Joe Donnelly's fatherly advice to Jeff Gahan -- a pictorial.

Still, wouldn't you like to see Joe come back and campaign for Jeff in 2019?

Embarrassment as "the Donnelly campaign demonstrates the futility of seeking to surmount these obstacles by trying to out-Republican the Republicans."

This guy who wrote this piece teaches at Indiana University, the same place where Romeo is playing basketball.

The Guardian is big-time, so please pay attention.

Are there any questions?

The Democrats shouldn't move right to win Trump voters. Here's why, by Jeffrey C Isaac (The Guardian)

The midterms showed that pandering to Trumpism is a recipe not just for defeat but for demoralization. Even losing progressive campaigns brought hope

 ... How should the Democrats move forward with an eye toward 2020 and beyond? There are no easy answers, and in the weeks and months to come many answers will be debated. Democrats scored most of their victories in more or less liberal suburban and urban areas where Hillary Clinton won in 2016, and experienced defeat in much of Republican “red state” America, and especially the rural areas, where Trump won in 2016. Do the Democrats need to do better in these conservative, “red” areas? Certainly. Should Democrats attempt this by running candidates who play to the right and appeal to elements of Trump’s base? Many pundits are already stepping forward to urge this. I disagree. And the case of my home state of Indiana is instructive.

Is it ever.

One of the most striking Democratic losses on Tuesday was the resounding defeat of the incumbent Senator Joe Donnelly by conservative Republican Mike Braun. 

The word "loss" simply doesn't convey the odiousness.

The worst features of Trumpism dominated the Indiana Senate race. How did Donnelly respond? By emphasizing his closeness to Trump and the fact that he voted with Trump over 60% of the time, and by campaigning not against his rightwing attackers but against the left of his own party, running his own anti-immigrant, anti-liberal, and red-baiting ads.

It was a destructive and cynical calculation that severely compromised Donnelly’s integrity. More importantly, it was an abysmal political failure. Indiana voters drawn to Trumpism demonstrated on Tuesday that they strongly preferred a real, unadulterated Trumpist to a Democratic facsimile. And so Donnelly lost. First his soul, and then the election. A significant Democratic defeat.

Let's repeat that: "They strongly preferred a real, unadulterated Trumpist to a Democratic facsimile." And yet, how many self-styled local "progressives" voted for Donnelly and Liz Watson?

Area chiropractors should be having a field day.

Democrats lost big in Indiana. But some electoral losses can be seen as ethical and even political victories. And so I turn to Indiana’s ninth congressional district, and to the effort of Democrat Liz Watson to unseat one-term incumbent Republican Trey Hollingsworth.

As we already know, Watson also lost big.

In a way, the electoral margin underestimates the power of (her) loss. For while Watson campaigned tirelessly for months, holding town halls in every county in the district, Hollingsworth did virtually nothing. He held no town hall meetings, and he refused to debate Watson even once. One of the richest men in Congress and a beneficiary of all of the Trumpist support thrown to Republicans in the state, Hollingsworth demonstrated a cynical contempt for the competitive elections and public accountability that are the hallmarks of constitutional democracy. And he won.

Hollingsworth’s victory is a devastating blow for Indiana liberal Democrats, and it underscores just how stacked is the deck against Democrats in the state, who confront a trifecta of serious obstacles: gerrymandered districts profoundly favoring Republicans; garden-variety Republican voter suppression; and a general electorate demographically inclined towards and seriously mobilized by the right.

At the same time, while the Donnelly campaign demonstrates the futility of seeking to surmount these obstacles by trying to out-Republican the Republicans, the Watson campaign demonstrates the potential for something better ... Unlike Donnelly, she refused to turn on her own base. Instead, she tried hard to expand that base. Watson lost, indeed by roughly the same margin that Donnelly lost. But while Donnelly inspired widespread disillusionment among liberal Democrats, Watson inspired hope, in the promise of citizen activism, and in the possibility of a better Democratic party.

The author goes on to make the point that Watson's loss can be rationalized according to future-oriented strategy, while that might possibly be gained from Donnelly's dopey foolishness is a desire to take as many showers as possible in a futile effort to out-distance the taint.

Pretty in Pink Slips: "The Indiana Democratic Party is badly broken, and party leaders must let go of what worked in the not too distant past."

A writer after my own heart, aiming straight for the jugular.

Swarens: Joe Donnelly's loss proves Indiana Democratic Party is broken, by Tim Swarens (Indianapolis Star)

No amount of gloss will turn a pigsty into a mansion, and no level of political spin can obscure the fact that Tuesday's elections were an utter disaster for Democrats in Indiana.

Let's survey the wreckage. With Joe Donnelly's impending exit from the U.S. Senate, Democrats will give up their only statewide office. Republicans will fill nine of 11 spots in Indiana's congressional delegation, including both Senate seats. The GOP on Tuesday retained super majorities in the Indiana House and Senate. Democrats last won the governor's office in 2000, and incumbent Gov. Eric Holcomb is a heavy favorite to win re-election in two years.

snip

How do Democrats in Indiana regroup? Is rebuilding even possible?

Let's answer the second question first: Yes, it can be done. And, as I'll argue a bit later, it's important for all Hoosiers that they eventually succeed.

But success will require acknowledging that the Indiana Democratic Party is badly broken, and party leaders must let go of what worked in the not too distant past.

Ding ding ding.

Younger, diverse voters told me repeatedly in this election cycle that they were turned off and even insulted by Donnelly's attempt to run away from his own party. They derided him as a Democrat In Name Only and a Republican Lite.

Their message to Democratic leaders in Indiana is to own who they are and to not apologize for belonging to the same party as Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren, just as many Republican candidates don't turn their backs on Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.

... Democrats here should look to Kansas, which until Tuesday was just as red as Indiana and where Democratic state Sen. Laura Kelly is now the governor-elect.

You may or may not agree with Swarens' rationale as to a solution, but it's hard to contest his critique of the fundamental problem.

"Global threats, from extremism to mental illness to humanitarian emergencies, can only be addressed if we take seriously the economic systems that foster them."

I'd like to thank Senator Donnelly for making my point for me. It saves time that way.

It's been a few months.

Back by popular demand: "Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems."

Think of it as a concise explanation of how both "major" American political parties are playing the very same hand, operating from the very same fundamental economic assumptions. In a few quantifiable ways, Democrats and Republicans differ on social issues, which have been elevated into culture wars, which in turn keep the 99% at each other's throats while the fundamental assumptions remain unchanged.

Neoliberalism Is Killing Us: Economic Stress as a Driver of Global Depression and Suicide, by Noelle Sullivan (Truthout)

 ... Perhaps it's time to acknowledge the role of our current global economic system in exacerbating the very problems we're trying to address, from extremism to mental health crises. Of course, there are no panaceas when it comes to mental health, but it's time we began acknowledging some of the structural issues that fuel anxiety and depression.

Perhaps it's time for economic innovations, instead of the tired claims around reduced government spending, tax cuts and deregulation.

Mourdock's corn-fed theocratic fascism should not distract from genuine issues of reproductive choice.

The current GOP position on God, rape and pregnancy shows a tremendous debt to Greek mythology.
--Andy Borowitz



Welcome to L'America, where pervasive religious hooey renders political bedroom peekers like Richard Mourdock into drooling, patriarchal, small-time ayatollahs, reposing permanently on their knees (whether in supplication to the imaginary or expressing thankfulness for the endless pipeline of cash from the Koch Brothers). They follow by crediting religion for making them what they are. That's true enough, as long as they don't forget to count the money.

But it gets worse. As Bluegill noted on Twitter, Joe Donnelly rushed to provide testimony that his own "god" and that of other Hoosiers wouldn't approve of such extremism, providing Mourdock's backers with the perfect opportunity to cite Donnelly's presumed chumminess with Barack Obama as evidence that his "god" is a Muslim one, anyway, and as we wait to see if any candidate in the nation cares to discuss important matters like climate change, we're back to wondering what our Senate hopefuls feel about the deity's role in the Holocaust and child molestation (thanks, Rodney).

Unfortunately, as revolting as Mourdock's worldview remains, and equallty lamentable Donnelly's failure to eschew the fanatics, the rape/abortion equation continues to distract: Reproductive choice and women's rights are synonymous, and should be the rule, not the exception ... and leave your specific "god" out of it, okay?

Richard Mourdock On Abortion: Pregnancy From Rape Is 'Something God Intended', by Michael McAuliff (Huffington Post)

... All three said they were anti-abortion. But Mourdock went the further, putting himself in territory near Missouri GOP Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin, the anti-abortion congressman who infamously asserted that women don't get pregnant from "legitimate rape."

"The only exception I have to have an abortion is in the case of the life of the mother," said Mourdock, the Tea Party-backed state treasurer. "I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize life is that gift from God. I think that even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen."