When Will Republicans Start Physically Beating Up Women Colleagues?

The story about how a pro-slave fanatic, Rep. Preston Brooks (D-SC) brutally beat an abolitionist, Senator Charles Sumner (R-MA), unconscious on the floor with a cane on the Senate floor in 1856, is well known by anyone who has studied the lead up to the Civil War. Less well known is that by 1858 "partisan tensions over slavery erupted into a 'full-fledged sectional combat on the floor.' This was one year after the U.S. Supreme Court enraged abolitionists by ruling in Dred Scott v. Sanford that black people couldn’t be citizens and the federal government couldn’t ban slavery in western territories. The brawl started around 2:00 a.m. during an overnight session when a southern representative grabbed a northern representative by the throat and said he would teach the 'black republican puppy' a lesson. As the two white men struggled, their colleagues ran over and a fistfight broke out. The end result was a free fight in the open space in front of the Speaker’s platform featuring roughly thirty sweaty, disheveled, mostly middle-aged congressmen in a no-holds-barred brawl, North against South... Acts of violence like this showed how intensely southern congressmen wanted to preserve the economic, political and social power that they and their constituents held through owning slaves. They also presaged the larger fight between North and South that broke out three years later, when southern states seceded and declared war on the Union. After all, civil wars don’t just come out of nowhere."

No, they don't, do they? And yesterday it was cowardly southern dogs, doing what they do best: threatening women colleagues. First it was a concerted attack, led by pig-person Matt Gaetz of the Florida panhandle, demanding that Liz Cheney step down as Republican House Conference chair-- the only woman in the Republican leadership-- for not supporting Trump enough. The whole neo-fascist wing of the House GOP piled on, from Gym Jordan to Louie Gohmert-- and all the scarping from the bottom of the sewer system between. Apparently the anti-mask contingent were all in a huff because Cheney is pro-mask. Jordan and Andy Biggs screeching about her being pro-Fauci and Biggs "accused Cheney of undermining the GOP’s ability to win back the House and said that if someone has a problem with Trump, they should keep it to themselves."

The way the beat down started was weird. Gaetz was bitching about how Cheney supported Thomas Massie's primary opponent before he complained she was supportive of Trump. The problem there is that the person leading the charge against Massie was... Señor Trumpanzee himself. Aside from Jordan, a Confederate at hearts, only southern males attacked her: Gohmert (TX), Chip Roy (TX)-- who is about to be beaten by a woman for his seat and is flipping out-- Ralph Norman (SC)...




Meanwhile two more Southern gentlemen of the radical right, very much like Preston Brooks-- neo-fascist Ted Yoho of Florida and crooked used car salesman Roger Williams of Texas-- accosted AOC and started hurling expletives at her. Neither took a crap in their hands to throw it at her because there were witnesses around. Yoho was heard by a reporter called her a "fucking bitch," Williams chimed in and then when the news broke, they both denied it and called her a liar, refusing to address the problem of the witnesses, let alone apologizing. (This morning, Yoho made a disingenuous non-apology ("I cannot apologize for my passion... the offensive name-calling words attributed to me by the press were never spoken to my colleagues and if they were construed that way...") apology on the House floor. Williams is still claiming nothing happened.)

Bloomberg's Ugly Trump-Like Sexism Makes Him Absolutely Unfit To Be The Democratic Nominee

Bloomberg is running in 3 super-Tuesday states so far: Alabama Arkansas and Tennessee but his campaign always says he hasn't decided if he's running for president or not yet. Sounds crazy to me but... he's also spending $100,000,000 on digital ads in battleground states the way you or I might spent $100. Michael Scherer and John Wagner, writing for the Washington Post, reported that the first ads popped up yesterday in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Arizona and that "the outlay far exceeds what any other Democrat already in the race has spent on advertising."

The New York Times reported that the ads will stay up through the primary season even if Bloomberg ultimately decides to run only in Alabama Arkansas and Tennessee. (He's not actually in the ads.)

The announcement of the ad campaign might take some of the attention off all the stories that inundated the press this week about Bloomberg's sexism. Bloomberg's arrogance makes him incapable to responding directly to a long litany of example of his misogyny but he did have a lackey, tell the media that "Mike has come to see that some of what he has said is disrespectful and wrong. He believes his words have not always aligned with his values and the way he has led his life."

On Thursday Mediaite reported that "Bloomberg’s demeaning or outright disturbing comments about women and sexual assault date back decades. In mid-to-late ’90s, four women sued Bloomberg LP for sexual harassment and details that came out of the suit include the billionaire allegedly demanding a woman sales executive 'Kill it!' when she announced that she was pregnant. While discussing the same sales executive getting engaged, the lawsuit claimed Bloomberg looked at her engagement ring and said, 'What, is the guy dumb and blind? What the hell is he marrying you for?' before asking several days later if she was 'still engaged,' adding, 'What, is he that good in bed, or did your father pay him off to get rid of you?' In an incredible argument insisting he did not make sexually inappropriate comments about the sales executive, Bloomberg said in a deposition that he thought the phrase 'I’d do her' was a reference to having a friendship with someone, not sex. The suit was settled out of court and Bloomberg claims he passed a lie-detector test proving his innocence, but the supposed test results were never released."

In a late ’90s lawsuit over Bloomberg LP’s sexist work culture, a woman employee claimed she had been raped by her superior, but in a deposition, Bloomberg suggested that she was lying by saying that the only time he believes rape accusations are when there’s “an unimpeachable third-party witness” vouching for the victim. The suit accused Bloomberg of using phrases like, “I’d do that piece of meat” and “I’d do her in a second;” the billionaire took issue with just one part of those comments, saying, “I don’t recall ever using the term ‘meat’ at all.” A Village Voice report from 2001 suggested that Bloomberg may have quietly settled the suit out of court with the woman, like he did in the lawsuit years previous.

In a book from the early ’90s-- titled, The Portable Bloomberg: The Wit and Wisdom of Michael Bloomberg-- written by Bloomberg LP staffers to canonize some of their boss’s most memorable quotes, the lines "If women wanted to be appreciated for their brains, they’d go to the library instead of to Bloomingdale’s" and "I know for a fact that any self-respecting woman who walks past a construction site and doesn’t get a whistle will turn around and walk past again and again until she does get one" are attributed to the billionaire. When journalist Michael Wolff wrote about the book, he reached out to former Bloomberg LP executive Elisabeth DeMarse, who confirmed that the quotes were accurate, adding that Bloomberg “was touched” by it because “He loves things that are about himself.”

Business Insider made him sound like Trump! "In his 1997 autobiography, Bloomberg wrote that he kept 'a girlfriend in every city' during his years on Wall Street in the 1960s and 70s. And he once told a reporter, 'I like theater, dining, and chasing women ... Let me put it this way: I am a single, straight billionaire in Manhattan. What do you think? It's a wet dream.'... In 2008, at least 58 women filed a class-action lawsuit against Bloomberg LP alleging pregnancy discrimination. The women alleged they were demoted, had their salaries cut, or were otherwise mistreated after they returned from maternity leave. One of the women's complaints alleged that an executive at the company said, 'I'm not having any pregnant bitches working for me.'" A Democratic Party presidential nominee? Maybe in Alabama, Arkansas and Tennessee... nowhere else.

If Evangelicals Are Supporting Trump Because They Can't Cope With Women's Bodies, Maybe They Should Skip The Election This Year And See A Psycho-Therapist Instead

Trump's support among white evangelicals hasn't sunk much despite the discomfort some of them feel about a few of his noticeably anti-Jesus policies and about the way he comports himself. 80% of white evangelicals voted for him in 2016 and, if the election were held today, 77% of them say they would do the same now. Writing for the Washington Post, Andrea Lucado cited a Maris poll for NPR and PBS from last month, in her piece that ran yesterday, How the female body became the scapegoat for white evangelicals. She pointed to the fact that 70% of white evangelicals reported hating Hillary Clinton, overwhelmingly because of her stand on women's Choice. "As a white, evangelical-raised Christian," wrote Lucado, "I am frustrated, angry and confused by the continued support of Trump even when his first term is coming to an end, but I can’t claim to be surprised." Not only do 65% of evangelicals oppose abortion-- a relatively new phenomenon; American evangelicals used to back Choice and deride Catholics for opposing it-- but "Americans who oppose the legality of abortion (27%) are significantly more likely than those who support the legality of abortion (18%) to say they will only vote for a candidate who shares their views on the issue."

I have grown suspicious of the way some evangelicals identify with their pro-life status so deeply that it affects every political decision they make.

French literary critic and philosopher René Girard studied how ancient civilizations relied on the tradition of the scapegoat. Girard claimed that scapegoating was necessary due to what he called “mimetic desire,” which, put simply, is the fact that we want what others have. This coveting ultimately leads to conflict only resolved through an act of violence, usually cast upon one victim chosen by the tribe: the scapegoat.





Girard found that this method of scapegoating changed when Jesus arrived in ancient Palestine. Jesus himself was described as a scapegoat, a “lamb led to slaughter” (Acts 8:32). But Girard argued that the circumstances around Christ’s crucifixion symbolized the end of the need of scapegoating. As he explained in his book “I See Satan Fall Like Lightening,” “Jesus is innocent, and those who crucify him are guilty.”





Girard theorized that because Jesus’ innocence was known by those in attendance at his crucifixion (See the accounts of Pontius Pilate in Matthew 27:23-24 and of the centurion in Matthew 27:54), the curtain was pulled back on the scapegoat method. It was finally clear that the truly guilty are those who scapegoat, not the scapegoat. The crucifixion symbolized the final sacrifice and negated the usefulness of the scapegoat tradition.

Even though Christianity was founded upon this very sacrifice, some have not gotten the message that scapegoating has ended.

Although the pro-life movement has made steps toward helping women through pregnancy, many of its tactics to prevent abortion are sometimes driven by shame. Each movie that portrays the horrors of the procedure, each image of a fetus, each hand-scribbled sign bobbing up and down outside a Planned Parenthood seems to be pointing a finger and asking, How could you? And the finger is always pointed at the woman. Her decision, her body, her fault.

What I have seen in the pro-life movement and elsewhere in evangelical culture is this ancient reliance upon the scapegoat mechanism, and the scapegoat is always the same-- the female body.

Purity culture-- an evangelical movement that reached its height in the late 1990s and early 2000s-- promoted a core message of abstinence before and outside of marriage. The way this sexual ethic was taught to me and many others badly warped my view of sex, the body and gender. Only in recent years have I been able to clumsily untangle the message from my faith, namely the weight, guilt and responsibility the movement put on females.

When learning about sex and purity, I was taught my virginity was my greatest commodity, therefore, I must protect it at all costs until I was married. Marriage and childbearing would be the pinnacle of my existence-- a belief many evangelicals still hold today. Just this week, Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, suggested being a parent is what makes one human.

According to purity culture, the protection of my virginity was up to me. I remember many lectures about the importance of girls’ dressing modestly so as not to let our brothers stumble into the sin of lust. I once heard a youth leader say that a mere glimpse of a bra strap would cause a boy to have impure thoughts.

I was warned about how often boys thought about sex and the warning’s undertone was a warning for me: Don’t lead him into temptation. It was up to me to keep myself pure and to keep my brothers in Christ pure, as well. If I had sex before marriage, I would not only taint myself, but I would also own the guilt of causing the male I had sex with to have sex with me.

It made for a world nearly impossible for a girl to do right and for a boy to do wrong.

The shame and guilt that drove purity culture is the same shame I see driving the pro-life movement today. And like purity culture, the woman is the scapegoat. She is the one making the decision. She, and she alone, is at fault.

The fact that white evangelicals still as a whole support Trump for a 2020 reelection with abortion as the flag over their crusade points to an important truth: Evangelicals are still obsessed with female bodies, controlling them and blaming them.

Recalling Girard’s theory of mimetic desire, this leads me to wonder, what is the desire behind the scapegoat of the woman’s body? What do evangelicals want that others have? Is it power? Is it fame? Is it women themselves?

Or, do they fear what an end to their scapegoat mechanism would do? When the woman, or scapegoat, speaks, it causes unrest. It causes a dismantling. Look what it did to former Southern Baptist seminary president Paige Patterson, one of the most prominent religious leaders of the late 20th century. Is the pro-life movement just a convenient, moral excuse to keep the woman as scapegoat, and, therefore, maintain order?

Whatever it is, the pull to isolate a presidential vote to one issue is strong enough to blind many evangelicals to what Jesus would care about today: the poor (He was.), the immigrant (He was one.), the marginalized (He was.), the person of color (He was one.). It seems the primary rock some evangelicals are standing on is one in which the woman’s body is scapegoat, in which she is sacrificed.

President of the Evangelical States of America, Pig Man

And this isn't just about people in some backward part of Alabama or Oklahoma. How about Long Island? Nancy Goroff is running for a Suffolk County congressional seat held by anti-Choice fanatic Lee Zeldin. Yesterday, Goroff told her supporters that "Trump has instituted a 'gag rule' that prevents doctors from giving full medical advice to their patients. It has forced Planned Parenthood out of Title X, putting at risk wellness exams, STD and HIV screenings, birth control, and contraceptive education that millions of people count on. As a scientist, I believe medical decisions need to be made with the best information possible, and I don’t believe the government should stand between a patient and their doctor. Anti-choice politicians, like my opponent Lee Zeldin, are part of the problem and need to be replaced. Zeldin has voted to defund Planned Parenthood, to allow for 'personhood' legislation and to repeal the Affordable Care Act-- stripping health insurance from tens of millions of Americans. Overall, he’s voted against Planned Parenthood 30 times THIS YEAR-- and not once in favor of the women who need their help. When it comes to women's healthcare, Zeldin chooses policies that ignore the facts and data. As a scientist and a mom... I will work to debunk the lies about Planned Parenthood and fight to restore critical funding for it."

The Grassroots Will Defeat Trump, But The Democrats In Congress Have A Role To Play Also

This is how the Republican Party depicts women of color fighting for their rights

This week, UC Berkeley political science professor Taeku Lee explained Trump's fears of women of color and how Democrats take them for granted instead of mobilizing them. "Women of color, especially black women," he wrote, "are potent forces in progressive politics, both in office and as organizers who mobilize voters. It seems that liberals take this for granted, but conservatives tacitly recognize the political power of women of color when they try to discredit them through ridicule and harassment. Consider President Trump’s attacks on the members of 'the squad' who have proven to be remarkably deft and savvy politicians. Or recall that Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia played referee, scorekeeper and contestant so he could tip the scales in his favor in the 2018 election for governor against Stacey Abrams, whose voter protection efforts had begun years earlier.

That’s why it’s important to note that the outcome of the 2020 election will likely depend upon the efforts of independent groups led by women of color-- like Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta and the New Virginia Majority Education Fund-- that are expert at the nuts and bolts of politicking.

A new report called Ahead of the Majority, by the AAPI Civic Engagement Fund and Groundswell Fund uses recently released census data, polling data from the 2018 midterm elections and interviews with community organizers to illuminate the political power of women of color. Their numbers are growing, and they are turning out to vote; mobilizing their families, friends and communities; and taking to the streets.

Since 2008, women of color have grown by 18 percentage points in the general population and by 25 percentage points among registered voters. This is starting to show up at the ballot box. The 2018 election set new benchmarks for turnout in a midterm election, with a whopping 30 million more people voting than in 2014. For women of color, the increased turnout was even more stark, at 37 percent; for Latinas it was 51 percent; and for Asian-American and Pacific Islander women, 48 percent.

Women of color incited this change because they mobilized their friends and family in significant numbers. Black women led the way, with 84 percent convincing members of their social networks to register and vote, followed by 76 percent of Asian-American and Pacific Islander women, 72 percent of Native American women, 70 percent of Latinas and 66 percent of white women.

Turnout also substantially relied on the efforts of independent political groups. Consider that nearly half of 2018 voters who were contacted to register or go to the polls reported that the contact came from a group unaffiliated with a political party.

Voters of color were more likely to have been contacted this way, and these numbers buttress the experience of community-based organizations on the ground that carried out an uncommon range of nonpartisan civic engagement activities to reach those who had recently become citizens or who were classified as having a “low propensity” to vote.

The impact of community groups is especially impressive given their limited resources. Those focused on reaching communities of color have even fewer resources.

Women of color who are organizers on the ground testify that they were effective because they came from the same communities they were organizing. These independent community groups see women as the original influencers in the family and designed culturally informed programs for them. Those programs drew from the knowledge of existing networks and were used to help develop homegrown talent instead of simply relying on outside strategists who parachute into communities to extract surgical campaign victories.

...We are in a time of extraordinary challenges and opportunities for our democratic politics. At moments like this, people most directly impacted best understand the urgency for change and action. In 2018 women of color showed America what that urgency means in terms of political engagement.

Ninety-three percent of black women voters supported a Democratic House candidate as did 68 percent of Native American women, 76 percent of Latinas and 73 percent of Asian-American and Pacific Islander women. This does not bode well for the incumbent president.

Mr. Trump’s re-election strategy is focused on energizing his base of disaffected white men. And with white women evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, we would do well to heed the potential for women of color to decide the outcome of the 2020 election.

Thursday there was a lot of discussion online of Jim Lardner's American Pospect piece, Have Democrats Forgotten How to Do Oversight?. Lardner suggests what Democrats in Congress can do to help to unseat Trump while the grassroots defeats him. His panel of experts came to the conclusion that the Democrats "should not see their task simply as one of picking up the package of evidence handed to them by Robert Mueller and continuing to pursue the case he was either unable to nail or unwilling to state. Mueller felt bound to define his investigation narrowly, sticking to the trail of a potential Trump-Russia plot to meddle in the 2016 elections and adjacent offenses. The House, my panel of authorities agrees, needs to define its investigation broadly, as an inquiry into the bigger and more basic problem of kleptocratic corruption-- of self-enrichment, crony enrichment, and betrayal of the public trust." Sounds about right.

That rich realm encompasses three sub-territories. The first consists of all the areas where the Trumps have tried to turn the presidency to personal profit, whether by sneaking a $60 million real-estate developers’ tax break into the Republican tax package; getting government entities, contractors, and supplicants to purchase overpriced lodgings at Trump properties; or doing whatever they did with the $100 million supposedly raised for the inauguration ceremonies. In the second zone lie the various members of the president’s circle who, following his lead, have taken financial advantage of official positions or Trump ties. That domain blurs over into a third, in which we find the galaxy of federal departments and agencies that, thanks to the strategic placement of industry lobbyists and corporate insiders in the decision-making ranks, now routinely bow down to corporate interests at everybody else’s expense.

...In Trump’s case, the immediate loot was supposed to come from a real-estate boondoggle in Moscow. But he had also developed a taste for Russian financing when past sources had run dry. “After multiple bankruptcies in the 1980s and ’90s, Trump turned to Russian oligarchs and crime figures for a ready supply of cash,” Representative Jamie Raskin pointed out to me. “They were looking for ways to launder and safeguard money looted from the former Soviet Union.” Those transactions and thoughts of more like them appear to have been the original source of Trump’s desire to cozy up to Vladimir Putin, and in that sense, they drive U.S. Russia policy today.

Democrats, Raskin and others say, should rethink the aim as well as the subject matter of their inquiry. A scholar of constitutional law by trade (a former professor of same at American University’s law school), Raskin has no doubts about the impeachment-worthiness of credible allegations already on record. But regardless of what the House decides about impeachment or how long it takes to decide, it is time, he says, to concentrate on points of fact rather than law, and to lay out the facts to “tell a coherent and digestible story to the American people about how the president’s campaign and administration have both been money-making operations from top to bottom.” Storytelling must be the mission. And the story has to go beyond the act of corruption, says Paul C. Light, an oversight specialist and professor of public service at New York University; it needs to include the injury to government’s ability to do right by everyday people. “There’s a lot of outrage in the Democratic bloodstream,” Light says. “Unfortunately the House has not paid much attention so far to the effects of Trump’s corruption. Why does it matter to the American people? How does it affect your pocketbook or your children’s future? Who’s he robbing?”

Eight years in the minority have sapped the Democrats’ supply of oversight know-how. One of the party’s past masters of the art, former Representative Henry Waxman, counsels persistence and a willingness to “hit the same point over and over again.” The Democrats, he says, should borrow a page from Trump’s “No collusion, no obstruction” playbook. They should be willing to keep pounding away at a concise (in their case, true) message about crooked government and innocent people being shafted. “Sometimes it’s hard to get something across except in a cumulative way,” Waxman says.

...On top of the usual challenges, Democrats must now deal with a president and an attorney general telling everyone under their authority (and quite a few people who aren’t) to withhold cooperation. “Lots of norms are being thrown out the window,” says Molly Claflin, a former Senate Judiciary staffer now employed at American Oversight, an anti-corruption nonprofit that files lawsuits and surfaces official documents to compensate for the recent neglect and underfunding of Congress’s investigative work.

To get over the Trump stonewall, House committee staffers will have to cast a wide and imaginative net for witnesses, what with all the Trump-dependent people likely to resist testifying. One place to look, Light suggests, is in the middle ranks of corrupted entities, private or public. The Financial Services Committee, for example, might bring in some of the Deutsche Bank financial-crime watchdogs who tried to warn their superiors against continued lending to Trump family interests. The Natural Resources Committee could question some of the career employees at the Environmental Protection Agency who have been blocked from going after polluters. If such people feel skittish about testifying, they can be offered the option of wearing masks and having their voices distorted—a nice touch, perhaps, for the committee’s attention-getting purposes as well as the witnesses’ job-security purposes.

The ultimate victims of crooked government-- everyday people-- can also be called in. A Department of Education in the clutches of for-profit college companies and private student lenders is one unlikely to implement a loan forgiveness program for holders of student debt who commit themselves to public service. Light points to that program as a neglected and ripe target for oversight. “You have tens of thousands of people,” he says, “who have made their payments on time and are working as police officers, nurses, medical professionals and can’t get a dollar of forgiveness.” The testimony of a carefully chosen sample of those people could be the perfect prologue to a round of student-loan hearings.

Powerful stories can be aired more than once in forums with different frames of reference. The House Education and Labor Committee could hold a stand-alone hearing on the loan forgiveness program, for example; but that problem could also be examined by the Oversight and Reform Committee, under the spirited leadership of Elijah Cummings of Maryland, as part of a multi-agency investigation of the role of the former corporate lobbyists and executives now littered across the federal government. They’re all over: David Bernhardt, the fossil fuel lobbyist turned interior secretary, proud of his readiness to hand out oil-drilling leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; Daniel Elwell, the former airline guy running the FAA while it slow-walked its response to the safety issues of the Boeing 737 MAX; Jay Clayton, the ex–Goldman Sachs lawyer (married to an ex–Goldman Sachs executive) presiding over the Securities and Exchange Commission, and on and on. “Trump has found a fox for every henhouse in Washington,” Raskin says. That point could be effectively dramatized not only by the testimony of career public servants trying to do their jobs, but by an electronic map of the Trump administration with one agency after another lighting up as its conflicted leaders are identified.

Tax policy and tax enforcement is an obvious hearing topic. The Ways and Means Committee, under the cautious chairmanship of Richard Neal, took a woefully long time to sue for Trump’s tax returns, and it is unclear whether or how soon that litigation will bear fruit. The practical consequences of a New York law intended to force the release of Trump’s state tax returns are also up in the air. But Neal’s committee should have plenty of fodder for investigation, including an “opportunity zone” tax break with potentially large benefits for Jared and Ivanka, the disposition of a $7 million back-tax debt owed by the hedge fund manager and Republican donor Robert Mercer, and the strangely fast-tracked Senate confirmation of an Internal Revenue Service general counsel who had previously helped the Trump Organization with its taxes.

...The country needs Congress to do more oversight, not less. It’s time for the Democrats to map out a coordinated and thoughtfully sequenced series of hearings and investigations designed both to expose new information and to stir more awareness and outrage over what is already known and half-known. Old stories, vividly told, can have fresh impact; that is true even if they have a sketchy basis in reality, as the House Republicans proved with their endless claims about Benghazi and Hillary Clinton’s emails. The Democrats can proceed, moreover, with confidence that more dirt will surface, even if they cannot say exactly what it will be or where it will be found. Elected by fraud and fluke, Donald Trump has given us the crookedest presidency in our national memory, if not our history. Never has anyone with so much to hide occupied such a central and visible place. That is a formula guaranteed to keep the flow of ugly information coming as long as anyone keeps looking.

Mueller and his team, in the course of not quite finding an actionable Trump-Russia conspiracy, unearthed evidence of a multitude of other offenses, and that haul helped the Democrats retake the House of Representatives last year. By Election Day next year, Trump’s crimes could be his undoing, and they could pose an impossible burden for his Republican partners in Congress as well. The Democrats cannot be sure of that-- but it would be a terrible mistake to discount the possibility. Donald Trump himself is clearly troubled by the prospect of renewed scrutiny. We caught a recent glimpse of that fear in his racist fulminations against Elijah Cummings-- a crazed preemptive effort to undermine one of the senior House members and committee chairs most bent on pressing ahead with aggressive oversight. If the president doesn’t think he’s home free, the Democrats had better not make that assumption either.

