Santa Clarita Gives Right Wing Radical Steve Knight An Angry, Sour Reception

Steve Knight has a long history in politics-- and one word no one who has ever followed his career would use to describe him is "moderate" or even "mainstream." He was a Palmdale city councilman (2006), then an assemblyman (2009) and then a state senator (2013) before he was elected to Congress in 2014. Until recently he always seemed to take delight in being the furthest right crackpot in the room.

Knight's voting record in the state legislature would be ultra-conservative if he represented a backward district in Alabama or Mississippi. In suburban L.A., it's just bizarre... and a throwback to another century. Widely considered a shill for the NRA and an automaton for the most extreme right-wing proposals that ever came up in Sacramento, Knight was one of only 11 state senators who voted against increasing the minimum wage and, despite representing a district with a huge Hispanic population, he was one of only 8 senators who voted against drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants. When the Governor decided to expand Medicaid in line with the Affordable Care Act, only 7 die-hard right-wingers opposed it, Knight being one of them, naturally. He was also one of only 8 senators to fully back unregulated fracking in earthquake zones in California. He was always vehemently anti-Choice and anti-gay and voted against every piece of legislation promoting equality that has ever come before him. For example, in May, 2013 he was one of only 9 senators to vote against a bipartisan bill that prohibits tax-exempt status for organizations that discriminate against the LGBT community and he also one of only seven sociopaths who opposed an anti-bullying bill that passed the Senate with huge bipartisan support. One legislator who served with him told me that Knight isn't a bad guy on a personal level but that he's "an inflexible ideologue… probably the single least effective member of the state legislature."

Knight's district has turned pretty blue of late and he's really an anomaly who was left behind primarily because of grotesque DCCC incompetence and corruption. Eric Bauman should throw the DCCC out of the state and have the California Democratic Party take over recruitment of candidates and allow the DCCC to send and spend only through the state party. (Every state should do that but California is in position to lead the way. Sorry for the tangent.) Although Obama won the district-- very narrowly, 49.4% to 48.3% in 2008, the district voted for crackpot Republican Carly Fiorina in 2010 by a pretty wide margin over Democratic incumbent Barbara Boxer, 54.0% to 38.9% and two years later supported Meg Whitman for governor over Jerry Brown, 50.9% to 41.4%, and Romney over Obama, 49.7% to 47.8%. Trump seems to have turned the beat around entirely, Hillary kicking his ass 50.3% to a dismal 43.6%. But all the while, the DCCC has stumbled all over itself, unable to win the congressional seat. Last year the party bosses in DC decided to parachute in some guy from Orange County who worked at a law firm in Beverly Hills and had never previously set foot in the district. That went over badly and their candidate, some guy named Caforio, was clobbered as Clinton voters ignored him. Knight beat him 53.1% to 46.9%. (That was even too much for the DCCC and they decided to discourage him from running again in 2016, although their clueless West Coast staffer, conservative shill Kyle Layman, didn't get the message and persuaded him to run again anyway.)

Thursday afternoon-- when most people are working or at school-- Knight held a sparsely attended but raucous town hall meeting at Canyon High School in Santa Clarita. It got really raucous when he started lying to a woman claiming "On the AHCA, no one will be kicked off Medicaid," a program that is slated to be cut by around 800 billion dollars under the TrumpCare bill he voted for. He committed to another woman that he would never vote to cut Medicaid, which he had already done over and over and over, including just 2 weeks ago. "I don’t see cutting any of those programs. You’ve got my commitment," he lied. Or does he not even know what he's voting for and against? It's like he's from another planet. He told the audience that Congress would never, ever, cut that safety next-- even though that's exactly what Congress has been doing at every opportunity, something Ryan and his puppets like Knight attempt to whittle away day in and day out.

When several other constituents confronted him about his vote to allow internet service providers to sell people's private information without their permission or even knowledge, he pretty much admitted he didn't know what was in the bill he just voted for by rote, like every other bill Ryan and McCarthy put in front of him.

Closing the event, Carole Lutness, an elderly Valencia resident, said she believed America was witnessing the collapse of democracy and said Trump is a “crook” who only cares about himself.

She was met with a standing ovation.

Lutness told The Signal this was the core issue America is facing and said the “one percent” are stealing from the rest of Americans.

It is the change of the whole structure of government,” Lutness said to Knight. “We have to get money out of politics.”

Knight said if money was going to stay out of elections, it would have to be all money.

“If we want to get corporate money out of politics, they also want to get union money out,” Knight said.

Hopefully the DCCC will stay out of CA-25 this primary season and allow a hometown girl, Katie Hill, to win the nomination without their heavy-handed interference. We asked her why she thought Knight got such an surly reception in Santa Clarita. "The bottom line," she told us, "is that people are angry and they are scared. Health care is something that we just shouldn't have to worry about whether we can afford-- people shouldn't forsake their own health and well-being because they need to pay the rent. Knight's constituents know that the AHCA is going to make things harder for them and the people they care about, while the wealthiest Americans get huge tax breaks and insurance companies and big pharma continue to make record profits. His vote shows whose side he's on-- and it's not ours." Blue America has endorsed Katie and if you'd like to help her end Knight's ridiculous career, please tap the thermometer on the right and contribute what you can.

With Trump's Base Starting To Get Restless, Republican Congressional Incumbents Are Staring Into The Face Of Mortality

On Thursday Alex Isenstadt looked into the idea that Trump's base is starting to turn on him. He reported for Politico that some of them are "losing the faith... 'We expect him to keep his word, and right now he’s not keeping his word,’ says one campaign supporter." The racists and bigots who catapulted him into the White House are getting restless. And the chaos and failure that is coming out of his Regime is starting to wear thin. Even morons sometimes understand they've been had. Trump pretended to be religious and "godly" during the campaign. You know how many times he's been to church since the election? The same number of times I have. But that is an actual metric that means a lot to some of the idiots who were stupid and gullible enough to have voted for him.

Their complaints range from Trump’s embrace of an interventionist foreign policy to his less hawkish tone on China to, most recently, his marginalization of his nationalist chief strategist, Steve Bannon. But the crux of their disillusionment, interviews with nearly two dozen Trump loyalists reveal, is a belief that Trump the candidate bears little resemblance to Trump the president. He’s failing, in their view, to deliver on his promise of a transformative “America First” agenda driven by hard-edged populism.

...Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), one of the president’s most vocal backers on Capitol Hill, said he’s been disheartened by the chief strategist’s isolation.

"A lot of us look at Steve Bannon as the voice of conservatism in the White House," said King, who has known Bannon for years.

The displeasure over Bannon’s reduced status has trickled down to Trump’s grass-roots army of volunteers.

Yesterday CNN reported that Trump's opponents are already beginning to stoke and capitalize on these feelings. The ad by American Bridge, just above, and "aimed at Trump supporters who are likely to be angered by his recent flip-flops," is a good example. It casts Trump "as someone who said one thing to working-class voters on the campaign trail, but did something different once those voters catapulted him into the White House."

Trump, in just the last week, walked back several anti-establishment campaign promises, including labeling China a currency manipulator, questioning the efficacy of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, his support of Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and his plan to get rid of the Export-Import bank.

"Circumstances change," White House press secretary Sean Spicer told CNN.

Though circumstances may have changed for now-President Trump, they haven't for the millions of voters-- fueled by populist rhetoric and anti-establishment fervor-- who backed candidate Trump.

..."Donald Trump's promises to working families throughout the campaign were lies," said Andrew Bates, spokesman for American Bridge and a former Clinton campaign staffer. "In reality, his administration has abandoned them to finance policies that help no one but the wealthiest Americans."

Bates called the ads "part of a larger, ongoing effort to hold him accountable and expose all he's done to sell out working-class Americans."

...The goal is not necessarily to turn Trump voters into Democrats, since that isn't likely to happen. But by demoralizing Trump's base of supporters, Democrats are hopeful they can capitalize on excitement in their base to sweep many Republicans out of power in the House and Senate.

With that in mind, the ad will aim to tie Trump's comments to vulnerable 2018 Republicans, including Sens. Dean Heller of Nevada and Jeff Flake of Arizona, two Republicans up for reelection in 2018 in states that are turning progressively bluer.

"His tax plan, just like Trumpcare, is a giveaway to the rich at the expense of working families and would have serious consequences for the middle-class that our country cannot afford," American Bridge president Jessica Mackler told CNN about the ad.

Jeff Flake's raucous town hall meeting in Mesa Thursday night shows how tricky the political situation has become for Republicans who will have to go before the voters in 2018. Trump won Arizona last year-- but not by much. McCain and Romney each beat Obama in Arizona 54-45%. Trump squeaked by 49.5-45.4%. It wasn't that Hillary did better than Obama-- she didn't-- it was that voters liked Trump less than other GOP nominees. Last November Trump got 1,021,154 votes the same day that McCain was being reelected senator with 1,089,324 votes (53.4%). Trump was a drag on the GOP ticket across the state. He's less popular among Arizona voters today. The trick for a politician like Flake is to hold onto Trump's base while expanding it by differentiating himself from Trump. But Flake made a tremendous error by sponsoring the bill that gives internet service providers the right to sell our personal information to anyone willing to pay for it without asking for permission. Trump was happy to sign the bill-- in secret-- but the bill turns off Trump voters and Trump opponents alike. If Flake has a savvy opponent in 2018, he'll be mercilessly roasted for that one.

Glenn Beck on Trump: "another Republican who said stuff and didn't mean it"

Thursday night, Flake was barraged with questions about Trump, as well as about substantive issues around healthcare, climate change, Betsy DeVos, the budget, immigration, Planned Parenthood, etc. He was roundly booed and jeered for almost every answer he came up with. 2018 is going to be a deadly election cycle for Flake and others caught up in the Trump undertow. As Greg Sargent pointed out in the Washington Post yesterday, "for all the chatter about how Trump is suddenly getting more conventional, his serial shredding of our norms on ethics and transparency continues to run rampant."

The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that Trump’s reversal on the value on the Export-Import Bank and on whether to label China a currency manipulator reflect a “growing reliance on former corporate executives in his White House-- and business leaders outside of it.” Meanwhile, the Post reports that White House “moderates” aligned with Wall Street, such as Cohn and Jared Kushner, are “racking up successes in a battle over ideology and control” with the Bannon wing. This will be clear in the coming prioritization of tax reform.

But it has long been obvious that Trump was going to govern in ways that Wall Street aligned GOP elites are perfectly comfortable with. Trump’s agenda has long included elements that conventional conservative Republicans support: deregulation of Wall Street; a rollback of regulations to protect the environment and combat climate change; deep tax cuts for the rich and businesses. All of that has been underway or in the planning stages since the beginning.

Trump’s reversals on trade and Ex-Im should only be surprising if you took his economic populism seriously during the campaign. But there was never any grounds for thinking it amounted to anything concrete at all in policy terms. Trump blustered a lot about trade, but he never detailed an actual agenda on it, let alone one that would help workers. He talked tough about raising taxes for the rich before releasing a tax plan that would slash them dramatically.

Pundits told us for months that Trump’s economic nationalism represented a heterodox combination of hard-line immigration restrictionism and a decisive break with Paul Ryan’s Ayn Randian Republicanism on Keynesian spending and social insurance and the safety net. But the second half of that was always mostly nonsense, and all that’s happening now is that this is getting confirmed.

Bannonite populism supposedly held out the promise of massive infrastructure spending, but it looks more likely we’ll end up with a cronyist tax break and privatization scheme, not a genuine public expenditure. White House budget director Mick Mulvaney declined to say in a recent interview whether Trump would veto a bill that contains Ryanesque Medicare “reforms,” i.e., cuts. In other words, Ryanesque entitlement reform is alive as a real possibility. Meanwhile, on Obamacare, Trump continues to pursue a deal with conservatives on repeal, which means he is moving towards more deregulation, even as he remains fully committed to rolling back health coverage for 24 million people.

But the first half of the equation-- the immigration restrictionism-- remains fully in force on the level of policy. The administration continues to defend the travel ban in court. On deportations, the reign of fear is kicking in. Parents are yanking kids from day care out of fear of removal; longtime residents with no other offenses are getting deported; the administration continues to try to strong-arm sanctuary cities into enforcing the federal immigration crackdown. As ABC News reports this morning: “The deportation force looks like it’s coming together-- just more quietly than anticipated.”

...Wall Street and GOP elites may be glad to see Trump reverting to form on the issues that matter to them. But-- while these elites would perhaps like to see immigration reform-- how much do they really care about the ugly nativist stuff that’s proceeding under the radar? Meanwhile, the trips to Mar-a-Lago (which use the White House to enrich the Trump family) and the refusal to release Trump’s tax returns and show transparency about his finances (which allows untold other conflicts of interest to remain undetected)  doesn’t appear to concern them too much, either. The “economic” nationalism is no longer operative (if it ever was), but the ethno-nationalism and the corruption are running as strong as ever.

Needed: A Candidate To Run Against Devin Nunes

OK-02 is right-wing crackpot country; it's one of the most backward congressional districts in the country. Trump won there 72.9- 22.8%. Aside from a couple of rural former slave-holding backwaters in Texas, Georgia, Alabama, Kentucky and Tennessee, it's where Trump did best (although his state campaign chairman, then-Senator Ralph Shortey was arrested for having sex with a teenage boy within 1,000 feet of a church and won't be working to promote Trump in the Sooner State). Anyway OK-02-- the eastern part of the state that borders on Arkansas and Missouri and includes the outer suburbs of Tulsa and some small towns like Muskogee-- has a PVI of R+20. I the Republican vote collapses in 2018 on the same level by which it collapsed in Kansas Tuesday (just over 20 points down), it still won't matter for the lunatic right congressman, Markwayne Mullin, who was reelected last year 70.6% to 23.2%.

A drop-off of 20 points would mean nothing to him. And that's how he treated his constituents at a town hall meeting in Jay this week. When they said they pay his salary, Mullin a former plumber and handyman who flunked out of college, cursed at them and said "I pay for myself. I paid enough taxes before I got here and continue to through my company to pay my own salary. This is a service. No one here pays me to go." He's a backbencher and generally considered one of the most unpleasant members of Congress. No one likes him and he has no friends. He was a member of the Natural Resources Committee until a couple months ago and when he left the celebration was... bipartisan.

Kevin Nunes has been even more disrespectful to his constituents in CA-22 than Markwayne Mullin has been to his. Mullin at least held a town hall meeting-- which is more than Nunes has done. His constituents have taken to following him around, booing him and waving Putin signs in his face. A general 20 point GOP collapse of the Kansas magnitude would sweep Nunes out of office. Trump won his Central Valley district 52.1% to 42.6%. Nunes has never had a serious opponent before and although the DCCC is dragging its feel, several members of Congress aren't-- and are very actively looking for an opponent and ignoring the DCCC.

Wednesday a neighbor came to my door and offered a $100,000 check to Blue America to use in an Independent Expenditure campaign against Nunes. "As a downpayment," he added. I explained that the kind of candidate we need in CA-22-- part of Fresno plus Clovis, Visalia, Tulare, Dinuba-- is an issues-driven populist willing to commit to a 2-cycle strategy.

Central Valley Indivisible, Together We Will Fresno/Central Valley and Health Access California are organizing a town hall for Nunes' constituents for next Wednesday evening, April 19 (6pm) at the Ponderosa lecture hall of the College of the Sequoias in Visalia. I guess I should make my way up there-- it's just a 3 hour drive. Nunes has already announced he's not going and won't be sending one of his staffers.

