The Progressive Midwesterner

U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-OH) is considering a bid for U.S. House Speaker , as it's not clear if the presumed Speaker-designate, U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), has enough votes to be elected speaker in the upcoming Congress that will be sworn into office in January of next year. While I'm open to the idea of new leadership of the House Democrats (I believe that U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) would be a fantastic House Speaker, although, if I recall correctly, she is running for Democratic caucus chair instead of the Democratic nomination for House Speaker), nearly all of the serious opposition to Pelosi within the House Democratic caucus is ideologically to the right of Pelosi, meaning that, if Fudge or anyone else who is supported by the faction of anti-Pelosi Democrats who want to shift the Democratic Party rightward is elected Speaker, there will be immediate criticism towards Fudge or whoever else the new Speaker would be from progressives and Pelosi loyalists, two factions...

Thirty years ago, 1988 Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis actually won an Illinois county that neighbors Champaign County (specifically, Vermilion County), while losing Champaign County en route to losing Illinois as a whole as part of a landslide loss nationally to Republican George H.W. Bush. 1988 was the last time a Democratic presidential nominee lost Champaign County, but, until Tuesday, Champaign County had a strong Republican machine that, with few exceptions, dominated countywide elections. On Tuesday, the blue wave hit Champaign County in a big way, with all of the Democratic statewide candidates carrying Champaign County on the way to statewide victory (even Republican attorney general candidate Erika Harold, who is from Urbana, lost her home county on the way to losing statewide to Democratic Attorney General-elect Kwame Raoul), and Democratic countywide candidates in Champaign County winning five countywide races, including the newly-created office of county ...

Most election analysts are already predicting that this year's midterm elections are likely to be a very strong election year for the Democratic Party nationally. One region of the country that could amplify an already-likely "blue wave" of Democratic electoral victories is the Inland Midwest, a six state region consisting of Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota. The Inland Midwest region gets its name because all six states are Midwestern states, but none of the six states have a shoreline along any of the Great Lakes. The Inland Midwest is a very Republican-leaning region of the country, as Donald Trump received slightly over 56% of the vote in last year's presidential election in the six-state region . However, at least one statewide race in each of the six states in the Inland Midwest are competitive (including all three U.S. Senate races in the region), and several U.S. House seats in the region are competitive as well. As much of th...

Tomorrow, voters in Ohio's 12th Congressional District will vote in a special election to fill the district's vacant U.S. House seat. Recent pre-election opinion polling has shown that the election is expected to be extremely close, although support for Democratic nominee Danny O'Connor appears to be surging in the lead-up to the special election. One recent pre-election opinion poll had O'Connor only one percentage point behind Republican nominee Troy Balderson, well within the poll's margin of error, and a different pre-election opinion poll had O'Connor ahead of Balderson by only one percentage point, also within that poll's margin of error. The 12th District of Ohio was gerrymandered by Republicans to be what would be considered in 2012 to be a Republican stronghold. After cracking the Columbus area into three Republican-leaning districts after the 2000 Census, Republicans in Ohio, after the 2010 Census and despite Ohio losing two congressional distr...

On Tuesday, Kara Eastman, the chairwoman of Omaha, Nebraska's Metropolitan Community College (MCC) board, pulled off one of the biggest upsets in Nebraska political history by defeating former Congressman Brad Ashford in the Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District of Nebraska by a narrow margin, but a large enough margin to avoid an automatic recount, in the Democratic primary. Eastman will face Donald Trump crony Don Bacon in the general election in November. One big reason why Eastman won is because she is willing to stand up to those in her own party that oppose progressive values; this campaign ad is an actual campaign ad Eastman ran during the Democratic primary campaign: Eastman's victory in the Democratic primary will live in the glories of the progressive movement for generations to come. Democratic primary voters in Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District rejected the notion that Democrats need to appease Republicans, or even run Republican candidates as Democrat...

With less than two months until the March 20 major-party primary elections in Illinois, Marie Newman, who is seeking the Democratic nomination in the Chicago-area 3rd Congressional District of Illinois, is making it completely clear why she's running against incumbent U.S. Representative Dan Lipinski . As many of my blog's readers already know, Dan Lipinski is one of the most right-wing members of the U.S. House Democratic Caucus, having voted against expanding health care access for millions of Americans, co-sponsored unconstitutional legislation to restrict the right of women to make their own health care decisions , has opposed LGBT rights, voted against the pro-immigration DREAM Act, and has voted with fascist Republican President Donald Trump over one-third of the time . Lipinski's voting record is so awful, two of Lipinski's colleagues, Jan Schakowsky and Luis Gutiérrez , have endorsed Newman's campaign against Lipinski . Marie Newman, on the other hand, ...

I will note that I am currently serving a two-year term as an election judge in my home county of Vermilion County, Illinois, and I may be asked to serve as a poll worker in the March 20, 2018 primaries here in Illinois. If I am asked to serve as a poll worker in the primaries here in Illinois this year, I will do so to the best of my ability and in an impartial manner in accordance with Illinois state laws. This blog is completely separate from any election judge duties that I may have in the spring of 2018. However, I am also a registered voter here in Vermilion County, and I will publicly mention that I intend to vote for Mary Catherine Roberson for Vermilion County Clerk . As far as I know, Mary's campaign lacks a website or a Twitter page, although her campaign does have Facebook and Instagram pages. Mary is, like me, a progressive Democrat and a lifelong Vermilion County resident who strongly believes in the right to vote. Mary is a critic of the now-dissolved Kobach Co...