high.

The obvious consequence if the Schumer-Portman scheme becomes law is that businesses based solely within the U.S. would be at a permanent disadvantage. Multinationals could earn profits in the U.S., get their armies of lawyers and accountants to make these profits appear to have been “earned” in the Cayman Islands, and get taxed at the overseas profit rate. Meanwhile, purely domestic companies would either have to pay the higher domestic rate, or turn into multinationals themselves.

There is a much simpler, fairer, more efficient way to run the tax system for international corporations, called “formulary apportionment.” With formulary apportionment, it wouldn’t matter how many subsidiaries and departments corporations had scattered all over the globe, and which “earned” their profits where. Instead, a formula (based on a combination of a corporation’s sales, payroll and capital stock) would determine what proportion of the corporation “belonged” to each country. Then the corporation’s overall profits would be allocated according to that proportion, and the corporation would pay that country’s tax rate on that proportion.

This would be good for the U.S. overall, given that we’re a huge market that accounts for a large proportion of most multinationals’ sales. It would be good for domestic business, making it possible to raise the same amount of revenue at a lower corporate tax rate. And it would make companies compete based on who made the better product, not who has the better lawyers and accountants. But it would make it far more difficult for multinational corporations to play governments off each other and evade taxes, so don’t look for it anytime soon.

A Democratic campaign staffer told me this week that this was why Schumer was so rough with Bernie about the Ohio race and why he was adamant that a tough candidate like Sittenfeld be given no oxygen against a weak and doddering Strickland who would have zero chance to beat Portman. Portman has spent $21,341,755 to Strickland's $9,537,702. (As of October 19's FEC reporting deadline Portman had $5,144,370 cash left and Strickland had just a tenth of that, $598,658.) Another $28 million has been spent of behalf of Portman by the NRSC and right-wing allies. The DSCC and it's allies have spent far less than half of that on Strickland and gave up on his race almost instantly after he won the primary against Sittenfeld. The RealClearPolitics polling average shows Portman beating Strickland with a 15.6 point spread, 50.3% to 34.7%. The most recent poll, by Quinnipiac last week, is even worse for Strickland, who Portman is beating 56-38%, an 18 point margin.

Maybe the DSCC-- and especially Chuck Schumer-- should get out of the primary business and concentrate on defeating Republicans, not progressive Democrats. This kind of tape drives Schumer insane... and the Democratic Party is made to suffer because of that insanity.

GOP Imploding

This hasn't been a good election cycle for Paul Ryan. He got muscled out of the early running for the presidential nomination by a a bunch of buffoons The Deep Bench and then he wound up jumping on the Trump Train to nowhere. It's been all downhill from there and yesterday Trump took a couple of seconds out of his busy schedule attacking CNN to fart in Ryan's face:

This morning Trump was on twitter again, attacking Ryan again, delusional and ranting that he won the debate-- he didn't-- and that Ryan is a "very weak and ineffective leader," adding that Ryan had "had a bad conference call where his members went wild at his disloyalty." He seems to be setting Ryan up as someone he can blame after he loses next month. "It's hard to do well," he tweeted this morning, "when Paul Ryan and others give zero support." Ryan may soon learn with the ire of the deplorables is worth in terms of votes.

Now pundits on Politico are debating whether or not he'll unendorse his party's vulgarian presidential nominee. "He feels torn between his own conscience and his obligations as the top Republican in the country... about saving his massive 60-seat majority... Many of his closest allies say left to his own devices, he'd dump Trump. But Ryan, who's seen as a potential presidential candidate in 2020, has held on, despite some possible long-term political upside of abandoning Trump. The immediate calculation is this: If Ryan pulls his endorsement, the base could revolt or stay home on Election Day, damaging GOP House candidates. Plus, in some of the deep red districts around the country, constituents want House Republicans to rally around Trump no matter what." Trump was reacting to the conference call that Ryan had with the House Republican conference early Monday morning after a tumultuous weekend for Trump that ended in another disastrous debate performance Sunday night. Trump allies inside Ryan's conference immediately reported to Trump Tower that Ryan had signaled he was giving up on the idea of the GOP winning the White House and is now strictly focused on "ensuring Hillary Clinton doesn't get a blank check as president with a Democratic-controlled Congress."

