Trump Seems Completely Determined To Let The Banksters Rape And Pillage America Again

Damian Paletta is the Washington Post's White House economic policy reporter and before we get into the much-discussed piece he wrote over the weekend, How regulators, Republicans and big banks fought for a big increase in lucrative but risky corporate loans, let's look at which current members of Congress have taken the most in bribes from the Finance Sector. Since 1990, that sector has pumped $2,805,307,780 into congressional elections, over and above the massive sums spent on presidential campaigns. They spent $1,549,196,835 bribing Republicans and $1,239,551,817 bribing Democrats. Counting only members who are still serving in Congress this dozen from each house can be considered the most corrupt men and women in our legislative branch. If all were in prison tomorrow, America would be a much better place very quickly. First the Senate:

• Mitt Romney (R-UT)- $81,834,111
• Chuck Schumer (D-NY)- $26,901,212
• Marco Rubio (R-FL)- $13,757,755
• Mitch McConnell (R-KY)- $12,953,133
• Ted Cruz (R-TX)- $11,268,146
• Rob Portman (R-OH)- $11,026,133
• Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)- $9,985,657
• Pat Toomey (R-PA)- $9,822,497
• Bob Menendez (D-NJ)- $9,442,669
• John Cornyn (R-TX)- $9,419,544
• Mark Warner (D-VA)- $9,133,431
• Richard Shelby (R-AL)- $8,315,554

And now the dozen worst still serving in the House of Representatives:

• Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)- $8,086,692
• Steny Hoyer (D-MD)- $6,865,814
• Jim Himes (New Dem-CT)- $6,376,379
• Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)- $6,309,318
• Patrick McHenry (R-NC)- $5,627,242
• Steve Stivers (R-OH)- $5,620,077
• Richard Neal (D-MA)- $5,527,960
• Nita Lowey (D-NY)- $5,249,506
• Kevin Brady (R-TX)- $4,207,385
• Ed Perlmutter (New Dem-CO)- $4,121,168
• Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)- $4,072,569
• John Larson (D-CT)- $3,966,959

You could say this money means the banksters control much of the government and you wouldn't be off the mark. In fact, Bernie did say something like it:

Now, this is what Damian Paletta had to say in the article I was referring to: "Actions by federal regulators and Republicans in Congress over the past two years have paved the way for banks and other financial companies to issue more than $1 trillion in risky corporate loans, sparking fears that Washington and Wall Street are repeating the mistakes made before the financial crisis. The moves undercut policies put in place by banking regulators six years ago that aimed to prevent high-risk lending from once again damaging the economy." And he's right. But, to be strictly fair, it isn't only the Republicans. It's all the Republicans and a shamefully growing number of corporate-oriented Democrats behind all this. The Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- the New Dems, Blue Dogs, Problem Solver Caucus-- are all in this together.

"Now," Paletta continued, "regulators and even White House officials are struggling to comprehend the scope and potential dangers of the massive pool of credits, known as leveraged loans, they helped create. Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and other financial companies have originated these loans to hundreds of cash-strapped companies, many of which could be unable to repay if the economy slows or interest rates rise. 'This means that the next downturn that we have could be more serious and longer-lasting and more difficult to deal with than it would have been if we had constrained these practices,' former Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen said in an interview."

Of the men and women running for president one has proven utterly incapable of-- and uninterested in-- dealing with this: Trump. Two have careers that prove the opposite-- that they are eager to take on the problems and solve them systemically: Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. [A Bernie and Liz ticket is just what the doctor ordered.] The rest of the candidates are... just running or president because... why not? Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Paletta wrote that in 2011, two years after the end of the financial crisis, Timothy Long, chief national bank examiner at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and a seasoned bank examiner saw a worrying trend that caused him to issue warnings to other examiners to keep their guard up and prevent greedy banks, which charge huge fees for taking on these risks, from taking on too much risk, with this type of corporate credit called leveraged lending. The risk is inherent because the loans are "made to borrowers who have access to less cash than others, and who tend to fall behind on payments with greater frequency when interest rates go up or the economy slows down."

In 2013, two years after Long retired, the OCC joined with the Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the main banking regulators, to issue formal "guidance" meant to steer banks away from the riskiest of these loans, cementing Long's warning into a firmer policy. Guidance isn't the same as an order. But "in a report the next year, regulators revealed 'serious deficiencies' in the way that leveraged loans were offered by banks. It found 31 percent of the loans offered by banks during the previous 12 months were considered 'weak,' meaning they are poorly executed and at a high risk of default. It also found that 75 percent of all the banking industry's substandard assets were leveraged loans. Credit Suisse was one of the worst culprits. Paletta reported that "This new regulatory push sent shudders through the banking industry. Financial companies dialed back their leveraged lending, according to industry data. Issuance of these loans fell from $607 billion in 2013 to $423 billion in 2015, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. Private equity firms complained that it was harder to obtain loans for leveraged buyouts. Bankers, upset about losing out on millions of dollars in fees, started complaining to regulators and congressional aides that regulatory 'guidance' should not dictate how banks do business."

Paletta continued, explaining that "Before the 2016 election, bankers told regulators and congressional aides that their banks simply wanted to originate the loans and then sell the risk off to investors, such as insurance companies and mutual funds. Bankers argued that even if the loans were risky, the federally insured banks would not stand to lose if the loans went south because they had sold the products on to others, according to five banking industry executives involved in the discussions." The bad guys here: a trade association called the Clearing House Association (now called the Bank Policy Institute), whose members include JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank of America.

The lending boom was precipitated, in part, by the rush to water down regulations at the start of the Trump administration. That's when newly minted regulators-- many with close ties to the financial industry-- sought to strip away post-crisis financial rules and find ways to juice the economy by encouraging more lending.

One of their top targets was leveraged loans. These are giant loans that banks make to heavily indebted-- in financial speak, highly leveraged-- companies. Bankers often have little assurance that the loans can be repaid, which can make them particularly risky. Bankers earn large fees off these products, and many banking executives say their institutions are sheltered from losses because they sell the loans to other investors such as hedge funds, mutual funds and insurance companies.

By freeing banks to make more of these loans, regulators allowed more money to be pumped into the economy. White House officials believe this helped achieve President Donald Trump's goal of growing the economy faster in the first half of his term.

...This tension between easy money and unknown risks has flummoxed some of the very officials who have allowed the lending binge to heat up since 2017. In an appendix to its annual budget, White House officials in March touched on both the benefit of leveraged loans and the potential that they could cause a repeat of the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009.

"Lending has increased, which is a positive development, but care must be taken that excessive leverage and risk do not reprise the mistakes of the 2000s," the report said.

...In March 2017, two months after Trump's inauguration, Sen. Patrick Toomey (R-PA) sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office asking for a legal ruling on whether the 2013 guidance should have been classified as a "rule."

This designation mattered because Congress has the ability to repeal a "rule" with a majority vote, and Republicans in Congress were moving swiftly to nullify multiple regulations with this tactic.

Toomey is one of the Senate's top voices calling for more banking deregulation, and 10 of his 17 biggest campaign contributors are financial company officials.

