The Progressive Midwesterner

The Democratic nominee in the 9th Congressional District of Indiana is Liz Watson, a fifth-generation Hoosier, an attorney who has represented low-wage workers and victims of domestic violence, a former labor policy director for the U.S. House Democratic Caucus, and one of the most progressive Democrats to be nominated for a Republican-held U.S. House seat in the 2018 midterm elections. Can an unabashed progressive like Liz Watson win a U.S. House seat in the Southern Indiana-based 9th Congressional District of Indiana? I believe that she can! One thing that defines Watson's style of politics, more than anything else that one could say about her, is that she is a fighter for the people. On her campaign's biography page, Watson described her style of politics in this sentence: I will always vote to make Hoosiers’ lives better, and that will be my litmus test for every single vote I take. There is this pervasive mentality, particularly in the Trump era, among many in the R...

Even though the 2018 general election for all 435 U.S. House seats aren't until November 6, U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who, when he was an assistant wrestling coach at The Ohio State University, turned a blind eye to sexual assault committed by now-deceased team doctor Richard Strauss, launched his bid for U.S. House Speaker. There are precisely two reasons why Jordan would launch a bid to become speaker: either Jordan believes that current House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), who has already announced that he will not run for re-election to his House seat, is going to give up the speakership before the midterm elections, or Jordan is deluded enough to believe that Republicans are all but certain to retain a majority of seats in the House (according to a FiveThirtyEight weighted aggregation of polls, Democrats have, as of this writing, a 7.7% generic congressional ballot lead, which, given the Republicans' net gerrymandering advantage, that would mean that Democrats have at leas...