The Type Of Democrats We Need... And The Type We Don't

Yesterday the Maine Beacon reported that 8 Democrats-- 2 in the state Senate and 6 in the House-- signed on to Paul LePage's plan to roll back a just-passed minimum wage increase. And by "signed on," I mean co-sponsoring a bill that would target restaurant workers. What LePage, his GOP allies and those 8 Democrats want to do is overturn the voter-approved ballot measure, which won in November 417,132 (55.5%) to 334,774 (44.5%). How big a deal are those numbers? Hillary won the state with 357,735, beating Trump's 335,593. Measure 4-- the minimum wage increase-- beat both candidates substantially and beat the winning marijuana legalization measure to boot! These are the Democratic co-sponsos of the anti-worker GOP bill:

• Sen. Bill Diamond (Cumberland County)
• Sen. Jim Dill (Penobscot County)
• Rep. Robert Alley (Beals)
• Rep. Martin Grohman (Biddeford)
• Rep. Brian Hubbell (Bar Harbor)
• Rep. Louis Luchini (Ellsworth)
• Rep. Anne-Marie Mastraccio (Sanford)
• Rep. Catherine Nadeau (Winslow)

Amy Halsted, campaign manager for Mainers for Fair Wages, the coalition that supported the minimum wage referendum, explained that "The median hourly wage for a waiter or waitress in Maine is just $9.06, including tips. They are twice as likely to live in poverty and three times as likely to access food stamps to feed their families. These legislators need to hear from us right now about not betraying the will of the voters and not cutting the minimum wage. No legislator should support cutting the minimum wage, but for Democrats in particular to try to betray the voters and attempt to cut the subminimum tipped wage after leaders like President Obama, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, and women’s and workers’ rights groups have worked so hard to increase it is absolutely unacceptable."

As you've probably guessed by now, my reason for reporting this isn't specifically because of Maine or even this (worthy) issue. It's because of Democrats. If you want to oppose the minimum wage and the right of the voters to raise it, why not just switch parties and become a Republican?

The GOP isn't fooling around. They have a national agenda-- a highly toxic one, that will role back all the progress made since FDR was president. As Trump's proto-fascist chief advisor, Steve Bannon, admitted boasted, "That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that’s why the regulatory thing is so important."

Yesterday, for example, the House voted on the so-called SCRUB Act to put together a new agency to find regulations to repeal, primarily science-based public health and safety protections. It passed 240-185. Republican Walter Jones was the only Republican to vote against it. These 11 Democrats, primarily very right-wing Blue Dogs, crossed the aisle to vote with the GOP:

• Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)
• Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog-NJ)
• Stephanie Murphy (Blue Dog-FL)
• Tom O'Halleran (Blue Dog-AZ)
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
• Jacky Rosen (NV)
• Bobby Rush (IL)
• Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR)
• Kirsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ)
• Tom Suozzi (NY)

Another example: the EPA. When he chose Scott Pruitt to head the agency, there could have been no doubt what his intentions were. I was dismayed on February 17 when the Senate voted to confirm Pruitt even before reading the Big Oil documents he was hiding that a court had just ordered released. Two Democrats-- both up for reelection in 2018-- voted with the GOP: Heidi Heitkamp (ND) and Joe Manchin (WV), the two Dems who cross the aisle most frequently, looking to please home-state Trumpists and brazenly thumbing their noses at their own base.

Did it surprise anyone when Trump's budget included ripping nearly a quarter of the EPA budget out from under them-- and it wasn't to lower Scott Pruitt's salary. If Congress approves it, that will mean $8.1 billion that would have been used to keep water and air from being polluted (by people very much like those in Trump's cabinet-from-hell), will instead be used to... build a wall along the southern border? Finance another tax break for multimillionaires and billionaires? Increase military spending even even more ridiculously than it already is? Look at this comparison? It's already completely repulsive. Trump wants to make far more so.

Trump has released Pruitt from any kind of pre-confirmation leash he was on to start aggressively rolling back regulations that in any way touch on the climate change programs Obama had begun. Tuesday, Trumpanzee signed an executive order that will lead directly to plenty of dirty water.

Raúl Grijalva is the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee and just before Trump gave his speech Tuesday night, he noted that "If this budget is enacted the way he wants it, he’s effectively dealt a very significant death blow to the EPA." And there are even some conservative Republicans who fear that Trump and Pruitt are too extreme. People in Idaho may be extremely conservative-- Trump won the state 409,055 (59.2) to 189,765 (27.5%)-- but they also appreciate a clean robust environment. Far right Republican Mike Simpson has been in Congress since 1999. Yesterday he gulped when he saw Trump's numbers. "If they’re trying to get rid of the regulatory regime and a few things like that, you could probably make some cuts... I don’t know if they can be as big as what they’re talking about."

R.L. Miller, head of ClimateHawksVote cut right to the chase: "America is going to run an uncontrolled experiment: will a mixture of 76% clean air and water, and 24% dirty air and water, poison the body politic?"

A little addendum on Cory Booker. Remember back in January when he voted with the Republicans against Bernie Sanders' attempt to cut the price of pharmaceuticals by allowing drug importation from Canada, something almost 80% of Americans support? The fury unleashed in Booker's direction seem to have yielded some instant results. He's now very publicly supporting Sanders' bill.

NY Times Exposes The Garbage Candidates The DCCC Spends All Their Money On

The root of the House Democrats' problem

California freshman Democrat Mark DeSaulnier is the only Member of the House left with a ProgressivePunch crucial vote score of 100. He's never backed any of Boehner's right-wing agenda. Aside from DeSaulnier, the 10 Members who have, over the course of their careers, been the least likely to vote for Republican efforts to undermine America's working families are Mark Pocan (D-WI), Katherine Clark (D-MA), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Jim McGovern (D-MA), Judy Chu (D-CA), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Donna Edwards (D-MD), Alan Lowenthal (D-CA), Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Nydia Velazquez (D-NY). Way on the other end of the scale, the House Democrats who have the career-long worst ProgressivePunch crucial vote scores-- the ten voting most frequently with the Republican Party against the legitimate interests of working families-- are (with their abysmal scores):

• Gwen Graham (Blue Dog-FL)- 29.42
• Brad Ashford (Blue Dog-NE)- 29.42
• Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ)- 36.67
• Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY)- 39.52
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)- 39.98
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)- 40.54
• Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)- 43.85
• Cheri Bustos (Blue Dog-IL)- 44.03
• Patrick Murphy (New Dem-FL)- 45.71
• Raul Ruiz (CA)- 46.03

Each of them has voted more often against progressive legislation than for it. Exposing these false Democrats has been one of the themes of DWT-- a lonely effort overall-- for years. So wasn't I pleasantly surprised yesterday when Derek Willis reported in the NYTimes who the House Democrats are who have been backing the GOP agenda? (Unfortunately, Willis uses crude data that doesn't show the depths of right-wing support these fake Dems have been exhibiting, just their relative ignominy.) It isn't a subject Times readers are normally exposed to and I can imagine that the report absolutely freaked out the DCCC-- not the content, of course, but just that the Members they waste the most money on were exposed, and exposed to nearly the entire DCCC donor base.

Appropriately enough, the piece is accompanied by a photo of political chameleon Kyrsten Sinema, who started her shameful career as a socialist and a Green, posing provocatively. Willis' point isn't just that these treacherous Democrats abandon working families but that they're doing it even more consistently than they used to. And he's most interested in talking about the careerist scum looking for political advancement by selling out progressive values.

A small group of House Democrats has begun moving to the right in the current Congress, breaking from a majority of colleagues on votes that pit lawmakers from liberal areas against those from more rural and conservative districts.

The lure of a Senate seat, which in many cases requires shifting from a narrower ideological focus to a broader one, and the threat of a well-funded challenger are among the reasons for this this shift.

A few members of this group, which numbers fewer than a dozen, are congressional veterans like Collin Peterson of Minnesota, who survived a tough challenge in 2014 and is voting with a majority of his fellow Democrats 64 percent of the time, down slightly from the previous Congress.

But most are new to the House and have known life only in the minority, with Republicans controlling the schedule and agenda. These Democratic lawmakers have voted against Democratic legislation such as the alternative budgets proposed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus.

Their ranks include John Delaney of Maryland, who was first elected in 2012 and narrowly defeated his Republican challenger last fall, and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who won easily in 2014 but may be considering a run for the Senate (and, notably, did not vote for Nancy Pelosi for Speaker of the House in January). Ms. Sinema’s party voting percentage has dropped to 73 percent from 80 percent this year, while Mr. Delaney’s score has fallen further, to 80 percent from 92 percent.

Patrick Murphy of Florida is another example; he’s already running for the Senate seat currently held by the Republican Marco Rubio, and his party voting score has dropped from 83 percent in the last Congress to 77 percent in this one.

Also in the group are four California Democrats who have voted less often with their party in the current Congress than in the previous one, including Julia Brownley, who has joined a majority of Democrats on 84 percent of votes in 2015 compared with 91 percent the previous two years.

...The bills that have attracted the support of the small group of Democrats have included ones that provide tax cuts; support the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline; and change the ways the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies study and approve regulations.

Willis' list of the worst House Democrats:

• Collin Peterson (MN)
• Kyrsten Sinema (AZ)
• Kurt Schrader (OR)
• Jim Costa (CA)
• Patrick Murphy (FL)
• Scott Peters (CA)
• John Delaney (MD)
• Ami Bera (CA)
• Julia Brownley (CA)

A motley collection of political cowards, many of them claim they vote with Republicans because their seats are in jeopardy in "moderate" districts, although each of them won those districts campaigning on progressive values. None of them will acknowledge that their seats are in jeopardy because they vote with Republicans so much and have managed to alienate their own support base.

Reid And Pelosi Give Obama The Finger-- Bow Down To The NRA

Oh, yeah-- that worked

The NRA will be happy to know that bullying Democrats-- even when they control both houses of Congress and the presidency-- works. Earlier today Nancy Pelosi told Eric Holder that a reinstating a ban on automatic weapons will take a better man than her. Yep, while John Bolton was being applauded wildly for telling the American neo-fascist movement at their CPAC NutFest in DC that Chicago should be nuked, Speaker Pelosi was closing the door on Holder's request to stem the tide of senseless violence here and in Mexico by banning automatic weapons.

And, just in case Holder didn't get the message, 22 Democrats joined the Republicans yesterday to vote for compulsory gun worship in Washington, DC-- Max Baucus (MT), Evan Bayh (IN), Mark Begich (AK), Michael Bennet (CO), Robert Byrd (WV), Bob Casey (PA), Kent Conrad (ND), Byron Dorgan (ND), Russ Feingold (WI), Kay Hagan (NC), Tim Johnson (SD), Mary Landrieu (LA), Blanche Lincoln (AR), Claire McCaskill (MO), Ben Nelson (NE), Mark Pryor (AR), Harry Reid (NV), John Tester (MT), both Udalls (NM & CO), Mark Warner (VA) and Jim Webb (VA). It would be so ironic if a dozen or so of them learned the problems associated with that that first hand... even if just for a fleeting few last moments.

And if that vote wasn't clear enough for Holder that the Democrats are too scared to tackle gun control, Harry Reid left no room for doubt last night that he's as scared of the Republican front groups as Pelosi is.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will join Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in opposing any effort to revive the 1994 assault weapons ban, putting them on the opposite side of the Obama administration.

Reid spokesman Jim Manley said the Nevada Democrat will preserve his traditional pro-gun rights voting record.

"Senator Reid would oppose an effort (to) reinstate the ban if the Senate were to vote on it in the future," Manley told The Hill in an e-mail late Thursday night.

It was not immediately clear whether Reid would block the bill from the Senate, but his opposition casts serious doubt on its chances. Also, Manley noted that Reid voted against the ban in 1994 and again when it expired in 2004.

Imagine if Reid had shown that kind of backbone when Bush and Cheney were shredding the Constitution over the last eight years! Now it will be interesting to see how the Senate's most junior member, Kirsten Gillibrand, reacts to this schism. Will she represent her pals at the NRA or the Democratic base that will determine who wins her first statewide primary?

Almost All The Cowardly Senate Democrats Join The GOP In Bolstering Hate Talk Radio And Banning Gun Control

All but 11 Democrats join Repugs in validating Hate Talk Radio

The headline at The Hill this afternoon was well-chosen: Senate Tunes Out Fairness Doctrine, 87-11. In the run-up to this afternoon's vote on granting representation to Washington, DC's residents, the spineless, craven almost-as-bad-as-Republicans Democrats couldn't throw enough compromises the GOP's way. I'm surprised the Republicans didn't get them to seat Norm Coleman. What they did do-- after stopping the de facto filibuster of 34 obstructions on Tuesday-- went a lot further than just throwing the Republicans an extra vote by creating another Mormon seat. Today they dealt with 3 ugly amendments to S. 160-- the 2 of which passed will hopefully be stripped out by the House in conference. The first was something by Geert Wilder's host Jon Kyl (R-AZ) asking that the District of Columbia be absorbed by Maryland; anything rather than create a Hose seat for another African-American! Neither the residents of DC nor Maryland want this and the Senate, sanely, rejected it 67-30, every single Klan Republican, except Jeff Sessions (R-AL) voting for it, joined, disgracefully by Tim Johnson (D-SD) who may have been suffering a relapse. Corker hid in the men's room so he wouldn't have to vote. After Kyl's silliness was defeated Dick Durban offered an amendment encouraging "diversity in communication media ownership, and to ensure that the public airwaves are used in the public interest." Sounds good, right? It was just so much hot air with little meaning and just some cover for what was to happen next. Durbin's airy-fairy amendment passed 57-41 (party-line). Twenty minutes later they voted on Jim DeMint's "We Love Limbaugh" amendment which seeks to prevent the FCC from promulgating the fairness doctrine. Only 11 Democrats-- and obviously no Republicans-- voted for fairness. Isn't it great that the Democrats have such an overwhelming majority in Congress? Imagine if they could pass a spine around. There were 87 votes against fairness, all the Republicans and a sickening list of Democrats that went way beyond the Landrieux and Nelsons and Pryors. Here's the list of the only members of the Senate with the right to call themselves Democrats today:

Jeff Bingaman (D-NM)
Kent Conrad (D-ND)
Byron Dorgan (D-ND)
Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
Tom Harkin (D-IA)
Tim Johnson (D-SD), partially making up for the KKK support earlier
John Kerry (D-MA)
Jack Reed (D-RI)
Jay Rockefeller (D-WV)
Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

The Democrats were almost as pathetic in their response to John Ensign's guns, guns, guns amendment, which would strip DC of it's gun control laws. It passed 62-36, every Republican but Dick Lugar (IN) being joined by Max Baucus (MT), Evan Bayh (IN), Mark Begich (AK), Michael Bennet (CO), Robert Byrd (WV), Bob Casey (PA), Kent Conrad (ND), Byron Dorgan (ND), Russ Feingold (WI), Kay Hagan (NC), Tim Johnson (SD), Mary Landrieu (LA), Blanche Lincoln (AR), Claire McCaskill (MO), Ben Nelson (NE), Mark Pryor (AR), Harry Reid (NV), John Tester (MT), both Udalls (NM & CO), Mark Warner (VA) and Jim Webb (VA).

You know, no one is asking them to ban guns in their own gun-lovin' states. This was about the citizens of Washington, DC, where the only thing to hunt walks upright on two legs, wanting sane gun control laws and these pompous assholes voting against their rights of self governance. It's what I would expect of Johnny Isakson and Richard Burr, but not Russ Feingold and Tom Udall. (Feingold, usually one of my favorite senators, requested an endorsement from Blue America this week. Remind me of this vote if you see him appear on our endorsement list anytime in 2009.)

In the end, all that compromising with the Devil passed the bill, 61-37, almost all the Republicans voting against it anyway, including, of course, the two who got their unconstitutional amendments passed, Ensign and DeMint. All the Dems but Baucus voted yes and they were joined by Collins, Hatch, Lugar, Snowe, Specter and Voinovich. In effect they didn't gain a single wingnut vote after playing footsie with them all day. Yecchhh. I need a hot shower.

Wrong time for Senate Democrats to sign on to the Republican agenda for failure: