These Are The Democratic Candidates Being Attacked Hardest By The GOP's Vicious Cookie-Cutter Ads-- Progressives, Though, Are Not Being Defended By The DCCC

In 2016 a shady right-wing SuperPAC, Future 45, spent $24,970,330 smearing Hillary and Bernie. Where did all that sewer money come from? The Adelson's laundered $20,000,000 from their worldwide gambling and prostitution businesses into it, the Ricketts family put in a million and World Wrestling Federation executive Linda McMahon threw in another $1,250,000 (and was rewarded by Trump who made her Administrator of the Small Business Administration). Several fossil fuels polluters, like Joe Craft of Alliance Coal and Jay Bergman of Petco Petroleum and some Wall Street crooks like Paul Singer and Ken Griffin and the Linder family (American Financial Group) also made 6-figure contributions. This cycle they've been quiet... until Tuesday when they released the hysterical-- and somewhat insane-- ad above, using Bernie, Alexandria Ocasio, Maxine Waters, Pelosi and Elizabeth Warren as their bêtes noires. So far the Ricketts family has dumped $4 million into airing the ad on TV, attacking, attacking, attacking... no issues, just fear and twisted Pavlovian messaging.

The Ricketts family-- which made its billion dollar fortune through TD Ameritrade and owns the Chicago Cubs-- has deployed its TV ad to work hand-in-hand with Ryan's new "Liberal Mob" radio ad. Here's the one they're running in the Houston media market against Lizzie Fletcher:



The radio ad is running against about a dozen Democratic candidates so far, reinforced by Hate Talk radio hosts like Limbaugh and Fox "News." So far dozens of Democrats have been attacked by Ryan's SuperPAC but the ones who have been pummeled with over a million each are these:

• Colin Allred (TX-32)
• Cindy Axne (IA-03)
• Anthony Brindisi (NY-22)
• Randy Bryce (WI-01)
• Sean Casten (IL-06)
• Gil Cisneros (CA-39)
• Linda Coleman (NC-02)
• Jason Crow (CO-06)
• Sharice Davids (KS-03)
• Paul Davis (KS-02)
• Antonio Delgado (NY-19)
• Kara Eastman (NE-02)
• Jared Golden (ME-02)
• Josh Harder (CA-10)
• Katie Hill (CA-25)
• Brendan Kelly (IL-12)
• Andy Kim (NJ-03)
• Conor Lamb (PA-17)
• Susie Lee (NV-03)
• Tom Malinowski (NJ-07)
• Amy McGrath (KY-06)
• Dean Phillips (MN-03)
• Katie Porter (CA-45)
• Aftab Pureval (OH-01)
• Joe Radinovich (MN-08)
• Harley Rouda (CA-48)
• Kim Schrier (WA-08)
• Abigail Spanberger (VA-07)
• Scott Wallace (PA-01)

The DCCC is defending and counter-attacking... at least to protect their Blue Dog and New Dem candidates. When it comes to progressives, Randy Bryce in Wisconsin and Kara Eastman in Nebraska... they're on their own. That's right, the only progressive the DCCC is stepping in for-- and in this case just minimally-- is Jared Golden in Maine. They refuse to do anything to defend Randy and they refuse to do anything to defend Kara. Pelosi's Evil Empire strikes! (Please consider helping Randy and Kara counterattack by clicking on the thermometer on the right and contributing what you can to their campaigns. The DCCC won't help; Pelosi won't help; it's up to us.)

But speaking of Pelosi and her evil empire, Amy Walter had an interesting piece up today at Cook, A Referendum on Trump or Pelosi? Short version spoiler: they both stink. But...for what it's worth-- Trump stinks more, much more. Will independents notice and go into the voting booth with that in mind? For the sake of America, we'd better hope so.

[W]ith just under three weeks left until the election, there is no distinction between the Trump brand and the GOP brand. The GOP brand is Trump. Plus, it’s Republicans, not Democrats, who have made a national political figure the centerpiece of their 2018 strategy. Nancy Pelosi is getting more air time in GOP ads than Trump is getting in ads run by Democrats.

Since the beginning of September until mid-October, Republicans in House and Senate races have run 61,741 ads that mention House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi. Many of these ads are running in affluent suburban districts where Trump is deeply unpopular, but where Republicans hope that a ‘liberal’ take-over of Washington will be even more unappealing. Voters in places like Orange County and suburban Dallas say GOP strategists, are low-tax, less-government conservatives who may not like Trump’s style of politics, but dislike government over-reach even more.

