Live By The Sword, Die By The Sword

The two venal and equally corrupt party establishments have created an electoral system where the cost of entry has put all the power into their own hands. The parties' leaders in DC have helped prove the costs of elections so sky high that no one can afford to participate other than themselves and the wealthy self-funders they back.

I was laughing my ass off the other day when one of my informers inside the DCCC told me that after the DCCC got stuck with a nearly unelectable candidate, Gil Cisneros, in what should be the easiest of the Orange County GOP-held districts (CA-39, the one Hillary one with the biggest margin), their whole vile scheme started coming apart of the seams. Cisneros is a conservative "ex"-Republican who knows as much about public policy than Rue and Rooney, the two dogs in the neighborhood that I give dog biscuits to on my hike every morning. The DCCC didn't care about the district until after the current incumbent, Ed Royce decided to retire. But by then, it was too late. The DCCC had directed Cisneros and another candidate to run there instead of in the district they both lived in because they did care about the other district but not about CA-39. (The most inept of all the lame DCCC staffers, Kyle Layman, was largely responsible for this kerfuffle.)

Anyway, to make a short story long, the DCCC embraced Cisneros because he's rich and bribed everyone he needed to bribe. He spent $4,739,403 on the primary, after putting $4,552,762 of his lottery winnings into his campaign. After he beat legitimate candidates who could have won, he told the DCCC and California Democratic Party he expected them to start paying for things, like field organizers. They told him to go fuck off and as much as admitted to him that the reason they backed him was so that they wouldn't have to spend their own funds in the district. Now they're at a standoff another air is heavy with acrimony.

Remember when Obama did an event for the DCCC on Saturday in Anaheim? So far the only southern California candidate Obama has refused to endorse is Cisneros. But Layman stuck him up on stage with Obama anyway. He also neglected to invite Ammar Campa-Najjar to the event and when Obama personally invited him and sent him tickets, Layman wouldn't allow him onstage. That guys like Layman-- rather than elected politicians-- are allowed to run loose without supervision is disastrous for the Democratic Party. Polling in CA-39 may turn around but right now it shows Cisneros losing. The latest polls in CA-50 show a 46-46% between Ammar and Drunken Hunter-- with momentum completely with Ammar. Leave it to Layman and the DCCC to force another loss.

Is it any wonder billionaires who can, have been going around the party establishments and doing their own thing? Yesterday McClatchy ran a piece by Adam Wollner, Rogue billionaires are giving the GOP and Democrats a migraine, about people with enough cash to tell their respective party establishments to buzz off and play politics the way they want to, not the way party bosses what them to. Wollner is sympathetic to the establishments. I'm not. He focuses in on how Republican Richard Uihlein and Democrat Tom Steyer are "irritating" the bosses, who Wollner refers to as "their political parties" and "party leaders" instead of... oh, say "assholes" or "incompetents" or something more descriptive and accurate. Wollner assumes that people like Kyle Layman know something. He should rethink that.

The two billionaires have backed candidates and causes that Republican and Democratic leaders believe are detrimental to their chances in November. Uihlein, the founder of a Wisconsin-based shipping supplies company, has boosted insurgent conservative candidates over the GOP’s choices in several races. Steyer, a San Francisco hedge fund manager, has poured cash into a campaign to impeach President Donald Trump, an effort many Democrats view as counterproductive at best.

“Both parties have never been weaker than they are at this point in time,” said Jim Manley, a longtime Democratic operative. “It allows vanity projects to dominate the process. These wealthy donors are taking over functions that have usually been left to the parties in years past.”

While Uihlein and Steyer have ranked among the most generous donors in recent elections, they are stepping up their activity in 2018 as they try to pull their parties further from the political center.


Both have contributed nearly $30 million each to outside groups so far this cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks political spending.

It’s unclear how much more Uihlein plans to give, but he’s already spent more than he did in the last two election cycles combined-- $24 million. And Steyer, after spending $74 million in 2014 and $90 million in 2016, has pledged to spend a total of $120 million in 2018.

Only Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam have outpaced them to this point, shelling out $55 million so far to two super PACs aligned with Republican congressional leadership.

Uihlein hasn’t picked many winners this cycle, and some Republicans think his efforts have only weakened their position in races across the country. Following multiple accusations of sexual misconduct against Roy Moore last year, most Republicans in Washington abandoned their nominee in his Alabama Senate race. Not Uihlein, who gave $100,000 to a pro-Moore super PAC.

In Illinois, where Uihlein resides, he backed state Rep. Jeanne Ives to the tune of $2.5 million as she challenged GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner in the primary. Rauner survived, but is considered to be one the most vulnerable governors running for re-election this fall.

Most recently, Uihlein spent nearly $11 million in the Wisconsin GOP primary to support Kevin Nicholson, a Marine veteran who had never run for office before, and attack state Sen. Leah Vukmir, who was endorsed by the state party. After the bruising contest, Vukmir now faces a tough battle against the well-funded Sen. Tammy Baldwin.


Charlie Sykes, a former longtime conservative radio host in Wisconsin, said the primary forced Vukmir to tack to the right and constantly reinforce her support for Trump, which could now weaken her in the general election.

“The entire race basically occurred because Uihlein was willing to dump in eight figures behind Nicholson,” Sykes. “He would not have been a legitimate candidate without that one donor behind him.”

“If we lose in November, a lot of people are going to look at Uihlein and say, it’s your fault,” added one Wisconsin Republican strategist involved in the race, who requested anonymity to speak candidly.

The next test for Uihlein comes in Mississippi where a special election to replace Sen. Thad Cochran takes place in November. Uihlein supports conservative state Sen. Chris McDaniel over GOP Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, who is serving out the rest of Cochran’s term. Republicans fear that if McDaniel emerges from primary, Democrats would have an opportunity to win the seat.

Uihlein has already given $750,000 to a pro-McDaniel super PAC, which has some Republicans concerned that more could be on the way.


“That is a genuine risk. In a small state like Mississippi, if he pumped another $2 million in before the election, he could have a big impact,” said one Republican operative involved in the race. “I worry about that everyday.”

Josh Holmes, a leading GOP strategist, said he thinks Uihlein has been a victim of bad advice, and is holding out hope he will be as active in the general election as he was in the primaries.

“If your advice is to throw $30 million behind Roy Moore, Kevin Nicholson and Chris McDaniel, you’re going to lose all that money. That’s an investment that’s akin to setting a pile of money on fire,” Holmes said. “It’s not the return on investment Republican donors should expect.”

Uihlein did not respond to multiple requests for comment. But one of his closest allies, Illinois Policy Institute CEO John Tillman, explained Uihlein’s donations by saying, “Dick believes in the underdog.”

“He believes it’s important to build mechanisms of accountability for lawmakers from both parties,” Tillman said. “He is pragmatic and realistic about every investment he makes, whether it’s in policy, politics or charitable giving.”

While Uihlein stays out of the spotlight, Steyer embraces it.

Through his “Need to Impeach” campaign, he has starred in his own ads, held town halls across the country, and frequently appeared on TV for interviews. In total, he plans to spend $40 million to encourage voters who want to kick the president out of office to actually vote on Election Day.

Many Democrats, including the party’s leadership in Washington, believe pushing for Trump’s impeachment ahead of the midterms will backfire.


 “The message of impeachment revs up the Republican base,” said Sheila Nielsen, a Democratic donor from Illinois. “I’d rather have those people sleeping on the couch than coming out to vote. Let’s not talk about impeachment right now.”


Steyer’s efforts also have some Democrats wondering whether the billionaire is more concerned about boosting his own profile as he toys with a 2020 presidential run, or helping the party take control of the House of Representatives.

“It’s a bad strategy,” Manley said. “I’d rather see him put that money behind candidates than impeachment.”

Steyer’s groups have been less active for candidates thus far. NextGen America gave more than $1 million to Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, a progressive who scored an upset in the Florida Democratic gubernatorial primary this week. At the federal level, the group spent less than $700,000 on ads across eight races. In total, NextGen plans to spend $32 million on the midterms across 11 states, with an emphasis on mobilizing young voters.

Steyer also endorsed liberal state Sen. Kevin de León over Sen. Dianne Feinstein in the Democrat-versus-Democrat Senate race in California. But he has yet to spend money on the election aside from a personal donation to de León’s campaign.

From Steyer’s perspective, the Democratic Party does not have a history of success in the midterms because it has failed to get its core voters to the polls. He and his team are convinced the prospect of removing a despised figure like Trump from office will be a more potent turnout tool for the party’s base than any policy area.

“Democrats need to stop worrying about Republicans, and worry about our base voters that continuously don’t show up to vote for midterm elections,” said Kevin Mack, a political adviser to Steyer.

The pro-establishment bias in this piece is so pronounced and so unselfish-conscious that I suspect Wollner would be shocked to hear he needs to go back to journalism school and start all over again from scratch. Is he, for example, even aware that Feinstein, one of the most shockingly corrupt members of the Senate-- and utterly senile and unable to function-- was rejected by the California Democratic Party for reelection and that the party endorsed Kevin de León? Is he aware that conservative Democrats keep being nominated for statewide office and keep being rejected and that the reason a half million more Democratic primary voters turned out this cycle than anyone predicted was because they were excited to have someone and something to vote for instead of another Republican-lite nothing like Gwen Graham or Philip Levine?

Not talking about impeachment is one approach; talking about it is another. Did Wollner think the two approaches through and make a decision which was better before turning in his OpEd disguised as a news story?

There's More To The DCCC's Screwed Up Attacks In The CA-48 Hans Vs Harley Kerfuffle

On Sunday we ran an explosive post about why the DCCC dumped Hans Keirstead and endorsed Harley Rouda. Just for the record, I emailed Keirstead's campaign, told them I was writing the story and asked for a call so we could go over it before I published. The response was "I call you in a few minutes." Never did get the call so I ran the post Sunday and included Keirstead's press release. A few days ago the campaign was complaining they had been ill-treated.

A little background: I think both candidates-- Harley and Hans-- would be absolutely dreadful members of Congress. Terrible combination of traits between the two: one's an "ex"-Republican, both were endorsed by the New Dems (the Republican wing of the Democratic Party) and neither seems committed to any progressive values or principles.

Blue America endorsored Laura Oatman, who dropped out because of the huge sums of personal money the various candidates were using to self-finance their campaigns. And there's an even worse candidate running than either Hans or Harley: Omar Siddiqui, another "ex"-Republican who now claims to be "a Reagan Democrat" and who doesn't live in the district but decided to run there because he's such a big supporter of the very right-wing (and racist) incumbent Republican in the district he actually lives in. A dreadful mess in a district that should be a synch for a Democratic flip!

Keirstead's campaign manager complained that the DCCC was using me, something I talked about in the post, which gave me a feeling he didn't actually read the post. In any case, he seems to think, since I published the DCCC smear against Hans, I should also publish another smear against Harley, which he graciously sent along, something along the lines of Rouda firing a woman because she had cancer and her health care bills were causing the company to be in a "downward death spiral" according to him. As I mentioned in the first post, neither of these tragically flawed candidates should have been recruited by the DCCC's imbecilic, right-wing local staffer, Kyle Layman. This whole thing is entirely his fault and the fault of whoever didn't fire him months ago when he started showing clear signs that he didn't have what it takes to do the job. Unfortunately, his boss, Jason Bresler, is even more of a moron-- and more of a threat to the Democratic Party. Ultimate responsibility? Nancy Pelosi, Stenchy Hoyer and Ben Ray Lujan.

In any case, the Keirstead campaign's version of the story I ran Sunday is that the whistleblower was someone trying to ruin his life for his own (unrelated) reasons:

While Hans was a professor at UC Irvine and running a lab, a man who was suing his family for $5 million over a piece of artwork filed a complaint with UCI accusing Hans of various forms of misconduct. He did this in an attempt to discredit Hans and gain leverage in the lawsuit.

UCI took the allegations seriously and funded an independent investigation. Hans fully cooperated, encouraged his students and lab employees to do the same. After months of interviews and conversations, the woman hired to conduct the investigation determined there was no wrongdoing and that all the claims were unfounded, not credible, or false. The man who accused Hans was forced to drop his other malicious lawsuit and signed a statement acknowledging the UCI complaint was false.

The man was recorded on a voicemail stating:

“You think, what I did to Keirstead is fucking near child’s play. And I’m not letting up on Keirstead one fucking bit. You have no idea.”

The DCCC acknowledged that this was part of what they based their decision on but claims it is incomplete and that Hans was still promising-- for over a month-- to get them proof "in two days" that he never punched out the woman and knocked her to the ground. He never provided them with the proof. These are the documents I got from Hans' campaign as proof that he's innocent of the DCCC changes they made when they threw him overboard. As I said, they should throw Kyle Layman and Jason Bresler overboard... as well as Hans and Harley.

