Donna Edwards... A U.S. Senator? You Bet!

Despite nonsense from the Beltway media, the only "surprise" about Barbara Mikulski's retirement announcement yesterday was that she made it yesterday. There was no chance she was running for another term. She'll have served in the Senate for thirty years (the longest-serving woman in the history of Congress, when you recall that she was also in the House for a decade, from 1977-1987). And she's 78-- and not in the greatest of health.

Now we'll be hearing about all these preposterous Senate wannabe's for the next year and a half-- from conservative multimillionaire John Delaney and soundly rejected ex-Lieutenant Governor Anthony Brown to an undistinguished former senator's son and Military Industrial Complex shill Dutch Ruppersberger. Every politician in the state would like this job.

The most natural place to turn, however, is Congresswoman Donna Edwards. Others being mentioned are Chris Van Hollen, Elijah Cummings, Martin O’Malley (who has already announced he's not interested in running), Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, and Labor Secretary Tom Perez. Van Hollen is in line to be Speaker and talk about his big $1.7 million war-chest could as easily be about that climb as about a Senate race. Speculation on the nearly pointless Republican side of the aisle is even sillier.

Former Maryland Gov. Bob Ehrlich (R) could be atop their list. He’s also has been exploring long-shot White House bid. Ehrlich served one term as governor of Maryland but lost to O’Malley in 2006. He challenged O’Malley again in 2010 but got crushed by 14 percentage points.

Rep. Andy Harris, Anne Arundel County Executive Steve Schuh, current Lieutenant Gov. Boyd Rutherford and Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent who lost a Senate bid in 2012 and House bid in 2014, are also potential candidates.

Two other names to watch are Ben Carson and former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele.

Carson has moved to Florida, but the retired Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon still has a house in Baltimore County. He’s currently near the top of many polls in the GOP presidential race, and his political adviser told The Hill that’s where his focus is right now.

Steele has a high profile from his time as chairman of the RNC and as an analyst on MSNBC. He served as Ehrlich's lieutenant governor and lost a 2006 race to Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.).

You'll be hearing more from us about Donna Edwards in the coming days. For now, let me just say her ProgressivePunch crucial vote score for 2015 is 100% and her lifetime crucial vote score is 96.16. She has lived up to her promises to represent ordinary working families... and her constituents love her. She was reelected in November with 70% of the vote and in 2012, the presidential year that will be a lot more like 2016, she won with 77%. She's been a great congresswoman and she'll be a great U.S. senator. If we were to launch a Draft Donna Edwards page, would you support it?

Why North Carolina Partisan Hack Robert Pittenger Owes A No Sweat Reelection To Steve Israel

In 2013 right-wing lunatic Robert Pittenger and a less extreme, business-friendly Republican calling himself a New Dem, Patrick Murphy, sent out a letter to House leadership from a motley crew of conservative freshmen-- from crackpot sociopaths like domestic terror supporter Steve Stockman (R-TX), congressional coke dealer Trey Radel (R-FL), whack job teabaggers like Kerry Bentivolio (R-MI), Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) and Ted Yoho to the usual aisle-crossing Blue Dogs and New Dems from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party like Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ), Pete Gallego (Blue Dog-TX), Scott Peters (New Dem-CA) and Ami Bera (New Dem-CA). Murphy and Pittinger announced the formation of the transpartisan, pro-business.anti-family United Solutions Caucus. Hey, how many congressional caucuses have their own in-house cocaine dealer? And how many congressional caucuses have a member who was involved with blowing up a Federal Building and murdering 168 men, women and children? And a reindeer rancher! Only in this Congress would Wall Street puppet Patrick Murphy try to pass that off as "bipartisan" and give cover to a gaggle of Republican fringe characters looking for a tiny bit of mainstream creed.

“For too many years, folks in Washington have yelled at each other, but never taken the time to listen. Our Nation’s tremendous fiscal problems won’t be solved by more posturing, but they will be solved when we sit down and find common ground,” said Rep. Pittenger. “That doesn’t mean individual members won’t still have disagreements, but by working together we’ll go farther than by working alone.” This morning, Pittinger was on MSNBC this morning and he seems to have given up entirely on looking for any mainstream creed. Of course, just the quickest glance at his voting record, shows you he doesn't have a bipartisan bone in his body. His 1.88 ProgressivePunch crucial vote score shows that he was the most far-right extremist in the whole North Carolina congressional delegation since he was first elected!

José Diaz-Balart introduced Pittenger as the chairman of a committee; he isn't. He asked Pittenger-- why him, a ridiculous and inconsequential backbencher from a grotesquely ethnically-cleansed gerrymandered district in the Charlotte suburbs?-- if he agrees with some Democrats who are demanding that Obama come to Congress before committing the U.S. to greater involvement in Iraq. Perfect softball question for the co-head of the bipartisan United Solutions Caucus, right? He brushed off Diaz-Balart immediately (video above):

Certainly, I think the president needs to come to Congress. Tragically, the president's foreign policy has lacked true leadership. Whether you look at Ukraine or Syria or Iran, we've left vacuums; we've left a void. That's what [incomprehensible] ISIS today. He could have confronted this back in the Free Syrian Army; he could have responded to Mr. Maliki back in June and brought air strikes against the ISIS movement. But he didn't do that.

Pittenger droned on with his incoherent critique seeking to use U.S. foreign policy for his own pathetic and narrow partisan agenda, the polar opposite of everything he pledged in the original United Solutions Caucus document he and Murphy drafted together. What Pittenger says may make sense to a high school dropout in Waxhaw, Wesley Chapel, Weddington or up in Mooresville but… well there's a reason he lost Mecklenburg, the biggest of the 3 counties in his district, to an unknown and underfunded Democrat the DCCC was studiously annoying. People in Charlotte are too sharp for the load of crap Pittenger is peddling.

In 2012 Democrat Jennifer Roberts-- again ZERO help from the DCCC-- nearly beat him. The final vote was 193,174 (52%) to 170,462 (46%). He put $2,310,735 of his own money into the race and spent $3,307,264 to her $599,487. The only outside help she got was $10 from the Sierra Club. What happened to the old DCCC rule that if a Republican freshman got less than 55% of the vote, they would be a big priority the following cycle. This year Israel didn't even bother recruiting a candidate at all-- and Pittenger won't have to tap his bank account for another $2.3 million to keep his seat. You can't lose to no one. Thanks, Nancy Pelosi, for giving the Democratic Party Steve Israel and Republican dominance of the House of Representatives!