How Important Is Twitter In Electoral Politics Now?

Some friends of mine are getting ready to launch a new endeavor, Sprokk, the next step in social media. In the most simplistic terms, it's like an audio version of Twitter and the potential seems unlimited. Lee Rogers, a tech-savvy physician and progressive candidate for Congress, was the first political figure to give them a message, which you can usually see on their home page beta. Let's hope Chuck Grassley never finds it. Meanwhile, Twitter has embedded itself firmly into the fabric of 21st century communications in general-- and political communications specifically. It may be all about 140 characters but I probably get as much as 80% of my breaking news from Twitter now. In his feature for Adweek last May, Charlie Warzel is clear: "Twitter," he writes, "has become a veritable particle accelerator for news cycles and political battles... It is, for better or worse, the center of the political conversation, and it is transforming the way political campaigns and those who cover them do business."

“What happens on Twitter does not stay on Twitter-- it is not Las Vegas,” says Peter Greenberger, Twitter’s director of political ad sales in Washington, D.C. And if anyone in Washington has reason to smile these days, it’s him.

...Part of the reason for Twitter’s accelerated importance in the zeitgeist of political coverage stems from its stunning growth over the past three years. Last March, the company announced that it had achieved 140 million active users, up from 100 million last fall. Every day, Twitter hosts roughly 340 million new tweets.

To put that in perspective, it took Twitter three years, two months and one day to serve up 1 billion tweets; it now does that volume every three days. the New York Times’ David Carr likened Twitter to “a river of data.” Still others compare it to a violent gusher. Call it what you will: The tweets will flow with or without you.

This year’s presidential contest has already been pitched as the first truly digital election, despite the fact that politicos dubbed both the 2004 and 2008 elections as such. With each new election cycle comes proclamations about the latest technology’s impact. In 2004, it was the rise of the blogs. In 2008, CNN and many others asked whether that election would be won or lost on Facebook. This year, Twitter is home base to the political discourse, and journalists have set up shop to make sure they don’t miss a moment.

Take Ben Smith, the politically engaged editor in chief of the social site BuzzFeed. Smith averages 19.4 daily tweets and uses the information stream to stay in front of each day’s news cycle. For Smith and many like him, Twitter is more than a journalistic tool. “Twitter is not only driving the conversation, it is transforming the design of the modern newsroom,” he says.

But it isn’t just Smith and BuzzFeed that are doubling down on Twitter; newsrooms across the country have bent to the social network’s will. “It’s the best place right now to reach the central opinion makers and that conversation is really where you want to be,” says Smith.

For Ethan Klapper, social media editor, politics, for the Huffington Post, Twitter affords the 22-year-old a peculiar vantage point as he oversees the campaign trail far from the stump speeches and cross-country bus tours.

Klapper, like many young journalists, has been thrust into an elevated position due in part to his fluency monitoring the pulse of the chattering classes via the social medium.

“I often find myself getting home from work and opening up TweetDeck,” Klapper says. In fact, he rarely ventures far from the feed. “When it comes to the real-time news/debate element, Twitter reigns supreme,” the editor says.

...“People on Twitter like the drama of campaigns,” [Republican consultant Vincent] Harris says. “I think that’s why they’re on Twitter. I think they’d be bored if there wasn’t this constant chatter, and I think you’re going to continue seeing campaigns go to Twitter as a means to pick those fights.”

An increasingly hostile environment means more work for campaigns, always struggling to speed their reaction times and dominate the public opinion.

“In 1992, during the Clinton/Gore campaign, the idea of rapid response was responding within the news cycle,” Greenberger points out. “If you got hit at a morning news conference, you have to respond before the evening news. Rapid response is in real-time for the first time. So you have to adjust communications strategy accordingly. The velocity of this is new and it will take people time to adjust.”

With the general election all but officially begun, Zac Moffatt, digital director of the Romney campaign, doesn’t have time to adjust. Moffatt and his team are in unchartered digital territory, and Twitter is but one of their concerns.

Says Moffatt: “I definitely think Twitter has and will have a huge impact on this election, but it has to be recognized that, even with all the talk, even if you had the greatest Twitter strategy out there, I’m not sure you would win on that alone. In fact, I know you wouldn’t.”

