Problem Solvers Caucus Has Never Solved A Problem; They're Paid By Conservative Billionaires To Make Problems For Progressives

Jacobson & Penn: Murdoch pays they to undermine the Democratic Party

You've heard the term "Fox Democrat," right? Mark Penn is the prototype. Politically he's another Bill and Hillary Clinton-Tony Blair fox in the henhouse shitbag always working to pull the Democratic Party rightward-- for which he gets paid-- and handsomely so-- by wealthy conservatives. If anything, his wife, Nancy Jacobson-- a professional fundraiser-- is even worse. They are the couple from hell behind the corporately-funded No Labels cabals. Their web of dark money PACs and SuperPACs finance the Republican wing of the Democratic Party with money from-- for example-- Republican billionaires like the Murdoch family. And they make their living by taking a cut from every penny that comes in. And Penn's poison has spread all over the world-- supporting center-right candidates from Menachem Begin in Israel, Carlos Andrés Pérez (El Gocho) in Venezuela and Belisario Betancur in Colombia to Tony Blair, Ed Koch and, of course, the Clintons.

In the past cycle, Penn and the Mrs. were behind the sewer money-- from charter school fanatics, hedge fund managers and GOP financiers-- that flooded into Democrat primaries against Marie Newman in Chicago, Alan Grayson in Orlando, Deb Haaland in Albuquerque, Matt Heinz in Tucson and Susan Wild in the Philly suburbs. They are behind shady conservative PACs like United for Progress, United Together, Forward Not Back, Progress Tomorrow, Patriotic Americans PAC, Citizens for a Strong America, etc, entirely funded by contributions from 5 and 6-figure right wing donors, such as Rupert Murdoch, his son James Murdoch, Chicago White Sox and Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf, hedge fund manager Louis Bacon, former Major League Baseball Commissioner Allan Selig and Wheels Inc. executive Jim Frank and like-minded sleaze bags trying to turn the Democratic Party into another corporately-owned arm of Wall Street, just like the GOP.

This week, Sam Stein, writing for the Daily Beast, reported that it is the No Labels operation behind the Moulton coup plot against Pelosi. That should come as no surprise to anyone who follows DWT, even if the mainstream media hasn't caught on yet. Unfortunately, Stein's readers will all be confused because he mistakenly refers to the conservative conspiracy as "moderates," which is absolutely NOT what they are. Stein should know better.

Internal communications reviewed by the Daily Beast show that early this year the group No Labels, a centrist [he means right-of-center] advocacy organization, contemplated a plan to kneecap Pelosi’s political standing. In one exchange, a top official with the group even laid out the pros and cons of turning the California Democrat into a “bogeyman.”

That was well before Democrats took back the House of Representatives. In the weeks since they reclaimed congressional power, Pelosi has sought to earn back the Speaker’s gavel. And though the vast majority of her caucus supports her bid, moderate [he means right-of center] Democrats allied with No Labels remain some of the few party members refusing to give her their votes absent concessions from Pelosi and her team.

No Labels has publicly couched its efforts in conciliatory language, posting items on its website that subtly nudge other Democrats towards a Pelosi challenge, or that gently suggest it might be time for a leadership change. The group also wants Pelosi to commit to weakening the power of party leaders and committee chairs, among other measures that it says will empower rank and file members and reduce gridlock.

Behind the scenes, No Labels and its leader, political strategist Nancy Jacobson, have been more skeptical of Pelosi and more willing to try and marginalize her among her members.

Rupert

Emails obtained by the Daily Beast show that No Labels leadership contemplated a campaign to attack Pelosi aggressively after the primary campaign of centrist Rep. Dan Lipinski, who faced a primary challenge this year from Marie Newman, a progressive political neophyte. Lipinski’s pro-life stance had alienated a number of Democrats, but he was a proud member of the No Labels-backed House Problem-Solvers Caucus, and the group worked through a network of allied super PACs to support his reelection bid.

“Nancy, I have been thinking about our using Pelosi as the chief bogeyman in our messaging post-Lipinski,” began one email, subject line: “Pelosi as bogeyman.”

Pelosi had endorsed Lipinski. But No Labels leadership was convinced that her support was a fig leaf. Jacobson, according to a source familiar with the group’s internal deliberations, was convinced that Pelosi had secretly tried to scuttle the congressman’s reelection and proposed publicly attacking the Democratic leader in the run-up to the midterms.

“We were trying to figure out, assuming we got a positive result [in the Lipinski race], which we did, what would be the comms strategy afterwards,” said the source. “Nancy Jacobson’s immediate answer was, ‘I want to make Pelosi the bogeyman.’ She wanted to make it all about Nancy Pelosi and how she was going after incumbent Dems. None of that was true.”