Wednesday the NY Times reported that suburban voters across the nation are growing even more sour on the GOP. "While the next nationwide elections are not until 2018, Republicans have grown fearful that these voters are recoiling from what they see as lamentable conditions in Washington: a government entirely in Republican hands that has failed to deliver on fundamental goals like overhauling the health care system. Early missteps by President Trump and congressional leaders have weighed heavily on voters from the party’s more affluent wing, anchored in right-of-center suburbs around major cities in the South and Midwest. Never beloved in these precincts, Mr. Trump appears to be struggling to maintain support from certain voters who backed him last year mainly as a way of defeating Hillary Clinton... It remains to be seen if Democrats can fully exploit the turbulent environment. They hoped last fall that Mr. Trump’s unpopularity would drag down suburban-based Republican candidates across the country, but the party won full control of government. And Democrats may face a tricky balancing act if the explosion of energy on the left collides with the native sensitivities of the moderate-to-conservative districts they aim to win."

CA-22 would be an excellent testing ground. Trump is bad enough, but Nunes has made himself into a cartoon-character villain with his willfully botched investigation into Putin-Gate in which he is widely seen as having been trying to help the Trump Regime cover up their activities rather than get to the bottom of Russian interference in the 2016 elections.

The Natives Are Restless-- In Texas

Regina Montoya is a successful attorney, chairwoman of Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings' Taskforce on Poverty and senior vice president and general counsel of Dallas' Children's Medical Center. In 2000. In 2000 she ran against Pete Sessions, who beat her 100,510 (54.0%) to 82,685 (44.4%). She was able to nearly match his $1,986,465 fundraising haul (with $1,642,494). Things have changed in TX-32 (North Dallas from Uptown, Highland Park and University Park, up to Richardson and Garland to the eastern shore of Lake Ray Hubbard). Even though the Republican legislature recently gerrymandered the district to make it less Latino, Hillary actually beat Trumpanzee 48.5% to 46.6%-- in a district that Romney won 57.0% to 41.5%. And now Dallas area Democrats want Montoya to run against Sessions again. He appears very vulnerable and she's a pretty ideal candidate for a seat like that. The DCCC brain surgeons didn't run a candidate in 2016 at all and, in fact, the last time Sessions had a real challenge was in 2004 when he was in an incumbent vs incumbent battle with Martin Frost, each raising over $4.5 million. Since they, it's been a free pass from the DCCC. But not 2018 (they claim).

Over the weekend, Patrick Svitek, reporting for the Texas Tribune, wrote that Sessions' packed town hall on Saturday was raucous and angry-- and all about the highly unpopular TrumpCare, which can't pass without Sessions' connivance on the House Rules Committee. His constituents know it too. In the Republican primary Trump came in third behind Cruz and Rubio.

Addressing over 2,000 people, Sessions was frequently drowned out by boos and angry outbursts from the audience. Many of his answers were not entirely audible due to the crowd’s reaction as he began to speak.

“We are going to make the changes, we are going to pass the bill and we are going to repeal Obamacare,” Sessions said at one point, a declaration that gave way to sustained chants of “Vote him out!”

...“You know what? I know why you’re so frustrated: You don’t know how to listen,” Sessions said amid the negative feedback, inviting a new round of boos.

“I know how to listen,” Sessions added a short time later.

Sessions did appear to find some common ground with the otherwise largely hostile crowd. Asked repeatedly about Trump's proposed budget cuts to a number of federal agencies and programs, he expressed support for protecting the National Institutes of Health and Meals on Wheels, the service that provides food to the elderly and relies on grants that could be on the chopping block. Sessions also expressed doubt that Congress would go along with what he described as Trump's "drastic cuts" to the Environmental Protection Agency.

...In a congressional town hall in North Texas, U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Lewisville, withstood two hours of booing from hundreds of angry constituents at a local high school.

Lucky for Burgess, his district, TX-26, just a bit north and west of Sessions' (primarily Denton County), is way redder. The PVI is R+20, Romney beat Obama 60-38% and Trump beat Hillary 60.9-34.4%. Burgess was first elected in 2002 when he bear retiring GOP crackpot Dick Armey's son in the primary. Last year the Democrat "running" against him raised zero dollars, the same amount the Democrat who ran against him in 2014 spent. In the 8 times he's run, the DCCC has never even tested his popularity by backing a candidate. And, worthless as ever, they have no intention of doing so in 2018.

Now GOP Congressmen Are Being Yelled At In Their Districts Over Putin-Gate As Well As Trumpcare

Flip-floppin' Darrell says he's changed his mind again on a special prosecutor

Yesterday, Adam Schiff (D-CA) was on ABC's This Week and John McCain (R-AZ) was on CNN’s State of the Union and they both were singing the same tune, namely that Trump was full of shit with his crazy claim that Obama wiretapped him. McCain said that the asshole "has to provide the American people, not just the intelligence community, but the American people, with evidence that his predecessor, former president of the Unites States was guilty of breaking the law... I have no reason to believe that the charge is true, but I also believe that the president of the Unites States could clear this up in a minute." Schiff put it slightly differently: "I don't expect we're going to see any evidence of this either... There are one of two possibilities here. Either the president quite deliberately for some reason made up this charge or, perhaps more disturbing, the president really believes this. And here's where I think it's consequential... if six months from now the president should say that Iran is cheating on the nuclear agreement, if he's making that up, it's a real problem. If he's not making it up and it's true, it's an even bigger problem because the question is, would people believe him."

Over the weekend, two right-wing congressmen from the San Diego region-- Duncan Hunter and Darrell Issa caught hell at town halls meetings in their districts. According to reporters from the San Diego Union-TribuneA, about a thousand people showed up for each. Hunter ignored the 600 who couldn't fit into the small venue he had hired in Ramona, while Issa had back-to-back sessions in Oceanside. It was the first time either of them faced their constituents since Trump's election. According to the report, "The messages from the audience and those outside mainly came in the form jeers, hollers and protest signs with a clear theme: they want the congressmen to oppose Trump’s agenda. Hunter appeared to have more supporters at his event than Issa did at his, but they were both heavily outnumbered... The two forums were rowdy, confrontational and packed. Health care was perhaps the main focus, but attendees also wanted to talk about other issues including immigration and climate change."

Issa and Hunter were pressed on their positions on Russian interference in last year’s elections. Issa drew applause when he told one crowd that he wants an independent investigation.

“Are we going to investigate Russia to the very nth degree for interfering in our election? Yes,” Issa said. “But we also have to stop Russia from their actions around the world and destabilizing the world.”

Issa also said his “public statements are clearly out of step with many other Republicans.”

“I will continue to press my colleagues publicly and privately to realize that this is an existential threat to democracy if we do not stop it,” he said.

Hunter, in response to a question, said he would not support an independent investigation into Russian interference in last year’s elections, but said he does back various investigations by Congress. The intelligence community, Hunter said, is filled with “seditious Obama folks” who “hate Donald Trump as much as you do” and are trying to undermine the administration.

He said he believes that Trump’s emails and communications were intercepted when Obama was in office, but he later, when questioned by a reporter, said he has no proof.

“I think that Donald Trump did have his phone conversations and emails intercepted,” Hunter said. “And those of you that believe in democracy and free elections, can tell me that a sitting election whose party is running for the presidency, can wire tape and intercept another candidate’s phone. I would think you would be for freedom and liberty, not for an Orwellian government that controls us, which is what we have right now.”

On Twitter earlier this month, President Donald Trump said that the Obama administration had wiretapped his phone. The White House has not provided any sort of explanation or support for the claim. Obama and his administration’s intelligence officials issued strong denials of such activities.

The Orange County Register also covered Issa's town hall and noted that "no answer came without a smattering of jeers," including demonstrators outside the hall shouting "Do your job!" over and over.

Dmitry Demidov, who has lived in America for 21 years and is critical of the Trump administration’s ties to Russia, wore a Russian-styled police hat as he stood outside the building and held a red banner that read “Make Russia Great Again.”

