Can A Blue Dog Party Switcher's Pledge Of Undying Loyalty To Trump Help Him Win Re-Election... In Atlantic City, Where Trump Destroyed The Economy?

 

New Jersey's second district is the only real swing district in the state. Obama won it it a tad over 53% both times he ran and then Trump beat Hillary there 50.6% to 46.0%. The district takes up the entire southern part of the state, including Atlantic City, although most of it suburban and rural. There are 8 counties and parts of counties, but most of the people live in just 4: Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland and Gloucester counties.

Frank LoBiondo, a mainstream Republican, was elected to the congressional seat in 1994 and finally retired in 2018 granting the DCCC their long-in-the-tooth and disastrous wish-- a run by the most conservative member of the New Jersey state legislature, NRA darling Jefferson Van Drew. He won but not by a huge margin-- 52.9% to 45.2%-- while losing Salem, Ocean, Camden and Burlington counties. And he spent $1,877,531 while his Republican opponent only managed to spend $299,475. Outside group spent another million-plus on bolstering Van Drew, while his GOP opponent was without allies in that department.

Now, of course, Van Drew is the Republican candidate and the Democrats snagged a moderate Democrat, Amy Kennedy. So far she's outspent him by around a million dollars-- $4,085,926 to $3,028,402 with Pelosi's superPAC kicking in another $5,275,471 and the DCCC $1,165,084 more. In all over $7 million in outside money has been spent on Kennedy's behalf while "just" $5.3 million has been spent by the GOP to defend Van Drew.





CNN reported this week that Van Drew's very public pledge of his "undying support" for Trump has not done him any good with independent voters, who ultimately decide who wins and who loses elections in NJ-02. Rebecca Buck wrote that last December, Van Drew "shocked his colleagues in the Democratic Party when he announced he would become a Republican," blaming the impeachment for his decision. His shocked colleagues would only have to know a little something about Blue Dogs-- dozens of whom have stabbed the party in the back and joined the GOP-- and Van Drew's very Republican voting record to have not been shocked. Just as they shouldn't be if others just like him-- Anthony Brindisi (NY) and Kendra Horn (OK) being prime examples-- when they hop the fence in a couple of years. Buck continued that "Van Drew's detractors point to a more craven political calculation: that he might not have been able to survive his Democratic primary."

The decision culminated in an Oval Office photo-op, where Van Drew pledged his "undying support" to the President. Camera shutters clicked as the two men vigorously shook hands. Eleven months later, those images are at the center of one of the hottest congressional races in the country, with Van Drew seeking reelection for the first time-- and, also for the first time, running as a Republican.

His GOP debut happens to coincide with a daunting year for his new party. But he says his transition is "going fine."

"What's really good about it is, I sort of feel liberated, in that I don't have somebody telling me what you can and can't vote for," Van Drew said, "and that's what really started all of it."

Van Drew's Democratic challenger, Amy Kennedy, is a former schoolteacher born and raised in South Jersey; she is also the wife of former Rep. Patrick Kennedy, a son of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy.

The race is only nominally between Kennedy and Van Drew, however. As in down-ballot contests across the country this year, Trump looms large here-- perhaps even more so because of the public embrace between Van Drew and the President.

"What's happening at the top of the ticket is really defining the down-ballot races," said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, which recently surveyed the race for New Jersey's Second Congressional District. "It's much, much harder this time around than it has been in the past to establish yourself as an independent voice."

A year ago, a close association with Trump might not have sounded like such a bad thing in South Jersey. The President won this district in 2016 by 5 points; in January, when Trump traveled there for a victory-lap rally with Van Drew, thousands of supporters lined up in the frigid cold. Van Drew, reminiscing on that night, recalled an atmosphere of such exuberance that a match "just would have self-lit."

But that was before Trump stumbled responding to a global pandemic, before millions of Americans lost their jobs, and before 2020 and the election took a sharp turn in another direction.

Now, Trump's endorsement might not be enough, if it's a net positive at all-- and as the President lags in the polls with Election Day nearing, Van Drew, a former mayor and state lawmaker, is trying to remind voters of his own brand, cultivated over two decades in public service, of an independent-minded politician unconcerned with party labels.

"I don't always agree with what the Republican Party is doing or even the President is doing. And the President knew that when I got involved," Van Drew said. "I vote independently. I'm the same Jeff Van Drew I always was."

If some at-risk Republican candidates are hedging their support for Trump, however, Van Drew insists he isn't one of them.

Indeed, Van Drew's campaign website still features a large banner photo of his Oval Office handshake, swallowing up most of the screen. Van Drew was a featured speaker during the Republican National Convention over the summer. And his campaign office windows plainly bear the signs of Van Drew 2.0: not only Van Drew's logo, printed on yard signs this year in a new shade of bright GOP red, but also Trump's. The Van Drew campaign shares the office with Trump's New Jersey operation.

"I don't run away from people," Van Drew said. "...I don't think, whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, whether you always agree with the President or not, that you just betray him and walk away. I don't think that's the right thing to do."

Some Democratic voters who supported Van Drew two years ago believe that's exactly what he did to them, by switching parties just one year after they sent him to Washington.

"I felt betrayed actually, that he would do something like that," said David Burr, a Democratic voter who cast his ballot this year for Kennedy. "It just seemed like he wasn't thinking about me, he was thinking about remaining in office."

And it isn't just voters: party leaders, too, felt broadsided by Van Drew's decision. Just days before Van Drew's announcement, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer headlined a lunch reception for the congressman at a townhouse on Capitol Hill. There, according to Hoyer, he praised Van Drew for his party loyalty, despite hailing from a moderate district. Donors wrote checks for as much as $5,000 to Van Drew's reelection campaign; Hoyer, for his part, had already maxed out.

Many of the actual founders of the Blue Dog coalition found it expedient to quit the Democrats and become Republicans, like Nathan Deal (GA), Billy Tauzin (LA), Jimmy Hayes (LA), Michael Parker (MS), Gene Taylor (MS), Ralph Hall (TX), Pete Geren (TX), who came up with the term "Blue Dog," and Greg Laughlin (TX). In leaving the Democratic Party, Van Drew was staying true to what Blue Dogs generally do.

However, many of these Blue Dog party switchers lose subsequent elections (or even GOP primaries). Buck reported that "Van Drew claims to be 'the only person in all of American history who ever went from the majority party to the minority party,' and insists that others who have done it have been rewarded with chairmanships and greater political clout. But that's not true, even in recent political history." She cited Blue Dog scumbag Parker Griffith (AL) who became a Republican in 2009. Alabama Republicans weren't interested and defeated him in a primary.

For Van Drew, at least, a contested GOP primary wasn't an issue after Republicans rolled out the red carpet for him. Along with Trump's endorsement of Van Drew, the President's reelection committee immediately invested $250,000 in advertisements thanking the congressman for switching parties and supporting the President.

But if the GOP welcomed Van Drew with open arms, his district's voters might make another calculation.

"Van Drew has been successful his entire career setting himself up as not the typical politician, not somebody who's beholden to partisan interests," said Murray, of Monmouth. "Yet many voters view his party switch exactly in that vein, that it was an act of political self-preservation."

In a sense, it was. As Van Drew prepared to vote against impeaching the President last year, his campaign team shared with him an internal poll suggesting the stance would doom him in a Democratic primary. Switching to the GOP was hardly a guaranteed return ticket to Washington-- but at least it wouldn't be a certain political death sentence.

...The bigger issue for Van Drew, unquestionably, will be Trump-- and their alliance symbolized by the moment when Van Drew pledged his "undying support, always" to the President.

It was that moment, Kennedy says, that motivated her to run in the first place.

"I had no intention of running for office," Kennedy said. "But it was hearing those words, 'I pledge my undying support to you Mr. President, always,' that was when I felt like this is someone who is absolutely not there to look out for our best interests. And that compelled me to want to run."

Now that moment has become a symbol of the campaign-- and a headache for Van Drew, who like voters in his district has seen his sound bite played and replayed "over and over and over again," by his count, in attack ads this year.

During CNN's interview this week, we asked Van Drew if he regretted those words that have followed him around these months and might now cost him reelection.

"I think the words didn't explain as well what I exactly felt," Van Drew conceded. "It's not undying support that, whatever you say I'm going to do, or undying support, I agree with whatever you say. It was undying support for the presidency, for the idea of the greatness of America, for a friendship, but not necessarily that I'm going to agree with everything."

But it's unclear if will voters understand what he meant versus what he said.

"I think voters understand that when you're in the Oval Office and you're having a very exciting day and you're making a little piece of history," Van Drew said, "that sometimes we all say things."

A few minutes later, after our conversation had moved on, Van Drew stopped mid-sentence to rephrase something-- and then, recognizing the humor of it, he cut himself off again. Under his mask, he might have allowed a smile.

"See how your words can come out wrong?" he said, stabbing the air playfully, laying his Jersey accent on thick. "Well, I got a chance to fix it this time."

Kennedy isn't a Blue Dog, but has been endorsed by the New Dems, basically just as bad and more firmly tied to Wall Street. Progressives have no candidate to vote for Tuesday, though many are just going to hold their noses and vote for Kennedy to express their antipathy for Van Drew.

He Thinks He's A Democrat Now-- But Until He Understands AOC, He Never Will Be

Aaron Price used to be a Republican political consultant. In January he wrote about why he had decided to leave the GOP and become, more or less, a Democrat. He admits, though, he hasn't changed any of his core political beliefs. He's still a Republican-- just wearing a "D" next to his name until Trump is gone... like half the talking heads you see on MSNBC. He voted for McCain and Romney but says he misses Obama now. His favorite member of Congress is Justin Amash and his vision of the Democratic Party is the Yang Gang. Now he wants to tell Democrats that need to be exactly like pre-Trump Republicans. Let's face it, if a #NeverTrump Republicans claims to be a Democrat and then hates what Bernie and Elizabeth Warren stand for, they're still just a #NeverTrump Republican-- especially if they're still quoting Milton Friedman and F.A. Hayek. Which do you think will happen first-- Cheri Bustos recruits him to run for Congress or MSNBC gives him an afternoon slot?

I don’t have the wisdom, or wit, of George Will. I’m not a defecting GOP Congressman. Nor State Representative. Not even a retired party elder saying what others won’t.

But, I’m not politically apathetic. I was a door knocker for a Republican congresswoman. I interned for the GOP get out the vote effort in 2004. I had a leadership position in College Republicans. More recently, as a lawyer and political consultant, I helped elect numerous Republicans in four states while flipping the State House in one and the State Senate in another.

On paper, I’m that “5 for 5” primary voter, that steadfast party loyalist politics is built on-- and I’m leaving the Republican Party.

That discrepancy, between paper and reality, is just one of those contradictions that defines modern American life. I’m a well-educated straight white man from one of the whitest, and politically reddest, states in the country. I regularly (okay, semi-regularly) attend church. My wife is one of our deacons. I’m a small business owner who, without exaggeration, would likely have to close our business upon the passage of progressive policies.

My family tree is more military than civilian. After 22 years in the Marine Corps, my father told me that one of his only career regrets was that he retired in early 1993 instead of a tad sooner. He wanted George H.W. Bush to have signed his papers instead of Bill Clinton.

Both my parents are Republicans.

I’m privileged. Those same parents, still married, have worked hard to improve their economic circumstances throughout my life. At every turn, like their parents before them, they have sacrificed to help me do the same.

Even when we had very little money, they spent time and energy teaching me, supporting me, and ensuring I was taken care of. My wife’s parents fit that same mold.

We’ve worked long hours to build a stable life for our family (and we’ve got a seemingly endless distance yet to go)-- but I’ve never quite had to face the economic, systemic, or prejudicial obstacles that others have. I’ve been able to do it all with the belief that, no matter what, everything will be OK. I’ve had a personal safety net of support-- emotional and financial-- that many others don’t.

I’m a father. A dad who loves data. Is that a dadatician? Wocka wocka! (My kids are 2 and 4 so I’m working on my dad jokes.)

Like my parents, and every other parent I know, I want my kids to grow up in a world that is better than the one I grew up in. I want them to have a shot at a better life and a better America.

And, as I look at the data-- that’s becoming increasingly unlikely. The joint combination of the GOP’s eroding principles and the U.S.’s emerging challenges has pushed me to the point of switching parties.

Somehow, without trying and while avoiding it as long as possible, I’ve become a Democrat.

I’m not quite comfortable in my new political skin. I struggle with the idea of joining a party I disagree with rhetorically, and in some ways, culturally. Where I do rhetorically relate, I disagree with their ideas. I’m not sure I can support many of their candidates outright-- but you’re welcome to join me on the Yang Gang.

I haven’t changed my core beliefs and Justin Amash (also no longer a Republican) remains one of my favorite members of Congress. But, even if they differ only in scope or scale, the partisan distinctions of old seem more like a relic of time gone by than a prescription for the future.

The world has changed, or is changing, and it seems that many of our core economic assumptions just don’t fit the challenges that lie before us.

I didn’t “choose” the Democratic Party. I still believe that most of their proposed solutions evince a fundamental misunderstanding of both economics and business. I believe that most of their ideas come with dark unintended consequences that will harm the very people they seek to help. But in the end, I’d rather debate the people whose hearts are in the right place than those whose heads are in the sand.

And so to the extent there is a “choosing,” I’m sandwiched between what I believe to be bad ideas and an intellectually bankrupt opposition that increasingly has no ideas at all.

I tried to describe the modern GOP platform. I thought it might help me figure out why I don’t feel at home anymore. The problem? I have no idea what it is.

I’m not sure the GOP actually has a real platform outside of “Making America Great Again” or combining increased governmental borrowing with tax cuts and increased military spending. It has a policy agenda dead set on short term gain for a specific subset of people.

It’s willingly blind to the troubles we increasingly face.

I’ve got a brand new mascot for the Grand Old Party.

As long as the stock market is high there won’t be nary a peep about how everyday people are increasingly squeezed by the rising combined cost of housing, healthcare, fuel, and food.

As long as unemployment remains low you won’t hear about under-employment. Nor are there proposals to deal with the consequences of automation. Their plan to address globalization seems to be demonizing everyone else around the globe.

The President doesn’t really have a foreign policy. The party doesn’t really have a backbone, so it doesn’t have one either. But hey, we abandoned the Kurds for no strategic gain and we just took one more step towards war.

There’s no real plan to control healthcare costs.

They aren’t small government conservatives anymore-- they’ve voted for increased spending at every turn.

They aren’t no one’s above the law anti-elitists-- they turn a blind-eye to the President’s increasing corruption and profiteering.

They aren’t in favor of free-trade and free-markets-- they gleefully support tariffs that are hurting America more than anyone else.

To make matters worse, the Republican Party has not only abandoned its core conservative principles but has seemingly abandoned reality.

Just two years ago a slew of respected conservative economists and advisors argued that:

The opposition of many Republicans to meaningfully address climate change reflects poor science and poor economics, and is at odds with the party’s own noble tradition of stewardship.

Does it feel like we’ve made any headway since then? Nope. The administration is, instead, scrubbing the words from its website.

The party that routinely mocked liberals for their “bleeding hearts” has emotionally chosen to ignore the facts.

It shouldn’t have to feel like pulling teeth to get someone to acknowledge that:

• Having the highest incarceration rate in the world is both unnecessary and shameful.
• The war on drugs has failed.
• Our complicated, government-driven, and anti-competitive healthcare system is more expensive and less universal than every other developed nation.
• Increased immigration has been good for the economy and helped limit the impact of our aging population.
• We are underspending on infrastructure and accruing huge liabilities via deferred maintenance.
• We have too much rent-seeking, regulatory capture, and corruption.
• The 2018 tax cuts did not “pay for themselves” and have only increased deficit spending.
• Climate change is real. This one is particularly vexing-- have modern Republicans just stopped going outside these last few years?

It gets even worse when shifting from policy and cost to principles and character.

Can you imagine the outrage if Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election then didn’t divest conflicts of interest and let Chelsea Clinton control her finances? If it was patently obvious that the President and her family were profiting off the presidency itself?

At virtually every turn, the President has sought to advance his own interest through his office and at the expense of anyone in his way. As long as they get the judges they want, I guess the GOP won’t do a thing to stop him.

