Joe drove his Prius to every town in PA. If cash flowing into the Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee hadn't stopped Joe Sestak. Admiral Joe Sestak would have been our Senator.
Instead we got 11 years of Wall Street made Republican Pat Toomey.
McGinty is still unknown.
What’s different this time is John Fetterman has the support of many Democratic committee people. In Pennsylvania, the individual Democratic committee people came around to Joe & John’s way of taking politics to the people.
Win or lose there's money to be made in politics.
This time Democrats losing in the midterm elections means a Republican Congress, Senate and a Ginny & Clarence Thomas Republican Supreme Court.
And maybe the end of Democracy in the United States.
Money to lose with ain’t all there is anymore.
***
“It’s not about John Fetterman,” Smith said. “It’s about the strength of Conor Lamb.”
Conor Lamb's real "strength" is the flow of corporate bribes from pharmacutical billionaires & health insurance billionaires into the pockets of Democratic Committee people.
"An outside group planning to attack Pennsylvania Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman for supporting single-payer health care is being led by a consultant whose firm works for the health insurance giant Cigna, documents show.
The super PAC, Penn Progress, says it is supporting conservative Democratic Rep. Conor Lamb in the Pennsylvania race because he represents the party’s “strongest chance to flip the seat” — despite the group’s own polling data finding that Fetterman, the lieutenant governor, is trouncing Lamb in the primary and performing better than Lamb against at least one top Republican candidate, according to reporting by Politico.
While Fetterman might actually be Democrats’ best chance to take the seat, Politico obtained a slide deck prepared for donors showing that Penn Progress is preparing to attack Fetterman as a “socialist” who supports a “government takeover of health care.” These are standard talking points used by Republicans and corporate health care propagandists — which makes sense, given the super PAC’s ties to the industry.
Penn Progress’ executive director, Erik Smith, leads a communications firm that works for Cigna, one the nation’s largest health insurers, according to a corporate financial filing. Smith was previously a spokesperson for a health care industry front group campaign created to oppose Medicare for All — and another Penn Progress consultant also worked for the front group…
The Pennsylvania primary is a vital one for Democrats, as they have an opportunity to pick up a Republican seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Pat Toomey. Biden narrowly defeated former President Donald Trump in the state by 1.8 percentage points in 2020. The primary election takes place on May 17.
So far, Fetterman has outraised Lamb. Fetterman’s campaign ended last year with $5.3 million on hand, while Lamb had raised $3 million.
There hasn’t been any outside spending in the Democratic primary race this year, but that could change soon.
Politico reported last month that Penn Progress has set a fundraising goal of $8 million. While the group only raised $35,000 last year, super PACs can raise money quickly since they are permitted to accept donations of any size.
Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville has started promoting Penn Progress, according to Politico. An email from Carville to potential donors said that Lamb was set to join a call with the super PAC’s supporters.
Penn Progress recently warned donors that Fetterman is leading Lamb by 30 points and even winning among Democrats who want a moderate candidate, according to Politico. The group’s polling also found Fetterman has a stronger lead than Lamb over Republican primary candidate Mehmet Oz, the television personality known as Dr. Oz.
A Penn Progress memo explained that “primary voters don’t yet see Fetterman as the liberal he is,” which is why the super PAC recently tested potential attack lines against Fetterman. The group’s proposed negative messages include the claim that “Fetterman supports far-left policies like a $34 trillion-dollar government takeover of health care.”
This is a highly misleading spin. Under a single-payer system, the government would insure everyone, but doctors and hospitals would still be privately-owned. Single-payer would save the U.S. significant money overall — because the current system is enormously wasteful, inefficient, and designed to make investors and corporate executives wealthy.
A recent study by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that a single-payer system would radically improve people’s lives: Americans would be paid higher wages, work fewer hours, save on medical expenses, retire earlier, and experience better health outcomes.
While Fetterman’s website doesn’t explicitly mention Medicare for All, he has long been a proponent of single-payer. He says in a video on his website that health care is “a basic, fundamental human right, no different than food or shelter or education.”
Lamb, by contrast, has opposed single-payer proposals…
According to a memo obtained by the Philadelphia Inquirer, Penn Progress has also hired Impact Research, a polling firm that has worked for Biden’s presidential campaign as well as the party committees that elect House and Senate Democrats. The firm, previously known as Anzalone Liszt Grove Research, conducted polling for PAHCF alongside Smith in 2018.
Smith told HuffPost that he’s working with Penn Progress because Lamb is the “best equipped” candidate to win the statewide race, since he’s won in a swing district three times.
“It’s not about John Fetterman,” Smith said. 'It’s about the strength of Conor Lamb.”
MORE AT:
The Corporate Threat In Dems’ Must-Win Senate Race
A health insurance consultant’s super PAC wants to tilt a Democratic primary against John Fetterman, who backs Medicare for All.
***
"It should have been easy to cast Glenn Youngkin, once the CEO of the financial behemoth Carlyle Group and now Virginia’s governor-elect, as a greedy private equity vampire. But when his opponent, former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, tried to pull it off in a debate, his attempt fell flat. “If you can trust me with your money, the rest of Virginia can trust me too,” Youngkin shot back, alluding to McAuliffe’s substantial investments in Carlyle. “It wasn’t any good investment, let me tell you that,” was all McAuliffe could muster in response.
Following the loss by McAuliffe, the establishment pick who sought to win his old job back after leaving the Virginia governorship in 2018, the next big test for the Democrats’ centrist wing is likely to be the primary contest to succeed outgoing Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. In the key swing state — which proved decisive in President Joe Biden’s election — centrists and progressives are preparing for a showdown between Rep. Conor Lamb, a House moderate and member of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, an ally of Sen. Bernie Sanders who endorsed the Vermont independent for president in 2016. Lamb, who has few endorsements from major leaders but has earned the stamp of reliable Democratic groups like the Human Rights Campaign, does not seem shy to take up the centrist mantle. Days after McAuliffe’s loss, Lamb tweeted, “If you want a Senator who runs as a Socialist, feeds the GOP attack ads, & didn’t help with infrastructure, I’M NOT YOUR GUY.”
But Lamb may find himself in a similar predicament as McAuliffe, trapped as an avatar of the Democratic party’s monied interests, having received over $100,000 in campaign contributions from PNC Bank executives and employees since his first congressional run in the 2018 cycle. Over $28,000 of that sum came from his father, a lobbyist and senior executive for the bank, and his wife, according to campaign finance records reviewed by The Intercept…
'Conor was one of 78 House Democrats who voted for this bill — nearly half of the Caucus at the time, including Leader Hoyer, Whip Clyburn and Chairman Jeffries,' wrote Lamb’s campaign manager Abby Nassif-Murphy in a statement to The Intercept. 'The bill applied to small community banks, not large banks like PNC, and Conor voted for it after listening to constituents at community banks in his district who had a common-sense case to make. Conor has also voted against legislation to relax regulations on large banks. This is just recycled Republican garbage that no one bought the first time and no one will buy now…'
Fetterman, Lamb’s leading primary opponent and previously the mayor of Braddock — a former steel town savaged by poverty — is unlikely to have many fans among the cufflinks crowd. Earlier this week, Fetterman joined striking teachers in Scranton, calling their current contract an “abomination.” The image of the towering, 6-foot-8-inch former college football player standing sentry over a crowd of union members is hard to miss and is one he’s sought to cultivate amid the recent spike in strike activity. Last month, Fetterman joined striking Kellogg’s workers at a cereal factory in East Hempfield Township. 'They posted record earnings and have been able to be compensated for providing the critical food supply that they do, and the workers deserve a share of that,” Fetterman said…
However, like Lamb, Fetterman is also a beneficiary of his father’s support, having received over $45,000 from him in federal campaign contributions. Fetterman’s father, Karl Fetterman, is a small business owner, with Federal Election Commission data identifying him as an “insurance agent” who works at Kling Bros. Insurance LLC. Insurance appears among Fetterman’s top industry supporters, representing some $36,000 in campaign contributions.
The vast majority of Fetterman’s campaign contributions come from small-dollar donors, whereas the reverse is true of Lamb. 68 percent of Fetterman’s campaign contributions came from small individual contributors versus 8 percent for Lamb, according to data compiled by OpenSecrets."
MORE AT:
The Intercept
Conor Lamb’s Bank Lobbyist Dad Shells for His Son’s Senate Campaign
The centrist Pennsylvania lawmaker hasn’t done much to obscure his fondness for big business.
November 12 2021, 11:10 a.m.
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