Watch Guy Cecil And Michael Bennet Hand Mitch McConnell The Senate Leader Post

Rick and Rounds

The Rapid City Journal is arguably the most conservative newspaper in South Dakota. And they are certainly more conservative than the Beltway operative who seems hellbent on handing control of the Senate over to the Republicans, DSCC executive director Guy Cecil. Cecil, still pouting that he was unable to deliver the South Dakota Democratic nomination to former Blue Dog chairwoman Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, has blackballed South Dakota Democratic nominee Rick Weiland. Weiland has been endorsed by Tom Daschle and Tim Johnson and by most of the Democrats in the Senate including virtually all the senators who fight for Main Street rather than for Wall Street: Elizabeth Warren, Jeff Merkley, Al Franken, Barbara Boxer, Sherrod Brown, Brian Schatz, Mazie Hirono, Ron Wyden, Sheldon Whitehouse, Jack Reed, Patrick Leahy, Ed Markey, Richard Blumenthal, Tom Harkin and, of course, Bernie Sanders, who recognizes a kindred spirit when he sees one. He's also been endorsed by Blue America and, this week, DFA. Missing from the list is Cecil's pathetic puppet, Michael Bennet, ostensibly the chairman of the DSCC, who Patty Murray forgot to explain the facts of life to when she turned over the committee to him. Smart money in DC now predicts Bennet and Cecil will hand the Senate majority over to Mitch McConnell after the November elections. Their refusal to stop pouting and get behind Weiland is one of the symptoms of a sickness they both suffer from: a kind of bizarre DC defeatism that predicts that only conservatives can win elections.

Back to the Rapid City Journal now. Today they predicted something Cecil and Bennet should ponder long and hard-- something Senate Democrats and Daschle have been trying to make them both understand: South Dakota elects authentic populists, not just values-free centrist hacks… like Bennet himself. "George McGovern," wrote their editorial board, "was the original Prairie Populist. In Rick Weiland, we can see a reincarnation of the political philosophies that kept McGovern in Congress for 22 years." They can. Guy Cecil and the clownish Bennet can't. Time for Harry Reid to get more competent leadership for the DSCC and let Cecil go work for Hillary Clinton?

Well on his way to visit all 311 cities and towns in South Dakota in his campaign for U.S. Senate, Rick Weiland stopped by the Journal recently to meet with the editorial board.

The Sioux Falls Democrat hopes that by shaking as many hands as possible and greeting as many voters as he can before November, he will keep the Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Tim Johnson in Democratic hands.

He notes that at least one member of South Dakota’s congressional delegation has been a Democrat since George McGovern was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1962. “It’s a tradition in South Dakota to elect Democrats to Congress,” Weiland said.

Weiland has reason to be optimistic, despite the advantage Republicans have in registered voters, because of the open seat. Without an incumbent to fill up an overwhelming campaign war chest, the race could be considered wide open, even with five Republicans, including former Gov. Mike Rounds, in the race, along with former Republican Sen. Larry Pressler, running as an independent.

Despite never having held statewide office, Weiland is no stranger to South Dakota politics. He worked for Tom Daschle when he was a member of the House of Representatives and was his West River director for several years in Rapid City. In 1996, Weiland ran for the open U.S. House seat against John Thune in a battle between political neophytes but lost by 20 points.

Since then, he has worked as regional director for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, AARP and the International Code Council. He and his wife currently operate a successful restaurant in Sioux Falls.

Traveling across South Dakota and stopping in every town along the way is a campaign strategy Weiland learned from Daschle and McGovern, who preached that every voter counts come election day.

Weiland presented a populist message to the Journal editorial board that most of the country’s problems can be laid at the feet of the wealthy and big business that are preventing progress. “Big money has gotten in the way of getting things done,” he said.

Other examples of Weiland’s populism:

• Health care: The Affordable Care Act was poisoned by big insurance and pharmaceutical companies. Weiland proposes letting people choose to buy into the popular Medicare program. Private insurers would be forced to reduce premiums, mostly by cutting CEOs’ pay.

• Farm bill: Too much money goes to big producers.

• Energy: Policies are driven by big oil.

• Taxes: Businesses are not paying taxes, “meanwhile, we’re kicking kids off Head Start.”

• Campaign finance: The U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision is threatening our democracy by allowing large amounts of “dark money” (undisclosed donations) to influence elections.

• Free enterprise: Our economic system has been rigged by big money interests that create an “inequality of opportunity.”

The theme that a few hundred wealthy individuals and big corporations are the cause of all the country’s ills, and who use money and influence to prevent positive change fills a conversation with Weiland.

The back of Weiland’s business card even includes an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that he says he will introduce on his first day in Congress: "So that the votes of all, rather than the wealth of the few, shall direct the course of this Republic, Congress shall have the power to limit the raising and spending of money with respect to federal elections."

George McGovern was the original Prairie Populist. In Rick Weiland, we can see a reincarnation of the political philosophies that kept McGovern in Congress for 22 years.

The balance of power in the United Stated Senate is likely to be determined by who wins in South Dakota. Guy Cecil and Michael Bennet are on the wrong side of that battle. Please step up and help Rick Weiland win in South Dakota-- and keep the Senate blue… and America out of the direct control of the Koch brothers' demented fascism. You can contribute directly to Rick's campaign here.

Guy Cecil counts the ways he can lose the Senate majority for the Democrats, starting with ignoring South Dakota and Maine

The Beltway's Not America-- And It Sure Isn't South Dakota

Josh Kraushaar's National Journal post yesterday started off just right: "If Democrats fall a seat short of holding the Senate, there will be a lot of second-guessing on the one race that never materialized but should have held a lot more promise: South Dakota." But then he veered right off the rails. In regard to Rick Weiland's chance of holding the seat for the Democrats he asserts that "even the most optimistic Democrats will acknowledge [he] faces near-impossible odds in the solidly red state." That isn't true. Optimistic Democrats know Weiland could win if he weren't being cock-blocked by DSCC Executive Director Guy Cecil. Almost every Democrat in the Senate-- and every single good one-- has already endorsed Weiland but Kraushaar chose not to speak to any of them but to instead play stenographer for the poutraged Blue Dog-loving/progressive-hating Mr. Cecil. "It didn't have to be that way," commiserates Kraushaar, totally with the grain.

The Senate race to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson could have been one of the most consequential contests in the country, if Democrats had a little more luck. Just over a year ago, the political talk in South Dakota centered on which of their up-and-coming prospects would run-- former Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, one of the most popular figures in the state after representing it for three full terms in the House, or Tim Johnson's son Brendan Johnson, who's serving as a U.S. attorney. Despite the state's Republican moorings, now-Sen. Heidi Heitkamp's surprising 2012 victory in neighboring North Dakota served as a fresh reminder that strong candidates running in conservative-minded states can overcome disadvantages.

In the delusional Beltway world of the Cecils and Kraushaars, Stephanie Herseth Sandlin is indeed "one of the most popular figures in the state." But not in real life. And even if they're delusional, she isn't. Democrats in the state don't trust her and didn't turn out in 2010 to reselect her, allowing right-wing Republican Kristi Noem to beat her. Herseth Sandlin knew she could never win a Democratic primary and she only agreed to run if Cecil could assure her he would clear the field for her-- which he did, by persuading Brendon Johnson to not run. That's when Weiland jumped in… and Herseth Sandlin jumped out. "She announced," writes Kraushaar, "the desire to spend more time with her family as the reason for stepping aside, but several Democratic operatives familiar with her decision said she didn't want to face any primary opposition, even against a longer-shot candidate like Weiland… Against Weiland, Herseth Sandlin would have been a clear favorite to win the nomination. But against the more-liberal challenger, she would have been forced to defend her vote against the president's health care law, an issue she trumpeted in her unsuccessful 2010 reelection. In a state where Democrats have little margin for error, being pushed to the left in a primary would have been costly in a general election." Cecil has stomped his feet and barked and barked and barked-- and decided to tale it into his own hands to let Mitch McConnell and the Republicans take over the Senate rather than have his fragile ego bruised by something as messy as Democracy-- and dirty fucking hippies. More Krushaar commiseration for poor Cecil: "to the small universe of Democratic activists within the state, Weiland's progressive principles trumped Herseth Sandlin's more-electable profile."

Krushaar gets the rest of the story wrong and just presents a laughable Guy Cecil version, a dress rehearsal for the blame that will be coming his way when he tries getting the campaign manager job for Hillary in 2016. The reason South Dakota should be one of the top DSCC priorities-- and why they should fire Guy Cecil today before he can do any further damage-- has nothing to do with the Republican primary. It has to do with the 3 Republicans running in the general election, the tainted, Establishment corporate shill, Mike Rounds, plus former Republican Senator Larry Pressler and a Tea Party fave, Gordon Howie, the latter two both running as independents-- and both peeling off votes from Rounds.

Rick Weiland can keep that South Dakota Senate seat blue and the Democrats can hold onto the Senate-- despite Guy Cecil and the DSCC. If you'd like to help make sure that happens, please consider contributing what you can to Rick's campaign.


UPDATE: Last Night's Republican Primary

Rick's campaign sent this out this morning about the South Dakota GOP Senate primary and how it served to underscore Mike Rounds' vulnerability, asking that people consider the following:

• Former two term governor, Mike Rounds, spent $2.5 million dollars to win just 55% of the vote, while his four unknown opponents spent less than $75,000 on television advertising and received 45%. This should hardly be reason for optimism in the Rounds' camp.

• Despite Rounds egregiously high spending, he actually LOST ground on his favorable/unfavorable scores! In October, Rounds fav/unfav score was 42%/40%, but by early May, despite spending many hundreds of thousands of dollars on soft-positive 60 second ads, Rounds not only didn't move the dial forward, he slightly moved backwards-- his fav/unfav scores were 41%/41%. The folks who don't like him--half the electorate who can rate him-- are unmoved by his ads. And it's a truism in politics that an impression, once made, is not easily changed.

• One of Rounds' challenges is that he not only faces Rick Weiland in the general election, he also faces former three-term GOP U.S Senator Larry Pressler and former South Dakota GOP State Senator Gordon Howie, the latter two who certainly will draw tens of thousands of votes away from Rounds (GOP challengers to Rounds drew a combined 33,000 votes in the Senate primary yesterday).

• If “Weiland can get around 45 percent of the vote, a reasonable target for a Democrat in the state, and Pressler and Howie together get more than 10 percent, Rounds could wind up coming in second.” -- Tom Lawrence, Prairie Perspective Blog– April 11, 2014

• And this morning, conservative KELO radio host Greg Belfrage reiterated this point on his show-- Howie enjoys wide support among Tea Party Republicans and Pressler still appeals to "old-school" GOP voters.

• The May PPP poll showed that, despite the fact that Rounds had placed far more time on TV than Rick Weiland, he actually trailed Weiland by 2% among those respondents who could rate Weiland either favorably or unfavorably, which clearly indicates that Rounds lead (10%) was due entirely to his unsurprising advantage in name identification (67% for Weiland, 82% for Rounds). As Weiland gets better known-- not difficult in a low-cost television state like South Dakota-- Rounds' lead will shrink, and then disappear.

This race remains what it has been from the start-- entirely winnable, the only question being whether Weiland will received the relatively modest amount of funding that he needs to make his case to the voters of South Dakota. If he does, it's clear that Weiland-- who is outworking Rounds every day-- could easily win.

NRSC Clearly Understands They Can Lose South Dakota, But Guy Cecil Is Still Filled With Poutrage

DSCC executive director Guy Cecil isn't thinking clearly... or doesn't give a shit if the Democrats keep control of the Senate or not. The battle over the Senate could well come down to one state: South Dakota... and Cecil, who rides roughshod over pathetic DSCC chairman Michael Bennet, refuses to play. When Beltway political reporter Alexandra Jaffe asked the question, Why Is Rick Weiland Getting Cold Shoulder?, there is never a mention of Cecil.

No doubt he was just too busy trying to worm his way into the Hillary For President Campaign taking shape, but its hardly a secret that Cecil is still furious that Weiland's entry into the race, wrecked Cecil's dumb centrist plan. South Dakotans defeated Blue Dog Queen Stephanie Herseth Sandlin in 2010 and replaced her with another nothing, Kristi Noem. Noem beat her 153,683 (48%) to 146,561 (46%), in large part because progressives just stayed home rather than vote for the conservative Herseth Sandlin. They didn't hold their noses and vote for her; they say home and grilled hot dogs and burgers. The following election saw a much bigger turnout-- presidential year-- but Noem, with no accomplishments under her belt, beat Democrat Matt Varilek with an even greater margin. He was a classic Steve Israel mystery meat candidate. No one ever knew what he stood for. That's the way the DCCC and the DSCC likes their candidates-- even though candidates like that usually lose.

So around roles the 2014 cycle and Cecil is tripping all over himself to recruit the pathetic Herseth Sandlin, the former chair of the Blue Dogs who was so certain she could never win a Democratic primary that she told Cecil she would only run if he could clear the Democratic field. Cecil gave his word and, sure enough, persuaded Tim Johnson's son, Brendan, to drop out of the race. Sandlin was beaming... until populist Rick Weiland jumped in. Herseth Sandlin stormed out of the race and Cecil-- as well as Harry Reid-- were furious. Cecil probably told Bennet, an idiot, to put on a sad face.

Now Weiland has been picking up a head of steam and has been endorsed by almost every Senate Democrat, including all the good Senate Democrats, from Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown, Bernie Sanders and Jeff Merkley to Al Franken, Barbara Boxer, Brian Schatz, Mazie Hirono, Ron Wyden, Sheldon Whitehouse, Jack Reed, Patrick Leahy, Ed Markey, Richard Blumenthal, and Tom Harkin. No Reid, and, of course, no Bennet, who only makes endorsements when Cecil tells him it's OK. But can Weiland win? In South Dakota? You bet he can... unless Cecil sabotages his race. And right now... Cecil is sabotaging his race-- although that isn't what Alexandra Jaffe discusses in her Hill post.

The DSCC has consistently insisted it would have a strong option, likening the race to North Dakota in 2012, when the last-minute entry of Democrat Heidi Heitkamp delivered the party a winning candidate.

But with no other Democrats in the race, there are now no other options for the DSCC. And Weiland is certainly no centrist like Heitkamp. He’s the rare critic of ObamaCare who says it doesn’t go far enough; he opposes the controversial Keystone XL pipeline that remains popular with conservatives; and he has received the backing of Howard Dean’s Democracy for America, a national progressive group.

Critics say that strategy won’t work in South Dakota, with a voting population that’s 45 percent Republican and where GOP 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney won with nearly 60 percent over the vote.

Craig Lawrence, chairman of the South Dakota Republican Party, said he’s confident widespread opposition to the national Democratic Party will deliver the GOP candidate a win.

“How do you spell ‘Obama’? How do you spell ‘ObamaCare’? How do you spell, ‘our decline in image for the United States throughout the world’? How do you spell ‘Harry Reid’?” he said, when asked what he saw as the GOP’s winning argument in the race.

Weiland has, however, distanced himself from Obama on core issues, ranging from possible U.S. military intervention in Syria to the Environmental Protection Agency’s recent actions on ethanol. His adviser Mike Lux said calling his campaign “progressive” would be inaccurate.

“I think he’s running a populist campaign, and I think that a populist campaign has won most South Dakota senate elections in the last few years for Democrats. It’s not a conventional progressive campaign at all,” Lux said.

Lux said Weiland is framing his push for a public option as essentially support for allowing the public to buy into Medicare, which is popular with seniors, and that his opposition to Keystone XL is appealing to farmers and ranchers who know it could hurt their water supply.

Democrats say they’re further heartened by the contours of the GOP primary. They believe prevailing conservative discontent with Rounds, the establishment pick, as well as investigations into potential misconduct involving the state development office during Rounds’ administration, could cripple him for the general.

Lawrence argued there’s no direct connection between Rounds and the alleged misconduct: “There’s smoke but there’s no fire. It will not singe Mike Rounds.”

That could change, however, if national Democrats pour money into advertising pushing the issue-- and in a state as cheap as South Dakota, a small investment goes a long way.

They also believe the entry of Pressler as an independent candidate could split off votes from the GOP nominee and deliver Weiland a win, if the race tightens.

Lawrence predicted that Pressler could draw 8 percent of the vote but that Rounds-- whom the state party has not officially endorsed, but Lawrence and many others see as the clear front-runner-- will be too strong to overcome.

“Mike Rounds is so popular and the Democratic candidate is so comparatively weak that Larry Pressler would have to have an incredible amount of support” to leave an opening for Weiland, he said.

Maybe the DC Democrats are doing Weiland a favor by painting a picture that shows Reid against him. Reid is extremely unpopular in South Dakota and his backing won't do Weiland any good with the state's voters, even if it would with institutional Democratic Party donors. But Rounds has a worse roadblock than the 8% Pressler is bound to take away from the GOP. Meet Mike Rounds-hater, Gordon Howie, the teabagger who is going to deliver South Dakota to a full-fledged Democrat, not a Stephanie Herseth Sandlin or Heidi Heitkamp type from the Republican wing of the party. Craig Lawrence, chairman of the South Dakota Republican Party:

From the moment Gordon Howie filed his petitions for US Senate as an Independent, Republicans from around the state have been ringing our phones off the hook in anger that one of our own would set out to be the spoiler in the race.

Gordon called me this afternoon to ask if the State Party were challenging his petitions,  and I explained that it is not the State Party that may challenge, but that it is impossible for me not to know about or be involved in such a challenge in one way or another.  There is simply too much controversy surrounding his switch from Republican to Independent, and I am the Republican Chairman.

I suggested that if he were to get 12% of the vote as he has in the past, he could be the spoiler who gives the seat back to the Democrats. He said, “I expect to get much more than 12%.”

And the GOP effort to disqualify Gordon from the ballot is going to backfire on them even beyond the very slim odds of them being successful.

Gordon submitted 5200 signatures which is about 59% beyond the minimum requirement and the second largest margin of any candidate for office this year. His petitions, so we're reliably informed, tested in at about 84% accuracy which would mean the SDGOP would need to identify over 1,000 indivuduals on Gordon's petitions who had already previously signed U.S. Senate Candidate petitions this year. This would invovle cross checking each one of his 5,200 signatures against the 25k+ that were submitted previously and doing so by next Tuesday.

Most importanlty, if this were to evolve to a legal dispute, the South Dakota courts have a long and documented history of allowing candadites on the ballot even if they fall below the margin assuming it isn't by a terribly ergrious margin. What a mess! And all it does is drag the already badly wounded Rounds through the mud in the minds of independent voters-- while further infuriating Republicans who lean in a Tea Party direction. You can help Rick Weiland here-- even if Guy Cecil won't.

When Will Rick Weiland Start Covering Some Stone Temple Pilots Songs? They Were Huge In South Dakota

There is exactly zero chance the Democrats will take back the House in November. And there is not a single serious, non-senile person who will tell you that there is a chance. A few days ago we looked at some of the underlying reasons here, in an open letter to Nancy Pelosi: extraordinarily bad leadership. The situation in the Senate is not as hopeless, although the leadership at the DSCC this year is not what it was when Patty Murray ran the show in 2012 and swept the field. This cycle an abysmally weak and clueless chairman, Michael Bennet, is beyond worthless and takes orders from Guy Cecil, whose only concern is positioning himself for a top position in the Hillary For President campaign.

Cecil, who wanted defeated Blue Dog chairwoman Setphanie Herseth Sandlin to run for the open South Dakota Senate seat, tools his marbles and went him when prairie populist Rick Weiland scared her out of running in a Democratic primary she knew she would lose. (Her conservative vision is awesome for Beltway centrists like Bennet and Cecil-- but are not relatable for actual Democratic voters). So Cecil, Bennet and Harry Reid have refused to back Weiland and have hampered his fundraising in what should be a very competitive race. So far, Weiland, who has been endorsed by almost every Democratic senator except Reid and Bennet, has only taken in $1,094,098 (as opposed to Republican Mike Rounds' $3,716,986. The two other Republicans in the race-- running as independents-- haven't raised enough to do any real advertising. Former Republican U.S. Senator Larry Pressler has raised $107,797 and Republican former state Senator and Tea Party favorite Gordon Howie has raised $32,074. (Looks like the teabaggers want to waste all their money in Tennessee banging their heads against a wall trying to defeat ¡Lamar! when getting behind Howie actually could stop Mike Rounds for real.)

Last week the Koch brothers' shady politeical operation opened an office in Sioux Falls the same day the RNC started running anti-Weiland robocalls. The DSCC won't help but the Koch brothers and RNC is frightened enough to start spending money in this race. It's a race that could make the difference between the Democrats controlling the Senate or the Ted Cruz agenda being the Senate agenda. Is that what Guy Cecil wants? Is he so Machievellian that he thinks 2 years of gridlock horror between Obama and a GOP-controlled House and Senate will make voters eager ro elect Hillary? It's not worth it. Blue America has endorsed Rick Weiland's campaign and if you'd like to help save the Senate from the grasp of conservatives-- not something the DSCC is concerned with-- you can contribute here.

A few days ago I saw this note on Weiland's Facebook page:

A year ago, I hit the road with my daughter, my guitar and a map of South Dakota. A few well-meaning friends thought I was crazy to promise to visit every incorporated town in the state. Nine months later, we’d accomplished our goal. Now, we are doing it all over again. This campaign won't be won sitting on corporate jets. It will be won at lunch counters and co-ops on the back roads of South Dakota. Real people, real stories and incredible memories as I ask South Dakotans to help me take our country back from Big Money. We had such a good response on our first video; we’ve decided to make a second one. It’s called "Bring On the Road." Please forward this to your friends and family and anyone who will vote in this November’s Senate race.

The video is up top. I suspect the lyrics, based on the beloved Americana classic by Roger Miller, "King of the Road," aren't going to win over the suits in DC. This isn't they kind of message (or delivery) that someone like Michael Bennet or Guy Cecil can relate to (although I bet Weiland supporter Elizabeth Warren would get it without much effort):

They don't want a handout
But they want a fair shake
And they're tired of Big Money sayin'
Let them eat cake

My vote's not for sale or rent
I just won't listen to the one percent
I'm not campaignin' in corporate jets
I'm meetin' voters in luncheonettes

I used to be a country dj at the Rainbow Cattle Company and then the Outpost in San Francisco and back in the '70s I was an editor of Country Music Magazine and I have a sense that the song will go over real well among real people in South Dakota, no matter what Harry Reid thinks of it. Weiland: “I will never make a living singing country songs, but a lot of folks told me they enjoyed the first song and my friends and family enjoy hamming it up a bit. I said from the beginning, I was going to keep this campaign fun and not take myself too seriously."

