The people demand cargo shorts, reject crypto
A night of reckoning for corporate Democrats
Welcome to a Tuesday evening edition of Progress Report.
A number of significant primary elections are wrapping up tonight, and for progressives, it is a night of mostly good returns.
In tonight’s edition of the newsletter, I’ll touch on some of the big primaries and offer up some analysis and context. And then tomorrow, I’ll send a premium edition of the newsletter with some very noteworthy stories that I promise are not receiving any national news attention.
I’ll lead off with the election that we’ve focused the most on here at Progress Report: In Oregon, Jamie McLeod-Smith is projected to win her primary campaign against conservative Rep. Kurt Schrader by a handy margin.
The progressive activist and city manager knocked off the long-time representative after he regularly helped to water down and defeat key Democratic legislation, including President Biden’s popular drug pricing reform plan.
Traditionally neutral in primaries, county parties across Oregon broke protocol and endorsed McLeod-Smith over Schrader, who somehow won a rare endorsement from President Biden despite his regular sabotage.
On the other hand, we raised $10K for McLeod-Smith, so I guess that makes all of us power brokers now. You can read our story with McLeod-Smith right here:
Elsewhere in Oregon, a crypto billionaire wasted $13 million on propping up some newcomer named Carrick Flynn, who got blown out in OR-06 by progressive State Rep. Andrea Salinas.
Locals were pissed off by Nancy Pelosi’s bizarre decision to wade into the race on Flynn’s behalf last month, and though her PAC dropped a million bucks on ads, it may have caused more harm than anything else.
In Pennsylvania, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman has utterly wiped the floor with self-proclaimed “normal Democrat” Rep. Conor Lamb in the race for the Democratic Senate primary.
This wasn’t just an absolute pasting — Fetterman beat Lamb in just about every single legislative district in the state — but also an epic embarrassment for the state party apparatus and its larger orbit of power brokers and spenders.
Lamb was endorsed by just about every major Democratic elected official in the state, got the backing of every major statewide union, and was gifted the endorsement of every major newspaper in Pennsylvania. He was also the beneficiary of outside groups that burned millions of dollars on scorched earth ads accusing Fetterman of dastardly things like being a democratic socialist (which he isn’t) and attacking his character.
Those ads made zero dent and maybe even backfired on Lamb, who did himself no favors by regularly taking cheap shots at Fetterman instead of articulating any kind of vision for the state.
So how did Fetterman, a tattooed giant who always cargo shorts and talks constantly about legalizing weed and helping working families in abandoned parts of the state, so utterly destroy Lamb, a clean-cut centrist who frequently votes to loosen financial regulations and avoids taking hold stances on hot button issues?
The answer is right there in the question.
As we constantly emphasize here at Progress Report, people need something to vote for, and in a time of utter disgust with an establishment politics that has failed them in every way, which a guy like Fetterman, who embodies the rejection of the staid business as usual, more appealing than ever.
Unfortunately, corporate-backed slanderous attacks on good progressive candidates are much more effective in smaller races, where a few million bucks can blanket the airwaves with attack ads for months. Unfortunately, those attack ads are also often more effective against women of color.
AIPAC and DFMI, two ostensibly pro-Israel organizations that somehow back dozens and dozens of insurrectionist Republicans with white nationalist ties, spent obscene sums of money to help conservative anti-choice and anti-union candidates in Congressional primaries in Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
In North Carolina, the investment paid off with a pair of victories in Congressional districts 1 and 4. The CD-1 loss is especially egregious, as the two PACS — as well as the AFL-CIO and Democratic Whip James Clyburn, smh — backed Don Davis, an anti-abortion Democrat who has done little to distinguish himself during his time in office.
Davis beat out a young state legislator named Nida Allam, a true progressive who was endorsed by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and a bevy of local progressive organizations. You can read more about that depressing race right here.
On the bright side, it seems like the Democratic establishment and corporate lit $3 million on fire trying to derail the ascendancy of grassroots hero Summer Lee, a state legislator running for Congress in Pennsylvania’s 12th district.
AIPAC and DFMI spent more than $3 million on negative, misleading ads against Lee, who is one of the most effective and progressive lawmakers in the state, but their candidate of choice, a former Republican anti-union lawyer named Steve Irwin (no relation to the late crocodile guy), inspired absolutely nobody.
An onslaught of ads — along with support from trade unions and outgoing Rep. Mike Doyle — helped to significantly slash Lee’s massive lead in the polls, but she held on thanks to some clutch assistance from the Working Families Party and Justice Democrats.
I hope the message that Democratic leaders take from tonight is that their voters want outspoken representatives that will take bold stances, punch back at conservatives, and side with working people over corporate lobbyists. For far too long, the party has taken its base voters for granted, just assuming that they’ll turn out in general elections. That’s always a mistake, but would be an especially perilous one to make this year, given Democrats’ miserable polling numbers and the unhappiness of the coalition that delivered them the trifecta in November 2020.
It’s always better to have voters who want to vote for — and volunteer for! — a candidate than to have them begrudgingly vote for because the Republican alternative is even worse. Democrats have been unable to accomplish anything these past few years, and not just due to the intransigence of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.
Voters won’t bother turning out for the same hacks and corporate toadies. Promoting new voices that repudiate the staid establishment is probably the party’s best chance of not getting wiped out this fall… that and going up against the maniacs that the GOP is nominating…
The Republican Mess
The nod for the GOP Senate nomination in Pennsylvania is too close to call, with just .1% separating Dave McCormick and the Trump-supported Dr. Oz (reality TV star huckster solidarity is evidently very strong).
On a personal note, Dr. Oz was part of the cardiac surgical practice at Columbia Presbyterian in 2009 and 2012, when I underwent two of my heart surgeries, and it’s terrifying to think a man with that much goop in his brain was allowed to be responsible for the lives of so many people.
Trump’s candidate for Pennsylvania governor, the QAnon-aligned, Big Lie-supporting Doug Mastriano, waltzed to the GOP nomination. The guy is, in a word, a nut:
Mastriano has pledged to decertify equipment from “compromised” vendors, espousing debunked conspiracy theories. He also said during a debate that he wants all 9 million registered voters in the state to re-register — an idea that would likely run afoul of federal law. He was in Washingtonfor the rally that preceded the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, though he has said he left the area before the day turned violent.
A retired Army colonel who enjoyed a rapid political ascent since his election to a south-central Pennsylvania state Senate seat in 2019, Mastriano has proposed banning abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy with no exceptions. He has called for eliminating property taxes, expanding charter schools, and banning “critical race theory” in schools.
He’ll take on Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who ran virtually unopposed for the Democratic nod. Shapiro was the hand-picked successor of termed-out Gov. Tom Wolff, and though he’s not exactly a firebrand progressive, he’s been very outspoken and not afraid to throw a punch against Republicans and corrupt actors.
In North Carolina, Trump-backed Rep. Ted Budd blew out former Gov. Pat McCrory for the Senate nomination. McCrory was truly a shitty governor, but evidently did not fail his constituents with the kind of flourish that Trump likes to see in his endorsees.
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