Rich Maryland New Dem John Delaney Is On The Attack Again-- Against Progressives

John Delaney spent $2,370,556 in 2012 to buy himself a seat, the third most-- after Suzan DelBene and Scott Peters-- among the wealthy Democratic freshmen (all of whom immediately joined the extremely corrupt, pro-business/anti-family New Dems). Now a Maryland congressman in a safe blue seat, Delaney is often a fount of Republican ideas-- like forbidding the EPA from protecting clean drinking water in streams and lakes and raising the retirement age for the working poor and forcing chained CPI down the throats of Social Security recipients. He was at it again yesterday-- another op-ed in the Washington Post, this one to go on a deranged attack against the values and principles of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt that made the Democratic Party great.

Delaney is the perfect Democrat for Fox, always eager to blame progressives for everything, always eager to equate progressives with the extremists, Confederates and fascists that dominate the Republican Party. He's an advocate of the "both sides are equally wrong" simplemindedness. "Washington," he wrote, "is paralyzed by extreme political rhetoric that creates powerful sound bites but poor policy... With Washington already broken, the last thing we need is a left-wing version of the tea party. But I am worried about where some of the loudest voices in the room could take the Democratic Party." Delaney is worried. Why doesn't he hop the fence and join the GOP?

Rejecting a trade agreement with Asia, expanding entitlement programs that crowd out other priorities and a desire to relitigate the financial crisis are becoming dominant positions among Democrats. Although these subjects may make for good partisan talking points, they do not provide the building blocks for a positive and bold agenda to create jobs and improve the lives of Americans.

...[W]e need a philosophical shift in the Democratic Party, a new willingness to support programs that create pathways for nongovernmental and philanthropic innovation and investment to help solve the problems of society. We should embrace approaches, such as social impact bonds, that combine private-sector capital and expertise with public-interest goals to produce better government services. Such changes will require Democrats to leave our ideological comfort zone and move away from the idea that government, and government alone, is the answer to our problems.

But instead of being used to voice an agenda that can bring the country together, the party microphone has been hijacked by people more interested in scoring points than in solving problems. They propose expanding Social Security rather than prioritizing serious efforts to preserve the program-- even though it will be unable to provide full benefits as soon as 2032, the Congressional Budget Office has made clear. The only way a large-scale expansion could work is by allocating new revenue away from needed investments in the next generation or by shifting the financial burden to workers or our children.

In a barely veiled critique of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Sherrod Brown, Alan Grayson, Raul Grijalva, Keith Ellison, Mark Pocan and other stalwart progressive fighters, Delaney wrote that "some in our party continue to engage in time-consuming rhetoric attacking banks that has little chance of producing more financial reform and distracts from far more consequential areas of economic risk, such as climate change, chronic underinvestment in the next generation and our broken immigration and housing finance systems."

He's painting an entirely false picture, especially when you consider that the same legislators attacking his Wall Street pals happen to be the most determined fighters for immigration reform, for low-income housing, for reforming the education system, for restoring American infrastructure and, of course, for battling against climate change. But painting false pictures is John Delaney's stock-in-trade. It's what he does; it's all he seems capable of doing. 

Two of Congress' most dedicated and enlightened progressives reacted badly to Delaney's nonsense. This morning Alan Grayson mused that "corporate tax breaks, corporate welfare, corporate trade giveaways and sucking up to Wall Street... 'New Democrats' sound a lot like old Republicans." And yesterday Mark Pocan told us, "The surest way to avoid the creation of a tea party on the left wing is to stop the Democratic Party from moving to the right. It's clear people are for progressive values and the Democratic Party should reflect that or face defeats at the polls." 

I guarantee you, Delaney will never find his name on this page, but maybe someone should show him this video Robert Reich released for MoveOn this week:




UPDATE: Anonymous Congressman

One Democratic congressman who asked that I not identify him, was fuming this morning after he read Delaney's OpEd. "He is my poster child for what's wrong with the Democratic Party. Recruiting clueless, rich people who have no real values is almost always a failure." Someone should introduce this guy to Steve Israel, Nancy Pelosi and Ben Ray Luján.