Also note above that Toomey has taken close to $10 million in legalistically permissible bribes, among the most of anyone who has ever served in Congress. Toomey has always been a dirt-bag and a crook, from his earliest days in politics. In the House he served on the Budget Committee. Today, in the Senate, he serves on 4 committees. See if you can discern any commonalities: the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs where he is the chair of the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection and serves on the Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance, and Investment; Budget Committee; Finance Committee; and Joint Economic Committee. Those bribes he gets are not random. Bank lobbyists know exactly how to target their "contributions." When Paletta interviewed him, Toomey claimed he hasn't been "approached by any financial company about the leveraged-lending issue. Instead, he said his aides identified it as a glaring example of the type of regulatory overreach he had long fought to curb. 'It comes, first of all, in the context of a broader effort on my part to diminish the... near omnipotence of some regulators and restore legislative authority to where it belongs, which is Congress,' Toomey said."

Less than two months later, Trump replaced Thomas Curry, appointed by President Barack Obama to lead the OCC, with banking attorney Keith Noreika.

In June 2017, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin issued a 149-page report calling for changes to the way financial companies are overseen by the government. Among them, Treasury's report said banks found the guidance confusing, which was one reason they had cut back on these loans.

Treasury urged the agencies to effectively suspend the guidance and issue it again, this time seeking more feedback from banks. These loans were key to helping the economy grow and extending credit to companies that might not otherwise have access to it, the Treasury report said. Treasury officials met with bankers and others as they prepared to write the report, though it is unclear what their role was in having input into the final language.

In October 2017, the GAO issued a report saying the 2013 "guidance" should have been issued in a more formal way, a position that raised the possibility of invalidating the regulators' power.

The next month, Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO) then-chairman of the House subcommittee on financial institutions and consumer credit, sent a letter to the regulators asking for assurances that they would not be enforcing the leveraged-lending guidance. [NOTE: Luetkemeyer is a total Wall Street whore, since being elected to Congress in 2008, he's been on the House Financial Services Committee which he's used as a perch to do the bidding of Wall Street banksters and to collect $3,788,703 in bribes-- remember, just since 2008-- to finance his revoltingly corrupt and destructive political career.]

A few days later, Noreika told the Wall Street Journal that the leveraged-lending guidelines "shouldn't be binding on anyone." Noreika, who has returned to the private sector and advises financial companies, among others, declined to comment.

The floodgates were only beginning to open.

Noreika's replacement at the OCC was Joseph Otting, a financial executive and former colleague of Mnuchin. In early 2018, Otting told an investor conference in Las Vegas that banks, in terms of leveraged loans, "have the right to do what you want as long as it does not impair safety and soundness. It's not our position to challenge that."

He remarked on all the tightening that took place after the 2013 guidance came out: "It was like people were afraid to jump over the line without feeling the wrath of Khan from the regulators," he said, according to a Reuters report at the time.

The comments stunned some regulators at other banking agencies, as they had become concerned watching bankers dive back into the high-risk corporate lending business, according to two people involved in the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to reveal internal agency deliberations.

Long, the former top official at the OCC, said he and many of his former colleagues believe that, with the U.S. economy entering its 10th year of growth, it is only a matter of time before a downturn begins and many of these loans unravel. When companies default on their loans, bankers often retrench and won't lend as freely, worried about extending money to other companies that could also default. This can quickly affect the broader economy, leading to layoffs and bankruptcies, and halting new investment.

"We are in the eighth year of a seven-year credit cycle," he said. "When things turn, they are going to turn hard."

As regulators scaled back scrutiny, bankers began to binge.

Financial companies issued a total of $1.271 trillion in leveraged loans in 2017 and 2018, 40 percent more than in 2015 and 2016, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. More than 80 percent of the loans made in 2018 were made with fewer restrictions on the borrower and fewer protections for the lender in the event the loan falls into default.

These loans are often central elements of the leveraged buyouts private equity companies perform when they take over a struggling company at risk of collapse.

In the past few years, household names like J. Crew, PetSmart, Neiman Marcus, Buffalo Wild Wings and Nine West have all been restructured with leveraged loans. There are hundreds of other cases, including energy and health-care companies, many of which received multibillion-dollar loans from a consortium of banks and other lenders.

Asked about the company's exposure to leverage loans, JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon told analysts in January that banks are much more resilient-- and smarter-- than they were 10 years ago. He acknowledged that some financial companies, particularly those that are not banks, could lose money during a recession because of these products, but he expected the impact would be contained.

"Someone's going to get hurt there," he said.

Bank of America chief executive Brian Moynihan had a similar take in the earnings call for his company that month. He said his company makes a number of these loans but sells them off immediately-- an indication that they do not hold any of the risk on their balance sheet.

"We market and move them out, and it's gone," he said.

One reason bankers have been able to make so many of these higher-risk loans without regulatory interference is that they sell these products on to outside investors. The loans are packaged into products known as collateralized loan obligations, or CLOs.

The CLO market has surged in the past 10 years, growing from $300 billion at the end of 2008 to $615 billion at the end of 2018, but the quality of these products is worse than it was before the financial crisis, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

Some former regulators have noted an eerie parallel between the subprime mortgage crisis and the leveraged-loan buildup. In the 2000s, banks and other finance companies took risky loans-- certain mortgages-- and packaged them into products that were sold off to investors. Financial companies also made other exotic instruments, known as collateralized debt obligations, tied to those securities. The products entangled financial companies with one another, allowing weak institutions to pull down stronger institutions when the value of these products cratered.

Today, regulators say they don't have a firm grip on what the impact will be when the economy weakens or enters a recession.

"We're doing a lot of work in this area, trying to understand the risk better," said Bob Phelps, the OCC's deputy comptroller for supervision risk management. "How this will play out... is really hard to figure out."

The recent reluctance to crack down on leveraged lending is part of a broader regulatory walkback.

Officials at the Fed, which is charged with spotting risks posed by large financial institutions to the financial system and broader economy, announced plans in March to scale back the process they use to monitor the way large banks weather a recession. Officials said banks had made improvements in how they prepared for the next downturn. Lael Brainard, a member of the Fed's Board of Governors and an Obama-era appointee, was the only Fed official to vote against the move. The others who voted for it were appointed by Trump.

In November, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) pressed Randal Quarles, the Fed's vice chairman for bank supervision, on whether regulators were doing enough to address the record levels of leveraged loans. She asked why the 2013 guidance was not being monitored as it had been five years ago.

Quarles said the Fed was more appropriately focused on whether banks posed a risk to the financial system.

"We are monitoring compliance with safety and soundness," Quarles responded. "We should not monitor compliance with guidance."

He stressed, however, that the Fed and other regulators were monitoring the risks leveraged loans could pose, though he did not offer any assessments.

"We are actually quite athletically looking at that," he said, without explaining what he meant.

Having made substantial progress in pushing regulators to soften scrutiny of leveraged loans, the banking industry is continuing to expand its influence.

Last year, partly at the urging of Powell, the White House nominated economist and financial-regulation expert Nellie Liang to the central bank's Board of Governors.

Her nomination from the White House was exceptional, in that she does not have a banking background and previously worked at the Fed to fine-tune oversight of financial companies. She formerly directed the Federal Reserve's Office of Financial Stability, one of its most powerful components.

Banking industry lobbyists whipped up opposition to Liang, persuading some Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee to block her confirmation, according to five people involved in the process. In January, she announced she was withdrawing from consideration after it became clear she could not win Senate confirmation.

Trump then went in a much different direction and announced his intent to nominate two big political supporters, Herman Cain and Stephen Moore, to open seats at the Fed. Neither has commented on leveraged lending, but both are big proponents of stripping back regulations and have called for immediate steps to make the economy grow even faster.