Click on the images to read the documents

DCCC-- Tearing Up The California Democratic Party... With No One To Stop Them

Gil Cisneros-- this is what a DCCC recruit looks like

Alexander Burns decided to tell the story from a primarily DCCC/Washington perspective: Fearing Chaos, National Democrats Plunge Into Midterm Primary Fights. Yes, they fear chaos... but there's more to it than that. He picked CA-39 as the example. But he doesn't know the story and didn't name the main characters in the chaos. Early on the DCCC wanted to get two friendly allies from Dana Rohrabacher's 48th CD along coastal Orange County where they lived and wanted to run. One was very wealthy Vietnamese-American physician Mai Khanh Tran and the other was a very pliable "ex"-Republican who won a couple hundred million dollars in the lottery, Gil Cisneros. Very right-of-center DCCC political operatives, Kyle Layman and Jason Bresler wanted the DCCC candidate against Rohrabacher to be someone else, another wealthy ex-Republican, Harley Rouda, so they persuaded Cisneros and Tran to move their campaigns inland and north to CA-39.

Pelosi and her circle, though, didn't want Rouda as the candidate against Rohrabacher. They wanted someone who looked really good on paper, wealthy medical entrepreneur Hans Keirstead, but who has turned out to be a stiff. Rouda sorted himself out among CA-48 candidates as everyone's second choice after themselves and the one everyone prefers over the DCCC mandated candidate. The DCCC now seems saddled with Keirstead-- plus some guy named Omar Siddiqui calling himself a "Reagan Republican" (in a Democratic primary!) who stuck $764,856 of his own cash into the race. Don't feel sorry for the others though. They're trying to buy a seat for themselves too. As of the March 31 FEC filing deadline:

• Rouda- $1,130,500
• Siddiqui- $764,856
• Keirstead- $430,400

Two candidates in the race, Laura Oatman (the progressive candidate) and Michael Kotick (the millennial candidate) have recently dropped out and endorsed Rouda. The New Dems are backing both Rouda and Keirstead. And another serious Republican, ex-Assemblyman Scott Baugh, has jumped into the contest, with a ton of money from a previous campaign. This contest is a mess-- and because of the DCCC, the mess has spilled all over CA-39. And that brings us to Burns' DCCC perspective, their never ending, failed justification for interference in primaries, not just in Orange County, but around the country.

Burns started with how the DCCC is trying to push former recruit Tran, who is polling very badly, out of the race. She told Burns that she told the DCCC that she was "the only qualified woman, the only immigrant and the only physician in the race. 'I said to them, frankly, let the voters decide,' recalled Ms. Tran."

The national Democratic Party was not chastened: On Wednesday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee took sides in that House race and backed Gil Cisneros, a Navy veteran and former Republican.

With their forceful intervention in Orange County, national Democrats have lunged into an impatient new phase of the 2018 primary season-- one in which they are clashing more openly with candidates and local political chieftains in their drive to assemble a slate of recruits for the midterms.

In districts from Southern California to Little Rock, Arkansas, and upstate New York, the party has begun interceding to help the Democrats it sees as best equipped to battle Republicans in the fall.

Really? "As best equipped to battle Republicans in the fall?" That's where the lie starts. Their candidates are always conservatives and never independent-minded agents of change. Even in districts that Bernie won in landslides against Hillary, they always seem to come up with Hillary-hacks-- and call them "the best equipped to battle Republicans in the fall." Funny how that works, when the decision-makers are conservatives themselves, like, among others, Kyle Layman and Jason Bresler. Back to Burns, whose instincts start pointing him in the right direction: "The approach," he figured out, "is laced with peril for a party divided over matters of ideology and political strategy, and increasingly dominated by activists who tend to resent what they see as meddling from Washington. A Democratic effort to undercut a liberal insurgent in a Houston-area congressional primary in March stirred an outcry on the left and may have inadvertently helped drive support to that candidate, Laura Moser, who qualified for the runoff election next month." He doesn't say the DCCC are morons, conservative, assholes or, most important, personally corrupt, but... he calls them "Democratic leaders" and concludes they "have concluded it is worth enduring backlash to help a prized recruit or tame a chaotic primary field."

They are moving most aggressively in California, where the state’s nonpartisan primaries present a unique hazard: State law requires all candidates to compete in the same preliminary election, with the top two finishers advancing to November. In a crowded field, if Democrats spread their votes across too many candidates, two Republicans could come out on top and advance together to the general election.

There are at least four races in California where Democrats fear such a lockout, including the 39th Congressional District, where in addition to Mr. Cisneros and Ms. Tran there are two other Democrats running: Sam Jammal, a youthful former congressional aide, and Andy Thorburn, a wealthy health insurance executive who is backed by allies of Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont. The district is among the most coveted for Democrats nationwide-- a seat left open by the retirement of Representative Ed Royce, a popular Republican, in an area Hillary Clinton won by about 8 percentage points.

National Democrats may also intervene in the Southern California districts held by Representatives Dana Rohrabacher and Jeff Denham, where multiple Republicans and Democrats are running, and in the seat held by Representative Darrell Issa, a Republican who is retiring. Voters receive mail-in ballots starting in early May, making the next few weeks exceptionally important.

House Majority PAC, a heavily financed Democratic group that spends millions in congressional elections, recently polled all four races and has been conducting digital surveys that simulate the complicated California ballot, according to people briefed on the group’s strategy. The super PAC has run ads in California in the past when Democrats have faced disaster in primary season.

Representative Judy Chu, a Los Angeles-area Democrat, said the open primaries had led Democrats to take unusual steps to prevent Republicans from dominating the first round of voting.

“That would stop our goal of taking the House back,” Ms. Chu said. “We have to have a viable candidate, and I think that if it does turn out to be a Democrat versus a Republican, the Democrat will win.”

Ms. Chu said the campaign committee’s endorsement of Mr. Cisneros was a signal to donors and volunteers that it was time to close ranks.

But picking favorites is not easy for Democrats: Until mid-March, Southern California lawmakers were divided in the 39th District race between Mr. Cisneros, who is backed by Representative Linda T. Sánchez, an influential member of the Democratic leadership team, and Jay Chen, another Democrat who was endorsed by Ms. Chu. It was only after Mr. Chen opted against running, with a call for party unity, that Ms. Chu and other Democrats swung behind Mr. Cisneros.

Ms. Sánchez said the glut of Democratic candidates remained concerning across California, and acknowledged having lobbied the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to back Mr. Cisneros. National leaders, Ms. Sánchez said, had “a role to play in terms of trying to talk to nonviable candidates and urging them to be team players.”

Meredith Kelly, a spokeswoman for the committee, said the group was taking action in California because voters “deserve to have a Democrat on the ballot in November.”

“Any decision to get involved in these races is toward that goal and based on intelligence from the ground in California, extensive data and partnerships with as many local allies as possible,” Ms. Kelly said.

Facts Burns might have included at this point: 1- Meredith Kelly is one of the stupidest people in Democratic politics; 2- California's Democratic Party has been so riven with identity politics that it borders on blatant racism; 3- Jay Chen who was the most qualified candidate for November had been in the race a little over a month when the DCCC persuaded him to drop out to help Cisneros; 4- the DCCC is threatening to smear Thorburn and make it impossible for him to win in November unless he drops out; 5- Cisneros has been bribing Democratic congressmembers and organizations to back him; 6- and, of course, the self-funding:

• Andy Thorburn- $2,335,900
• Gil Cisneros- $2,052,762
• Mai-Khanh Tran- $480,000
• Phil Janowicz- $194,900 (pressured out by the DCCC)

In the 39th District, Democrats went beyond prodding underdogs like Ms. Tran, 52, to stand down. Mr. Thorburn said the D.C.C.C. presented him with polling that suggested attacks on his finances and business record would be damaging in the general election-- data Mr. Thorburn dismissed out of hand. He said the committee clearly indicated its preference for Mr. Cisneros.

Mr. Thorburn, 74, is now the most unsettling rival for Mr. Cisneros and national Democrats, pairing a pointed ideological message with a personal fortune to spend on advertising. Deriding Mr. Cisneros as a “wishy-washy” newcomer to the party, Mr. Thorburn said he would strike back hard if the committee were to attack him, as it did Ms. Moser.

“I’m much more of a fighter than the national party,” Mr. Thorburn said, warning: “If they do something like they did in Texas, we would come back guns blazing.”

Mr. Cisneros has won over important state groups, including the muscular California Labor Federation. But his campaign office, at a strip mall in Brea, about 30 miles southeast of Los Angeles, showcases his national allies: One wall boasts an enormous sign from the gun-control group Giffords, which supports him, while another displays photographs of Mr. Cisneros with Barack and Michelle Obama.

...Some voters sounded unlikely to take their cues from national parties. Outside a Fullerton coffee shop where Mr. Jammal was greeting voters, Adam De Leon said he was suspicious of the candidates using personal wealth to sway the race. Mr. De Leon, 72, said he favored Mr. Jammal, 36, because of his government experience.

“What does it tell you when people spend millions of dollars to get into a position that pays maybe $140,000 a year?” Mr. De Leon said, somewhat underestimating the $174,000 congressional salary. “It’s all about power and connections.”

The Republican field is in flux, too. Young Kim, a longtime aide to Mr. Royce, is the front-runner but has several candidates challenging her from the right. With Republicans in Washington focused on defending beleaguered incumbents, they have been less intent than Democrats on shaping open primaries.

For Democrats, that project extends beyond California: On the same day the D.C.C.C. endorsed Mr. Cisneros, it also boosted candidates in New York and Arkansas who face contested primaries. In New York, the committee enlisted Juanita Perez Williams, a former candidate for mayor of Syracuse, to challenge Representative John Katko this month, though a lower-profile Democrat was already running with the support of local party leaders.

That kind of big-footing may be trickier in California. Mr. Chen, the Democrat who opted out of the 39th District race, said the party still faces a “precarious situation” there. He said he had decided against running after conducting a poll that showed him neck and neck with Mr. Cisneros and Mr. Thorburn-- but with Democratic voters fragmented enough to create an all-Republican general election.

He predicted none of the remaining Democrats would follow his lead and get out.

“If you’ve never been involved in the party before and you just ran because you want to run, then you don’t really have those considerations,” Mr. Chen said. “They are new to this. They don’t have bridges to burn.”

The ideological battle within the Democratic Party is between the Democratic wing of the party (progressives and populists) and the Republican wing of the party (New Dems and Blue Dogs). The DCCC is part of the Republican wing and working hard to elect uber-corrupt former New Dem head, Joe Crowley, to lead the party after Pelosi and Hoyer are gone. DCCC candidates, like Cisneros, will do whatever they're told. A guy like Jammal has a functioning mind, always a great danger for closed hierarchical systems like the House Democrats. You know what that Blue America ActBlue congressional thermometer is on the right? It leads to a contribution page for candidates who aren't in thrall to the DCCC and who are independent minded. And, one thing for sure-- no Blue Dogs and no New Dems... No candidates from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party.

With This DCCC, It Really Will Take An Electoral Tsunami To Win Back The House-- Here's Why

Not always that easy to tell who's worse, Crist (D) or Rohrabacher (R)

Yesterday the House passed (246-176) a cockamamie bill by Tim Wahlberg (R-MI) called the Regulatory Integrity Act, the purpose of which is to prevent the public from finding out what rules are being worked on by federal agencies to protect the public. The only Republican to vote against it was Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), while 15 Democrats joined the rest of the GOP in backing it, primarily the regular suspects from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, like Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ), Lou Correa (Blue Dog-CA), Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX), Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog-NJ), Stephanie Murphy (Blue Dog-FL), Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN), Tom O'Halleran (Blue Dog-AZ)... you know the names, all the worst congressional garbage who consistently vote for the Republican agenda. (Oops, I almost left off Charlie Crist, but he voted for it too, of course.)

In fact, ole Charlie-- like Tom O'Halleran-- was a Republican who found it politically expedient to switch to an independent and then even more expedient to switch to a Democrat just before an election. Charlie eventually (this past November) won a Pinellas County, Florida congressional seat and O'Halleran won an unlikely open seat in Arizona, having lucked into a race with a somewhat scandal-ridden and crazy gay Republican opponent. Both Crist and O'Halleran have reverted to their Republican instincts and are reliable votes for the Ryan/McCarthy agenda pretty much across the board. As are the other fake Democrats mentioned above. O'Halleran, in fact, is one of the last House Democrats with ProgressivePunch crucial vote scores of... ZERO. (Hey, even Louie Gohmert has a better score-- 16.67!) But O'Halleran is down in the sewer with the worst of the worst-- the zeroes-- like Sinema, Cuellar, Cooper, Collin Peterson, Ami Bera, Dan Lipinski, John Delaney. What do we even need Republicans for with Democrats like these? (And Delaney wants to run against Ben Jealous for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in Maryland!)