According to the emails, No Labels chief strategist Ryan Clancy appears to have tried to talk Jacobson down. A direct confrontation with Pelosi would blow back on the group’s congressional allies, he explained. It would also be unprecedented; No Labels had never engaged in similar campaigns against congressional leaders of either party. Clancy instead proposed to make Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) the object of the group’s criticism. Unlike Pelosi, Sanders had actually endorsed Newman; had no procedural power to wield against members of the Problem-Solvers Caucus; and wasn’t even a Democrat.

“This is us, in effect, declaring war on Pelosi,” Clancy warned. “No Labels has never identified a party leader as ‘the enemy’ before. We didn’t do it with Obama or Trump. We haven’t done it with Schumer, Ryan, or McConnell. If we do this, we should consider some very real downsides.”

At the end of his memo, Clancy conceded that, “at some point,” No Labels “is probably going to go to war with Pelosi. And it probably should.” But “I don’t know that now is the time to do it, especially when we have a perfectly good villain to use in Bernie.”

No Labels has worked diligently alongside the Republican Party to diminish and demonize both Pelosi and Bernie. That's what they do; that's who they are-- the heart and soul of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. That's why it sickened me to see the DCCC and other Democratic groups spending tens of millions of dollars to recruiting the elect conservative shitbags like Ben McAdams (UT), Abigail Spanberger (VA), Anthony Brindisi (NY), Jeff Van Drew (NJ), Max Rose (NY), Mikie Sherrill (NJ), Xochitl Small (NM), Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ), Chrissy Houlahan (PA), Jason Crow (CO), etc.

This year, No Labels spent hundreds of thousands of dollars from GOP contributors who wanted to make sure there was a pliable conservative represneting Orlando, not Alan Grayson. The vicious, non-stop attacks against Grayson that Jacobson orchestrated were meant to help Darren Soto, a conservative backbencher who regularly sells his votes. But, according to leaked internal communications that Edward-Isaac Dovere published at The Atlantic yesterday, Jacobson had soured on him and wanted to destroy him-- and other conservative Democrats who didn't live up to her nefarious expectations.

“So Soto is now asst whip …” Jacobson wrote in an internal email on January 17. Margaret White, a senior adviser, responded: “And he is boycotting the inauguration …”

“Not a promising early development,” Clancy chimed in.

Less than an hour later, Jacobson wrote back, posing a question: “Do we ever take on someone we helped …?”

The conversation appears to have faded after that, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Jacobson on Monday initially responded to questions from The Atlantic by saying the group had never considered challenging Soto. “We supported Darren Soto. Heavily. Both his elections. 2016 and 2018. Over 1.5 million total,” she wrote in an email.

When presented with what she had previously written to her staff about him, she responded, “As a group we support people who are willing to work across the aisle to solve problems and don’t support people who put partisanship above progress. As a consequence-- we consider lots of options and ideas and we always hold true to our central values of promoting bi-partisan solutions to our nation’s problems.”

...No Labels looked into taking out another Democrat almost a year later. In December 2017, Jacobson sent an email to advisers and people in New Hampshire with the subject line “advice asap” in search of how to respond to Annie Kuster, a Democratic congresswoman, with whom she had just had a call asking her to rejoin the Problem Solvers Caucus.

“It did NOT go well. She ended up hanging up on me … She told me our group was offensive … She told me we had accomplished nothing and that she was the true bipartisan,” Jacobson wrote, calling herself “shaken up by her aggressive and hostile actions and speech.” She then asked for help on the ground to mount a campaign against Kuster. In follow-up emails to people in New Hampshire, Jacobson asked about potential primary challengers, including Dick Swett, a former representative and ambassador, and Steve Marchand, who was running in the gubernatorial primary by talking up his 2016 support for Bernie Sanders.

Upon being told they were weak, Jacobson asked about Republicans and asked for contact information for one of the candidates running. “What are the political facts about her district?” Jacobson asked in one email in December 2017. “Why are there no republican challengers?” she asked in another. She also reached out directly to Swett to ask him about running.

On Monday, Jacobson said, “We support members of Congress who truly want to reach across the aisle to solve problems. We have a strong citizen group in New Hampshire that is very disappointed in Congresswoman Kuster and her disdain for our mission.”

At the same time Stein and Dovere were publishing their pieces, Stein's old comrade in arms, Ryan Grim, put up a related blockbuster at The Intercept: Who's The Mystery Man Behind The Latest Pelosi Putsch? It's Mark Penn. Grim's right on target: "a small group of billionaire-backed Democrats, part of the so-called Problem Solvers Caucus in Congress, has launched a last-ditch effort that threatens to derail Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s election as House speaker. They’ve framed their challenge to Pelosi, a California Democrat, in terms of good government and high-minded bipartisanship. Yet the force behind their campaign is one of the most toxic and notorious partisan warriors the Democratic Party has produced in the past three decades: political and corporate consultant Mark Penn." No bullshit about "moderates," especially not when he introduced Penn-protégé and Wall Street whore-- founder of the Problem Makers Caucus-- Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog-NJ).

The links between Gottheimer and Penn go back decades. Gottheimer was Penn’s assistant in the Bill Clinton White House in the 1990s. Then in 2006, when Penn was CEO of the consulting firm Burson-Marsteller, he hired Gottheimer as an executive vice president, with Gottheimer reporting directly to him. When Penn became chief strategist of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign, he brought on Gottheimer as an adviser. In 2012, Penn set up shop at Microsoft, where he built a guerrilla PR operation to do battle in Washington with rival Google. There, too, he brought on Gottheimer.

Gottheimer had the full-throated support of both Bill and Hillary Clinton when he ran for Congress in 2016, with Hillary Clinton calling him “something of a family member.”

No Labels launched what it called “The Speaker Project” in this past June, proposing a sweeping set of rules changes that lawmakers should demand before agreeing to elect the next speaker, which by then was presumed to be a Democrat. The next month, the Problem Solvers Caucus embraced the plan. In September, Penn went on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News to talk up the project. “There’s a problem-solvers group that is looking to have some influence if the result is close, in terms of changing the rules and naming the speaker,” Penn said.

A lawsuit this summer by former No Labels contractors who alleged that they were bilked by the group claimed that Penn was was “calling the shots” at the organization. Penn, according to the Washington Post, has denied involvement with the operation of No Labels, and the group rejected the assertion that he was in charge. Neither No Labels nor Penn responded to The Intercept’s questions about Penn’s relationship with the group.

But aside from the claims of the contractors, there are also direct links between groups Penn owns and No Labels’s political activity. Penn is a minority owner of the consulting firm Targeted Victory, which the group contracted with for some of its 2018 campaigns. No Labels uses an affiliate, Victory Passport, for its online fundraising. Penn’s firm Harris Interactive does the group’s polling; SKDKnickerbocker, of which Penn is an owner, produces and places the group’s television ads, as it did in its campaign to support the re-election of Rep. Daniel Lipinski in Illinois, according to the lawsuit. Hilary Rosen, an SKDK partner, said that the firm does not produce ads for No Labels.

The New Center, a think tank launched by No Labels to house its 501c3 nonprofit operation, listed Mark Penn as a contact for inquiries about its invitation-only “ideas summit.” Penn is managing partner and president of the Stagwell Group, the holding company that owns SKDKnickerbocker. Penn regularly talks up the great work of No Labels during his appearances on Fox News.

...Penn is notorious in Washington as the metaphorical devil on the shoulder, whispering toxic advice into the ears of Democratic candidates. Penn and Jacobson were both early players in the Democratic Leadership Council, a faction that emerged within the party in the 1980s to push it to align with corporate money and to move in a more conservative direction. He’s perhaps most well known for urging his client, Hillary Clinton, to attack Barack Obama as un-American during the 2008 presidential primary.

In a now-famous 2007 memo to Clinton, Penn noted that there had been much coverage in the media of Obama’s “boyhood in Indonesia and his life in Hawaii… geared towards showing his background is diverse, multicultural and putting that in a new light. Save it for 2050.”

In other words, Penn argued, an appeal to diversity wouldn’t work politically for another half-century. “I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values,” he wrote.

How Penn planned to isolate Obama’s alleged otherness is a window into how he views the kind of glossy, good government rhetoric now deployed by No Labels-- its meaning is found less in what it says than in what it doesn’t. He advised Clinton that “we give some life to this contrast without turning negative” by elevating the values she grew up with as uniquely American. “Every speech should contain the line you were born in the middle of America to the middle class in the middle of the last century.”

That, Penn argued, would make an implicit contrast with Obama, who allegedly lacked those values-- “fairness, compassion, responsibility, giving back”-- due to his lack of American roots. “Let’s explicitly own ‘American’ in our programs, the speeches and the values. He doesn’t. Make this the new American Century, the American Strategic Energy fund. Let’s use our logo to make some flags we can give out. Let’s add flag symbols to the backgrounds,” he advised. “We are never going to say anything about his background-- we have to show the value of ours when it comes to making decisions, understanding the needs of most Americans-- the invisible Americans.”

Clinton, clumsy in her rhetoric, would occasionally make the subtext into text. In a 2008 speech in West Virginia after she beat Obama in Indiana, she said, “Senator Obama’s support among working-- hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again.” (Obama went on to win Indiana in the general election.)

A more effective dog-whistler, in the 2016 campaign, would boil the Penn approach down to just four words: “Make America Great Again.” Donald Trump was named by No Labels in 2016 as an official “Problem Solver.”

A Trump surrogate accepted the award, even though two months earlier, Trump had spoken at a No Labels conference and delivered a speech larded with Trumpisms. (Since his 2017 swearing in, Gottheimer, the Problem Solvers Caucus chair, has voted with Trump more than half the time, according to FiveThirtyEight.)

Here's a real problem that needs solving-- and urgently. Don't be surprised that not one so-called Problem Solver has signed on-- and no one supported by No Labels of course. It wouldn't surprise me if we get a Republican signed on before a "problem solver."