I had a fun exclusive story yesterday afternoon, one that regular readers of this email probably know was long in the making: the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is finally jumping into the special election in Montana.
Anyhow, the HBO show VEEP is supposed to be a complete parody of Washington, but I actually think it is by far the most realistic depiction of this world that it is my privilege to write about on a daily basis.
This latest trip by Bernie Sanders to Omaha, part of a DNC-Bernie "Unity Tour," is a case in point. He went out there with deputy chair Keith Ellison to rally for Heath Mello, a Democrat running in a general election for mayor in just a few weeks. This was part of the 50-state strategy, the idea that Dems shouldn't give up in any race anywhere.
But apparently nobody had googled the guy, and he had a long, proud anti-choice voting record in the state legislature. When national groups found about that, they slammed Bernie for campaigning for him and calling him "progressive."
Daily Kos pulled their endorsement. Perez stuck by him; so did Bernie. (I don't think either of them knew about his record; I interviewed Sanders two weeks ago about this trip and at the time he didn't appear to necessarily even know the guy's name. "I will be in Omaha, Nebraska, where there is going to be a mayor's race and my understanding is that the Democratic candidate there has a chance to win if voter turnout is high, and we'll do what we can to create high voter turnout," he told me.)
One thing Sanders fans like about Sanders is that he's stubborn. You're not moving him easily. So my guess is that he later found out he was campaigning for an anti-choice candidate but wasn't going to admit he didn't know that, so started justifying it. That justification infuriated people, especially as he refused to endorse Jon Ossoff in Georgia, saying he wasn't sure if he was progressive or not. (Ossoff, for his part, was probably quite happy to have Sanders say that.)
After taking a bunch of heat, Perez himself has done a giant climb down, and now says any Democratic candidate must either be pro-choice or pledge to govern as pro-choice regardless of their personal views. Yesterday, in a statement to HuffPost, the mayoral candidate did just that, saying that despite his own views, he "would never do anything to restrict access to reproductive health care." So this shambolic journey through the heartland actually ended as a big win for the reproductive rights movement, particularly for NARAL, which led the charge on it.
And Sanders now says he endorses Ossoff (though his statement noticeably does not use the word "progressive.")
Meanwhile, back in Washington, Republicans are taking that other run at Obamacare that I mentioned the other day. A lot of people are scratching their heads at why, so Sam Stein and I try to explain that here.
Have a good weekend!
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