With questions about Putin-Gate swirling around congressional Republicans like Issa and Hunter back in their home districts, the stonewalling and sleazy game being played by House Intelligence Committee chairman--and Trump campaign official-- Devin Nunes (R-CA) is becoming more and more of an embarrassment. And now that Nunes' refusal to cooperate with any semblance of an impartial investigation, the Democrats on his committee are starting to threaten to pull out of his silly whitewash entirely. Saturday the NY Times reported that the Democrats on Nunes' committee aren't going to sit back and be props in an illegitimate proccess meant to add to the Regime's desperate coverup.

Democrats are bracing for fights over subpoenaing witnesses and documents-- including, possibly, Mr. Trump’s tax returns-- since Republicans have balked at an outside, independent inquiry into what intelligence officials say was an unprecedented intrusion into an American election by a foreign power.

“I’m not going to be part of a dog-and-pony show that is not a serious effort to do an investigation because this is really serious,” said Representative Jackie Speier, Democrat of California. “If it’s not a legitimate and comprehensive and in-depth investigation, why would we be party to it?”

Ms. Speier said the committee’s Democrats-- all nine of whom were interviewed by the New York Times-- would not hesitate, “under certain circumstances,” to pull their support.

Democrats are already wary of moves by the committee’s chairman, Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of California, to undercut the purported Russian connection. Mr. Nunes has belittled news stories about the Russian links of Mr. Trump’s associates and has pledged-- along with Senator Richard M. Burr, the North Carolina Republican who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee-- to examine Mr. Trump’s accusations, made without evidence, that President Barack Obama ordered surveillance of Trump Tower.

...Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the committee’s top Democrat, said it was unclear whether the panel could conduct a credible investigation, ideally resulting in a single, bipartisan report on its findings. Along with Mr. Nunes, Mr. Schiff is among the so-called Gang of Eight congressional leaders who receive classified intelligence briefings.

“If we get to the point at any time where I feel we can’t do that, where there are legitimate lines of investigation that are being walled off, then I will say so,” Mr. Schiff told reporters this week.

Democrats expect the first major test of the investigation-- and Mr. Nunes’s stewardship-- to come on March 20, when the committee holds its first public hearing. An initial list of invited witnesses included James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director; James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence under Mr. Obama; and Sally Q. Yates, the former acting attorney general who was fired by the Trump administration after refusing to defend the president’s first travel ban.

Absent from the witness list was Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser, who resigned after it was revealed that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence and other White House officials about his conversations with the Russian ambassador. Though Mr. Nunes emphasized it was only an early list, he referred to Mr. Flynn as “a tangent,” portraying him as more of a victim of the intelligence leaks Mr. Nunes is seeking to investigate than a target of the inquiry.

“From everything that I can see, his conversations with the Russian ambassador, he was doing this country a favor, and he should be thanked for it,” Mr. Nunes said.

Mr. Nunes may need to tread cautiously to avoid the perception of crossing the line from impartial moderator to advocate. He has said the issue of whether Trump Tower was under surveillance during the campaign was well within the scope of the inquiry, and has denied that he added it after the president demanded that Congress investigate.

With a tight smile, Mr. Schiff said he welcomed the opportunity to disprove Mr. Trump’s accusation. But some Democrats fumed at the idea that the panel’s work could give credence to it. Should the issue not be put to rest quickly, Ms. Speier said, “it would call into question the entire investigation.”

Several Democrats said they expected their desire to compel certain witnesses to testify to stoke friction among Republicans. But a flash point could come if Democrats press to subpoena Mr. Trump’s tax returns, a move that could scuttle the entire inquiry.

Democrats have favored an outside, independent investigation, but many of them see the panel’s inquiry as the best they can do. And they are keenly aware that by pulling their support, they would sacrifice their roles in an investigation some see as among the most important of their time in public service.

“It’s a big jump to pull out of this investigation, no matter how bad it is,” said Representative Mike Quigley, Democrat of Illinois. “Because whatever truth you can bleed out of this thing, the better off you are.”

Crowds Are Packing Democrats' Town Hall Meetings Too-- Take Ro Khanna... Very Different From Mo Brooks

Buried in the new PPP poll about Trump's fights with the media was a question about town halls. PPP's conclusion is that "Members of Congress who dodge open town hall meetings may be opening themselves up to trouble with their constituents. 81% of voters think they ought to hold town halls, to only 5% who think their members of Congress should avoid them. That includes overwhelming majorities of Democrats (88/2), independents (81/2), and Republicans (73/11) who think members of Congress should make themselves available to the public in that way. Mitch McConnell (25/45 approval) and Paul Ryan (37/43 approval) are both unpopular, and Democrats hold a 46/43 lead on the generic Congressional ballot."

Crackpot and right wing extremist Mo Brooks (R-AL) is worried that some congressional Republicans are cowards and now getting cold feet after their encounters with angry constituents. He's freaking out that some of them won't help him kicking millions of Americans off healthcare. He was on the WBHP morning show Thursday and told the hosts that "there are a significant number of congressmen who are being impacted by these kinds of protests and their spine is a little bit weak. And I don’t know if we’re going to be able to repeal Obamacare now because these folks who support Obamacare are very active, they’re putting pressure on congressman and there’s not a counter-effort to steel the spine of some of these congressmen in tossup districts around the country." He called his colleagues' constituents all kinds of names. But speaking of cowards with weak spines, Crazy Mo, is too scared to meet with Alabama voters and adamantly refuses to have any town halls. He says he's worried someone may shoot him or his supporters or that Muslim terrorists will get them. Brooks, who represents a horribly backward Alabama district-- a hell-on-earth of poor white trash-- primarily in Huntsville, Florence, Scottsboro and Decatur across the northern 6th of the state, is in one of the safest seats in the country. Trump won it in November with 64.7% and ole Mo did even better.



Thursday the Blue America crew sat down with Ro Khanna and Ted Lieu for a few hours to talk policy. At one point, though, Ro told us about the town hall he had just had at Ohlone College in Fremont. He was only expecting around 250 people based on RSVPs. But when 900 showed up, they had to start opening overflow rooms. Although his constituents had very serious questions, the town hall didn't have much in common with the contentious town halls you've been seeing on TV with Republicans. What Ro had to say to voters primarily from Fremont, Newark and down the Nimitz from Milpitas and Santa Clara who packed the auditorium must have been music to their ears. The Democratic Party, he told them, needs it move in a more progressive direction.

In the 2016 Democrat vs Democrat general election, his long-time liberal opponent, Mike Honda, was a pledged Hillary delegate; Ro was a Bernie supporter. CA-17 isn't Trump country. Obama had beaten Romney there 71.9% to 25.5%. Hillary improved on that, eviscerating Trump 73.9-20.5%. Ro said where Hillary went wrong-- at least in the Midwest if not in California-- was when she started talking too much about Trump and stopped talking about how she was going to make people's lives better. "She was up when she was talking about making people’s lives better and unrigging the economy," he reminded the audience. The East Bay Times reported the next day that he "acknowledged the need to hold President Donald Trump accountable, and in response to a question from a member of the audience, he said he would support impeachment of Trump if an open and thorough investigation found evidence of violations. However, he said that right now, there are bigger fish to fry for Democrats, alluding to the 2018 mid-term elections."

“We are not going to win the next election, nor do we deserve to win the next election, by just focusing on Donald Trump’s missteps,” he said, adding that Trump voters were upset at leaders across the country, and felt the economy is rigged to favor a select few. He said Democrats cannot ignore those voters in their messaging.

“Shame on us if we don’t hear them,” he said, adding that his party must offer Trump voters a positive vision, with recognition of the “profound demographic changes” the country has seen.

“A vision that says, your life can still be good. Your kids’ life will still be good. We will help get your kids the skills to compete in a new economy. We’ll make sure that you don’t have to worry about retirement and health care,” he said.

Many in the auditorium seats flashed bright green signs that read “Agree,” and offered rounds of applause as Khanna said he believes the Democratic Party needs to be “far more bold, far more populist.”

The congressman said “it’s better in my judgement to have a slightly smaller party even, but a morally consistent party, than a party that doesn’t stand for anything,” a point he said the Republicans understand.

After Khanna said he supports a $15 minimum wage in response to a question, he doubled down on his idea that Democrats must be more bold in their actions.

He said he will be proposing a bill that would massively expand the earned-income tax credit to the tune of $1 trillion to help low- and moderate-income families, something he described as in contrast with “conventional” Democratic ideas, which would only offer a $60 billion expansion.

He chastised Republicans for claiming to want to help working-class families and the working poor, while pushing to give tax breaks to the wealthy.

When asked how his constituents can help create change, he said it’s important that they don’t underestimate the influence the average person can have, especially in the age of the Internet, when a viral blog post could get many more views than anything he says on the floor of Congress.

After spending about an hour in the main auditorium, Khanna traversed the campus to speak to another packed room, and reiterated many of the same points to that crowd.

Khanna told the crowds that he plans to hold monthly town hall meetings going forward to allow more people to engage, especially those who were locked out of Wednesday night’s gathering.

Ted Lieu and Ro Khanna are both avid supporters of Keith Ellison in today's DNC election, though neither has a vote. They both like Tom Perez but are certain that Ellison represents the progressive, grassroots vision of a more populist vision for the Democratic Party. I'm not certain when this document was released by Ellison of his first 100 days plan but it certainly in in synch with the messages we heard from both Lieu and Khanna Thursday, neither of whom shied away from the term "The Resistance."

Over the last several years Democrats have lost more than 940 state legislative seats, hundreds of congressional, senate and statewide seats and countless local races.

The job of the next DNC Chair is going to be incredibly challenging. It will require: juggling raising tens of millions of dollars; unifying Democrats; holding Trump, his cabinet and Republican-controlled states accountable; protecting the right to vote and creating opportunities to expand voting access; laying the foundation for redistricting; and recruiting, training and supporting candidates up and down the ballot.

This document lays out a framework for the first 100 days for the next DNC Chair.

ORGANIZING SESSIONS

All across America Democrats are mobilizing, energized and ready to take back our country. We need to harness this energy by holding organizing sessions in every single state so Democrats know what we are going to do to fight back the Trump administration and Republicans on a state and local level.

These organizing sessions will be collaborative and involve state and local party leaders, elected officials, labor, constituency groups and rank and file Democrats who want an active and meaningful role and voice in the party. We will work with state parties to hold organizing sessions in all 57 states and territories with the Chair and other senior DNC officials personally attending as many as possible.

We will pick locations across the country of strategic importance focusing on counties or locations where candidates did particularly well or poorly last election, and locations that are municipal or legislative priorities going into 2017.

ORGANIZING THE OPPOSITION

The DNC-- working hand in hand with state and local Democratic parties-- will seek to organize and channel the immense groundswell of opposition to President Trump and his policies.

The Democratic Party and its partners will support these activities and will create new opportunities to stand up against not only the dangerous policies of the Trump Administration but any Republican on a state or local level that makes it harder for Americans to achieve prosperity and inclusion.

These organizing rallies must involve unifying not only all Democrats, but Americans who are committed to building a world that promotes an economy that works for all Americans, not just the wealthy and corporations, and an agenda where we have liberty and justice for all.

INCLUSION AND ACCOUNTABILITY

Our party is at its best when it reflects the regional, racial, ethnic and overall diversity of the Americans we represent. We build an inclusive and accountable party by making sure that people have a seat at the table.

A 3,143-county strategy means that we bring everyone to the table. We will work to ensure that constituency caucuses are fully staffed and we have regular briefings and programmatic updates from the Chair and Department Directors to the DNC Executive Committee and state party chairs.

We will call a meeting of all of the caucus and council chairs to set metrics for evaluating the work that we are doing to ensure we are moving our party in a consistently inclusive and accountable direction.

...MESSAGING

We have already been holding Trump accountable on social media, via email and substantial research into his nominees. Our goal over the coming years is to hold every single Republican in the country accountable to the people they represent. Having two way communication from the DNC to partners across the country helps nationalize local fights and localize national fights.

We also need to aggressively remind voters for the Democratic Party and our candidates stand for. That means establishing an accessible and easily digestible version of our platform and disseminating it to county and state parties.

The DNC can help candidates get their message out by looking at bulk purchasing options, reducing any remaining barriers between the voter file and digital platforms and template pieces for down ballot candidates.

Republican Congressmembers Are Meeting Their Angry Constituents-- Or Hiding From Them

Friday, the editorial board of the NY Times asserted that "What America has seen so far is an inept White House led by a celebrity apprentice", pointing out that Señor Trumpanzee "did not inherit 'a mess' from Barack Obama, as he likes to say, but a nation recovered from recession and with strong alliances abroad. Mr. Trump is well on his way to creating a mess of his own, weakening national security and even risking the delivery of basic government services. Most of the top thousand jobs in the administration remain vacant. Career public servants are clashing with inexperienced 'beachhead' teams appointed by the White House to run federal agencies until permanent staff members arrive."

That same night, filmmaker Jon Favreau tweeted that he doesn't get angry at Trump when he sees these tweets; "I get angry at Republicans in Congress. Their cowardice is why we're dealing with this." I think there are a lot of people-- an increasing number of people-- feeling that way across the country. Trump isn't up for reelection until 2020-- if he makes it that long-- but Paul Ryan and every single member of the House will face the voters in 2018. Right now there are 5 special elections for open House seats coming up-- starting in about 2 months-- in Los Angeles, Montana, South Carolina, Kansas and the suburbs north of Atlanta. These will be opportunities for American voters to send a message. Trump did worse than Romney in 3 and slightly better than Romney in two.

• CA-34- Romney- 14.1%, Trump- 10.7%
• GA-06- Romney- 60.8%, Trump- 48.3%
• KS-04- Romney- 61.6%, Trump- 60.2%
• MT-AL- Romney- 55.4%, Trump- 56.5%
• SC-05- Romney- 55.1%, Trump- 57.3%

The potential for the biggest headlines would come from the race in GA-06-- to replace the new Medicare slashing Health Secretary, Tom Price-- a district which Trump barely managed to keep red and where Democrat Jon Ossoff could well displace whichever Republican manages to make it into the June 20th runoff after the April 18th jungle primary. The GOP establishment is praying for ex-state Sen Judson Hill but may get stuck with anti-Choice kook and controversial ex-Secretary of State Karen Handel or one of the two unhinged Trumpists, businessman Bruce LeVell or Johns Creek ex-Councilman Bob Gray. (Price's wife, state Rep. Betty Price, dropped out at the last minute.)

Or, perhaps, Trump and his cohorts in Congress haven't gone far enough yet, haven't convinced enough voters-- including Republican votes, who, after all, dominate 4 of the 5 districts-- that a loud, ringing message is necessary or even desirable. (Polls indicate most Americans are ready though, Trump's approval rating sinking by the day.

Yesterday Lisa Mascaro, in an article picked up by NationalMemo, noted that the relationship between Trump and GOP leaders in Congress started as a marriage of convenience, "thrown together by necessity and sustained on the promise of pushing a Republican agenda into law." Ryan and McConnell "tolerated Trump's turbulent debut because they agreed with the direction the White House was heading-- or were confident they could nudge it in the desired one... But the newfound partnership is showing signs of serious strain. Growing discomfort about the Trump team's ties to Russia, daily dramas at the White House and the increasing unrest at town hall meetings with constituents back home have prompted many in Congress to express second thoughts about the alliance." Mark Sanford (R-SC) went out of his way to savage Trump and separate himself from the White House sociopath the day before and the day after he visited Sanford's district in Charleston, a city (and county) Trump lost in both the primary and against Hillary.

As the first 100 days tick away, and rank-and-file Republicans head home for a weeklong recess, there is a growing worry that Congress will face a drip-drip-drip of new revelations about the Trump White House that will overshadow the rest of the Republican agenda, such as repealing Obamacare, enacting tax reform and cutting government spending.

"That's what the fear is," said one Republican senator, granted anonymity to frankly discuss the outlook. "It's not a good situation. You can't let this go and not look at it."

...One former GOP leadership aide said "there's not a single Republican anywhere" who's not stunned by some of Trump's comments. But they focus instead on the GOP priorities they see taking shape, he said.

"In the end, we're still talking about tax reform, Supreme Court-- all the stuff is getting done," the aide said. "Most of the stuff is sort of within the lines of what Republicans want anyway. People by and large think progress has been made."

Trump has already started signing into law bills sent by Congress to roll back President Barack Obama's regulatory clampdown on coal pollution and overseas corporate bribes. More are on the way to his desk.

Republicans have put their trust in Vice President Mike Pence, the Cabinet secretaries and a legislative team culled from the halls of Congress-- even though it is unclear how much sway those voices ultimately have with the occupant of the Oval Office.

And areas of significant disagreement with Trump lie ahead, such as his $1-trillion infrastructure plan, having Congress pony up funds for the border wall with Mexico, and a massive military buildup.

But the questions about Russia are threatening to overshadow Republican goals. Emboldened Democrats are calling for independent inquiries into alleged contacts between Trump's campaign team and Russian intelligence officials, and demanding the release of a transcript of a wiretapped conversation between Flynn and a Russian diplomat.

The Republican leadership has tried to contain the congressional investigations to the House and Senate intelligence committees, where hearings are often conducted in secret because of the classified nature.

...But a growing number of top Republicans, including Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, are calling for a deeper and more transparent dive into Russia's role in the November election. That could take weeks, or more likely months.

"What the hell went on? That's what's on my mind," McCain said. "We know they tried to affect the outcome of the election... Now we've got all these other issues."

And, with lack of cohesive-- let alone coherent-- leadership from the White House, naturally-fractious House Republicans from the party's various wings have been fighting each other. One top-ranking Republican staffer told me that "the only thing everyone agrees on is dismantling Dodd-Frank... The rest is completely up in the air and the parameters shift with every one of his early morning tweet storms." Sail Kapur, reporting this week for Bloomberg, pointed out that "some conservative House Republicans are objecting to a major part of the Obamacare replacement outline presented to them by party leaders, underscoring the party’s continuing inability to agree on an alternative health plan."

The proposal would allow Americans who lack insurance to buy coverage with refundable tax credits they can receive before the end of a tax year. House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady said he and other leaders presented the idea during Thursday’s private conference of the House GOP.

Some conservatives say they oppose the idea because it could amount to a new government subsidy by allowing people to receive a larger credit than they pay in taxes. They prefer a mechanism that would preclude people from getting any more money than they paid in taxes.

"I don’t like the refundable tax credit," says Representative Ted Yoho of Florida. "I don’t want people getting money back."

"This is Obamacare light," Yoho said, adding that he told Brady about his views.

Representative Trent Franks of Arizona said tax credits "should be predicated on those taxes paid in, not a refundable tax credit, because it can so easily become a major and unstoppable entitlement."

The dispute over tax credits is one of many issues facing Republican leaders as they seek agreement on how to fulfill their promise to repeal and replace Obamacare. Also discussed Thursday were a proposal to cap the tax break for employer-provided health insurance, and efforts to restructure Medicaid. Republicans are set to face their constituents during a week-long congressional recess next week.

Saturday, Tom Reed's town halls in Ashville and Cherry Creek, New York-- he was way too scared to accept an invitation from Mayor Svante Myrick to hold one in Ithaca, the biggest city in NY-23-- drew large raucous crowds. When Reed tried selling the crowds on Ryan's health care replacement (bogus health savings accounts) people were furious and started yelling "We want your health care! We want your health care!" Reed was also peppered with uncomfortable questions about Trump's embrace of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and about Trump's failure to pay income taxes-- Reed was sounded boo-ed for voting in committee against a proposal that would have forced Trump to release his tax returns-- and the crowd wound up chanting "What are you covering up?"

When Reed tried to avoid fighting about Putin, he pivoted back to Medicare, that had his constituents yelling at him that they like it the way it is and weren't going to accept Ryan's tax credits and voucher bullshit instead of actual health care. People in Cherry Creek, where he held his second town hall of the day, were shouting that rather than repeal Obamacare, Congress should turn it into a single-payer system (as Bernie Sanders has been advocating).

In 2012, the DCCC viciously sabotaged progressive Democrat Nate Shinagawa when he ran against Reed. Because of DCCC hostility Reed managed to eke out a 52-48% win and never faced a serious competitor again. In the 2018 cycle it will be the responsibility of Joe Kennedy III, the new DCCC vice-chair for the region to make sure a progressive like Shinagawa is the recruit and that he gets support, not shade.

Next door in Syracuse-based NY-24, where, once again DCCC incompetence and a craving for an inoffensive, unelectable Republican-lite crap-candidate-- and fear and loathing for the Berniecrat-- resulted in the inevitable, reelection of John Katko in a solidly blue district Obama won with 57% and even Hillary managed to win against Trump 48.9% to 45.3%. Katko announced Friday that he won’t attend any town hall meetings with his constituents and won’t let outside groups "hijack service to my district or disrupt meaningful engagement with my constituents." If Joe Kennedy recruits a real Democrat and not another vapid New Dem or Blue Dog, Katko will be wiped off the face of the political map in 2018, along with Reed.

The NY Times also noted how angry grassroots constituents are at Republican members of Congress right now. Regardless of what fools like Katko try to say "national organizers concede they are playing catch-up to a 'dam-bursting level' of grass-roots activism that has bubbled up from street protests and the small groups that have swelled into crowds outside local congressional offices."

Several Republicans, including Mr. Trump, have dismissed the pro-health care act crowds as “paid protesters,” not constituents. Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, without offering evidence, called the protests a “very paid, AstroTurf-type movement,” unlike the Tea Party demonstrations against the drafting of the health care law in 2009, which he characterized as “very organic.”

In fact, some of the most formidable and well-established organizing groups on the left have found themselves scrambling to track all of the local groups sprouting up through social media channels like Facebook and Slack, or in local “huddles” that grew out of the women’s marches across the country the day after the inauguration.

...The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is keeping track of Republican lawmakers who do not hold town-hall-style meetings. Some events have been canceled, and Representative Tom MacArthur of New Jersey said he had done so because the meetings have been “hijacked” by groups hostile to Mr. Trump. The committee plans to run internet ads trying to shame lawmakers for not facing their constituents in public since voting last month on a procedural motion aimed at repealing the health law.

Some of the most creative activity is coming from people who are new to political activism. In Plymouth, Minn., Kelly Guncheon, a financial planner who described himself as an independent, has organized a “With Him or Without Him” meeting for Representative Erik Paulsen, a Republican who has not scheduled any of his own. A volunteer offered to make 400 cupcakes decorated with a “Where’s Waldo?” picture of Mr. Paulsen’s face, and Mr. Guncheon said he planned to project onto screens legislation that Mr. Paulsen had supported. Participants will be asked to write down questions, which will be delivered, along with a recording of the event, to Mr. Paulsen’s congressional office after the recess.

Mr. Guncheon, like other new activists, said he was not looking to traditional political groups for guidance.

“In this new culture, this new era, we have to figure out new ways to do things,” he said. “There’s certainly no leadership at the head of the Democratic Party, or the state party. Not that I’m a Democrat anyway, but that seems to be the opposition party.”

Other new groups organizing on Facebook have arranged similar events, calling them “no-show” or “empty-chair” meetings, for Senators Cory Gardner of Colorado and Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, as well as for Republican lawmakers from California, New Jersey and New York.

In response to Mr. Gardner’s complaints that the people showing up at his office to request town-hall-style meetings were paid protesters from other states, one group showed up at his office with a banner on which members had written their Colorado ZIP codes.

Crackpot wing nut Dana Rohrabacher-- whose Orange County district Trump lost to Hillary-- claimed that constituents asking for town hall meetings are "enemies" of democracy and political "thugs." He's literally talking about the voters in Huntington Beach, Fountain Valley, Costa Mesa, Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, Laguna Niguel and Aliso Viejo. He's one of scores of aloof, unaccountable Republican congressmembers hiding from their own voters (unlike less dishonest Members like Justin Amash and Jim Sensenbrenner who have scheduled and gone to numerous town halls). Among the shadiest and most dismissive congressmembers have been Peter Roskam (R-IL), Chris Collins (R-NY), Darrell Issa (R-CA), Lamar Smith (R-TX), Ed Royce (R-CA), Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ), Roger Williams (R-TX), Paul Cook (R-CA), Lee Zeldin (R-NY), Mike McCaul (R-TX), Bill Flores (R-TX), Steve Knight (R-CA), Devin Nunes (R-CA), Duncan Hunter (R-CA), David Valadao (R-CA) and Rodney Davis (R-IL).

Nick Kristoff Times column this weekend dealt with how to get rid of Trump and his Nazi regime before they do some existential damage to America. "[F]or now," he wrote, "it’s hard to imagine a majority of the House voting to impeach, and even less conceivable that two-thirds of the Senate would vote to convict so that Trump would be removed. Moreover, impeachment and trial in the Senate would drag on for months, paralyzing America and leaving Trump in office with his finger on the nuclear trigger... [I]t’ll be up to Republicans to decide whether to force Trump out. And that won’t happen unless they see him as ruining their party as well as the nation."

“The only incentive for Republicans to act-- with or without the cabinet-- is the same incentive Republicans had in 1974 to insist on Nixon’s resignation,” Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia told me. “The incentive is survival.”

Trump does have one weakness, and it’s parallel to Nixon’s. Republicans in Congress were willing to oust Nixon partly because they vastly preferred his vice president, Gerald Ford-- just as congressional Republicans prefer Mike Pence today.

If I were betting, I’d say we’re stuck with Trump for four years. But as Sabato says: “Lots of things about Donald Trump’s election and early presidency have been shocking. Why should it stop now?”

And what does it say about a presidency that, just one month into it, we’re already discussing whether it can be ended early?

Wednesday there'll be a big rally in front of Paul Ryan's house in Janesville, Wisconsin, since he adamantly refuses to meet with his constituents. They'll meet at Parker Park at the corner of Harrison Street and East Court Street (53545) at 10:30 AM.

Why Diane Black Has Far More To Fear From Her Constituents In Tennessee Than Justin Amash Does From Michigan Voters

Justin Amash isn't hiding from his constituents and he's not hiding the media coverage of his raucous downhill meetings. He welcomes them and wants Michiganders to know about them. Amash's Grand Rapids-based seat is in a swing district (PVI is R+4); most of the voters coming from Kent (Grand Rapids) and Calhoun (Battle Creek) counties. Obama won it 50-49% in 2008, lost it 53-46% in 2012 and Hillary lost to Trump 51.6% to 42.2%. 3 months ago, Amash did considerably better than Trump-- winning reelection with 203,069 votes (59.6%) to 128,159 (37.5%). He won all 5 counties in the district.

According to the ProgressivePunch crucial votes scores, he's the most likely Republican in the House to support progressive legislation and, in fact, his score so far this year is 40.0, more progressive than would-be Democratic Leader Tim Ryan (D-OH), New Dem leader Jim Himes (CT), Blue Dog leader Kurt Schrader (OR) and over two dozen other Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, who apparently see the Trump-Ryan agenda as more attractive and supportable than Amash does. Amash's 2017 score is 40.0 while reactionary Blue Dogs like Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Collin Peterson (MN), Henry Cuellar (TX), Jim Costa (CA), Dan Lipinski (IL), Jim Cooper (TN), and Tom O'Halleran (AZ) all have scores of... ZERO. You can see why Ryan and McCarthy prefer Democrats like Sinema and Cuellar way more than independent-minded Republicans like Amash and Walter Jones (NC).

This week, while Ryan's lockstep Republicans were being torn apart by their own constituents in town halls, even in deeply red districts and in every part of the country, Amash was packing in the crowds-- and with a different result than, for example, Tom McClintock found waiting for him in Roseville, in the suburbs north of Sacramento.

More than 600 people showed up to a town hall meeting hosted by Congressman Justin Amash Thursday night. It was his second Grand Rapids town hall in less than a month and it was the second time so many people showed up they had to close the doors and turn people away.

Some Michigan members of Congress have been criticized lately for avoiding constituents.

But town halls are not new for Amash. The Republican says he’s always felt taking unscripted questions from his constituents, in person, is part of the job. But under the new administration, the crowds have been major.

“I like to be here hearing the different perspectives. I’m not afraid of my positions. They’re positions I believe in and positions I ran on,” Amash said... The generally left-leaning crowd gave Amash heat for supporting the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and a bill dismantling the U.S. Education Department. Amash got cheers for his support of immigrant families and civil rights. He told the crowd President Donald Trump needs to release more personal information, up to and including his tax returns if necessary, in order to ease ethical concerns.

But, more than anything, they thanked him for showing up and listening.

16-year old Holly Heathfield came with a group of classmates from Coopersville seeking extra credit in her government class. She asked Amash whether he supported expanded charter schools; she doesn’t, he does.

“Even though I don’t agree with all his views I do respect him for holding these meeting and hearing other people’s opinions. I think that’s really important for the community as a whole,” Heathfield said.

“You can see how hard it is to get people to accept the idea of non-partisan discourse,” Amash said after the event, “Of listening and working together and learning from each other, but I believe that a majority of Americans want something like that.”

The Republican town hall that got all the attention Thursday night was Jason Chaffetz's in the Salt Lake City suburb of Cottonwood Heights, one of the more moderate parts of his district. He was roundly booed by a thousand of his constituents, who are sick of him on a whole array of issues.

The din of the hostile and harassing audience that filled the 1,000 seats of a high school auditorium Thursday night drowned him out.

"Explain yourself," they roared over him.

When the congressman did get a chance to speak, the crowd often didn't like what he had to say. And he knew it.

The town-hall meeting was 75 minutes of tense exchanges between Chaffetz and residents from across the state. They were frustrated by the Utah Republican's refusal to investigate President Donald Trump's potential conflicts of interest. They doggedly pursued him for his initiatives to transfer or sell public lands. They questioned his position on immigration and refugees.

And that was only half of the largely liberal crowd.

About 1,500 people stood outside Brighton High School, too far back to make the cut, their signs reading, "Do your job" and "America is better than this."

...The congressman addressed 13 questions, three focused on public lands and four on investigating Trump. The other subjects jumped from Planned Parenthood to air quality to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

Noor Ul-Hasan, a Democratic activist, said, "If you want to continue to look into Hillary Clinton, I don't care. But why aren't you checking out your own president?"

Chaffetz, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said he's looking into comments made by Kellyanne Conway, a counselor to Trump, who plugged Ivanka Trump's fashion line in a national television interview.

"There's no case to be made that we went soft on the White House," Chaffetz said as police nervously patrolled the perimeter of the room. "In terms of doing my job, that's what I'm supposed to be doing."

Melissa Batka Thomas, from Salt Lake City, steadied her shaking hands as she read a quote from Chaffetz in which he called on presidential candidates to release their tax returns and "show everything."

"I'm asking you to explain what your timeline is to uphold your word or why there is a reluctance to do so," she said.

The congressman said, as he has before, that the president is "exempt" from conflict of interest laws. "Until there is evidence that [Trump] has somehow overused that to ingratiate his family …" Chaffetz said before boos cut him off.

...While discussing public-land use and his opposition to Bears Ears National Monument, Chaffetz was greeted by the strongest pushback of the night.

"I hope you do appreciate that not every person has the same viewpoint on the use of public lands," he said. "What we're trying to do is find a balanced approach."

The topic came up again, giving him a chance to speak about his bill to strip Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service employees of their law enforcement powers, an idea that elicited protest from the audience.

"I'm trying to be as representative as I can," he said.

Charlie Luke, a Democratic member of the Salt Lake City Council, wrote on Facebook that the harassment Chaffetz faced "ensured his reelection for as long as he chooses to run."

"It will embolden his majority Republican district," he wrote. "We need to resist, but let's be smart in the way we do it."

This drooling imbecile represents TN-06 in Congress

In November Trump only got 47.2% of the votes in Chaffetz's district, dramatically down from the 78.3% Romney got 4 years earlier. Clinton actually beat Trump in Salt Lake County 175,863 to 138,043. Chaffetz was reelected 186,743 (73.3%) to 68,104 (26.7%), a feat he's unlikely to duplicate in 2018. Halfway across the country in Tennessee, Diane Black, her state's most reactionary member of Congress, represents one of the state's two most backward fascist-oriented districts, TN-06, the north-central Tennessee district composed mostly of the suburbs and exurbs east of Nashville. She won every county in the district-- by a lot-- as did Trump. Trump beat Hillary there 72.6% to 23.7%. Black did nearly as well-- 71.1% to 21.8%. Her Murfreesboro town hall wasn't as raucous as Chaffetz's or McClintock's, but it was no love-fest either. One hundred of her constituents confronted her at an "Ask Your Reps" event hosted by the Middle Tennessee State University's College Republicans.

Mike Carlson, a 32-year-old student from Antioch, Tennessee, said that as an overweight man, he depended on Obamacare to stay alive.

"I have to have coverage to make sure I don't die. There are people now who have cancer that have that coverage, that have to have that coverage to make sure they don't die," Carlson said. "And you want to take away this coverage-- and have nothing to replace it with! How can I trust you to do anything that's in our interest at all?"

Black responded that Obamacare's individual mandate-- which requires everyone to have health insurance or pay a penalty-- still allowed millions, including many young and healthy people, to be without coverage.

"About 20 million people did actually come into the program who were uninsured," Black said. "You don't want to hurt one group of people to help the another. We can help both groups at the same time."

Bohon shot back: "How many of those people were in states where they played a political game with people's lives?"

Black appeared flustered, and declined to continue. "I'm going to pass this one," she said.

Bohon told CNN afterward that as a state employee, she receives health insurance through the state. Her question to Black, she said, was motivated in part by her Christian beliefs, as well as her upbringing in the coal-mining town of Grundy, Virginia.

"Growing up in the community that I grew up, in Appalachia, because we were so poor there that we had to take care of each other," Bohon said.

Both Carlson and Bohon told CNN that they voted for Hillary Clinton in the general election.

The same event hosted by MTSU's College Republican last year was attended by around 30 to 40 people, according to organizers. On Thursday night, the room was quickly filled to capacity while dozens outside chanted: "Let us in! Let us in!"

Black, along with two other GOP local officials, were at first asked questions that had been pre-submitted on the topics of healthcare and tax reform-- a format that clearly frustrated audience members and prompted some to interrupt.

At one point in the discussion, GOP State Rep. Mike Sparks told the room: "I'll be honest with you. As a state representative, I got health insurance. I feel a little guilty."

Multiple audience members could be heard responding: "You should."

While Republicans were suffering through accountabilty sessions with their constituents, House Democrats were at a retreat in Baltimore where they tried to figure out what went wrong in November and how to move forward. As has become too commonplace among House Democrats-- so utterly dominated by timid corporatists-- everyone was all smiles and upbeat, while "progressives privately vented about being lectured to by a speaker from a moderate [note: when Politico writers use the word "moderate," they are invariably referring to corrupt right-wingers, in this case the putrid whores from Third Way] think tank. And several lawmakers worried that the Democratic leadership would be too dependent on consultants and data to chart a course forward, rather than focusing on a clearer vision for the party... [I]t’s obvious from private and public conversations with members and Democratic aides that the caucus is still struggling, trying to unite on a path forward while still fighting about how they got here in the first place."

Silicon Valley freshman Ro Khanna (D-CA) had far more to offer than Pelosi and her sad-sack eggshell-walking lieutenants. "We need to stop doing the autopsies, stop doing all this metric data stuff and listen to the visionary voices. [Trump] didn’t have deep-dive data. He bragged about not polling. He offered a vision based on what he thought was his vision." Khanna proposed including liberal economic thinkers like Robert Reich and Paul Krugman in Democratic Party discussions like the one they were having.

ABC News' John Parkinson and Mary Alice Parks reported more fully on what Khanna had to say.

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-California, echoed, "I don’t think that running on Donald Trump’s missteps is going to win. That didn’t work for Hillary."

As she has often repeated since the election, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said again this week that the problem for Democrats during the election was messaging around their own ideas.

"There wasn't that clarity of the message coming through so we could represent we were the party of the working people," she said.

But Khanna and other progressive members in the party argue it isn’t that simple. They contend Democrats need to spend time crafting a clearer, populist economic agenda, in line with the ideas offered by Sen. Bernie Sanders during his presidential campaign, in order to present a concrete alternative to voters.

“What is the Democrats’ bold economic vision?” Khanna wondered rhetorically, during an interview with ABC News. “People get that the Democratic Party is for the little guy, but that is not a bold economic vision where it is clearly rejecting corporatists past, being populist and future looking and aspirational.”

He argued the passion and energy in the party right now was with the left and that he worries the party was looking for an all-inclusive “lowest common denominator” message to present that all members in the party, including more moderates, could get behind.

“I think the way to win is to be clear, to be bold, to be progressive, to look at where [Sen. Elizabeth] Warren and Sanders are taking the party and if there are 20 or 30 folks who are not onboard with it fine. But it is better to run with a bold, clear, contrasted vision of the future,” he said.

Jim Himes (New Dem-Wall St)

"The energy of this party is with a message of economic populism, of... questioning the rules of capitalism and saying that these rules have been rigged and written in a way that favors concentrated economic interests and need to be changed" was the message Khanna wanted House Democrats to focus on, something that frightens and infuriates the Members from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, like Jim Himes (ex-bankster and head New Dem-CT). Times was obviously discomforted by Khanna's perspective. "We need to be really careful about convincing ourselves that the right answer is to have 'the perfect message,'" said the congressman who has taken $5,547,712 in legalistic bribes from the Finance Sector since first being elected in 2008. "We bristle a little bit at the idea that 'my gosh, this person shouldn’t even be allowed in the room.'"

After the conference Progressive Caucus officers Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Mark Pocan (D-WI) issued this statement on the confirmation of Tom Price as Secretary of Health and Human Services. It's probably no more what Himes or his Third Way buddies would have like to have seen than it is what Chaffetz, Black and McClintock would embrace:

Rep. Tom Price has led the Republican crusade to dismantle Medicare and Medicaid as we know it. As the Chairman of the Budget Committee, Price has advocated for privatizing Medicare, and turning it into a voucher program, which would increase costs and harm our seniors and most vulnerable Americans.

He has worked to defund Planned Parenthood in order to restrict women’s access to comprehensive reproductive health services. And he has introduced legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which would threaten health care coverage for more than 20 million newly insured Americans.

With Price’s confirmation today, it is clear that Republicans are doubling down on their efforts to destroy these fundamental programs and turn health care over to the hands of insurance companies.

Health care is a right, not a privilege. The CPC will oppose any attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, privatize Medicare, or destroy Medicaid. We will fight to guarantee high-quality health care for all regardless of gender, age, or income.