In fact, the "tax and spend liberal" playbook is getting more use than immigration; an issue that many thought would be the ‘go-to’ for Republicans looking to label their Democratic opponents as out of step with the district. Over the last six weeks, Republicans have run fewer ads on the issue of immigration (47,001) than on Pelosi (61,741).

Meanwhile, Democrats have run a little over half as many ads that mention President Trump (39,737) than Republicans have run against Pelosi. But, in a sign of just how polarized the country and the 2018 Senate map is, Republicans have run almost as many pro-Trump ads (32,643), as Democrats have run anti-Trump ones.

In fact, of the 134,021 ads run between September 1 and October 15 that mention Trump and/or Pelosi, 70 percent were run by Republicans. So much for all politics is local.

Democrats, as I’ve written previously, continue to emphasize healthcare in their campaign advertising. Between September 1 and October 15, Democrats ran 266,321 ads on healthcare-- that’s almost six times as many ads they ran on Trump. So why are Democrats running healthcare ads like these that criticize Republicans for their support of legislation that would no longer mandate that insurance covers pre-existing conditions, instead of slow-mo images of Trump rally footage or screen grabs of his tweets? To win control of the House, Democrats need to win in districts where Trump isn’t totally toxic. And, of course, to win seats in the Senate, Democrats need to win in places where Trump is popular.

There is also some political PTSD going on with Democrats. In 2016, they believed that Trump’s biggest liability was his personality and style. The Clinton campaign led with a message that emphasized her stability and his lack of judgment and decency. That didn’t work out so well. This year, they are leading with bread and butter issues and leaving the debate over Trump’s tweets to the cable TV panels.

The conventional wisdom from earlier in the year-- that it would be impossible to try and morph or link the unconventional president to more conventional GOP incumbents-- still holds. But, Democrats don’t need to make the race just about Trump when the signature issues of the GOP-controlled Congress, the (failed) repeal and replace Obamacare legislation and the successful tax cut bill, are also unpopular.

And, it’s clear that the healthcare issue is taking a toll. Republicans have run 96,396 ads on healthcare over the last six weeks. Unlike in years past when Republicans were on offense against Obamacare, this year, they are playing defense by trying to change the topic. Republicans aren’t defending their vote on repealing Obamacare, but instead charge Democrats with planning to raise taxes by trillions to support a government-run health care program. Or they are defending themselves against charges that they support the gutting of pre-existing condition protection.

This election-- like every midterm before it-- is a referendum on the president. Democrats don’t need to remind their voters of this-- their voters have been ready to rebuke Trump since early 2017. Republicans, however, are taking a different tact on dealing with a polarizing president of their own party than previous candidates did under similar circumstances. They aren’t trying to show their independence from Trump-- as many Democrats unsuccessfully did with an unpopular Obama in 2010 or Republicans did with an unpopular Bush in 2006. Instead, Republicans are trying to win back their formerly committed GOP voters by stressing the loyalty their Democratic opponent shows to Pelosi.

Ultimately, fear of the future unknown is tougher to sell than fear of the present. Which makes the Pelosi-fear-factor ads a tough sell. I still think that Trump’s approval rating in a GOP-held district is a better gauge of whether it is vulnerable, than Pelosi’s image in that district. And, instead of weakening Pelosi, these ads may actually embolden her bid for Speaker. If Democrats win the House, Pelosi will be able to crow to her members-- even those who said they’d vote against her-- that she was the topic of more ads than Trump-- and still won.

Kara doesn't seem that concerned that the DCCC won't be running their negative ads against Don Bacon in the Omaha media market. She doesn't want non-issue-oriented ads in the district, regardless of which party runs them. "The ads CLF are running for my opponent," she told us today, "embody everything that is wrong with politics today. These ads are designed to scare people, to divide people, and to discourage people from getting involved in politics. Nebraskans deserve better, which is why I am committed to running my campaign with integrity and will continue to put people first."

Pope Pius Baloney XIII

Newt and other Republicans, frustrated with Romney's impenetrably slick Teflon® exterior, have called him a liar before, but this weekend [see video above] Newt let loose on the GOP front-runner and aloof, condescending Mormon bishop at an official Republican Party debate on national TV. Previously, Newt was just looked at as a misfit grousing because Romney was getting the best of him.

“He’s not telling the American people the truth. It’s just like his pretense that he’s a conservative,” Mr. Gingrich said on CBS’s The Early Show. “I just think he ought to be honest to the American people and try to win as the real Mitt Romney, not try to invent a poll-driven, consultant-guided version that goes around with talking points.”

The volume of Mr Gingrich’s complaining has gotten louder and louder each day.

At a stop in Marshalltown, Iowa, on Monday, Mr. Gingrich complained that he has been “Romney-boated,” a reference to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads that helped derail Senator John Kerry’s presidential campaign in 2004.

Appearing on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight on Monday, Mr. Gingrich repeated his complaints about Mr. Romney’s refusal to disown the negative ads being run by a “super PAC” supporting his campaign.

“If he would be willing to just be man enough to say, ‘You know, this is my negative campaign and I admit it,’ I’d be a lot happier,” Mr. Gingrich said. “What I find very frustrating, and frankly irritating,” he said, is someone who “wants to run for president of the United States who can’t be honest with the American people.”

...“Here is my simple tag line: Somebody who will lie to you to get to be president will lie to you when they are president."

Not exactly the most trustworthy of organizations when it comes to calling out Republicans on their lies, even FactCheck.org was stunned by the stream of bullshit flowing off the ABC stage Saturday night and the NBC stage Sunday morning. "Less than 12 hours after the ABC News/Yahoo! debate in Manchester ended, the Republican presidential candidates were at it again-- debating on NBC’s Meet the Press. As they did the night before, the candidates at times distorted the truth on a variety of topics, including Medicare, job creation, gasoline prices and environmental regulations."

And of course it isn't only Romney who lies virtually every time he opens his mouth. ABC News fact-checked its own debate with this pack of liars, and the report was... well, just what one should expect from a gaggle of Republican stooges. From the Romney Big Lie about creating jobs at Bain instead of killing them to Santorum's eye-popping ethics violations and Perry's inchoate, barely decipherable nonsense, not one of these guys, other than perhaps Ron Paul, allows truth to get in the way of what how he wants to present his talking points.

The Romney lies about being a job creator, instead of the more accurate description as a jobs cremator, have a special place in my heart, since Bain used the Romney model to destroy my old company, Warner Bros Records. Matt Negrin reports for ABC that he continued to advance false claims on Saturday night.

Newt Gingrich raced out of the gate in tonight’s debate by being skeptical of Mitt Romney’s claim that Bain was responsible for creating 100,000 jobs, and he pointed to scrutiny of the firm in a recent New York Times article and a documentary.

In response, Romney repeated a familiar talking point-- that Bain, under his leadership, was responsible for creating 100,000 jobs at companies in which it invested. Romney was asked tonight if the 100,000 jobs are discounting the number of jobs that were lost at companies backed by Bain. He said the figure includes “both” and that it’s a “net” tally. He rattled off some talking points on companies that added jobs, like Sports Authority and Staples.

Bain was not the sole investor in Staples (which Romney said added 90,000 jobs) nor Sports Authority (which he said added 15,000). In 2002, for example, Staples founder Tom Stemberg wrote on CNN Money that Bain “gave us a boost.” Though the company also had help from two other firms. Sports Authority, too, was started with financial help from a few other investors.

Democrats were quick to respond to Romney’s claim tonight. In an email to reporters, the party pointed to a number of quotes the candidate has made years ago about that figure-- including this part from a 1994 Boston Globe article: ”In a telephone interview late yesterday, Romney dismissed the characterization of Staples and his other investments as streamlining, saying that what he has done is ‘build and grow businesses,’ not shrink them. He asserted that there is no way to calculate whether jobs have been lost or gained economy-wide as a result of his ventures, and noted his 10,000-job figure simply measures what happened to employment at companies in which Bain invested.”

FactCheck.org checked Romney’s 100,000 jobs claim earlier this week and found it to be “unproven and questionable.”

Rick Santorum, standing to Romney’s left on the stage, was asked early in the debate whether his comment that the United States doesn’t need a CEO (it needs a leader) was directed at Romney; he confirmed that, yes, it was.

And speaking of Santorum, the dust-up over his character as one of Washington's sleaziest operators was interesting. His behavior as a bribe-taker in office and a corrupt lobbyist as soon as he was defeated by Pennsylvania voters is pretty standard fare among Republicans, and it can be expected that he would be pounded a lot more heavily if he were debating a Democrat. But he still managed to lie his ass off and come out looking as bad as Romney.

During the debate, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum sparred over Santorum’s ethics record. Who characterized it more accurately?

Moderator George Stephanopoulos asked Ron Paul about this ad, which the Texas congressman’s campaign will begin airing in South Carolina on Monday:



The ad accuses Santorum of corruption and states that he took the most money from lobbyists of any member of Congress, during his time in Washington.

Paul stood by the ad tonight, noting that the “corruption” allegation originally came from an independent group. Santorum protested that the group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), had leveled “ridiculous” charges against him and that CREW disproportionately makes such charges against conservatives.

Both are (mostly) right.

On the topic of lobbyist cash: Santorum did receive the most contributions from lobbyists and lobbying groups in the 2006 election cycle, when he lost to Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Santorum’s objection-- that the total was based on PAC donations-- is partly true. Center for Responsive Politics counts both PAC and individual (over $200) donations, according to its listed methodology.

On the topic of corruption, CREW did file a complaint against Santorum, and it did list Santorum on its “most corrupt” members of Congress list in 2006. But the complaint was never taken up by the Senate Ethics Committee and Santorum lost his reelection campaign, as noted in this ABC News story. CREW’s complaint alleged that a loan violated the Senate gift rule and that Santorum appeared to have traded legislative action for donations. Santorum did write a letter to Pennsylvania newspaper protesting the allegations.

As for CREW’s partisanship: Santorum is probably right about CREW’s reputation among Republicans, but the group focuses its criticism on both parties. Its current “most corrupt” list includes 10 Republicans and four Democrats.

When Santorum made the list, in an election cycle marked by GOP ethics scandals, the list included 21 Republicans and four Democrats.

One more great big Romney lie everyone noticed early in the debate: his claim that no states want to ban contraceptives. Technically, no state does, but hundreds of Republican Party officials do all over the states-- including, oddly enough, Romney himself!

Romney backed Mississippi’s ultimately failed (it was voted down in a referendum) Personhood Amendment, which if passed would have defined life as having begun at the point of conception.

Such language “could potentially ban common forms of contraception like the birth control pill, as well as prevent a pregnant woman experiencing complications that threaten her life or health to obtain safe abortion care,” Molly A.K. Connors wrote in New Hampshire’s Concord Monitor.

In 2005, Romney, then the governor of Massachusetts, vetoed a bill meant to expand emergency access to the “morning after pill.” The law would have required hospitals to offer the pill to rape survivors and allowed for certain state-sanctioned pharmacists to sell it without asking for a prescription.

“The bill does not involve only the prevention of conception: The drug it authorizes would also terminate life after conception,” Romney wrote, defending the veto in this op-ed piece.

For his part, Santorum has often spoken out against the Supreme Court’s ruling in Griswold vs. Connecticut (1965). That decision, which stated that the constitution protected “the right to privacy,” was inspired by an ultimately overturned state ban on contraception.

Santorum and many anti-Abortionists feel that the ruling paved the way for Roe v. Wade.

The Griswold case, he said yesterday, “created a new Constitutional right, which in my opinion is judicial activism.”

So while it would be unfair to say Santorum wants to ban contraception, he has been and remains a vocal opponent of the most prominent court ruling in its favor.

Meanwhile right-wing bloggers are on suicide watch over the incompetence of their preferred lunatic fringe candidates to take on the craven Willard and today's tweets from rightist Dan Riehl portend a seriously disillusioned base.

Debunking More McCranky Lies Anout Barack Obama's Tax Proposals

Meet Brian Deese, the Deputy Director of Economic Policy for Barack Obama's campaign. He seems like a nice young man, smart one too. Here's a video of him analyzing all the distortions and lies in McCain's new Smear and Fear attack ad. I like how he ends it: "In summary, this ad is a lie."

The bottom line about McCain's lies is this: Obama's tax plan gives 95% of American families a $1,000 tax cut, eliminates income taxes for seniors making less than $50,000, cuts capital gains taxes for small businesses to zero percent-- and ensures that no one making less than $250,000 pays a dime more in taxes.

Multimillionaires-- and the oil companies and other corporations they control-- and who have financed, and continue to finance, John McCain's political career are among the 5% who will be asked to pay their fair share. They're furious and... well there's a reason the Oil & Gas industry has poured over a million dollars into the McCain campaign and there's a reason why they've given him more money than anyone else in Congress. Did you see what we were talking about earlier in terms of the unsafe deterioration of the air travel system? You want to guess who gets the biggest contributions from the Air Transport Industry? Over a wide array of industries and corporations McCain is the One. The Telecoms paid him enough to sell out the Constitution on warrantless wiretaps and retroactive immunity for their law-breaking executives. In fact AT&T is his fifth biggest donor this year ($179,930), far beating out crooked, bankrupt home mortgage manipulators Bear Stearns ($94,200). Favorable tax policies have made him the #1 recipient of any politician in the country from the alcoholic beverages industry. John McCain always has been and still is-- is more than ever-- for sale. He has a long, long record of taking money from special interests and then voting for their agenda, regardless of what effect it has on his constituents. You think the gas crisis is bad now. It would be even worse under McCain! For all his years and years in Congress, he has no record of accomplishment to run on and he stands for nothing (other than war, war and more war)-- not even what he said the day before. All he can do is attack Obama with lies and lies and more lies.