...Greenberger tells those involved with campaigns that they must “be committed to tweeting and working on the platform.” Moffatt agrees that a successful Twitter strategy requires serious commitment.

“With the message, you have to make it timely and relevant,” Moffatt says. “If we put out a tweet, it can become the largest driver to our site, and it has become a huge point for us to engage with people.” That level of engagement comes with a price: Promoted trends run roughly $120,000 per day.

That’s hardly a bargain, but the payoff can be enormous. Besides its impact on messaging, Twitter is also becoming an important fundraising tool. “Twitter was a top eight referrer to the Gingrich campaign in terms of where money was being raised,” Harris reports. “For some of my other clients, it is an even more powerful fundraising tool than Facebook.”

Still, as vital as Twitter has become for political campaigns, there is a dark side. For anyone wiling away his days and nights on TweetDeck, fatigue becomes a very real thing, for campaign staffers and journalists alike. In a world routinely grown weary of micro scoops, memes and never-ending political posturing, a social media slipup can mean lost jobs, and lost campaigns.

“There’s so much chance for burnout,” warns Harris. “I think that does scare campaigns. It is terrifying in some ways to think that anyone from my staff or anyone who has access to a campaign Twitter account could instantly tweet out to over 1 million people whatever they want to say. And once it’s out there, it’s out there.”

The issue raises real questions about the restructuring of campaigns in the social media age. Should younger staffers who are more fluent in the medium be handed the reins? Or should senior staffers who can be trusted to stay on message-- and stay out of trouble—be given social media oversight?

Says Harris: “It could be 140 characters that nails the coffin, begging the question: Who do you trust?” Social strategy has become so sensitive, in fact, that the Obama campaign’s digital team refused Adweek’s requests for an interview.

At the end of the day, the position of the campaigns seems to be: Mistakes be damned-- let the information flow. The question is, for how long? “Facebook has become part of the plumbing of the Internet, and I really think Twitter is right on the cusp of doing the same,” says Smith.

“Twitter has definitely embedded itself into the fabric of the Internet,” seconds Klapper.

While it is impossible to know whether Twitter will endure as a political force, what’s become clear is that 2012 is living up to the hype as “the Twitter election.”

Whether it endures or not, two of the most active netroots campaigns this cycle are using Twitter and other social media sites like mad, Rob Zerban's and Wayne Powell's. These are the two guys taking on-- with ZERO help from the DCCC-- GOP Goliaths Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor. I talked to the architect of Powell's social media strategy. Antonia Scatton is the communications director and she told me that "the kind of buzz Wayne Powell is getting online is the kind of promotion you can't buy. You can run all the tv ads you want, but it can't compete with an excited person telling their friends about you-- all 5,000 of their friends. I am actually surprised at the lack of grassroots support I'm seeing online for Eric Cantor. It suggests a genuine weakness on the ground which doesn't bode well for him in November."

Rob Zerban has a great team running one of this year's most successful online strategies. "Social media," he told me this morning, "levels the playing field and allows a grassroots effort like ours to battle the Koch brothers and Wall Street money behind Paul Ryan's campaign. When I began this race, I hoped people would join and help but this is the first major challenge to Paul Ryan so we didn't know what to expect. Thousands of new supporters have come in from across Wisconsin and the nation and many great ideas our campaign has implemented have come from our supporters. Some of the best ideas come from unlikely sources and I believe everyone can help. I encourage people to join at Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Daily Kos, Tumblr, YouTube, and Flickr. As Democrats and progressives, we must use every avenue available to explain more to voters about Ryan's destructive budget and how we as Democrats can strengthen the middle class."

None of this, by the way, has anything to do with the Romney campaign strategy of buying phony Twitter followers to make it look like their pathetic hack candidate is popular.

Mitt Romney has gotten extremely popular on Twitter in the last 24 hours. In fact, he is receiving 25 new followers per second as I write this.

What’s happening? It seems to have started Friday, when Romney’s typical average of 3-4,000 per day increased some twenty fold to over 62,000 in a single day, according to TwitterCounter.com. But the new followers are highly suspect. From “empty” accounts to pornbots, spambots, Justin Beiber-related accounts, Obama supporters and foreign accounts, the followers tell a puzzling tale, suggesting spam automation, purchased traffic or perhaps even sabotage.

Accounts like “@banvardrazjzk” or “@etonyge” have ten or less tweets, some containing gobbledygook characters and despite only following a few accounts themselves, they each have hundreds of followers, implying it’s part of a mass-generated fake account network.

...With some onlookers assuming the Romney campaign is buying accounts to pad his numbers, we highly doubt they would be so clumsy. Last summer, Newt Gingrich received embarrassing national press when he had 1.3 million followers at a time no other GOP candidate even had 100,000 followers. The news then had sport  reporting over 90% were fake accounts.

Just yesterday, Rush Limbaugh was exposed as it was discovered that New Delhi was the most popular source for “shares” on his “Rush Babes for America” Facebook promotion. This suggested he was outsourcing “astroturf” by paying experts in India to pad his traffic figures and perceived female support.

Beto O'Rourke... Back From His Camping Trip

Knowing how extensively Beto's successful campaign had used social media to beta an entrenched incumbent, I had e-mailed him for his perspective at the same time I wrote to Rob Zerban and Wayne Powell. This morning Beto got back from a weekend off-the-grid camping trip and replied: "We were outspent 3 to 1 by an eight-term incumbent ($1.2 million spent by Reyes, to our $400,000), so we could not win this campaign conventionally. Social media allowed us to organize hundreds of volunteers, reach tens of thousands of voters and help make up for the fact that we would never be able to raise and spend as much money as the incumbent."

Why Does The DCCC's Steve Israel Continue To Protect Paul Ryan?

As we've mentioned several times lately, Republicans target and destroy senior House Democrats and committee chairmen any time the opportunity arises. The DCCC, especially under "ex"-Blue Dog Steve Israel, gives Republicans a pass. Thanks to the DCCC's refusal to help Justin Coussoule in 2010, no Democrat is even running against John Boehner this year. And without Ed Schultz, no one would even know Eric Cantor has a strong challenger and that Cantor is very vulnerable to defeat (with a 31% approval rating in his own district). The DCCC not only refuses to help his opponent, Wayne Powell, they tell Democratic donors to not give him any money. Thanks, Steve Israel! Watch this Ed Schultz clip from Wednesday-- and see the kind of Democrat Steve Israel's DCCC hates and adamantly refuses to support:



Israel has only one overarching goal-- to lard the House Democratic caucus with corrupt conservative Blue Dogs and New Dems, the kinds that were defeated en masse in the 2010 Great Blue Dog Apocalypse when grassroots Democrats refused to turn out for slimy characters like Bobby Bright, Melissa Bean, Ann Kirkpatrick (who Israel is running again-- against a progressive fighter, Wenona Baldenegro), Baron Hill, Gene Taylor, Allen Boyd, Walt Minnick, Lincoln Davis, Charlie Wilson (also running again this year with the help of the Blue Dogs, the New Dems and, of course, Israel), Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, Chris Carney... dozens more. Virtually all the money the DCCC sucks out of Democrats this year will be spent bolstering anti-Choice, antigay, pro-Big Business Democrats with little, if anything, to do with progressive values and principles. One of Israel's most favorite of all-- Patrick Murphy-- is a lifelong Republican who was contributing to Mitt Romney's campaign until he switched his voter registration so he could run as a Democrat-- and promptly joined the New Dems, the Republican wing of the Democratic Party.

And when it comes to giving high ranking Republicans a free pass... well, that's Israel's specialty and Boehner and Cantor aren't the only lucky-duckies. If you're a Republican chairman, you know you have nothing to worry about from Steve Israel and the DCCC. House Armed Services Committee Buck McKeon is on the verge of political collapse and could be arrested as a national security threat by the FBI at any moment, but the last I heard of any interest in this race from Israel was him instructing a major Democratic donor to not contribute any money to McKeon's opponent, Dr. Lee Rogers. (There are 3 things about Rogers that drive Israel crazy: he's incorruptible, he's progressive and he's independent-minded.) And, believe me, McKeon is hardly the only vulnerable GOP chairman Israel is protecting.

Who's the most hated senior Republican in Congress after Boehner and Cantor? Right... Paul Ryan who represents WI-1, a district President Obama won in 2008. The DCCC has never-- not once-- tried to defeat Ryan. He is always given a free pass. But this year-- unlike in past years-- the DCCC forgot to make sure he would have a hapless opponent. Instead he has a dynamic opponent who can actually beat him, Rob Zerban, a Blue America-endorsed candidate. We'll come back to Rob in a moment. I want to share a memo with you, that Israel has read and is ignoring, from one of the most prominent insider Beltway Democratic firms, Democracy Corps (Stan Greenberg's, James Carville's company). "[V]oters," they report, "raise serious doubts when they hear about proposed cuts [in the Ryan Budget]-- particularly to Medicare, education, and children of the working poor. President Obama’s lead against Romney more than doubles when the election is framed as a choice between the two candidates’ positions on the Ryan budget-- particularly its impact on the most vulnerable. The President makes significant gains among key groups, including independents and voters in the Rising American Electorate (the unmarried women, youth, and minority voters who drove Obama to victory in 2008.) This is an important new finding; highlighting the Ryan budget’s impact on the most vulnerable seriously weakens Romney."

This has to be explained to voters and President Obama's campaign are explaining it-- all across the country. And, in fact, so is the DCCC... also all across the country-- everywhere but in WI-1, Paul Ryan's and Rob Zerban's district. Back to their findings for a moment:

• The Ryan budget is a big target. Even described using Ryan’s own words, support for the budget barely gets majority support.

• Mitt Romney’s embrace of the Ryan budget erodes his support in a close race. Romney’s full-fledged support of the Ryan budget opens him up to attacks on big, decisive issues.

• Voters respond equally to three big critiques of the Ryan budget. Voters reject Ryan’s plan to allow the refundable child tax credit to expire, which would push the families of 2 million children back into poverty. Second, voters are deeply concerned about Ryan’s plan for Medicare and health care spending for seniors. Finally, voters strongly disapprove of cuts to education spending. These three facts about the Ryan budget are the most concerning to voters, especially unmarried women and Hispanic voters.

• Concern for the most vulnerable has a ballot box impact. After hearing balanced facts about the Ryan budget and messages on both sides, we asked voters to weigh the two Presidential candidates based on their positions on the Ryan budget and its impact on the most vulnerable. Not only does focusing on the most vulnerable not hurt the President, it helps him-- Obama’s margin widens to 9 points, with his vote climbing above 50 percent.

• Obama’s base consolidates against the Ryan budget. The Rising American Electorate (youth, minorities and unmarried women) who swept Obama into office move sharply against Romney in this survey, especially unmarried women, who shift a net 10 points.

• Hispanics value education above all. While the expiration of the child tax credit is unnerving to this key bloc, Hispanic voters are most concerned by the budget’s proposal to cut funding for education.

• Voters take a moral approach to evaluating the proposed cuts in the Ryan budget. The most compelling arguments in both focus groups and on this survey were those framed by moral concerns for the most vulnerable. This poses a real opportunity for Democrats to expose the Ryan budget in a way that is compelling for independents and undecided voters.

• The upcoming debate about whether to extend the refundable child tax credit is an opportunity for those who support it. This memo outlines the strongest attacks against allowing the benefit to expire and the strongest messages to support it.

The DCCC has fully embraced the campaigns of Pat Kreitlow and New Dem Jamie Wall-- the candidates against hapless, inconsequential GOP freshmen Sean Duffy and Reid Ribble-- while effectively ignoring Rob Zerban's campaign against Ryan. Ass backwards? When someone asked Debbie Wasserman Schultz recently she reared up like a deranged dragon screeching that Ryan has too much money to back his opponent. Is that how it goes?

As of the June 30th reporting deadline Ribble had raised $1,516,105 (with $1,001,013 cash on hand) and Wall had raised (mostly with help from the DCCC and their cronies) $687,023 (with $542,206). Only 56% of Wall's money has come from individual donors. In the same report Duffy was shown to have raised $1,775,928 (and has $1,147,757 left), while Kreitlow has raised $775,440 (with $450,826 on hand). A more respectable 64% of his take comes from individual donors, although the DCCC is helping him a bit too, though not as much as Wall (the New Dem). And what about WI-1? Ryan, as the dragon lady from South Florida asserted, is loaded. Corporate bribes have helped him amass a warchest of $4,240,334 (with a daunting $5,408,958 cash on hand). But Rob Zerban-- with ZERO help from the treacherous DCCC, in fact with their active hindrance-- has raised far more than Wall, $1,176,707, has spent more than half of it becoming a household name in southeast Wisconsin and still has $557,522 on hand. And a staggering 83% of his contributions come from individual donors.

