To What Extremes Will The Establishment Go To Cling To Their Power?

I've never seen anything like the smear campaign against a Democrat like the one Chuck Schumer is orchestrating against Alan Grayson. Corrupt creatures of Wall Street, Schumer and Reid are hysterical that they're failing to get traction in Florida with their efforts to get their ultra-conservative, "ex"-Republican twerp-candidate, Patrick Murphy, into the Senate. Hours after the newest polling was released, from 20/20 Insight, showed that Grayson is beating Murphy 41% to 32%-- despite all the mud-slinging from Schumer and Reid and their puppets and all the money from Wall Street and Murphy's rich Republican father (and Trumpf business partner)-- Reid went on the attack. Reid, an anti-choice centrist who has led the Democrats into the wilderness, called Grayson "a disgraceful hedge fund manager masquerading as a 'progressive.' He started an e-mail-harvesting "petition"-- remember the DSCC sells the email addresses to marketing firms-- calling on Grayson to drop out of the race. "Reports," he wrote on Murphy letterhead, "indicate that Alan Grayson may have used his position as a congressman to unethically promote his Cayman Islands hedge fund." Yeah, reports manufactured by Chuck Schumer and shopped around for a year to establishment stenographers masquerading as journalists. "Grayson," he continued, "claims to be a 'progressive,' but it seems he has no moral compass."

callow

Alan Grayson doesn't have to "claim" to be a progressive; he's helped define the term. Murphy, Schumer and Reid could make the same claim-- in a comedy routine reminiscent of the 3 Stooges-- but their records would show the assertion totally unfounded. As for Reid's "no moral compass" remark, he, Schumer and Murphy are trying portray Grayson's personal investment portfolio into a hedge fund business. This is especially ironic in light of the ongoing federal investigation into one of the many and unending Reid bribery scandals.

Grayson, who has been endorsed by Blue America and who you can support here, addressed the reason for the smear campaign by Schumer and Reid himself today in an e-mail to his supporters:

You may be wondering why the corrupt Establishment is so hell bent on defeating me. The reason is simple: they don’t own me, and they hate that. Here are a few examples:

1. They told me to sit down and shut up about the job-killing “Trans-Pacific Partnership,” which will make America a country of cheap labor and debt slavery. Instead, I made a nine-minute video exposing their sick game of sucking up to multinational corporations at the expense of American workers. On Facebook alone, 1.5 million people saw the video and learned the truth. Then I gave out phone numbers of who to call in Congress, to tell them to vote no on Fast Track and the TPP. Sorry, I’m not sorry.

2. I wrote the “No Cuts” petition that drew almost three million signatures, and thwarted the effort to cut Social Security benefits through the “chained CPI’ scheme.

3. I called out their corrupt “superdelegate” system, and I’m listening to the People regarding my superdelegate vote. You can still vote, if you hadn’t had a chance yet, at GraysonPrimary.com.

4. I speak out and I organize against Big Money and Big Bribery in politics. Three of my bills to fight back against Big Money were incorporated in the DISCLOSE Act, which passed the House. And I am so proud to be the ONLY member of the House who raised most of my campaign funds from small donors, in both 2012 and 2014.

5. I do the greatest good for the greatest number-- a concept utterly foreign to them.

The corrupt DC Establishment, addicted to sewer money, has thrown everything but the kitchen sink at me, to drag their callow Wall Street errand boy over the finish line. And yet, we’re winning.

Monday, Ron Sainato, writing for the New York Observer exposed Reid's complicity in fixing the Nevada caucus for Hillary Clinton. Referencing the Politico article from a week before the Nevada caucus that begins "Reid clearly wants Hillary Clinton to be the next president. Yet he hasn’t endorsed her, even as she struggles to ward off a resilient Bernie Sanders... Reid’s neutrality isn’t necessarily out of respect for his Senate colleague Sanders or because he has doubts about Clinton. His final order of business as Senate Democratic leader is to mobilize his vaunted political machine back home to keep his seat in Democratic hands. The Nevada Democratic Party allows same-day registration, which, he believes, could pad Democratic voter rolls by the thousands if he plays it right. Simply put, a caucus filled with frothing Democratic partisans is good for party business... Reid is resisting the kind of Sanders bashing that some of his colleagues have taken up as he's gained on Clinton."

Sainato asserted that "Reid refused to endorse a candidate was [in order] to influence the caucuses under the guise of neutrality, which would not have otherwise been afforded to him had he not remained publicly impartial."

A week before the Nevada caucuses, as new polls showed Sen. Bernie Sanders’ support in the state surging, Mr. Reid made a call to the head of Nevada’s most powerful union-- the Culinary Workers Union in Las Vegas, which did not plan on engaging in the caucuses-- and influenced the union’s decision. Mr. Reid also made calls to casino executives along the Las Vegas strip to ensure casino workers were given time off to join the caucuses on the strip, which was predicted to be Ms. Clinton’s stronghold in the state. Mr. Reid’s gamble paid off, with all six casino caucuses favoring Ms. Clinton over Mr. Sanders by 109 to 52.

Mr. Reid’s own precinct favored Ms. Clinton by a wide enough margin that there weren’t enough Sanders supporters to win any delegates, essentially deeming his supporters’ votes worthless, which demonstrates the flaws inherent in the caucuses themselves. The caucuses are disorganized, offering more opportunities for fraud and corruption, and allow supporters to solicit potential voters as they make their decisions, which is illegal at voting locations because it’s contradictory to democracy and makes one’s vote public-- subjecting participants to influence contrary to their political beliefs. Caucuses also discourage high voter turnout because groups of voters must be counted all at once, making the affair much more time-consuming than simply casting a ballot.

In Nevada, an estimated 80,000 people showed up for the state’s Democratic caucuses, a significant drop from 120,000 in 2008, which was also an abysmally low turnout given there are over 470,000 registered Democrat voters in Nevada-- and over 200,000 of those voters cast a ballot in the 2014 general election. Nevada is known for having low voter turnouts compared to the rest of the country, and the move to hold caucuses instead of a primary-- primarily decided by Mr. Reid-- wasn’t going to help.

...[I]f Ms. Clinton had lost in Nevada, it would have been a major blow to Mr. Reid’s Democratic machine (and his reign as its overseer), which has already been under threat from the Republicans. In 2014, Republicans won big in Nevada, taking the governor’s seat, majorities in the State House and Senate, and three of the state’s four U.S. congressional districts.

Mr. Reid’s influence wasn’t the only disconcerting and undemocratic aspect of the Nevada caucuses this year. Supporters from Ms. Clinton’s campaign were caught by the union’s executive director, RoseAnn DeMoro, impersonating members of the National Nurses United Union, which has endorsed Mr. Sanders. Ms. DeMoro took photos of Ms. Clinton’s supporters changing into red shirts identical to the ones worn by members of the union while campaigning for Mr. Sanders. ABC News also reported Clinton supporters were conducting push polls ahead of the caucuses testing attack lines on potential voters.

One of the biggest controversies of the caucuses was a claim made by actress Americana Ferrera and activist Dolores Huerta, both Clinton supporters, of Sanders supporters chanting “English Only” at Ms. Huerta while she attempted to translate during a caucus held at Harrah’s Casino on the Las Vegas strip. Actresses Susan Sarandon and Gaby Hoffman, Sanders supporters who were also present, provided video evidence debunking Ms. Ferrera and Ms. Huerta’s claims. Snopes also ruled Ms. Ferrera and Ms. Huerta’s accusations were false, but not before several major media publications jumped the gun and published stories asserting they were true. DNC Vice Chair Donna Brazile chimed in, despite the impartiality her position requires. The lack of any sort of due diligence to corroborate Ms. Ferrera and Ms. Huerta’s allegations is symptomatic of the bias skewed in favor of Ms. Clinton by media and the political establishment.

In 2008, Ms. Huerta supported Ms. Clinton over Barack Obama, and attempted to vilify Obama supporters as racists against Latinos. “In spite of the oppression and the voter suppression and huge intimidation on the part of the Obama supporters of the Latino casino workers, they voted for Hillary,” Ms. Huerta said in a 2008 interview with Democracy Now.

This type of smearing has been common by Clinton supporters over the past few months. The Bernie Bros narrative, an attempt to stereotype Mr. Sanders’ supporters as sexist white men, was also used against Mr. Obama in calling his supporters Obama Boys. Both accusations had very little evidence despite the attention garnered in the media and from Clinton supporters, while feminism and issues relating to the promotion of gender equality fell to the wayside in favor of policing alleged widespread sexism.

Similar tactics were used by Clinton supporters and by a Clinton-supporting journalist to warp a response from civil rights hero and Congressmen John Lewis, who said he never saw Mr. Sanders during the civil rights movement. The comment was manipulated to suggest Mr. Lewis questioned Mr. Sanders’ involvement in the civil rights movement-- which was false and was clarified a few days later by Mr. Lewis. Shortly after, another journalist took a quote from Sanders supporter rapper Killer Mike, and manipulated it to appear as though Killer Mike was making a sexist remark. The rapper was actually just quoting a conversation he had with feminist activist Jane Elliot.

This type of propagated manipulation in favor of Ms. Clinton at the expense of Mr. Sanders is not beneficial to the Democratic Party. Ms. Clinton will eventually need Mr. Sanders’ supporters and the many independent voters he attracts if she wins the nomination and wants to win the presidency-- especially as recent polls predict current GOP frontrunner Donald Trump defeating Ms. Clinton in the general election. Disenfranchising those voters with smear campaigns that stereotype them for political gain may help Ms. Clinton win the Democratic nomination, but it will hurt her and the Democratic Party in the long run as even Republican presidential candidates are not stooping to such levels against one another’s supporters.

Their should be no doubt that the elites in control of the two political party establishments would rather see the other party win than to give up their own power, even if over a diminished base. American voters sense this and have wisely been abandoning both parties. Independents are now 44% of the national electorate, largely due to revulsion of corrupt, self-serving party bosses like Reid, Schumer, Israel, Wassermann Schultz, Hoyer, the Clintons, Clyburn... the whole horrid bunch who have stolen the legacy of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt for their own purposes. Let's not give up, ever... let's keep trying: