Last week, Randy Bryce was on with Joy Reid to talk about his race to unseat Lyin' Paul Ryan. Immediately after this segment, Reid had a panel consisting of herself, Joan Walsh, Jamal Simmons and Scot Ross to discuss Randy's chances in this race:
And this was just the end of the first week of Bryce's brilliant campaign kickoff, which started less than two weeks ago with his brilliant introductory video, which quickly went viral.
Between the release of the video and his appearance with Reid, Randy was also on with Lawrence O'Donnell and Don Lemon. Besides his TV appearances, he has received shout outs from Whoopi Goldberg and Sarah Silverman, Ruffalo, Mac Brandt, Rob Perleman, Vincent D'Onofrio, Chelsea Handler, Beau Willimon (creator of House of Cards), and Mary McCormack,
He has already won the support of groups like Blue America.
But, as Joy Reid asked the panel, will nationalizing this race help or hurt Randy? It will obviously help. If national attention is on this race, that will help force the local corporate media to also watch it and report about it. (Trust me from experience, they hate to be scooped). That will go along way to keeping the local voters informed, which is something Ryan doesn't want to happen.
Not only will the national attention help with the coverage, but it will also help with raising the money that Randy will need to counter all the dark money that Ryan will be dragging in. No one would be able to match the money that Ryan will get from his dark money masters, both directly and indirectly, but any money Randy raises will help go along way in getting his message out there, especially if his team keeps producing videos like that first one.
As I already said, no matter how much money Randy is able to raise, it wouldn't be enough. And that's where Randy's real advantage comes in.
Randy is not afraid to meet and more importantly, listen to the people. He does not just sit and drink $350 bottles of wines with lobbyists, like Ryan does. He goes to the work sites and meets with people, and asks them what their concerns are and listens to their stories.
This was evident at Randy's kickoff rally, appropriately held in a union hall in Kenosha. As you can see in the video of the rally, he drew speakers ranging from State Senator Chris Larson to retirees to school teachers. In fact, he drew a small crowd of 150 - 200 people on a bright, sunny, beautiful Saturday morning to cheer him on:
What the video doesn't show is the time that Randy took before the rally to go around the room shaking hands and sharing laughs with people. I won't go into the details of the rally because Charlie Pierce already did a much better job than I could have hope to do.
Now compare that to one of Ryan's meetings, when he used to have meetings with the people, where a 71 year old man is forced out of the room, body slammed to the ground and arrested for expressing his concerns:
It's also very telling that Ryan jokes about the old man's health after he is hauled away.
Lastly, Randy has a good, solid and realistic grasp of the job he is undertaking. He is taking it very seriously and just like when he is working on the iron, Randy is willing to give it all he's got and then some.
He realized it's a monumental task, being the David facing down Goliath, but his fortitude and resolve is as hard as the iron he works with. As Randy says, he's fought and beaten cancer, he served in the US Army overseas and he's been on top of iron beams high up in the sky and he's not afraid of this challenge.
I hope you'll join me and "Stand with the Stache." To learn more about Randy and how to help, please visit his website and/or his Facebook page. You can also follow him on twitter at @IronStache.