We'll close for now with a poignant message-- some ideas for a song and video perhaps?-- from Lee's son, Mötley Crüe lead singer Tommy:

Republicans Only Have 13 Women In The House

Guess which party is havin' a meetin'

After the North Carolina Republican Party got caught trying to steal the NC-09 House seat last November, the election of far right Trumpist sociopath, Mark Harris was invalidated and a special election called for September 10. Citizens of a district going from Charlotte to Fayetteville will have had no representation in Congress for nearly a year. The Democrat in the race is, politically, a worthless Blue Dog, Dan McCready and his GOP opponent, Dan Bishop, is even worse-- a right-wing psychopath who made a name for himself as author of the legislation to deny transgender children bathrooms.

There are only 13 Republican women in the House, a shockingly low number likely to bear some of the responsibility for the output of such a horrifying GOP agenda, even more extreme than normal. Women have been encouraged to run in open-seat primaries and against Democrats, weakly by the NRCC and strongly by Elise Stefanik' and her pro-women leadership initiative E-PAC. [Spoiler: last cycle, Stefanik raised money by screaming about electing women-- for example, $10,000 each from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, UPS, Goldman Sachs, the Laborers Union, Ernst & Young-- but in the end she contributed to 54 right-wing men and just 20 women. She's a phony; keep reading.] When it came time to sign up for the NC-09 race, 4 women qualified as candidates. The votes of all 4 combined didn't add up to the transgender bathroom bill guy.

• Transgender Bathroom Bill Guy- 14,178 (47.7%)
• Leigh Thomas Brown- 2,624 (8.8%)
• Stevie Rivenbark- 892 (3.0%)
• Fern Shubert- 433 (1.5%)
• Kathie Day- 190 (0.6%)

Two other crazy right-wing lunatics, Stony Rushing (5,820 votes) and Matthew Ridenhour (5,065 votes) also finished significantly ahead of Brown. The biggest outlay of outside money ($1.3 million) was spent on behalf of Brown by the National Association of Realtors-- with this ad-- but to no avail. The ad was too positive and uplifting, not what Republican primary voters expect to hear in North Carolina. They were more interested in Dan Bishop's negative ugly messaging against AOC and socialism and his image as someone for trans-fats and against transgender students. This is the ad the Club for Growth, which was backing Stony Rushing, ran to smear Brown:





Did the NRCC or Stefanik rush to her defense? Not a chance. On Sunday Laura Barrón-López and Mealnie Zanona, reporting for Politico wrote that "Before Leigh Brown ran for a vacant House seat in North Carolina earlier this year, she got plenty of encouragement from Republicans in Washington eager to grow the ranks of GOP women in Congress. Then Brown jumped into a crowded Republican primary-- and the people who had given her hope were nowhere to be found. Among those who disappeared, she said, was Rep. Elise Stefanik, who launched an initiative this year to elect more Republican women."

“That's a little frustrating to have initial conversations and then follow up and be ghosted,” Brown said in an interview with Politico. “I put my real estate business on hold. I've dinged my own reputation in order to put myself forward as a public servant, and then you find out exactly how lonely it is to run for office.”

Stefanik acknowledged Brown’s account during a brief exchange in the Capitol last week but declined to elaborate.

The Republican Party has ramped up its efforts to recruit female candidates for the 2020 election, following the brutal midterm that decimated the ranks of GOP women. But Brown’s experience highlights an enduring challenge for the party: translating widespread concern about the dearth of women in the House Republican Conference into significant campaign support and, ultimately, victories by female candidates.

GOP consultants and candidates acknowledge their recruitment and resources lag far behind Democrats. And no centralized group exists to provide hiring advice, social media guidance, press training, or messaging tactics to candidates. Democrats, on the other hand, have the behemoth EMILY’s List network, as well as groups focused on recruiting immigrants, women of color, female veterans and more.

“The support structure needs to be more than the idea that you can get some PAC dollars from random PACs out there,” Brown said. “I didn't know how to hire. I'm an outsider to this.”

Republicans are not blind to the problem. A growing number of outside GOP groups are dedicated to boosting female candidates since the House GOP’s official campaign arm doesn’t play in primaries. “Winning for Women” launched a new super PAC in response to the devastating losses Republicans suffered in 2018.

And after watching her party swear in a 29-member class of House freshmen that included 28 men, Stefanik repurposed her leadership PAC, known as E-PAC, to focus on backing women in primaries. She told Politico at the time that “we are at a crisis level for GOP women.”

But neither Stefanik nor Winning for Women supported Brown, who faced nine other Republicans in the North Carolina race-- including three other women, each of whom finished with fewer than a thousand votes. The National Association of Realtors threw $1.3 million behind Brown as she presented a more moderate tone than her conservative opponents, and View PAC, a group focused on electing more GOP women since 1997, endorsed her.

Brown also spoke to Winning for Women before she filed and received strong encouragement. But once she announced her candidacy, she never heard from them again. Winning for Women’s super PAC said it has limited resources and stresses candidate viability.

...[A] number of Washington Republicans, including Stefanik and Winning for Women, have coalesced around a different female candidate in another special North Carolina race this year: Joan Perry.

Perry’s success in an upcoming July 9 runoff will be the first real test of Republicans’ new efforts to propel female candidates through primaries. But Perry begins the race at a disadvantage: She finished with 15 percent of the vote in the April primary, behind the first-place candidate, Greg Murphy, who earned 23 percent.

If Perry fails, it will highlight the limits of Republicans’ cash-only strategy-- and amplify the party’s woman problem heading into 2020. [It will also highlight how bad GOP recruiting is when the best woman they could find is so obviously unsuited for Congress and who couldn't come up with a better ad than this pathetic attempt to run against AOC and Bernie. Has anyone asked her how she feels about the total abortion bans in Alabama, Georgia and Missouri?]





“Donors are taking it seriously. Outside groups are taking this seriously. The party is taking it seriously,” said Olivia Perez-Cubas, a spokeswoman for the Winning for Women Action Fund. “It would be awesome if the first election after the midterms, Republican voters chose a woman. It would send a strong message.”

Indeed, Republican leaders have made replenishing their ranks of female lawmakers a top priority in 2020. The issue could take on even greater urgency if Rep. Liz Cheney, the No. 3 Republican in the House, decides to run for an open Senate seat in Wyoming.

