Steve Israel-- The Schmaltz Of The Democratic Party

Because I travel a lot-- and not just to Paris and London-- I've eaten in some pretty dicey restaurants over the years. But few that I remember being as revolting as one my dear departed friend Susan schlepped me to several decades ago: Sammy's Roumanian on Chrystie Street in Manhattan's Lower East Side. You know how a normal restaurant might have ketchup and mustard on the table as condiments? Sammy's has schmaltz. Lard is what Jews carefully avoid in Mexican food, right? Schmaltz is Jewish lard-- specifically, rendered chicken (or goose) fat. It stinks. Someone once told me that when Steve Israel called I'm to tell him he had been added to the DCCC's Red-to-Blue program, he said. "I have good news. You just fell into the schmaltz pot." He had no idea what Israel was talking about, but he was glad it was good news. He lost anyway.

Sammy's is a Steve Israel kind of restaurant. The boys and girls who work for Sean Eldridge's campaign up in Ulster, Dutchess and Rensselaer counties should thank their lucky stars that they live far enough away from the City to not get dragged to Sammy's when Israel wants company for a nosh-- and just suffer with deliveries of bagels and cream cheese every week. But Azi Paybarah may not have been so lucky. He interviewed Israel at the Long Island congressman's favorite (unidentified) Lower East Side schmaltzakatessen to talk about how New York's wretchedly conservative governor, Andrew Cuomo, could help bolster Israel's favorite wretchedly conservative Democratic congressmen, Sean Patrick Maloney (a prominent Wall Street whore), Dan Maffei and Tim Bishop.

"In the districts where we are defending-- Bishop, Maffei and Sean Patrick Maloney-- the governor does very well," said Israel, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, in an interview at a Lower East Side restaurant Tuesday. "So we’re going to have a lot of cooperation with him in those districts."

He also said, "We are talking about having a seamlessly coordinated operation between the governor’s operation and our house seats in this election."

Separately, Israel said the message of another New York Democrat-- Mayor Bill de Blasio's theme of income inequality-- is very much on voters' minds, or at least a version of that message.

"We just did the most expansive, expensive, deepest voter-research project in our history to help determine where voters are in a very volatile climate," Israel said.

He said the DCCC polled in 67 battleground districts and did "16 separate focus groups" of "base voters, persuadable voters, African-Americans, Latinos, unmarried women; we did ad-testing [and] online chatrooms. The most resonate issue across every single one of those districts boils down to who's got your back. That Republicans just care about their own self-interest, the special interests. Democrats are working to strengthen the middle class. Now Mayor de Blasio calls it income inequality. It’s a variation of that. It’s a sense that the most powerful people are getting ahead and that Republicans are shifting the burden to the middle class."

He said, "I think his message resonates in every congressional, competitive congressional district."

Asked if he wanted to see de Blasio hit the campaign trail for congressional Democrats, Israel said, "I think his message resonates in every congressional, competitive congressional district [and] anything we can do to fortify and amplify our message, we’d love to do."

He was clearly more enthusiastic about the prospect of Hillary Clinton campaigning for Democrats.

But would she be active in the mid-term elections?

"The second she is ready to go, not the minute, not the hour not the day, the second she is ready to go, we have the booster rockets on," he said. "She can go into, literally, any competitive congressional district in America and do very well for our candidates. She is in very high demand."

He said, "I’ve talked to her several times to ask for help. She’s indicated she wants to help. And now it's just a matter of when the timing makes the most sense to her."

Israel also said, "Boy, I hope she runs."

Well, of course he does! Hillary and Cuomo are from the same wing of the party corrupt, transactional Blue Dog Steve Israel is. De Blasio, Elizabeth Warren… not Israel's cup of schmaltz. So in case you were wonder why someone like Israel, whose entire claim to political power and prominence is based on the corruption and the corroding influence of of big money on governance is so enamored of Cuomo, look no further than Corrution with a Capitol 'C'. Transpartisan parasites like Steve Israel and Andrew Cuomo are positively made for each other.

Gov. Cuomo’s decision to shut down his corruption-fighting commission nine months early looks more questionable with every fresh indictment in Albany… [A]ccording to an analysis released Tuesday by the Citizens Union, the state Capitol’s corruption eruption seems to be getting worse.

No fewer than six lawmakers were driven from office by criminal charges or ethics complaints during the Legislature’s 2013-2014 term — the highest two-year total in the 16 years studied… Clearly, New York’s state government still suffers from a raging infection of unethical and venal behavior. Just as clearly, Cuomo has not yet delivered on his promise to clean the place up.

...Further tarnishing Cuomo’s record was the untimely demise of his Moreland Commission to Investigate Public Corruption-- which he created last year, then abruptly deep-sixed in March in an unseemly deal with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate coleaders Dean Skelos and Jeff Klein.

When he pulled the plug, the commission was in the throes of probing one of the Legislature’s darkest recesses-- the substantial income that pols are allowed to earn without fully disclosing who is paying them or why.

“He shut Moreland down at the exact time that the commission was focused on outside business relationships-- which is what these charges against Libous involved,” says Dadey. “He had them on the ropes, and he threw the match.”

In return for making the investigation go away, Cuomo won what he framed as worthy anticorruption measures-- including tighter antibribery laws and beefed-up enforcement of campaign fund-raising laws by the Board of Elections.

Left completely unaddressed was how scandalously weak those fund-raising laws still are-- riddled with loopholes that allow special interests to contribute virtually unlimited amounts to politicians who can, in return, do them big favors.

Nor were legislators finally forced to come truly clean about their moonlighting, even as one colleague after another is led away in handcuffs.

Cuomo made a big deal about changing this climate once and for all when he was running for governor four years ago.

“In the past decade, New York State’s elected officials were more likely to resign due to criminal conviction than to lose in a general election,” he wrote in his campaign manifesto.

Four years later, that sad fact is just as true as ever.

There is no New York congressional incumbent better suited for an endorsement by Cuomo than Israel's boy Sean Patrick Maloney, who actually does his call time from a hedge fund office!