Get More Smarter on Wednesday (April 1)

6 thoughts on “Get More Smarter on Wednesday (April 1)”

1. Dems could get more smarter if they cut this Blue Dog Bullshit.

   Why Blue Dog Dems Suck and Why DWT Blog Goes After Them All the Time

   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.

   And yet…….

   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.

   I will remind again, and perhaps forever, that both Bennet and Udall pursued this tactic upon Barack Obama’s election. I’m not a Dem purist, not even close. We will never know how much they degraded the chance for progress in 2009, how much they poisoned the revitalized Dem voting base that overwhelmingly elected Obama, nor how much they enabled Republican obstructionism with their half-hearted support for the newly elected Democratic president.

   They say they’re “voting their district”, but they have most likely never truly pushed for truly progressive policies. One of the prime reasons we may never know these things is that Democrats can’t seem to give up this failed, phony strategy that keeps losing seats.

   But I think it’s quite simple: Dems need to get More Smarter!

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   1. Got one of those fund raising e-mails begging for money for Bennet as one of the most vulnerable Dem incumbents. No wonder. This isn’t a conservative rural state but it is a state where polarization is increasing as it is in general. So it’s no wonder that the Republican lite thing doesn’t work well for Dems here anymore. It doesn’t get them R leaning votes. Times have changed since Ken Salazar got a nice chunk of those. Those go to actual Republicans now. It just pisses off the base and leaves most run of the mill Dems not terribly enthused.  

      It’s not that an Elizabeth Warren would be the right choice in Colorado but it wouldn’t hurt if Bennet would do something attention getting on some issue dear to Dem hearts once in a while instead of doing things like joining the Rs in making a statement by voting to to overturn our President’s veto. Especially when he knew it couldn’t be done so it wasn’t to actually accomplish an overturn. So just who was that statement addressed to? 

      Most low info voters, the kind who show up only in presidential years, wouldn’t even recognize his name. More of those same low info not terribly partisan voters have at least heard of Coffman and don’t know much more about him than that he’s a vet.  Makes people who don’t know much more than that think he must be a good guy. People like that like to vote for good guys. That’s a plus for him if he decides to run. What’s Bennet’s plus to voters like that?

      And if I contribute, will my money just get spent on the same kind of stupid campaign they ran for Udall? The kind where the ads keep dropping the candidate’s numbers instead of pushing them up but they keep sticking to their obviously lousy strategy no matter what the polls tell them? Because they’re the experts and the locals desperately warning them that their strategy isn’t working are just bumpkins so the polls are sure to turn around?

      I think I’ll hang on to my wallet until I see some signs political life from Bennet and some indication that the alleged expert ops have learned something from the completely avoidable Udall fiasco.

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      1. I, too, get the phone calls from the national Dems and always turn ’em down on their money requests.  They support candidates I don’t like, but don’t support the candidates I do like, so I contribute directly to the Permutter’s, the Donna Edwards’ (in MD), Bernie Sanders, and the like.

         BC has a good last paragraph; I don’t have the resources to throw away on someone who has only political aspirations, and not the interests of their constituents.

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2. Klingenschmitt just has to share his “expertise” regarding transgender folks changing their birth certificates.  He’s agin it, because he says that

   “I don’t think the government should be joining in the confusion that’s in someone’s mind”

   Reported by Kirsten Wyatt in today’s Gazette

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   1. Then again coming from him, that probably one of his more compassionate remarks.

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      1. Right – at least he didn’t compare TG people to ISIS…yet.

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