You want the short version? Like something you might get at Axios? Trump's "booming" economy-- for some-- is built on a foundation of sands-- these ultra-risky loans, a trillion dollars worth-- that could come toppling down if there's any jolt to the system. Jolt to the system? With Trump in change? The congressional Republicans-- and the New Dems and Blue Dogs who constitute the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- have been all in on delivering for the banksters who delivered for them. This kind of legalistic bribery can only lead to catastrophe for someone-- generally speaking, the rest of us. We have an economy built on high risk and rampant corruption. I guess I could have put that up top, but now you know more than anyone else you're likely to talk to about this in the next week or two.

The NRA And Two GOP Governor Scotts-- One In Florida And One in Vermont

Vermont's PVI is D+15 and Hillary beat Trump there 178,573 (55.72%) to 95,369 (30.27%). Trump won just one of Vermont's 14 counties (Essex, the least populated). Florida is a more swingy state, although the PVI is R+2. Although Obama won Florida both times he ran, Hillary gave up on the state's crucial 29 electoral votes. Trump beat her (narrowly)-- 4,617,886 (49.0%) to 4,504,975 (47.8%). Of the state's 67 counties, she won 9.

Both states have Republican governors named Scott-- Phil Scott in Verment, who is running for reelection, and Rick Scott in Florida, who is running for the U.S. Senate. And the NRA has turned against each of them. In 2016 the gubernatorial seat was open in Vermont and the Democrats ran a weak EMILY's List nothing candidate, Sue Minter. Scott, the state's lieutenant governor, beat her 166,817 (52.96%) to 139,253 (44.21%).

Rick Scott, a convicted criminal who was caught stealing from Medicare, beat another weak EMILY's List nothing candidate, Alex Sink, in his first run (2010). He was reelected in 2014 against pointless ex-Republican Charlie Crist. In 2010 he beat Sink 2,619,335 (48.9%) to 2,557,785 (47.7%), largely because she allowed EMILY's List run her campaign). In 2014, Scott beat Crist 2,865,343 (48.1%) to 2,801,198 (47.1%) to 2,865,343 (48.1%).

Today the NRA is angry with both governors. How angry? Last week Phil Scott approved a package of gun-related laws passed by the state legislature and the NRA called on gun owners to abandon him. Dana Loesch, a national spokeswoman for the NRA: "This governor in Vermont completely gave a one-finger salute to the Constitution and to gun owners. He is no friend of firearm owners and I hope that all firearm owners remember this betrayal the next time he’s up for re-election." That's in about half a year.

The NRA gave Scott an A rating during his first gubernatorial campaign in 2016, when Scott said he saw no need for new Vermont gun laws. The governor changed his position in February "after deep reflection" after an alleged school shooting plot came to light in Fair Haven, and on Wednesday he signed three gun-related bills into law.

Loesch described Scott's shift as "an attempt to appease the gun-grabbers in his state."

The NRA spokeswoman seemed particularly bothered by S.221, a bill that won support from even the most ardent gun-rights lawmakers and passed both the Vermont House and the Vermont Senate unanimously.

The new law sets up a court process from removing weapons from people deemed to be at "extreme risk" of violence or suicide. State's attorneys or the Attorney General's Office may petition a family court judge to require a person to relinquish their firearms for up to six months. In emergency situations, these orders may be granted without the person's knowledge, and would expire after 14 days.

... Gun-rights advocates have reacted angrily to Scott's decision to sign the bills, and some jeered and shouted during the bill signing ceremony Wednesday.

"I understand I may lose support over the decision to sign these bills today," Scott said, "but those are consequences I am prepared to live with."

Scott will seek re-election for a second term in November. He is facing a challenge from fellow Republican Keith Stern, who has made gun rights a cornerstone of his campaign.

Rick Scott has an uphill battle to displace Bill Nelson-- especially in a blue wave environment. The last thing he needs is his right flank in tatters. And that's what he's got, with gun nuts stepping up their attacks on him for signing gun control legislation after the school shooting in Parkland. First off, the far right Republican Trumpist campaigning to replace him as governor, Ron DeSantis says he would have vetoed the legislation Scott signed. And the gun group to the right of the NRA, the National Organization for Gun Rights, has already attacked him in an e-mail entitled "Gov. Gun Control Running for Senate," for signing a popular bill putting minor restrictions on the sale of assault-style weapons.

One of the most respected Democratic political operatives in Florida, an old friend, Kevin Cate: "The whole guns and NRA situation is very complicated for Rick Scott. This is a guy who sprinted far to the right, who's BFFs with Donald Trump, he signed a gun bill that did have some more moderate positions in it, so he's got to be sprinting back and forth, back and forth, and someone as robotic as Rick Scott, that's tough for him to do. He's got to sprint back and forth to keep that base happy because if they don't turn out, if these Trump folks don't turn out, he doesn't have a chance."

Meanwhile, reflecting one of those back and forth, the Tampa Bay Times reported late last week that mayors of several cities are suing Scott for sticking with the NRA's agenda.

[St. Petersburg] Mayor Rick Kriseman announced Wednesday that he will join 10 other Florida cities and mayors in a lawsuit against Gov. Rick Scott over the issue of being able to regulate firearms in local jurisdictions.

..."What I see is a collective effort at taking away our home rule authority,'' he said. "I also find it incredibly ironic…the Florida legislature complains about Washington telling them what to do…But they don't seem to have any problem telling us, cities and counties, what to do."

The mayor said he would ban military style weapons, bump stocks, and armor-piercing bullets if he could.

"Governor Scott and legislative leaders decided to overstep their authority and use fear and intimidation as a tactic to preserve the NRA's agenda," Kriseman tweeted before the City Hall announcement.

Alex Leary and Steve Bousquet, writing for the Miami Herald speculate that Scott angering the gun nuts would actually help him in November. Yes, gun nuts are angry. Comments on Scott's campaign Facebook page prove that: "Sorry, Governor Scott. You blew it when you signed the anti-gun legislation into law. Will not be voting for you," one person wrote. Another compared him to Democrat Charlie Crist. A third fumed, "Shouldn’t have gone against Americans with your knee jerk pandering to the gun grabbers." Scott’s embrace of Florida’s first gun restrictions in decades has infuriated the gun lobby and its fiercely loyal lieutenants. What will the NRA do about Scott's A+ rating now? It's a lot more important than their stance on Phil Scott in Vermont.

If Scott escapes attacks after weakening gun rights, other Republicans may feel emboldened in a time of soaring public support for solutions to Parkland and other mass shootings.

“It has always been our practice to hold public officials accountable for their actions that impact law-abiding firearms owners and their Second Amendment rights. Nothing has changed,” said Marion Hammer, the NRA’s Florida lobbyist who, pre-Parkland, had achieved a legendary reputation for her control over the agenda in Tallahassee. 
...“She is very much, 'You’re with us or you die,’ ” said Robert Spitzer, an expert on gun politics and chairman of the political science department at SUNY Cortland in New York. “But Scott’s well positioned. It’s certainly helpful to his campaign because he can say that he’s not completely in the thrall of the NRA.

“It’s a pretty clear message that it’s possible to weave a path that amounts to expressing support for gun rights but also some gun measures, even if they are limited.”

Part of the lesson, Spitzer added, “is that the NRA’s bark is worse than its bite. It’s certainly an influential group. But the idea they can just sort of wiggle their finger and make things happen magically in politics, it really isn’t like that. There are many other candidates who have sided with them then parted ways and lived to tell the story.”

Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey was an A+ rated NRA darling during his 2010 campaign, the group spending $1.5 million to help him get elected. But a few years later, after the Sandy Hook tragedy, he sponsored bipartisan legislation to expand background checks. It did not pass and the NRA turned on Toomey, but he still won re-election in 2016.

“You can do the right thing and you’ll be fine,” Toomey said in an interview about the climate Scott now faces. “In his state, like mine, a majority of voters feel very strongly about the Second Amendment, as do I, and these folks voted for me. I commend him for being willing to stand up.”

Despite all the social media noise, the legislation just might help the Republican governor win a seat in the Senate.


The law Scott signed last month raised the age to buy a gun in Florida from 18 to 21 with a three-day waiting period. The NRA filed suit immediately. In public comments, Hammer included Scott among “turncoat Republicans” who “caved to bullying and coercion” by passing the changes in response to the shooting at a high school in Parkland that killed 17 people on Feb. 14.

Four years ago, Hammer praised Scott for his “historic” signing of five pro-gun bills.

Florida has long been at the vanguard of NRA-backed policies, including the controversial “stand your ground” law. But the national movement spurred by Parkland, with massive rallies in Washington and cities coast to coast, led to action from state and local governments and companies such as Dick’s Sporting Goods to end some gun sales.

It came just as Scott was preparing to run against Nelson, and Scott’s critics say his change of heart is all about politics. Scott showed no such initiative after the 2016 mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando or an attack early last year at the Fort Lauderdale airport.

“The fact that Rick Scott in this politically craven way sees opportunity in accommodation with our side is an indication of the weakness of the NRA,” said Peter Ambler, executive director of a gun safety group started by former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords. “But elections are about choices. Bill Nelson has had the courage throughout his tenure to do the right thing, to vote for gun safety, while Rick Scott was doing the exact opposite, while he was embracing the NRA.”


Nelson, who likes to tell audiences he’s been a lifelong hunter, charges that Scott “will say and do anything to try and get elected. He highlights an NRA-backed provision of the new law that calls for arming school personnel, though it would not apply to many teachers and school districts have largely said they would not participate in the optional program. (Scott opposed arming teachers but said he had to compromise.)

On raising the purchase age and adding the three-day waiting period, the Democrat said they were “steps in the right direction” but stressed that stricter measures are needed, including universal background checks and limiting large-capacity magazine clips. Nelson also wants to ban assault-style weapons.

For Scott, being under attack from the NRA could attract votes from independents and moderate voters who are more inclined to favor gun restrictions. Scott also has the support of some families of the victims of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, who stood with him at his Capitol office in Tallahassee on March 23 as he signed the legislation. (Others, particularly Douglas students, say the legislation fell well short.)

Scott can avoid the weight of the NRA because he doesn’t face a serious primary challenger, will have no trouble raising money and is not likely to face an exodus of Republican voters over the gun issue.


... [The NRA] is unlikely to mount a full-throated attack on Scott, though it could withhold formal support. A membership drive mailer that reached homes across the state last week mentioned “anti-gun politicians” but did not say anything specific about Florida.

The showdown with Nelson is expected to be wildly expensive and extremely close. Scott won two races for governor by about 1 percentage point in Republican wave elections against underfunded Democratic opponents.

Four years ago, against Charlie Crist, Scott won 54 of 67 counties. Some of Scott’s most lopsided victory margins were in counties such as Bay, Okaloosa and Santa Rosa in the Florida Panhandle. Even there, in the most conservative region of the state, where opposition to gun restrictions could be strongest, Scott is unlikely to face a political backlash.

Rep. Brad Drake, a Walton County Republican and an A+ NRA-rated lawmaker who voted against the gun bill, said: “I’m going to strongly support Rick Scott. I agree with him on almost every issue. Once in a while we disagree, but it’s never personal. He’s very conscientious.”

Sen. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, one of the NRA’s strongest allies in the Legislature, also voted against the gun bill, but said he has no quarrel with Scott.


“I view people based on their overall competence and effectiveness, and he’s A+ in my book. You’re never going to agree 100 percent of the time,” said Baxley, who represents The Villages, home to a vital bloc of Republican voters in statewide elections.

“It may give pause to some people who view the Second Amendment as a litmus test,” Baxley said. “But compared to the record of Sen. Nelson on the issue, the contrast is huge.”


Scott joins a host of other politicians who are finding daylight with the hard line of the NRA-- out west, in states such as Montana, some Democrats are shifting as well-- and it comes as Republicans face a tough midterm election climate.

Dan Eberhart, an energy executive and major conservative donor, recently held up Scott as an example of candidates needing to appeal to suburban voters and doing so by standing up to the NRA.

“Republicans are going to have to move a little to get 51 percent-plus in elections, and the NRA will have to deal with it,” Eberhart told the New York Times. “The NRA is really out of step with suburban GOP voters.”

Scott hasn’t brought up guns on the campaign trail but Nelson will make it an issue, as will a flood of outside groups trying to paint Scott as an opportunist.

Even Establishment Stooges Are Sensing A Wave. By The First Wednesday In November They'll Be Certain

As we noted on Tuesday, the PA-18 special election 4 days from now, should be easy-peasy for the GOP. But they're on track to spend 40 times more money on this race than the Democrats! The PVI is R+11 and it's a district where McCain beat Obama 55-44%, Romney beat Obama 58-41% and then Trump eviscerated Clinton 58.1% to 38.5%. On top of that, the Democrats have a terrible candidate-- Conor Lamb a bland, wishy-washy Blue Dog who flies in the face of the energy that is motivating Democratic enthusiasm. He's worse than Ossoff-- but in a much redder district. And yet... polls show a tie, a toss-up, with Republican officials in DC peeing in their pants.

Yesterday Chuck Todd started the day by writing how Señor Trumpanzee has managed to turn the PA-18 special election into a major referendum on himself, exactly what Democrats were hoping for... and the only way to win a blood-red district like this with a crap candidate like Lamb. "[I]f there’s reason to pay attention to the outcome on Tuesday," Todd wrote, "it’s this: Trump has put his office’s prestige on the line. In addition to the president holding a rally with Saccone on Saturday, the Washington Post suggested last week that Trump’s move on tariffs is aimed at the voters in PA-18. 'In recent weeks, he has been told by associates that voters in places such as Pennsylvania’s 18th District are looking for more to be done by the administration, according to two people familiar with the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations,' the Post wrote. 'The president has noted that the Republican in the race is struggling in a district where he won by a large margin, those people said.' So the race-- despite the new map and already-evident political winds-- matters because it matters to President Trump. A win, therefore, would allow Trump to crow that the GOP can still win in Trump Country. But a loss would be devastating for him: After all the money, the campaigning and the tariff timing, to have a Republican lose in a district Trump carried by 20 points would suggest there’s not more the president can do to help GOP candidates, even in Trump Country. In sum, Tuesday’s PA-18 is a perfect microcosm of much of the Trump Era: So much attention and such high stakes on something that didn’t have to be this big-- and in large part because Trump made it so."

As Alex Isenstadt reported this week in Politico, in anticipation of a possible loss, the NRCC is already starting to trash Rick Saccone. Yep, their candidate is as mediocre and lame as Connor Lamb. The NRCC bitching is all about what a bad fundraiser he is. They're pissed off that as of the Feb 21 FEC reporting deadline, Saccone had only raised $916,392 to Lamb's $3,869,247. Because of Trump's hysteria-- as well as Paul Ryan's-- the GOP has had to open their purses is the biggest possible way-- over $10,000,000 in independent expenses to bail out Saccone.

Meanwhile you have Pennsylvania's Republican U.S. senator, Pat Toomey, bad-mouthing Trump's trade war strategy. Toomey: "I think the tariffs are a big mistake. I think the policy is very, very counter productive. It makes no sense. If there is a problem with steel, a problem that needs to be addressed, it’s Chinese over capacity. The Chinese, in an attempt to accelerate their industrialization in decades past, they built massive capacity to make steel and that’s true, that’s a fact. We can have a good debate, about what American policy should be about that fact. Here’ s the reality, because of perceived violations of trading norms, we’ve already punished the Chinese in the past and today, American imports from China are trivial. They only provide 2 percent of the steel we import... We manufacture 75 to 80 percent of all the steel we consume domestically. Our biggest imported source is, for this modest amount that we do import, is Canada. By the way, Canada buys from us as much steel as they sell to us, we just happen to have an almost equal balance of in trade of steel with Canada. So what we’re doing is were slapping a tariff on Canadian steel, which makes no sense at all, they don’t impose that kind of tariff on our steel but we’re doing that. China is completely unaffected because we already don’t buy steel from China." He completely undercut Trumpanzee's foolish reasons to start a trade war (and help Saccone). "Since we signed NAFTA, Pennsylvania’s exports to Mexico are up 500 percent. I mean it just totally opened up Mexico to all kinds of chemicals and manufactured goods, transportation equipment, the things that we sell to Mexico, that we export generally from Pennsylvania have gone through the roof. The exports that we sell to the Canadian and Mexican companies add up to more than we export to the next 10 Countries. They’re number one and two."

What a mess! And that's Trump, Trump, who is leading the GOP into a massive oncoming tsunami, an unprecendent electoral disaster, that they absolutely deserve for enabling his every unhinged circus performance since he became their nominee. This week Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball didn't just move PA-18 from "leans Republican" to "toss up," he moved 25 districts across the country in favor of Democrats-- and not one in favor of the GOP! This is the shape of the GOP catastrophe in the making. [Keep in mind Sabato is a sad-sack establishment idiot and his prognosticating months behind reality. His comments are generally worthless, other than to indicate what the DC establishment is thinking. Example: his critique of Randy Bryce's campaign is not based on reality in any way shape or form. Bryce's campaign is-- by far-- the best run in the country, the envy of every single campaign on both sides of the aisle, but Sabato is parroting DCCC/Hoyer wishful thinking and envy.]

"Democrats have been consistently overperforming Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential performance in special elections held since Donald Trump’s election," wrote Sabato... Democrats have been running on average 13 points ahead of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 margin in the nearly 90 races held so far featuring a Democrat and a Republican. That speaks to the overall political environment, which clearly favors Democrats right now."

We’re moving Reps. Ami Bera (D, CA-7), Tom O’Halleran (D, AZ-1), and Stephanie Murphy (D, FL-7) from Leans Democratic to Likely Democratic, and we’re moving Reps. Dave Loebsack (D, IA-2), Ann Kuster (D, NH-2), Sean Patrick Maloney (D, NY-18), Tom Suozzi (D, NY-3), and Ron Kind (D, WI-3) from Likely Democratic to Safe Democratic. If a Democrat was in the White House, many or all of these members would be Republican targets. Republicans still hope to push many of them this fall, but we’re just skeptical of their ability to do so given history and the overall environment. Of all of these changes, Bera is probably the closest call-- he barely won in both 2014 and 2016, and he has had to deal with the fallout of a campaign finance scandal that sent his father to prison. But memories of that scandal are likely fading, and he benefits, just like every other Democrat, from Trump being in the White House. A possible exception may be if first-term Rep. Ruben Kihuen (D, NV-4) decides to run for a second term after retiring earlier this cycle because of sexual harassment accusations. The Nevada Independent reported Wednesday that Kihuen might be reconsidering. We currently list his open seat as Leans Democratic.

...In addition to the new PA-17 and the soon-to-be defunct old PA-18, we have three additional Republican Toss-ups to add to a growing list of 50-50 races: Reps. Rod Blum (R, IA-1), Mike Bost (R, IL-12), and Erik Paulsen (R, MN-3). The first two, Blum and Bost, represent working-class districts with down-ballot Democratic strength that swung to Trump in 2016. Both should face strong opponents and the prospect of a Democratic snapback later this year. Brendan Kelly (D), a local state’s attorney, is set to challenge Bost, while Blum awaits the winner of a contested Democratic primary. Meanwhile, Paulsen represents a more affluent district in the Twin Cities suburbs where Trump underperformed in 2018. Paulsen is likely to face Dean Phillips (D), a member of a powerful Minnesota business family. The moves here are not related to a specific new development, but rather represent a fresh assessment of these races that takes into account what we believe is a challenging environment for Republicans in districts that both moved toward and away from Trump in 2016 relative to their previous presidential voting.

The same applies to several other Republicans who are also moving to more competitive categories this week: Reps. Mike Bishop (R, MI-8), Ted Budd (R, NC-13), Robert Pittenger (R, NC-9), Lee Zeldin (R, NY-1), Steve Chabot (R, OH-1), and Pete Sessions (R, TX-32) all move from Likely Republican to Leans Republican. These incumbents seem likely to face credible challengers, and Democrats have had success in some of this territory in the recent past. Zeldin in particular stands out as someone who may be a key Democratic target if only because his Suffolk County seat has been perennially competitive. Sessions, a former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, is a very formidable longtime incumbent, but Tuesday’s Texas primary did demonstrate an urban/suburban Democratic energy in terms of significantly improved turnout from the most recent comparable election (the 2014 midterm). That may not be enough to change the statewide dynamic, where Republicans have long ruled the roost, but members like Sessions and another longtime Texas Republican, Rep. John Culberson (R, TX-7), may be endangered in districts narrowly carried by Hillary Clinton in 2016. The Democratic primaries to face both Texas incumbents are going to runoffs: Former NFL player Colin Allred (D) more than doubled the vote of his closest competitor for the right to face Sessions and is likely a big favorite in the May 22 runoff, while attorney Lizzie Pannill Fletcher (D) and activist Laura Moser (D) will battle to face Culberson. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee clearly prefers Fletcher, and the committee intervened (some would say ham-handedly) against Moser a couple of weeks ago. Moser ended up getting about 24% of the primary vote, second to Fletcher’s 29%, but Moser’s level of support grew from 22% in the early voting to 26% of the Election Day vote, perhaps suggesting the DCCC brouhaha actually helped her improve her standing in the latter stages of the race.

Meanwhile, Reps. Vern Buchanan (R, FL-16), Jack Bergman (R, MI-1), Fred Upton (R, MI-6), Tim Walberg (R, MI-7), and Steve Russell (R, OK-5) move from Safe Republican to Likely Republican. Russell in particular may seem like a curious addition, but Democrats have had some of their best special election performances in Oklahoma so far this cycle, and the Oklahoma City-based district shifted from 59%-41% for Mitt Romney in 2012 to 53%-40% Trump in 2016, perhaps indicating some anti-Trump sentiment that could contribute to a Democratic opening in a good year. Noah Rudnick, a sharp young analyst, recently published a long piece looking at OK-5 and questioning why House handicappers were ignoring it. We were sufficiently intrigued to include it in our ratings. The other four Safe to Likely Republican districts mentioned, three in Michigan and one in Florida, are also deep sleeper Democratic targets.