The party’s leader, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (CA), has already contributed to New York state Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis, who is running to unseat freshman Democratic Rep. Max Rose-- even though the rest of the GOP field has yet to take shape.

[Note: Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm is expected to run, win the primary and lose the general.]

...[A]ccording to recent data collected by The Associated Press, just 38 of 172 declared Republican House challengers for the 2020 elections were women, or around 1 in 5. That compares with 84 of 222 declared House Democratic challengers, nearly 2 in 5.

Part of the problem, critics say, is that there is little concert between the groups set up to help Republican women. And they limit where they get involved to vacant, open Republican-leaning seats or swing districts currently held by Democrats-- while deliberately shying away from backing challengers to male incumbents.

...The key to getting Republicans to commit to a cohesive effort to boost women candidates isn’t just convincing them that it’s good for the party’s image, but that women will make better candidates in general elections against Democrats, VIEW PAC’s Conway said.

"People need to put their thumbs on the scale during the primary to make the nominee be the person most likely to be able to win in November,” Conway said. “And the Republicans have not done enough of that.”

"The key to getting Republicans to commit to a cohesive effort to boost women candidates isn’t just convincing them that it’s good for the party’s image, but that women will make better candidates in general elections against Democrats." Yes, but that will never happen inside a party that seems to think that a way one women is a good strategy to turn out their base voters. Maybe not passing abortion bans with no exceptions for rape or incest in every state that Republicans control would be good messaging too?

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

I ran across a Republican acquaintance the other day (Not ran over, which might be my first inclination). He immediately opened his mouth and out came "13. You Democrats have a crazy amount of 'librul' candidates running for president." After confusing him with the knowledge that not all of the 13 are liberals, and certainly not progressives, I reminded him that 18 Republicans ran last time and look what they chose. "At least none of them were women," he replied.

The above conversation is a good example of why I try not to engage any Republicans in conversation. It's pointless.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Tonight's meme comes to you from the Noah's Big Pop-Up Archive Of Things You Can't Unsee. I hope it doesn't give you nightmares. Look at it this way: The nightmares can't be any worse than what we are all seeing every day. As a side benefit, if you have a weakness for cold Burger King, Big Macs and similar deadly crap, consider this an attempt at aversion therapy.

There's been a lot of talk in the last few days about Trump not inviting championship women's sports teams to the White House. Considering the Misogynist-In-Chief's history, that he hasn't been eager to issue such invitations can't possibly be surprising. Maybe some women would go. Maybe some would not, but I do know that all the women I know are very careful about not eating fast food junk. Maybe if they do go, they could do the world a service and bury him in burgers... or, berders. Smother him! Please jam some adderall-dusted fries up his nose for me!

Republican Ladies, There's A Fella Who Says It's OK For More Of You In Congress-- But Only The Types He Approves

Nice shoes! Can she dance?

New York's North Country Republican Elise Stefanik did well in November. Her R+4 district, the biggest in the state, which stretches from just not of the Albany/Schenectady/Sarasota Springs are along the Vermont border and Lake Champlain to Quebec, along the St. Lawrence, past Waterown and into Lake Ontario. In 2016, the district went for Trump 53.9% to 40.0%, after voting for Obama twice. In November, Stefanik beat progressive Democrat Tedra Cobb 131,981 (56.1%) to 99,791 (42.4%). She won 10 of the 12 counties, spending $2,810,249 to Cobb's $1,538,958. Neither the DCCC nor Pelosi's House Majority Fund gave Cobb a dime.

Stefanik is a well-liked mainstream conservative. Her Trump affinity score was 89.6%. Right around the average for the 9 New York state Republicans. (Aside from Stefanik, there are only 5 left, Faso, Donovan and Tenney having been swept away in the anti-red wave.) Serving on the Armed Services, Education and Labor, and Intelligence Committees, she was an ally of Ryan's and never gave leadership a hard time-- until after the election, when she served notice on GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy that she would no longer work with or pay dues to the NRCC and would be using her own leadership PAC to recruit women to run in primaries (against Republican men). "I am going to keep pointing out to my colleagues," she explained to the media, "that we are at a crisis level for GOP women. This election should be a wake-up call to Republicans that we need to do better... We need to be elevating women’s voices, not suppressing them."

This kind of thing doesn't go over with in the GOP. Identity politics is a no-no for white patriarchs and the new NRCC head, reactionary Tom Emmer (R-MN), blew his top, and menacingly told an on-the-record interviewer that she was "making a mistake" to help female candidates in primaries. Stefanik tweeted that she was informing him, not "asking for permission." Other GOP women-- including even some on the most extreme fringes, like Tennessee sociopath Diane Black-- backed Stefanik... and Emmer was forced to back down and apologize.

But Republicans are still smarting from the little lady stepping out of line and talking too loud. Over the weekend, one right-wing goof-ball, Neil Dwyer, wrote an OpEd for oligarch Philip Anschutz's crackpot misogynysitic website, the Washington Examiner, We need more GOP women, but not in the mold of Rep. Elise Stefanik. He tried-- but failed-- to make the point that Republicans lost so many seats in November was because they didn't have enough extremists and it was "moderates" who dragged the party down. He used long-time far right psychopath Barbara Comstock, who lost her suburban DC district in a landslide to a relatively conservative Democrat, Jennifer Wexton, as an example. "One moderate who did win re-election and has asserted herself in the face of her party's defeat," he fumed, "is Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY). She has conducted many interviews describing the level of women in the Republican caucus as at a 'crisis level.' Stefanik has also announced she will be using her political action committee, 'E-PAC.' for congressional recruiting, aiming for more Republican women to get through primaries and win races. There's nothing wrong with recruiting more female Republican candidates for Congress," he condescended. "But is Stefanik the mold we want to see the party's candidates being shaped from?" No, he wants the women to be just like neo-fascist Arizona lunatic Debbie Lesko or like even further right Marsha Blackburn.

Stefanik has voted for a farm bill without the original work requirements, for amnesty, against spending cuts, against tax cuts, and for taxpayer-funded sex change procedures in the military. She voted for $81 billion in emergency aid for natural disasters (two months after a $36.5 billion bill for aid was also passed). Meanwhile Republican women such as then-Reps. Martha McSally, Marsha Blackburn, and Kristi Noem all voted "nay." While Stefanik voted against the major tax reform law passed in 2017, her upstate New York Republican colleagues like Reps. John Katko, Chris Collins, and Tom Reed all voted for it. Katko's 24th District even trends at a D+4 rating on the Cook PVI, yet he won re-election by more than 6 percentage points.

...Republicans who want to limit Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's second term as speaker to two years need to find women who serve as a counterpoint to the Women's March, women who can speak directly to the mothers in these suburban districts and appeal to their family values, which include treasuring life, security (which includes immigration), and prosperity. Recruiting women for the sake of optics will get the party nowhere."

This past cycle, Stefanik's leadership PAC raised $250,167 and contributed $105,000 directly to 68 House candidates, 49 of them men and 20 of them women. Among the Republicans she gave to were very extreme right candidates like Steve Knight (CA), Mimi Walters (CA), Rod Blum (IA), Barbara Comstock (VA), Dino Rossi (WA), Randy Hultgren (IL), David Young (IA) and Marty Nothstein (PA), all of whom were defeated Nov. 6 by Democratic women.

Dwyer should go out on tour-- perhaps with that other long-time GOP woman-hater, Ed Rollins, who referred to Ocasio as "the little girl" a couple of days ago omg Fox. Maybe they can start with an interview with Teen Vogue. I'm sure editor Lucy Diavolo would be delighted to take them on.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Sunday Thoughts:

We shouldn't be at all surprised now that the Republican Party has so loudly and proudly come out, in unison, as a party that thinks rape and any kind of sexual assault is really no big deal. It's not like we didn't already know. Misogyny, like racism, and a love or authoritarianism, have been qualifications for joining the Republican Party for the last 50 years. The Brett Kavanaugh hearings presented an opportunity for republicans to demonstrate their inner rapist on the biggest public stage, and they have seized that opportunity with every molecule of evil that lies in the dark heart of any of them.

Sure there are democrats that behave horridly when it comes to these things but, the Republican Party has, as with everything else, become the party of horrific extremism. They endorse such behavior daily. In Brett Kavanaugh, they seek to codify extreme misogyny.

To Republicans, overturning Roe v. Wade isn't enough of an expression of their need to fear, control, and hate women. Last night (as I write this), Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that his party had hired "a female" who would serve as an "assistant" to ask the questions of Kavanaugh accuser Dr. Christine Blasey Ford; the questions that the Republican men on the Senate Judiciary Committee were afraid to ask because they knew they couldn't hide their contempt for women for even five minutes.

The woman the committee hired to question her is an attorney, woman of professional accomplishment in the field of sex crimes. She has a name, a name that McConnell couldn't even bring himself to speak. Her name is Rachel Mitchell. She has achievements. But, to McConnell she is just a "female" and she is no more than an "assistant", you know, like some lower level secretary, as if, in his fetid maggot-filled mind, earning a living by being a secretary isn't noble work. It's sad that, since several of the all male republican contingent on the Senate Judiciary Committee are experienced prosecutors themselves, who could have asked the same questions that Rachel Mitchell asked, it just showed that to Senate republicans, Attorney Rachel Mitchell really was just a cynically used prop.

Republicans, led by their dear leader Trumpanzee, are demonstrating that, to them, actual physical abuse is even better than just abuse by policy, and they have chosen to celebrate that agenda in the person of Brett Kavanaugh. Alabama Judge Roy Moore wasn't enough. They had to take it to a bigger national stage. Once they rallied around a sicko creep like Donald Trump and continued to do so, even with the specter of high crimes, misdemeanors and treason hovering, anything became possible; as if it wasn't already when 62 Million supporters of this kind of thing eagerly went to the polls to vote their choice. What's next for Republicans? A continued devolution that ends in something akin to tribal human sacrifice of women into a pit of fire? All approved by their Republican Jesus as if he's a modern day island volcano god?

Happy Sunday everyone.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

I woke up this morning to find that the above meme about republican attitudes toward rape had been removed from my personal facebook page. I guess someone at fb objected to people knowing this particular reality of what it means to be a republican in 2018. Not that I wasn't going to eventually use if as a Midnight Meme, but, I am retaliating right now by using the meme as a Midnight Meme in order to help give it a bigger platform than my fb page has. I'd love it if others did the same. Feel free to share away! Considering the Republican Party's disregard of the growing accusations against Brett Kvanaugh, there may never be a more appropriate time than today. As NIKE says: Just Do It!

Given the attitude of most republicans towards issues of rape, it was inevitable that they would nominate and vote for a serial sexual predator who would in turn nominate a suspect character such as Brett Kavanaugh. The Repug Party's misogyny is not just about Roe v. Wade. It is a complete philosophy of dominance and gleeful misuse of power. It's also worth noting that democrats dumped Al Franken in a heartbeat for far less serious accusations. The difference in the Kavanaugh situation is that Republicans see nothing wrong with the accusations leveled at their guy. For them, it's a lifestyle choice which they obviously embrace.

And here's a special bonus meme about Republican attitudes towards rape. I wouldn't want Mr. Donahue and his armada of raping priests to feel neglected in any way.

UPDATE: Bill Cosby

Bill Cosby just got his sentence today: Jail for 3 to 10 years. He denied all of the accusations against him but the truth came out eventually. Imagine if Cosby's case went to a Supreme Court that included a Justice Brett Kavanaugh and the accusations now directed at Kavanaugh prove true? How would Kavanaugh vote? Would the usual inner Republican racist lead him to decide against Cosby, or, would his sex predator self rule in Cosby's favor? Meanwhile, the entire Republican Party, from Trump and McConnell down, smirk at us all.

I'm Sure Kirsten Gillibrand Doesn't Want To Lead A War Against Men

Yesterday I was all excited that Kirsten Gillibrand had boldly endorsed progressive reformer Marie Newman against Blue Dog Dan Lipinski. It was probably the first time I've praised Gillibrand since 2006 when she was first elected to Congress-- with a little help from Blue America. (Watch that Rickie Lee Jones/Squirrel Nut Zippers video we produced and promoted on upstate New York radio for her above.)

But then I looked a little closer at Gillibrand's Off the Sidelines PAC, largely funded by the same Wall Street crooks and corporate monstrosities that have made her the #1 recipient of tainted Financial Sector money in the Senate so far this cycle ($1,368,153). Since 2006 she has accepted $9,093,866 from the Financial Sector, more than any other current members of the Senate other than a couple who ran for president (John McCain and Marco Rubio) plus Schumer, McConnell, Rob Portman and Pat Toomey.

I looked at the contributions Gillibrand's PAC had handed out last cycle-- $172,000-- and couldn't find any pattern to the giving in terms of ideology. She gave to some of the most rotgut conservative Democrats like Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ), Cheri Bustos (Blue Dog-AZ), Gwen Graham (Blue Dog-FL), Stephanie Murphy (Blue Dog-FL), "ex"-Republican Monica Vernon, Blue Dog Gretchen Driskell (MI), Chris Matthews' conservative wife Kathleen (MD), and lots and lots of New Dems from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, like Terri Sewell (AL), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL), Katherine Rice (NY), Emily Cain (ME), gun fanatic Ann Kirkpatrick(AZ), Ann Kuster (NH), and Suzan DelBene (WA), but also to a few very strong progressives like Zephyr Teachout (NY), Carol Shea-Porter (NH), Pramila Jayapal, Joseline Pena-Melnyk (MD), Mary Ellen Balchunis (PA), Donna Edwards (MD) and Lucy Flores (NV). All over the map, right? Yeah... except for one thing. No men. Gillibrand only gives to women. Not even one man was good enough? And then I realized she was also  giving to really terrible women candidates in primaries against really excellent male candidates. OK, that's how she plays... nothing to do with how bad Lipinski was at all yesterday after all.

Same pattern of giving this cycle as well... all women-- awesome ones like Haley Stevens (MI), Tammy Baldwin (WI), Katie Porter (CA) and Elizabeth Warren (MA)... and really dreadful crap candidates like Sinema, Kirkpatrick and Dianne Feinstein. Does Kirsten Gillibrand think some kind of a war on men is what's needed now? Is that going to further her transparent goal for the presidency?

Let me acknowledge-- with great vigor and greater enthusiasm-- the entirely justifiable rage women have now, not only at patterns of abuse that permeate a reactionary patriarchal society, but at Trump stealing the election from Hillary and that, in order to actually change things for the better, there may have to be a rational proportionate series of responses-- even a little EMILY's List type affirmative action. I know for me personally, if the woman candidate is better, I support her. If the man candidate is better I support him... but if the two candidates are equally qualified, I'll always back the woman candidate. Why? There aren't enough women in elected office-- and that is primarily because the patriarchal power structure has disadvantaged women as a class. That needs to be made up for.

Friday night, Politico went up with a post by Gabriel Debenedetti, Gillibrand remark on Clinton sends shockwaves through Democratic Party. "Going," reported Debenedetti, "where no other prominent Democrat had before on Thursday evening by declaring that Bill Clinton should have resigned the presidency during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the New York senator and potential 2020 presidential contender yet again found herself the face of a national conversation with the potential to dominate headlines and divide her party. At a time Democrats are desperate to keep the focus on accusations against President Donald Trump and Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, Gillibrand’s stand shocked even some of her close allies. They had no inkling that she was planning to make news-- let alone news that would invite questions about her own ties to a political power family that has dominated her party’s consciousness for nearly three decades."

The comment also put new, awkward distance between two women whose careers have been politically intertwined since Gillibrand-- then a second-term House member-- took over Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat upon her ascension to the State Department in 2009.

Yet it allowed Gillibrand to act as the tip of the spear on a position that many Democrats suspect will slowly become more popular in the party.

The longtime Clinton ally’s answer to the New York Times' question neatly encapsulated how Gillibrand has placed herself front and center on the dominant issue of the day, even if it forces a debate her own party is uncomfortable confronting. And it highlighted the political dexterity that her critics and rivals often deride as opportunism: A former conservative Blue Dog House member, Gillibrand has reinvented herself as a leading progressive [ROTFLMAO-- sure she is, Gabe] and face of the Trump resistance ahead of a potential presidential run.

"I admire her for speaking out and for being really honest and blunt and brutal about it, even when it comes to Democrats and even when it comes to President Clinton," said longtime Democratic strategist Maria Cardona, a former Hillary Clinton aide.

But, Cardona said, Gillibrand's fight is far from a straightforward one even within the party: "President Clinton is beloved."

So was Al Franken... but no longer. And perhaps he doesn't deserve to be. Perhaps Gillibrand can have a party free on men altogether. That seems brilliant... but unfair. She only wants a party without men who have oogled women or who have jerked off while talking to one on the phone once or committed some other sin against women. This is so touchy but, apparently, we're going to have to deal with it. Many men-- most men?-- are pigs and they're going to not do the kind of crap Bill Clinton and Al Franken did. Is what Franken did a political death sentence? It shouldn't be-- unless the voters of Minnesota think it should. I know one thing for sure... if I had to pick between Al Franken or Kirsten Gillibrand (or Kyrsten Sinema), I'd pick Franken any day of the week. I was never a big Bill Clinton fan but when Gillibrand was asked by the NY Times if he should have stepped down, after the consensual sex he had with another adult, she said, "Yes, I think that is the appropriate response."

A handful of aides to both Clintons declined to comment for this story, citing the political danger of weighing in on such a delicate matter between influential figures in the party. But Philippe Reines-- a longtime aide to the former secretary of state-- lashed out at Gillibrand on Twitter.

“Ken Starr spent $70 million on a consensual blowjob,” he wrote, referring to the investigation into Bill Clinton. “Senate voted to keep [President Clinton]. But not enough for you @SenGillibrand? Over 20 yrs you took the Clintons’ endorsements, money, and seat. Hypocrite. Interesting strategy for 2020 primaries. Best of luck.”

I'm sure Gillibrand is aware that Bill Clinton was impeached for his crime. But that's not enough for her? Nope. This is a topic Democrats are going to have come to some consensus on-- and fast. I can't imagine a Democratic senator having a PAC that only gave money to men. Can you? Of course not; it's a ridiculous concept. There's probably a difference that needs to be recognized between what predators like Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump, Mark Foley and Roy Moore do and what Al Franken and even Bill Clinton are guilty of. But I would say that if Gillibrand and her single-minded friends keep this up, it will play right into Steve Bannon's hands and crash the anti-Trump wave real fast and do what otherwise looks impossible: keep the Republicans and Donald Trump in power.

And by the way, Gillibrand was once the poster child for the NRA in New York State and the voice of ugly, vicious xenophobia and racism against Hispanics. Should we dredge that up to and drum her out of the party? I don't think so. Is it as bad-- or worse-- than what Franken did? Make up your own mind.