EMILY's List Up It Its Old Tricks Again... Trying To Slip In A Corrupt Conservative Over A Progressive Because They Like The Plumbing's Better

Except when it's bad women candidates like Michele Bachmann, Colleen Hanbusa or Katherine Clark 

I got into a friendly Twitter argument the other day with a guy who works for the Victory Fund, an LGBT PAC. He was cheering slimy New Dem Sean Patrick Maloney, who is the Democratic freshman with the worst-- i.e, most conservative-- voting record this year. He's corrupt and unworthy of being reelected, despite the fact that he's gay and married with two adorable children. His lovely family does not excuse his excruciating bad votes. (Watch this video, please.) But the Victory Fund guy and I just could not see eye to eye on this. Finally I said something like, "we both support Carl Sciortino for Congress. I back him because he has a record as the most progressive and effective member of the Massachusetts state legislature. Why do you?" I don't want to put words in his mouth; here's the exact tweet exchange:

Blue America also endorsed Heather Mizeur for governor of Maryland. It's cool that she's a woman and it's cool that she's an up front lesbian, but that certainly is NOT why we think she will make as good a governor as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are senators. No, Mizeur is dynamite on policy and big on ideas and that's what attracted us to her. Maybe Victory Fund will back her because she's a lesbian and maybe EMILY's List will back her because she's a pro-Choice woman-- I hope so-- but Blue America backs her because she's the best candidate running.

Last year the Victory Fund endorsed a conservative Republican-- albeit a mainstream one, not a teabagger-- for Congress, Richard Tisei, over John Tierney, one of the most progressive Members of Congress AND a guy with a career-long 100% voting record on LGBT issues (unlike Tisei who was a typical Republican dick to the LGBT community when he was still a closet case). Ugghh. Maybe that's the only time the Victory Club ever made that kind of mistake, I hope so. EMILY's List, however, turned away from the progressive coalition long ago and seems to take particular delight in screwing up progressive male candidates-- especially ones with impeccable pro-Choice records-- on behalf of corrupt, untrustworthy women candidates (untrustworthy even on Choice), like when they backed the horrific anti-Semite Nikki Tinker in Memphis against Rep. Steve Cohen and the way they're pushing for corrupt warmonger Colleen Hanabusa now against Senator Brian Schatz in Hawai'i.

A friend of mine in Massachusetts sent me a post from Blue Mass about EMILY's List latest nightmare candidate, Katherine Clark, who they're running against the aforementioned Carl Sciortino. Clark is trying to pass a bill that would allow the cops to wiretap virtually anyone for anything, anytime, anywhere. She's the lead sponsor of a bill she claims would "just update" the organized crime wiretap bill on the books. The ACLU doesn't agree that she's trying to update it and they're horrified by Clark's Big Brother position that advances in communications technology,” necessitates it. The ACLU has said otherwise: “It’s not an ‘update.’ It’s a broad expansion of the wiretap law," asserts the ACLU, "to allow law enforcement to listen in to private conversations for virtually any investigative purpose.’” The ACLU is working with the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, Demand Progress, Digital Fourth, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Fight for the Future to stop Clark.

While Carl was fighting in the legislator to preserve benefits for ordinary working families, EMILY's List managed to find the lead sponsor of the very Republicanesque pension "reform" bill that was premised on cutting employee benefits and drastically raising the retirement age. That's why a coalition of over 20 Massachusetts unions including the AFL-CIO, the Massachusetts Teachers Association and AFSCME, opposed Clark's unfair conservative anti-worker approach. This is all typical of a ConservaDem who fights for corporate special interests and against ordinary working families. There are enough of them in Congress already-- way too many. Clark's vote for putting punitive restrictions against poor people in the welfare bill tells you all you need to know about her: she's a Republican at heart, masquerading as a Democrat in a blue state. Did you watch that video I suggested up near the top?

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Washington, DC Needs Women... But Not Women Like Penny Pritzker

This week, EMILY'S List launched a program, Madam President, to elect a woman president. The idea is GREAT. America is overdue and really needs a woman president. EMILY'S List, though, is the wrong organization to lead the effort, not much better than if the GOP launched the effort to push Michele Bachmann, Virginia Foxx or Kelly Ayotte. We've seen many times before that EMILY'S List's modus operandi is to viciously and baselessly attack progressive men with sterling records on women's issues, in order to push forward their own hackish candidates-- like Nikki Tinker-- who happen to be females, regardless of the damage those candidates' conservative agendas are likely to cause. What America needs is a strong, progressive woman president.

That's also what America needs in the House, the Senate, in state legislatures, in the Cabinet and across government. I was surprised-- though why I don't know-- to read this morning that although women are 51% of the nation, they make up just 8% of House Republicans. (It’s 30 percent on the Democratic side, which isn't something to be that proud of either.) And only 20% of the current senators are women. Obama's nominated 15 of his 16 Cabinet members-- and just 4 are women, Kathleen Sibelius, Janet Napolitano, Sally Jewell and now Penny Pritzker.

And that fact that she's a woman shouldn't make Pritzker any more palatable for a progressive. That's really scraping the bottom on the barrel and I'd love to see the Republican obstructionists in the Senate do soemthing worthwhile with their filibuster regime for a change. Pritzker is a real Greg Palast nightmare. "You made fun of me," he wrote, "when I suggested that President Barack Obama would nominate a confessed bank scammer, a loan-sharking mortgage predator, to his cabinet. But thar she blows! Today, Obama has named Penny Pritzker Secretary of Commerce. As the President says, It's a milestone: the first female fraudster to hold that post. No longer will criminal bankers have to lobby the administration-- because now they'll have one of their own in the Cabinet. Obama goes way back with Pritzker in Chicago Democratic politics.

Pritzker's net worth is listed in Forbes as $1.8 billion, which is one hell of a heavy magic wand in the world of politics. Her wand would have been heavier, and her net worth higher, except that in 2001, the federal government fined her and her family $460 million for the predatory, deceitful, racist tactics and practices of Superior, the bank-and-loan-shark operation she ran on the South Side of Chicago.

Superior was the first of the deregulated go-go banks to go bust-- at the time, the costliest failure ever. US taxpayers lost nearly half a billion dollars. Superior's depositors lost millions and poor folk in Sen. Obama's South Side district lost their homes.

Penny did not like paying $460 million. No, not one bit. What she needed was someone to give her Hope and Change. She hoped someone would change the banking regulators and the Commerce Department so she could get away with this crap.

Pritzker introduced Obama, the neophyte state senator, to the Ladies Who Lunch (that's really what they call themselves) on Chicago's Gold Coast. Obama got lunch, gold and better-- an introduction to Robert Rubin. Rubin is a former Secretary of the Treasury, former chairman of Goldman Sachs and former co-chairman of Citibank. Even atheists recognized Rubin as the Supreme Deity of Wall Street.

Rubin opened the doors to finance industry vaults for Obama. Extraordinarily for a Democrat, Obama in 2008 raised three times as much from bankers as his Republican opponent.

So what did Citibank's Rubin get for showering Obama with gold? Obama agreed to take care of Rubin's poodles, Larry Summers and Tim Geithner. They became Obama's first cabinet picks: Summers as Economics Czar and Geithner as his czarina, Secretary of the Treasury.

Geithner and Summers were the gents who, under Treasury Secretary Rubin, designed the deregulation of banking. In effect, they had decriminalized the kind of financial flim-flammery that brought the planet to its knees while bringing Rubin, Pritzker and the banksters loads of lucre.

...In return, in 2008, Obama decided to make his patron Penny the Secretary of Commerce. But then, in November 2008, just as Obama was about to submit her nomination to Congress, a bunch of Pritzker's victims marched on Washington. They were not from her busted bank, but unhappy workers from the lucrative nursing homes that her family owns through a string of complex offshore trusts. Obama slammed the door on Penny pronto.

The Pritzker family made its billions mostly from Hyatt Hotels and Hyatt nursing homes. Penny, on the Hyatt board of directors, is an infamously combative anti-union apostle. UNITE HERE, the union that represents Hyatt workers, has called for an international boycott of Hyatt hotels. In 2012, UNITE HERE and its parent, the AFL-CIO, were crucial to Obama's winning Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. So, in this last campaign, Obama had to keep his billionairess heiress on the down-low.

Obama appeared to keep the door shut on Pritzker throughout the 2012 campaign, reducing her to hosting an election fundraiser at her Gold Coast digs, which she had to bill as a Goldman Sachs PAC event. This marks possibly the first time and last time anyone used Goldman Sachs as a PR cover.

