If Hollywood is looking for a character to cast as a smooth-talking slick pol, they could do no better than my congressman, Rep. Richard Neal (D-MassMutual).

The crushing defeat that Donald Trump delivered to the Democrats, mostly from a beat down in the boondocks has many in my party asking if they should even bother trying to woo white working class and rural voters anymore. The thinking among coastal elites is that with coming demographic changes in the years ahead, the “coalition of the ascendant” that powered Barack Obama to the White House will turn red states blue. This mindset is deeply flawed.

The news out of June 14ths state Democratic convention that two of the contenders in the gubernatorial race did not make the ballot overshadowed the lone candidate for lieutenant governor who won’t make it to the primary election on September 9.

Welcome to the 2013-2014 election cycle, a wonderful feature of the permanent campaign. As the ink has dried on the redistricting maps drawn after the 2010 federal census, it is now clear after the results of November 6, 2012 that Republicans should be locked into their majority control of the House for the balance of the decade, barring a tidal wave election along the lines of the 1974 post-Watergate tsunami. This built-in Republican advantage means that the GOP only need to win 28 of 99 swing districts/seats in any given election between 2014-2020 to remain in control of the House.

There was a great story on Boston’s WBUR the other day about how U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren has been avoiding her two remaining Democratic primary opponents by blowing off appearances with them at debates and forums.

As the frontrunner, Warren’s strategy is to ignore her underfunded primary challengers and focus on the November match with Sen. Scott Brown, the Republican incumbent.

With the Democrats suffering yet more losses in rural America last November, including the Mississippi House and the Virginia Senate, I recently read Joe Bageant’s book Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War.

The book takes place in Bageant’s hometown of Winchester, VA at the northern end of the Shenandoah’s and is an earthy and telling tome about how the party of Roosevelt and Truman has lost the support of white working-class voters.