One final change of note: We’re moving Speaker Paul Ryan (R, WI-1) from Safe Republican to Likely Republican, too, for a variety of reasons.

The first is that Ryan’s district is actually competitive, on paper at least: Barack Obama narrowly won it in 2008, Mitt Romney (with Ryan as his VP nominee) carried it by four points in 2012, and Trump won it by 10 in 2016. So the district seems to be trending Republican — but, remember, we’re in an electoral period where Democrats are making districts Trump won by 20 points into Toss-ups, like PA-18.

Still, Ryan has been untouchable, never winning less than 55% in his 10 victories dating back to 1998. Ironworker Randy Bryce (D), one of Ryan’s potential general election challengers, has become a minor celebrity on the left, and he raised more than $1 million in the last quarter, a lot of money for a House candidate (though he burned through almost all of what he raised last quarter, which calls into question how he is running his campaign). Still, in a big wave environment, it’s not impossible that Ryan could be vulnerable, particularly because voters don’t seem to reward senior leaders the way they used to (it’s probably not a coincidence that Ryan’s weakest general election performance in the House came in 2012, when he was also on the ballot as the vice presidential candidate and thus a highly nationalized figure).

However, the main reason we’re including Ryan’s district on the list is to account for the possibility that he may not even be running in the fall. A few months ago, some well-connected congressional reporters, Politico’s Tim Alberta and Rachael Bade and Huffington Post’s Matt Fuller, suggested Ryan was not long for the House, and in late January, Ryan was non-committal about running for reelection, and Wisconsin’s filing deadline is not until June 1. Could Ryan decide not to run? Or might he run this year and then resign after winning reelection, perhaps necessitating a special election in 2019? It’s hard to say, but Ryan may keep us all guessing for awhile, because if he retires he could prompt even more of his colleagues to also retire. Ryan is also a vital (and very strong) fundraiser for his caucus, and he might not raise as much if donors explicitly knew he was heading for the exits.

So what that chart-- which Sabato comes up with by talking to the clueless imbeciles at the DCCC-- tells us is that Republican incumbents Vern Buchanan, Rod Blum (IA), Mike Best (IL), Jack Bergman (MI), Mike Bishop (MI), Fred Upton (MI), Tim Walberg (MI), Erik Paulsen (MN), Ted Budd (NC), Bob Pittenger (NC), Lee Zeldin (NY), Steve Chabot (OH), Steve Russell (OK), Keith Rothfus (PA), Pete Sessions (TX) and Paul Ryan have joined the ranks of the vulnerable.

How Much Damage Will Their Support For TrumpCare Cause GOP Senators?

Tuesday night, Jerry Moran, a conservative Republican senator from Kansas, let lose with a couple of tweets that augur poorly for McConnell's chances of ever passing TrumpCare 3.0 through the Republican-controlled Senate. He's another NO vote-- an unexpected one. "The Senate health care bill missed the mark for Kansans and, therefore, did not have my support,” he said in a statement. “I am pleased with the decision to delay the vote-- now is the time to take a step back and put the full legislative process to work." He added that he's hoping to help craft a bill that "makes certain Kansans will have access to more affordable and better quality healthcare," a slap in the face at Trump, McConnell, Price, Ryan and the rest of the anti-healthcare fanatics who are trying to pass this garbage bill off as just that exactly.

Another senator no one expected to oppose TrumpCare is Tennessee's Bob Corker, a conservative Republican in a deep red conservative state. But he's up for reelection in 2018 and a new poll of his state just came out from Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Bad news for Corker if he's seriously considering voting for this turd. Trump won Tennessee in a landslide-- 92 out of the 95 counties with 61.1% of the vote to Clinton's 34.9%. And most Tennesseans still back him, though, the poll finds, "they are less optimistic that he’ll change things for the better... The percentage of Tennesseans who say health care should be the state government’s top priority has been steadily rising since 2012 and now stands at 30 percent, tied for first place with the economy. At the federal level, Tennesseans rank reducing health care costs second, after the economy and before terrorism prevention." And he's where it gets sticky for Corker:

Support for the Affordable Care Act is still low but higher than it’s ever been before—29 percent. Additionally, support is growing among Tennesseans to fix the ACA (33 percent, up 5 from November) rather than repeal it (14 percent, down 7) or repeal and replace it (24 percent, down 5). In another surprise, the percentage of Tennesseans favoring a single-payer health care system has risen 6 points since November to 22 percent.

While Tennesseans may still be skeptical of the ACA itself, several of its signature policies have overwhelming bipartisan support: Just under 80 percent want insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions, not charge them more for it, cover children up to age 26 and cover addiction treatment.

I suspect state polling across the country, in one red state after another, is going to show senators the same thing. The new national poll from Marist, released yesterday morning, shows approval for TrumpCare at a startlingly anemic 17%. The top-line: "Americans broadly disapprove of the Senate GOP's health care bill, and they're unhappy with how Republicans are handling the efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act." The details don't make it sound any better. While Democrats and Independents hate the thing (only 8% of Dems approve and just 13% of independents do), just 35% of Republican voters are onboard. And this poll was done before the CBO report was released, which will drive this numbers lower.

In fact, while many Americans want changes to the ACA, also known as Obamacare, they want it to be more far-reaching. A 46 percent plurality say they want to see the ACA do more, while just 7 percent want it to do less. Keeping the ACA and having it do less is essentially what GOP congressional plans are doing.

Only 17 percent want the 2010 bill left intact and unchanged, while a quarter of Americans want it repealed completely-- including just over half of Republicans.

If Congress doesn't go through with a repeal of the ACA, 37 percent of Americans said they would blame Republicans in Congress, while 23 percent would blame Democrats, and 15 percent would blame President Trump.

Wednesday morning Congressional Progressive Caucus chairman Raul Grijalva was trolling Señor Trumpanzee with a tweet pointing out that "Public support for #Trumpcare is below @realDonaldTrump's abysmal approval rating. #Sad!" And it's true. And now Republicans are starting to blame each other for the failure. McConnell has been hissing behind the scenes that Trump has been useless in the battle, even counter-productive, while extremists like Freedom Caucus Chair Mark Meadows (R-NC) and anti-government radicals like Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and Rand Paul are all demanding the bill go even further right, alienating mainstream Republicans who are trying to stick with McConnell. McConnell's office has been telling reporters off the record that the Trump/Pence SuperPAC, America First Policies, deciding to attack Dean Heller (R-NV) with a million dollars in ads encouraging Trump voters to abandon him, was the last straw for many Republican senators.

I want to point out a Philadelphia Daily News column by Will Bunch on a Republican senator, Pat Toomey (R-PA) left twisting in the wind but still sticking with Trump (who barely won the state, 48.8% to 47.6%). Bunch wrote that Toomey had a close call inasmuch as having to take an actual on-the-record vote on TrumpCare would have discomforted him bigly, considering around 700,000 Pennsylvanians get healthcare coverage though the Medicaid expansion TrumpCare savages. "Maybe we’ll never know how Toomey would have voted," he wrote. "While he called the measure “a constructive first step” when it was finally made public after weeks of secret, closed-door deliberations, he also assured Pennsylvania: “I will thoroughly examine this draft and welcome all feedback from my fellow Pennsylvanians in the coming days.” Ha, who was he kidding? The reality is that the draft that Toomey and the Senate is considering is, in good measure, Toomey’s own work. As Philadelphia Magazine’s Claire Sasko reported last week, it was Toomey who-- without holding a single public hearing (something that we here in Pa. call the Toomey Way)-- drafted the $800 billion in reduced Medicaid spending which the senator said is 'necessary to make it a sustainable program' yet in the real world seem to have disappeared mostly to pay for those tax cuts for the Maserati crowd."

So you could also say that Toomey’s posturing on Medicaid and on the BCRA tax-cut-disguised-as-health-care bill was disingenuous, at best-- but then it got worst, a lot worse. On Sunday morning, the Pennsylvania Republican went on CBS’ “Face the Nation” and, facing the nation, proceeded to blatantly attempt to bamboozle it. To the casual coffee-cake-munching Sunday a.m. TV viewer, Toomey delivered a rap that made it sound like he’d found a magical way to make Medicaid better by spending less money-- and no one gets hurt. The senator uttered words that were true only if you parsed the English language in a way that 320 million  Americans, minus about 40 U.S. senators and a few brain-dead Trump administration officials, do not. In that kind of “it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is” way.

Here’s some of what Toomey told CBS’ John Dickerson:

Yes, listen, it’s going to be a challenge, but I have to strongly disagree with the characterization that we’re somehow ending the Medicaid expansion.In fact, quite the contrary. The Senate bill will codify and make permanent the Medicaid expansion. And, in fact, we will have the federal government pay the lion’s share of the cost. Remember, Obamacare created a new category of eligibility. Working-age, able-bodied adults with no dependents for the first time became eligible for Medicaid if their income was below 138 percent of the poverty level. We are going to continue that eligibility. No one loses coverage. What we are going to do, gradually over seven years is transition from the 90 percent federal share that Obamacare created and transition that to where the federal government is still paying a majority, but the states are kicking in their fair share, an amount equivalent to what they pay for all the other categories of eligibility.

That was Sunday. About 30 hours later, the Congressional Budget Office came out with its devastating report on so-called Trumpcare which projected that 22 million fewer Americans will have health insurance by 2026 including-- more relevant to Toomey’s CBS comments-- a whopping 15 million fewer to be covered by Medicaid. That’s a lot more than “no one.”

Even some of Toomey’s colleagues from across the aisle, normally reluctant to call out a peer, were aghast at the senator’s performance.

In the spirit of, ahem, civility, I reached out on Monday to Toomey and his staff, and his staffers were civil back in offering their background thoughts on their boss’ comments. His defense is essentially that the Senate bill retains the eligibility for the working poor that was added in 2010-- the only thing that’s changing is dramatically fewer federal dollars to pay for that coverage. In theory, states receiving Medicaid block grants could somehow increase their own ante, or else states could cut services but not the rolls of the insured. Those more-than-highly unlikely things could keep Medicaid enrollment at the same levels! Also in theory, the last place Phillies could suddenly win their final 87 games and still make the playoffs. That’s about as plausible as the Toomey Medicaid scenario.

Here’s what Toomey’s spokesman Steve Kelly sent me tonight: “Senator Toomey’s comments related to Medicaid and the current Senate health care bill-- the federal government is not ending Medicaid expansion coverage or eligibility for anyone. States are still free to offer the coverage to anyone who meets the Obamacare’s expanded criteria. However, instead of funding it at 90 percent in perpetuity, the Senate bill asks the states to contribute the same amount for the expanded population as they do for every other category of Medicaid.”

That said. you can and probably should note that Toomey’s CBS Sunday statement is demonstrable false, since 8 states that expanded Medicaid coverage after 2010 have so-called “trigger” provisions that automatically kill their program if federal funding drops below 90 percent, which is exactly the plan that Toomey is pushing. That would end Medicaid coverage for 3.3 million people. Again, not “no one.” The Pulitzer Prize-winning Factcheck.org looked at Toomey’s appearance and-- citing his parsing on the eligibility issue-- gave him a “half-true” rating. I think they were more than generous. The truth is that Toomey didn’t want to level with Pennsylvanians-- or the American people-- about what’s in the bill or what it does. There’s a word for that: Bamboozlement. And when it’s a matter of life and death for the elderly, the working poor, and the sick people that Toomey represents, bamboozlement is an outrage.

Toomey won’t tell you the whole truth because, politically, he can’t. Because he helped design this scheme to cut Medicaid solely for the purpose of benefiting the people that he really represents. People like the oil-billionaire Koch Brothers, who bankrolled Toomey’s 2016 re-election and whose retreat in sunny California the senator fled to while his Pennsylvania counterpart Sen. Bob Casey was at Philadelphia International Airport fighting for the rights of migrants. Or like hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, whose Elliott Management employees are Toomey’s largest corporate source of campaign funds. Or Wall Street billionaire (and former New York mayor) Mike Bloomberg, another key 2016 backer. These are the folks who will gain millions while states are struggling to decide which sick truck driver gets to see a doctor.

The good news? The temporary collapse of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s scheme to ram through the BCRA this week means that Toomey comes home for the July 4 break with a wonderful opportunity to both atone for his bamboozlement and follow up on his promise. You know, sir, the one where you said that you “welcome feedback from my fellow Pennsylvanians…” That would mean doing something that you haven’t done since 2013, senator-- holding a public, in-person town hall in the state that you represent. That would give you a chance to explain in long form-- and not tortured TV soundbites-- why you think reducing Medicaid is such a good deal for Pennsylvania. And it will give you, Pat Toomey, a chance to do something else you so rarely do, which is listen to regular people, and not lobbyists. You’ll hear something that might even sound a little strange to you.

The truth.

The Republican Wing Of The Democratic Party Rides Again

How do you know which congressional candidates-- often without records, or without easily accessible records-- you should vote for? Many people just base it on party ID. People who identify with the Democratic Party, for whatever reason, vote for Democratic candidates and people who identify with the Republican Party, vote for Republican candidates. I bet that accounts for upwards of 70% of the electorate. But on both sides of the political divide, there has been a realization dawning that not all Democrats (and, to a lesser extent, not all Republicans) are the same.

There's this thing-- the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, primarily conservatives grouped as New Dems and Blue Dogs-- that actual Democrats ought to not ever vote for. We write about this pretty frequently and I'm bringing it up again today because the New Dems just released their final list of 2016 endorsements-- two dozen of the worst Democrats (to use the term loosely)-- running for the House. Candidates have to submit applications proving that they are bona fide conservatives in order to get endorsed. Sure, some are worse than others, but if you're a Democrat who care about Democratic Party ideals, values and principles, and about getting progressive legislation passed, these are not candidates for you. The worst ones-- with records of how bad they are-- include Lou Correa (CA), Joe Garcia (FL), Pete Gallego (TX), Randy Perkins (FL), Colleen Hanabusa (HI), Brad Schneider (IL), Isadore Hall (CA), Monica Vernon (IA), Darren Soto (FL), Josh Gottheimer (NJ)... and from I know of them Matt Heinz (AZ) and Angie Craig (MN) don't seem as terrible as the rest.

The only reason to vote for Isadore Hall would be because you feel there aren't enough corrupt snazzy dressers in Congress

But a New Dem is a New Dem... It doesn't mean they're worse than a Republican, but it does mean they'll be dragging the Democratic Party further and further right and further and further into the corrupt clutches of Wall Street, something no Republican, no matter how bad, can do. (Also worth noting: two of the worst of the New Dems, Lou Correa and Isadore Hall, aren't running against Republicans Nov. 8, but against progressive Democrats, respectively Bao Nguyen and Nanette Barragan.)

