In the last few days Randy Bryce debated Paul Ryan's cutout candidate to replace himself, corporate lawyer and job outsourcer Bryan Steil. Randy kicked his ass so badly that Steil, teary-eyed, ran from the building without even consoling his small contingent of deflated supporters. A day or two earlier, Kara Eastman shamed incumbent Donald Bacon in a debate. According to the Omaha World Herald "On climate change, Eastman described it as the 'No. 1 moral issue facing our kids right now. We are leaving this to them to clean up, and it is a disaster.'... [Bacon] questioned how much of climate change is caused by human activity but said 'regardless of where that ratio is at, let’s keep making our planet cleaner.'"





Both Randy and Kara have raised the money they need to stay competitive. Eastman raised $2,028,178 to Bacon's $2,363,497 but needs DCCC help to offset Ryan's shady SuperPAC pouring $1,145,183 in negative ads in against her. The DCCC has spent ZERO in the district. Randy has outraised Bryan Steil by a mile-- $7,390,769 to $1,664,276 but Ryan's SuperPAC has spent or reserved $4,000,000 in the cycle's ugliest smear campaign anywhere. The DCCC responded with: ZERO.





Both campaigns have polls that show the races are essentially tied. But the DCCC has refused to counter-attack against the ceaseless barrage of negative ads flooding the airwaves the way they are doing for New Dem and Blue Dog candidates from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. If the Republican agenda is to crush the middle class, it usually feels like the DCCC's agenda doesn't differ all that much. The elitists who run the congressional wing of the party are not working people. Working people clean their toilets and they don't want them in Congress. How many decision-makers in Congress made a living with their hands? The problems is that these elites don't want working people crashing "their" party. How many of them understand what it's like to get up and go to work every day and to come home physically exhausted-- and then worry about paying the bills?





Standing in their Christian Louboutins or Guccis, with a cocktail, they shudder when they meet a man in work boots holding a beer who wants to be elected to Congress. Fuck them in their Louis Vuttion shoes; fuck them because-- whether they know it or not-- they're conservatives and they are the enemy of working families everywhere. The DCCC needs a Testoni or a Diciannoveventitre right up the ass-- and fast.





This week, Politico mentioned that Corry Bliss, the executive director of Ryan's sleazy SuperPAC, had told them that the DCCC was "abandoning" Nebraska 2-- "the more progressive candidate that the DCCC did not endorse won the primary, which operatives believe pushed the seat to the GOP." Moron operatives. That candidate they supported was defeated by the GOP and that's why NE-02 has a Republican today. Try a progressive that the local Democrats support? NOT.A.CHANCE! Not this Pelosi-controled DCCC.









Kara doesn't seem that concerned that the DCCC won't be running their negative ads against Don Bacon. She doesn't want non-issue-oriented ads in the district, regardless of which party runs them. "The ads CLF are running for my opponent," she told us this week, "embody everything that is wrong with politics today. These ads are designed to scare people, to divide people, and to discourage people from getting involved in politics. Nebraskans deserve better, which is why I am committed to running my campaign with integrity and will continue to put people first."





As Erik Gunn wrote at The Progressive recently, "Bryce has been an ironworker, building projects ranging from parking garages to some of Milwaukee’s most recognizable landmarks. While serving also as political coordinator for his union local, he emerged as an outspoken advocate for labor in his community. When Walker took office as governor in January 2011 and soon after introduced his plan to strip teachers and most other public employees of their union rights, Bryce joined the tens of thousands of public- and private-sector workers who staged massive protests at the capitol building in Madison." At one of those protests, Bryce was arrested though not charged. Now that arrest may be a badge of honor, it is also part of a coordinated multi-million dollar smear campaign Ryan's PAC is running against him-- a smear campaign Pelosi and the DCCC refuse to answer.





Just one day after Bryce launched his uphill campaign against Paul Ryan, he raised $100,000 "and within a week stories about Bryce had appeared in publications from the Washington Post to Politico. The New Republic interviewed Bryce, and Esquire writer and acerbic political blogger Charlie Pierce flew out for his kickoff rally at Kenosha’s United Auto Workers union hall."

“I really think it was the contrast of this worker, this regular Wisconsinite with a hard hat, completely blue collar,” [state Rep JoCasta] Zamarripa says. “I just think that captured the press’s attention and the public’s attention. Because here’s a guy that’s the exact opposite of his opponent, Paul Ryan.”



In April, however, Ryan announced that he would not seek re-election. Taking credit, Bryce coined a catchphrase that puts a snarky twist on Republican vows to undo the Affordable Care Act, declaring, “We just repealed Paul Ryan. Now it’s time to replace him.”



...Yet given that the First District went for Romney in 2012 and Trump in 2016, the question is inevitable: Can any Democrat win the district as it’s now constituted? And will Trump’s most enthusiastic backers, some of whom are clustered in the white working class, actually vote for someone like Bryce?



Denise Cox is one Bryce volunteer who thinks that’s possible. The sixty-one-year-old grandmother, a Navy veteran, has voted for only one Democrat for President in her life—Jimmy Carter—because she felt the party was too weak on defense. But over time, she became less satisfied with the Republican Party over such issues as climate change. She liked Bernie Sanders in the 2016 election and was disappointed he wasn’t the Democratic nominee.



The separation of immigrant families at the border was what finally pulled her away from the Republican Party for good, she says. When she went looking on Twitter, “thinking there’s got to be something better,” she stumbled across @IronStache. She liked what she saw.



“This is a real person, with real experiences,” Cox says. She likes his support for Medicare for All, and respects that he’s a veteran. “That’s very important to me.”



Hearing Cox talk on a phone bank about her own political shift, the Bryce campaign made a video with her aimed at persuading other, potentially like-minded voters. “I think the majority of people in this country are ready for big changes, and I am excited about that,” she says. “The more I talk to people, the more I realize that I’m not unique.”



Bryce, in an interview with The Progressive, tells of a fellow ironworker who was a vocal Trump supporter before the election. “He was razzing me, ‘We’re going to drain the swamp!’ All that kind of talk,” Bryce recalls.



“I wouldn’t put him down,” he continues. “I wouldn’t call him names, say things like ‘You’re an idiot if you’re going to vote for Trump.’ I was like, ‘What do you think he’s going to do for you? He’s lying to you.’ ”



At a recent ironworkers event, Bryce ran into the man again. He says his coworker had a change of heart after seeing the reality of Trump in office. “He came up to me at that event and he’s like, ‘OK, own this. Go kick some ass.’ He was completely on board.”