But today, with the unions' money and votes already pocketed and counted, Obama can give working folks The Finger and give Penny her pound of flesh: the Commerce post.

The New York Times says that, "At Commerce, Ms. Pritzker could provide the president with a new way to reach out to the business community." The last time Pritzker reached out to the business community was to sell them sub-prime mortgage securities, worthless bags of financial feces manufactured by Superior Bank.

By giving Penny, the Piggy Banker, Commerce, we have to change Obama's rating to sub-prime. I do note that some woman's organizations are applauding the appointment of the first female to the Commerce post.  But I prefer to honor the victims of the Chicago femme fatale. Most of Penny's victims, busted bank borrowers and underpaid health care workers, are women, too. But, unlike those wounded and destroyed by Pritzker, she worked hard for her money: it was not easy inheriting her first billion from her daddy.

Obama mislead the public when he introduced this sack of crap to the public. “Penny is one of our country’s most distinguished business leaders. She’s got more than 25 years of management experience in industries including real estate, finance and hospitality. She’s built companies from the ground up.” He left out the part about her being vehemently anti-union, both on the Chicago School Board and on the board of Hyatt. And he neglected to mention that FDIC action against her bank and her role in pioneering the re-packaging of subprime loans.

We want more women in government-- but not women like Michele Bachmann and not women like Penny Pritzker. And, by the way, when will ordinary working women-- rather than multimillionairesses and billionairesses-- get some representation. They sure need some-- on every level. But, of course, EMILY'S List has no interest in working class women either.

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EMILY's List Up To No Good Again-- In L.A... And In Hawaii?

Sen. Brian Schatz, City Councilman Eric Garcetti-- too progressive for EMILY's List

On election day eve, late summer 2008, long after mail-in ballots had been sent in, EMILY's List sent out a bizarre message to its members in Tennessee. They withdrew their endorsement from the corrupt, conservative Democratic woman they had recruited and backed all year, Nikki Tinker, a cog in the Harold Ford political machine who was taking on progressive incumbent Steve Cohen, a 100% pro-choice ally. Tinker, was the quintessential candidate of the new EMILY's List: conservative, Blue Dog, corrupt to the bone, allied to Big Business... but she stepped over the line as her campaign turned more and more virulently anti-Semitic and upset EMILY's List's Jewish donor base in the Northeast and on the West Coast. Cohen, meanwhile had been endorsed by progressive women's groups like the National Organization for Women (NOW) and by Planned Parenthood and was way ahead in the polls.

EMILY's List's unendorsement of their candidate had no impact. But Tinker's vile ads did. Cohen won with 79.34% against Tinker's 18.64%. Before Tinker let loose with her barrage of vicious, racist, Republican-like negative ads Cohen was only leading with 65%. Negative ads work with Republican voters, not so much with Democratic voters. "It says Memphis has come a long, long way and that people who were counting on racial voting to prevail are thinking of a Memphis that doesn't exist anymore," Cohen said. "The people of Memphis are more sophisticated voters that deal with issues and someone's record and not simply race."

In the race for L.A. mayor, EMILY's List, predictably, picked the more conservative and sleazy candidate, ex-Republican Wendy Greuel, while progressive women's groups like NOW are backing proven ally and pro-Choice stalwart Eric Garcetti. No one expects anything more from EMILY's List. They back conservative, pro-choice women. But what people do expect is that they refrain from the gutter politics that have gotten them in trouble in the past. Yesterday many of us found this shady mailer from EMILY's List attacking Garcetti by objectifying women:

As Wendy Greuel and her allies unleash unwarranted attack after unwarranted attack on Garcetti, Los Angelenos have grown more and more angry, angry at Greuel and angry at EMILY's List. Garcetti, who was in a dead heat with Greuel after the first round primary has now pulled ahead by double digits. EMILY's List never learns that the Republican strategies it uses in Democratic primaries don't work among Democrats. They didn't work for Nikki Tinker and they're failing to work for Wendy Greuel. And they won't work for EMILY's List's latest conservative recruit, New Dem Colleen Hanabusa, who's running against progressive Senator Brian Schatz.

Hanabusa, an opportunist burning with ambition, was first elected to the House in 2010. She joined the conservative, Big Business-aligned New Dems and ran up a mediocre record as a backbencher with little to no influence. Rather than follow the trail being blazed by fellow congresswoman Mazie Hirono, a progressive champion, Hanabusa stuck to a path to nowhere started by much-disliked right-wing former Democratic Congressman Ed Case. Yesterday she announced she will give up her House seat to run for Brian Schatz's seat in the Senate.