Were the DCCC to get behind Zerban it is estimated that his fundraising could triple and that his national media appearances-- which the DCCC works hard to monopolize-- would increase at least five-fold. Until Nancy Pelosi steps in and gets Israel back in line and makes him endorse and support Zerban, you can help through ActBlue. That's how Zerban has raised over a million dollars even up against a wall of hostility from the corrupt Inside-the-Beltway machine. Blue America has two pages for him, our regular House page and the Stop Paul Ryan page. Either one will do the trick! He's also on the verge of winning a month of free Facebook ads from Blue America that highlight Ryan's vote to kick 18-26 year olds in Wisconsin off their parents' health insurance plans. (You can still vote for him here... for one more day.) Let me share with you an e-mail Rob Zerban sent to his supporters yesterday. (The photo up top came from that e-mail as well.)

Paul Ryan's budget would ask seniors to pay an additional $6,500 a year for the same care. Thousands of students would be forced out of technical college and other higher education, and our roads, bridges, and veterans care get defunded.

This budget is also unpopular because Ryan wants to give an additional $3 Trillion in tax cuts to the wealthiest on top of the George W. Bush tax cuts.

No wonder Mitt Romney pays only a 13.9% tax rate! Thanks Paul.

Are Family Values Republicans Rushing To Return Tainted Prostitution Cash From Sheldon Adelson?

Before Al Capone was finally convicted on income tax evasion America's #1 gangster was "an innocent man" and even palled around with corrupt politicians. Today the biggest organized crime figure-- and biggest single Mitt Romney donor-- is Vegas-based mobster Sheldon Adelson. He has a myriad of serious legal cases pending against him but he has the best legal minds money can buy keeping him out of prison. Adelson and his Israeli wife have pumped tens of millions of dollars into the Republican Party-- partly protection money and partly to move forward his very specific agenda (everything from war against Muslim states and American unions to low taxes for billionaires and a gambling casino in Manhattan). This week, though, it's been revealed that his $10 million to the Koch brothers, and $5 million each to Boehner's and Cantor's SuperPACs, he was getting the cash to funnel to the GOP by running a prostitution network in China.

The fired former chief executive of Las Vegas Sands Corp.'s Macau casinos alleges in court documents revealed Thursday that billionaire Sheldon Adelson personally approved of prostitution and knew of other improper activity at his company's properties in the Chinese enclave.

...In the lawsuit, he accuses the company and Adelson of breach of contract and of pushing him into illegal activity in Macau, a former Portuguese colony near Hong Kong where Sands has established a strong business presence. The company owns the Venetian Macao and Sands Macao casino resorts, the Plaza Macao hotel, restaurant and shopping complex and the newly opened Sands Cotai Central resort with three hotels and two casinos.

In documents revealed Thursday-- including a sworn seven-page declaration that Jacobs submitted along with a summary from his attorneys of problems obtaining documents from Sands-- Jacobs describes an effort he launched after arriving in Macau in May 2009 to rid the casino floor of "loan sharks and prostitution."

"This project was met with concern as (company) senior executives informed me that the prior prostitution strategy had been personally approved by Adelson," Jacobs said in the documents.

In his court filing, Jacobs alleges other documents that haven't been turned over include records of misuse of "blue card' work permits and the hiring of illegal workers in Macau; emails and records of Adelson controlling a "Chairman's Club" allowing favored members, including known or suspected organized crime figures, exclusive access to Sands China's most luxurious accommodations; and email requests from Adelson to a Macau lawmaker who Jacobs said was hired as outside counsel after Jacobs was fired.

...Jacobs' lawsuit has drawn interest from U.S. Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission investigator for possible violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, according to a filing with the SEC. The law bars American companies from paying foreign officials to "affect or influence any act or decision" for commercial benefit. No charges have been filed.

The company and Adelson deny wrongdoing. They say the investigations stem from allegations by Jacobs. Sands also alleges that Jacobs stole confidential documents that might contain trade secrets.

Adelson's latest scandal comes "as no surprise, given the Chinese territory has long been known as a haven for gangs and corruption. In fact, in December 2010, police rounded up more than 100 suspected prostitutes at the Sands’ Venetian Macao casino-resort while Adelson was in town."

Adelson and his wife give exclusively to Republicans-- and only to Republicans known for loose moral standards. Among the crooked Republican politicians who have partaken in the tens of millions of dollars in naked legalistic bribes the two have them have been sending out are Scott Brown (R-MA), Virginia Foxx (R-VA), and Eric Cantor (personally over and over and over and above and beyond the leadership PAC he controls). It's more than a little strange that all the Republicans who have gotten money from the Adelsons and from their corporate PAC claim to be "family values" Republicans but none are willing to return the prostitution money that's tied to Chinese organized crime. I guess family values mean different things to different people-- depending on how big the checks are. And they sure don't mean giving back the millions of dollars Cantor has received from Adelson and his wife. That will never happen. As Wayne Powell, the progressive Democrat running for the Virginia seat Cantor is occupying, told us this morning, "This is typical of Eric Cantor. He will take money from any source to perpetuate his ongoing sale of influence to the highest bidder, as long as it supports his political advancement."

Today's the last day of the congressional fundraising quarter. Feel like going up against Sheldon and Miriam Adelson? There's a special page dedicated to ending Eric Cantor's tragic political career: Eric Cantor.

Should Eric Cantor Get Another Free Pass From The DCCC?

We're been agitating for a courageous DCCC that takes on powerful Republican committee chairmen, especially the ones who are causing the country so much damage and who are electorally vulnerable. We've used Budget chair Paul Ryan (WI) and Buck McKeon (CA) of House Armed Services as the two best examples. They're not the only examples, of course; another good example is John Mica (FL), who-- because the NRCC knocked out Jim Oberstar (D-MN) in 2010-- heads the immensely powerful House Infrastructure and Transportation Committee. And he's been doing a terrible job-- unless you think spreading around pork at taxpayer expense indicates good job performance.

After scaring off everyone interested in challenging John Boehner, it's too late to go after that bumbling drunken old lecher-- he has no opponent this year, thanks to the DCCC-- but Eric Cantor is very much available. And he has a great opponent, Wayne Powell. (We have a special page devoted solely to defeating Cantor). But the DCCC doesn't want to take on Cantor... too hard, too costly... too many big donors who give both to Cantor and Steve Israel.

Powell has a remarkable-- even legendary-- Democratic strategist on his team, Dave "Mudcat" Saunders. He helped turn Virginia blue for both Mark Warner in the 2001 gubernatorial race and for Jim Webb's 2006 Senate race. He wrote the campaign classic Foxes in the Henhouse: How the Republicans Stole the South and the Heartland, and What the Democrats Must Do to Run 'em Out. And, unlike the idiots at the DCCC, he thinks Cantor is a great target and that it's a campaign worth waging. “We’re going national,” Saunders told the Daily Caller Wednesday. “And we’re going to be doing a lot of national shows.”

The campaign’s message against Cantor? “He screwed us, and us is pissed.”

“What he has done is sold out the 7th District and his country so that he could become majority leader and continue his march to the speakership,” Saunders said. “It’s all about Eric Cantor. It has nothing to with anything else.”

He added: “It’s a classic case of a guy going to Washington and buying his way to the top."

...“I wasn’t going to do a campaign this time,” the consultant said. “Had no intentions to do it. Then I met Wayne Powell. We have a good horse.”

Cantor has more than $5 million in his campaign war chest, but the hope is to gin up enough national interest in the race to raise enough money to put up a fight, Saunders said.

“We cannot win this campaign, cannot tell the story on Eric Cantor, if we don’t have bullets.”

“How are we going to raise the money? We’re going to tell the story,” he said.

And while toppling Cantor seems far-fetched, Saunders claims the district’s voters are open to someone else. “He’s not well-liked in his district. He doesn’t do town hall meetings, he shelters himself from the electorate.”

“This ain’t about red or blue,” he added. “This is about red, white and blue. This is about the health of the country. We got to stop this crap.”

And Wayne is on the Blue America ActBlue page, if you're of the mind to help take out Cantor.

Blue America Welcomes Wayne Powell (D-VA)-- And Do I Ever Have A Headline For You!

On November 7, 2012, the headline on the top of the New York Times will read, "Obama Reelected to Second Term. Democrats Retake House of Representatives, Hold Senate."

And right below that:

"Majority Leader Eric Cantor Defeated."  

Yes, it can happen. If we all work together, we can fire Eric Cantor and elect a progressive Democrat to the Richmond, Virginia area House seat he occupies, Wayne Powell. Blue America is formally endorsing Wayne today and he'll be joining us for a live chat at 2pm (ET) at Crooks and Liars.

Wayne's a retired Army Colonel who is running for political office for the first time. He's a small business owner and a community lawyer who has lived his whole live in Virginia's 7th congressional district. And he's a progressive Democrat who's the best challenger ever to run against Cantor. He did a guest post for us a couple of weeks ago about Cantor's leading role in Washington's Culture of Corruption. Yesterday Wayne expanded on that... with a promise:

"We have the best Congress money can buy, and those without vast resources are left out of the system. To put it simply, money has corrupted our democracy. On my first day in Congress, I will join all attempts to establish that 'corporations are not natural persons' in a Constitutional amendment. The Citizens United ruling must be overturned. Further, I will introduce legislation to limit and make transparent all independent political expenditures. We must ban corporate expenditures in elections-- shadowy SuperPACs with secret donors have no place in a democratic society."

Much like Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor hasn't had a serious election in his life. He's had everything handed to him-- the exact opposite of Wayne Powell.

The son of a welder, Wayne has never had anything handed to him. He put himself through college, and rose in the Army the only way you can-- grit and hard work. After our country was attacked on September 11, 2001, Wayne was mobilized to help defend our country. He commanded troops, directing military intelligence assets and living away from his family for a year. Like most of the Republican chickenhawks, Cantor managed to avoid military service, although he loves sending other people's sons to fight wars for corporate aspirations and profits abroad.

Wayne is the kind of tough progressive we need to fight Eric Cantor's culture of money, greed, and corruption. And the people of the 7th District are fed up with Cantor's smug rejection of their vital needs. A recent poll bears this out. Just 40% of voters in the district want to see Eric Cantor reelected, while 46%-- and 66% of independents-- would rather vote for someone new. Moreover, only 51% of voters think favorably of Cantor and 43% of voters dislike him, indicating that he is a polarizing figure with no room to grow his support.

The 7th Congressional District is ripe for a progressive, populist turnaround in 2012. Voters in the Richmond suburbs have been trending increasingly Democratic, and in 2008, Mark Warner won a commanding 58% in the district. With a strong populist message-- from the Buffet rule to ending tax breaks for private jet owners, from ending Big Oil's unjustifiable taxpayer subsidies to ending incentives for Big Business to outsource American jobs, all hallmarks of Eric Cantor's watch-- Wayne Powell is patiently persuading the voters in central Virgina that he's on their side... and that Cantor deserves to be fired.

Here's a promise: Every dollar you invest in Wayne Powell's campaign will force Eric Cantor to spend $20 protecting himself. That's $20 the highest-ranking member of the Tea Party can't spend on this GOP cronies. And that makes a buck for Wayne Powell a dollar very well spent.

We just added Wayne to the Blue America official ActBlue page. Let's make those headlines come true!

Hello, DCCC... Wayne Powell Is Taking On Young Gun Eric Cantor Just A Little South Of Where You Are

Last cycle we talked a lot about how the DCCC adamantly refused to even recognize the campaign against John Boehner by a valiant young progressive Democratic veteran, Justin Coussoule. They would go out of their way to invite every Democrat running for Congress to an event-- once an event in his own district-- and leave Justin out. If I ever doubted the DCCC was the enemy of progressives, I understood it after watching that campaign. It's as if they were doing all they could to protect Boehner rather than defeat him. This year we, once again see almost the same pattern we always see when it comes to Conservative Consensus posterboy Paul Ryan. The DCCC just absolutely refuses to help Rob Zerban in a race that is absolutely doable. That's pushed Blue America to lend a hand ourselves. So what about the third in the Republican trio of arch-villains?

Recently we met Virginia attorney and progressive vet, Wayne Powell. He's running a vigorous campaign against Eric Cantor, Republican Majority Leader. Cantor has been severely wounded by his interference in Republican primaries but, once again, the DCCC is taking an adamantly hands off approach. They're ignoring Wayne Powell. We added him to our ActBlue page. And I asked him to introduce himself to DWT readers.

Cantor as “Part of the Problem” of Legal Corruption in Congress

-by Wayne Powell, Democratic candidate for Congress (VA-7)

In Eric Cantor’s section of his 2010 book entitled Young Guns includes his description of the circumstance of both major parties when he was elected in 2000, a corrupt culture where “…the illegal corruption of the process leads to members indicted and behind bars, and the legal corruption of the [political process] leads voters tossing out the incumbent party.”(Page 29, Young Guns). I intend to see that this prophesy is realized in my race to unseat Mr. Cantor this election year, since he is the epitome of the corrupt culture that he describes in his book. He is the consummate political operator, a Washington insider who has become the poster child for what’s wrong with our political system.

In a lackluster congressional career over the past dozen years, he touts two recent initiatives by which he claims bipartisanship and an effort to “clean up” the political process, and spur job growth: the “STOCK Act,” and the “JOBS Act,” which neither prevents insider trading by the “political intelligence” agents who foster insider trading on Wall Street, nor stimulate job growth, but rather reduces the very regulation on Wall Street firms which led to financial and economic disaster in 2008. Even his own party colleague Senator Chuck Grassley from Iowa derided Cantor’s stripping of the requirement that political intelligence operators register and that there activities be monitored stating that by taking out that provision the “…House would fulfill Wall Street’s wishes by killing this provision.”

In the “Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act,” Cantor claims authorship of the law that really doesn’t direct its primary focus on job growth, but on the reduction of regulations that have not be proven to hamper job growth in the first place. The possibility of fraud, and a recurrence of activities preceding the economic meltdown of 2008 is present, and the SEC chairman herself opposed the JOBS Act, stating that the Act could actually chill job growth if investors become concerned with the adequacy of protections and might make capital formation harder, not easier.

So if you wonder what it means if an insider trading bill promotes insider trading, and if a job promotion bill is really an effort to further deregulate the market, then we need to return to Cantor’s book and his statement that he had come from a “…place that believes in hard work being rewarded. I had come to a place where special interests are rewarded.” Page 29, 30, Young Guns). Well, I come from that same place, Richmond, Virginia.

I grew up as the son of a welder in the Church Hill neighborhood of Richmond, and I had to work hard out for everything I have. From 12 years old on-- nothing was ever given to me. I sought loans for my education after my father died at 51 years old, and later joined the Army, and commanded troops in the War on Terror. I built businesses and a law firm from scratch. I'm running for Congress to represent folks like my father, and my mother who survived on Social Security payments and with the help of me and my sister until she died. These are the kind of people that need our help in these tough economic times. I'm running my campaign with the same work ethic that helped me rise to the rank of Colonel in the Army and led to accomplishments in my business and professional careers. I’m running against a man who epitomizes exactly what he criticizes, a political operator who panders to special interests from the wealthiest and privileged corporate interests on Wall Street and beyond, and who has no time for his own constituents.

I'm not a politician. I am someone who believes, like most Americans, that something is drastically wrong with Congress and our country’s political system, a system where multi-national corporations and the wealthiest control too many of our elected representatives like Congressman Cantor.

There is a good reason that Cantor was dubbed the champion of the “overdog” by his colleagues in the Virginia House of Delegates. My first Commander in the Army told me in 1974, if you’re not part of the solution, then you’re part of the problem. There’s no doubt that Cantor is part of the problem.

While I'm running to represent everyday Virginians: families struggling to make ends meet, and small business owners, Cantor is only focused on pleasing those who raise enormous sums of money for him and his Super Pacs.

My campaign will lay out a forward looking vision for Virginia's 7th district that places people first. I'm also running to reform Congress, create jobs, and to make sure every American has the opportunity to find a job. Congress is broken, and I'm running to fix it and end Congressman Cantor's culture of corruption.

To do that, I need your help. Follow my campaign on Twitter, like on me on Facebook, or sign up for email updates from my campaign.