DCCC Chair Ben Gay Lujan Throws Women Under The Bus-- Will No House Democrats Stand Up For Women?

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Why aren't there more members of Congress like Barbara Lee? And why has Pelosi consistently blocked her from becoming part of party leadership and promoting Garbagecrats-- think Crowley, for example-- over her? As Austin Wright reported for Politico over the weekend, Congresswoman Lee is one of Congress' most courageous members. He wrote that "The anti-war congresswoman-- from an ultraliberal congressional district that includes Berkeley, California-- has somehow managed to spark an uprising, joined by rank-and-file Republicans, against House Speaker Paul Ryan. Their demand: Repeal the 2001 war authorization against Al Qaeda and begin debating a new authorization better suited for the wars of today. This strange alliance is all the more remarkable because Lee, one of the leftmost denizens of Capitol Hill, was famously the only member of Congress to vote against the original authorization of force, a vote held just three days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Explaining her decision at the time, she warned, in language that rankled many as the smoke still curled from the ruins of the World Trade Center, 'As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore.'...Lee says her upbringing prepared her for the lonely fight she would later wage in Congress against what she calls 'perpetual war.'... She says she grew up feeling self-conscious about her appearance and lacking self-esteem. But she had gained some confidence-- and a penchant for standing up to authority-- by the time she attended high school in Southern California’s San Fernando Valley."

The Congressional Democratic Party desperately needs more Barbara Lees... and far fewer pathetic careerists who have no penchant for standing up to authority. I wonder why no progressives are demanding that Ben Gay Luján (and his boss, Pelosi) and his henchman, Denny Heck step down from their roles at the DCCC. Yesterday, after all, The Hill reported that the DCCC is digging in its heals on spending millions to stock the Democratic caucus with Blue Dogs, "ex"-Republicans, New Dems and anti-Choice freaks. The wording comes right from the pack of Einsteins at the DCCC messaging shop and it's extremely;y misleading, sugar-coating the DCCC's decision to turn the congressional caucus in a more right-of-center direction across the board by recruiting and supporting more conservatives and, once again, giving progressives the cold shoulder:

Democrats will not withhold financial support for candidates who oppose abortion rights, the chairman of the party’s campaign arm in the House said in an interview with The Hill.

Rep. Ben Gay Luján (D-N.M.) said there will be no litmus tests for candidates as Democrats seek to find a winning roster to regain the House majority in 2018.

“There is not a litmus test for Democratic candidates,” said Luján, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman. “As we look at candidates across the country, you need to make sure you have candidates that fit the district, that can win in these districts across America.”

OK, get ready for the DCCC's disinformation campaign. Notice, for example how they term long-ago defeated anti-Choice fanatic maniacs Brad Ellsworth, Baron Hill, Heath Shuler and Jason Altmire as "Democrats who did not entirely support abortion rights." You can't imagine how much I hate these people:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) have both argued against party litmus tests, saying there’s room for people with different opinions on abortion. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), another influential voice, has echoed that argument.

Democrats are unlikely to win the 24 seats they need to recapture control without contesting more conservative districts. The last time Democrats won control, in the 2006 midterm elections, the party recruited-- and supported financially-- a significant number of Democrats who did not entirely support abortion rights, including former Reps. Brad Ellsworth (IN), Baron Hill (IN), Heath Shuler (NC) and Jason Altmire (PA).

“Both [then-DCCC Chairman] Rahm Emanuel and [then-Democratic National Committee Chairman] Howard Dean with his 50 state strategy understood that in order to win districts that had eluded Democrats in previous cycles, they were going to have to field candidates who didn’t look like national Democrats,” Altmire told The Hill. “People understood the class of '06 was driven largely by the centrist candidates.”

Luján said he had spoken with Emanuel, now the mayor of Chicago, about Democratic efforts to retake the House.

The fight over abortion and what it means to be a Democrat has boiled over in recent months. Prominent national Democrats, including Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Tom Perez and Sanders, campaigned with Heath Mello, a candidate running to serve as mayor of Omaha who did not support abortion rights.