Hanabusa had been considering primary challenges to either Schatz or Abercrombie. A source close to her campaign said Monday that Hanabusa had decided on a Senate campaign and was informing close allies.

A primary between Schatz, 40, and Hanabusa, 61, would evoke generational as well as political fault lines within the Democratic Party. Schatz, a progressive, has the potential to build seniority in the Senate over a generation. Hanabusa, a more traditional liberal, will contend that her experience prepares her to have an immediate impact.

By "traditional liberal," they mean corrupt conservative. The only mark Hanabusa has made in Congress, other than being a lap dog for K Street and a predictable New Dem, was pioneering a way around ethics rules to make money personally from her campaign. Hanabusa "collected significant amounts of money in interest from personal loans she made to her campaign. In addition, her campaign reimbursed her husband thousands of dollars in expenses."

“With the interest rates Rep. Hanabusa is charging for loaning her own campaign money, she could be confused for a loan shark,” said CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan. “Most Americans open a savings account when they want to earn a little interest on their money. Instead, Rep. Hanabusa is making a killing by investing in her own campaign.”

Campaign records show Rep. Hanabusa made two loans to her campaign committee, totaling $125,000, in 2006. Since then, she has charged more than 9% interest on these loans, resulting in over $30,000 in interest payments. At the end of the 2010 election cycle, less than $3,000 of the principal on these loans had been repaid. Additionally, campaign records show that Rep. Hanabusa’s campaign committee reimbursed her husband, John Souza, almost $9,000 for food and other expenses during the 2010 cycle.

A few weeks ago, I called Honolulu City Councilman Stanley Chang when I saw he had filed the paperwork to run for Hanabusa's 1st district seat. I was excited that someone was going to offer her a primary challenge. He told me that it was an open secret in Hawaii that Hanabusa would not be running for reelection but would try to climb the political greasy pole, either by running against Governor Neil Abercrombie or against Senator Brian Schatz, both progressives. Since being appointed to Congress, Schatz has run up a 94.12 ProgressivePunch crucial vote score, the 11th best in the Senate, almost as good as Mazie Hirono's 96.30. Schatz and Hirono are both co-sponsors of Tom Harkin's bill to take Chained CPI off the table. Hanabusa is keeping her mouth shut on where she stands on Chained CPI. Schatz is exactly the kind of Democrat EMILY's List thrives on attacking and smearing. We'll be watching.

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Margaret Thatcher And EMILY's List

While we didn't cheer, nor take part in the wailing and the rending of garments,  at the announcement of Margaret Thatcher's death-- she's been all but dead for several years-- yesterday, we did recognize her passing. I hope you read Ken's fair and balanced obit last night. And, regardless what you thought of her reactionary brand of politics, there is certainly no denying her a hard-earned place in history-- England's first women prime minister. When a similarly senile British Consul General assigned to the L.A. garden party and high tea post, viciously anti-union Dame Barbara Hay, went on KPCC to eulogize her idol yesterday, she seemed stumped when asked to name a Thatcher contribution. So she went right to Thatcher breaking the unions, the real bond that she and Reagan had in common.

When her Conservative Party cabinet colleagues kicked her out of office, she was embittered and said, even years later, "I shall never forget; I shall never forgive." What a dreadful old monster she was! And no less so for being a woman. In politics, as in all things, there are good women, great women, horrible women, flawed women and women who are good on some things and bad on others. Sounds a lot like men, doesn't it? Morrissey doesn't have fond memories of Thatcher in any way, shape or form and he wasn't shy in pointing out that she was even a monster when it came to women's issues, even beyond wrecking the social system women often depend on for themselves and their children.

Iron? No. Barbaric? Yes. She hated feminists even though it was largely due to the progression of the women's movement that the British people allowed themselves to accept that a prime minister could actually be female. But because of Thatcher, there will never again be another woman in power in British politics, and rather than opening that particular door for other women, she closed it.

Thatcher will only be fondly remembered by sentimentalists who did not suffer under her leadership, but the majority of British working people have forgotten her already, and the people of Argentina will be celebrating her death. As a matter of recorded fact, Thatcher was a terror without an atom of humanity.

I don't want to go into my whole schpiel about how special interest groups like EMILY's List and, say, Victory Fund make grievous strategic errors when they support a conservative woman or a conservative gay over a progressive man or a progressive straight ally. I watched Barbara Boxer, clearly senile now and past her due date, crowing about how she persuaded an ex-progressive champion, Nancy Pelosi, to support conservative (proto-Republican Wendy Greuel for mayor of L.A. over a far smarter, far more progressive and far better qualified Eric Garcetti for one reason and one reason only: Wendy has a vagina and Eric has a penis. Each of them is a lot more than plumbing. The National Organization for Women (NOW) gets that even if EMILY's List, which predictably, is backing Greuel, doesn't. The California state branch of NOW endorsed Garcetti as did, yesterday, one of California's foremost advocates for women and children in Congress, Rep. Karen Bass, the former state Assembly Speaker. (Sadly, Boxer and Pelosi are in their dotage. Who's going to help them ease out of public life though? It was hard enough for U.K. Conservatives to unceremoniously throw Thatcher out in time.)

There are a number of races EMILY's List is getting involved in that pit conservative women against progressive men and one of their keystone races is for the governor of the Keystone State. Their candidate is great on one issue: Choice. On economic justice issues, she's a backward conservative and a danger to working families. Her record in Congress is disgraceful for anyone calling themselves a Democrat, let alone a Democrat from a safe, solidly blue district like hers. A vice chair of the repulsively corrupt, corporately-owned New Dems, her lifetime ProgressivePunch score on crucial roll calls is a wretched 76.68. But for the current session-- where nothing is in her mind except her lust to become Pennsylvania's first woman governor-- her voting record has really gone into the toilet as she endeavors to prove how conservative she is by voting with Boehner and Cantor whenever she can. Her score for the current session has sunk to an abysmal 52.4, Blue Dog territory.

Allyson Schwartz isn't a terrible candidate because she's a woman. She's a terrible candidate because she's a conservative serving the interests of Big Business and Wall Street rather than of working families of Pennsylvania. EMILY's List is terrible for supporting her just because she's a woman. They should be supporting women-- we need lots more in public office-- but not women like Margaret Thatcher... or Allyson Schwartz. Oh come on, Howie... how can you compare Allyson Schwartz to Margaret Thatcher? Here's how:

• Allyson Did the Dirty Work for America’s Credit Card Industry Against the Middle-Class

She came under heavy fire from liberals in Philadelphia for her vote in favor of the credit card industry-written Bankruptcy Bill of 2005 that the GOP was pushing. The bill allowed the credit card companies to ruin the finances of middle-class Americans and then prevent those same Americans from filing for bankruptcy and getting rid of their credit card debts. The bill also specifically removed protections to prevent identity theft.

• Allyson Gave Cover to House Republicans to Overturn Obamacare

Allyson Schwartz has been accused of siding with health care interests-- one of her biggest bloc of contributors-- and giving House Republicans cover on dismantling important parts of ObamaCare. Schwartz’s actions would result in increased profits for health care providers.

• Allyson Supported Keeping the Bush Tax Cuts For the Wealthy

When President Obama was forced by House Republicans to move the cut-off for the Bush tax cuts to $400,000 from $250,000, Politico reported that Schwartz cheered the move as beneficial to her wealthy district. “It makes a difference for some in my district,” she said. Previously, in 2010, Schwartz proposed extending the Bush tax cuts for those who making up to half a million ($500,000) a year. And in December 2010, Allyson Schwartz voted to extend all of the Bush tax cuts for two more years.

• Allyson Sided With George W. Bush on Iraq

During her first campaign for Congress in 2004, Schwartz said she supported Bush’s War in Iraq and then repeatedly voted to give him blank checks to keep it going. Then, in May 2007, she voted against the bipartisan progressive/Libertarian resolution that sought to safely redeploy U.S. troops out of Iraq. Four years later (March, 2011) she helped defeat another bipartisan plan to end another war, this one in Afghanistan. All the while, she has been voting to renew the Patriot Act without protections for civil liberties.

Is she better than Corbett? Sure... but what a low standard. Pennsylvania Democrats can do a lot better-- and there's more than one good choice. OK, I hope you've paid attention. How about, as a reward of sorts, a couple of songs by Elvis Costello, one he wrote about Margaret Thatcher ruining human existence and one about Alison? Enjoy!

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Would You Like To See John Boehner Lose His Seat In 2014? Let's Get Started

When EMILY's List started they were the bee's knees-- an inspired organization meant to help put progressive women into political office in numbers more commensurate with their share of the population. In recent years, I've come to distrust EMILY's List as I see them backing horribly conservative and unqualified women against sterling progressive men who are better on women's issues-- and everything else-- than their miserable sadsack candidates. The worst example, though by no means the only, was in 2008 when they ran right-wing anti-Semite Nikki Tinker against Steve Cohen in Memphis. It was the beginning of the new untrustworthy EMILY's List model and it's something that has been repeated again and again. They frequently back very conservative and very corrupt women against progressive men. Last cycle, for example, they knocked out phenomenal progressive champions Eric Griego (NM) and Chris Donovan (CT) for two pathetic corporate shills, Michelle Lujan Grisham and Elizabeth Esty. Still, there's no denying one major contribution EMILY's List made in their glory days when they were part of the emerging progressive coalition they have since abandoned. The women who started it didn't name it for Emily Dickinson or Emily Browning. It's an acronym for "Early Money Is Like Yeast" (it raises dough). When the organization got going in 1985, they already knew that early money was one of the key ingredients to a successful campaign, but that it was missing for most grassroots campaigns. It's how campaigns get off the ground, hire staff and get a strategic plan into operation, very different from late money used to run TV and radio ads.

The DCCC tells Democratic congressional candidates that if they want to run, they have to bring in over $250,000 per quarter for the election cycle. That's why we're stuck with so many millionaires and multimillionaires in Congress-- even on the Democratic side of the aisle, many of whom don't see issues from the same perspective normal people do. It's why, even as Congress prepares to liberalize laws regarding marriage equality, marijuana and perhaps even gun safety, economic justice is still way at the back of the line.

Last year John Boehner (R-OH) raised $22,024,288 for the election cycle. His Leadership PAC raised another $3,715,270. And he didn't have an opponent! Between the PAC and his own campaign coffers he already has over a million dollars for next year. The DCCC has shown no interest whatsoever in challenging him or in giving a hand to anyone who does. In 2010 an Army vet and young father, West Point graduate Justin Coussoule ran against him. The DCCC didn't ignore the race; instead they went out of their way to humiliate and demoralize Coussoule and his supporters. That's a big part of why no one bothered to run against Boehner in 2012.

But one of those Coussoule supporters decided to run this cycle, Andrew Hounshell, a steel worker from Middletown who is also vice president of his union local. Another army vet and young father, Andrew was chosen by President Obama to introduce him at his campaign's big closing rally in Cincinnati last year. Andrew grew up in a Republican home but as he matured he saw through all the lies and hypocrisy, especially on issues like a living wage and fair trade. This is what he told me when I asked him about his, pardon the expression, evolution:

"There wasn’t one particular event that turned on a light bulb, but rather a combination of many: college, union work, community work, my father relying on the VA for health care, my mother relying on her Social Security to survive, in-laws going without health insurance because they can’t afford it after my father in-law was laid-off from Delphi, having 3 children at one time (the list goes on and on). I realized that through policy, our elected officials do have a huge impact on our livelihood. Through cuts in Social Security, appointments to the NLRB, cuts to the VA, immigration reform (or lack thereof), tax loopholes for corporations, subsidies to oil companies, etc., our middle class has been eroded and we are not taking care of those who can no longer take care of themselves. The Republicans I loved as a child, and I thought loved me back, were the very ones who were supporting this erosion."

Blue America didn't try to barge in while every candidate and every committee was frantic over the phony-baloney end of the quarter "deadline" last week. It's quieted down now and we're trying to help Andy raise that yeast-like money to get his campaign going. Can you kick in, even if it's just a small amount? The DCCC isn't going to lift a finger to defeat John Boehner or Paul Ryan or Eric Cantor; they never have. The NRCC always targets senior Democratic policy makers. Steve Israel has decreed that the DCCC will not do likewise. He makes sure GOP leaders have a safe and easy path to reelection. It's really going to be up to grassroots Democrats to help local candidates in Ohio, Wisconsin and Virginia get rid of these three malefactors. Andrew is in early; let's help him build a strong campaign against Boehner. Here the Blue America contribution page for 2014 House candidates. There aren't many so far.

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