Sure, just like President Trump, AOC shares a shocking proclivity to bend facts and attack anyone who challenges her. Elizabeth Warren’s most well-known plan is to replicate European failure. Bernie Sanders doesn’t acknowledge either the lessons learned from failed socialist states or the free-market and free-trade reforms of his Nordic examples. I’ve got a lot of issues with these three, but that’s for a different piece.

For me, what it comes down to is this:

Democrats paint with too broad of brush. They’re every bit as partisan. They have their own issues with ideology-- including a problem with large centralized businesses but a blind spot for an increasingly large and centralized government.

They speak holistically and evaluate their plans in isolation. Their economics can be shaky. Their evidence untested.

And yet...

The evidence regarding the problems they are trying to solve is quite real. They have legitimate debates about solutions.

The Republicans can’t participate in those debates because they won’t acknowledge underlying facts. Despite growing consensus and mounting evidence on a number of fronts, the Republicans have seemingly become deniers in every degree. In some cases, the GOP has led an all out assault on science, facts, and truth.

Shouldn’t we have:

• A system of shared prosperity with a broad social safety net, including some type of universal healthcare.
• A restrained and engaging foreign policy that responds to global trends, ensures peace, and protects the environment.
• A morally just and inviting immigration policy that benefits the economy and promotes the “American Dream.”
• A society where we have access to clean air, clean water, and public land.
• A government that roots out corruption, prosecutes corporate crime, and preserves the free market.
• An economy that promotes entrepreneurship while also endeavoring to protect those most harmed by the transition to an information age.
• A plan to reform the criminal justice system, end mass incarceration, and begin repairing the damage done by Jim Crow laws and modern segregation.
• A modern tax system that isn’t rigged in favor of the rich and powerful.
• An upgrade to our declining infrastructure and more investment in research with broad public application but little private incentive to pursue.

Ultimately, I don’t think any of these ideas are that controversial. Or at least they shouldn’t be.

What's In Your Wallet?

Republicans once advocated for free trade, free markets, environmental conservation, universal basic incomes, increased immigration, and pathways to citizenship. They were civil libertarians concerned with abuses of police power and skeptical of foreign interventionism. They funded and advanced infrastructure projects.

Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize winning economist and adviser to Ronald Reagan, once wrote:

Suppose one accepts, as I do, this line of reasoning as justifying governmental action to alleviate poverty; to set, as it were, a floor under the standard of living of every person in the community.

What did F.A. Hayek, conservative stalwart and another Nobel Prize winner, think?

The assurance of a certain minimum income for everyone, or a sort of floor below which nobody need fall even when he is unable to provide for himself, appears not only to be a wholly legitimate protection against a common risk to all, but a necessary part of a Great Society...

They weren’t alone. Richard Nixon almost implemented a basic income in 1969. Who oversaw his initial UBI experiments? Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.

Teddy Roosevelt’s legacy is one great quote and 230 million acres of public land. Dwight Eisenhower helped create interstate highways. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush both supported a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

Its not just social issues either. Which party do you hear talk about corruption and the rules of the game? Which one is concerned with combating technical monopolies? Which wants to evaluate our systems as we enter the information age?

We’ve somehow reached the point where anyone who reads the above largely assumes I’m a dyed-in-the-wool liberal.

These ideas have not just fallen out of Republican favor, but the very ideas underlying them have fallen out of the Republican platform.

Leaving the GOP is easy.

But, what do you do when you agree with one party’s premises while abhorring their conclusions? When the other isn’t premised on much of anything? If you don’t want to end up independently irrelevant, where do you go?

Someday the Democratic Party might split and we’ll see the rise of a moderate/centrist party focused on practical solutions to everyday problems instead of using them to pursue broad ideological agenda. It can be home to independents as well as disaffected Ds and Rs.

Until then, whether I’ve intentionally chosen them or not-- I guess these are my people now.

I removed Yang for him-- and replaced him with Bloomberg

So here I am. A Democrat. I’m uncomfortable but I’m OK.

That’s more than I can say for the party I called home. The party of the free-market, checks and balances, the rule of law, principles and restraint-- the party acutely aware of the corrupting power of government-- abandoned all of that in blind loyalty to an authoritarian strongman and a small cadre of crony corporatists getting rich at our expense.

That’s just not a party I can be party to.

Last Westchester County Republican Legislator Switches Party

When I was growing up in Brooklyn-- same neighborhood (and schools) as Bernie-- there were no Republicans anywhere in site. They were all in tony, upscale Westchester north of the City. That's all changed. My old neighborhood is filled with incredibly bigoted and savage Russian immigrants who gave Trump big majorities over Hillary in 2016 and Westchester... well, the last Republican in the county legislature, David Tubiolo, just switched from Republican to Democrat.

Don't get me wrong, Brooklyn is still a Democratic bastion, even if my old neighborhood isn't. Hillary beat Trump in Brooklyn 595,086 (79.7%) to 133,653 (19.9%). Hillary also won in Westchester-- 245,670 (64.9%) to 121,643 (32.1%).

Last week, the Rockland/Westchester Journal News reported that Tubiolo switched his registration to meet the February 14 deadline so that he'd be able to vote in the Democratic primary. (He was also facing a redistricting that will bring more Mt. Vernon Democrats.

“I’m not trying to demonize Republicans,” Tubiolo said. “I’m just saying I feel more comfortable at the moment with the Democratic Party.”

He said he hasn’t decided which of the candidates he’ll vote for, but knows he won’t be voting for President Donald Trump.

...His departure will give Democrats a 16-1 majority on the county Board of Legislators, with only registered Conservative Party member Margaret Cunzio left representing the minority caucus. That marks a major downturn from 2017 when Republicans held the county executive seat and controlled the legislature in a coalition with eight Republican caucus members and two Democrats.

Democrats outnumber Republicans more than 2-to-1 in the county and the GOP’s influence has been in fast decline in large part as backlash to the Trump election. Republicans have seen big losses in every year since 2016, while the enrollment gap grows exponentially.

Tubiolo said Trump was one of many factors that fueled his decision. The 32-year-old Yonkers resident lamented the loss of Rockefeller Republicans, a more moderate brand of the party popular in the region for decades and named after former New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller.

“They slowly disappeared or they got pushed out of the party,” Tubiolo said. “I always viewed myself more of that kind of mold and I don’t feel I have as much of a home anymore.”

The legislator considers himself pro labor and said he's a proponent of student debt and prison reform, which have become issues more at the forefront of the Democratic Party’s agenda. Tubiolo said he understood some of those who supported him as a Republican may be upset by his decision but he said he’d continue to stay true to his principles.

“They might be upset in one aspect but in another aspect I’m still here, I’m still me, I’m still going to do everything I was doing before,” he said. "It’s just I can’t keep going with this national climate with the president at the top."

Tubiolo’s parents are highly influential members of the local Republican Party. His father, Justin Tubiolo, is chairman of the Yonkers city Republicans. His mother was executive director of the county GOP and worked in the administration of former County Executive Rob Astorino, a Republican and now CNN analyst known for defending Trump on the air.

Friday, when he changed his registration, he said "To be honest I think everyone saw this happening for two years now. It’s the worst-kept secret in the county I’d say... You can get off the sidelines and help make the change we need in this pivotal moment in our history."

A few months ago Tubiolo publicly blamed Trump for how badly the Westchester Republican Party has been doing. No doubt, Cheri Bustos and the DCCC will soon be knocking on his door, since they always favor Republicans over real Democrats and are always recruiting them to run for Congress.

The Norcross Machine Is Determined To Pick Another Congress Member To Replace Their Jeff Van Drew

The DCCC had been trying to recruit Jeff Van Drew for years. He was the perfect candidate for them-- a South Jersey machine-backed hack in the state legislature who tended to vote with the GOP more frequently than any of his colleagues. Although Obama comfortably won the district (NJ-02) twice, the long-time mainstream conservative congressman, Frank LoBiondo, seemed untouchable. The machine and the DCCC decided that the only way too beat him would be with an extremely right-wing Democrat: Van Drew. But Van Drew wasn’t interested in giving up his safe seat. So he flirted with the DCCC but never but out-- until LoBiondo announced he was finished… and retiring. At that point, Van Drew jumped right in with support for the machine, the DCCC and even his colleagues in the state Senate who were eager to be rid of him and pass the Van Drew problem on to DC Dems. “We were delighted,” one of his former Trenton colleagues told me, “to see him take his anti-environmental, anti-gay, anti-women, NRA A+ to Washington… Good riddance!”