Anyway, back to Rohrabacher for a minute. Like I mentioned, he was the only Republican to vote with the Democrats yesterday against that Regulatory Integrity Act, a total coincidence. Coincidental to what, you may be wondering? When I started writing this post, hours and hours ago, it was going to be about the race to beat Rohrabacher in CA-48, a northwest Orange County district that Trump lost and is, suddenly, being targeted by the DCCC. CA-48 starts up at Seal Beach and runs down through Fountain Valley, Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa, Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, Aliso Viejo, Laguna Niguel and ends at Three Arch Bay where Darrell Issa's district begins. It's the 31st richest congressional district in the country. It's about 58% white, 21% Hispanic and 18% Asian. Rohrabacher was first elected in 1988 and has never once been challenged by the DCCC, which has given him 14 free passes. You can may recall that in 2008 Blue America backed Huntington Beach mayor Debbie Cook, who came closer than anyone to ever beating him, but was undercut by the DCCC and lost 53-43%. It's a pretty red district and the national Democrats have abandoned it entirely and done ZERO work to try to turn it blue. In 2008 McCain beat Obama 51-46% and in 2012 Romney won 55-43%. But last year, voters found Trump too offensive to support, so while Rohrabacher, an outspoken Trump and Putin enthusiast, was reelected 165,987 (58.5%) to 117,716 (41.5%%) against completely un-funded Democrat, Sue Savary, Hillary inched by Trump 47.9% to 46.2%.

So now the DCCC thinks they can jump in and win the rich, white Republican (11 point registration advantage) district in one cycle with no setup. What a joke! Maybe Trump and Ryan will be toxic enough to lose CA-48 for Rohrabacher... but not because of anything the DCCC does. So far there are 2 candidates who have declared-- Boyd Roberts, a real estate broker who moved to Laguna Beach from the Inland Empire last year, and Harley Rouda, also a real estate guy (a big one) who lives in Emerald Bay. I checked their records of political contributions and neither was active in that area. Roberts donated a couple times to the Tea Party Express in 2011-- although it might have been a different Boyd Roberts-- and Rouda gave just one contribution to a federal candidate ever-- $1,000 on January 31, 2016, not to Hillary Clinton or to Kamala Harris or Sue Savary, but to... John Kasich.

I haven't spoken to Roberts yet but the stuff I'm reading hasn't inspired me to find his number and call him. I guess I should. I did speak to Rouda though, a couple of hours after he declared yesterday. Very nice guy-- former Republican who turned independent and more recently, registered as a Democrat. The worst of the let's-turn-Congress-Republican-lite DCCC staffers, Kyle Layman (former chief of staff for conservaDem Raul Ruiz, now DCCC West Coast director), seems to have been involved with recruiting him. If the Republicans were desperate to find a way to prevent the Democrats from winning seats in California in 2018, they couldn't outdo giving Kyle Layman this job. As for Rouda, maybe I'm wrong, but if you want another Charlie Crist or Tom O'Halleran... you have your man. He didn't want to talk about any issues when I brought up Social Security and Medicare, but did tell me that he's "socially progressive and fiscally conservative."

3 Versions Of Why The DCCC Threw Hans Keirstead Overboard And Endorsed Harley Rouda

The coastal Orange County district occupied by Putin ally Dana Rohrabacher, CA-48, has been pretty red for a long time. As crazy as he is, Rohrabacher has never had any serious competition and Obama lost both times there, 51-46% the first time and 55-43% the second time. In 2016, though, Hillary beat Trump 47.9% to 46.2%. The PVI went from R+7 to R+4. I looks fairly winnable, especially in a wave cycle and especially when the GOP tax scam hits California suburbanites especially hard.

That picture up top is from the DCCC's Red-to-Blue page. They added one of the candidates, Harley Rouda, to the page on Friday, a shock since the DCCC recruited two candidates for the seat and have been trying to stay neutral. (Rouda, a former Republican who has been endorsed by the New Dems, was recruited by right-wing DCCC staffer Kyle Layman and then Hans Keirstead was either also recruited by Layman or was pushed on the DCCC by corrupt money-hungry consultant Achim Bergmann.) Anyway, the DCCC, confused and dazed, had been neutral until they started getting uncomfortable with Hans last month-- but I'll get to why in a moment. First, the "official story" from the Beltway press release machine, Roll Call:

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is taking sides in a crowded California primary in the 48th District, backing businessman Harley Rouda, in an attempt to avoid a nightmare scenario of being shut out of the November ballot.

Rouda was added to the DCCC’s “Red to Blue” program on Friday, giving him additional access to committee resources. The move is also evidence that Democrats are stepping up the effort to coalesce around one candidate.

In California, the top two vote-getters in the June 5 primary advance to the November election regardless of party affiliation. This district is one of a handful of California races where Democrats are concerned multiple candidates on their side could split the Democratic vote, allowing two Republicans to advance to the November ballot.

...“Harley has demonstrated that he is the strongest Democrat in this race and best prepared for the general election, and with the grass roots and numerous California delegation Members strongly behind him, we know we will flip this district this fall,” DCCC Chairman Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) said in a press release.

...[T]he DCCC's move does contradict the state Democratic Party's endorsement process, where delegates backed prominent stem cell researcher Hans Keirstead.

State Party chairman Eric Bauman said in a statement that the California Democratic Party and the DCCC have had a "productive and successful partnership", and he encouraged the DCCC not to attack the state party's candidate.

"Throughout our partnership, I have been consistently clear on one key point: when CDP delegates endorse a candidate, that candidate is the official candidate of the Party, and the DCCC should tread carefully in openly supporting a different candidate," Bauman said.

"California Democratic activists value our independence and the grassroots nature of our endorsement process," Bauman said. "Decisions that undercut the independence or our endorsed candidates have the potential to be extraordinarily counterproductive."

So that was the official story for the public. The official story for insiders is that the DCCC is disappointed that Hans didn't spend enough of his own money on the race. As of the March 31 FEC reporting deadline Rouda had spent $1,130,500 of his own on the campaign and another "ex"-Republican masquerading as a Democrat-- and calling himself a "Reagan Democrat," Omar Siddiqui-- had self-funded to the tune of $764,856. But Keirsteaf had "only" put $430,400 of his own into his campaign. That made the DCCC sad.

Frick and Frack... neither would make a good member of Congress

And that may be true. But there's a third story for "inner" insiders, like Pelosi, who seemed punch-drunk at a big end-of-the-day meeting last week between DCCC staffers and interested members when the final decision was made to jettison Hans and endorse Harley. (By the way the two are both New Dems and are basically as indistinguishable ideologically as their names are.) Before I get into the "real" reason, this was Han's response the the betrayal by the DCCC hours after they dumped him and started pressuring him to drop out of the race for the good of the party:

I was shocked this morning when I saw that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) added our opponent Harley Rouda, a former Republican, to its "Red to Blue" program.

“Red to Blue” is meant to help strong, committed Democratic candidates in key districts. On every measure, Harley Rouda doesn’t make the cut.

• Harley Rouda was a registered Republican before he announced his run for Congress in 2017.
• In 2016, Harley Rouda donated $1,000 to anti-choice, anti-union Republican presidential candidate John Kasich.
• The California Democratic Party endorsed Hans Keirstead over Harley Rouda by an overwhelming margin.

"Red to blue" should be adding committed progressive Democrats to its program. Not recent Republicans who failed to win local support.

We’re running the only true grassroots campaign in this district. We’re fueled by more than 3,200 grassroots donors across 49 states, far outpacing our opponent’s level of support.

We’ve built the strongest ground game in the district-- our volunteers and organizers have knocked on tens of thousands of doors.

But this isn’t the first race that D.C. insiders have meddled in. In Texas, New York, and elsewhere, they’ve swooped in and tried to prop up their chosen candidates-- creating chaos and angering local activists.

One of the DCCCers on the now infamous phone call and meeting that settled Hans' fate, first told me the incredible real story and then sent me the back-up documents to prove it, obviously on condition that I wouldn't rat him out. I was so shocked that I took two days before publishing so I could get absolute confirmation. I also worried that I was being used by the scumbags at the DCCC to help disseminate this smear campaign against Hans which is very much the same kind of nightmare they used against Laura Moser in TX-07 and against Andy Thorburn in CA-39. Their excuse is always the same: the Republicans have the info already and if the candidate-- in this case Hans-- gets into the general election the Republican candidate will eviscerate him with it and we'll lose an opportunity to win a crucial red seat. (Is that true? Do the Republicans already have it? Or am I doing the DCCC's dirty work and giving it to them? I was told by several sources that Harley has had the documents for weeks and chose not to use them.)

The documents accuse Hans of having had sexual affairs with multiple students and employees at UC Irvine. Even worse, it documents a scene that Hans promised for weeks to refute and then never could, that he punched a young woman in the face when he was drunk and in a limo filled with female students he was partying with. The first memo is 14 pages. Here are the first 2 pages that the DCCC was handing out internally and seems to have decided it would be a good idea to send to me as well:

You'll have to click on the 2 images to read them

Is there a moral to this sordid story? The DCCC needs a new staff and a totally new direction. And the DCCC should stop interfering in primaries and spend its resources fighting Republicans, not other Democrats. Nor should the DCCC be recruiting such totally flawed candidates like Harley and Hans. There was a grassroots activist in the race, Laura Oatman, but the immense self-funding and DCCC pressure drove her out of the race. Today she would surely look like the best candidate to beat Rohrabacher.


UPDATE: Why The Mess in Orange County?

A DCCC source-- someone different from the one who sent me the documents-- called to congratulate me on the story. He also wanted to remind me that Hans is the reason for the mess in another Orange County district-- the 39th in the northeast part of the county. "Kyle Layman is the most incompetent and pig-headed staffer I 've ever met. He recruited Hans and, to help clear the field for him, he pushed Cisneros and Dr. Tran to run in the 39th, where neither of them lives. We are in our mess in the 39th largely because the DCCC was in love with the concept of Hans... We fucked up royally and, thanks to Kyle, may now lose both districts.

Is The DCCC Supervising A GOP Win In Orange County's Most Flippable District?

One of California's most conservative Dems, Scott Peters, endorses his rich funder, Paul Kerr

According to OpenSecrets.org, this cycle's half dozen worst self-funders-- at least so far-- include 5 Democrats-- and 4 of this 5 are running ing in Orange County. These are men-- and one woman (an utterly worthless Qualcomm heiress from Brooklyn, pushed run by EMILY'S List-- who are trying to buy congressional seats. All are expected to spend much more before their races are over. Anyway, these are the sic with how much they've self0funded and what percent of their total campaign war chest comes out of their own pockets:

• David Trone (D-MD)- $5,281,939 (93.71%)
• Andy Thorburn (D-CA)- $2,335,900 (91.20%)
• Gil Cisneros (D-CA)- $2,052,762 (81.96%)
• Paul Kerr (D-CA)- $1,612,728 (82.75%)
• Bob Corlew (R-TN)- $1,300,000 (98.91%)
• Sara Jacobs (D-CA)- $1,087,461 (64.35%)

Kerr and Jacobs are running in the same district, CA-49. Kerr knows he has no shot at winning but he wants to build up name recognition so when his conservative pal, New Dem Scott Peters runs for mayor of San Diego in 2 years, he can then run for Peters' neighboring San Diego seat. Jacobs' ridiculous run is just something EMILY's List has cooked uo as a way for their corrupt consultants to get their hands on her money.

But the two biggest Orange County self-funders are Thorburn and Cisneros. Cisneros is the silliest candidate of the cycle, a former Republican potato chip taster for Frito Lay's who won $266 million in a lottery and thinks that entitles to him to a seat in Congress. He's been buying endorsements from easily corruptible members of Congress (like this guy) since he decided to run as a "Democrat."

When candidates have money to burn, they spend it foolishly. This week Cisneros, whose campaign is controlled by the DCCC, started running an ad on CNN attacking Thorburn. And Cisneros and Thorburn have started flooding Orange County mail boxes with slick, vicious attack ads against each other , like these 3:

Republican voters love is when their candidates attack each other. Democratic voters don't; in fact, they hate it. Democrats like positive primaries. And Democrats like the negative saved to be used against Republicans. Cisneros' incompetent task masters at the DCCC-- Jason Bresler and Kyle Layman-- should know better. But they don't. So, you have seen Cisneros and the DCCC smearing Thorburn relentlessly, asserting that he's a tax evader and giving the GOP weapons against him if he makes it into the general-- much like the DCCC did to Laura Moser in Houston.

Cisneros, whose every word is scripted by the DCCC and the high-priced consultants they made him hire, is on a kamikaze mission against Thorburn. "We already have a con man in the White House," they had him say. "We don’t need one representing the 39th District. Andy Thorburn’s career is an unbroken chain of tax evasion, financial mismanagement, and misreprersentation." What's especially funny about this is that it's coming from the mouth of a man who has constantly been caught in outright lies and an unending stream of misrepresentations. Cisneros is more like Trump than any other Democrat running for Congress anywhere in America.

This is the cached website the DCCC designed for Cisneros to use in his attack against Thorburn. They are such scumbags-- but also stupider than shit and unable to cover their own tracks. This is the site that has been taken down-- "Committee name here" written in the disclaimer box-- instead of anybody's disclaimer. Watch them screw up another race! Since Cisneros isn't even a Democrat and has no idea how to appeal to Democrats, his campaign is completely based around attacks against the Democrats running for the CA-39 seat. This are the claims he's been using his lottery winnings to make against Thorburn:

• Thorburn is running for office on his record of being a teacher but his only teaching experience was four decades ago in New Jersey. He is in fact an insurance executive who has bankrupted numerous companies, failed to pay his taxes, and made a fortune that he is now spending to misrepresent himself to voters.
• Thorburn says he’s a successful businessman but in fact he has a history of illegal and unethical business misconduct. He led a company that was forced to pay over 234 thousand dollars for breach of contract to a customer who asserts Thorburn defrauded him. A former business partner asserts Thorburn used fraud and defamation to push him out of their business and says that Thorburn did not pay taxes or use normal account procedures, used offshore bank accounts, and used insurance ratings improperly.
• Thorburn says he supports big government policies but won’t pay his fair share in taxes to fund these policies. He failed to pay his taxes for five years and has faced nearly three-quarters of a million dollars in federal tax liens. Thorburn and two of his businesses filed for bankruptcy. When wealthy men like Thorburn fail to live up to their responsibilities, the burden is shifted to ordinary families who pay their taxes. 

There's also a good candidate in the race-- Sam Jammal, the Democrat who actually lives in the district (unlike Cisneros, Mai Khanh Tran and Thorburn, the 3 multimillionaire carpetbaggers)-- but the clueless DCCC shenanigans could well end with 2 Republicans-- Young Kim and Bob Huff-- winning the jungle primary and no Democrat making it into the general election. That's the DCCC; that's Kyle Layman; that's Jason Bresler; that's Ben Ray Lujan... and that's what we get when Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer get to supervise the DCCC. Eric Bauman should kick them out of the state.

Recruiting Republicans To Run For Congress As Democrats Has Usually Ended Badly For All Concerned

Rahm's revolting stench is still the only smell at DCCC headquarters

I'm going to start talking about a rule of Beltway politics by immediately pointing to an exception: Elizabeth Warren, who today-- along with men and women like Bernie Sanders, Ted Lieu, Pramila Jayapal, Raul Grijalva, and Jeff Merkley-- defines what it means to be a real Democrat, was once an Oklahoma Republican! That's a long time ago, the Democratic Party didn't recruit her as a Republican, and, like I said, that's the glaring exception to the rule.

About a decade ago, Blue America was toiling away on behalf of school teacher and union member Dave Lutrin, running for Congress in the Palm Beach area of Florida, a pretty red district represented at the time by hypocritical Republican closet case Mark Foley. We knew that sooner or later Foley would slip up-- they always do-- and expose himself and become very defeatable. But suddenly Lutrin was getting all this intense pressure from Rahm Emanuel, then head of the DCCC, and Steny Hoyer to withdraw from the race. It made no sense. Florida's 16th congressional district was pretty red and not a district that the DCCC ever paid any attention to. It turns out, though, that my hunch about Foley was more than a hunch for Emanuel. Foley's alcoholism and closeted homosexuality were widely known Inside-the-Beltway but it was not as widely known that those two factors had combined to create a very sick yen for being caught molesting underage boys. And he was-- both molesting the boys and caught. But congressional leadership, primarily Republican congressional leadership under fellow closet case Denny Hastert, covered up for him. Rahm Emanuel was very much clued in to what was happening but he saw Mark Foley's tragic crumbling universe as an opportunity to pick up a House seat the Dems weren't counting on. So... he kept his mouth shut too-- complicit in allowing Foley to have his way with young congressional pages (primarily the sons of big GOP donors). Long story, short: Emanuel with Steny Hoyer, froze Lutrin, the legitimate Democratic candidate, out of the race and enticed a wealthy lifelong, conservative Republican, Tim Mahoney, into the race (delivering on their promise of an uncontested primary and a "special circumstance" for the general). The special circumstance was how the media exploded into an orgy of Mark Foley Caught With His Pants Down (in a boys dorm).

Although Foley resigned and checked into a posh clinic for naughty Republicans, it was conveniently too late to get his toxic name off the ballot... and converted "Democrat" Mahoney was elected-- though just barely (49-48%). Mahoney immediately joined the Blue Dogs and reverted to voting with his fellow-Republicans on virtually every crucial issue... and to chase women all over town. His one term ended in scandal, amid sexual escapades, payoffs, hush money and all sorts of things normally associated with Republicans (which, of course, he was, despite the deceptive "D" next to his name). He lost his seat to a Republican. The district was soon redrawn and re-numbered and came to be represented by war criminal and right-wing extremist Allen West who was eventually beaten by yet another DCCC-recruited lifelong corrupt Republican, Patrick Murphy, who Wall Street and Chuck Schumer-- I know, I know: redundant-- picked to oppose Marco Rubio, destroying Alan Grayson in the process and guaranteeing Rubio another 6 year term.

It used to surprise me when crooked conservative Dems like Emanuel, Hoyer and Chris Van Hollen recruited Republicans to run as Democrats. Now it's practically standard operating procedure for the DCCC. Last cycle DCCC-recruited Republicans masquerading as Democratic candidates (like Monica Vernon in Iowa, Mike Derrick in New York, Randy Perkins in that old Palm Beach seat... just a few examples) went down in flames. Unfortunately two former Republican office-holders didn't. Charlie Crist (FL) and Tom O'Halleran (AZ) are both in Congress now and, predictably, both are spending more vote time across the aisle than with the Democrats. O'Halleran is a full-fledged Republican in all but party affiliation. His ProgressivePunch crucial vote score was a ZERO until last week when he finally found something to vote on with the Democrats. His score-- still an "F"-- obviously, is now 27.27-- third worst after wretched Blue Dogs Stephanie Murphy (FL) and Josh Gottheimer (NJ). Crist's score is also among the dozen worst Democrats in Congress-- 40.0. Ryan and McCarthy can count on them both whenever they want to pretend one of their murderous agenda items is "bipartisan."

You would think the Democrats' record of abject failure with recruiting Republicans and trying to pass them off as real Democrats would be something they would have learned not to do. But you'd be wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The DCCC believes it's how to win seats and they continue doing it-- in the face of years of evidence to the contrary-- compliments of brain-deficient conservative shitheads on the DCCC recruitment committee like Blue Dog Cheri Bustos (IL) and New Dem Denny Heck (WA). The DCCC's favorite recruits are always wealthy Republicans who they can get to "switch" their registration from GOP to Democrat. Even though Kelly Ward is finally gone as executive director, just watch all the garbage candidates the DCCC drags out from under rocks in the red districts Hillary won in November. They're already up to their old tricks.