Perez said at the time the DNC’s job is “to help Democrats who have garnered support from voters in their community cross the finish line and win.” In a statement days later, Perez said the party’s support for abortion rights were “non-negotiable.”

A DNC aide told The Hill at the time that Perez was not establishing a litmus test in that subsequent statement.

Abortion rights were notably absent from the party’s new policy push announced last week, meant to unify the party around an agenda outside of opposition to Trump. That plan, called “A Better Deal,” focused on economic policy largely related to jobs, wages and reducing the burden on families.

After the dispute over the Omaha mayoral race, party leaders worked behind the scenes to mend fences with those outside groups that back abortion rights. Senior DCCC officials have met with groups like EMILY’s List and NARAL, both to maintain relations and to coordinate on the party’s "Better Deal" platform.

Pro-abortion rights groups cast reproductive health issues as an economic concern.

“At the core of the Democratic Party is our commitment to a better economic future for the working people of our country. Reproductive choice is fundamental to our platform. One of the most important financial decisions a woman makes is when and how to start a family. It's also why we recruit pro-choice Democratic women and work tirelessly to elect them-- because they stand up for that critical choice,” Leila McDowell, a spokeswoman with EMILY’s List, told The Hill.

“Democrats don't need to choose between coal miners in Ohio, nurses in Georgia, or home healthcare workers in Arizona. This isn't a choice Democrats need to make. It's a coalition we need to win."

They also argue the advantage gained by backing candidates who oppose abortion rights is negligible.

“Anyone who actually thinks that Donald Trump and the GOP candidates won in 2016 because of their opposition to abortion rights is sorely mistaken,” NARAL’s Stille said.

“A small minority of voters vote strictly on an anti-choice platform. Those same voters just aren't going to vote for Democrats anyway-- they fundamentally disagree with just about everything Democrats stand for.”

The DCCC is working furiously to disadvantage progressive candidates backing Medicare-For-All in favor of conservative Blue Dogs who oppose single-payer. They have instructed their duck careerist candidates to refuse to answer the question about Medicare-For-All-- or multimillionaire ex-Republican lottery winner Gil Cisneros did at a Fullerton candidates forum last Wednesday-- or to just lie the way Joe Crowley did when he signed on as a cosponsor of Conyers' Medicare-For-All a few weeks ago when he came under political pressure from his Democratic constituents. Last night Rolling Stone noted that "Amy Vilela is primarying a progressive Nevada Democrat because he refused to sign on to a Medicare for All bill. A businesswoman by trade, Vilela never thought she'd run for political office. But losing a child changes you in ways you can't imagine, especially when you're sure she'd still be alive if America had a functional health care system. 'A $1,000 test would have allowed doctors to diagnose her and save her life,' Vilela says. 'Your care in this country is solely determined by what kind of insurance you have.'" The Rolling Stone, like myself, was taken in by incumbent Ruben Kihuen, who ran as a full-on progressive but then joined the New Dems and quickly started voting badly enough to earn himself a crucial votes ProgressivePunch "F."

In 2014, Vilela's 22-year-old daughter Shalynne went to the Centennial Hills Hospital Emergency room displaying classic symptoms of deep vein thrombosis, a blood clot in her leg. The family says hospital staff refused Shalynne's pleas for treatment because she told them she didn't have insurance, sending her away despite the 8-out-of-10 pain she reported. A few weeks later, the clot travelled to her lungs, causing a massive pulmonary embolism. The last thing she'd googled on her phone was "symptoms of a heart attack" so her mom thinks she spent her last moments panicked and in pain.

Vilela got to the hospital after her daughter had already lost consciousness; she remembers the lead smell of blood in the room as Shalynne sank into brain death. She made the unbearable decision to take her daughter off life support so her organs could help others. "She always talked about how much she respected organ donors," Vilela says.

At first, Vilela went crazy with grief and could barely get out of bed. Then she decided to fight-- to share Shalynne's story so people would understand that no one's safe in a profit-driven health care system. "Being a businesswoman in the finance field, I understand profit motive," she says. "My experience has made me understand more fully that there are things in this country that should not have profit in them." She used her daughter's story to lobby hard against the Republican effort to kill Obamacare, but after a heated exchange with freshman Rep. Ruben Kihuen she decided that she-- and the Democratic Party-- needed to do more and demand Medicare for All.

"They had to pull me away from her casket because I was screaming and crying, and I knew that was the last moment that I was going to touch my daughter forever," Vilela told Kihuen during the town hall. Kihuen nodded empathetically. But when she asked why he hadn't put his name on HR 676, the Medicare for All bill, Kihuen countered that his priority is defending the Affordable Care Act against Republican attacks. Amy pointed out that the ACA didn't save her daughter.

It was a tough decision, she says, but she decided to primary Kihuen because she believes universal health care is a more realistic goal than many elected officials seem to realize. "We have more power than we assume. We can come together as a people and help create the transformation needed to achieve Medicare for All. We don't have time to waste," she says.

Kihuen supports health care as a human right, but the idea that Medicare for All is an absurd leftist impossibility continues to permeate the discourse around health care reform. Exhibiting a suspicious amount of concern for the Democratic Party's future, the right-wing National Review argued that if Democrats embraced single-payer, they'd be in danger of following the "Bernie Sanders wing of their party off the proverbial cliff." In another strange twist in the final hours of Republicans' repeal-and-replace effort last week, GOP lawmakers goaded Democrats with a sham proposal for single-payer.

But 33 percent of Americans support single-payer, a five percent increase since January, according to a Pew poll published in June. That number might suggest many aren't sure what single-payer means, since the same survey showed 60 percent of Americans think the federal government should provide health care coverage to all Americans. Even the Harvard Business Review, hardly a bastion of leftism, has argued that America might be ready for a single-payer system.

Like many Americans, Paul Ryan's challenger, Randy Bryce, worries about health insurance, which is why he thinks it's a winning issue against the House speaker, who appears singularly devoted to taking away health coverage from people.

Bryce is in a union, which means he can afford insurance for his young son-- but he only has enough money for expenses if he works enough hours. In the winter, that can be difficult.

"I'm concerned about my son," Bryce says. "Let's say he goes sledding. What if he runs into a tree and gets hurt? Am I going to have to skip other bills to pay for his medicine?"

A cancer survivor, Bryce didn't have insurance when he battled his disease. He was lucky enough to get help at a local medical college. "I was like a guinea pig!" he jokes.

Bryce's mother, who has multiple sclerosis (and who starred in his viral campaign ad), has insurance because her husband was a cop. What if she'd gotten an incurable disease without insurance, he wonders?

Since the launch of his campaign, Bryce says he's gotten heart-warming letters from older women like his mother thanking him for running against Ryan. "You gotta get rid of this guy, he's trying to take away our health care," he says they write as they send in their donations, which tend to be around $5. It's not a lot of money, but it means a lot to him. "I get so much energy being committed to getting rid of Paul Ryan," he says. "Because, we're not 'losing' health care-- they're actively trying to take it away from us."

Bryce served in the U.S. Army in Honduras, so he's seen what a banana republic looks like. He says America is heading in that direction, and he wants to stop it-- by fighting what he calls "banana Republicans" like Ryan. In a move that might signal concern from Ryan's team, they're targeting Bryce as a "liberal agitator." But he's more than happy to take on that label. "It takes agitation to get the dirt out," he says. "I'm part of the agitate, educate, organize model."

As for whether his position on health appears too extreme in the current climate, Bryce says, "If they consider it 'too far left' for people to have the ability to see a doctor, then that's more of a problem with where they're coming from than with my position."

Bryce also wonders why Ryan hasn't shown his face in a traditional town hall in nearly two years. "It's not that he doesn't have time. He's traveling all around the country going to these fundraisers. People are upset about that," Bryce says. "Meanwhile, he's trying to take away health care. I don't know whose 'House' he claims to be speaking for, but it's not my house.

"He's gone the opposite direction of what we need," he says. "He doesn't care about us."

Blue America has endorsed Randy Bryce for Congress and, of course, has refused to re-endorse treacherous New Dem Ruben Kihuen, who set about to deceive us when he wanted us to help him get elected last year. We're sorry we ever did.