The Republican Wing Of The Democratic Party Picks A New Leader-- Meet Jim Himes

It's worth reading Sunday's Salon post by Sean McElwee, Jesse Rhodes (the singer-songwriter?) and Brain Schaffner about the pernicious impact big Republican donors-- like Sheldon Adelson, Robert Mercer, Ken Griffin, Liz Uihlein, Paul Singer, Joe Ricketts, Ron Cameron, Diane Hendricks and Bernie Marcus-- have had on the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt.

"The donor pools, they wrote, "for both Republicans and Democrats, in both presidential and congressional elections, are dominated by the wealthy. Millionaires make up a mere 3 percent of the population, but nearly half of all congressional donors contributing more than $10,000 are millionaires. Fully 25 percent of Democratic and 27 percent of Republican donors in our sample were millionaires. Millionaires were evenly divided between the parties: Among those contributing more than $200, 51 percent contributed to Republicans and 49 percent to Democrats. In a cumulative sample, 51 percent of donors with an income over $150,000 identified as Democrats, compared to 43 percent who identified as Republicans (and 7 percent who said they were independent)... [This cycle] one-third of the money raised by both candidates came from Americans with a net worth between $300,000 and $1 million. Both campaigns relied on big donors. Forty-two percent of the money Trump raised came from donations of $5,000 or more, compared to 29 percent of the money that Clinton raised... How might this affect policy? Consistently, donors are much more skeptical of government intervention and more supportive of domestic spending cuts. When looking at major redistributive policies such as the Waxman-Markey bill (comprehensive climate-change legislation), the financial stimulus package, the SCHIP expansion (the State Children’s Health Insurance Program), the Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank (a financial regulatory bill), donors hold more conservative positions than non-donors. Furthermore, opposition to each of these measures was even more intense among the largest donors. If the largest donors (those giving more than $1,000) had had their way, only the SCHIP expansion would have been enacted."

Many of Clinton's top donors are also conservatives with agendas way out of whack with what ordinary Democrats the Clinton Machine took for granted. The Pritzkers may be Democrats for some reason, but their agenda isn't. Billionaire contributors who tug Democrats forever right-ward (at least on some critical issues) include Haim Saban, James Simons, Donald Sussman, Fred Eychaner, Michael Bloomberg and Henry Laufer.

And the pressures on the Democratic Party aren't all directed towards presidential candidates. The Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- basically the New Dems and the Blue Dogs-- exists primarily to serve the interest of the millionaire and billionaire class that has been traditionally a GOP bastion but that has been aggressively pursued by corrupted Democrats like the Clintons, Rahm Emanuel, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the others who have played crucial roles in destroying the party. Last week, the most Wall Street-oriented corner of the House Democrats, the New Dem coalition, elected it's new chairman. And they couldn't have found anyone worse. Jim Himes, a former Goldman Sachs bankster, serves on the House Financial Services Committee, a fount of grotesque corruption and home base for the New Dems, has taken $5,542,577 from the Finance Sector. Though he was first elected in 2008, he's gobbled up more legalistic bribes from Wall Street than any other House Democrat other than two notoriously corrupt slime bags, Whip Steny Hoyer ($5,932,098) and ex-New Dem chairman Joe Crowley ($6,143,739), the conduit and trap door into serious Wall Street money for Democratic caucus members looking to sell out their constituents.

Himes showed the way in 2013 when he co-sponsored a bill, H.R. 992 with Wall Street whores Randy Hultgren (R-IL) and Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY) for Goldman Sachs and J P Morgan that rolls back "the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act relating to Federal assistance for swaps entities." It passed 292-122, the Republican wing of the Democratic Party eager to side with the GOP against consumers, honest investors and working families. 119 Democrats voted against it but when the New Dems and Blue Dogs cross the aisle en masse, there is nothing the Democrats can do to hold back the Wall Street/Big Business tide. Among the other treacherous and corrupt "Democrats" who joined Himes, Crowley, Maloney and Hoyer that day were Terri Sewell, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and a pack of vile reactionaries who have since been defeated at the polls, like Joe Garcia (twice), Ann Kirkpatrick (twice), Pete Gallego (twice), Dan Maffei (twice), Patrick Murphy, John Barrow, Loretta Sanchez, Ron Barber and Nick Rahall.

Thursday the New Dems elected Himes their headman (over Jared Polis), as well as vice chairs Suzan DelBene, Derek Kilmer and Terri Sewell. What a crew! "The New Dems," boasted Himes, "are the ones who are likely to be the linchpin in anything that gets done around here. Republicans are going to lose their 30, 40, 50 people and they’re going to need some help. That gives us an opportunity to stand up and really say, 'If you do some things that are important to Democrats, we’ll sit at the table.'" Yep, count on the New Dems to compromise away Social Security and Medicare benefits when Ryan can't persuade "30, 40, 50" Republicans from backing the most bastardly parts of his toxic agenda. Himes-- pictured here in his German Shepherd costume-- will be there to lend a hand.

Himes is eager to sell out Democrats on infrastructure, taxes, Wall Street "reform" and public education. It's going to be a rough couple of years.