Last Call For Red State Blues

It's tough being a red state Democratic senator in 2016 because you basically have to publicly hate Obama and Clinton to keep your job.  This week's example: North Dakota Dem Sen. Heidi Heitkamp on the Basket of Deplorables.

Heitkamp was asked on WZFG AM 1100 if she renounced the comments. 

“Yes, I do,” said the Democratic senator on Thursday. “I think it was a wrong thing to say. I think that it ignores the very true concerns that we have about needing change in this country. I think that it was ill-advised. 

“I think [Secretary Clinton] said it was ill-advised,” he continued. “I think she walked it back, and I think that it was unfortunate that she said it. I’m glad that she’s denounced that statement, and I do not agree with her.”

Like it or not, the alternative to Heidi Heitkamp is having another lunatic cowboy Republican from the Dick Cheney school of public "service" like Wyoming's John Enzi or Montana climate change "skeptic" Steve Daines in the Senate. You may not like Democrats like Heitkamp (or yes, even Joe F'ckin Manchin and Evan F'ckin Bayh) but they are lawmakers who will at least vote with the Dems most of the time, and not fall in line with Team GOP on things that count.

As a Kentucky liberal commie pinko agnostic type, you take your victories in the states where you can get them, because we need as many wins as you can get.  Remember, in the end, lawmakers and presidents are elected by the people they represent, so if you can get a Heitkamp or Manchin as opposed to, I dunno, Ted Cruz or Jeff Sessions, you go with the Blue Dogs every time.

Sometimes the useful idiots do serve a purpose.