A Noun, a Verb, and Vladimir Putin

The Democrats in the so-called Heartland, the ones that Hillary Clinton lost in 2016, are losing patience with the DC party establishment's fixation on Russia:

In battleground states in the middle of the country, some Democrats watched with frustration as their party grabbed headlines last week with a splashy new lawsuit alleging a vast conspiracy between President Donald Trump and Russia.

The Democratic National Committee’s drumbeat of messaging on Trump and his relationship with Russia is wearing thin with some Democrats in purple states — particularly in the Midwest, where people on the ground say voters are uninterested and even turned off by the issue. The suit exposes a gap, they say, between the party’s strategy nationally and what Midwest Democrats believe will win elections in their state.

“The DNC is doing a good job of winning New York and California,” said David Betras, the Democratic county party chair in Mahoning County, Ohio, home to Youngstown. “I’m not saying it’s not important — of course it’s important — but do they honestly think that people that were just laid off another shift at the car plant in my home county give a shit about Russia when they don’t have a frickin’ job?”

Trump and Russia, Betras said, is the “only piece they’ve been doing since 2016. [Trump] keeps talking about jobs and the economy, and we talk about Russia.”

For some people working to elect Democrats in Midwestern swing states, the suit — which threads evidence of a conspiracy between Trump’s campaign, WikiLeaks, Russia, and Trump family members — prompted something akin to an eyeroll.

Same for me.

They aren't talking real issues, Nancy Pelosi has gone full in on this, saying that it's OK for the Dems to back anti-abortion candidates, they aren't talking jobs, or trade, or racism, the corruption of high finance, or apologizing for their own incompetence and telling us how they might fix this, they are talking Russia, .

There is an internal logic to all of this: Admitting your incompetence can get you fired, going after high finance would turn off big dollar donors, which allow for big dollar consultancy fees, etc.

It's simply too lucrative to actually address the real problems of people.