Jeff Berman's got a new job! The former Obama/Clinton staffer is now Beto O'Rourke's senior advisor, having moved laterally from his post-Obama-campaign career working for the DC lobbyists Bryan Cave, where he lobbied on behalf of Seaworld, the Keystone XL pileline and the private prison industry. Read the rest

Dan Lipiniski is the worst Democrat in Congress, a man who literally inherited his seat from his father and has spent his career in Congress opposing minimum wage laws, access to abortion, and rights for LGBTQ people, taking massive contributions from literal railbarons in exchange for fighting railroad safety rules. Read the rest

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee says that it will refuse to contract with any vendor or consultant that offers services to primary challengers for the Democratic nomination: it's a rule that ensure that candidates like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (who won a primary challenge against Joe Crowley, a right-wing finance industry creep who'd sat as a Democratic Congressman since 1999) will not be able to depose other establishment Dems. Read the rest

Joe Biden, a colossal asshole, wants to be the Democratic nominee for president in 2020 and in the most on-brand move ever, he's launched his campaign with a fundraiser hosted by the chief lobbyist for Comcast, the most hated company in America. (Image: Ildar Sagdejev, CC-BY-SA) Read the rest

US federal law sets the national minimum wage at $7.25/hour, a number that hasn't budged for a decade and is in part responsible for the nation's wage stagnation, which has seen working peoples' earnings falling in real terms, while productivity grew, the stock market surged, and the richest grew much, much richer. Read the rest

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has a long history of being reactionary assholes who support the worst kind of corporate Democrats while libelling progressives and selling out to America's greediest and most rapacious corporate lobbies, so the latest move isn't much of a surprise, but it's still pretty fucking terrible. Read the rest

If there's one issue that the Democrats could win votes with, it's limits on pharmaceutical prices, because virtually every American agrees that we're being ripped off by Big Pharma (and that goes double for Obama Democrat voters who switched to being Trump voters in 2016). Read the rest

After the 2020 census, the nation's electoral districts will be redrawn and it's a widely accepted fact that New York City will lose a seat, despite its growth since the 2010 census. Read the rest

Oh, sure, the Democratic leadership says it takes climate change seriously, but that same leadership has sidelined the Green New Deal and gutted the climate committee, replacing it with a lame-duck committee led and staffed by beneficiaries of big energy sector dollars. Read the rest

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a Twitter ninja, whose Twitter interactions far outstrip any establishment Democrat (including powerhouses like Kamala Harris and Barack Obama) as well as media outlets from CNN to the New York Times. Yeah, she trails Trump, but he tweets three times as much as she does and also gets a baseline of attention thanks to the presidency. Naked Capitalism's Jerri-Lynn Scofield reveals ACO's secret: "She’s preaching popular, common sense, underexpressed messages. But honestly, would a new member of Congress be so dominating the national conversation, if other Democrats were either less clueless or less beholden to their donors?" Read the rest

LA teachers are on strike today, fighting against privatization, standardized tests, giant classes, and clawbacks of in-class teachers' aides. Read the rest

When Obama took office, he took over from one of the least popular presidents in US history, 22% George Bush, a liar who tortured and spied his way through an illegitimate war that we're still fighting, and next year's deployment will include soldiers who weren't even born when the war started. Read the rest

California's Democratic Governor Jerry Brown repeatedly vetoed universal healthcare after the state legislature voted it through; Democratic state majorities in NY, CT and NJ refused to enact legislation to close the "carried interest" tax loophole that makes billions for hedge-fund managers; Rhode Island Democrats went on a slashing spree, taking down pensions for teachers, firefighters and other public servants while the finance-affiliated state treasurer funneled the pension funds into her pals' underperforming hedge funds; Democrats in NJ gutted the tax bill to give millionaires an easy ride; New York Democrat Governor Andrew Cuomo shut down the state anti-corruption commission, only to have his top aide busted for being horrifically corrupt. Read the rest

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a community organizer from the Bronx who is challenging New York Democratic Rep. Joe Crowley for the party nomination; she's a Bernie Sanders-affiliated left-wing Democrat who raised $200,000 to challenge Crowley's $1.6m war-chest. Read the rest

Ann Kirkpatrick cast the vote that kept Guantanamo Bay open and voted against cap-and-trade, and has been a consistent opponent of EPA air-quality measures; Jason Crow says he won't take corporate PAC money, so instead he's funded by his law firm which lobbies for casinos, fossil fuel companies (he also opposed gun control after the Aurora shooting happened on his watch in his district, having received large sums from the gun lobby) and he's the beneficiary of Bain Capital's largesse; Paul Davis voted to bar cities from enacting gun control rules, and for a ban on the use of state funds to support gun control lobbying, he's supported drug tests for welfare recipients and a corporate tax cut during the recession. Read the rest

Four Democratic challengers backed by United Working Families (linked with the progressive Working Families Party) have successfully challenged establishment Dems backed by Chicago's legendarily unassailable "Democratic machine," effectively winning their offices at the same time, because the Democrat candidate always gets elected to those offices, thanks to Republicans not bothering to field candidates (leaving a vacuum that is sometimes filled by Holocaust-denying Illinois Nazis). Read the rest

Dan Lipinski literally inherited his Illinois seat from his father, and has held it since 2004, despite voting against a $15 minimum wage and against a woman's right to choose to have an abortion. Read the rest