So this happened yesterday:
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema does not support Democrats' $3.5 trillion budget plan that aims to deliver major components of President Joe Biden’s economic agenda that Democrats hope to pass after moving a separate bipartisan infrastructure deal that Sinema negotiated.
Sinema, D-Ariz., told The Arizona Republic on Wednesday she had reviewed the Senate Budget Committee’s spending framework and has told Senate leadership and Biden that she supports many of its goals, including job growth and American competitiveness.
“I have also made clear that while I will support beginning this process, I do not support a bill that costs $3.5 trillion — and in the coming months, I will work in good faith to develop this legislation with my colleagues and the administration to strengthen Arizona’s economy and help Arizona’s everyday families get ahead,” Sinema said in a written statement.
Cue John Fetterman (D. PA):
Pennsylvania Lt. Governor John Fetterman (D) on Wednesday publicly criticized Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) for voicing opposition to a $3.5 trillion price tag on a spending package that includes large swaths of President Biden's jobs and families plan.
"In unprecedented times like these, Democrats need to vote like Democrats," Fetterman, a U.S. Senate candidate, said in a statement. "We have the majority, we have the presidency, we have the House, we have the Senate – so let’s act like it and finally deliver Biden’s agenda to the American people."
Fetterman joined a chorus of progressive lawmakers who took shots at Sinema after she condemned the spending bill's $3.5 trillion price tag while expressing support for starting debate on the budget resolution that lays the ground work for the spending package backed by Democrats.
Well said. Until we can expand our Majority in the Senate and make Sinema insignificant, we still need to put pressure on her to not sink this package. If you are an Arizona constituent, click here to contact her office and tell her to stop her whole schtick and just vote for the package as it is.
By the way, while we are on Fetterman, he continues to be a fundraising juggernaut:
Democrat John Fetterman is showing his early fundraising prowess in the crowded stakes for Pennsylvania’s open U.S. Senate seat ahead of next year’s election.
Fetterman, the state’s lieutenant governor, reported $2.5 million raised in the three months ending June 30, leaving him with $3 million in his campaign account. That is far more than any candidate, Republican or Democrat, has reported.
Thursday was the Federal Election Commission deadline to file reports for the second quarter.
Fetterman is making his second run for U.S. Senate after coming in third in an expensive three-way Democratic primary race in 2016.
Second behind Fetterman in fundraising in the Democratic primary is Val Arkoosh, who chairs the three-member Montgomery County board of commissioners.
And speak his mind:
Universal voter ID is “insidious and unnecessary,” Mr. Fetterman said, because it would risk disenfranchising thousands of Pennsylvania residents who don’t have access to ID at any given time — and because there’s no such thing as voter fraud, he added.
“It is rare, it is always caught and it is never materially important to the outcome,” Mr. Fetterman said, adding that the few instances of voter fraud Pennsylvania did experience in 2020 were supporters of Mr. Trump voting on behalf of their dead relatives.
Mr. Fetterman said if he’s elected to the Senate next year, he would vote in favor of ending the filibuster and “enacting the kind of voting laws this country needs in order to protect and provide universal voting access and push back all of these laws instituted in states like yours and attempted in states like mine.”
On Twitter, he has written that he’d support the For the People Act — a federal voting and elections package that Senate Republicans have vowed to block — and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore the protections of the Voting Rights Act that were “gutted by the Supreme Court in 2013,” according to a congressional memo.
Asked if he would come testify in Texas if the legislature held hearings on voter fraud, Mr. Fetterman said he would — and appeared to denounce the seemingly strict punishments of two people in Texas who were convicted of illegally voting, including one woman who faces a five-year prison sentence for casting a provisional ballot in 2016 while she was on supervised release for a federal conviction. The woman said she didn’t know she was ineligible to vote, according to the Texas Tribune.
But the Democratic Primary is about to get bigger:
Rep. Conor Lamb, D-Mt. Lebanon, is expected to launch a Senate campaign in August, according to three sources familiar with the decision.
Two sources said Mr. Lamb is planning a campaign event Aug. 6 at an International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union hall in Pittsburgh, with one source noting that’s where the congressman is expected to announce his Senate run. Multiple sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized by the campaign to speak publicly about Mr. Lamb’s plans. His campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Lamb, a Marine veteran and former prosecutor, will join a crowded primary field seeking to replace retiring GOP Sen. Pat Toomey. Mr. Lamb would likely be the most moderate Democrat in the race, as he’s known for a willingness to buck his party and work across the aisle. However, Mr. Lamb has been more likely of late to vote with a majority of Democrats on votes that split the parties.
Mr. Lamb’s entry into the race also intensifies a geographic divide in the Democratic primary, with both Lamb and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman hailing from Western Pennsylvania. Two other candidates, state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta and Val Arkoosh, who chairs the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners, are based in the Philadelphia area in southeastern Pennsylvania, as is state Sen. Sharif Street, who is considering a Senate run.
But that’s fine. We’ll have a real debate with our candidates whereas the Republican primary is just one big audition for Trump’s endorsement:
In the battle over the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, Jeff Bartos and Sean Parnell are exchanging verbal blows in an attempt to pin their opponent as less conservative and anti-Trump.
The race to fill Sen. Pat Toomey’s seat is hotly contested with candidates on both sides vying for their party’s nomination. As Democrats and Republicans look to take control of the U.S. Senate in 2022, Pennsylvania is listed as the seat most likely to flip parties.
Bartos and Parnell are working to make sure the seat stays in the GOP’s hands, and an endorsement from former President Donald Trump would go a long way in helping a Republican candidate gain support in the Commonwealth.
Bartos, a former GOP nominee for lieutenant governor, founded the Pennsylvania 30 Day Fund during the pandemic, which provided forgivable loans to small businesses hit hard by COVID-19. He said getting an endorsement from the former president would be “very big.” Parnell, who came within three points of knocking off Rep. Conor Lamb in 2020, is an Army veteran and author.
In a crowded primary field, the two have been grappling with each other over previous tweets expressing support for Democrats and criticizing Trump. Parnell’s team came at Bartos for previously donating to Democrat campaigns, and for his experience working under the Clinton administration. Bartos’ team, in response, called out Parnell for old tweets chastising Trump, and for times he “sided with liberals.”
And good luck with this:
A one-time chief of staff to the late former U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter and a longtime lobbyist and political consultant from Philadelphia will run for U.S. Senate as an anti-Trump Republican, and sees a crowded GOP primary as a key ally.
Craig Snyder, who backed Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential campaign against then-Republican nominee Donald Trump, announced his candidacy Wednesday and aimed it squarely at middle-of-the-road voters.
The seat is opening up with theretirement in 2023 of two-term Republican U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey. Pennsylvania’s Republican and Democratic primaries are already crowded for what is expected to be one of the nation's most competitive contests for Senate in next year's election.
In his announcement video, Snyder attacks both “Trumpism” and “socialism,” notes that Republicans lost the White House and both chambers of Congress in the last two federal elections and laments that centrist voters have come to see the Republican Party as “even crazier” than the ultra-left wing.
Snyder, 60, criticizes Trump-era policies on immigration and health care, but most of all the perceived refusal of Republicans to unequivocally condemn white supremacists or oppose efforts to hold responsible therioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
“In next year’s election, this party must again decide what it stands for and why it deserves the support of a majority of all voters," he said in his announcement video.
Democracy is on the ballot and we need to keep Pennsylvania Blue this year (Supreme Court Elections) and next year. Click below to donate and get involved with Fetterman and these Pennsylvania Democrats and organizations campaigns:
Val Arkoosh
Malcolm Kenyatta
Maria McLaughlin for Supreme Court
Timika Lane for Superior Court
David Spurgeon for Commonwealth Court
Amanda Green-Hawkins for Commonwealth Court
Lori Dumas for Commonwealth Court
Brian Sims for Lt. Governor
Pennsylvania Democratic Party
Draw the Lines PA
Committee of Seventy
Conor Lamb
Matt Cartwright
Susan Wild
Chrissy Houlahan
Madeleine Dean
Dwight Evans
Mike Doyle
Mary Gay Scanlon