His decision to jump the fence didn’t surprise anyone in Jersey politics-- and shouldn’t have surprised anyone who reads DWT since we had been predicting it for months… and celebrating it once knew for certain that he was about to make it official. Reactionary Blue Dogs-- especially intellectually-impaired ones and especially ones who live at Fox News the way he does and who say the kinds of anti-Democratic crap he does, usually switch parties. It was just a matter of when. A couple of days ago, Ben Jacobs of New York Magazine explained how it happened. Basically, he wrote “Van Drew panicked. Last week, the first-term conservative Democrat polled his district about his opposition to impeachment. The results were very one-sided. Over 70 percent of Democratic primary voters would be less likely to support him if he voted against impeaching Donald Trump. Van Drew immediately went silent and was unreachable by allies [DCCC chair Cheri Bustos] in the party. The next day, he was meeting with Donald Trump at the White House to discuss switching parties. Within 48 hours, word had leaked out about his decision and, within a week, Van Drew was on cable news pledging his “undying support” to a president whom he voted against 93 percent of the time."

A longtime state senator from South Jersey with a reputation for being a “right-leaning moderate” in Trenton, Van Drew “was used to getting some backlash from members of his own party who didn’t think he was sufficiently liberal,” said one New Jersey operative who worked with him in the past. But the operative said “this whole process started happening” when Van Drew became one of two Democrats to vote against opening the impeachment inquiry on October 31. Advisers had urged Van Drew to vote yes to keep his options open, but the New Jersey representative barged ahead.

The initial vote against opening the inquiry came as a particular shock to local Democrats only days before state legislative elections in New Jersey. “People were freaking out,” said Michael Suleiman, the chair of the Atlantic County Democratic Committee.

Van Drew offered a variety of reasons for opposing impeachment. Sometimes he argued the process was ill-advised with an election less than a year away. On other occasions, he said that he didn’t see enough evidence to convict Trump.

One well-connected South Jersey Democrat told New York, “He never really had a rationale that was consistent. You need to have your own narrative. Not a Republican-lite narrative, but a Jeff Van Drew narrative.” However, the New Jersey operative noted that Van Drew did not seem to view his opposition to impeachment as being “pro-Trump at first,” but simply an effort to be reflective of his district. And then “he started spiraling.”

Although Jacobs asserts that the 2018 election was “relatively easy,” he’s wrong. It should have been relatively easy. The GOP put up a pyscho-clown that even Republican voters were uncomfortable with. Van Drew out-spent him $1,877,531 to $299,475, Van Drew only managed 52.9% of the vote-- less than Obama did both times he ran. DCCC and its allies spent another million dollars smearing Republican Seth Grossman and the NRCC ignored the race entirely. In the end, Van Drew won the 4 biggest counties and lost the 4 smallest, although he didn’t live up to expectations in Cape May or Gloucester. Turnout wasn’t as strong as it should have been, primarily because progressives just didn’t want to cast their ballots for someone who holds Van drew’s reactionary ideology… “Van Drew,” admitted Jacobs, “felt bruised that his victory was not by the margins he was accustomed to in his past legislative wins, according to the South Jersey Democrat-- even though federal races are far more partisan than state-level races. The result prompted Van Drew to go back to his playbook from his days in Trenton and try to demonstrate his bipartisan credentials.” Exactly the wrong move.

Although the New Jersey operative described Van Drew as very attentive to polls in the state legislature, the congressman had long been reluctant to actually put a poll in the field on impeachment. It was suggested that he knew the data “would put him in a box” and he was afraid to see it. When he finally commissioned a poll, in conjunction with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, he “genuinely freaked out” when he saw the results.

From that moment, it was only several days before Van Drew defected to the GOP. Former White House political director Bill Stepien and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie tried to clear a path for the congressman among Republicans in the Garden State. Kellyanne Conway, who was the only White House staffer present for Van Drew’s meeting with Trump, played a vital role as well.

Van Drew was the first member of Congress to switch parties in almost a decade. The last one to do so, Parker Griffith, a one-term congressman from Alabama who switched from Democrat to Republican in 2009, told New York, “Ordinarily, it’s a mistake to switch parties. I made a mistake by switching parties. The mistake I made-- I made an assumption that everybody knew as much about politics as we did in D.C., and it really is an emotional decision.”

Griffith was skeptical of Van Drew’s choice. “I hope he’s got a better handle on what he’s doing than I did.” The former congressman compared Van Drew’s Oval Office handshake with Trump to “fondling a rattlesnake.” He added, “I’m sure it made him feel good temporarily, but I don’t think Trump makes friends well, and doesn’t keep them well.”

Van Drew now faces a number of political obstacles. As Suleiman told New York, he is “now persona non grata with Democrats.” The local county chair, who had been fiercely critical of Van Drew’s stance on impeachment before his defection, said, “No one likes a weasel, and no one likes a turncoat.” Already, several Democrats are running for the party’s nomination in 2020. Brigid Callahan Harrison, a political-science professor at Montclair State University, is currently considered the favorite.

She’s certainly the favorite of the grotesquely corrupt Norcross machine that had made Van Drew’s career. And because Norcross is behind her, Bustos and the DCCC are behind her. Trump is behind Van Drew, of course, but there were already 3 loyal Republicans running against him when he switched parties, including a very wealthy self-funder, Dave Richter. Trump will hold one of his bund rallies in NJ-02 early in the New Year.

Griffith, who eventually returned to the Democratic Party after losing his primary as a newly minted Republican in 2010, noted the personal cost that Van Drew could face as well.

“He’s alienated a lot of people who put their faith in him,” said Griffith. Reflecting on his own experience, the former Alabama congressman said, “When you look in the faces of people you disappoint, and the tears in their eyes, and to this day it breaks my heart to think about it.”

The hope for Van Drew is that his embrace of Trump will help convince voters that his party switch was motivated by a crisis of conscience, rather than a crisis of polling, and ease any bitterness. But it is a big risk for the freshman congressman who represents Atlantic City-- a community that’s had bad experiences betting on Trump in the past.

On Monday, Greg Giroux wrote for Bloomberg News that Van Drew’s chances to win are iffy “House party-switchers,” he wrote, “have a mixed electoral record, with some going on to win re-election while others facing primary defeats by voters unconvinced by their political conversion… Even with presidential support, Van Drew can’t expect a coronation in the June 2020 Republican primary against opponents who have been campaigning for months to unseat him. ‘As a lifelong conservative Republican, I have a message for liberal Switcheroo Van Drew: Bring it on,’ Bob Patterson, one of the candidates running in the Republican primary for New Jersey’s 2nd District, said in a Dec. 19 statement. Patterson criticized Van Drew as ‘pro-choice, pro-amnesty and anti-Trump.’” But can that message win when Trump is behind him?

Brigid Harrison, the Machine/DCCC candidate, lives in Longport, which has always been a very exclusive area of the shore… kind of an “old money” area-- and the wrong look for the Democratic Party. Ashley Bennett announced on Friday. Last year she was elected to the Atlantic County Board of Freeholders, having gained a good reputation for challenging incumbent Freeholder John Carman after he posted a meme critical of the national Women’s March. Like most of the candidates running, Bennett is African-American. The Machine, of coursed, insisted on a white person. Amy Kennedy-- wife of Patrick Kennedy-- is also running. They live in Brigantine, another exclusive community for wealthy white people.

Other candidates who have already thrown their hats into the ring are John Francis, a West Cape May commissioner, who spent “nearly three decades as a planet walker, playing the banjo and ‘traveling the globe by foot and said with a message of environmental respect and responsibility.  He spent seventeen years without speaking.”





Another Freeholder, Jack Surrency, from Cumberland County, is also running for the seat. We’ll spend some time trying to figure out who the best candidate or candidates are as alternatives to the Norcorss Machine’s Van Drew and Harrison. Meanwhile, if you're interested in helping keep the DCCC from recruiting and electing more Jeff Van Drew types, please consider supporting the candidates here, at the Primary A Blue Dog ActBlue page. Have't they done enough damage to the Democratic Party already-- and not just in New Jersey?

Good Riddance, Jeff Van Drew, Who Has Always Belonged In The GOP

If you're a regular DWT reader, the Washington Post and NY Times pieces from earlier today should come as no surprise: Blue Dog and fake-Democrat Jefferson Van Drew is jumping the fence and becoming a Republican instead of just voting like one. Mike DeBonis, Rachel Bade and Josh Hawsey wrote it up. And Jonathan Martin did the honors for the Times. The Post crew said his switch to the GOP-- after a meeting with Señor Trumpanzee on Friday-- would be a "political jolt to Democrats ahead of next week’s expected vote to impeach the president." Why? Have they not be noticing how he votes? Progressive Punch doesn't just rate his voting record an "F." They show he has the most anti-progressive record of any Democrat (19.23)-- and more conservative than independent former Republican Justin Amash (32.93) and 3 Republicans, Brian Fitzpatrick (28.57), Thomas Massie (28.33) and John Katko (21.20). Van Drew's voting record is closer to conservative Republican Elise Stefanik's (16.10) than it is to the next worst Democrat, Anthony Brindisi (23.08). The New Jersey Democratic Party has already been warning that they would not back him in a primary fight, although, of course, DCCC Chair Cheri Bustos has been firmly on his side and has offered to spend whatever he needed for reelection.

Two Democratic officials familiar with Van Drew’s discussions in recent days said they believe he has decided to switch parties. The White House meeting was confirmed by a Trump administration official and one of the Democratic officials.

Van Drew and Rep. Collin C. Peterson, a veteran Minnesota Democrat who represents a much more conservative district than Van Drew’s, were the only two Democrats to vote against a House resolution in October formalizing the impeachment inquiry.

Van Drew’s decision to oppose impeachment badly alienated Democratic voters in his district, sparking a primary challenge that threatened his prospects for reelection.

A polling memo obtained by the Washington Post, citing results of a Dec. 7-10 survey of likely Democratic voters commissioned by Van Drew’s campaign, found that only 24 percent believed that he should be reelected, with 58 percent wanting another Democrat nominated for the seat.

Speculation about a potential party switch has swirled for days on Capitol Hill and inside New Jersey political circles. Van Drew on Tuesday denied that he was switching parties, as he maintained that he would vote against impeachment.

“I’m not changing anything-- just doing my job,” he said in a brief interview. “I’m still a Democrat, right here.”

Asked if Republicans had approached him about a party switch, he said, “I’m not talking about other people and what they’re doing.”

A few weeks ago, Van Drew's handpicked candidate to replace him in the state Senate, another GOP-lite conservative pretending to be a Democrat,, was defeated. Bob Andrzejczak is a Van Drew clone and he lost to Republican Mike Testa in a district that includes much of Van Drew's-- 27,163 (53.5%) to 23,636 (46.5%.

Van Drew is hardly the first Blue Dog to jump the fence. The name "Blue Dog" came from Fort Worth conservative Democrat Pete Geren who switched to the GOP and got a job from George W. Bush. Three other Blue Dog founders, Billy Tauzin (LA), Gene Taylor (MS), Nathan Deal (GA), Jimmy Hayes (LA), Ralph Hall (TX), also became Republicans. Since the desertion of the founders many more Blue Dogs have jumped ship, especially Blue Dogs from the old slave holding states, such as Parker Griffith (AL), Charles Canady (FL), Artur Davis (AL), and Virgil Goode (VA).

I guess he won't be part of this one-- but he has already collected $1,276,316 this year as a Democratic candidate, including large amounts from unions and from Democratic leadership PACs (about a hundred thousand dollars), including Steny Hoyer's PAC. Before Trump bribed him on Friday, Van Drew had very publicly promised he would stay a Democrat, so he really should give all that money back that he took under false pretenses.

Does It Shock You When Conservative Democrats Switch Parties? It Shouldn't. Meet John Yudichak

John Yudichak just guaranteed that the GOP will hold power in the Pennsylvania state Senate

The Republican Party tent is way too small-- a virtually pup tent filled with racists and xenophobes with increasingly less room for anyone else. But the Democratic Party tent is way too big-- everyone is welcome no matter what they believe in. You get Democrats who vote further to the right than even Republicans on core party values... which have been getting fuzzier and fuzzier. And this hurts the party in many ways. People don't know what the hell it even stands for. A "Democrat" like Chicago walking freak show, Dan Lipinski co-sponsors anti-LGBTQ legislation and anti-Choice legislation. And ever further right member, freshman Antony Brindisi goes whining to leadership every time a progressive proposal is made, weeping that it jeopardizes his reelection.

Look at the bottom of the ProgressivePunch ratings for House Democrats' lifetime crucial vote scores. By the scores, it would be hard to impossible to say who's a Democrat and who's a Republican-- and not because the Republicans are voting like Democrat's. That cross-over is one-way.

• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)- 39.40%
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)- 39.09%
• Cindy Axne (New Dem-IA)- 38.78%
• Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog-NJ)- 38.34%
• Ben McAdams (Blue Dog-UT)- 34.69%
• Abigail Spanberger (Blue Dog-VA)- 34.69%
• Justin Amash (Independent-MI)- 32.93%
• Jared Golden (D-ME)- 32.65%
• Kendra Horn (Blue Dog-OK)- 32.65%
• Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA)- 29.02%
• Thomas Massie (R-KY)- 28.30%
• Joe Cunningham (Blue Dog-SC)- 26.53%
• Anthony Brindisi (Blue Dog-NY)- 24.49%
• John Katko (R-NY)- 21.39%
• Jeff Van Drew (Blue Dog-NJ)- 20.41%
• Elise Stefanik (R-NY)- 16.24%
• Chris Smith (R-NJ)- 15.93%

Tuesday night and Monday morning I talked about 2 Blue Dogs who could easily slip over to the Dark Side-- Trump apologist Jeff Van Drew, whose departure to the GOP is probably imminent and Dan Lipinski, who would probably flip to the Republican Party if Marie Newman defeats him in the primary.

Let's move to the Pennsylvania legislature, where Democrats looked to be on the verge of flipping the General Assembly from red to blue. Right now the gerrymandered Senate has 28 Republicans and 22 21 Democrats and the House has 110 Republicans and 93 Democrats. Tuesday, the most conservative Democrat in the state Senate, John Yudichak, left the Democratic Party and is now caucusing with the GOP.

Yudichak represents Carbon County and part of Luzerne County (including Wilkes-Barre). In 2016 both counties were essentially tied between Bernie and Hillary in the primary-- Bernie slightly ahead in Carbon and Hillary slightly ahead in Luzerne. In the general, Carbon County voted 18,714 (65.2%) to 8,917 (31.0%) for Trump. Luzerne voted 77,508 (58.4%) to 51,454 (38.8%). Two years later Luzerne County voted to reelect Governor Tom Wolf (D) and Carbon voted against his reelection. Luzerne is the biggest vote source in the newly drawn 8th district and it went for Matt Cartwright (D). The parts of Luzerne and Carbon in the 9th congressional district next door went strongly for conservative Republican Dan Meuser, who was being challenged by a worthless Republican-lite Blue Dog, Denny Wolff. Republicans were perfectly happy with Yudichak and didn't bother running anyone against him. The state Senate district voted for Obama both times and then for Trump.

Yudichak-- a fracking and coal whore-- was first elected to the state House in 1999 and then to the state Senate in 2011. He now says he's a better fit with the Republicans than with the Democrats and says he sees that as "less of a purist party." The purist party had made the worst Climate denier among Senate Dems the minority chair of the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee.

The move takes the minority Democratic caucus from 22 to 21, and it has the feeling of blunting some of the momentum Democrats felt after gaining six seats since the 2016 elections. Republicans currently hold 27 seats, with one vacant seat set to be filled in a January special election.

Yudichak - whose next re-election campaign would be 2022 - will be the chamber’s sole Independent, though he will be apparently draw new committee assignments through the Republican leadership.

Senate Democrat Leader Jay Costa, a Pittsburgh Democrat who turned back a leadership challenge from Yudichak in after the 2016 elections, issued this statement on the defection Tuesday:

"Our Democratic caucus prides itself on our advocacy for working people, for fair wages, affordable and accessible health care, and access to every opportunity the Commonwealth has to offer-- regardless of race, gender, or creed.

“This Democratic caucus and the Democratic Party as a whole promotes a “large tent” approach, and we welcome debate and diverse opinions within our membership, and will continue to do so. We’re extremely disappointed to see Senator Yudichak turn his back on those values and his Senate colleagues who have supported him since his first election to this chamber in 2010.”

A top Senate staffer who keeps me up on what goes on in Harrisburg told me that Yudichak "left largely because our awful leader, Jay Costa, was nasty to him. If he doesn't think you're loyal to him, he treats you like shit. This is a terrible way to run a caucus. And these are the consequences. We lost an important seat and now we're not going to win back the Senate. Every time I see you writing about that Costa in California, I have a glimmer of hope you're writing about our own jackass Costa... Yudichak isn't as bad as you think he is. He can be worked with."


 

How Many Republican Legislators Will Leave The Party Because Of Trump?

When you woke up yesterday, Democrats were still sweating how to win back the state House of Representatives in 2020. There were 54 Republicans and 46 Democrats in the body so the Dems have to win 5 seats. That changed before everyone went beddie-bye. Now there are 53 Republicans and 47 Democrats in the House. One Republican switched parties-- and not just any Republican. Andy McKean is was the longest serving Republican in the state legislature-- 40 years. He re-registered as a Democrat. Why? Señor Trumpanzee, of course. McKean: "With the 2020 presidential election looming on the horizon, I feel, as a Republican, that I need to be able to support the standard bearer of our party. Unfortunately, that's something I'm unable to do... I think the party has veered very sharply to the right. That concerns me."

The rural 58th House district is primarily made up of Jackson County, includes most of Jones County, and Cascade and Whitewater townships within Dubuque County. Maquoketa is the closest thing to a city-- population about 6,000. The district falls entirely within the first congressional district, where garden variety Democrat Abby Finkenauer beat GOP extremist Rod Blum last year. The 58th stayed loyal to Blum-- and had gone to Trump in 2016, 57.8% to 37.1%.

In 2018, McKean defeated his Democratic opponent, Joe Oclon 9,004 (69.2%) to 4,004 (30.8%). This is a red district and McKean didn't flip blue to gain any partisan advantage for himself. Jeff Kaufmann, chair of the Iowa GOP is already on the attack: "When he was running for office a mere five months ago, he made a commitment to the voters of District 58, running on the Republican platform. Today, he has violated the trust of the voters in his district."

The Des Moines Register reported that this could auger poorly for Republican legislative plans. Todd Prichard, the Democratic Minority Leader, said the shift creates an "interesting dynamic" for the rest of the session, which is expected to end within days. It's unclear whether Republican lawmakers have the votes to pass several policy bills.

"If the majority wants to bring forward what I would call controversial and bad ideas ... it would probably delay," Prichard said. "We're not going to lay down and just acquiesce to that kind of partisan idea. ... It could definitely prolong the session."

McKean, a retired attorney, has been long viewed as a moderate within his party and hasn't always voted along party lines. Earlier this session, he was the only Republican in a committee meeting to vote "no" against a bill that would revamp who is on the commission which selects judge nominations for the Iowa Supreme Court.

Many Republican lawmakers argue the legislation would make the nomination process more accountable to voters, but Democrats and lawmakers like McKean have said it will make the courts more partisan.

While McKean considers himself a moderate, he said he still is more fiscally conservative. But he said he sees the Democratic caucus as more moderate, and that he will be able to find a role in the party.

"There may be some things I might not appreciate in that caucus as well," he said. "I will continue to speak out for what I believe in. I look forward to that opportunity."

McKean has been in the Iowa Legislature for decades, though he left for several years. He was first elected to the Iowa House of Representatives in 1978, and also served in the Iowa Senate from 1993 to 2003. He rejoined the House when he was elected to represent Anamosa in 2016.

McKean: "I might have limped along attempting to work within my caucus for what I felt was best for the people I represent if it hadn’t been for another factor. I believe that is just a matter of time before our country pays a heavy price for President Trump’s reckless spending and short-signed financial policies, his erratic, destabilizing foreign policy, and his disregard for environmental concerns... Furthermore, [Trump] sets, in my opinion, a poor example for the nation and particularly for our children by personally insulting, often in a crude and juvenile fashion, those who disagree with him, being a bully at a time when we’re attempting to discourage bullying, his frequent disregard for the truth, and his willingness to ridicule or marginalize people for their appearance, ethnicity or disability."

Will The Establishment's Culture Of Corruption Defeat The #GreenNewDeal?

Everybody does it... except those who don't. Yesterday PhilosophRob, a vegetarian, ran two Open Secrets-based lists of how much money some of the presidential candidates in Congress took from hedge fund managers and from lobbyists so far this cycle. It's easy to talk about cleaning up the corruption in Congress at the root of all the county's problems. But who is willing to walk the walk? Hint: look down at the bottom of the two lists. Not everyone is the same.

Another list: the probable chairs of the House committees starting January 3:

• Agriculture- Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
• Appropriations- Nita Lowey (D-NY)
• Armed Services- Adam Smith (New Dem-WA)
• Budget- John Yarmuth (D-KY)
• Education and Labor- Bobby Scott (D-VA)
• Energy and Commerce- Frank Pallone (D-NJ)
• Ethics- Ted Deutch (D-FL)
• Financial Services- Maxine Waters (D-CA)
• Foreign Affairs- Eliot Engel (New Dem-Israel)
• Homeland Security- Bennie Thompson (D-MS)
• House Administration- Zoe Lofgren (D-CA)
• Judiciary- Jerry Nadler (D-NY)
• National Resources- Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ)
• Oversight and Government Reform- Elijah Cummings (D-MD)
• Rules- Jim McGovern- (D-MA)
• Science, Space and Technology- Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX)
• Small Business- Nydia Velázquez (D-NY)
• Transportation and Infrastructure- Pete DeFazio (D-OR)
• Veterans Affairs- Mark Takano (D-CA)
• Ways and Means- Richard Neal (D-MA)
• Human Rights- Jim McGovern (D-MA)
• Intelligence- Adam Schiff (New Dem-CA)

Now, in light of Pelosi's much ballyhooed H.R. 1 (which I totally support, even though it doesn't go nearly far enough towards reform), keep these logical and pretty obvious words from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in mind:

I took a look at who the biggest contributors are to each of the incoming chairmen to see if there is any connection to favors they could do as chairs of their committees. And, there were. We've been talking about how corrupt and deceitful New Jersey hack, Frank Pallone, is blocking the creation of a Climate Change Committee, or at least blocking the idea of the committee having any power at all. It's a turf war based on the bribes he gets from Oil and Gas. We'll get back to him in a moment.

A reminder: certain committees are honey pots for corrupt members looking for cash. Generally speaking, congress members flocking to the Financial Services Committee, for example, are looking for bribes from Wall Street. Ditto for the House Ways and Means Committee. The Agriculture Committee is also a get-rich-quick scheme. Same with Armed Services and the notorious Energy and Commerce Committee. I should mention there are also members who go to those committees in order to reform them00 but not many. Let's start with Agriculture, which Collin Peterson-- a super-corrupt Blue Dog-- has ruin before and used as a meeting ground for Blue Dogs interested in his quid pro quo way of dealing with Agribusiness. What businesses have been most generous to Mr. Peterson? Well, this cycle the top half dozen in order of generosity: Crop Production & Basic Processing, Agricultural Services/Products, Food Processing & Sales, Securities & Investment, Dairy and Forestry & Forest Products. Overall this quarter, his top sector for collecting bribes as... Agribusiness and he took $533,825, a nice haul. At the height of his chairman glory days (2006), Agribusiness paid off Peterson to the tune of $393,586. Since 2000, Peterson has gobbled up over $4 million from Agribusiness. During a time period when the sector has given almost double to Republicans ($204,052,583) than Democrats ($107,213,690) Peterson has done very well for himself. He is a living case study for bribery in Congress. It's a disgrace that at the same time Pelosi is introducing H.R. 1, she is also giving Collin Peterson back the chair of the Agriculture Committee, making a mockery of her call for reform.

A half dozen who should be rotting in prison cells

Let me take the 4 committees involved with money-- Appropriations (Nita Lowey), Budget (John Yarmuth), Financial Services (Maxine Waters) and Ways and Means (Richard Neal) in one shot. In way of comparison, let me start by showing you how much the out-going Republican chairs have taken from the Finance Sector (since 2000):

Appropriations- Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ)- $1,714,880
Budget- Steve Womack (R-AR)- $681,143
Financial Services- Jeb Hensarling (R-TX)- $7,916,748
Ways and Means- Kevin Brady (R-TX)- $4,160,535

OK, now let's look at the incoming Democratic chairs, who you might think are less corrupt than the Republicans. Mixed bag on that one:

• Appropriations- Nita Lowey (D-NY)- $5,215,043
• Budget- John Yarmuth (D-KY)- $689,012
• Financial Services- Maxine Waters (D-CA)- $1,826,285
• Ways and Means- Richard Neal (D-MA)- $5,481,179

Let's just look at the current cycle. Lowey's top sector for contributions: Finance ($323,030). Yarmuth's top sector: Labor ($141,000). Waters' top sector: Finance ($412,579). And Neal's top sector: Finance ($894,530). Certainly Lowey, Waters and Neal will all be in, let's say, awkward ethical situations when considering and writing legislation on banks, investments, insurance, real estate, taxes, etc.

Let's move to Armed Services. Adam Smith is considered a friend of the Military Industrial Complex. This cycle his biggest sector for bribes was, of course, Defense ($206,950). His #1 industry-- Defense Aerospace; among his top half dozen: Defense Electronics, Electronics Manufacturing and Equipment, Miscellaneous Defense. Career long he's taken $1,140,050 from the Defense sector. The current chairman, Mac Thornberry (R-TX) has taken $1,562,150. No doubt Smith will quickly surpass him.

Bobby Scott (D-VA) will chair the Education and Labor Committee. His top sector this cycle was-- no surprise-- labor ($136,000). Among his contributors, the half dozen industries that forked over the most: #1- Public Sector Unions, #2- Building Trade Unions, #4- Education, #5- Industrial Unions. Since 2000, unions have contributed $1,437,250 to Scott's campaigns. Education isn't one of the high rolling sectors but the sector contributed $20,400 to his campaign this cycle (and $120,254 career-long).

Energy and Commerce has it's fingers in a lot of pies-- as does the incoming chairman, Frank Pallone. This cycle his 5 biggest contributing cycles were sectors his committee writes legislation for:

• Health- $724,700
• Communications/Electronics- $333,451
• Finance- $214,450
• Labor- $187,525
• Energy and Natural Resources- $178,199

His biggest industries this cycle were health professionals, Pharmaceuticals and Telecom services, industries he will be writing legislation for in the next Congress. but career-long, this is what he's gotten from the sectors that are most eagle to influence him:

• Health- $6,067,900, the most of any member of the House, past or present!
• Communications/Electronics- $1,536,862
• Finance- $2,179,885
• Labor- $2,891,945
• Energy and Natural Resources- $862,516

I think I'm going to stick with Pallone and what he's up to in terms of the turf war he's waging against Alexandria Ocasio, or against her proposal to establish a select committee to deal with the #GreenNewDeal. Some of the other chairs are screaming bloody murder over this as well, since if an effective committee was re-authorized-- the Dems had one in 2007-11 but Boehner immediately abolished it upon the GOP victory in 2010-- it could have jurisdiction or co-jurisdiction in many areas and threaten the ability of committees to squeeze bribes out of almost every industry.

First off, Pelosi, who faced this in 2007 when she first established a Select Committee on Climate Change. She compromised and made it into more of an investigative committee with no real powers and it is likely that she will do the same thing because of Pallone's squawking and temper tantrums. The Sunrise Movement and other progressive groups are working to pressure Pelosi to make it stronger and more strategic than what it turned out to be in 2007. The pressure on her will mount as more members sign up as supporters. Right now there are 35 congressmembers who are on board. These:

So where are all the freshmen who just campaigned on the #GreenNewDeal issues? The only freshmen so far are Mike Levin (D-CA), Joe Neguse (D-CO), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Chris Pappas (D-NH), Deb Haaland (D-NM) and, of course, Alexandria Ocasio (D-NY), who is helping the Sunrise Movement with their efforts in Congress.

Yesterday, author Ellen Brown, in an OpEd for TruthDig, This Radical Plan to Fund the 'Green New Deal' Just Might Work, explained how the Green New Deal could transform the country and why the arguments by conservatives against it can all be overcome. "With what author and activist Naomi Klein calls 'galloping momentum,' the Green New Deal promoted by Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) appears to be forging a political pathway for solving all of the ills of society and the planet in one fell swoop," she wrote. "Her plan would give a House select committee 'a mandate that connects the dots' between energy, transportation, housing, health care, living wages, a jobs guarantee and more. But even to critics on the left, it is merely political theater, because 'everyone knows' a program of that scope cannot be funded without a massive redistribution of wealth and slashing of other programs (notably the military), which is not politically feasible." Brown doesn't believe that and neither do I.

That may be the case, but Ocasio-Cortez and the 22 35 representatives joining her in calling for a select committee also are proposing a novel way to fund the program, one that could actually work. The resolution says funding will come primarily from the federal government, “using a combination of the Federal Reserve, a new public bank or system of regional and specialized public banks, public venture funds and such other vehicles or structures that the select committee deems appropriate, in order to ensure that interest and other investment returns generated from public investments made in connection with the Plan will be returned to the treasury, reduce taxpayer burden and allow for more investment.”

A network of public banks could fund the Green New Deal in the same way President Franklin Roosevelt funded the original New Deal. At a time when the banks were bankrupt, he used the publicly owned Reconstruction Finance Corporation as a public infrastructure bank. The Federal Reserve could also fund any program Congress wanted, if mandated to do so. Congress wrote the Federal Reserve Act and can amend it. Or the Treasury itself could do it, without the need to even change any laws. The Constitution authorizes Congress to “coin money” and “regulate the value thereof,” and that power has been delegated to the Treasury. It could mint a few trillion-dollar platinum coins, put them in its bank account and start writing checks against them. What stops legislators from exercising those constitutional powers is simply that “everyone knows” Zimbabwe-style hyperinflation will result. But will it? Compelling historical precedent shows that this need not be the case.

Michael Hudson, professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, has studied the hyperinflation question extensively. He writes that disasters such as Zimbabwe’s fiscal troubles were not due to the government printing money to stimulate the economy. Rather, “Every hyperinflation in history has been caused by foreign debt service collapsing the exchange rate. The problem almost always has resulted from wartime foreign currency strains, not domestic spending.”

As long as workers and materials are available and the money is added in a way that reaches consumers, adding money will create the demand necessary to prompt producers to create more supply. Supply and demand will rise together and prices will remain stable. The reverse is also true. If demand (money) is not increased, supply and gross domestic product (GDP) will not go up. New demand needs to precede new supply.

The Public Bank Option: The Precedent of Roosevelt’s New Deal

Infrastructure projects of the sort proposed in the Green New Deal are “self-funding,” generating resources and fees that can repay the loans. For these loans, advancing funds through a network of publicly owned banks would not require taxpayer money and could actually generate a profit for the government. That was how the original New Deal rebuilt the country in the 1930s at a time when the economy was desperately short of money.

The publicly owned Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) was a remarkable publicly owned credit machine that allowed the government to finance the New Deal and World War II without turning to Congress or the taxpayers for appropriations. First instituted in 1932 by President Herbert Hoover, the RFC was not called an infrastructure bank and was not even a bank, but it served the same basic functions. It was continually enlarged and modified by Roosevelt to meet the crisis of the times, until it became America’s largest corporation and the world’s largest financial organization. Its semi-independent status let it work quickly, allowing New Deal agencies to be financed as the need arose.

The Reconstruction Finance Corporation Act of 1932 provided the financial organization with capital stock of $500 million and the authority to extend credit up to $1.5 billion (subsequently increased several times). The initial capital came from a stock sale to the U.S. Treasury. With those resources, from 1932 to 1957 the RFC loaned or invested more than $40 billion. A small part of this came from its initial capitalization. The rest was borrowed, chiefly from the government itself. Bonds were sold to the Treasury, some of which were then sold to the public, although most were held by the Treasury. All in all, the RFC ended up borrowing a total of $51.3 billion from the Treasury and $3.1 billion from the public.

In this arrangement, the Treasury was therefore the lender, not the borrower. As the self-funding loans were repaid, so were the bonds that were sold to the Treasury, leaving the RFC with a net profit. The financial organization was the lender for thousands of infrastructure and small-business projects that revitalized the economy, and these loans produced a total net income of $690,017,232 on the RFC’s “normal” lending functions (omitting such things as extraordinary grants for wartime). The RFC financed roads, bridges, dams, post offices, universities, electrical power, mortgages, farms and much more, and it funded all this while generating income for the government.

The Central Bank Option: How Japan Is Funding Abenomics with Quantitative Easing

The Federal Reserve is another Green New Deal funding option. The Fed showed what it can do with “quantitative easing” when it created the funds to buy $2.46 trillion in federal debt and $1.77 trillion in mortgage-backed securities, all without inflating consumer prices. The Fed could use the same tool to buy bonds earmarked for a Green New Deal, and because it returns its profits to the Treasury after deducting its costs, the bonds would be nearly interest-free. If they were rolled over from year to year, the government, in effect, would be issuing new money.

What if Trump heard about from his pal, Abe?

This is not just theory. Japan is actually doing it, without creating even the modest 2 percent inflation the government is aiming for. “Abenomics,” the economic agenda of Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, combines central bank quantitative easing with fiscal stimulus (large-scale increases in government spending). Since Abe came into power in 2012, Japan has seen steady economic growth, and its unemployment rate has fallen by nearly half, yet inflation remains very low, at 0.7 percent. Social Security-related expenses accounted for 55 percent of general expenditure in Japan’s 2018 federal budget, and a universal health care insurance system is maintained for all citizens. Nominal GDP is up 11 percent since the end of the first quarter of 2013, a much better record than during the prior two decades of Japanese stagnation, and the Nikkei stock market is at levels not seen since the early 1990s, driven by improved company earnings. Growth remains below targeted levels, but according to Finacial Times this is because fiscal stimulus has actually been too small. While spending with the left hand, the government has been taking the money back with the right, increasing the sales tax from 5 percent to 8 percent.

Abenomics has been declared a success even by the once-critical International Monetary Fund. After Abe crushed his opponents in 2017, Noah Smith wrote in Bloomberg, “Japan’s long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party has figured out a novel and interesting way to stay in power—govern pragmatically, focus on the economy and give people what they want.” Smith said everyone who wanted a job had one, small and midsize businesses were doing well; and the Bank of Japan’s unprecedented program of monetary easing had provided easy credit for corporate restructuring without generating inflation. Abe had also vowed to make both preschool and college free.

Not that all is idyllic in Japan. Forty percent of Japanese workers lack secure full-time employment and adequate pensions. But the point underscored here is that large-scale digital money-printing by the central bank to buy back the government’s debt, combined with fiscal stimulus by the government (spending on “what the people want”), has not inflated Japanese prices, the alleged concern preventing other countries from doing the same.

Abe’s novel economic program has done more than just stimulate growth. By selling its debt to its own central bank, which returns the interest to the government, the Japanese government has, in effect, been canceling its debt. Until recently, it was doing this at the rate of a whopping $720 billion per year. According to fund manager Eric Lonergan in a February 2017 article:

The Bank of Japan is in the process of owning most of the outstanding government debt of Japan (it currently owns around 40%). BOJ holdings are part of the consolidated government balance sheet. So its holdings are in fact the accounting equivalent of a debt cancellation. If I buy back my own mortgage, I don’t have a mortgage.

If the Federal Reserve followed suit and bought 40 percent of the U.S. national debt, it would be holding $8 trillion in federal securities, three times its current holdings from its quantitative easing programs. Yet liquidating a full 40 percent of Japan’s government debt has not triggered price inflation.

Filling the Gap Between Wages, Debt and GDP

Rather than stepping up its bond-buying, the Federal Reserve is now bent on “quantitative tightening,” raising interest rates and reducing the money supply by selling its bonds into the market in anticipation of “full employment” driving up prices. “Full employment” is considered to be 4.7 percent unemployment, taking into account the “natural rate of unemployment” of people between jobs or voluntarily out of work. But the economy has now hit that level and prices are not in the danger zone, despite nearly 10 years of “accommodative” monetary policy. In fact, the economy is not near true full employment nor full productive capacity, with GDP remaining well below both the long-run trend and the level predicted by forecasters a decade ago. In 2016, real per capita GDP was 10 percent below the 2006 forecast of the Congressional Budget Office, and it shows no signs of returning to the predicted level.

In 2017, U.S. GDP was $19.4 trillion. Assuming that sum is 10 percent below full productive capacity, the money circulating in the economy needs to be increased by another $2 trillion to create the demand to bring it up to full capacity. That means $2 trillion could be injected into the economy every year without creating price inflation. New supply would just be generated to meet the new demand, bringing GDP to full capacity while keeping prices stable.

UPDATE: Jumpin' The Fence

Allow me to include some of Kurt Bardella's fascinating weekend essay for USA Today, even though the connection is somewhat tenuous. Last year he switched parties and announced he was becoming a Democrat. He seems happy to have done so... more or less. "My first year as a Democrat," he wrote, "has given me an appreciation of the gulf between the world views of Republicans and Democrats. Even how we digest and process information is so different. In the decade I spent working in Republican politics here in Washington, I don’t think I ever heard climate change come up as a serious topic of social conversation."

Shocking as it may be to learn, Republicans do not sit around and talk about the environment. As a Democrat, I feel like this topic is a consistent focal point of social conversations. In fact, I’ve found the same thing to be true about gun-law reform, racial inequality, social injustice and sexism. As a Republican, I just never talked about these things, but as a Democrat, I talk about them all the time.

I’ll tell you, being a Democrat is a heck of a lot more emotionally exhausting than being a Republican was, because I care about a lot more things than I used to. There must be some wisdom in the old saying that “ignorance is bliss.” It’s funny, because I remember as a Republican, we would often mock “bleeding-heart liberals” who are always “caring” so much. I think to myself now, what the hell is wrong with these Republicans who don’t seem to care about anything at all?

On a personal level, one of the biggest changes for me has been how I view issues of race. I’ve spent the bulk of my life avoiding race. My first name is German, my last name is Italian and I was born in Seoul, South Korea-- I’m adopted. I grew up in a very rough part of upstate New York where I was taunted and at times beat up by kids because I was (and looked) different. On some level, I was conditioned through this treatment to believe that being different was a bad thing and so I avoided it.

I’ve spent the bulk of my life rejecting my Asian-American heritage. Quite frankly, as a Republican, this was very easy to do. The Republican Party’s attitude toward anyone who isn’t white speaks for itself. Why would I want to even pursue an association as a “minority” in a political party that spouts hateful rhetoric about minorities and pushes policies that discriminate against anyone who isn’t white? It was a pretty cowardly attitude considering how many have brave enough to take a stand and fight for minority rights and confront social injustice.

But once I stepped away from the Republican Party, its efforts to promote racism through rhetoric and policies offended me on a very personal level. I began engaging in these issues and exploring what it means to be a minority in America. One of my favorite moments of this year was participating in a panel at Politi-con called “Crazy Political Asians.” At one point, the moderator, MSNBC’s Richard Lui, asked our panel what year each of us owned up to being a member of the Asian-American Pacific Islander community. Most people gave answers like kindergarten or middle school. My response was “2018.” It may seem like a small thing, but saying this in public for the first time was a big deal for me.

...Relief that I was finally able to speak my truth. For the better part of two years, I had felt like a fraud still calling myself a “Republican.” I guess on some level, I had hoped that the cancer that is Trumpism would be isolated to a smaller segment of the Republican Party. Instead, it spread to infect the entire GOP with so-called “leaders” like House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell becoming the biggest enablers and defenders of Trump’s unique brand of toxicity.

Their refusal to forge a different identity within the Republican Party divorced from Trumpism forced me to confront a reality I had tried to avoid-- that there really was no virtue in trying to be a sane voice within the GOP, and it was time to embrace a different way.