An AP story carried on many outlets, you can Google the title, "Hillary Clinton, not on ballot, is star of GOP midterm attacks." Headlines may vary but that is the gist. Why it is not really unfair.

The San Jose Mercury version of the AP carry, full headline,

Hillary Clinton, not on ballot, is star of GOP midterm attacks --
Critics suggest the Republican strategy reeks of desperation, if not sexism

That sub-head is fully true as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. The Clintons are hash because of what they did to the Democratic party, making it Repubican-lite, which Obama continued despite promises of HOPE and CHANGE. They, the three and not merely Ms. Clinton alone, are worthy of attack and scorn, mainly by progressives a/k/a Berniecrats, more than Republicans.

Also, there is name recognition. Heap the scorn on Tom Perez and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and many who vote anyway would not know who you discuss and would need to read a few paragraphs to learn. Say Clinton. Bingo. Saying Podesta brothers fails in most minds to ring the "pure evil" bell you get by saying "Koch." That should not be. Equivalents need recognition as such.

Yet Ms. Clinton is a fine and dandy symbol of all that went kaput with the Democratic party resulting in Trump as President. The high point for its crassness was the convention balloon drop for the Clintons and the VP pair, whatever their name was. That online as a video with "Stronger Together" sung aggressively as background says it all. Dumb as dirt and an insult where the Clinton constituency started with and ended with Goldman Sachs.

Not my Democratic party.

BERNIE WOULD HAVE WON.

That is what every progressive candidate should be starting any discourse with; then saying what Bernie ran on as an agenda and that the same goal set will be that candidate's aim.

As the AP article has a focus on Republicans wanting to "run again against Clinton" every sound non-Blue Dog Democrat should "run with the Bern." That said, back to the AP/Mercury article, a quote or two:

With control of Congress up for grabs this fall, the GOP’s most powerful players are preparing to spend big on plans to feature Clinton as a central villain in attack ads against vulnerable Democrats nationwide. The strategy, which already has popped up in races in Pennsylvania, Indiana and North Dakota, illustrates the resilience and political potency of Republican voters’ antipathy for Clinton. As difficult as it’s been for Democrats to move past the Clinton era, it may be even harder for Republicans.

“STOP HILLARY. STOP PELOSI. STOP LAMB,” read pamphlets circulated during the special election in Pennsylvania earlier this year.

That’s just a taste of what’s to come as the November elections grow closer, say those who control the GOP’s strategy in the first midterm elections of Donald Trump’s presidency.

“I promise you that you’ll continue to see it — Hillary Clinton starring in our paid media. She’s a very powerful motivator,” said Corry Bliss, who leads the Congressional Leadership Fund, a Republican super political action committee ready to spend tens of millions of dollars to shape House races this fall. “It’s about what she represents. What she represents, just like what Nancy Pelosi represents, is out-of-touch far-left liberal positions.”

Well, last sentence exposes the big lie. Nancy Pelosi, like Obama and the Clintons, is Republican-lite, the antithesis of progress and progressivism. Pelosi is a Rockefeller Republican when the party of the Rockefellers is going hell bent to throw tea in the ocean, purposeless in being so oriented, except pissed off at how bad the nation has been abused by politicians of both parties since World War II.

That pisses me off too, but I do not go off the cliff as a Tea Party Patriot. That's stupidity, and I instead see what Bernie set as a platform and cannot find a simple thing wrong with it. Were I a plutocrat with a Koch attitude, different story, but I am not wealthy off the backs of the rest of the nation and am without that inhumane view. Back to the article's midsection:

Critics suggest the strategy reeks of desperation, if not sexism. But with no Democrat to attack in the White House for the first time in nearly a decade, Republicans are betting big that the ghost of Clinton will serve them well in 2018. Saddled with Trump’s poor approval ratings, they may have little choice.

It’s helpful, some Republicans say, that Clinton refuses to disappear from national politics altogether.

Less than a year ago, she launched a political organization designed to encourage anti-Trump “resistance” groups. She made two public appearances this week alone. During recent remarks in India, she took a shot at Trump’s slogan and his appeal across middle America: “His whole campaign, ‘Make America Great Again,’ was looking backwards,” Clinton said.

[...] “She’s called you ‘deplorable.’ Now, she’s called you ‘backwards,'” said one ad that targeted Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson.

“If Bill Nelson had his way, Hillary Clinton would be president,” the ad continued. “Florida won’t forget.”

[...] Internal polling and focus groups conducted by Republican campaigns find that Clinton remains one of the most unpopular high-profile Democrats in the nation, second only to Pelosi, the House minority leader. Just 36 percent of Americans viewed Clinton favorably in a December Gallup poll, an all-time low mark that bucked a trend in which unsuccessful presidential candidates typically gain in popularity over time.

