Demographic Change... And A New Word: Schumercrat

Schumer + schumercrat Patrick Murphy

The Establishment Democrats-- primarily DC insiders-- either can't or won't do anything to save the party of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. The positions of power within the establishment are almost entirely captive of a self-serving clique of utterly corrupt, right-of-center political hacks with either no vision or a vision hostile to the values and principles the Democratic grassroots have fought for. As the Republican Party has moved further and further to the right, the establishment Democrats have followed them and now basically occupy the ground much of the GOP held in past decades. Establishment politicians are either not terribly interested in ideology or are interested in it inasmuch as it lures voters to support their own ambition, careerism and personal empire-building.

When Wall Street banksters-- fresh from their latest outrages against the country-- scream to Chuck Schumer-- to whom they have given $23,538,638 to date (more than to any other politician who hasn't run for president), he promises to take over the Senate Democrats (and there has not even been one voice against that-- and to "balance" the voices annoying the banksters (Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Sherrod Brown) with more malleable and Wall Street-friendly recruits like Patrick Murphy (FL), Ted Strickland (OH), Tammy Duckworth (IL) and Chris Van Hollen (MD). So far this year, the Finance Sector is on track to continue financing Schumer's shameful career. Their half dozen biggest Senate bets so far this cycle:

• Chuck Schumer (D-NY)- $2,519,661
• Ted Cruz (R-TX)- $1,795,845
• Marco Rubio (R-FL)- $1,778,997
• Rob Portman (R-OH)- $1,347,067
• Pat Toomey (R-PA)- $1,296,416
• Michael Bennet (D-CO)- $1,081,225

And in terms of non-senators running for the Senate, no surprise who the banksters are lavishing their cash on:

• Patrick Murphy (New Dem-FL)- $787,750
• Kamala Harris (D-CA)- $432,817
• Todd Young (R-IN)- $344,015
• Chris Van Hollen (D-MD)- $323,857
• Ted Strickland (D-OH)- $249,515
• Tammy Duckworth (Rahm Dem-IL)- $248,801

Funny that the banksters, who have given $54,521,519 to congressional Republicans this cycle and "just" $32,684,671 to congressional Democrats, are super-serving the campaigns of corrupt conservative Democrats like Murphy, Duckworth, Strickland and Van Hollen (all in primaries against more progressive candidates Schumer is working actively to sabotage), while giving less money to Republican Senate candidates like Ron DeSantis ($247,102), David Jolly ($243,900), Marlin Stutzman ($239,400), Joe Heck ($239,133) and, metaphorically speaking, buckets of warm spit to the progressive pro-consumer Democratic candidates Schumer works daily to vilify and cut off from funding:

• PG Sittenfeld (D-OH)- $107,050
• Donna Edwards (D-MD)- $55,420
• Alan Grayson (D-FL)- $14,975

So... back to the original premise about how the establishment will do nothing but further hollow out and rot the Democratic Party brand. It's no coincidence that corrupt politicians like Rahm Emanuel, Chuck Schumer, Steve Israel, Steny Hoyer, Chris Van Hollen and Debbie Wasserman Schultz have exponentially increased their power as the Democrats lost nearly 70 House seats, control of the U.S. Senate and now run a pitiful 11 state legislatures to the GOP's 31. The GOP also holds 31 governorships to the Democrats' 19. So is it hopeless for the Democrats? No, the party has one thing working in its favor: demographics. A must read for anyone interested in this kind thing: Ruy Teixeira's spectacular look at the demographic shifts as we head into the 2016 elections. First the good news (if you're a Democratic Party... something-or-other): even a totally flawed, incredibly disliked and untrusted establishment candidate like Hillary Clinton can probably beat any Republican. The report is over 60 pages but I'm going to share a couple of random thoughts from it. One that struck me right off the bat helps explain why Hillary is exactly the wrong nominee for the Democrats this cycle:

Americans voters are angry, distrustful of establishment politics, and open to seemingly out-of-the-mainstream candidates and movements that channel these concerns and anxieties. Despite improvements in the overall economy over the past seven years, many Americans remain economically stressed and have a rising sense that the government is run for the benefit of a few wealthy and well-connected interests rather than the middle class.

...In the United States, left-wing populism is driving Democrats to offer more far- reaching solutions to problems such as inequality and structural racism, while right-wing populism is driving Republicans to more forcefully confront immigration and government spending across the board. Populist forces in both parties are increasingly hostile to global trade, militarism, money in politics, and political compromise with opponents. It remains to be seen whether these populist forces will determine the nominations of either party, but it is clear that the animating issues and the candidates representing these movements will have an effect on the eventual platforms and messages of the two general election campaigns.

OK, you can contribute to Bernie's campaign here and to the non-Schumercrat Senate candidates here. And now we'll proceed to the points Teixeira actually wanted to make himself much of it based on the fact that the share of the vote among non-college whites (who overwhelmingly tilt Republican) is projected to drop by 2.3 percentage points while the share of minority voters is projected to rise by at least 2%.

As America has changed demographically, the Democratic Party has increasingly changed with it, enabling the party to grow markedly at the national level in terms of both vote share and partisan identification. In five of the last six presidential elections, the Democrats have won the popular vote and regularly lead the GOP by around 8 points in terms of party identification.

...If Democrats are to retain the presidency in 2016, they will need to successfully transfer the enthusiasm and support of the Obama coalition to a new candidate and overcome the wider belief that the party had its shot for eight years and that it is now time for a change. Finding a candidate and agenda that can successfully motivate core progressive voters-- while simultaneously convincing a wider cross-section of less ideological voters that they have new ideas to address lingering economic and social problems-- will be paramount. The party must also take seriously the need to knit together its more diverse coalition with a larger share of working class whites if it wants to be competitive in congressional and state-level elections.

...the percentage of white voters in the actual electorate dropped 15 percentage points, from 89 percent in 1976 to 74 percent in 2012. The percentage of white working-class voters dropped even more, decreasing by 26 points over the same period.

In a conversation with the Washington Post's Greg Sargent last week, Teixeira pointed out-- as he did in the report-- that "in the last two elections, the Democrats got 81 percent of the minority vote. That can’t be assumed for 2016. So we are conservative about the minority vote, giving the Democrats in 2016 the average of their share of the minority vote in the last four elections-- 78 percent. In 2012, in our assessment, Democrats lost the white non-college vote by 22 points. We estimate the Democrats’ deficit among the white college vote was 11 points. Let’s say the Democrats do get 78 percent of the minority vote. We find that the white non-college support for the Republican could actually go up substantially-- to the 30 point margin Republicans won in 2014-- and the Democrats would still win the popular vote nationally, if they held their white college support."

All that said, the operational strategy the DCCC uses in recruitment and messaging-- Republican-lite-- will mean the party will never win back the House, even if the best case scenario-- Bernie or even Hillary vs Herr Trumpf or even Cruz-- until the DCCC is completely cleaned out and started over again, from scratch, not just with new personnel but with a new governing context that is unrelated to Blue Dogs (Steve Israel) and New Dems (Rahm Emanuel and Wasserman Schultz). Democrats have something to be extremely proud of, a stunning tradition that is 100% antithetical to everything Emanuel, Van Hollen and Israel have turned the DCCC into.