For example... they're interested in 2 Austin Republican multimillionaires, Joseph Kopser and Chad Kissinger. (One of the DCCC idiots told me that Berniecrat Tom Wakely is "too progressive for the district," even though he beat the conservative Democrat in last year's primary and then went on-- with no money and no support from the DCCC-- to come closer to beating Lamar Smith than any Democrat ever has previously. You can contribute to Tom's campaign here.) One of the worst of the new dip-shits the DCCC hired, Kyle Layman, is running around trying to recruit conservative candidates for California seats. Perhaps that was how Orange County wound up with "ex"-Republican Harley Rouda running against current Republican Dana Rohrabacher in CA-48, a district where Republicans just couldn't pull themselves to vote for Trump. Though Romney beat Obama there 54.7% to 43.0%, Hillary bested Trumpanzee 47.9% to 46.2%. The DCCC has never run a candidate against Rohrabacher so unless an anti-Trump/Ryan tsunami does all the work for them, they'll fail again in 2018 with their pet Republican. And there are lots of little assholes like Kyle Layman working, coast to coast, for the DCCC, digging up Republicans to pretend to be quasi-Democrats. We talk a lot about the Republican wing of the Democratic Party here but that isn't just Blue Dogs and New Dems; it's also actual Republicans recruited by the DCCC. No quasi-Democrats at the Blue America 2018 thermometer below:

The DCCC Has Plans For California-- Everybody Hide 'Til They Go Back To DC

Guess who the DCCC has another free pass for this year

The DCCC which is positively loathed by the California Democratic Parry county committees is bringing their circus to town-- or at least to Orange County, where the DCCC had been dormant for so long no one knows much about how horrible they are. The DCCC is a completely backward and backward-looking operation. They're continually losing because they continually prepare to fight last cycle's war. Last cycle Hillary won-- or, more descriptive of what actually happened, Trump lost-- every district in Orange County, many for the first time in anyone's memory. But because the DCCC was busy fighting some other cycle's battle, they weren't prepared-- like didn't have any candidates-- and couldn't take advantage of the Trump debacle. In 2012 Romney had beaten Obama countywide 541,592 (53%) to 457,077 (45%). Last year Trump flipped the numbers and turned the county blue. Hillary beat him 556,544 (51.0%) to 472,669 (43.3%).These are the districts either entirely or significantly in Orange County, along with Hillary's winning percentage over Trump:

• CA-39 (Republican Ed Royce)- 51.5- 42.9%
• CA-45 (Republican Mimi Walters)- 49.8- 44.4%
• CA-46 (Democrat Lou Correa)- 66.3- 27.9%
• CA-47 (Democrat Alan Lowenthal)- 62.6- 31.05
• CA-48- (Republican Dana Rohrabacher)- 47.9- 46.2%
• CA-49- (Republican Darrell Issa)- 50.7- 43.2%

All the Republican congressional districts sent a Republican back to Congress and all the Democratic districts sent Democrats back to Congress. The only close call-- Issa's seat, which is mostly in San Diego County-- would have been won by Doug Applegate had the DCCC jumped in in a timely fashion instead of waiting for Applegate to practically tie it up-- and then start spending large sums in the ineffective ways they always spend-- commissionable TV ads that do nothing but make DCCC cronies rich.

Issa spent $6,275,754 for 155,888 votes (50.3%) and Applegate spent $2,041,091 for 154,267 votes (49.7%). The DCCC came in late with 2,501,786 misspent dollars which was added to by Pelosi's House Leadership PAC to the tune of another $991,187, money that would have put Applegate over the finishing line if it was competently spent, especially early on in the cycle when Applegate was struggling financially and the DCCC was laughing at his efforts instead of helping.

The DCCC didn't field or back candidates against Royce, Walters or Rohrabacher each of whom, along with Issa, is supposedly a top target in 2018. Royce has no opponent yet although pressure is mounting on Jay Chen who still remembers how the DCCC screwed him when he ran against Royce in 2012. Walters has already drawn 4 opponents, Katie Porter, Kia Hamadanchy, Ron Varasteh, the guy who ran last time, and Dave Min, some crony of Schumer's always the sign of guaranteed disaster in House races. eager beaver conservaDem staffer, Kyle Layman, recruited a typical DCCC "ex"-Republican to run against Rohrabacher, Harley Rouda. A slight looney district-shopper named Boyd Roberts is also running. Layman has had to back away from his "ex"-Republican when his bosses slapped him across the snout with a rolled up OC Register and told him they already have a "surprise" super-star candidate waiting in the wings, stem cell scientist Hans Keirstead.

And then Applegate vs Issa, right? Well, normal people would think so. And Applegate is all fired up and ready to go-- Blue America has endorsed him again and you can contribute to his grassroots campaign here-- but then up pops, tired old Ira Lechner. one of Pelosi's sleazy multimillionaire donor buddies asking her to stab Applegate in the back to make room for one of his friends, Mike Levin, a Hillary Clinton bundler. Pelosi said leave it to her. Apparently saner minds at the DCCC have prevailed on her to back off, at least for now. Even Layman is claiming he had nothing to do with Levin (which isn't true).

So the DCCC will hobble into the 4 Orange County races, try again in 2 Central Valley races in blue districts (Denham and Valadao) that they always manage to get completely wrong and again in the blue CA-25 district they also are becoming expert in screwing up, with terrible recruitment and stumbling ineffectual follow-up. That's what the L.A. Times was celebrating? A forward-looking DCCC wouldn't just be trying to turn back the clock to 2016 in Hillary districts; they'd also be cultivating candidates to run against Tom McClintock, Paul Cook, Kevin McCarthy, Ken Calvert, Duncan Hunter and the best target of all-- Devin Nunes-- who the DCCC may not be aware represents a California district that could be won with a 2-cycle concerted effort. But they're not-- because Hillary didn't beat Trump in those districts in 2016. They are so fucking lame. The DCCC, wrote Javier Panzar, "will send staffers in charge of overseeing House races in California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington to work out of an Irvine office in an effort to make inroads in Republican strongholds that have traditionally been sure bets for the GOP." The incoherent fool chairing the committee, Ben Ray Luján told the Times the move was made to "be as close to the voters and the campaigns as possible." I wonder if that means they'll lose even worse than usual.

So why isn't it completely hopeless? Congressmembers from the West Coast recently elected a non-corpse, Ted Lieu, as DCCC regional vice-chair. If anyone can turn this clown care around, it's Ted.