“We’re going to make them own her,” Republican National Committee spokesman Rick Gorka said.

Well she and Obama own Tom Perez, and that is shameful; the DNC and DCCC do own the Clinton legacy and national viewpoint that money talks all else walks; Hello and hail Wall Street. Yet the inner party Republicans are no different, that is the joke.

And Clinton using the term "deplorables?" She got it right and it galls the deplorables that they are called what they are. Her error was ignoring and being among the "deplorables" of her own party.

Run one of those focus groups among Berniecrats who watched Haim Saban have his way over Ellison at DNC, and you find the same distaste present and pungent.

BOTTOM LINE ON THE REPUBLICANS DECIDING TO RUN AGAINST CLINTON: Run against evil and incompetence is not a bad strategy to hide being a Republican and hence running to promote greater evil and comparable incompetence, White House on down.

May the Blue Wave be a progressive one. That being a wish and far from an expectation. Warmed over Obama is more a likelihood. Students still screwed big time over college debt. No single payer. No living minimum wage. Labor insecurity being the law of the land. Wall Street over Main Street. Big war spending, dumb war ongoing. Gitmo still open. Afghanistan poppies fueling Big Pharma dope pushing, still and ongoing, because it pays.

Fusion GPS founders write of Trump. While not expected to present a dry, neutral exegesis, this is better.

NY Times published it, Apr 21, 2018. Yet the Trump brand in use possibly to launder illegal money into the US remains fair game, always in season, no bag limit.

The most significant recent development involving the president may be that the special counsel, Robert Mueller, has subpoenaed Trump Organization business records as part of his inquiry into Russian interference in the presidential election.

Those documents — and records recently seized by the F.B.I. from the president’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen — might answer a question raised by the president’s critics: Have certain real estate investors used Trump-branded properties to launder the proceeds of criminal activity around the world?

Pop the popcorn, the show may have started. Even with Jarad and Ivanka branded junk aside and apart, it's theater. The hook, as written:

A string of bankruptcies in the 1990s and 2000s may have left Mr. Trump’s companies largely unable to tap traditional sources of financing. That could have forced him to look elsewhere for financing and partners at a time when money was pouring out of the former Soviet Union.

Indeed, from New York to Florida, Panama to Azerbaijan, we found that Trump projects have relied heavily on foreign cash — including from wealthy individuals from Russia and elsewhere with questionable, and even criminal, backgrounds. We saw money traveling through offshore shell companies, entities often used to obscure ownership. Many news organizations have since dug deeply into the Trump Organization’s projects and come away with similar findings.

This reporting has not uncovered conclusive evidence that the Trump Organization or its principals knowingly abetted criminal activity. And it’s not reasonable to expect the company to keep track of every condo buyer in a Trump-branded building. But Mr. Trump’s company routinely teamed up with individuals whose backgrounds should have raised red flags.

All circumstantial or will the records - the paper and email and cell phone trail - prove intent to prosper any way feasible, even promise a gig on the TV apprentice thing if it gets the man into his aims and wants; possibly even needs. Which would not have been unlawful, but perhaps in the big garbage mountain even Jarad might have a share.

But Pence. What's the story on Pence, the Russians, anybody where dealings might have crossed a line? Is there that nugget of stuff that could stick to Pence? Not much but something would be fine enough. Of course there are Pence supporters who would want the opposite.

Both of them.

In an ideal world there would be more admitted to med school, and fewer admitted into the military academies.

Doctors are useful. Supply and demand has traditionally been minuplated by the profession itself, via control of the number of students allowed into the nation's med schools. If justice were to be served some attorney general with sound ambition and the fortitude needed would sue the bastards for "contract, combination or conspiracy in restraint of trade."

That, of course, is opinion. An opinion reawakened by this Strib local report.

The officer corps has bloat enough already, and they deal death and not healing. Priorities are stood on their head; and who makes such decisions?

Not you nor I. And saying the economy is rigged does not unrig it; but in seeing how badly it is rigged, lift every rock and examine all the critters that are a-crawl beneath each.

And yes, nurse practitioners can push pills as well as any M.D. relying on what the pharma sales rep comes by and touts as the next great new thing. Lab tests and pill pushing need not rest upon a band of commerce rigging folks who can put an M.D. behind their name after being "toughened for combat" by the Med School faculties. Surely skilled surgeons are apart from "primary care" which as this is written is being proven to be sufficiently handled by nurse practitioners, bless each and every one of them.

Reform need not have tunnel vision only for the bankers and Wall Street. Much needs attention, the M.D. cabal included.

UPDATE: A parallel Strib item, here. Figure that one out from the insurers' perspective. The private insurance paradigm is to take in as much cash as feasible and to be penurious in payouts since that's aiding the bottom line. If someone croaks while waiting for a bed and treatment, obviating expensive care, would the person's private-sector insurer cry over that outcome? It's a racket.

Minnesota's CD1 Republicans prove, of all things, interesting. At least in one sense.

Strib covers that operation's convening, this being the quote that resonates:

Republicans gathering in Mankato delivered a surprise result in a straw poll on the GOP governor's race. Hennepin County Commissioner Jeff Johnson finished first, followed by Woodbury Mayor Mary Giuliani Stephens. Former Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who instantly became a top-tier candidate when he joined the race on April 5, was third and Phil Parrish was fourth.

Why Parrish was not third is a question, but beyond that: Likely the resulting order among the four means the gathered faithful would not buy a used car from Pawlenty this time around.

Or it means that money can't buy you love. But Pawlenty is in it for the primary where the rich fund his ambition to serve the rich who told him to leave the big DC paycheck and get back to flyover machinations where instead of being kept by them he was needed by them.

If Johnson beats Timmy in the primary it will prove the rich are now gaining disdain even among Republican grass roots to where the rich only have Tom Perez, the DCCC and the DNC to turn to.

A Blue Wave without progressives atop it, leading edge surfing that wave, will be a ho-hum, as usual, and not monumental.

Let's get monumental for a change.

Laura Moser representing a person and place to see something, Randy Bryce being another. The Bryce thing might be a disappointment with Darth Vader no longer being there to unseat; even should the force be with Bryce. Michelle Lee up in CD8 might prove something, or she might be sidetracked along the way and Stauber elected.

If Ian Todd can unseat Emmer in CD6, that would not be only a Blue Wave, it would be a tsunami.

May it be. So folks in CD6, besides those that are the Emmerites, show Todd a little respect. Donate.

Also, in the several states where legislatures and executive powers may be turned, that might be where grass root progressivism does best.

There is hope. Hope for Our Revolution being prophetically named, rather than less. HOPE, for actual CHANGE.

Does the Tea Party still have Angst? And - why don't they have a roundtable?

Links, here, here, here.

Video.

A non-round table. You go for a non-round, you get nailed?

The King Arthur legend was pagan stuff, round table and all. Spiel. What's spiel help, who's paying for the spiel? Content vs length, why so many words? Used car test is a good test. Is the Tea Party set to buy that used car, or has it options? Anyway, is it a luxury used car Tea Partiers cannot really afford?

UPDATE: Is there wisdom in electing an entertainer, has it proven itself, and will there not always be another one or the same one, step up, sell?

Going into an election where 30sec negative advertisements may predominate, keeping a grounding and perspective in the world as it is might help in sorting things out.

Chomsky. Try thinking about who is offering the best option to growing worker insecurity. Student debt insecurity. Healthcare insecurity. Social Security insecurity. Paul Ryan.

Only two parties. Only two choices up/down the ballot. Always lesser evil? Need it be so?

Do political advertisements inform or incite? How should it be?

DCCC does another number against Laura Moser in Texas, possibly feigning error but withdrawing an endorsement of AFL-CIO opposed Fletcher, (Moser's party runoff election opponent). Moser survives and prospers with grassroots contributions, even with DC money aligned elsewhere.That is Texas, but closer to home, grassroots support is necessary as well.

Besides AFL-CIO support Moser has Our Revolution backing. The story here. The Fletcherless list, here. There Craig and Phillips, Minnesota CD2 and CD3 respectively are endorsed. Nobody in CD6. Nobody in CD1. Nobody in CD8.

CD6 appears to have only Ian Todd as the DFL candidate wanting to take the seat Tom Emmer currently holds. Todd is not rolling in money. Todd is not supported by DCCC.

Is DCCC a barometer of anything besides grassroots disdain but loving candidates with money; and thus a touchstone of where progressives should look to find other choices for donations?

Craig, she's fine enough, but a millionaire with DCCC money too, so that gives me no incentive to contribute. She's enough and only has to campaign hard, ride the Blue Wave, and go to Congress in Jason Lewis' place. Yes that would be quite an upgrade. Yes if in that district I'd vote for her in an eyeblink. No my meager discretionary funds are not going there, but elsewhere. Same attitude toward Phillips. Paulsen disdains town halls or other returning to the district to meet people and hear their needs, but Phillips has DCCC money for the fight.

Ian Todd is great on the issues that matter. And he needs donor money to help run a campaign:

Facebook. ActBlue.

In the Minnesota Legislative District where I live, HD 35A, DFL endorsed candidate Bill Vikander also needs to be recognized and helped by local donors. If the grassroots do not work hard, they wither.

Facebook. ActBlue.

Across the river, a photo of a generic Republican candidate with two current Republican fixtures, the speakers gavel, and another to his right. The first fixture needs to change party hands, the second can simply drift away west to purchase Broncos.

The focus here, however, is where the household is, and that's the land of Todd and Vikander. And to help their need to compete.