Today Is Election Day In IL-02

The top ad was the original ad Bloomberg put out against Halvorson and then someone got them to alter it in a way that forced Toi Hutchinson out of the race. This is it:



Technically, it's just a primary to pick the Democratic nominee to replace Jesse Jackson, Jr. But in a district where Jackson won reelection-- without even campaigning-- with 181,067 votes (63%) against a Republican opponent who got 67,396 votes (23%) and where Obama took 80.7% of the vote in November, the primary is the real contest. Whomever wins today will be the next Member of Congress for this Southland district. Blue America endorsed state Senator Toi Hutchinson primarily because she seemed like the strongest candidate who could beat self-described conservative Debbie Halvorson-- and, most important, not splinter the progressive and African American vote that would allow Halvorson to get back into Congress. We hoped to interest a nonplused online community in a race no one seemed to care about or understand. Eventually a few online groups and communities did get involved but decided that Toi was tainted because she filled in an NRA questionnaire badly-- even though she was a sponsor of the bill to ban assault weapons and high caliber magazines and even though she had never voted with the NRA. In fact, once the Bloomberg folks were persuaded to changed their TV ad campaign from just attacking Halvorson to also attacking Toi... well it wasn't a race Toi had the resources to stay in.

She immediately-- the next day-- withdrew and threw urged her supporters to back Robin Kelly, the other progressive candidate. Blue America respected that and endorsed Kelly. And then yesterday-- the bad news. New polling from WCKG shows Chicagoland voters so angry about the millions of dollars being spent by Bloomberg that his ads are backfiring and Halvorson has taken the lead (at least according to a poll by a Republican who was once convicted of manipulating numbers). Another poll shows Robin winning by double digits.

Pollster Rod McCulloch told The Daily Journal that negative ads paid for New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Independence USA PAC “may have backfired.”

The ads highlighted Halvorson’s past alliance with the National Rifle Association. But conservative, pro-gun voters in Will and Kankakee counties may have taken the ads as an endorsement of Halvorson, and may be willing to cross over to the Democratic primary, because the Republican primary is meaningless. The Illinois State Rifle Association has sent postcards to its members declaring "A Vote For Robin Kelly Is A Vote For Michael Bloomberg" and "A Vote For Debbie Halvorson Is A Vote For AMERICA."

The Illinois State Rifle Association is the state lobbying version of the NRA and below are copies of what they've been sending out:

If you plan to vote today... bring a friend. If you have two friends, bring them both. If the NRA wins this one it will set back the gun safety movement gigantically. Let's hope that the liberal PACs, which played such a huge role in driving Toi Hutchinson out of the race on largely trumped up and hysterical charges of being an NRA candidate, can pull this off for Kelly. She'll make an excellent Member of Congress and Halvorson has already shown herself to be a shill for not just the NRA but for Wall Street as well. Chicagoland congressmembers Jan Schakowsky, Danny Davis, Bobby Rush and Mike Quigley took the unusual step of endorsing a challenger against a former colleague. That's because Robin Kelly really is good and Debbie Halvorson really is horrible.

How Toxic Is The NRA's Political Embrace Now?

Right now there's a contest in the House. Which Democrat has voted most frequently with Boehner and Cantor against progressive ideas in crucial roll call votes? When you just count the current session, Arizona ConservaDem Ann Kirkpatrick-- who has cast aside her 100% pro-Boehner voting record-- and is now tied exactly tied with Rick Crawford (R-AR), Aaron Schock (R-IL), and Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), 14.29%-- is the worst of the worst. 13 Republicans score higher than Kirkpatrick before you get to the next most horrible Democrat, freshman Gloria Negrete McLeod, who clocks in at a putrid 28.57%. That's 28.57 with Democrats... 71.43% with Boehner and Cantor. She's off to a bad start... be not an unexpected one if you followed her conservative record in the California legislature.

Kirkpatrick has the excuse-- and she's always whining about it-- that her district is too reddish to support anyone with a progressive record. She beat her GOP opponent 49-45% in November, while Romney took the district with 50.4%. McLeod can't use that excuse. Obama trounced Romney in CA-35, a healthy 67.4- 30.6% and McLeod wasn't up against a Republican; she beat a Blue Dog opponent, Joe Baca. She beat him 56- 44%, something no one saw coming. No one.

A week before the November election, Mayor Bloomberg dumped over $3 million dollars into the race and swamped Baca. He did it for one reason, Baca was one of the NRA's biggest supporters-- along with Georgia Blue Dog John Barrow-- inside the House Democratic Caucus. Bloomberg sent a message to incumbents that cozying up to the NRA could cost you your cozy career. (Nevermind that McLeod didn't even have a bad NRA record herself, she was more than willing to denounce the NRA on behalf of Bloomberg's strategy.)

Last week, Toi Hutchinson's sponsorship of a virulently anti-NRA bill in the state legislature wasn't enough to save her from the wrath of Bloomberg and other NRA foes. An NRA questionnaire she filled out was enough to cause Bloomberg to flood the district with anti- NRA ads implying she was an NRA-backed candidate. Bloomberg's villain didn't sound like a villain to me, not in the guest post she did for DWT and not in the video she released in January:



But the NRA brand is becoming so toxic that once it sticks to a candidate, Democrats, moderates and independents start turning away. Debbie Halvorson, the actual NRA candidate in IL-02, started out as the clear frontrunner. Next Tuesday she is likely to lose to the anti-NRA candidate, Robin Kelly. The NRA seal of approval is a career death sentence outside of the Old Confederacy. Yesterday Politico reported that the NRA is going to spend $375,000 attacking Democrats in hot Senate races in Arkansas, Louisiana, North Carolina, West Virginia, Alaska, Colorado, Montana, New Hampshire and South Dakota and against one mainstream Republican (Susan Collins) in Maine. The NRA ads will probably guarantee Collins' reelection and aren't likely to win the GOP seats in New Hampshire, Montana (where Max Baucus has an NRA A+ rating, better than most Republicans!), Colorado, or even Alaska. The other states... that remains to be seen. Mark Begich (AK) and Tim Johnson (SD) haven't exactly been the enemies of gun owners and the NRA gave Johnson a solid A.

The NRA has a big base in these states, although private polling shows that that base has been having serious second thoughts after the Newtown, Connecticut school massacre and the unhinged reaction from NRA president Wayne LaPierre.

Even before Newtown, the NRA's bite was failing to live up to its bark. Last year the NRA spent considerable money trying to defeat its enemies and elect lackeys. That worked out very badly for them on election day. Big NRA supporters among House Dems who lost their reelections, despite NRA financial help, included

• Jason Altmire (Blue Dog/New Dem-PA)- $2,500
• Joe Baca (Blue Dog-CA)- $2,500
• Ben Chandler (Blue Dog-KY)- $4,000
• Mark Critz (PA)- $3,500
• Kathleen Hochul (New Dem-NY)- $3,000
• Tim Holden (Blue Dog-PA)- $4,950
• Larry Kissell (Blue Dog-NC)- $3,000

The NRA also contributed to other PACs, almost $200,000, much of it to the RNC, the Romney Victory PAC, the NRSC, the Blue Dog PAC and shady leadership PACs run by Boehner, Cantor, Miss McConnell and Patrick McHenry. But that ain't all, folks. The NRA also ran their own campaigns in the congressional races. Of the $9,493,815 they spent, $6,735,955 went into negative ads against Democrats; $2,563,137 in favor of Republicans. They also spent $179,469 to help defeat Richard Lugar in the Indiana primary on behalf of Richard Mourdock. Some of their biggest spends-- all wasted-- for 2012:

• $5,771,433 against Obama
• $1,850,526 for Romney
• $537,667 for Richard Mourdock (R-IN)
• $344,832 against Sherrod Brown (D-OH)
• $210,823 against Claire McCaskill (D-MO)
• $163,967 against Tammy Baldwin (D-WI)

Toxic!

Toi Hutchinson-- Knowing Where To Draw The Line

Keeping the focus on the bad guy, Debbie Halvorson

Yesterday, in the midst of the unraveling of Breitbart's Friends of Hamas silliness, a tweet flew by my feed making fun of some right-wing numbskull for accusing Chuck Hagel of being a puppy killer. No one likes a puppy killer. It reminded me of some distinctively non right-wing numbskullery from a couple weeks ago by some over enthusiastic Robin Kelly supporters who felt the best way to advance their candidate would be to destroy her primary opponent, not the self-described conservative Debbie Halvorson but the fellow-progressive Toi Hutchinson. I kept getting e-mails from a formerly trusted liberal SuperPAC claiming that the NRA, which was working to defeat Hutchinson, a co-sponsor of a bill in the Illinois state Senate to ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines, was backing Halvorson. They knew it wasn't true. But it fit their agenda... regardless of how ugly and Republican the tactic is.

One of them told me Toi was also a puppy killer. Just like she hadn't actually ever voted for anything the NRA wanted, it turns out she had never actually killed a puppy, at least not in front of any witnesses. In fact, she was the lead sponsor of a bill to ban puppy mills, the exact opposite of what she was being accused of, which came down to filling in a misleading NRA questionnaire. Another candidate who got that questionnaire, a gun-owner himself, told me when he read three questions, he laughed and ripped it up and threw it in the garbage. In retrospect, it's what Toi Hutchinson should have done instead. I think she knows that now and I think she knows that that's why Robin Kelly is probably going to Congress and why she withdrew from the race and endorsed Robin.

Endorsed Robin? Not Debbie Halvorson? How could she not endorse Debbie Halvorson? Their pictures are all over the TV together. And the NRA loves them both, right? No, that isn't true. The NRA is backing Halvorson and it has always been backing Halvorson. The NRA, which rated Halvorson an A-plus and Hutchinson an A-minus, changed its mind about Hutchinson as soon as they saw what she was actually up to-- fighting their agenda.

After Hutchinson faced the reality that staying in the race could only result in splintering the progressive vote and allowing Halvorson to slip into the seat, she withdrew and urged her supporters to get behind Robin Kelly. I know because the day before she announced it, she called me and asked Blue America to help Robin win. She told me how crucial it is to stop Halvorson. The next morning at 6AM, we endorsed Robin Kelly.

But the attacks on Toi, the puppy killing NRA backer, had been so passionate and so ferocious that she was marked in the minds of many non-right-wing numbskulls as someone worthy of scorn. Some refuse to believe she endorsed Robin or that she "meant" it. Great strategy for building a progressive movement! I know some former Republicans-- who even admit they voted for Bush-- who have seen the light and are now dedicated progressives. I'm not talking about opportunistic trash like Charlie Crist and Patrick Murphy; I mean real stalwarts out there fighting the good fight who saw the error of their ways. I welcome them and celebrate them. Even if Toi Hutchinson checked off some bad boxes on a bad questionnaire she should have tossed, she did all the right things when it counted-- as a legislator.

Not every progressive group has jumped into the same bag. Here's the message TruthBTold sent out to their members this week. I thought it was pretty savvy:

The 2nd Congressional race in Chicago, Illinois, had all the symptoms of a system gone a foul. With over 20 candidates in the race and hardly any of them with real political experiences, it looked as though the contested open seat would turn into a full-fledged circus. But with less than two weeks left, the contestants have swindled down to less than 10 after Patrick Brutus has withdrawn his candidacy and given the thumbs up to Robin Kelly, who appears to be the crowd's favorite now.

It seems that the many candidates who've taken themselves out of the race, mostly have endorsed Kelly. Front runner, Toi Hutchinson suspended her goal of being the next Congresswoman of the 2nd District from Illinois on this past Sunday, insisted her loyal voters support Robin Kelly as well. Toi has shown amazing professionalism and her family, friends and supporters have stood beside her during the last few months since entering the race.

Now Hutchinson can immerse herself in continuing her efforts to be a terrific state senator, bringing real world results to her district. Hutchinson ran a great campaign and inspired the voters of the 2nd District to look carefully at the issues facing their far south side communities. Toi wanted to focus on jobs and economic development and equal housing, but her lack of funds contributed to her deciding to put her advanced political aspirations in the freezer for a later date.

Most people think the Bloomberg Super PAC, coming to Chicago and tossing over 2 million dollars to persuade voters is dirty and destructive politics. It's evil and very divisive. This is probably one reason why Hutchinson also decided to exit the race; it's very difficult for her or anyone to compete against millions of dollars being flooded into the state of Illinois, all for Kelly's election efforts only. And the PAC doesn't have to mention Kelly's name one bit, just keep beating down the leading contenders and voters will focus on the better of the political survivors. Toi should be admired for being smart enough to know right from wrong. Even though others do not!

The following are statements from Toi Hutchinson, Robin Kelly, Toni Preckwinkle and Jan Schakowsky:

• Senator Toi Hutchinson: “I am ending my campaign for Congress and throwing my support behind Robin Kelly. I urge those who have been supporting me to now work hard for Robin. I have said from day one that this campaign is not about me or any one person; it’s about moving America forward and standing with President Obama to create new jobs and safer communities."

• Robin Kelly: Today is a good day for the Second Congressional District. While Senator Hutchinson and I haven’t agreed on everything, we have a strong mutual respect, share a passion for public service and dedication to the people in Chicago and the Southland. I’m pleased to have her on our team.”

• Toni Preckwinkle, Cook County Board President: “Robin Kelly and Toi Hutchinson are both very strong, independent woman and public servants. I consider them both friends of mine. During Debbie Halvorson’s one term in Congress, she opposed President Obama on dozens of issues including critical Wall St. reform and extending benefits for the long term unemployed. I’m proud of Toi for agreeing to put voters before her own ambitions. She is young and has a bright future ahead of her. I did not want to see her campaign close with negative attacks at a time when Robin is surging with momentum to capture the Democratic nomination for Congress.”

• Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky: “This election is too important for our party to remain divided. I’m thrilled that Senator Hutchinson has joined me today in supporting Kelly’s campaign for Congress. Senator Hutchinson is a strong leader with a bright future. I applaud her for doing what is best for the Democratic Party.”

Robin Kelly has also been endorsed by most of the old-school elected operatives, who's attempts to attach themselves to Kelly's appeared winning campaign, only to remain relevant and active a few more years, all while doing very little for the Black community they serve throughout Chicago's South and West side.

At least none of our liberal friends dressed Toi up like this

Robin Kelly For Congress (IL-02)

This morning state Senator Toi Hutchinson, back in Chicago from working to get the marriage equality bill passed in Springfield, made an inevitable decision. She's pulling out of the race for Jesse Jackson's old seat (IL-02) and endorsing the other progressive candidate, Robin Kelly.

From the first, Blue America's position has always been that the key to preventing self-described "conservative Democrat" Debbie Halvorson from worming her way back into Congress was to keep the non-Halvorson vote from splintering. Toi looked best equipped to do that but over the course of the last two weeks, momentum has shifted to Robin Kelly. Respected Chicago congressmembers Danny Davis, Jan Schakowsky and Bobby Rush have all endorsed Kelly and it became apparent that she would be the strongest non-Halvorson. Toi is urging her supporters to rally around Robin and make sure that Halvorson doesn't get back into Congress to work for Wall Street and the NRA.

Toi, on announcing her withdrawal this morning: “I urge those who have been supporting me to now work hard for Robin over the next 9 days. I have said from Day One that this campaign is not about me or any one person; it’s about moving America forward and standing with President Obama to create new jobs and safer communities. Robin is a friend, and has captured momentum in pulling our community together. I am simply unwilling to risk playing a role going forward that could result in dividing our community at a time when we need unity more than ever.”

IL-02 Special Election And The Gun Question

Last October no one thought California state Senator Gloria McLeod had much of a chance to defeat incumbent Blue Dog Congressman Joe Baca in the new CA-35. Baca raised over a million dollars and McLeod had only raised $302,550. But on election day McLeod wound up with 72,562 votes (56%) to Baca's 57,304 (44%). What happened? The big anti-NRA PAC, Independence USA, funded, in part by Mayor Bloomberg, dumped independent expenditures into the district to the tune of $3,296,583 (almost all of it in the last week) and that was the end of one of the NRA's most enthusiastic Blue Dogs. But McLeod wasn't exactly an NRA enemy either. She was a recent-- and sincere-- convert to an anti-NRA position and before the election they had given her a B- rating. They were happy that she had voted against AB-352 here in California, which called for microstamping bullets fired from semi-automatic guns. Had McLeod and one other Assemblymember voted for it, it would have passed. The NRA was happy with her; now it rates her a C... and Joe Baca, of course, was a solid A.

Mayor Bloomberg's group-- which is responsible for the ad above attacking self-described conservative and former Congresswoman Debbie Halvorson-- backed McLeod because they wanted to get rid of Baca. I can only assume they also believed in the sincerity of McLeod's conversion away from previous support for NRA positions. Debbie Halvorson has stuck to her position opposing President Obama's proposal to ban assault weapons, which is why the NRA is so desperate to see her elected two weeks from today.

I hope you've already seen the video and read the guest post Illinois state Senator Toi Hutchinson did for us a month ago about why she had decided to sponsor legislation in Springfield that bans assault weapons and high capacity magazines. Right now she's a critical part of the effort to ban these weapons in her state. She’s co-sponsoring the legislation and negotiating with more conservative downstate members of the Democratic caucus here. Because of her previous A- from the NRA she has real credibility with these folks that long-time gun opponents do not have. If the goal is to elect someone who will pass this legislation, then it’s probably best not to attempt to torpedo the candidacy of the person who is going to be instrumental in winning crucial conservative votes in favor of the reforms.

Yesterday I asked Toi to clarify her position of guns, since there is so much distortion of her record going around by people who have never spoken to her. Here's what she told me:

I have moderated my views on gun safety reform over the past few years, but even before that I have never cast a vote to allow assault weapons on our streets or to prevent reporting of stolen weapons. I was profoundly appalled that in the wake of the shooting in Newtown, the NRA came out and said that the solution to gun violence was to allow more guns in schools. This approach is self-evidently wrong and demonstrates that the NRA is deeply out of touch even with its own membership. It is an organization more dedicated to ideology than practical solutions to the problems we face. While we need a comprehensive solution to the violence that plagues our communities, a key first step is to reform and limit easy access to dangerous guns. That’s why I’m a co-sponsor on legislation to outlaw assault weapons in Illinois, ban high-capacity clips and require that legal gun owners report any lost, stolen or transferred guns.

If you see an e-mail from a group calling her an NRA-backed candidate, they have that wrong. She's not an NRA-backed candidate. Debbie Halvorson is. The NRA wants very much to defeat Toi Hutchinson and elect Debbie Halvorson. The only one way to do that-- which we've been talking about since the beginning of the year-- is for the African-American and progressive vote to splinter. That looks like it could well happen now since several other sincere progressive groups have decided to back another decent candidate. It's precisely what I hoped wouldn't happen when we jumped in and tried helping Toi early on. Hopefully, the voters in the Southland will figure out which candidate will be best for them and turn out and vote. If you'd like to help Toi beat Halvorson, you can do that here.

There's a great deal of misinformation circulating about Toi being an NRA candidate-- that's flat out false; the NRA is working to defeat her because she's sponsoring the ban on assault weapons-- and being in favor of school vouchers-- also patently false and twisted-- and even a puppy killer... a puppy killer... the woman who pushed through the legislation to ban puppy mills in Illinois? Nice one! I can understand someone wanting to help another candidate win, but twisting bits and pieces of information to smear a progressive for that win isn't a good long-term strategy.

Wall Street Whores In DC (I.E., Conservative Politicians) Still Fighting Against Protecting Bank Customers

Miss & Debbie-- On Feb. 26, don't feed the troll

It was close, but on December 11, 2009, the House passed, 223-202 the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, better known as Dodd-Frank, which, among other things, established Elizabeth Warren's brainchild, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to protect baking customers from financial industry predators. Every single House Republican voted against it, of course-- and so did 27 Wall Street-bought Democrats. Eleven months later, almost all of those Democrats had either been forced to resign rather than be defeated or were actually defeated. One, Arizona corporate shill Ann Kirkpatrick managed to get back into Congress in November and she is currently the only Democrat in the House who has voted with the GOP 100% of the time on crucial roll calls. 

Another Democrat who voted against Dodd-Frank in 2009 and was then turned out of office by her constituents, Debbie Halvorson, is fighting to get back into Congress in a special election three weeks from tomorrow. The seat is open because of the resignation of Jesse Jackson, Jr. and Halvorson is freaking out because Dodd-Frank has come back to haunt her. Last week, the president of the Cook County Board, Toni Preckwinkle, endorsed Halvorson's progressive opponent, state Senator Toi Hutchinson. Her statement was a nightmare for Halvorson, a self-described "conservative Democrat," who has hoped to win the seat flying under the radar: "In just one term, Halvorson managed to vote against President Obama's agenda on 88 separate occasions. Debbie Halvorson voted against tough reforms on Wall Street and against extending unemployment benefits. And she even sided with the Republicans to give huge tax breaks to the wealthiest one percent of the population."

But IL-02 isn't the only place where the battle over Dodd-Frank is in the news again. For conservatives and their bankster allies, the loss on December 11, 2009 triggered a war to disable and destroy the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. If not for their machinations Elizabeth Warren would be running it now and their favorite senator, Scott Brown, would still be carrying their water in Washington. Instead, Warren is a U.S. Senator and member of the Banking Committee and Brown's political career is-- at best-- on hold.

But Republican Party obstruction in the Senate is alive and well-- and threatening to weaken the Bureau once again. As Pat Garofalo reported for ThinkProgress, the Republicans said they would block any nominee to head the CFBC-- "regardless of that nominee’s qualifications for the job-- unless the Bureau was weakened and made subservient to the same bank regulators who failed to prevent the 2008 financial crisis." Although the November elections dealt Miss McConnell a weaker hand, his success in hoodwinking Harry Reid on filibuster reform have left the GOP in a position to continue their obstruction on behalf of Wall Street. Obama has again nominated former Ohio Attorney General Rich Cordray, who he gave a recess appointment that ends next December, to be director. But the Republicans still insist on watering down the agency before they agree to allow a vote on Cordray. Miss McConnell (R-KY), who has taken $7,410,797 in legalistic bribes from Wall Street since 1990, and Mike Crapo (R-ID) who has accepted over $2 million in bribes from the banksters since being appointed the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, sent a letter sent to President Obama on Friday, co-signed by 43 Republican senators (all but Bob Corker and Rob Portman), committing themselves to obdurate obstructionism unless they get their way on undermining the Bureau.

Republicans want to see the top of the bureau changed so it is run by a bipartisan, five-member commission, as opposed to a lone director.

They also want to see the bureau’s funding fall under the control of congressional appropriators-- it currently is funded via a revenue stream directly from the Federal Reserve, and its funding levels cannot be altered by Congress. Republicans also want to give other regulators greater power to veto CFPB rules that could pose a threat to the safety and soundness of financial institutions.

...Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) dismissed the latest GOP pronouncement as "just politics at play."

"The CFPB enjoys overwhelming public support, and there is no evidence that the bureau is unaccountable and that structural changes are necessary," Johnson said. "The market needs certainty, and blocking Richard Cordray's nomination is a disservice to consumers and industry alike."

Debbie Halvorson isn't running for the Senate; she's running for the House. But a big defeat for her in the February 26 primary will help make it clear to conservatives inside the Beltway-- and on both sides of the aisle-- that if they vote against the interests of their constituents and kiss up to their financiers on Wall Street, their careers are in jeopardy. Please consider helping make sure DC gets that message by supporting Toi Hutchinson here at the ActBlue special election page Blue America set up.

And since we're discussing how conservatives are determined to continue wrecking the country, it's worth watching how Krugman eviscerated Carly Fiorina's tired right-wing dogma on TV yesterday.

Toi Hutchinson-- The Best Candidate For The Job

Over the last few weeks, we’ve written a lot about the special election in the 2nd District of Illinois. We’ve sounded the alarm: there’s a good chance that if we do nothing we’ll send the corporatist Debbie Halvorson back to Congress. Just to refresh your memory, Halvorson is the same congresswoman who proudly describes herself as a “conservative Democrat” and sided with big Wall Street banksters against her own constituents every chance she got. She voted against Wall Street Reform. She voted against cramdown measures that would have helped homeowners underwater on their mortgages. And now, after Newtown, Aurora, Tucson and countless other shootings, Debbie Halvorson is continuing to carry water for the NRA. She’s unrepentant about her support for assault weapons and has made it clear she will stand against President Obama's gun control efforts in Washington.

Fortunately, we have a great progressive choice; Toi Hutchinson is a state Senator who has worked hard since getting to Springfield to look out for regular working families. She’s helped to pass legislation that will create thousands of union friendly jobs by investing in infrastructure projects like road construction and public transit expansion. She passed a tax on strip clubs to fund rape crisis centers while the rest of the states were cutting the safety net. Toi voted for campaign finance reform that transformed Illinois, a place that previously allowed unlimited corporate and individual contributions, into a place with contribution caps and mandatory 48-hour reporting cycles for contributions over $1000 (more stringent than the federal system). She voted against a massive $1.2 billion Illinois Medicaid cut. She worked with local businesses to buy backpacks full of school supplies for 1500 struggling children who couldn’t afford what they needed otherwise. She voted to cut her pay four times and end lifetime healthcare for legislators (that both Debbie Halvorson and Robin Kelly received). And she’s now a co-sponsor on legislation that will ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in Illinois.

But over the last few days, I’ve been asked again and again why we would choose Toi Hutchinson over Robin Kelly. The first part of the answer is simple-- we have to beat Debbie Halvorson, and Toi can do that. Several different polls, including Robin Kelly’s, show Toi running second behind Halvorson with Kelly in third. Toi’s geographic base in the 40th Senate District means she cuts into Halvorson’s votes in Will and Kankakee counties and prevents her from running away with this election.

But these last few days, Robin Kelly has accepted some endorsements that should cause any good progressive to question whether she can be trusted. Yes, we should sometimes judge people by the company they keep. Let’s take them one at a time:

Senator Donne Trotter: Trotter was briefly a candidate for this race before being forced to drop out after carrying a gun, by accident he says, into O’Hare International Airport. Fine-- he forgot he was packing when he walked through security. To err is human. But how did he get that gun? Illinois right now is the only state that outlaws concealed carry, but Trotter somehow had a concealed carry permit. See, he was registered as a security guard with AllPoints Security-- a politically connected firm that does business with various governmental agencies. Unfortunately, there are a few problems with that story. First of all, the gun Trotter was carrying, a .25 Beretta, isn’t used by any security guard anywhere. Second of all, not a single one of Trotter’s colleagues knew that the 63-year-old was moonlighting as a security guard, nor did he disclose to the state any income from AllPoints. He’s currently awaiting trial in March. Robin Kelly has been claiming for the last few months that she is an avid crusader for gun reform, yet she just accepted the endorsement of a man who not only flouted the very gun laws she claims to support, but used his clout to get himself a concealed carry permit that regular citizens can’t have?

Senator Napoleon Harris: The newly elected Senator Harris is a dangerous voice within the Democratic Party. I’m shocked that he’s even a Democrat, but probably in the district he ran in it wouldn’t look good to run as a Republican. Anyway, Senator Harris is most famous for being a linebacker in the NFL. He was also a candidate in this race before dropping out and endorsing Kelly. But not before making some insane pronouncements on the record. Senator Harris is opposed to the Equal Rights Amendment. He is a supporter of the Illinois Abortion Law and would refuse to vote to repeal it. The Abortion Law says that as soon as Roe v. Wade is overturned, abortion will become illegal in Illinois even in cases of rape and incest. He is an opponent of marriage equality. And, though an African American, he is a proponent of voter ID laws that depress turnout among the poor and minorities. Maybe he took one too many hits to the head in the NFL. So Robin Kelly-- the self-professed progressive-- just took an endorsement from a sexist, anti-choice, homophobic racist.

And here’s the thing. Anyone who knows anything about Illinois knows that it is a state that has been plagued with corruption. Citizens of that state have suffered under machine politicians and establishment figures whose first loyalty is to themselves and their pocket books. That’s why three members of the Illinois General Assembly are currently under indictment, including Donne Trotter who we talked about above. But with Robin Kelly, this isn’t just a game of associations.

Robin Kelly served as Chief of Staff to then-Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias (a questionable figure in his own right). While she and Giannoulias were running Treasury, they failed to oversee the Bright Start college savings fund, losing $160 million that 65,000 parents across the state had counted on for their children. The money was lost by a fund that was reported to parents as a lower-risk investment that was intended to place money in government bonds and other generally safe bets. Instead the fund was investing in mortgage-backed securities and kept the money there even as losses mounted. And while the fund tanked, Giannoulias and Kelly refused to fire the fund manager, eventually losing 38% of the fund value before finally pulling the plug (other funds in the Bright Start portfolio actually gained). And while all this was happening, Robin Kelly enjoyed the use of a state car purchased for her benefit using taxpayer dollars.

And her illustrious career in the state house included votes to raise her own pay and votes against fulfilling pension obligations to public employees, an unfortunate counterpoint to Toi’s record of giving back. And in contrast, several dozen prominent pastors from across the district announced their support for Toi Hutchinson’s campaign at a prayer breakfast Thursday morning, calling her the strongest candidate in the race with a deep commitment to serving the needs of the South Side and South Suburbs.

“There is no question in our mind that Toi Hutchinson is the candidate who will take our voices with us to Congress,” said Bishop Simon Gordon of Triedstone Full Grace Baptist Church. “She has the kind of commitment to anti-violence, education, and job creation that we need so desperately right now.  I’m excited to have her fighting for us in Washington.”

“As community leaders on the South Side and in the South Suburbs, the pastors got together because we know we have to send a leader to Washington who will always put us first,” said Pastor Walter Turner of New Spiritual Light Missionary Baptist Church. “Toi Hutchinson is absolutely that candidate. Her record of reform and hard work for economic development in this area is what motivated me to throw my weight behind her, and I’m confident the voters will agree on election day.”

One thing is clear: if we keep electing flawed, mediocre candidates, we get flawed mediocre government-- regardless of political party. Listen to this interview Toi did last week with Nicole Sandler on her radio show and you'll get an idea of why Blue America endorsed her. It's worth listening to-- and when you're done, please consider making a contribution at the ActBlue special election page we set up here. The election is less than a month away. AFSME just endorsed Toi this morning! And Cook County Board president Toni Preckwinkle passed over Robin Kelly, one of her own staffers, to back Toi.

"In just one term, Halvorson managed to vote against President Obama's agenda on 88 separate occasions," said Preckwinkle. "Debbie Halvorson voted against tough reforms on Wall Street and against extending unemployment benefits. And she even sided with the Republicans to give huge tax breaks to the wealthiest one percent of the population."

Preckwinkle’s endorsement may be the first sign that Cook County’s black leadership is closing ranks around a single candidate in order to stop Halvorson, who Sunday announced she opposes President Obama’s proposed ban on assault weapons.

NRA Assaults Congress

Yesterday the Senate Judiciary Committee-- one of the most divided and partisan committees in the Senate, which includes NRA shills and gun fanatics like Ted Cruz (R-TX), John Cornyn (R-TX) and Jeff Sessions (KKK-AL)-- held the first Congressional hearing on gun violence since the Sandy Hook school massacre-- or as the far right extremists like to call it, the Sandy Hook Hoax. Former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords started the hearing with a simple and pointed statement:

"Thank you for inviting me here today. This is an important conversation for our children, for our communities, for Democrats and Republicans. Speaking is difficult, but I need to say something important. Violence is a big problem. Too many children are dying. Too many children. We must do something. It will be hard but the time is now. You must act. Be bold. Be courageous. Americans are counting on you. Thank you."

Wayne LaPierre, the NRA's executive vice president, told the senators that new weapons restrictions are not a "serious solution" to the problem. "We need to enforce the thousands of gun laws that are currently on the books," he said. "Prosecuting criminals who misuse firearms works. Unfortunately, we've seen a dramatic collapse in federal gun prosecutions in recent years... That means violent felons, gang members and the mentally ill who possess firearms are not being prosecuted. And that's unacceptable... We need to look at the full range of mental health issues, from early detection and treatment, to civil commitment laws, to privacy laws that needlessly prevent mental health records from being included in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System."

Sounds familiar? Those are the NRA talking points being endlessly repeated by the Members of Congress they own and, of course, by Fox and Hate Talk Radio hosts. And Sunday we heard those same words coming out of the mouth of a "Democrat" running for Congress in Jesse Jackson's old Southland seat. Debbie Halvorson, a self described "conservative Democrat" who has twice been rejected by voters in the district in the past two years, is the NRA candidate in the race. She's running on a platform opposing President Obama's proposal to ban assault weapons. Sunday she told voters at a candidates forum that "I refuse to take a look at these wide ranging gun bans and pass one more law against a law abiding citizen until there is something done against those who get their guns illegally or criminal." She has an "A" rating from the NRA, which is backing her in the race.

State Senator Toi Hutchinson is one of the sponsors of a bill in the Illinois legislature banning assault weapons. She's Halvorson's top-rated opponent, the stalwart progressive in the race-- and an across the board contrast to Halvorson's pro-gun posturing. If Halvorson manages to divide the vote and slip back into Congress, she'll continue voting with corrupt conservatives, like she did last time she was in Congress. If Toi Hutchinson is elected she'll be working for common sense solutions to gun violence with President Obama and with Members of Congress like independent-minded New Hampshire Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter, whose message on gun violence is very much like Toi Hutchinson's. Shea-Porter sent this column, "Time for Action," to her constituents.

As I write this column, the news is covering still another shooting, this time on a college campus. We will learn who was involved, who was standing where when it happened, who witnessed it, who was hurt, who the hurt people’s friends and families are. Students-- reportedly 10,000 students attend the college-- will say how terrified they were. And then… the story of this shooting will be dropped from the news cycle, only to be replaced by another shooting story. And Americans will wonder why we can’t seem to stop the violence. Or can we?

When the children and teachers were executed in a mass murder at an elementary school, right before Christmas, while we were talking about love and faith and family and peace, everyone thought that this time, politicians would take action. It did seem for awhile that we had reached our breaking point, and that we would finally be ready to pass responsible gun legislation that would give us both the freedom to hunt and protect our families and the freedom to go about our daily lives without fear of being gunned down in still another act of violence. There was encouraging talk about passing legislation as quickly as possible, and President Obama did sign some Executive Orders with the families of the murdered six and seven year olds and the slain staff in the room.

The fight was already ugly, but that’s where it got uglier. The head of the National Rifle Association said that President Obama was “attacking firearms and ignoring children.” There was a sea of outrage that President Obama had children at the event. Children were at the site of the massacre-- I think it is appropriate that children who knew it happened and wrote about it should be in the room when grownups say we are going to try to stop this from happening again to children, or anyone else. The NRA leadership also dragged the President’s own children into the fray, as they falsely warned that President Obama was going to take guns away from law-abiding citizens.

Some in Congress were upset at even the mildest suggestions, such as doctors asking if there are guns in the house so they can talk about safety issues involved when there are children in the residence. Doctors ask if somebody smokes around children. They talk about being safe and careful with candles and stoves, but apparently, they should not ask about a huge killer of children-- guns.

It’s time to stop the fighting and work on the solutions here. It is time to stop bowing to special interests and yes, the money they bring to campaigns, and talk about how we are going to protect both the right to have guns for sport and for protection, and the right to be safe from gun violence.

The easiest step should be to require background checks for gun sales. This means gun sales involving most private sales also. The majority of Americans support this plan. We also need to make sure that critical information is available when there is a background check. Records right now are too often incomplete, and do not identify a buyer’s criminal history or a dangerous mental illness.

It is time to end high-capacity magazine sales. It used to be that citizens had a chance to get away from a shooter when he had to stop to reload. But with high-capacity magazines, the killer can just keep firing away a lot longer, murdering many more innocent folks. Hunters do not need to fire 30 rounds. Neither do citizens exercising their right to defend themselves. I support banning magazines holding more than ten rounds. This will help law enforcement and the public to disarm a mass shooter, and it will give people a better chance to escape a madman.

I support President Obama’s call to close loopholes in gun trafficking laws, and to beef up law enforcement in communities. Let’s also step up mental health services, and work together to encourage a reduction of violence in video games and television and movies. All of these ideas should be the easiest to enact. There is another step, an assault weapon ban, that will require more political debate, but these ideas listed here are common-sense ideas that should have no political test of courage attached to them. Can’t we at least get this done now? Let’s get it done now. It already has been a long and deadly wait.

While the banksters and Wall Street interests on whose behalf Halvorson worked while she was in Congress, funnel cash into her campaign, Toi Hutchinson is running a people-powered grassroots effort. If you can help, please go to the ActBlue special election page here. This election is less than a month away.

In Chicagoland, Exactly One Month From Today...

Residents of the IL-02-- Jesse Jackson Jr.'s old Southland seat-- will decide who's going to Congress on February 26, 4 weeks from today. And although there are nearly two dozen candidates running, polls show only two in the double-digits, progressive state Senator Toi Hutchinson and self-described "conservative Democrat," ex-Congresswoman Debbie Halvorson. They're neck and neck but Chicagoland voters who haven't been paying close enough attention to see the difference got a big jolt today from a headline in the Chicago Tribune: Halvorson says she won't join Democrats on assault weapons ban.

It certainly isn't the first time Halvorson has been more in tune with right-wing Republicans than with her own party and with the constituents who sent her to Washington. She was one of only 27 right-wing Democrats who opposed Wall Street reform and voted against Dodd-Frank, almost all of whom, including Halvorson, were subsequently defeated when Democratic voters boycotted their reelection bids. She worked with the GOP to water down the tough provisions that were meant to protect investors and bank customers from the financial predators who have nurtured her own tawdry political career.

Halvorson has been a consistent darling on the NRA and refuses to back President Obama's common sense, moderate approach to putting an end to the NRA's reign of terror in American streets and schools. In stark contrast, a few weeks ago Senator Hutchinson did a guest post at DWT laying out why she's sponsoring a ban on assault weapons in the Illinois legislature and why she backs President Obama's approach.

There is no question that in America we have a problem with guns. The Newtown tragedy, the Aurora shooting, Columbine. These are places-- events-- that all of us will remember for the rest of our lives. And for me there is no question that there are certain kinds of weapons soldiers should have, and other kinds that civilians should be allowed to own.

As a State Senator I represent a district that straddles the landscape of South Suburban Chicago and the rural counties of Will and Kankakee. And if I win this race for Congress in the 2nd district, I will cover even more rural areas. I have a lot of constituents that are hunters. These people firmly believe that they should always be allowed to own guns that they need for recreation, and I’m with them. But I know, and they agree, that no one needs an AR-15 to bring down a deer. And no one needs a 100-round magazine on that semi-automatic for recreation or self-defense. So while I always will stand up for the hunters in my district, I also am a cosponsor on two bills in Illinois that would outlaw assault weapons and high capacity clips.

Halvorson is the only serious candidate who refuses to back the President and the Democratic Party-- and grassroots public opinion-- on an assault weapons ban. She's sticking with the NRA. She read off a list of Republican Party talking points written by the NRA at a candidates forum on Sunday at Trinity United Church of Christ on W. 95th St. "For her part," reports The Tribune, "Halvorson was adamant against looking at a gun ban. 'I refuse to take a look at these wide ranging gun bans and pass one more law against a law abiding citizen until there is something done against those who get their guns illegally or criminal,' she said after the forum."

She doesn't sound anything like Toi Hutchinson, who told us yesterday that "Many across the country were hopeful that the NRA would moderate their position after the profound tragedy we experienced at Newtown, but unfortunately their prescription for the epidemic of gun violence that has gripped our country has been not only distributing more guns, but also letting them into our schools. Their response angered me. This kind of ideological, single-minded approach to our problems isn’t acceptable to me and it’s why I am a co-sponsor on legislation here in Illinois to ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines."

Blue America is eager to help Toi respond to the barrage of misleading campaign mail Halvorson has been sending out. We have four weeks to make a difference. Please consider making a contribution at the Blue America special election page here.

UPDATE: Mayor Bloomberg Has A Surprise For NRA Shill Debbie Halvorson

The Chicago Tribune just reported that Halvorson may not get away with her bullshit politics much longer. Half a million dollars is the first installment to make sure Debbie Halvorson's miserable political career stays as dead as it has been since her back-to-back defeats in 2010 and 2012.

The first TV ad in the special primary election to replace ex-U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. comes from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s super political action committee and targets Democrat Debbie Halvorson’s support of gun owner rights.

A spokesman for Independence USA, Bloomberg’s gun-control backing super PAC, said it will launch what it called a “significant” TV and cable ad campaign on Wednesday to inform Chicago-area voters about Halvorson’s past support from the National Rifle Association. No details on the size of the ad buy were disclosed.

...In the TV ad, a narrator says, “In the race to replace Jesse Jackson, watch out for Debbie Halvorson. When she was in Congress before, Halvorson got an A from the NRA. The NRA: against comprehensive background checks, against banning deadly assault weapons, against banning high capacity ammunition clips.”

...On Monday, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle endorsed state Sen. Toi Hutchinson of Olympia Fields for the Democratic nomination. Preckwinkle contended Halvorson was too conservative for the South Side and south suburban 2nd Congressional District.

Hutchinson, who replaced Halvorson in the Illinois Senate when Halvorson was elected to Congress, also has gotten NRA backing in the past. But Hutchinson noted she is a co-sponsor of state legislation that would ban semiautomatic assault weapons and large capacity clips in Springfield, though the measure is unlikely to go anywhere.

The Bloomberg super PAC is not endorsing a candidate in the ad. But the ad said Halvorson co-sponsored a measure that would allow some criminals to carry loaded, hidden guns into Chicago.”

That was a reference to unsuccessful federal legislation to legalize public possession of firearms across state lines, if the gun owners had a permit and were not barred from carrying a concealed firearm by federal or state law. Halvorson was among 209 sponsors for the 2009 bill.

Halvorson has said she could not “in good conscience” place additional gun bans on law-abiding citizens until current gun laws were more strongly enforced, though she does support universal gun checks and an upgrading of the database to ensure criminals and the mentally ill do not get guns.

Will Darrell Issa Be Allowed To Kill Off The U.S. Post Office This Year?

Last week when Blue America endorsed Toi Hutchison for Jesse Jackson Jr.'s old congressional seat (IL-02), she told first Nicole Sandler's listeners and then Crooks and Liars readers what a strong supporter of the post office she is.

[H]ealthcare delivery is just like mail delivery in this way. Fedex is the private option, USPS is the public option. And the reason it doesn’t cost $99 to send a package through the private option is because the Postal Service will do it for $6. The public option holds private carriers accountable, and having a public option for health insurance would do the same thing. If it’s able to efficiently provide coverage and afford a high standard of care to patients, then that’s something we as a country should embrace.

And no on the crusade against the Post Office-- 6 day delivery! Seriously though-- I represent rural areas that depend on the post office to be open and working six days a week. I don't agree with attempts to cut that short.

Unlike her self-described "conservative Democrat" opponent, Debbie Halvorson, we can be sure Toi Hutchinson will never join Darrell Issa's (and the Republican Party's) jihad against the post office. This week, in Esquire, Jesse Lichtenstein has a remarkable look at the post office problem the GOP created and lays out the definitive explanation about why candidates pledging to support the U.S. Postal service need to be supported by the voters. Short answer: "The postal service is not a federal agency. It does not cost taxpayers a dollar. It loses money only because Congress mandates that it do so. What it is is a miracle of high technology and human touch. It's what binds us together as a country." Darrell Issa has twisted that up so much that few people understand any of it-- which is why it's so important to read Lichtenstein's whole article-- or at least these excerpts:

Today the postal service has a network that stretches across America: 461 distribution centers, 32,000 post offices, and 213,000 vehicles, the largest civilian fleet in the world. Trucks carrying mail log 1.2 billion miles a year. The postal service handles almost half of the entire planet's mail. It can physically connect any American to any other American in 3.7 million square miles of territory in a few days, often overnight: a vast lattice of veins and arteries and capillaries designed to circulate the American lifeblood of commerce and information and human contact.

...In mid-November, the postmaster general, Patrick Donahoe, reported that the post office had lost $15.9 billion for the year and was operating on just a few days' cash flow, having reached its legal debt limit. He all but begged Congress to take action. Mail was down 5 percent from the year before, and wages and benefits and other worker-related costs were an unsustainable 80 percent of the postal service's $81 billion operating expenses.

But nobody wants to hear that more than 70 percent of those losses were for extraordinary budget obligations mandated by Congress, or that the postal service posted its thirteenth-straight quarter of productivity gains. In a nation obsessed with cutting budgets and government fat, there is no better target than the federal postal worker who will have her route delivering paper mail for life, and then try to pass it on to her daughter.

Eighty-five percent of America's critical infrastructure is controlled by the private sector. We let private companies fight our wars; we have 110,000 defense contractors in Afghanistan compared with 68,000 American troops. We let private companies lock up 16 percent of our federal inmates and instruct 10 percent of our students. They provide our phone service and Internet access and air travel and hospital care. Surely, many believe, private companies can deliver our mail better and faster and cheaper than the federal government.

If you work with actual pieces of mail-- if you are a carrier, a handler, a clerk, but not an administrator-- it is said that you "touch the mail." The postal service has more than half a million full-time workers and a hundred thousand contract employees, the vast majority of which are mail touchers. ...That we're sending less mail is not debatable. Nor is it debatable that the post office as we've known it for the past forty years, one built for speed and brute force in sorting and distributing an ever-surging flood of paper documents, is outdated in our digital world.

This isn't a story about whether we could live without the post office.

It's about whether we'd want to.

...When Donahoe testifies on Capitol Hill, as he has done several times over the past two years, to describe just how dire the postal service's situation is-- losing $25 million per day!-- he talks in even, polite tones. Because there he's not telling, he's asking. Five hundred thirty-five members of Congress ultimately decide how to run the postal service: what it can charge for postage, which services it can offer, how it operates. Donahoe is the person who implements their policies, despite the postal service not being a federal agency or taking any taxpayer money; it runs solely on the postage it sells-- or lately, doesn't.

Take the most contentious issue: the seventy-five years' worth of future-retiree health benefits that in 2006 a lame-duck session of Congress legislated the postal service prepay over the following ten years as part of a broad overhaul of the way the postal service operates. No other government agency must do this, and most private companies would have spread those payments over forty years. But the postal service was flush at the time, and Congress figured out that since health-care payments are counted as general government revenue, it could use them to prop up its own books. (Five-and-a-half billion dollars a year coming in from the postal service was $5.5 billion less Congress would have to cut elsewhere to remain budget-neutral, as the Bush administration was demanding.) But then the economy crashed and with it the amount of first-class mail being sent around the country. Suddenly a law designed to keep the postal service solvent in the long term began bankrupting it. Of the $15.9 billion the postal service lost last year, 70 percent-- $11.1 billion-- was in future health-care payments.

...There's a story Donahoe tells Congress and reporters and pretty much anyone else who will listen. It's about what it was like growing up as a boy in Pittsburgh, how steel was king, the U.S. Steel Tower reaching higher than any other building in the state. There was pride in that, and in the mills, and in the middle-class jobs they produced. The steel industry built not just Pittsburgh but the entire country. The railcars and railways, the skyscrapers that made New York the capital of the world, the millions of Buicks and Pontiacs that rolled out of Detroit. Hell, with three hundred thousand men and women working twenty-four-hour shifts making ships and weapons in the 1940s, Bethlehem Steel even beat Hitler.

But there's a second half to the story-- about what it was like watching the industry crumble in the seventies and eighties. First from new, cheaper steel developed in Germany and Japan, where it took just five hours to smelt a ton of steel, half the time it took in Pennsylvania. And then from waves of retiree benefits that drowned many of the companies entirely. Even after the big steelmakers began using some of the most efficient smelting methods, it was too late. In the mid-1990s, they still had four retirees drawing benefits from every worker. Unable to shoulder the burden, Bethlehem Steel declared bankruptcy in 2001. After culling its workforce down to 11,500, it still had 95,000 dependents on the books.

Donahoe talks about steel because it's a cautionary tale. It is about what happens when management waits too long to make hard but necessary changes. It's about how industries that fail to adapt die.

"I've been the postmaster general now for almost eighteen months," he says at the end of his keynote address. "They say that you never really understand and appreciate how things work until you try to change them. I think this is true. Change is not easy. It's comfortable to keep things the way they are. It's comfortable not to make tough decisions. But our future is not in today's comfort zone... Your business depends upon a postal service that can reinvent itself. So that's what we're doing: We are reinventing the postal service."

A week earlier, in March, Donahoe presented his reorganization plan to a highly skeptical Congress. The post office of the 1990s, even of the last five years-- huge, capable of moving a piece of mail across millions of square miles in mere hours for a nominal fee, six days a week-- cannot survive, he said. He wants to get back the $49 billion the postal service has already prepaid in health benefits, wants to manage his employees' health care. But much more, his plan calls for sizing the post office for today. That means cutting 120,000 more jobs, largely through attrition; halving the number of processing centers that relay mail across the country at often breakneck speed; and drastically scaling back the hours of thirteen thousand unprofitable local post offices. He would stop nearly all Saturday mail, and ease the rate at which first-class mail races across the country, because much of the paper we do send doesn't need to get there tomorrow or on Saturday. Give me the freedom to do that, Donahoe said, and the postal service can make a profit of $6 million per day by 2016.

His plan is to shrink the post office in order to save it. ...No matter where it's headed in the U.S., first-class mail is all priced the same: forty-five cents. Germany has a modern and efficient post office that covers a territory about the size of Georgia and Florida, but it will cost you 60 percent more to send a letter. Mail a wedding invitation from Tokyo to its suburbs and it will cost you more than twice as much as sending the same item from Seattle to Boston. Yet the 2006 law prevents the postal service from raising prices for first-class or standard mail by more than the Consumer Price Index, regardless of fuel prices, regardless of what the mail actually costs to deliver. For instance, while the price of diesel used in delivery trucks has risen 60 percent since 2009, over the same period the price of sending a letter has gone up only a penny. FedEx and UPS, meanwhile, raised rates 5.9 and 4.9 percent this year alone. Some believe this pricing ceiling was added to the law after pressure from the big mailers' lobby, magazine and catalog companies, which claimed they couldn't afford to pay more. Others point to local politics: Constituents don't like it when the price of a stamp goes up.

...Ron Bloom is unequivocal in his view of the postal service.

"I've seen this movie. I saw it in the steel industry. I saw it in the car industry. Management can just decide to give up."

He's sitting at a large conference table in a large office on the eighth floor of a building near Union Station in Washington, D.C. The office belongs to Frederic Rolando, the president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, the largest postal workers' union. There are bookcases of leather-bound volumes, stuffed animals, a Godzilla action figure, and a yellow sign announcing a letter carriers' food drive. Bloom flew in this morning from Pittsburgh to testify before a House subcommittee about the bailouts that he pushed through as part of Obama's auto task force, which he eventually took over. One Republican congressman made a show of holding him after the session for extra questioning, but Bloom seems pumped up by the confrontation. A part of him, chomping on his sandwich, giving the blow-by-blow as if describing a bar fight-- shots landed, punches missed-- seems to have enjoyed it. He's tall, in his mid-fifties, with a buzz cut and an expression poised between irritable and mildly amused.

In July, the sixty-five hundred delegates in the union-- representing its 270,000 members-- unanimously passed a vote of no confidence in Donahoe. They believe he's the worst of disappointments, a company man who has lost faith in the company and the people whose job he used to share. So they hired their own man to help fix the postal service.

Like Donahoe, Ron Bloom lives in Pittsburgh and likes to draw parallels to the steel industry. But rather than framing the collapse of big steel as a lesson in management being too slow to recognize a change in the marketplace and downsize, Bloom sees what happens when management no longer has the stomach to innovate. He focuses on what happened to Bethlehem Steel after bankruptcy, because he's the guy who rebuilt it.

After an early career as an investment banker at Lazard, where he focused on mergers and acquisitions, Bloom left with a colleague to start his own boutique firm specializing in labor issues and bankruptcy restructurings. He was instrumental in an employee buyout of a Canadian steel company, and later the employee takeover of United Airlines. He became a special advisor to the United Steelworkers union in 1996, then seven years later pushed workers at Goodyear Tire to make major concessions in return for saved jobs and a reinvestment in the company's factories.

It was Bloom's reputation as a hard-nosed negotiator who starts from a principle of shared sacrifice that led President Obama to hire him as the point man for the federal bailout and restructuring of Chrysler and GM in 2009, and later as the manufacturing czar. In a failed business-- and Bloom is in the business of failed businesses-- he has a talent for getting both sides to give in far more than they expected. He's been able to persuade unions that they need to accept change, sometimes radical change, in dire situations; and he's gotten management to accept that it is not just the workers who are going to take it in the neck.

"Bethlehem Steel really believed that their job was to die slowly," he says of that company's former executives. When the company finally tanked in 2001, it was Bloom, acting on behalf of the union, who convinced financier Wilbur Ross to take on the mess and restructure it.

"They fundamentally believed you couldn't make steel in America and make money. I think the postal-service management believes, in their heart of hearts, that the day of the postal service has come and gone, and their job is to give it a decent burial. And to not hurt people more than they need to and still do a certain amount of what they do. I think they believe that. And if you believe your company is fatally broken... " he trails off.

Sitting around the table, three others nod in agreement: Jim Sauber, the union president's chief of staff; Bruce Simon, the NALC's longtime legal counsel; and Jennifer Warburton, its principal lobbyist.

At Bethlehem, Bloom pushed the unions to make extremely hard concessions in return for a massive investment into the retiree-benefit trust by the new owners. Bethlehem was rolled up with other bankrupt steel companies into International Steel Group, which just a few years later was turning a profit.

"If you watch Donahoe in public," Bloom says, "if you watch him kowtow to Darrell Issa [chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform], it really is like he's a..." He pauses.

"Fuck you! This is a great institution and we can grow it!" Bloom says. "That's what you want someone to say to the Congress, 'Fuck you! Let me win. I will win if you just get out of my goddamn way.'"

"And that's what the employees have wanted," Sauber says. He's a large man, a steady presence behind his rimless glasses. "Someone to pound the table and say, 'You screwed us on these pension funds.' Fight for 'em. Donahoe says, 'They'll never give them to us. I know it's unfair. They'll never give it to us.'"

The NALC feels like it found that fighter in Bloom. No one disputes that first-class mail is in decline, and no one really thinks it's going to return to pre-2006 levels. But Bloom doesn't believe that the postal service is in as dire shape as Congress and the media-- and even Donahoe-- have portrayed it.

...While Congress and Donahoe have refused to consider raising postal rates across the board, which is extremely unpopular with the public and the big mailers' lobby, and which Donahoe believes would simply drive more customers away, Lazard estimates raising postage by 1.5 percent-- just a half cent per letter-- would bring in enough revenue for the postal service to break even.

Bloom doesn't offer any specific examples of concessions the unions might be willing to make, but downsizing and benefits would be likely targets of negotiations. Postal workers pay 8 percent less toward their insurance premiums than other federal workers, which typically comes out to about forty dollars less per paycheck for those on family plans. They also pay nothing for life insurance, while other government workers pay two thirds of their premiums. If carriers were to pay the same rate as other federal workers, the postal service would save more than a half billion dollars per year.

...There is no such optimism on Capitol Hill today. In April, the Senate passed a bipartisan bill that would have reduced annual health-care payments, returned $11 billion in pension overpayments, and cut Saturday delivery after a two-year waiting period. But it left in place many of the restrictions on pricing and services that have crippled the postal service's ability to compete. The House countered by holding committee meeting after committee meeting in which they discussed all the reasons why the postal service was a failure-- and then did nothing. Since presenting a plan in September 2011 that would have allowed the postal service to cut Saturday service and have more flexibility with pricing, President Obama has remained mostly silent on the issue. He had a debt crisis to manage and an election to win.

The just-ended 112th Congress had a 9 percent approval rating, the lowest of any Congress in history, largely because it passed fewer laws than any other Congress in modern history. Its members are bitterly partisan, frustrated, and seemingly overwhelmed. This is the legislative body that must decide the postal service's fate. Whether they offer Donahoe the ability to cut unprofitable services and consolidate, or bet on Bloom and the union's plan to make shared sacrifices and grow. Whether they loosen the legislative strings and allow the postal service to pursue any of Adra's dreams, or in their inaction drive it into insolvency for good. Their divided, dysfunctional cynicism is a mirror of our own. Which is perhaps the greatest argument anyone can make for the postal service.

15% of all bill passed by Congress over the past ten years are actually bills naming post offices. Congress is happy to name 'em but unwilling to save 'em. In that time the House has passed no bills to help the postal system... not one has even managed to break out of the committee system. Democrats in the Senate passed a bipartisan bill last year, 62-37, that would end Saturday delivery and ease the absurd payment obligations but Boehner and Cantor, giving in to Issa's carping, decided to kill the bill-- part of their strategy to make America dysfunctional under President Obama.