On Tuesday Laura Reston dealt with the Senate version of the problem for the New Republic, asserting, correctly, that if Schumer's handpicked, Wall Street-friendly candidates blow this chance to take back the Senate, Democrats should stone Schumer rather than elect him Leader (except she put it more diplomatically in Will Mushy Moderates Cost the Democrats a Senate Majority?

Reston doesn't think much of former fracking lobbyist Katie McGinty, the 5th or 6th recruit Schumer finally managed to land as the not-Sestak candidate in Pennsylvania. She begins by quoting other journalists to puke on his Convention speech.

Delivered in a stilted, singsongy voice, McGinty’s string of platitudes earned a smattering of tepid applause from the crowd and a series of blistering reviews online. “McGinty sounds like she’s speaking to a kindergarten class, not a convention hall,” tweeted the National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar. Minutes later, the Guardian’s Dan Roberts added: “Katie McGinty, running for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, just gave the Saturday Night Live spoof version of a plastic political stump speech.”

That’s pretty much been the story of McGinty’s campaign--one that’s borne great resemblance to the equally lackluster efforts by the party’s chosen candidates in Florida (Rep. Patrick Murphy) and Nevada (former state Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto). The Democrats are close to blowing the best chance they may have in years to take back the Senate: Control of the chamber has boiled down to six races where the Democratic nominees are all virtually deadlocked with their opponents. (McGinty, down by 2 percent to Toomey, according to Real Clear Politics, is lagging about five points behind Hillary Clinton in the Pennsylvania polls.) If they fall short, it will be because the party went out of its way to recruit and push loyal foot soldiers like McGinty, a career bureaucrat who, despite having a compelling personal narrative, has shown very little spark on the campaign trail-- and offered only one consistent message: Isn’t Donald Trump awful?

Confirming what I've long thought-- namely that McGinty has nothing to offer-- Reston asserts the only qualities she has-- the ones that lured Schumer and Tester into backing her-- other than qualities authoritarian Democrats like Schumer "value in their recruits: thoroughly inoffensive centrist politics, fundraising prowess, endorsements from Washington insiders, and a willingness to stick to Democratic talking points. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and EMILY’s List wooed her into the race. And when her defeat looked likely, the DSCC officially endorsed her in March-- and then made sure that she won the nomination. In early April, the DSCC began pouring money into McGinty’s primary, expanding its initial investment well beyond the $1.1 million cash infusion they had originally allocated to shore up her campaign. The whopping $4 million spent by the party, EMILY’s List, and labor unions was enough to put McGinty over the top." And now they're stuck with a loser who might lose to Toomey, who-- as I expect to show in a poll next week-- would have been abandoned by the NRSC by now, the way they've abandoned Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, where Schumer was unable to insert right-wing New Dem Ron Kind instead of Feingold.

The party also recruited Cortez Masto to defend Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid’s seat in Nevada, and Murphy to challenge Marco Rubio in Florida. The Democrats would have had another flavorless centrist challenging Republican Richard Burr in North Carolina, too, if they hadn’t been turned down by a string of them. The DSCC sat down with former Senator Kay Hagan in early 2015, just months after her bitter loss in 2014, to gauge her interest in running again. Only after she and several other establishment options refused did Democrats settle on an unconventional choice-- liberal former state ACLU chief named Deborah Ross. Ross was considered a sure loss, but she’s running close to Burr with one of the most pleasantly surprising campaigns of the cycle-- offering a vision as fresh as the party’s chosen candidates’ are stale.

What Reston doesn't know is that Brad Miller, an independent-minded progressive was high on the list of every progressive group looking for an opponent to Burr and, knowing that crooked conservative Wall Street shills like Schumer and his hand-puppet Tester would never back him, demurred.

The central distinction McGinty has drawn between herself and her opponent is simple: He belongs to the same party as Donald Trump. “Donald Trump and Pat Toomey have plenty in common,” the narrator in a recent ad from the McGinty campaign says. “Even after Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women, Toomey stood by him.” Her allies have done the same. The Senate Leadership PAC recently released an ad that begins: “TOOMEY & TRUMP. Wrong for the women of Pennsylvania.”

It’s her one issue, really—and Toomey, the only senator running for reelection who hasn’t committed to supporting Trump, has made it devilishly hard for the attacks to stick. Pressed again in Monday night’s debate, he dodged again: “I don’t think my constituents care that much how one person is going to vote.” Toomey’s tactic has worked: Even as the Trump campaign was engulfed by sleaze in the weeks after his 2005 Access Hollywood tape surfaced, Toomey rose slightly in some polls, edging marginally ahead of McGinty.

Cortez Masto and Murphy have used the same playbook, repeatedly attempting to bludgeon their opponents with Trump. In an October 14 debate against Representative Joe Heck, Cortez Masto said, “When Donald Trump was making fun of the disabled, attacking Mexicans, calling them rapists and criminals, and calling women names and denigrating women-- which we know why he was, because he thinks he can sexually assault women-- Congressman Heck had high hopes Donald Trump would be president.” It didn’t quite work: In the days before that debate, Heck had disavowed the nominee altogether, helping to neutralize Cortez Masto’s prepared zingers. She had little other material to work with.

In an October 17 debate against Marco Rubio, Murphy experienced the same problem, almost comically. When Rubio attacked him for “inappropriate behavior” captured in an old photo that appears to show him groping a woman, Murphy sheepishly tried to pivot: “Let’s just talk about Donald Trump again.” It looked defensive, and furthermore, it’s hard to convince voters that a senator who famously feuded with Donald Trump in the Republican primary-- saying “Donald is not going to make America great, he’s going to make America orange”-- really stands with the Republican nominee.

After watching the recent Senate debates, Slate’s Jim Newell nailed the problem, writing that Democrats are “trapped in these races,” “adhering to the same, safe strategy of saying Trump’s name a million times, which keeps them close to their rivals but suffocates the strategies elsewhere that might reveal them as inspiring candidates in their own right, running their own races.”

Imagine, for a moment, that these candidates do pull out victories on November 8. What happens six years from now? In recent midterm elections, moderate Democrats have struggled to hang onto their seats; it’s the reason the Blue Dog caucus in Congress is down to 14 members. Kay Hagan, for example, ran a cookie-cutter Democratic campaign to take her Senate seat in 2008, hewing to the middle and touting her credentials as a corporate lawyer and bank vice president. Six years later, in a midterm election, she was defeated by almost 50,000 votes despite running what Democrats considered a “perfect”-- that is, cautious and unimaginative-- campaign. With no distinct political personality to attract North Carolinians to her, Hagen was easily cast by Republicans as an Obama puppet. And her centrist appeal was not enough to generate the kind of enthusiasm required to turn voters out in a midterm election year. As one Democratic strategist said at the time, “I don’t think a field operation can create enthusiasm.”

Even if Senator Katie McGinty has the best field operation in the country six years from now, she will need something more than pat Democratic talking points to turn out the vote. And if the Democrats keep handpicking candidates who have to rely on a rogue Republican presidential contender to manufacture enthusiasm, they will almost surely forfeit any chance at holding on to the Senate over the long haul.

If you want to see progressives win seats in Congress, not shills from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, this thermometer leads to a page that includes both House and Senate candidates, all vetted progressives-- no New Dems, no Blue Dogs, no Schumerites.