Even as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel called on Paul Ryan to unendorse Trump, Ryan said he's done defendingTrump's outlandish statements and that he won't campaign with him or for him and that other members are on their own in deciding what to do about Trump. "You all need to do what's best for you in your district," he was reported to have said. In their reporting, for the NYTimes, Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin called Ryan's call "a hammer blow to Donald J. Trump’s presidential candidacy Monday, dashing any remaining semblance of party unity and inviting fierce backlash from his own caucus." The Journal Sentinel editors wrote that Ryan "has tiptoed to the water’s edge but he still won’t jump in. If he really wants to maintain the integrity of the Republican Party and its principles-- and save down ticket candidates-- Ryan needs to repudiate his endorsement of GOP nominee Donald Trump. Instead, Ryan keeps dancing around the edges... [H]e thinks by doing so, he would endanger his party’s chances of winning other elections, especially in the House. But by continuing to stand by (if somewhat apart) the GOP pretender for the presidency, Ryan calls into question the party’s basic principles, which ultimately may have the opposite effect of what he wants... Ryan and other Republican leaders should make clear that they will fight tooth and nail for the Republican Party but that Donald Trump does not deserve their endorsements."

There was a backlash from Trumpists on Ryan's call-- the kind of Republicans who voted against the Violence Against Women Act and see nothing wrong with Trump's attitude and behavior towards women. Like California nincompoop Dana Rohrabacher (who sits safely in an R+7 district the DCCC isn't contesting. Rohrabacher raised $713,881 compared to his grassroots opponent's $54,155). He "attacked Republicans stepping away from Mr. Trump as 'cowards,' three lawmakers said. Another, Representative Trent Franks of Arizona, used graphic language to describe abortion and said allowing Mrs. Clinton into the White House would end with fetuses being destroyed 'limb from limb.'" Franks, who many inside the GOP caucus say is certifiably insane-- torn apart internally because by his struggle against his own homosexuality while attempting to be the most anti-gay member of a very anti-gay party-- is in an even redder district that Rohrabacher. His hellhole in the Arizona desert has a PVI of R+15 and his district is so ignored by the DCCC that his only opponent is a write-in candidate!

AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for Mr. Ryan, confirmed that his sole priority for the remainder of the election would be defending congressional Republicans.

“The speaker is going to spend the next month focused entirely on protecting our congressional majorities,” Ms. Strong said.

Ms. Strong said there was “no update” regarding Mr. Ryan’s endorsement of Mr. Trump.

The breach between Mr. Ryan and Mr. Trump concluded five months in which the two men have alternated between friction and courtship, eventually forging an uneasy working relationship only to see it collapse in the final weeks of the race.

The consequences for both men are enormous. Mr. Ryan and other Republican leaders fear that Mr. Trump’s flagging campaign could unwind their majorities in the House and Senate, while Mr. Trump can ill afford rejection from more prominent Republicans.

...Representative Scott Rigell of Virginia, a Republican who has long been opposed to Mr. Trump, said there was a general sense in the House that more humiliating disclosures about Mr. Trump were likely to come before Nov. 8, Election Day.

“There’s a consensus, even among supporters, that the likelihood of something else breaking in a very embarrassing and negative fashion, is certainly better than 50-50,” said Mr. Rigell, who joined the call on Monday. “The conference, members, et cetera, are bracing themselves for another salvo of this.”

...[I]n a potentially ominous sign for the party, Kellyanne Conway, Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, also offered a note of warning for Republicans fleeing Mr. Trump. Mr. Ryan, she noted on television, had been booed by Trump fans over the weekend in Wisconsin after asking Mr. Trump not to attend a political event in his home state.

Ms. Conway also repeatedly indicated that she was aware of Republican lawmakers who had behaved inappropriately toward young women, and whose criticism of Mr. Trump was therefore hypocritical.

And it wasn't just Kellyanne signaling that there would be a price to pay if the GOP officially abandons Trump. Trump's somewhat psychotic official spokesperson, Katrina Pierson, tweeted Monday that "people from all over the country" will vote for Trump but not for down ballot candidates. Music to Ryan's ears? Yeah... Ted Nugent's unreleased solo album.

Back to Ryan's call for a moment. The fear, of course, isn't really about Trump-- they all wish Trump Force One would crash and burn-- it's about the "best" strategy for keeping a House majority they feel is starting to slip from their grasp.

Representative Greg Walden of Oregon, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, urged members on the conference call to take new polls in their districts to gauge the impact of Mr. Trump’s political slide.

Mr. Walden said they should brace for a steep erosion of support for Mr. Trump and acknowledged the falloff could undermine congressional candidates, too. He asked the entire caucus to contribute quickly to the party’s campaign arm, making it clear they needed to bolster their defenses across the country.

Still, many members were pointed in their expressions of dismay, warning Mr. Ryan of grave consequences, in November and beyond, if Mr. Trump’s campaign collapses altogether. Representative Billy Long of Missouri spoke up in Mr. Trump’s defense, citing the danger of losing the Supreme Court in the event of a Clinton victory.

“Many of us commented that if Hillary picks the next two to four judges, it will change the fabric of our country of 40, 50 years,” Mr. Long said of the call. “Abortion and the Second Amendment, also, and lots of Supreme Court concerns.”

The DSCC is running ads based on the video above. Republicans are in a damned if you do/damned if you don't situation with Trump. And many of them are too frightened to take a coherent stand. Very endangered Long Island Congressman Peter King, for example, tells people on one day that Trump is unfit for office and follows that up the next day by urging them to vote for him. Voters are starting it think he's as crazy as Trump is. Yesterday, the Cincinnati Enquirer, in light of the new TV that and all but dead Ted Strickland campaign just released (below), wrote that late on Saturday, Senator Rob Portman, "who had spent months defending or dodging Trump's missteps, said he couldn't vote for the GOP nominee. He would write in GOP vice presidential candidate Mike Pence instead. (Although a vote for Pence wouldn't even count because he isn't an official write-in candidate.)"

Portman's about-face almost certainly hurts him with devoted Trump supporters. At a Warren County debate watch party Sunday night, Betty Dubin said she wouldn't vote for Portman after the senator abandoned Trump. Voters like Dubin won't vote for Strickland, but Democrats hope they skip the Senate race when casting their ballots.

Portman's change of heart might play well with GOP voters who find Trump unsavory. But are those new voters for Portman? Probably not.

And Portman's destiny is still tied-- however tightly or tenuously-- to Trump's. If Republicans frustrated with Trump stay home, that's bad news for Portman.

In South Florida, Trump's last remaining loyalist, Mario Diaz-Balart, is being tormented by the same forces. Progressive Democrat Alina Valdes, as well as independents and mainstream Republicans, are calling on him to drop his support for Trump while Trump supporters are threatening to not vote for him if he does. Yesterday the Miami Herald's Patricia Mazzei reported that Diaz-Balart is so tied up in knots that he can't even give a straight answer about whether he backs Trump or not. After Diaz-Balart carefully distanced himself from Trump's pussy-grabbing comments Saturday, he was asked if he's dropping his support for Trump. He's not capable of giving a straight-forward answer. How do you say "weasel" in Spanish? Is it "comadreja?"

His spokeswoman, Katrina Valdés, responded to the Miami Herald by saying Diaz-Balart never said he'd vote for Trump in the first place. She pointed to a statement from the congressman in May declaring his intention to "vote for the Republican nominee."

That would be Trump, of course.

And yet, Valdés insisted, Diaz-Balart "has not endorsed a candidate in the general election."

Diaz-Balart certainly hasn't used the word endorsement, and he's repeatedly said he won't vote for Democrat Hillary Clinton. But does he still intend to vote for him?

"His statement has not changed," Valdés said late Saturday. "His vote is conditioned on the clarification of a number of important issues that he has repeatedly said need to addressed by the nominee. As of tonight at 8:15 PM, several of those issues have not been clarified. That is where he still stands."

Diaz-Balart hasn't said what he'll do if he doesn't get his requested "clarification" from Trump. The congressman praised Trump for adopting a hard line on Cuba policy last month in Miami. Diaz-Balart then said he needed more evidence before he could condemn a report that Trump's casino company broke the Cuban trade embargo in 1998.

Alina Valdes, who has been endorsed by Blue America-- you can contribute to her grassroots campaign here-- pointed out that "Diaz-Balart is the only South Florida Cuban-American who still supports the Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump, for president. Despite all the horrible things Teflon Don has said about Latinos, women, African-Americans, Muslims, and anything not white and male, he has maintained his loyalty to party over country."

Jon Ralston has a smart take on this today. Writing for the Reno Gazette Journal He looked at Joe Heck's and Cresent Hardy's recent jettisoning of now toxic Trump. He also brought up Brian Sandoval and Dean Heller on charges of hypocrisy.

They came to bury Trump, and they expect praise.

They are all honorable men, these elected officials in the Nevada GOP, who bravely decided after all of this time that Donald Trump is unfit for office. And like their counterparts across the country, they are trying to kill Trump to avoid their own funerals.

The day after the tape emerged showing Trump sounding like a sexual predator and just a few hours after he apologized in a video in which he was held hostage by a teleprompter, Reps. Joe Heck and Cresent Hardy disavowed him Saturday at a Southern Nevada rally, ironically standing near the man who lost the last presidential race, Mitt Romney. They joined a countrywide chorus of Louis Renaults, shocked, shocked to discover Trump is a sociopath.

...Just look at the words they all used and see the blatant hypocrisy unmasked, the foundation of their arguments crumble. They even talked about Trump’s pattern of behavior, an admission of their guilt; they all should be convicted of failed leadership followed by rank opportunism.

It wasn’t repulsive enough to the governor of Mexican heritage when Trump announced in June 2015 and talked about Mexican rapists and murderers and later when he smeared a judge of Mexican descent?

It wasn’t lacking ethical and moral decency for the congressman cum brigadier general when Trump derided John McCain’s service, saying he likes his heroes not to be captured, or when he claimed to have raised money for veterans that he did not?

It didn’t degrade women enough for the rookie congressman when Trump alluded to Megyn Kelly’s menstruation or called Rosie O’Donnell a “fat pig” or criticized a former Miss Universe for gaining weight?

It would fill up too much internet bandwidth to list all of the Trumpian depredations that should have led these men to disavow the GOP nominee long ago. These were disqualifying acts then just as the videotaped comments are now.

They can say this is much worse because Trump essentially says he committed sexual assault, but is that the standard these elected officials use? I will support him despite his misogyny, nativism and racism, but this is a bridge too far? This is what they considered praiseworthy?

The irony here, of course, is while this is purely political and temporal-- exactly two weeks before early voting begins-- this is a no-win situation for them. But by lying down with Trump for so long, they have made their own bed.

And that is the problem every single Republican office holder has to grapple with now. They are so lucky the DCCC is the most incompetent organization that ever existed. One more example: the Democratic candidate for Congress in northern Nevada, Chip Evans, released the following statement on incumbent Mark Amodei's decision to remain Trump's Nevada campaign chairman.

"Governor Sandoval had it right when he renounced his support for Donald Trump-- ‘this video exposed not just words, but now an established pattern which I find repulsive and unacceptable for a candidate for President of the United States.’ I agree. Congressman Amodei’s choice to remain as Trump’s Nevada Campaign Chairman does not show the same principled leadership. It’s another example of Amodei’s poor judgment and consistent pattern of putting his party and his own interests before the people he was elected to represent. Remember, Trump’s already had his ‘30 days’ and then some to audition for the job. If Amodei is ‘genuinely concerned about the future of our country’ and looking for someone ‘who will set the tone in foreign policy, our economy… and gender,’ how can Amodei continue to embrace a candidate that has insulted our military by calling them ‘a disaster,’ wants to put nukes in Japan and South Korea, threatens to ‘shoot out of the water’ Iranian ships that make rude gestures to our navy, and proposes a tax plan that will hammer the middle class and cause a loss of 3.5 million jobs while adding $10 trillion to the deficit? It is time for a change. I’m confident northern Nevada’s hard-working families will see Amodei’s poor judgment and blind partisanship for what it is and bring him home in November."

Do Democratic Congressional Candidates Pass The Smell Test?

Who would you vote for to be a senator, Ed Snowden or the execrable Patrick Murphy?

The good thing about a narrow win for Clinton-- which is currently being forecast-- is that Trump won't be in a position to destroy the United States. The bad news is that the incredible weak menagerie of candidates recruited by the DSCC and DCCC-- all premised on an anti-Trump tsunami and strong Clinton coattails-- are all going to lose. The Democrats might not even be able to take back the Senate, something that was in the bag before Schumer started recruiting his shitty candidates and undermining the grassroots in state after state. According to the Reuters/Ipsos electoral analysis linked above, Clinton is going to, for example, lose Florida. The gigantically expensive, 7 figure effort by the DSCC and Wall Street to make sure progressive Alan Grayson wouldn't be in position to face Marco Rubio, has left the Democrats with an impossibly incapable nominee, Patrick Murphy-- a spoiled, drunken rich kid who voted with the GOP to start up the Benghazi witch hunt against Clinton and who voted with the GOP to unconstitutionally remove President Obama from the Keystone XL Pipeline decision-making process. This guy defines "loser."

Friday, Ben Kamisar reported for The Hill that the DSCC "is canceling advertising in Florida and Ohio to invest more heavily in Missouri and North Carolina." That may be smart strategy, given how fatally flawed the Democratic candidates are in Florida and Ohio. But the tragedy is that those two weak candidates were forced on Democratic primary voters by Schumer and his DSCC sock puppet Jon Tester. They decided to push corporate shills in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Arizona, none of whom are looking like winners. And it's left the DSCC floundering hopelessly in a year where they should be riding high and banking extra seats to make up for the expected big losses in 2018.

The financial rejiggering by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spells the latest disappointment for Ohio Democratic Senate hopeful Ted Strickland, who is being abandoned by the party as he plummets in the polls. It's also ominous for Democratic Rep. Patrick Murphy, who's fighting incumbent Sen. Marco Rubio in Florida.

By shifting cash, the Democrats are revealing two elements of their strategy that would have surprised anyone 18 months ago: They believe they can win in Missouri and North Carolina.

A DSCC official confirmed the cancelation of Florida and Ohio buys for the period between Oct. 4 and 10. The source said the DSCC has put an additional $2 million into Missouri and $4.2 million into North Carolina, as well as $2.5 million into Indiana, where former Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh is looking to win back his seat.

...The investments reveal a shifting map for Democrats, as a handful of states did not cooperate with conventional wisdom.

Ohio looks out of reach for Democrats, as Portman now holds a 13 point lead in RealClearPolitics' recent polling average. The Florida race is closer, but Democratic plans to take the seat have been frustrated by Rubio's surprise decision to run for reelection.

The Hill would never publish a story that pointed out that the Democrats' weak loser candidates were forced on the party by Schumer or that the Democratic establishment in DC has consistently recruited horrible candidates who are the mirror images of the conservatives who run the DSCC and DCCC. And who consistently lose.

Although the DCCC won't put actual money into most of them, this cycle they have 38 candidates on their Red to Blue list. Most of them are untethered from their district's grassroots. Many are outright conservatives-- Republican-lite candidates who can only be elected on presidential coattails and then almost automatically lose in subsequent midterms. Some of self-funders. Many of them are Blue Dogs and/or New Dems who, if they're elected, support Paul Ryan's agenda, not a progressive agenda. They look and smell just like the DCCC chumps who recruited them, New Dem Denny Heck and Blue Dogs Steve Israel and Cheri Bustos; or, worse yet, like Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a shameless crook, stinking of corruption to high heaven-- but nothing like the emerging Democratic electorate. Of the 38 candidates on their list, there is genuine grassroots enthusiasm for fewer than a dozen (Zephyr Teachout, who had to be forced on the DCCC by angry donors, Ruben Kihuen, Carol Shea Porter, Denise Juneau, Angie Craig, Kim Mower, Morgan Carroll, Doug Applegate, maybe Salud Carbajal). God knows how many of them aren't even Democrats but these 6 recently and opportunistically joined the party: Tom O'Halleran, Charlie Crist, Randall Perkins, Monica Vernon, Anna Throne-Holst and Mike Derrick. So far Pelosi's House Majority PAC has spent six-figure amounts on only 4 non-incumbents:

• Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog/New Dem-NJ)- $943,208
• Salud Carbajal (New Dem-CA)- $366,224
• Kim Myers (Blue Dog-NY)- $244,586
• Anna Throne-Holst (D-NY)- $163,716

Maybe Pelosi thought Throne-Holst, rumored to be having an affair with Steve Israel, is a New Dem because she is, literally a new Democrat, having switched parties days before the deadline for the election! And meanwhile, worthy candidates in winnable districts are being sabotaged by the DCCC which just does not want to see progressives strong within the House Democratic Conference-- like these men and women who won their primaries and aren't being backed by the DCCC:

Has Miserable DSCC/DCCC Recruitment Jeopardized Hillary's Chances Against Trump?

Is this supposed to inspire the Democratic base to turn out?

The recruitment theory at the DSCC and DCCC was grounded in a Hillary landslide. Piss-poor, unpopular candidates who Schumer and Tester spent millions of dollars to get the nomination-- particularly Patrick Murphy (FL), Katie McGinty (PA) and Ted Strickland (OH)-- crushing far better and more viable candidates in the process, could only possibly get through on Hillary's coattails in the anti-Trump tsunami that imagined was building. But the tsunami is nowhere in sight... and the DSCC has all but given up on Strickland and Murphy already. Yesterday's CBS/New York Times poll of likely voters shows Clinton with 46% and Trump closing in with 44%. If respondents are given a choice that includes Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, Hillary and Trump tie at 42% each.

Discontent with the major party candidates is widespread. Among those who say they intend to vote for Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton, slightly more than half express strong support. The rest say that they harbor reservations about their candidate, or that they are simply voting to thwart the other nominee.

This whole "lesser-of-two-evils" theory of politics could work out to be a catastrophe for the Democratic Party and a catastrophe for America. Thanks a lot Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid, Jon Tester, Nancy Pelosi, Steve Israel, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the whole wretched DC party establishment than is so loathed-- so deservedly loathed-- throughout the country.

Strickland, down by double digits

Instead of counting on Hillary's coattails to drag pathetic excuses for candidates like Ted Strickland and Patrick Murphy over the finish line, these kinds of examples of the dysfunction within a once-vibrant and hard-charging Democratic Party could be pulling Hillary's campaign down in two of the most important states in the country, Ohio and Florida. In fact, let's look at how the race in Florida is shaping up as we head into the home stretch. Politico points out that "the nation’s biggest battleground state should have buried Donald Trump’s White House hopes. With Florida’s booming Hispanic population, Trump’s harsh immigration rhetoric sounded like political suicide. In a state where TV ads drive the electorate, Trump penny-pinched on air time. And though organization is a must here, Trump had no field offices for months and he replaced his Florida campaign manager in a shakeup less than a month before officials mail out absentee ballots to voters. Yet he is essentially tied with Hillary Clinton and even leads her in some polls, a gravity-defying feat that is keeping Florida’s 29 electoral votes in play-- and Trump’s chances in the Electoral College alive."

The Democrats'-- or at least Hillary's-- superior ground game can still counter his celebrity and his uncanny ability to tap into-- and manipulate-- the mood of the electorate.

But at its core, the race is about race, about motivating white versus non-white voters. The whiter the electorate, the likelier it is Trump wins. And older whites are keeping Trump in the hunt.

Without the backing of older whites, polls indicate Trump would lose Florida-- in this retirement mecca, the elderly are still a force at the ballot box. Of Florida’s 12.4 million active registered voters, more than 3.3 million are older than 65 years old, making them the largest age group on the rolls (followed by those 50 to 64). The elderly also have the highest turnout rate in Florida.

When it comes to race, non-Hispanic whites are 65 percent of the overall voter rolls and are the most-reliable voters. So Trump’s base is easier to turn out in big numbers. If he can keep Clinton’s white support below 35 percent (Obama won 37 percent, according to 2012 exit polls) and boost white turnout by just a few points, Florida operatives say he’ll likely win the state.

Polling from local legislative and congressional races throughout Florida shows Trump is running stronger than 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney in the suburban areas of the Tampa Bay media market and Southwest Florida, according to results of confidential campaign surveys shared with Politico on condition of anonymity. Enthusiasm also appears high in Republican-rich North Florida and the Space Coast.

Clinton’s base-- African-Americans, mixed-race voters, Hispanics-- are historically harder to turn out, although they do a better job showing up in presidential election years as opposed to midterm elections. But they disproportionately support her.

An Univision poll this week had the Democratic presidential nominee leading Trump by 24 points among likely Hispanic voters, about 3 points more than President Obama beat Romney by four years ago to win Florida.

Because of the influence of Republican-leaning Cuban-Americans, Clinton’s poll numbers among Florida Latinos-- slightly lower when compared to other battleground states. Another problem for Clinton: a plurality of Florida Hispanics, 46 percent, agreed with the sentiment that she is a “liar,” although they trusted her more than Trump in the poll that was conducted by Bendixen & Amandi International and the Tarrance Group.

Clinton’s campaign says it’s heavily investing in turnout of Puerto Rican voters. Puerto Ricans are the fastest-growing Latino group in the state-- and could eclipse the 1.5 million Cuban-Americans in raw numbers by the next presidential election. Clinton’s focus: the urban counties of Southeast Florida, and the cities of Tampa, Daytona Beach, Jacksonville and Orlando, home to the Puerto Rican diaspora.

If the majority of Florida polls are right and non-white voters turn out at the statewide average, she’s expected to win Florida-- an outcome that could rest on Puerto Rican turnout near Disney World.

...For Trump, the biggest potential problem of all rests in the one county he lost to Sen. Marco Rubio in his blowout Florida primary win March 15: Miami-Dade County. It’s the most-populous in the state and has the largest concentration of Republicans, 72 percent of whom are Hispanic and mainly Cuban-American.

Even with the backing of Cuban-American leaders, Romney lost Miami-Dade to Obama by 208,000 votes in 2012. That gave the Democrat enough of a cushion to win Florida overall by just 74,000. Unlike Romney, Trump has little institutional support in the county. Among those not backing Trump: the GOP mayor of Miami; Miami-Dade's Republican mayor and his challenger; Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera; former Gov. Jeb Bush and two of the area’s three Cuban-American Republican U.S. House members.

If that lack of elite Miami GOP support is indicative of broader rank-and-file sentiment in the county, one Republican organizer in Florida said, Trump could see a “nightmare scenario … Clinton gets a 300,000 vote margin in Miami-Dade. If that happens, we should just start drinking early.”

Only Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart says he would-- but he wants Trump to clarify some “basic policy positions” on issues like Cuba, Israel and Russia. But Trump hasn't even replied to his repeated letters.

“As far as an organized effort, a campaign, I haven’t seen it,” Diaz-Balart said. “I’ve not seen a real attempt to engage the community. What Trump has going for him is the Cuban-American community’s serious disgust with Hillary Clinton. But many are looking for a reason to vote for Trump and have received no reassurance on the issues that are important to them.”

Look how incredibly easy bad DSCC recruitment can make it for the Republicans. Could the NRSC ever ask for a better target for their ad-making machinery? This one was released this morning:



Wealthy, anti-populist former Republican Patrick Murphy is a Wall Street candidate and, at the risk of sounding unkind, a talentless sieve who was pushed into the nomination by Wall Street's own best friend in DC, Chuck Schumer. Schumer had the DSCC go on an out-of-control rampage of slander and calumny against Alan Grayson and spent $1,013,760 of Senate Majority PAC money, $235,867 of DSCC money and $441,350 of Murphy's father's money against Grayson to get the nomination for Patrick. Even with multiple letters from Obama to every Democratic household in Florida and a barrage of dishonest Obama ads to minority voters, Grayson still won in the parts of Florida where Puerto Rican votes are most heavily concentrated. Murphy could conceivably help Clinton with rich Republicans who find Trump crude and deplorable, but that isn't where she needs the help and Murphy is up shit's creek without a paddle when it comes to those voters with whom he has nothing in common, no rapport and no experience-- and to whom he has nothing to offer whatsoever.

Meanwhile, demographic shifts-- whether in Florida or across the nation-- don't seem to be working the magic Democratic Party leaders were counting on. As Nate Cohn reported in the NY Times yesterday, turnout and enthusiasm are far more powerful than demographic change. Hillary, he wrote, "is not poised to match the gains Mr. Obama made among nonwhite voters over previous Democratic nominees... [which] brings the pace of Democratic gains down to the slow crawl of demographic change."

Want more of this?

Inspiring down-ballot candidates-- a Russ Feingold in Wisconsin or stellar, outside-the-box House candidates like Zephyr Teachout in upstate New York, Pramila Jayapal in Seattle, Paul Clements in Kalamazoo and Tom Wakely in Austin/San Antonio-- will motivate voters, especially millennials, it turn out in November. Ted Strickland, Patrick Murphy, Katie McGinty? Not so much. They're sitting around praying that Hillary has coattails. And the DCCC's favored candidates. Last night we looked at who they're spending their money on-- dreary anti-populist New Dems, Blue Dogs and establishment dregs like Brad Ashford (NE), Josh Gottheimer (NJ), Jacky Rosen (NV), Kim Myers (NY), Tom O'Halleran (AZ)... These are candidates tailor-made to suppress Democratic turnout, not inspire it!

You can find this cycle's most inspiring candidates-- the kinds who the DCCC and DSCC flee from in terror-- by tapping the thermometer below. Once again, it looks like it will be up to grassroots progressives to save the Democratic Party from its geriatric institutional leaders' own worst instincts and practices!

Is Schumer Giving Up On Murphy And Strickland Already? What A Waste!

Schumer and his pathetic Montana sock-puppet, Jon Tester, spent millions of dollars people contributed to the DSCC to defeat Democrats Joe Sestak and Alan Grayson. Early in the cycle, Schumer informed Bernie Sanders that if he interfered with Schumer's 4th rate candidates in Ohio, Pennsylvania or Florida he would not be a committee chair when the next Senate convened. So now the Democrats are stuck with three inferior candidates-- Katie McGinty, Patrick Murphy and Ted Strickland-- who probably can't win their races against 3 terribly flawed Republicans-- Pat Toomey, Marco Rubio and Rob Portman-- who should be easy to knock off in a presidential election year. Sestak, Grayson and Sittenfeld probably would be in the middle of spirited campaigns pitting a clash of ideas right now and there's a better than even chance all three would have beaten their weak Republican opponents. Thanks to Schumer and Tester the GOP may well keep all three seats, which will be catastrophic for the Democrats' hope to win the Senate in 2016 or-- if everything else goes their way-- a sure-fire incentive for the GOP to filibuster everything until McConnell is back in charge in 2018.

Schumer is about to be handed the Democratic leadership on a silver platter. The Senate Dems would be better off hanging him a harikari (or seppuku) tantō... pronto. Although Huffington Post polling averages shows Clinton ahead in all three states, Schumer's three disastrous Senate candidates are losing. Clinton is beating Trump in Florida 46-42%, but Rubio is beating Murphy 47-41%. Clinton is beating Trump in Ohio 43-41%, but Portman is slaughtering Strickland 46-39%. Clinton is beating Trump in Pennsylvania 46-40%, but Toomey and McGinty are in a dead-heat.

The Ohio race, as anyone who watched the primary would have predicted, is the worst mess. Strickland is like a barely animated walking corpse whose past conservatism has come back to bite him in the ass. He's a nightmare from the past Ohio voters don't want to deal with and instead of Hillary's coattails dragging him to victory, his reverse coattails could drag her down. His campaign, like the candidate, is a total mess. Seeing the futility of spending money on him, the DSCC cancelled millions of dollars in ad buys. And yesterday, Strickland's own campaign followed suit, canceling ads scheduled to have gone up in Cincinnati, Dayton, Toledo and Youngstown over the next two weeks. Sittenfeld is the opposite of a corpse and would have been running an energetic and inspiring campaign instead of sitting around hoping for an anti-Trump tsunami. This is Chuck Schumer and his know-it-all arrogance at work.

Toomey is taking on the Trump problem head-on. As Steven Dennis explained yesterday for Bloomberg readers, "Toomey knows he has a Donald Trump problem. He’s just hoping his opponent has an even bigger Hillary Clinton problem. As the only endangered Republican incumbent yet to back or reject his party’s nominee, Toomey is campaigning as an independent voice who can be a check on whoever is president. He’s also working to tie his Democratic challenger, Katie McGinty, as closely as possible to Hillary Clinton, whose unfavorable ratings rival those of Trump."

"There is no question that Katie McGinty will never stand up to Hillary Clinton, but I will, and I’ll stand up to Donald Trump if I think he’s wrong," he said in an interview last month.

Toomey is trying to find the middle ground by motivating disgruntled Republicans and independents to vote without alienating Trump’s passionate backers. Barring a Trump comeback, his message of independence might be the best he can do in the state that has emerged as a key battleground for control of the Senate, as well as the presidency.

Pennsylvania is already the second most expensive Senate race this year by some measures, with campaigns and outside groups spending an estimated $31.8 million on advertising on the general election so far, according to data from ad-tracking firm Kantar Media/CMAG.

Toomey has irritated Trump fans by withholding his endorsement of the nominee and many have peppered him at events across the state for his stance. But he hasn’t gone beyond saying he won’t vote for Hillary Clinton.

The senator is reflecting where a sizable, key bloc of voters stands, particularly in the vote-rich Philadelphia suburbs-- not enamored with Clinton but not sold on Trump.

...Like Senator Marco Rubio in Florida, Toomey emphasizes he will be a check on whoever becomes president, and he dinged McGinty for failing to name a single issue where she disagreed with Clinton at a press conference last month.

"I have played that role. I have separated myself from my party when I thought it was wrong," he added. He touts his long fight against spending earmarks, which were prevalent a decade ago before being banned, and his failed bipartisan push for expanded background checks for gun purchases.

This slug-fest is going to go on and on 'til election day, with all the worst right-wing elements in American politics, like the Kochs and the NRSC, in the mud and muck with the DSCC and EMILY's List, the worst garbage on the Democratic side. If the outside groups cancel each other out, Toomey will probably rout McGinty, possibly the least qualified candidate running for Senate this year other than Patrick Murphy... which brings us to the latest election news out of Florida.

At least in Ohio and Pennsylvania, Strickland and McGinty for all their obvious flaws, are the lesser of two evils for Democratic voters. Strickland isn't as terrible as Portman and McGinty isn't as terrible as Toomey-- close but not as terrible. Murphy, on the other hand, is as terrible as Rubio.. and, man, is that terrible. This is the one race where there is, literally, no lesser evil. (If I was a Florida voter I'd cast my ballot for independent Steve Machat.) And, now that they got rid of Grayson-- who Wall Street puppet Schumer was so scared to see in the Senate that he would rather lose the chance to win the majority than have anyone as brilliant and effective as Grayson challenging him-- they're willing to cut the embarrassingly pathetic Murphy loose. Or... maybe it's just a shot over the bow of the family yacht, Miss Cocktails, and a threat for Murphy's father to pay up the other $4 million he promised the DSCC for backing his feeble son. Daddy Murphy gave Schumer and Reid's Senate Majority PAC a million dollars as a downpayment for the endorsement and now they're squeezing him for the rest. Squeezing? Well the DSCC cancelled their first week of TV ads for Florida, just like they did for Ohio.

According to a report from the Columbus Dispatch, Schumer's lackey at the DSCC, Tom Lopach, was in a private meeting with a trade association a few days ago where he went through Schumer’s top targets. On the list were Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Missouri and North Carolina. Not on the list: Ohio and Florida!

[A]ccording to a source who attended the meeting, Lopach said Strickland could only win "if a wave comes" in, a reference to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton winning by a strong margin in Ohio.

When asked why Ohio is not among the likely states for Democrats to win, Lopach reportedly replied, "Portman has run a damn fine race."

"The rest, I’ll have to tell you over a drink," Lopach added, the source said.

Blue America is backing just two candidates running for Republican-held Senate seats this year. How about helping them out with $5 or $10 each? They're both real progressive Democrats, not craven, worthless Schumercrats like Strickland, McGinty and Murphy. Please click on the thermometer below and give what you can: