The Worst Democraps Who Want To Be President: Terry McAuliffe, Part V

Reports have it that Trump wants Jim Webb as Defense Secretary. He might even make a good Defense Secretary (or a lousy one; I don't know) but I think the two prima donnas deserve each other. Webb was a dickwad senator and in 2014 he decided to run for president (as a Democrat for some reason I'll never figure out) only to withdraw from the race while whining that he was "unhappy" and "not comfortable" with the policies Democratic grassroots voters seemed to favor. He had garnered virtually no support except from the same kind of inside the Beltway assholes who always claimed Biden would be a shoo-in every time he ran one of his single-digit campaigns for president. Webb said he might run as an independent and then, thankfully, more or less disappeared from the national stage... til Trump found him this week. (Remember, in 2016, "Democrat" Webb had said he would never vote for Hillary and that he might vote for Trump.) Lesson: all kinds of shit floats briefly to the surface in the lead up to a presidential election-- and then, thankfully, disappears.

I didn't think Terry McAuliffe, another creepy Virginia right-of-center faux-Dem like Webb, was even worth a chapter of our series The Worst Democraps Who Want To Be President... but while I was writing this post, I changed my mind. McAuliffe was a career bankster and he entire life has been built around one shady insider business deal after another. Those deals define who he is and who has always been and will always be-- someone who has been at war with ethics for a lifetime. Like Trump, he got rich by manipulating sleazy real estate opportunities. He was a master of raising immense amounts of money for the Clintons and making sure he would benefit from all sides of every transaction. In 1999 he admitted to the NY Times that the success of his grubby business dealings stemmed from his relationship with Bill Clinton, as well as other Democrats who played fast and loose with ethical considerations, particularly Rahm Emanuel role model Tony Coehlo and Missouri sleaze bag Dick Gephardt. "I've met all of my business contacts through politics. It's all interrelated."

And speaking of the vile Gephardt, currently a lobbyist who might have been re-sworn in as Speaker Thursday instead of Pelosi had he not thrown his lot in with Bush when it came to the attack on Iraq-- which is how Pelosi pushed him out of Congress just before the Dems won it back and made her Speaker. Off the point, but the only time I ever met McAuliffe, a character I had always avoided, was through Gephardt, then a candidate for president. The back story is long and stupid but, at the time, I was listed-- mistakenly-- as a $50,000 donor to a Clinton-related Committee. So every Democratic presidential candidate would call me to schmooze me and try to get me to write them a big check too. I met some nice ones that way. But one day Gephardt called me and wouldn't take no for an answer. He whined so pathetically the I actually felt sorry for him and agreed to meet him. When I agreed to meet Howard Dean around that same time, I was happy to invite Deanover to my home. Gephardt... I agreed to meet him in a public hotel lobby. When I got there though, he insisted I come up to his suite. I knew I shouldn't, but I did-- and what was waiting for me at the door? "Howard Klein, allow me to introduce you to [and by this time we're shaking hands] "Terry McAuliffe." Instinctively, I reacted as though I was shaking a rattlesnake and grabbed my hand away. McAuliffe headed for the exit and... well the rest is a boring story about me telling Gephardt why I thought he would make a terrible president and why I was supporting Howard Dean.

Yesterday I got an e-mail-- spam-- from McAuliffe, trying to build up his mailing list for a presidential run. "Hi there," his fundraiser pretending to be him wrote, "I want to take a moment to share my latest op-ed with you, which was published this morning by the Washington Post. I hope you'll take a look! — Terry McAuliffe."

Dull crap about Trump being a bad, bad man. But then came the last paragraph (in the e-mail): "Voters are now looking for a more realistic alternative. Leading up to 2020, Democrats must maintain our credibility with a pledge of results that are honest and achievable. We can expand the Affordable Care Act and take on pharmaceutical companies' cartel pricing, pass comprehensive climate change legislation and substantially raise incomes through minimum-wage increases and tax fairness. And that's just the start." So that was it... except for a link to click on that brought the reader to the Washington Post article itself. Those who didn't click, probably more than half, likely more than 90%, didn't see what came next, a veiled attack on progressives (i.e., Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Jeff Merkley, the 3 top candidates with vision) from the transactional scumbag dying to follow Trump into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and steal whatever Trump left over. Here's what came next:

These changes would be revolutionary for average families. Americans are asking us to focus on improving their lives, not to make unrealistic ideological promises.

For example, some senators have started to discuss a “federal jobs guarantee”-- a promise that, in certain formulations, means that anyone who wants could have a government job paying $15 an hour with great benefits. Sound too good to be true? It is. Proponents of a jobs guarantee are smart people with good motives, but they surely recognize that it is not a realistic policy.

[Note: he didn't include this video:]

Similarly, a promise of universal free college has an appealing ring, but it’s not a progressive prioritization of the educational needs of struggling families. We need to provide access to higher education, job training and student debt relief to families who need it. Spending limited taxpayer money on a free college education for the children of rich parents badly misses the mark for most families.

[Note: he didn't include this video:]



He kept going: "When the stakes are another four years of Trump degrading our country, do we really want to use the 2020 campaign as a first-time experiment on idealistic but unrealistic policies?" Unrealistic? Ah... yes, the old conservative trope. If you read DWT with any regularity you know what else conservative have always claimed was "unrealistic" or "pie-in-the-sky."

• The American Revolution
• The Bill of Rights and the forging of a democracy
• Universal white male suffrage
• Public education
• The emancipation of the slaves
• The national park system
• Food safety
• The breakup of monopolies
• The Homestead Act
• Land grant universities
• Rural electrification
• The abolition of child labor
• The eight hour workday
• The minimum wage
• Social Security
• Civil rights for minorities and women
• Voting rights for minorities and the poor
• Cleaning up our air, our water, and toxic dump sites
• Consumer product safety
• Medicare and Medicaid

Yeah, like Bloomberg, McAuliffe is another crooked political hack who can't imagine anything great ever, since he himself could never be great and he realizes that to the core of his being. "As we approach 2020," the pompous jackass droned on, sounding more and more like Claire McCaskill, "we should look at the candidates who won in swing districts in 2018. They are an energetic, diverse group who ran on realistic goals of lowering the cost of health care, improving education and raising wages. These are credible promises that Democrats have a proven record of addressing. We are the party that created the Affordable Care Act, raised the minimum wage, invested in education and even balanced the budget... Resisting dishonest populism is not just a policy imperative for serious Democrats but also a political imperative for 2020. Across the country, voters just sent a powerful message that they are tired of the broken promises of this administration, especially on health care and taxes." As soon as you see this corporate marketing tool on an e-mail, delete at once: