There's No IQ Test To Get Into Congress

The debates have taught me that many of our politicians don't understand what Medicare is beyond a Medicare-For-Dummies synopsis they may have read once. I noticed that as the case with Tim Ryan (D-OH), no brain surgeon to begin with. The fool got into an argument with Bernie about Medicare and thought he could skate by as though he and another drunk congressman were in a fact-free zone arguing. Watch the deer-in-the-headlights expression.

But what really goy me was when he responded by saying (re: union members) "the only thing they have is, possibly, really good health care." He has NO IDEA-- none-- what he's talking about. None. Their health care might be decent, but "really good?" Not a chance. As the president of a division of TimeWarner, I had really good healthcare-- or so I imagined. I mean the contracts of all the divisional presidents and chairmen stipulated that we had the best healthcare on the private market. How would I know that it wasn't very good? You know how I found out? When I retired and went to Medicare. Medicare is WAY better. Members of Congress should know that, but they don't. When I tell them, they think I'm exaggerating. I'm not. Medicare, even with its flaws (no dental, no ear care, no aural care, no mental health, a crap GOP-created drug plan), it's better than anything on the private market.

Yesterday, Tara Golshan, reporting for Vox wrote that union leaders are well aware that Ryan was wrong. And it wasn't just Ryan; Delaney-- an ultra-conservative New Dem idiot (so not a surprise)-- was also on an anti-Medicare tear.

“This plan being offered ... will tell the union members that give away wages in order to get good health care that they will lose their health care because Washington is going to come in and tell them they have a better plan,” Ryan said. Delaney talked about his father, a unionized electrician, suggesting he would “never want someone to take [his health care] away.”

But some of the biggest unions in the country couldn’t disagree more.

“Tim Ryan, that’s a great failure of understanding how unions work,” said Sarah Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants. His suggestion was “offensive to me,” she added.

American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten noted that that AFT is supportive of Medicare-for-all and other universal health care plans. “Any plan that provides more people with the care they need and gets us one step closer to affordable coverage is a step in the right direction,” she said.

Both Ryan and Delaney oppose Medicare-for-all on the grounds it is radical, politically unfeasible, and too disruptive to the current health care system. They advocate instead for proposals that would expand coverage while keeping private employer-sponsored plans.

Ryan’s campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment about where he got this idea. But those close to the labor movement suggested it may come from a vestige of a shrinking and transforming labor movement.

“Ryan, coming from Ohio, really frames this in terms of the union members with hard hats,” said Andrew Feldman, a Democratic strategist who has close ties to the labor movement. “It’s this old guard of labor. What we have seen in the last couple years, is this labor movement that’s made this grassroots resurgence, [like the teachers and service workers]. Those unions have publicly come out and said they would support Medicare-for-all.”

Delaney and Ryan were trying to pit some Sanders’s biggest priorities-- universal health care and worker’s rights-- against each other. Their argument centered around the fact that Sanders’s Medicare-for-all bill does away with employer-sponsored insurance and puts every American on an expanded public health care system. They say that unions have fought hard to secure generous health care packages from employers, and shouldn’t have to switch from that."

...It should be noted that as a member of the House, Ryan has signed on to a Medicare-for-all bill, which would eliminate private insurance. His campaign told the Washington Post’s Jeff Stein that Ryan disagreed with some of the key components of that bill, but signed on hoping it would change in negotiations.

[Ryan signed on for political expediency without understanding anything about the bill. He is hardly the only one.]

In making this case that Medicare-for-all was bad for unions, Ryan seemed to be echoing why many unions are open to the proposal.

“This is a priority we set in the 1940s, and labor was quite successful in negotiating contractural health care, but every time we go to the table the for-profit system has put so much pressure that when we get what we already have we call that a win,” Nelson told Vox about the difficulties negotiating health care poses. She added that having a government-sponsored baseline health insurance would go a long way to help unions negotiate better wages, and benefits in other areas of their contract.

While there is a wealth of research that has found increased health care costs bring down wage growth, there’s less evidence that companies engage in the trade-off the other way. As Sarah Kliff reported, “there are no studies that show the reverse relationship-- wages rising when premiums grow slower-- but experts in labor economics believe this relationship exists.”

Polling across the board shows that Americans aren’t too fond of the idea of cutting out private health insurance. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll found 56 percent of the public favors “a national health plan, sometimes called Medicare-for-all, where all Americans would get their insurance from a single government plan.” But when told directly that Medicare-for-all would end private insurance, larger margins support more incremental steps toward a government-run program, like lowering the eligibility age for Medicare.

And it’s true that Democrats have some work to do shoring up union members. Clinton underperformed Barack Obama among union workers; white male union members significantly shifted toward Donald Trump, outpacing Clinton altogether to help deliver Trump the presidency.

Those seem to be the voters Ryan is talking about; an older coalition of white working-class voters that defected to Trump.

“I think [Ryan’s argument] may resonate because they are just more conservative in general and many actually voted for Trump,” Feldman said. “I don’t think it’s because they love their private health care.”

But candidates like Warren and Sanders are taking a different approach to the union vote. They recognize that the labor movement as a whole has been attempting to broaden its constituency to a progressive working class that didn’t necessarily see a champion in either Trump or Clinton in 2016. This more diverse working-class group-- which includes women, Latinos, and African Americans-- represents the fastest-growing share of union membership. And this growing sector of the labor movement might be ready for something different.

“No elected official should accept incrementalism,” Mary Kay Henry, president of Service Employees International Union, one of the largest and most influential unions in North America, told Vox’s Alexia Fernandez Campbell. “American taxpayers are subsidizing multimillion-dollar companies that are making record profits but are not providing decent jobs for people. You can’t nibble around the edges. All these bold solutions are not radical.”

And, Nelson points out, not all union contracts are made the same.

“It is real that there is work to do with unions,” Nelson said. “People do love their contractural plans. But not every union contract today has exemplary health care.”

And NONE are nearly as good as Medicare.

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.

Today: The Big Pay-Go Show Down In The House

Yesterday I spent hours on the phone talking with members of Congress about Pelosi's Rules Package vote today. That's because her damned Pay-Go provision is part of it. Many of the members I spoke with DID NOT KNOW THERE IS A VOTE AND DO NOT KNOW WHAT PAY-GO IS. By noon I was so depressed I wanted to drown myself. They're just going to do whatever Hoyer and Clyburn tell them to do-- which will absoluetly kill any chance of a progressive agenda in this Congress. Kim Schrier, a physician, is a freshman from Washington's 8th district and is busy being sworn in today. Last night she got back to me with a statement about Pay-Go that threw me for a loop. "Pay Go," she wrote, "brings back fiscally responsible governance and ends the draconian practice of forcing cuts to vital programs to pay for others. It allows new funding sources to keep government working for the American People." I suspect that's what Hoyer and the leadership team are telling members of Congress, especially freshmen, what Pay-Go is. Am I getting ahead of myself here? I'll come back in a minute. Let me turn to my amigo, David Dayen at The Intercept, for a brief explanation-- yesterday-- about this controversy.

He wrote that progressives are pressuring against it-- I haven;'t found any other than Alexandria Ocasio and Ro Khanna-- "the House rules package for the 116th Congress will include a pay-as-you-go provision, requiring all new spending to be offset with either budget cuts or tax increases, a conservative policy aimed at tying the hands of government... Pelosi ran into resistance from progressives, who believe that the rule would make it more difficult for Democrats to pass a host of liberal agenda items, from 'Medicare for All' to a Green New Deal to tuition-free public college. Critics also argue that pay-go creates an unlevel playing field, where Republicans get to blow giant holes in the tax code, as they did with the 2017 tax cuts, while Democrats must pay fealty to the deficit.

The new rule establishes a point of order against any bill that increases the deficit within a ten-year budget window, based on figures from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The House could attach an “emergency” designation to legislation to get around the paygo rule: Congress did this in 2009 to pass the economic stimulus package under President Obama. The point of order could be waived by a majority vote of the House. But this gives the Democratic leadership another lever of control on what legislation can advance, as their assent would be critical to exempting bills from the paygo rule. And members of Congress tend to resist voting to waive the rule, as they worry it creates ready-made attack ads.

There is also a Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act, passed in 2010 under pressure from Blue Dog Democrats, which allows the president to enforce across-the-board cuts if Congress violates pay-go. But the prospect of a president implementing such an unpopular policy is remote. So the House rule looms large by constraining new spending at its source.

Liberals, of course, have plenty of ideas for how to raise revenue. The Trump tax cuts alone offer nearly $3 trillion in potential offsets simply by restoring corporate tax rates, “pass-through” rules on individuals, and inheritance taxes. But the pay-go rule forces Democrats to propose tax increases that Republicans gleefully broadcast. Meanwhile, Republicans, unconcerned with deficits, get to play Santa Claus, freed from having to match tax cuts with anything unappealing.

...At least one Congressional power broker wants progressive Democrats to fight the rules package. “In order for #PayGo to go into effect, it needs to pass the House,” wrote Bernie Sanders advisor Warren Gunnels on Twitter Tuesday night. “If some 18 Dems vote no, it fails. The vote will take place on Thursday. Will enough progressives have the courage to vote no on the first roadblock to #MedicareForAll, #GreenNewDeal & #CollegeForAll? Let’s see.”

The co-chairs of the CPC, Mark Pocan and Pramila Jayapal, look to be trying to tamp down the concern over Pelosi's attempt to ramrod Pay-Go through. They used a statement yesterday, which isn't that different from what I've been hearing from other liberals: "We have been concerned about PAYGO for months, and have had numerous conversations with Rules Chairman Jim McGovern and House leadership about these concerns. We all agree that the real problem with PAYGO exists in the statute that requires it. That is why we will reintroducing legislation in the 116th Congress to end PAYGO. In the meantime Chairman McGovern and House Leadership have committed to us that PAYGO will not be an impediment to advancing key progressive priorities in the 116th Congress. With the assurances that PAYGO can be waived, we do plan to vote for the House rules package and proceed with the legislation to fix the statute." I have tremendous trust in Pramila Jayapal's truthfulness and political instincts. But... Hoyer, Clyburn and Pelosi? Don't make me laugh. Besides, how is a satisfactory PAYGO legislative fix going to get through a wall of Republicans, Blue Dogs and New Dems? And then make it through McConnell's Senate and be signed by the always cooperative Señor Trumpanzee? NO WAY! Voting for a bad rule with the idea of "fixing" it down the road under these political realities, is... well, I won't characterize what I think it is. But, of late, there have been too many New Dems admitted to the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Former co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and incoming chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), told us that he'll "continue to state that pay-go is an unnecessary and misguided policy because it can stifle smart investments that are needed to better our nation and help families. With trillions in tax giveaways to the wealthy and corporations, Republicans are the ones who ushered in a new era of fiscal recklessness-- not Democrats. With the Trump Administration pushing dangerous policies, it is important not to tie our hands while governing. I’m confident our leadership understands these issues and will work toward ensuring pay-go does not impede progress on the policy solutions Americans have demanded." I'd interpret that to mean that today he'll be holding his nose and voting for it.

Tim Ryan (D-OH), often an unabashed Pelosi critic, told the Morning Joe crew yesterday that overall, he's backing Pelosi's efforts. "I don’t think anyone at any point questioned her ability to negotiate, for her to be in rooms like the one she’s going to be in today, like the one she was in last week, and be as effective as anybody else in our caucus or in our party." But that didn't stop him from announcing he's opposing PayGo. "Critical investments in education, infrastructure, and health care should not be held hostage to budgetary constraints that Republicans have never respected."

Saikat is Alexandria Ocasio's chief of staff

Impeachment Time Is Coming

Pelosi thinks it's "bad politics" to impeach Trump. (It's no less her duty than it was Paul Ryan's-- maybe more so.) She may be wrong... and her hand may be forced. A new poll, released this morning by the Associated Press, confirms that most Americans believe that Trump has obstructed the investigation by Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 election that put Trump into the White House. And a smaller majority think that if the case is proven that Trump worked with the Russians on this, he should be impeached and removed from office.

It's become painfully obvious that the Republican-controlled Senate won't vote to remove Trump regardless of what crimes he's committed (and what danger he puts the country in)-- including high treason. But if Pelosi is making her calculations based on what is good and bad politics, impeaching Trump, only to see the Republicans vote not to remove him, might be great 2020 Senate election politics. This could tip the scales in Republican-held seats in Kentucky (McConnell), Arizona (McSally), Colorado (Gardner), North Carolina (Tillis), Iowa (Ernst), Kansas (Roberts, if he runs again), Maine (Collins) and maybe even in Texas (Cornyn). 

A majority of Americans-- 58 percent-- think the president has tried to impede the Russia investigation, while 4 in 10 say he has not. An overwhelming share of Democrats, 90 percent, say the president has sought to obstruct the probe, compared with 22 percent of Republicans.

The survey also shows that if Mueller’s investigation finds that Trump did not personally have inappropriate contacts with the Kremlin but nonetheless tried to obstruct the FBI’s work, 51 percent of Americans think Congress should take steps to remove him from office, while 46 percent think it should not.

The special counsel’s obstruction investigation has shadowed the president for a year and a half, unfolding alongside his inquiry into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to sway the election and the separate campaign finance probe in New York. The last month has produced bombshell developments in the investigation, including Cohen’s sentencing, allegations that Trump’s former campaign chairman lied to prosecutors and a judge’s unexpected upbraiding of former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

...About 8 in 10 Democrats and 2 in 10 Republicans think Trump should be removed from office if he committed obstruction. Nearly three-quarters of Democrats and only about 1 in 10 Republicans think Congress should take steps to impeach him if he directed illegal payments.

Overall, 45 percent said Congress should take steps to remove him from office if he orchestrated the hush money payments. Slightly more, 53 percent, said Congress should not take steps to remove Trump for that.

About 4 in 10 think he broke the law when it comes to directing Cohen’s payments, and about as many say the same of his ties to Russia. About 2 in 10 think Trump has done nothing wrong, with the remainder saying his actions were unethical, but not illegal.

About 7 in 10 Democrats believe Trump has done something illegal involving Russia. Among Republicans, 55 percent say Trump has done nothing wrong when it comes to Russia, while 35 percent think he has done something unethical but not illegal.

...The poll finds rising confidence among Democrats of the fairness and impartiality of Mueller’s investigation. Overall, about a third of Americans say they’re extremely or very confident that the inquiry is fair and impartial; another quarter say they are moderately confident. Roughly 4 in 10 say they’re not confident.

Democrats are more likely to express confidence today compared with a year ago, 51 percent to 38 percent. Just 14 percent of Republicans say they are confident, which is unchanged from last year.

Members of Congress who will have to sit in judgment of Trump, probably shouldn't be making too many public statements about impeachment at this point. I reached out to some former members and so candidates we supported who ran and didn't wind up winning. Alan Grayson has been loud and clear about his support to move forward on impeaching Trump. This morning he reiterated that "Trump said on national TV that he fired Comey because of 'that Russia thing.' He exchanged information with Manafort and dangled a pardon after Manafort signed a plea agreement. That’s obstruction of justice. Trump called on Russia to hack Democratic e-mails, and Russia did so. Russia also ran a social media campaign to suppress votes for Clinton. Trump paid back Russia by removing Ukrainian support from the GOP platform, appointing a National Security Advisory on Russia’s payroll known as 'Misha' [Flynn], giving state secrets to the Russian Ambassador in the Oval Office, refusing to implement sanctions on Russia, and now withdrawing US troops from Russian ally Syria.  That’s collusion and treason. Trump should be impeached and removed from office because he has committed impeachable offenses, in broad daylight. Q.E.D."

Dan Cannon, who ran for an Indiana congressional seat this year, sees it much differently. "It's incredible that nearly half of Americans would not support impeachment at this point, given everything we know about our incompetent, narcissistic, crime-boss president. These poll responses, especially from Democrats, say a lot about how easy it is to manipulate the public into accepting a new normal for ethical behavior and the rule of law in general, and how quickly that manipulation can be accomplished. Still, as much as I would enjoy seeing Trump impeached, imprisoned, and humiliated, I think a better outcome would be to see him decisively defeated at the ballot box next year. Without the votes in the Senate, impeachment seems an exercise in futility anyway (Trump doesn't have the dignity even of a Richard Nixon type-- he won't resign). The real question is whether American democracy can handle another two years of Trumpism."

Los Angeles progressive activist and former congressional candidate Marcy Winograd told me she's "looking forward to a Democrat-controlled House conducting vigorous hearings and investigations into multiple Trump abuses of power, most importantly the use of corporate facilitators to pose as regulators, allowing polluters to plunder our land, air and water. My concern about impeachment is that I would not want to see the Vice President, a fundamentalist, ascend to the presidency to execute a dystopian vision. If we could impeach both Trump and Pence, then so be it. As for Trump obstructing justice by interfering with the Russia probe, I think the answer to that is clear: He obstructed justice when he fired the former FBI director James Comey and when tampered with witnesses on twitter, urging them, Michael Cohen and Roger Stone, not to cooperate with the Department of Justice."

Blue America supported Norman Solomon when he ran for Congress in northern California. We'd be way better off now if he had won. "The House," he told me today, "should move toward impeachment, though at best there'll be nothing immediate about it. First step is an impeachment investigation via committee."

Mueller's report or anything coming through the courts shouldn't impede or delay the House from going ahead with impeachment proceedings. Impeachment is a legislative branch function-- it's not a judicial function-- and frankly it has a lot more to do with politics and media than legalisms.

Tactical discourse can go on indefinitely, and conventional wisdom has been wrong so often in recent years that you gotta wonder why the pundits are taken so seriously at this point. From the outset of his presidency, Trump has been violating the foreign and domestic emoluments of the Constitution of the United States-- which is supposed to be 'the supreme law of the land.'

Impeachment would anger most Republicans. No telling what would do for independents. The 'backfire' argument cites what happened after Clinton was impeached, but skips over what happened after Nixon was forced from office on the verge of impeachment-- the Republicans lost lots of congressional seats and the White House.

No one is above the law-- what a concept!

John Laesch is another great candidate Blue America strongly supported (against Denny Hastert). I asked him what he thinks about all this impeachment discussion. He said that "A Democratic majority was elected by the American people to serve in the House of Representatives during the 2018 election. When those newly elected members of Congress take office we will probably see more congressional investigations on top of the ongoing Mueller investigation into Donald Trump’s Russian dealings. At this point, I think the American people want the United States Congress to do more to make sure that nobody, not even the President of the United States, is above the law. But as the Democratic majority pursues their 'death by a thousand cuts' strategy to thwart the rest of Trump’s chaotic presidency, they should be paying attention to polls like this one. According to a Dec. 2018 poll, 51% of Americans think that Trump should be impeached if he obstructed the Mueller investigation and 45% think that he should be impeached if he initiated hush money payments to Stormy Daniels. According to a Reuters  poll on Aug. 2018, 70% of Americans now support Medicare for All, single-payer healthcare. It doesn’t seem like rocket science and the math doesn’t lie. The American people are more willing and ready to support fundamental healthcare change than they are ready to support impeachment. A stronger strategy for Democrats would be to advance a bold, populist agenda that works for working Americans. This strategy has the added benefit of undermining Trump's populist rhetoric that helped get him elected."

Doug Applegate had the least honey-coated and more dire warning. A former Marine colonel, who ran for Congress in the Orange County/San Diego district and basically ran Darrell Issa out of office, he reminded us just moments ago that "Since 2016, I have stated publicly that Donald Trump was unfit to command. Donald Trump's actions disclosed to date far exceed the wrongful conduct of Nixon. Should we fail to impeach a president attempting to slay our Republic by suicide, the parties responsible (both political and individuals) will forever lose the moral authority to stop the next Donald Trump. Worst yet those political parties and individuals will have enabled the next despot to occupy the Oval Office. Chuck and Nancy must act now or step aside."

Only Bernie Sanders Can Keep Ohio From Trump Again

-by Tim Russo

Listen....oooh wah oooh

Some folks know I used to have a pretty good Dem rolodex. Thus, in summer 2016 I tried in vain to raise the alarm with the highest-up Democrats I could reach, for months, that Ohio was trending heavily Trump. As a leading indicator in presidential elections my entire lifetime, Ohio trending Trump meant the entire Midwest was trending Trump, too. The response was always the same, "Ha! Eat it Bernie Bro! So what. We don't need Ohio."

Now, Ohio is most definitely Trump country, just as it was Obama country the previous two presidential elections. Trump's ugly chaos is at least...change. Swing voters, but especially non-voters in Ohio, have wanted dramatic change, of any kind, since the crash of 2008 (remember that? Ohio sure does). Ohio knows the game is rigged, knows who rigged it, and as Democrats flail away at their Putin matroshka dolls denying the reality before their own eyes, it is folly to think an establishment Democrat, even any Democrat, will deliver the change Ohio has been demanding for a decade. Absent a non-Democrat (read, Bernie Sanders) seizing the Democratic Party in 2020 the way Jeremy Corbyn has seized Labour in the UK, Ohio will no doubt re-elect Trump, who even though he's con-man's con, at least fucks shit up good.

Do you want to know a secret? oooh wah oooh

For decades, the Ohio Democratic Party has zombie-walked in Clintonian Third Way pointlessness as if they think no one notices. Five days before the 2018 midterm, Ohio U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown, cruising to re-election, reverted to his factory setting of knifing the left in the back once he knows his paycheck is secure. On Nov. 1, Brown reversed his own position on reimposing Glass Steagall and breaking up the banks, with the added flourish of doing so to CNBC. Cherry on top, Sherrod's Pulitzer prize winning wife no doubt immediately put her inside game spin into overdrive to keep her husband's total surrender to capital safely, deeply buried in an unread CNBC transcript. No headlines. No op-eds. No trending post at DailyKos. No pearl clutching MSNBC roundtables with Nicolle Wallace or Joy Ann Reid. Just fealty to Wall Street fundraising safely assured from the self-proclaimed guardian of Ohio's left. Off to Iowa!

If Brown's 2018 opponent Jim Rennaci had two brain cells to rub together, he'd have pummeled Sherrod to pieces on this about face in favor of keeping the game rigged. Alas, Sherrod Brown has been for 30 years the luckiest man in Ohio politics. Brown's re-election was assured when his 2012 opponent Josh Mandel dropped out suddenly in 2018, leaving a pointless millionaire TrumpBot Jim Rennaci to attempt to unseat, against a midterm headwind, what is one of the strongest last names in the history of Ohio politics. Sherrod Brown now preens like a peacock mulling over a 2020 presidential run, Wall Street's biggest fear now certain to be unspoken in Iowa or New Hampshire. Viva La Resistance!

Give Sherrod a break. He was only aping the top of his ticket, Rich Cordray, who ran hard right every day for months via millions spent on a TV ad starring a Republican cop in uniform declaring his undying love for Rich Cordray, just like all his Republican cop friends he tells us! In a year we were told the core of the Democratic Party base is black women, as Mike Dewine ran left on medicaid, Cordray's right wing cop love was sugary frosting on the base-turnout-depressing cake baked first by shoving two women out of his gubernatorial primary. #ThemToo

Meanwhile, in Ohio's largest Democratic county, Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish worked at nothing harder in 2017-2018 than assuring himself not only no primary, but no Republican opponent in the fall. Less turnout, hooray! This, Budish achieved, by bending over for every sports billionaire demand he could find from the day he took office in 2015. Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson backed up Budish, spitting in the face of 20,000 signatures demanding a referendum on Budish's 2017 giveaway to Cavs owner Dan Gilbert. Jackson literally refused to accept the boxes in which the piles and piles of signature forms were presented.

Before Cleveland Congresswoman Marcia Fudge floated her name for House Speaker after the 2018 midterm, Fudge was instrumental in the back room guarantees to renovate Gilbert's Quicken Loans Arena at taxpayer expense. This latest sports billionaire largesse relies heavily on playoff game revenue. Anyone think the Cavs will be in the playoffs anytime soon now that Lebron James is a Laker? Taxpayers are still on the hook, alas. Marcia Fudge gets a chair's gavel.

Do you promise not to tell?

Down ballot, Ohio Democrats for decades have been a musical chairs rigged game for the sole purpose of their own state pensions. Former Cleveland City Council President and serial groper Marty Sweeney cooked up a move from City Council to state rep. a few years ago. Then, for 2018, Sweeney made an attempt to shift his pension...oops I mean public service...to the state senate. Defeated in that 2018 primary by an identity politics goldmine, Nickie Antonio (female, plus gay-- jackpot), Sweeney still cashed in by slotting his own daughter into his old state rep. seat. She's now my state representative. No one knows a damn thing she stands for, or her father stands for, or any other elected Democrat in Ohio, stands for, except their pensions.

In OH-12's heavily watched 2-round special election this midterm, Danny O'Connor still blames the Green Party for losing his utterly predictable 50-50 race, twice. Instead of moving left to make a Green Party candidate irrelevant, O'Connor aped Cordray's only other "message"-- he's cool. You see, being "cool" is supposed to be a message to the Ohio Democratic Party, just like Ted Strickland's message was something about good ol' boys in 2010. Despite knowing full well a Green would be in his race, both times, moving a single nanometer leftward was total heresy to O'Connor. Better to have the Green Party to slag off, anyway.

Not to be outdone, Youngstown Congressman Tim Ryan mulls running for president on the "yoga vote." The Zen Congressman Ryan is the most reliable NRA stooge in the entire Ohio congressional delegation, just as Cordray has been statewide, just as Ted Strickland before him. It's only a matter of time before one of the AR-15's Tim Ryan has built his congressional record defending sprays a yoga studio with the blood of innocents. Ryan must meditate in downward dog praying to his Third Eye that such a predictable horror doesn't occur before the Iowa State Fair in August, 2019.

Did I mention the Ohio Democratic Party ran a guy for governor 4 years ago who drove without a license for 10 years? Former FBI man Ed FitzGerald, whose only worse gubernatorial predecessor was the catastrophic Rob Burch of 1994, has predictably failed upward into six figures at the corporate law firm of Walter & Haverfield, doing god knows what. Immediately after 2014's meltdown, every single Ohio Democratic Party apparatchik carbuncled themselves onto the 2015 marijuana monopoly attempt not just as staff, but as shareholders-- neoliberalism! In a cut and paste of Dan Gilbert's 2009 casino gambling cash grab, ODP's great and good constitutionally attempted to seize legalized marijuana profits for themselves. Ohio's young voters ain't nobody's fool, so they mobilized to crush it. Ohio Democrats ignored that 2015 lesson, too.

  ...Ohio remains a predictive swing state.

These are just some of the reasons you hear nothing in today's media about a "blue wave" in Ohio. Ohio didn't irrevocably "turn red," Ohio was abandoned by Ohio Democrats to, for the benefit of, the rigged game. In the March 2016 Ohio primary, Hillary Clinton benefited from nothing more than Trump being on the other ticket, thereby splitting the radical change vote between Bernie Sanders and Trump. Ohio Democrats even mounted a campaign during that primary to get Bernie-leaning Democrats to switch to the Republican primary to vote for John Kasich, in what is now clearly the first pathetic attempt of Ohio Democrats to "stop Trump." Kasich's Ohio primary "win" is largely due to those Democrats. Bet Kasich himself has no idea.

Nothing establishment Democrats do will stop Trump in Ohio in 2020, unless it is Bernie Sanders forcing them to do it. Bernie is popular in Ohio and nationally, with both voters and non-voters alike, precisely because he is NOT a Democrat, who Democrats screwed over. Just like themselves. Average folks identify with Bernie for this reason, so if Bernie seizes the Democratic nomination in spite of all that, non-voters will be inspired to return to voting, and Obama-Obama-Trump voters will have someplace to go once they realize Trump's con game was no different. Unless Bernie Sanders drags the Ohio Democratic Party by their hair kicking and screaming the way Blairites do now as Corbyn inevitably approaches 10 Downing Street, the Ohio Democratic Party will once again hand Trump four years of power, con game or not.

 

Dilemma: If Pelosi Stays On As Democratic Leader, The Dems Will Never Take Back The House-- But Tim Ryan Is Even Worse

Pelosi's first DCCC chairman was Rahm Emanuel, certainly not someone with any seniority, just someone viewed as a tough guy. Ram's guiding philosophy-- that the House Democrats needed fewer progressives interested in policy and more Republican-lite corporate types happy to sit back and leave policy to the leadership-- appeared successful and it is the guiding philosophy to this day. But it was a huge long-term loser. Pelosi crowned him DCCC chair in 2005 and when the 2006 midterms came around, a midterm following the election of an increasingly unpopular George W. Bush, the Democrats picked up a net of 31 seats. Rahm-- with Pelosi smiling benignly-- took the credit, even though he fought tooth-and-nail to defeat several of the winners (among the only ones currently serving in Congress a decade later. Fact of the matter is, Rahm's recruits were almost all defeated in subsequent election. That's because it took rank-and-file Democrats to figure out that Rahm's recruits weren't actually Democrats and had nothing to offer them. When they did, they stopped voting for them and the disappeared from Congress.

Rahm was able to use the Mark Foley page scandal not just to replace Foley with a conservative Republican who switched parties and joined the Blue Dogs (only to be ignominiously defeated 2 years later), but he used the scandal (and coverup, which, ironically and for his own partisan reasons, he was personally part of) to help stimulate a tsunami of anger at Republicans on general.

The only members of the Class of 2006 who will still be serving in the House in January are Jerry McNerney (CA), who Rahm viciously opposed, Carol Shea-Porter (NH), also opposed by Rahm, Ed Perlmutter (CO), Joe Courtney (CT), Dave Loebsack (IA), John Yarmuth (KY), also opposed by Rahm, Tim Walz (MN) plus Keith Ellison, Yvette Clarke, Kathy Castor, John Sarbanes, Albio Sires, Steve Cohen and Peter Welch (who took open Democratic seats when, respectvely, Martin Sabo retired, Major Owens retired, Jim Davis ran for governor of Florida, Ben Cardin took a Maryland Senate seat, Bob Menendez took a New Jersey Senate seat, Harold Ford tried and failed to win a Tennessee Senate seat and Bernie became a Vermont senator). Rahm and the DCCC had nothing to do with any of those races. Oh-- and Hank Johnson, who defeated Georgia Democrat Cynthia McKinney in a primary.

In 2008 with Chris Van Hollen superficially running the DCCC but with Rahm still calling the shots-- and his operating philosophy firmly in place-- Obama;s coattails helped net another 21 Democratic members. The only freshmen who will still be in Congress in January is Wall Street whore Jim Himes (CT), Dina Titus (NV) and Gerry Connolly (VA) plus-- unrelated to the DCCC-- Chellie Pingree, who took Tom Allen's seat when he ran (unsuccessfully) for the Senate, Paul Tonko who took Mike McNulty's blue seat when he retired, Marcia Fudge who replaced Stepahnie Tubbs Jones when she suddenly died, and Kurt Schrader, who took Democrat Darlene Hooley's seat when she retired.

In 2010, all Rahm's chicken's came home to roost-- and then some. The Democrats lost a net of 63 seats and ceded the Speakership to Boehner. Almost all Rahm's Blue Dogs and New Dems were wiped out in one day, a bunch of shitty candidates who should never have been in Congress as Democrats to begin with, garbage like Bobby Bright (Blue Dog-AL), Ann Kirkpatrick (New Dem-AZ), Harry Mitchell (Blue Dog-AZ), John Salazar (Blue Dog-CO), Walt Minnick (Blue Dog-ID), Melissa Bean (New Dem-IL), Baron Hill (Blue Dog-IN), Travis Childers (Blue Dog-MS), Mike McMahon (Blue Dog-NY), Dan Maffei (New Dem-NY), Zack Space (Blue Dog-OH), Chris Carney (Blue Dog-PA)... I think you get the picture.

After the debacle Pelosi should have fired Van Hollen and retired from leadership herself. But deciding she was the indispensable personality, she kicked Van Hollen upstairs and put him on the Speaker track and found someone even orse-- and far stupider and more venal than Van Hollen, the odious Steve Israel. Israel should have been able to win back the House-- or make signficant gains in that direction-- because of Obama's reelection. But he failed-- because failing is the only thing he can always be counted on to do. He put Rahm's philosophy into overdrive and recruited the ugliest array of Blue Dogs and New Dems ever, including right-wing monstrosities like Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Ami Bera (CA), Patrick Murphy (FL), Brad Schneider (IL), Cheri Bustos (IL), John Delaney (MD), Sean Patrick Maloney (NY), Filemon Vega (TX), Pete Gallego (TX) Derek Kilmer (WA) and Denny Heck (WA).

Always one to reward failure, she kept Israel on for the 2014 midterms, in which he lost a net of 13 seats and then had him give a worthless Ben Ray Lujan on-the-job-training this cycle where he failed all expectations except one-- that Pelsoi would again reward cluelessness and abysmal failure. So unless Pelosi is beaten Wednesday, the DCCC will once again be led by a guaranteed loser.

The sad part is that the person challenging her, Tim Ryan is worse than she is and would likely keep Lujan on or appoint someone even even worse. Ryan, already feeling freed of his status as a terminal backbencher/pipsqueak, was all over the talking heads shows this weekend and feeling his oats enough to publicly counsel Hillary to not challenge Trump with a recount. On Meet The Press he said she could do whatever she wanted but that "Im moving on myself." On Fox News Sunday, understandably happy to bolster someone so incompetent and flawed, his line was how the House Democrats need "a new message and a new messenger." Everyone is too polite-- or conflicted-- to say "but not a worse one than we already have."

Referring to about 80% of the congressional delegation, he said "I think even our members from the coastal areas recognize that we are not a national party right now. They understand politics, and I think they understand that this is about having a new message and a new messenger." Without ever calling her and Hoyer and Clyburn "sclerotic" or "geriatric," that's his appeal and a lot of the younger members are buying a decidedly simpleminded approach. Wednesday-- day after tomorrow-- is D-Day. I can't imagine Pelosi could lose it a philandering nothing like Ryan but... look who the president-elect is.

Will Pelosi Survive Wednesday's Leadership Election?

Congress already has one foolish Ryan too many in leadership

Until this past Wednesday, the only House Democrats who have publicly gotten behind Tim Ryan's challenge to Pelosi's leadership were a gaggle of reactionaries from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party: Blue Dog co-chairs Kurt Schrader (OR) and Jim Cooper (TN) and rot gut Wall Street-owned New Dems Kathleen Rice (NY) and Ed Perlmutter (CO). As much as we criticize Pelosi's leadership here, she has been something of a bulwark against the corrupt, right-wing agenda espoused by the New Dems and Blue Dogs, who now see their opportunity-- under the guise of reform-- to replace her. She should be replaced, but not by someone even worse and far less capable.

Then Wednesday, a normal Democrat joined the ranks of the anti-Pelosi faction: Marcia Fudge (OH). Fudge pointed to the disaster the DCCC has become under Pelosi's leadership.

"I believe now is the right time for new leadership," Fudge said as she questioned the effectiveness of the party's strategy in recent years. "We continue to rely on consultants who know less than we about our districts and our states."

"I am now and have always been a loyal Democrat. I will support all those we elect to leadership positions. However, I do believe this is the time for a new direction and am confident my colleague from Ohio is the right choice."

When it became clear that DCCC Chairman Steve Israel had implemented his own racism in DCCC policies by refusing to fund African-American candidates-- including an incumbent-- in white-majority districts, the only prominent Democrat to call him out on it was Congressional Black Caucus then-chair, Marcia Fudge. Pelosi let her complaints pass.

The leadership election will take place in 4 days-- Wednesday, in a closed door Democratic caucus session. Pelosi has come up with a plan to have 5 elected DCCC co-chairs but is still clinging to her prerogative to appoint the actual DCCC chairman, unlike the Republicans, who elect their NRCC chair. Pelosi's 4 DCCC chairs-- Rahm Emanuel, Chris Van Hollen, Steve Israel and Ben Ray Lujan-- have all been complete catastrophes and are responsible for the loss of dozens and dozens of Democratic seats and the dominance of the GOP in Congress.

UPDATE: The Useful Idiot

The Blue Dogs and New Dems, far more eager to collaborate with Trump than Pelosi is, hope to use Ryan to take out Pelosi. No one thought it could happen but if the New Dems stick together they can cause a lot of damage. A notorious womanizer, some people find Ryan's presumption smacking of frat boy sexism.

Ryan’s challenge to Pelosi is remarkable in that despite his seven terms in Congress he has always been considered a backbench member. Typically, to aspire to leadership, a member needs to demonstrate a particular savvy to network with other members to get them on side, which requires a decent amount of skill and personality to pull off.

Ryan has the personality, he has yet to show the skill.

...But Ryan’s biggest challenge is also his best attribute; he is everything 76-year-old Pelosi isn’t. She is the progressive liberal from San Francisco, an affluent cosmopolitan city; he is the moderate New Deal Democrat from Youngstown, a former industrial giant trying to recover from decades of decline. She is a very wealthy political dynamo, he is upper-middle class at best and a novice.

Pelosi is a woman, Ryan is not.

This last difference was underscored in a recent tweet by justice editor Ian Millhiser at the left-wing Web site Think Progress: “This thing where an obscure male backbencher thinks he deserves to replace the most accomplished woman in Congress is how sexism works,” he declared.

Yeah, Pelosi's Got To Be Replaced-- But It Should Be By Someone Better Than Her... And Better Than Tim Ryan

Given: Nancy Pelosi needs to be replaced as House Democratic Leader. In any Parliamentary democracy she would have been replaced within days of the 2010 electoral catastrophe she oversaw. The premise for keeping her-- especially inside her own circle of supporters-- has always been that Hoyer, a creature of K Street, is far worse. And he is. Pelosi will be 77 in March. Three months later Hoyer will turn 78. And the #3 ranking Democratic Leader, Jim Clyburn, turns 77 the month after that. I guess they could save money and have a joint birthday party-- and then all announce they much-overdue retirements.

Replacing Pelosi shouldn't mean replacing her with someone worse and less capable than she is, a description that could easily be assigned to either Hoyer or Clyburn. Or, I'm afraid, Tim Ryan, the one Democrat with the courage and temerity to have stepped up so far to formally challenge her.

I don't hate Ryan-- not Tim Ryan. We've been covering him since he left the Ohio state Senate in 2002 to run for a northeast Ohio congressional seat when his boss, corrupt conservaDem Joim Traficant was forced to resign in disgrace. Ryan is not corrupt and he's not a right-winger, although he ran with the NRA's endorsement and has been very supportive of their bloodthirsty agenda. He's also not a progressive and not someone who has shown, at least 'til now, any leadership skills. I've been talking with his staff for over a decade about his "impending" announcement that he was finally switching from being an anti-Choice throwback to supporting women's rights to make up their own minds on their health issues. He was always just about to do it-- and they didn't. I hear now that he actually has officially become pro-Choice. I wouldn't want to count on him if I was a gal in need of someone to fend off the other Ryan... and Pence.

As for Ryan and guns, I recall him being out on the hustings with Hillary when she was attacking Bernie as a gun nut. I found it odd, in as much as Bernie never was and the Clinton surrogate by her side certainly is. Ryan, I wrote at the time, has a good record on trade and some other economic issues. There are some issues though, where he and Hillary haven't been in sync. She would love the primary to be about how much better she is than Bernie on gun safety. Her score from the NRA is an admirable F. Bernie is an admirable D-minus. Ryan is no where near as good on guns as Hillary-- or Bernie. He got an A from the Buckeye Firearms Association and, although he's been better lately, as recently as 2009 the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence gave Ryan (Tim, not Paul) a ZERO score. The NRA has given him an A and the last rating I could find from them for him was an 83% in 2012."

A much-read article about Ryan in New York Magazine by Marin Cogin last year, The Congressman on a Quest to Make America More Zen, showed him in a very different light than a gun-worshipping anti-Choicer. She seems impressed that he's been in Congress "penning books on the power of meditation and what he calls 'the real food revolution,' advocating for yoga, meditation, and unplugging from the internet as a salve to the stresses of modern existence... He’s introduced bills to add holistic and alternative-medicine programs for the treatment of veterans, to teach schoolchildren social and emotional skills through better self-awareness, to fund 'integrated nutrition curricula' in medical schools-- and that’s just in the last Congress. In 2009, he secured funding for a program that teaches mindfulness at schools in his district; students there instruct each other to take deep breaths when they’re upset, or visit the peace corner to take a break from classroom stress. He’s also trying to introduce his quiet revolution to Capitol Hill, organizing a weekly staff meditation session when Congress is in town, which he estimates is usually attended by 20 to 40 staffers, and a members-only session in the House chapel, which is less well attended."

Were he to become Democratic Leader, probably more people would attend. He's so committed to a higher lifestyle that he once unsuccessfully hit on attractive spiritual guru Marianne Williamson and has a reputation, though married with 3 kids, as a serial womanizer, something Pelosi supporters are "quietly" buzzing about now. He was also arrested drunk outside of some Joe Crowley event in Virginia. It takes a lot of yang to balance all the alcoholic yin.

His first public supporter couldn't be a worse omen of what faction of Democrats are backing him-- corrupt Wall Street hack Kathleen Rice, a pretty vile conservative New Dem from Nassau County on Long Island. Both Ryan and Rice have voting records graded "F" by ProgressivePunch, though her F (a 62.0 crucial vote score) is much worse than his F (78.06).

So, yeah, the House Democrats should get new leadership-- not just by getting rid of Pelosi but Hoyer and Clyburn as well-- AND they should be upgading not downgrading. Smarter, better leaders than Pelosi or Tim Ryan? Barbara Lee, Ted Lieu, Mark Pocan, Raul Grijalva... and if that's all too outsidery, they can try Xavier Becerra, the chairman of the House Democratic caucus and the 4th highest ranking member of the current leadership, a charismatic speaker and even a bit of a progressive.

Hillary Might Be Better Off Next Nov. If She Doesn't Allow EMILY's List To Offend Bernie's Supporters With Their Ugly, Aggressive Lies

Dream ticket

Aside from the lesser of two evils approach she will eventually win or lose the general election on, Hillary's most salient appeal is that it's time-- past time-- for a woman. But she shouldn't use that argument up in the primary. Attacking Bernie as somehow sexist is really stupid. First of all, it isn/t even remotely true-- it's Carly Fiorina/Donald Trum/Ben Carson/Marco Rubio territory false-- and Democratic voters know it. This wasn't written by a Bernie partisan:

Let’s discuss first the charge, then the truth and then the impact of Hillary Clinton’s false charge that Bernie Sanders is a sexist during their recent debates over gun control.

Here is the charge: Mr. Sanders has been saying that nothing is achieved by politicians “shouting” about gun control. In response, Ms. Clinton replied she was not “shouting” in her advocacy and implied that when men—in this case Mr. Sanders—say women are “shouting” they are being sexist.

Here is the truth: Bernie Sanders is not a sexist.

Period. Exclamation point. End of discussion. Mr. Sanders has a stellar and uncompromising history of supporting the range of rights and aspirations for women. He and many other male and female politicians often use the word “shouting” as a figure of speech applied equally to men and women in the course of political debate. Ms. Clinton knows this well. She also knows very well that Bernie Sanders is not sexist.

If this column offered a truth-o-meter, this political attack by Ms. Clinton that Mr. Sanders is sexist would earn the maximum number of Pinocchios.

Here is the effect of this Clinton charge against Bernie Sanders: first, it does not enhance her reputation for being trustworthy, which is in need of enhancing, and second, it angers supporters of Mr. Sanders, who she will desperately need to vote for her in November 2016 if she is ultimately the Democratic nominee for president.

“Who doth ambition shun” wrote Shakespeare in As You Like It. The rap against Ms. Clinton, which sometimes concerns even many of her supporters, is that sometimes in order to win an election she plays fast and loose with words, with the result that she generates an abnormally high level of distrust from voters.

The sad and strange thing about the bogus attack by Ms. Clinton against Mr. Sanders when she suggested he is sexist is that it was both wholly false and wholly unnecessary. At the very moment Ms. Clinton was regaining strength after her strong performance before the Benghazi committee-- after an assist from Mr. Sanders, who showed his character and integrity defending her over the emails during the debate—she regressed to the kind of low blow that accounts for the kind of distrust she often generates.

...Whatever the merits of the gun control debate, Bernie Sanders is not a sexist. His comments about “shouting” had nothing to do with his views about women. The Clinton charge of sexism was both false and offensive to supporters of Mr. Sanders.

Bernie Sanders is the candidate of conscience for progressives. On issue after issue-- including issues of vital importance to women-- Mr. Sanders has been a leader and champion in the House and the Senate, year after year, decade after decade. He has talked the talk and walked the walk in good times and bad, under Democratic and Republican presidents and Congresses, whether his positions championing progressive causes were popular or not.

It is a political mistake of the first order of magnitude for Ms. Clinton to falsely charge Mr. Sanders with sexism. This charge is transparently false, unworthy of the Clinton campaign and unworthy of the Democratic party.

Budowsky is right to point out that her "charge of sexism was both false and offensive to supporters of Mr. Sanders." And, if she wins the primary, she can't win the general if his supporters don't turn out for her. Her policy positions are already ugly enough without her giving them more reason not to. And if he wins the primary, if she continues to be so mean, she won't have a chance to be the first woman vice president. Remember, he's still ahead in New Hampshire and, continuing to catch up in Iowa. USAToday and the Des Moines Register write that both have grown in popularity in the state and that the gap between them has slimmed to 7 percentage points, 48% to 41%, without Joe Biden in the race."

Matt Brunei comes at the Hillary/EMILY's List-- of course it was their idea-- trope that Bernie is a sexist from an entirely different position. Each campaign has approximately the same proportion of men to women, she has a few more women and he has a few more men. "There simply isn’t a gender demographic divide... If you wanted to write about demographic divides, it is age and race that matter in the Clinton/Sanders fight. Gender doesn’t even register." Yesterday Dante Chinni wrote in the Wall Street Journal that "Sanders’s strong numbers with young voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, as well as his high 'positive feeling' number nationally, suggest he could play a significant role for the Democrats in that fight next fall, even if he doesn’t win the nomination." If Hillary keeps following the deranged EMILY's List approach-- demonizing progressive men-- it will do the same thing for her it did for Wendy Greuel, Colleen Hanabusa, Martha Coakley, Nikki Tinker, Alex Sink, Michelle Nunn, Marjorie Margolies, Kay Hagan, and Emily Cain... lose her the race. EMILY's List is poison. Hillary better be as careful of them as other successful Democratic women have been, keeping them at arm's length from her core campaign.

And Clinton's false, ugly charges about sexism, pissed off Bernie and his campaign in a big way.

“If there is going to be this other campaign of sniping and insinuation then that is going to precipitate a reaction from us,” Tad Devine, a senior adviser to Sanders, told The Hill. “That reaction would take the form of a more direct setting-out of policy differences.”

Those differences would likely encompass Clinton’s recent embrace of more liberal positions on issues such as free trade and the environment. Sanders has a long record of advocating for progressive policies.

More generally, Devine also suggested that to unilaterally disarm would be to allow Clinton’s team to dictate the dynamics of the race.

“The reality of presidential campaigns-- and I think campaigns at every level-- is that if you have conflict you have coverage. And if one side is engaging in conflict and the other is not, the coverage is going to be one-sided against the side that is being attacked.

“If they are going to do this back and forth about sexism, we have got to talk more about whether she can fulfill some of the promises she is making about the big banks and so on.”

...At the Iowa Democratic Party’s Jefferson-Jackson dinner last weekend-- a major event in the run-up to that state’s first-in-the-nation caucuses — Sanders assailed Clinton repeatedly, albeit without naming her.

Referring to Clinton’s recent declaration of opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which she had once called the “gold standard” of trade agreements, Sanders said, “I did not support it yesterday. I do not support it today. And I will not support it tomorrow. It is not now, nor has it ever been, the gold standard of trade agreements.”

Sanders also pledged that, if he were elected president, he would “govern based on principle, not poll numbers,” a remark that echoed then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama’s speech at the equivalent event in late 2007.

And, if you would like to see someone in the White House governing by principle... give Bernie-- and the congressional candidates who have endorsed him-- a hand.




UPDATE: Tim Ryan, Hillary, Guns...

I noticed that Hillary's surrogate in New Hampshire today is Ohio Democrat Tim Ryan. Ryan has a good record on trade and some other economic issues. There are some issues though, where he and Hillary haven't been in sync. She would love the primary to be about how much better she is than Bernie on gun safety. Her score from the NRA is an admirable F. Bernie is an admirable D-minus. Ryan is no where near as good on guns as Hillary-- or Bernie. He got an A from the Buckeye Firearms Association and, although he's been better lately, as recently as 2009 the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence gave Ryan (Tim, not Paul) a ZERO score. The NRA has given him an A and the last rating I could find from them for him was an 83% in 2012.

Ryan has also come around on Choice lately. As recently as 2006 NARAL rated him a zero and a 50% in 2009. Since then, NARAL has given him top ratings and Planned Parenthood's PAC gave him a 78% for the years 2009 thru 2014. Maybe Hillary is going to make him as good a Democrat as Bernie is on those issues. But I doubt it.