OK, Rick, how about covering a road song by Scott Weiland next-- this one:

DSCC: Dereliction Of Duty

Conservative Democrats who cannot win

Progressive Democrats who can win

Recent polls-- like this morning's release of the latest NBC News/Marist poll in Kentucky-- confirm what astute observers have been saying for some time: the DSCC braintrust-- Harry Reid, Michael Bennet and Guy Cecil-- are wasting their money on conservative candidates in deep red states. The DSCC has helped Alison Lundergan Grimes raise $11,353,760 and they and their Senate Majority Pac have spent close to another $4 million on TV ads in Kentucky already. Similarly, in Georgia, the DSCC has helped Michelle Nunn raise $9,211,931 while they and EMILY's List have spent over a million dollars on outside ads so far.

The most recent SurveyUSA polls shows Republican David Perdue beating Michelle Nunn 50-41%. Today's Marist poll has McConnell absolutely trouncing Grimes, 47-39%. OK, maybe Nunn and Grimes, both conservative Democrats eagerly wrecking the Democratic brand in their state to promote their own doomed candidacies, will lose less badly with DSCC support. So?

If the DSCC and its allies were funneling that kind of money and support into two winnable states they are ignoring-- Maine, where an outstanding progressive, Shenna Bellows, is taking on tired conservative hack Susan Collins, and South Dakota, where a plucky populist is hammering conservative corporate whore Mike Rounds-- the Democrats would have a far better chance to hold onto the Senate… and keep the majority without putting it's effectiveness into the hands of two idiots who will spend the next six years worrying about if they are voting conservatively enough for their reelection challenge.

Shenna Bellows, with no help from the DSCC or from EMILY's List beyond lip service, has raised $1,330,516 to Collins' $5,380,803 (45% of it-- $2,404,553-- legalistic bribes from PACs with agendas antithetical to the voters of Maine. The DSCC and its allies have spent exactly zero dollars in Maine this cycle. How could they when they're dumping so much down the toilets in Kentucky and Georgia? On her own-- and without a single Democratic senator with the guys to go up against Collins (and that, alas, includes Grimes-booster Liz Warren)-- Bellows is closing the gap between herself an Collins. She's now in a position where some help from the DSCC could help her do to Collins what Democrat Bill Hathaway did ("impossibly") against Margaret Chase Smith in 1972. Today's Portland Press Herald featured a debate between former Republican state Senator Phil Harriman and former Democratic state Senator Ethan Strimling on how the contours of the race are shaping up:

Phil: Now I understand why Mary thinks you need help. How about the U.S. Senate race? Is Shenna Bellows gonna be able to break 30 percent against Susan Collins?

Ethan: For sure. She has positioned herself well for the final stretch. The “walk across Maine” solidified her standing among Democrats and introduced her to many people who wouldn’t know her otherwise.

Phil: And many people smiled politely, shook her hand, and will then go into the voting booth to vote for Susan Collins. Collins’ level of popularity is verging on iconic (rightfully so) and will put her on the same plane as Margaret Chase Smith and George Mitchell.

Ethan: I am just saying that Shenna is turning out to be a much stronger candidate than many expected. She has money in the bank. She is very likable on camera. And she is working her butt off. She is turning out to be the Little Engine That Could.

Similarly, Rick Weiland's grassroots campaign in South Dakota-- for an open blue seat-- is getting no help (what would be the opposite of "help?") from the DSCC. Weiland has raised $1,094,098 (to Mike Rounds' $3,716,986). The DSCC has stubbornly refused to spend a dime in South Dakota, even though the most recent polls show him consistently gaining on Rounds.

Public Policy Polling’s newest South Dakota survey finds that Rick Weiland is continuing to cut into Mike Rounds’ once double digit lead in the race to replace Tim Johnson.

Key findings from the survey include:

• Rounds’ lead now stands at just 6 points- he’s at 39% to 33% for Weiland, 17% for Larry Pressler, and 4% for Gordon Howie. Rounds’ lead has dropped from 10 points in April to 8 points in early August to now just 6 points in late August as Weiland has become better known and more popular.

• Weiland is considerably more well liked by voters than Rounds. 48% see him favorably to only 27% with an unfavorable opinion. That +21 net favorability rating for Weiland is up from +15 earlier in the month, and it’s 24 points better than Rounds’-- only 44% of voters see him positively to 47% who have a negative opinion.

• There are several reasons to think the race could close further. Among voters who are familiar with Weiland, whether they have a positive or negative opinion of him, he leads Rounds 42/36. Rounds is ahead in large part thanks to greater name recognition, but as Weiland has become better known, Rounds’ lead has gotten smaller and smaller.

Additionally Pressler supporters say that if they had to pick, they’d choose Weiland over Rounds 48/29. Third party candidates tend to see their support fade as an election gets closer. If Pressler sees a decline in his support over the next two months, Weiland is likely to be the beneficiary-- he trails Rounds only 45/42 when you take Pressler out of the mix.

Rick Weiland has the momentum in this race. The more voters get to know him, the more they like him, and it’s making what was once a wide lead for Mike Rounds less and less comfortable.

If you've been waiting, now's the time to put your money to work for the two progressive Democrats who can save the Senate despite the jaw-dropping incompetence of Michael Bennet and Guy Cecil. Please give what you can to Rick and Shenna here.

Rick Weiland And The Battle Against Allowing The "Big Money Big Foot" To Swallow Up Our Democracy

John Tsitirian, a blogger South Dakota's Constant Commoner, missed the boat, in his own words, on the ideas inherent in regard to the dangers of oligarchy in America. His claim that oligarchy doesn't exist in America is just plain wrong. "For every Sheldon Adelson there's a Warren Buffet, for every Koch Brother there's a George Soros. I could go on. This is why I find Weiland's campaign falling short." He couldn't go on and that is far from correct. There are some progressive big dollar donors but the number isn't equal, isn't half, isn't a third, of conservative big dollar donors. In fact, many of the Democratic big dollar donors-- the ones cultivated by Rahm Emanuel, Joe Criowley, Jim Himes, Steny Hoyer, Mark Warner and others from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, may be culturally Democratic but when it comes to the core values and principles of economic equality… forget about it. Tsitirian generously hosted a follow-up post to give Weiland an opportunity to explain what being a "prairie populist" opposing oligarchy and plutocracy actually means.

Weiland's response illustrates why grassroots progressives are more comfortable with him than DC insiders and why the Democratic power brokers on K Street and Wall Street-- and their profession political puppets like Guy Cecil-- are actively sabotaging his campaign as much as the Republicans are. His brand of populism, like Elizabeth Warren's and Bernie Sanders' is a threat to the self-entitled establishment elites. They instinctively know that someone, like Weiland, who backs ordinary working families is no friend of theirs, political party registration be damned. Rick:

Sometime around our nation's 200th birthday the hard right invented the welfare queen as a symbol for its belief that, after 35 years of New Deal policies, their nation had gone too far in seeking to accommodate and empower the poor. They knew full well that "the poor" were not some "monolithic, unified political juggernaut," bent on defrauding hard working rich people of their well earned rewards. But their "Great Communicator" synthesized what they believed was the overall effect of two generations of attention to the needs of the poor and the lower middle class into a powerful symbolic "person."  That successful synthesis has changed American politics and public policy for two generations.

2014 is almost exactly as far removed from 1976 as 1976 was from 1929. Today we are reaping the whirlwind of two generations of public policy attention myopically focused on the needs of the wealthy and the powerful for policies that allow them to unleash their talents and ambitions with full force in our economy. Those talents and ambitions are in fact a formidable force for progress. I do not in any way agree with those who believe you can confiscate their fruits and your economy will walk away unharmed.

But after two generations in which the ideas of the rich and powerful have routed those of the middle class, the result has been predictable. What began as an unchaining of productive genius has congealed into protection of raw power and already earned big money. What at first helped the inventor starting out in the little garage market his or her inventions, to the immense benefit of our economy and our public, now helps the inventors' grandsons and granddaughters amass unheard of riches with ponzi schemes of negative value to the public, or simply send their billions offshore, while Head Start programs are shuttered because their billions go untaxed.

Big Money is an understandable public symbol for the kind of people, and the kind of thinking, that have dominated American public policy for the last two generations.

Warren Buffet understands Big Money's total triumph in public argumentation perfectly when he says, "There's class warfare all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning."

I'm sure Mr. Buffet has met Mr. Soros, and knows full well of the wide range of opinions within the billionaires club. But Mr. Buffet also understands the bottom line, and knows that the actual, factual distribution of wealth is the bottom line. Because he studies statistics, and thus knows the real economic and political world perhaps more accurately than any other human being now alive, Warren Buffet can see that "big money" has seen it's share of our nation's wealth rocket up in lock step with its share of the money with which politicians get elected. He understands the bottom line never lies, and that the bottom line today is that close to 100% of the increase in America's total wealth over the last 30 years has gone to the wealthiest and most powerful 1% of Americans, while the other 99% of us have gotten next to nothing.

Unless you can argue that the free market economy has changed so fundamentally over the last 30 years that this result is a fair reflection of open competition, a ridiculous assertion on the face of it, Mr. Buffet feels there is only one conclusion possible, the one he presented in his famous class war quote.

I agree with Warren Buffet. I believe the bottom line proves that the "big money" big foot against which I am campaigning hard not only exists, but is the fundamentally incorrect and unfair set of policy assumptions which must be slain before we can hope to right our course.

It is not true that the right to buy politicians is Big Money's free speech right.

It is not true that granting tax free status to offshore profits, and billionaires grand kids piggy banks, or bundling bad mortgages, helps spur productive economic growth.

The results of these untruths, propagated by our refusal to challenge the ascendant political myths of big money, are stunting our economy and defrauding our middle class.

Like Seymour's plant in Little Shop of Horrors, their myths have been allowed to grow unchecked for far too long, and they must be pruned.

That is why I am campaigning against "big money."

As Warren Buffet understands, the people and ideas that phrase synthesizes have gotten mightily greedy. As Ronald Reagan would well understand, labeling them is absolutely necessary to be effective in the world of public communication.

The thinking of Buffet and Reagan, each a much wiser man than I, is the basis of my campaign against "big money."  It is a base with which I am quite comfortable.

Blue America has endorsed Rick, even if Guy Cecil prevents the DSCC from doing the same. If Rick wins in November-- which he can-- the Senate will stay in Democratic hands. If Mike Rounds wins, the Majority Leader of the Senate will be Mitch McConnell and Guy Cecil will go work on the Hillary Clinton campaign, rewarded for his colossal stupidity, obstinacy and horrifying and catastrophic failure. You can contribute to Rick Weiland's campaign here on our Blue America ActBlue page.

A Democracy Dependent Upon The Funders

The video above comes from a TED Talk Lawrence Lessig did last year. He contends, correctly, that we have lost our representative democracy and that we have to act to get it back. Choosing between garbage candidates like David Jolly and Alex Sink won't help anyone get anything back. All it will do is perpetuate the deterioration of American democracy.

This short news story from the Associated Press this week shouldn't surprise anyone by it's specifics. But it is instructional nonetheless. This is what's left of our transpartisan faux-democracy:

Democrat Rahm Emanuel and Republican Bruce Rauner have something in common - many of the same wealthy political donors.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that more than 100 campaign contributors have given money to both men.

The newspaper conducted an analysis of campaign contributions since Emanuel, a Democrat, ran for Chicago mayor and since Rauner launched his campaign for the GOP gubernatorial nomination.

Common donors include billionaires Citadel investment firm founder Ken Griffin and Groupon co-founder Eric Lefkofsky.

Emanuel and Rauner both have a background in investment.

But Emanuel and Rauner also were the top contributors to their own campaign funds. Rauner has contributed $5 million and Emanuel has given himself $1.1 million.

Chicago-based political consultant Don Rose says big donors often give to ensure future access to political leaders.

Guy Cecil, the executive director of the DSCC, got to pick his own "boss" this cycle and he picked the weakest, most spineless member of the Senate, Michael Bennet of Colorado, a pusillanimous centrist for whom he had served as chief of staff and who he had helped reelect in 2010 (an election in which Bennet squeaked by with 48.1% of the vote against GOP sociopath Ken Buck). Cecil is calling the shots at the DSCC this cycle and is likely to hand the majority over to the Republicans as he spends all the committee's capital on trying to advance pathetic Beltway centrism. The two best Democratic candidates running this cycle, South Dakota's Rick Weiland and Maine's Shenna Bellows, have been shut out from support by Cecil. This is especially odd since the vast majority of Democratic senators have already endorsed Weiland. His brand of aggressive prairie populism is so foreign to a conservative operative like Cecil that he literally can't understand what Weiland is talking about. Bellows, an Elizabeth Warren type of transformational candidate, might as well be on another planet for a creature of the Beltway like Cecil. (You can contribute to Weiland and Bellows here.)

Steve Israel has guaranteed the Democrats will not take back the House and Cecil/Bennet are guaranteeing they will lose the Senate. Is the strategy just to hope the Republicans overreach so badly that Hilary sweeps in big Democratic gains in both Houses in 2016? How sad is that? And how far have we come from a politics of ideas to a politics based on contributions from the richest fraction of one percent of criminal plutocrats?

Why Did The Democrats Do So Badly Last Night? It Goes Beyond Gerrymandering And Obama's Poor Ratings

DSCC Executive Director Guy Cecil will reap big rewards for his incredible string of abject failures yesterday

Guy Cecil, is the Executive Director of the DSCC. He wants to run the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. He-- and Harry Reid-- just cost the Democrats Tim Johnson's South Dakota Senate seat. Cecil recruited reactionary Blue Dog Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, who South Dakota voters had rejected in 2010. They decided Herseth Sandlin's pleasant Beltway conservatism was exactly what South Dakota needed. They chased Johnson's son, Brendan, out of the race and handed the Democratic nomination to Herseth Sandlin, who was well aware she could never win a Democratic primary battle. But-- and it was a big but-- when Brendan Johnson bowed out, another progressive jumped in. Enter Rick Weiland. Herseth Sandlin stomped off and disappeared and Cecil flipped out. He and Reid decided to get even and refused to back Weiland, even after South Dakota Democrats rallied around him and made him their nominee. They closed the financial faucets and undercut him to a dull, lazy Beltway media, declaring South Dakota unwinnable. Cecil and Reid worked all cycle to make it unwinnable. Chatter is the Cecil, who just presided over the Senate catastrophe that Patty Murray completely avoided in 2012, will have a big position in the Hillary campaign. Makes perfect sense.

Right after the catastrophic 2010 midterms-- aka- The Great Blue Dog Apocalypse-- I worked with half a dozen congressional offices putting together an indictment of the corruption inherent in the way the DCCC does business. You should read it, if you haven't. It's all about the revolving door between the DCCC campaign operatives who get so many millions of dollars grassroots Democrats are suckered into contributing to the DCCC with all those annoying e-mails and the consulting companies they work for and own. At the time, I wasn't aware of Amy Sullivan's epic 2005 article for the Washington Weekly, Fire the Consultants-- Why Do Democrats Promote Campaign Advisors Who Lose Races? Sullivan focused in on the DSCC and I focused on the DCCC but the same disease afflicts both party committees. (Note: I don't care what diseases afflict the Republicans; I just hope whatever it is hurts them as badly as the Democrats are hurt by their consultant problems.)

I urge you to read the Sullivan piece in its entirety. Much of it is about Joe Hansen, a revolving door DSCC operative who is a partner in a very lucrative Beltway consulting firm. They get rich whether Democrats win or lose. Sullivan explains just how it works, although his own case, working for the DSCC and his own firm simultaneously, isn't the way its done anymore. The crooks are in one cycle and then back at their own firms the next and then back at the committee the next.

How does Hansen defend his performance and the seeming conflict between his roles as DSCC representative and private consultant? Not very aggressively. After I made numerous attempts over two weeks to get an interview with Hansen, he replied with a one-paragraph email, in which he listed the three victorious senatorial and three winning gubernatorial races that his company had worked on this fall, and concluded, redundantly, "Our firm has an unmatched record of success that no other firm can match." The email came from Hansen's DSCC account.

It's important to understand that even for experienced politicians--mayors, governors, representatives--a Senate run can be an intimidating challenge. It involves courting an entirely new world of donors by proving to Washington fundraisers and party leaders that you are a serious contender. Jeremy Wright, who served as the political director for Oregon Senate candidate Bill Bradbury's race in the spring and early summer of 2002, says that candidates are almost required to run two parallel campaigns, "one to get voters to vote for you and the other to get D.C. money by putting together the right consultants to show you're for real." For Democratic candidates in the few targeted races every cycle that are actually competitive, winning without the financial support of the DSCC (or its sister organization, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) is nearly impossible. While the candidates are grateful for the infusion of cash in the form of committee-sponsored polling, fliers, and commercials, the money comes with strings.

Officially, no favoritism exists. "We don't push one consultant over another," a DSCC spokeswoman told me. "It's more of an informational thing, telling candidates about good people who do a lot of Senate races." But Democrats who have worked on targeted races describe a reality in which they are strongly encouraged-- often with the reminder that precious funds hang in the balance-- to select recommended consultants. "The campaign was pretty paranoid about making sure the DSCC was backing us," explains one veteran of an unsuccessful 2002 Senate race. "We needed the cash. So of course, we were going to go with the consultants they recommended."

No one was in a better position to take advantage of this power relationship than Hansen. As the first man-on-the-ground, his contact with budding campaigns was early and often. "That person has a very large advantage in being able to shape the team," one of Hansen's consulting competitors told me. "You bond with the candidate from the get-go at a pretty stressful time when they're deciding whether to run and how to do it." Another Democrat who has worked with Hansen complains, "Joe is a pretty egregious example of a guy who is sent out as the official representative to help candidates plot their campaign plan, and then when he gets to direct mail, says, 'Oh, by the way, let me switch hats for a second-- I happen to do direct mail.'"

The situation puts candidates-- who are loath to alienate the campaign committee whose financial assistance they desperately need-- in a tricky spot. Even when working with experienced consultants, candidates need to retain some ability to disagree with a proposed idea or strategy. That's hard enough when the consultant is recommended by the party committee. But when the consultant actually is the party committee, the candidate's discretion stays sealed in a tight box. "It was an interesting dynamic, I'll say that," Wright says. "When Joe signed us up, he was on staff for the DSCC. We'd work on DS[CC] stuff during the day, and then he'd take us out to dinner and put on his consultant hat."

This Peters Principle effect of Democratic operatives rising--or muscling their way--up to the level of their incompetence, happens for a simple reason: The consultants are filling a vacuum. After all, someone has to formulate the message that a candidate can use to win the voters' support. Conservatives have spent 30 years and billions of dollars on think tanks and other organizations to develop a set of interlinked policies and language that individual Republican candidates and campaigns can adopt in plug-and-play fashion. Liberals are far behind in this message development game. Indeed, most Democratic elected officials have been running recently on warmed-up leftovers from the Clinton brain trust, ideas which were once innovative but are now far from fresh. With little else to go on, consultants-- many of whom came to prominence during the Clinton years-- have clung to old ideas and strategies like security blankets. "Democratic consultants are being asked to fill a role they're not suited to," says Simon Rosenberg, head of the New Democratic Network, "to come up with ideas and electoral strategy in addition to media strategy."

Rosenberg hints at a second Democratic deficit: The party has no truly brilliant strategists in positions of power. Such talent is always rare in both parties and tends to come out of the political hinterlands, often as part of a winning presidential campaign team. Jimmy Carter's 1976 campaign was waged by a crew of Georgia political operatives with the help of unconventional pollster Pat Caddell. Four years later, Reagan defeated Carter by relying on a California-based gang of professionals. James Carville and Paul Begala were largely unknown before they took Bill Clinton to the White House. And outside the South, the team of Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, and Mark McKinnon weren't much less obscure when they put together the strategy for George W. Bush's winning 2000 campaign.

Republicans have proven much more adept than Democrats at giving their best talent a national stage. While Democrats have permitted a Washington consultancy class to become comfortably entrenched, Republicans have effectively begun to pension off their own establishment. "The D.C. consultants for the GOP have their list of clients, but they're definitely on the outside looking in," Chuck Todd told me. "The Bush people have been very careful to give them work…but they're not in the inner circle." In 2004, seasoned Washington media strategist Alex Castellanos paid the bills with a handful of safe congressional races and a few unsuccessful primary challengers. Meanwhile, nearly every tight Senate race (North Carolina, Alaska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Florida) was handled by a Tampa-based firm, The Victory Group.

Republicans, of course, don't have any natural monopoly on strategic talent--they just give their best young strategists chances to run the biggest national races. In all likelihood, there is another Karl Rove or James Carville out in the Democratic hinterlands, who ought to be playing essential roles in the most important races. It might be David Axelrod in Chicago, who developed the media strategy for the then-unknown Sen. Barack Obama's (D-Ill.) primary campaign; West Coast strategists Paul Goodwin and Amy Simon, who helped Democrats regain the legislature in Washington state; or even unconventional D.C.-based consultants like Anna Bennett, the pollster who engineered Melissa Bean's upset of veteran Rep. Phil Crane (R-Ill.) in November. But any new talent will likely remain on the national margins-- running races for Congress and judgeships-- until someone breaks up the consultant oligarchy.

The electoral system takes care of dead weight when it comes to politicians. The proof is in the political wreckage evident after yet another year of Democratic defeats at the polls. Dick Gephardt--after 10 years at the helm of the Democratic minority in the House--has decided to go back home to Missouri. John Kerry is returning to the Senate instead of stretching out his legs in the Oval Office. The consultants, however, live on. After pocketing a $5-million paycheck following the election, Shrum is back from a vacation in Tuscany and now advising Sen. Jon Corzine's (D-N.J.) gubernatorial race. Mellman, whose advice helped sink Democrats for two consecutive campaign cycles, continues to line up clients. As for Hansen, his connection to Daschle may not help him now that the South Dakotan has vacated the Democratic leader's office. But don't cry for Joe Hansen--he's the consultant for incoming Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid.

And, as I've pointed out before, other profit-for-staff-driven Democratic-allied organizations-- EMILY's List is the worst-- are just as bad as the DCCC and DSCC... if not worse. Although almost every Democratic woman candidate is petrified to speak publicly about EMILY's List's shenanigans, I've heard from candidate after candidate the same exact details for years. When EMILY's List "suggests" that the candidates they raise money for hire The New Media, Inc., not everyone is aware that that firm's president, Tierney Hunt, is the wife of EMILY's List Campaigns Director Jonathan Parker. The money EMILY's List demands cannot be spent on something useful-- like a field operation-- but must be wasted on a lame Beltway firm which is going to personally enrich an EMILY's List executive. It's how EMILY's List killed the campaigns this year of Alex Sink, Wendy Greuel, Eloise Reyes and several other women they led down the garden path. Several despairing candidates have said to me that they are forced to sit on the phone all day begging for money and that all the money winds up in the pockets of utterly worthless consultants they are forced to hire. And then they lose. We all lose, except the executives at EMILY's List and the crooked consultants they are enriching-- like Parker's wife.

Can Rick Weiland Ride A Populist Wave Of Resentment Against Big Money Wrecking Our Democracy?

The DSCC preview of the electoral cycle that they hand out to big contributors is as upbeat as they can make it. In the section on South Dakota, where Democrat Tim Johnson is retiring, the DSCC asserts that "Democrats and the DSCC are committed to holding Senator Johnson's seat next year and will devote all the resources necessary to elect a new Democratic senator in South Dakota. Recent polls have shown that Democrats are in a strong position to hold the seat. This is another state where a likely divisive Republican primary could force the eventual nominee to the far right. A Tea Party group, the Senate Conservatives Fund, has already pledged to support a Tea Party candidate to take on the GOP establishment candidate, former Governor Mike Rounds."

Even better than a mere Republican primary battle, there are two Republicans who have already vowed to run in the general election, a prospect likely to make it very difficult for Mike Rounds, an establishment shill, to win against a populist Democrat. One of these two ex-Republicans is former GOP congressman and senator, Larry Pressler and the other is extremist teabagger Gordon Howie, who has expressly threatened to upend Rounds' general election campaign if Rounds beats the lunatic fringe teabagger in the primary, state Rep. and mentally deranged racist Stace Nelson.

“I am a Republican philosophically. I am now a registered independent, but I fully embrace the Republican Party platform. That is a significant difference between me and some other Republicans who are running for office,” Howie told The Hill, a reference to former Gov. Mike Rounds, the Republican establishment pick for the nomination.

…“My Stace Nelson signs are staying up through the primary,” he said. “This is basically a plan B, should Stace Nelson not win.”

Howie said a group of supporters had “done the polling and the foundational work and said, ‘Look, if you get in this thing we think you’ll have a good shot at it.' ” He wouldn’t disclose what people had urged him to get in, or the exact polling numbers.

“I was approached by a group of people who said, ‘If you do not get in, Mike Rounds is the next U.S. senator.' And I’ve never been a Mike Rounds fan. Philosophically, he doesn’t represent our conservative values.”

But while Howie hopes to offer a conservative alternative to Rounds, his candidacy runs the risk of opening a wider lane for the Democratic candidate, Rick Weiland… [Pressler] and Howie could draw Republican votes away from Rounds and deliver Weiland the opportunity to win with just a plurality of votes.

A wealthy friend, a big Democratic donor, sent me the the quote from the DSCC in response to a request that he contribute to the Democratic nominee, prairie populist Rick Weiland. My friend was confused because the DSCC listed the Democratic candidate as "TBD," to be determined, and he isn't prepared to contribute unless the DSCC is signaling they're backing Weiland. Executive Director Guy Cecil, the bag of wind who runs the show at the DSCC, having personally picked the weakest Democratic senator, Michael Bennet, as his "boss," isn't ready to give that signal. Although Weiland has been endorsed by Johnson and former South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle, by Independent Bernie Sanders and by almost every Democrat currently in the Senate, including all the champions of ordinary working families: Elizabeth Warren, Jeff Merkley, Al Franken, Barbara Boxer, Sherrod Brown, Brian Schatz, Mazie Hirono, Ron Wyden, Sheldon Whitehouse, Jack Reed, Patrick Leahy, Ed Markey, Richard Blumenthal, Tom Harkin… Cecil is still in a stage of poutrage that he couldn't get his handpicked Blue Dog, Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, who withdrew in a huff when faced with a primary challenge against a real Democrat. Cecil, who has delusions of grandeur and tells everyone he meets he's going to be the campaign manager for Hillary Clinton-- a laughable idea-- is playing with the Democrats' chances of holding onto the Senate majority. He finally did the right thing by endorsing Shenna Bellows but he's still playing childish ego-games with the South Dakota seat.

This week, after the Supreme Court's McCutcheon decision was handed down, Weiland wasn't paying attention to Guy Cecil's dysfunctional management style. He was writing an OpEd, Yelling Fire that went to the very heart of the premise of his entire campaign. All the bolded paragraphs were bolded by Rick, by the way. And when you're done reading, you might want to consider doing what my wealthy friend still hasn't done, contributing to the Weiland for Senate campaign.

The argument that money has the right to speech advanced in Buckley, Citizens United, and now McCutcheon, is of a feather with some of the most infamous decisions of the United States Supreme Court.

The infamy of Dred Scott, Plessy, Minor, and Korematsu is that they denied African Americans, women, and Japanese Americans their fundamental right to have their voices heard equally with those of their fellow citizens. The denial in Dred Scott was far more direct and severe than that of the other cases, but each of these cases involves dangerous denial of that right.

The failure of the Supreme Court to see the danger here results from looking too hard at legal texts and not hard enough at the real world.

For any court to hold that the right of one person to make 100 million dollars in political contributions, and to summon leading candidates for the Presidency of the United States to appear before him so he can judge their fitness for that office, does not infringe upon the rights of his fellow citizens, requires a truly shocking denial of reality.

Political reality today is that America is being turned into a plutocracy by the ability of big money to buy what it wants from Washington, and increasingly from every other level of government as well.

Political reality today is that politicians who used to be public servants are now servants of the big money that elected them.

How else can you explain the endless array of policy decisions at every level of government that are vehemently opposed by large majorities of ordinary citizens, but are made anyway by elected officials. Think about it. 90% plus majorities of the voting public oppose offshore tax havens for billionaires and yet they persist. 90% oppose shutting our government down, yet it is shut down. Oil spills occur, dangerous vehicles are sold, banks evict families from homes they have been conned into buying, payday lenders extort poor families, all practices supported by virtually no one, but permitted to persist, even encouraged by the representatives supposedly elected by the people these things harm.

Each of these policies, and many many more, result from the corrosive effect of big money political contributions. These contributions corrode both parties. They corrode the public's trust in their own government.

They corrode even the word "politics," democracy’s alternative to decision by bloody violence, which has now disastrously been made a synonym for incompetence, greed, and corruption by the mayhem wrought upon it by big money.

When elected officials must spend 80% of their time begging billionaires for money to stay elected, and a Supreme Court does not think that deprives we thousandaires of equal protection of the law, that Court is blind.

The statistics purporting to show that big money influence is not a problem because occasionally a candidate with less money happens to win, are a farce. Of course that happens, but it is irrelevant.  Both candidates are begging for big money, not peoples votes. The staffs of both candidates are meeting with big money donors and lobbyists, not ordinary voters. The consultants who advise candidates make their biggest dollars from big money. Even those in the employ of candidates and elected officials are on the prowl for big money jobs as soon as they can find them.

This and more is what is enabled by decisions like McCutcheon, which defend the right to free speech of a tiny handful of billionaires and powerful institutions by devaluing to the point of near worthlessness the free speech rights of everyone else.

Why, we should ask this court, is the yelling of "fire" in a crowded theater, which is the universally recognized example of speech not constitutionally protected because it infringes on the rights of others, not almost perfectly analogous to what happens when Sheldon Adelson yells in his billion dollar voice, "give me everything I want", so that the 300 million other Americans yelling in their ten dollar voices, "no, please don't," are drowned out?

This and more is why the growth of wealth in America over the last 30 years has gone almost 100% to the richest and most powerful 1% of Americans, and almost not at all to those of us whose voices at the ballot box are being drowned out by a tidal wave of talking money.

The line of "money talks" decisions capped by McCutcheon is a fundamental threat to democracy because it denies the rights of 99% of the American people to compete on a level playing field in the one place that matters most in a democracy, at the ballot box.

That, in my book, reserves for it a place in infamy alongside the very worst decisions ever made by the United States Supreme Court.

Worst, second worst, fifth worst, who cares?  Talking money is destroying our democracy and we need to pass a constitutional amendment to stop it now!

How Would You Like Two More Like Elizabeth Warren?

Do conservative voting records by vulnerable Democrats like Mary Landrieu (LA), Mark Pryor (AR), and John Walsh (MT) make it hard for you to get worked up about Democrats whining that they could lose the Senate? Are Steve Israel's reactionary Blue Dog and New Dem recruits, like Jennifer Garrison (OH), John Lewis (MT), Gwen Graham (FL), Pete Aguilar (CA), Jerry Cannon (MI), Ann Callis (IL), James Lee Witt (AR), Bill Hughes (NJ) and Suzanne Patrick (VA), demotivating you from even caring how badly the Democrats will lose the House again in November? Do you miss 2012 when at least we had the inspiration of Elizabeth Warren to focus on?

I have good news-- despite the DSCC, there isn't just one potential Elizabeth Warren to get excited about this cycle; there are two, Shenna Bellows in Maine and Rick Weiland in South Dakota, two races the Beltway Democrats have studiously ignored but who, much to the chagrin of laughable would-be power brokers like Guy Cecil, are breaking through the clutter anyway. Bellows, a civil liberties dynamo and former Executive Director of the Maine ACLU, and Weiland, a folksy; prairie populist inspired by George McGovern, Paul Wellstone and Warren herself, have steep paths to victory. But where you would once hear only, "you're crazy; that's impossible," now you sense people are taking a second look, paying attention. Most of the Democrats in the Senate, including all of the good ones, from Bernie Sanders, Sherrod Brown, Brian Schatz, Mazie Hirono, Tom Harkin and Jeff Merkley to Elizabeth Warren, Barbara Boxer and Ed Markey have already endorsed and donated to Weiland. It is nothing but the pigheadedness of Guy Cecil that is keeping Rick from being endorsed by the DSCC. Cecil already gave up trying to hold back Bellows and allowed the DSCC to endorse her last month. Her problem is that she's running against fake "moderate" Susan Collins, who Democrats count on to help out once in a while, usually when Republican leaders don't really care that much.

Friday, writing for The Nation, John Nichols, moved the narrative along for Bellows, who has yet to be endorsed by even one U.S. Senator, but is piling up an impressive array of national grassroots organizations behind her. His first sentence should get anyone to pay attention: "The woman who could be the future of progressive politics in America is sitting at the back table of an Indian restaurant in Portland, Maine." 

Bellows knows she can’t match the millions her opponent, three-term Senator Susan Collins, has banked-- or the millions that wealthy donors are ready to spend in Maine and other states to make Mitch McConnell the Senate’s next majority leader. The Democrat is satisfied if the Mainers she calls give $5. That’s because Bellows isn’t really dialing for dollars. She’s dialing for activists. “We had over 200 volunteers gathering signatures in Maine to put me on the ballot. They were talking to friends and family members about who I am and what our campaign represents,” she explains. “We then invited the signature-gatherers to speak on my behalf at Democratic caucuses. So we had 100 volunteers speak at 150 different caucuses across the state. This is the movement that we are building: a movement for social justice, environmental justice and economic justice. And it’s working.”

Bellows began her run against Collins-- who despite her “moderate” label has drifted with her party to the right on economic and social issues-- as an off-the-radar challenger. The 39-year-old former head of the Maine ACLU had no money, little name recognition, and a set of principles and positions that sometimes put her at odds with top Democrats. Bellows runs left on healthcare (she’s for single-payer) and climate change (don’t get her started on the Keystone pipeline), yet she makes common cause with libertarians on marijuana legalization and privacy rights. She speaks comfortably of building coalitions with independent-minded Tea Party activists against cronyism and corruption. Bellows believes in pushing political boundaries, and in Maine-- with its history of electing independent governors and senators-- it seems to be working. The challenger turned heads when, with those $5 donations from working-class Mainers, she outraised Collins in the last quarter of 2013. Even skeptics have begun to note the ease with which this first-time candidate-- the daughter of a carpenter and a nurse, whose home had no electricity during much of her childhood-- makes connections with disenfranchised and disengaged voters. Bellows has gained endorsements from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (which calls her “the Elizabeth Warren of civil liberties”), Democracy for America, MoveOn and, belatedly, at the end of March, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

This year’s fierce competition for control of the Senate is generally framed in terms that make sense to Washington operatives: cash on hand, famous names, carefully crafted talking points. By those measures, Republicans are thought to have the upper hand in most of the thirty-six contests that will be decided in an off-year election where turnout is down and the Koch brothers’ spending is up. If Democrats are going to upset this calculus, they’ll need unexpected wins in unlikely states. That means they’d better start considering contenders who have tossed aside lame messaging memos in favor of grassroots organizing. Like South Dakota Democrat Rick Weiland, who is well on his way to visiting every one of that state’s 311 towns, Bellows is focusing not just on Maine’s Democratic-leaning cities but on rural areas. She’s already identified supporters in 366 small towns, and the numbers are rising.

Bellows is determined to organize her way to the Senate. With the ACLU, she got Maine Democrats and Republicans working together to pass legislation requiring warrants for access to cellphone records. When Maine Republicans eliminated same-day voter registration, she co-chaired the 2011 Protect Maine Votes coalition, which put it on the ballot and secured a landslide vote to restore it. A year later, with Mainers United for Marriage, she helped organize the referendum campaign that overturned a 2009 ban on same-sex marriage. “No one thought we could win. Outside political observers said, ‘It’s too soon-- you just lost in 2009,’” Bellows recalls. “We said, ‘We know we have the right message, we’re on the right side of history, and we have a highly organized field plan to win.’ And we did. This is a very similar campaign. It’s a David and Goliath race, but we know we have the right message. Most Mainers think we should raise the minimum wage. Most Mainers are concerned about climate change. Most Mainers think we should restore civil liberties.”

As she talks through her organizing strategy, Bellows reminds me of a former farm organizer who ran an impossible campaign for a Minnesota Senate seat in 1990. When I mention this, Bellows doesn’t miss a beat. “Yes,” she says. “And Paul Wellstone won.”

Nichols was incorrect about one thing. He described Rick Weiland as "well on his way to visiting every one of that state’s 311 towns." He completed the last town, tiny Hudson (pop. 296) on Tuesday. If you don't live in one of those 311 towns and you want to check out what Weiland is all about, you could go to his campaign website. There, the first thing you will see on the very top of the page is a this statement:

The first bill Rick will introduce in the Senate os a Constitutional Amendment that reads: So that the votes of all, rather than the wealth of the few, shall direct the course of this Republic, Congress shall have the power to limit the raising and spending of money with respect to federal elections.

Rick grounds his populist message in a clear call to get Big Money out of politics. It's a popular message with ordinary voters, if not with the Beltway Establishment.

Elizabeth Warren isn't going to transform America alone. Susan Collins and Mike Rounds are impediments to what she's trying to do to move the ball down the field. There is no doubt which team Rick Weiland and Shenna Bellows will be playing for-- the team that supports the ordinary working families in their states and this country. You can help both win these two uplifting battles here on the Blue America ActBlue Senate page. Taking our country back is a theme that can be used on both sides of the aisle, but among progressives, it means stopping the plutocrats and oligarchs from further eroding American democracy.

Elizabeth Warren has endorsed Rick Weiland-- while the DSCC fiddles