The Republican Wing Of The Democratic Party Wants To Pick The Next Democratic Nominee

Last week David Atkins, writing for the Washington Monthly pushed back on some of the lame ideas ritually asserted by the Republican wing of the Democratic Party upon which they claim their right to dominate a party they are so obviously out of touch with. "Probably the most annoying frequently repeated shibboleth," he wrote, referring to another in a series of anti-AOC screeds pushed by corporate media, "is the notion that centrists make for more effective legislators than progressives. This is not the case by any quantifiable metric. In fact, centrist involvement has historically proved catastrophic for Democratic priorities. The most recent notable case was when Max Baucus was allowed to dither with the Affordable Care Act for months. That dilatory measure was not only counterproductive, it cost Senator Ted Kennedy his chance to vote on the landmark legislation. Meanwhile, Joe Lieberman (who, it must be noted, was endorsed by almost the entire Democratic establishment in his own primary battle against Ned Lamont) singlehandedly killed the initiative to allow the Medicare age to be reduced to the age of 50. It was not the progressives who harmed the Affordable Care Act in its march to passage; it was the centrists. Time and time again, the Third Way wing pretends that by being conciliatory enough with Republicans, Democrats can get votes from across the aisle to pass necessary legislation. This is a fantasy, a pipe dream far more far fetched than any progressive wish list. Progressives start with the understanding that Republicans will automatically blockade anything decent, then figure out what will be legislatively required to accomplish the necessary goals. It is worse than useless to start by trying to figure out what kind of compromise a bipartisan majority will accept. In fact, weakened platforms and confused messaging, which result from such an approach, end up doing more harm than good."

Historically, the anti-progressive faction of politics-- whether Federalists, Whigs, Democrats or Republicans in their day-- opposed ideas like the Declaration of Independence and the break with Britain, the Bill of Rights, public education, emancipation of the slaves, unions, government regulatory initiatives, the minimum wage, Social Security, Medicare, expanding suffrage to include non-property owners, women, former slaves, young people... That's what conservatives do; that's what conservatives are... defenders of the status quo, whether we're talking about Trump or McTurtle or Status Quo Joe, the Republican Party, the Blue Dogs, the New Dems, Third Way, No Labels, Problem Solvers... they are all essentially the same-- corrupted men and women willing to take money from the wealthy to act on the public stage as their agents.

"What progressives are doing," continued Atkins, "is laying down the marker that if this system won’t allow the Green New Deal to be enacted, they will change the system until it does-- whatever it takes. If that means eliminating the filibuster? So be it. Need to add states to the union? Go for it. Term limits for justices or packing courts? Sign them up. This might seem like fantastical thinking, but it actually carries a greater dose of realism about both the current political situation and about the opposition in the Republican Party… Any 'solution' that would realistically get the vote of even a single Republican senator wouldn’t come close to doing what the moment actually requires. Which means that progressives don’t care what the center-left thinks it might be able to pass, because that’s ultimately irrelevant. Progressives are saying what is necessary, and then determining just how far they’ll need to go to get there. And not just to deal with climate change, but also radical inequality, the destruction of the middle class, and much more besides."

Joel Bleifuss is the editor and publisher of In These Times. A short, right to the point essay last week, How Third Way Democrats Could Get Trump Re-elected isn't referring to creepy, crawly fake Democrats like Mark Penn, Nancy Jacobson and Andrew Stein going to work to reelect Trump-- as I did Saturday-- but today's versions of the DLC leading the Democratic Party down the path of ruin. He notes that former DLC president, a conservative Arkansas governor, Bill Clinton managed to snatch the Democratic nomination, win the presidency and wreck the bond between the Democratic Party and the working class. But the DLC's death in 2011 wasn't the good news it should have been. "[T]his creature of the Third Way," he wrote, "did not slither into the sunset. Rather, it shed its skin and emerged in 2017 as New Democracy, a political action committee. New Democracy is coiled to strike in 2020. Its advisory board includes declared presidential candidate John Delaney, a former Maryland congressman and millionaire businessman, along with two other possible presidential contenders: Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, who said in January that he is 'probably' in the race, and former New Orleans mayor, Mitch Landrieu, a self-proclaimed 'radical centrist.' Third Way Democrats love the word 'radical.' The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), the DLC-affiliated think tank, brags that it deploys 'its trademark philosophy of radical pragmatism' as part of 'the vanguard' working 'to design a distinctly American hybrid of publicprivate action'-- in other words, privatization of government services."

New Democracy founder Will Marshall expands on this point in a recent article for The Daily Beast, “Hey, Democratic Socialists: More Big Government Won’t Fix What Ails Us.” He writes that, “rather than emulate European-style statism” as advocated by “Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the new socialist idol,” progressives should “offer voters an indigenous and decentralized vision for effecting radical change.”

Marshall is also a founder of both the late DLC and the PPI, which shares an office with New Democracy. PPI funders have included the weapons manufacturer Raytheon, Dow Chemical and General Electric, along with the right-wing Bradley Foundation, which funds the American Legislative Exchange Council [ALEC].

Just as there is nothing “progressive” about PPI, there is nothing “new” about the ideas advanced by New Democracy. Like the Republican Party, New Democracy is death on single-payer healthcare, which the group’s website explains “would force working Americans to give up their doctors, and raise the threat of rationing care.” Back in 2010, PPI wonks ensured that the White House not push for a “public option”-- a government-run nonprofit insurance option-- in Obamacare.

New Democracy’s stated goal in 2020 is to expand “the party’s appeal across Middle America and make Democrats competitive.” Pragmatic radicals like Marshall advocate doing so not by “tear[ing] up existing trade agreements” but by building a “knowledge economy” that is “shaped largely by American ingenuity and technological prowess”—a vision crafted for corporate America under the guise of aiding downwardly mobile white working people who, according to the New Democracy fairy tale, were abandoned by Democrats in 2016. Not so. The abandonment dates to the 1990s, when the DLC, PPI and Bill Clinton championed free trade policies that destroyed the livelihoods of working people of all races, including many of Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables.”

Hillary’s speechifying may have opened the purses of Goldman Sachs bankers, but she failed to woo white non-college-educated voters who supported Barack Obama in 2012, and she lost the critical states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. According to the calculations of Ruy Teixeira at the Center for American Progress, Clinton would be president had she had won over just 25 percent of these former Obama voters.

Indeed, if Clinton had campaigned, as Bernie Sanders did, against trade agreements like NAFTA that benefit the rich and the powerful, it is a good bet that Donald Trump would not be president. If New Democracy steers Democratic strategy in 2020, it is a good bet he will remain president.

The New Democracy PAC-- a Super PAC-- hasn't spent any money on elections so far and has raised relatively modest amounts from just 8 key contributors (with the help of Harry Reid):

• Netjets Association of Shared Aircraft Pilots- $15,000
• Ernst & Young- $10,000
• DTE Energy- $5,000
• National Electrical Contractors Association- $5,000
• Fresenius Medical Care North America- $5,000
• Genentech Inc- $5,000
• American Apparel & Footwear Association- $5,000
• National Auto Dealers Association- $5,000

Marshall's odious PAC, is likely to jump in with both feet behind Biden (or Hickenlooper or Delaney). Remember, Marshall, a neocon, was a key figure in persuading right-of-center Democrats to back the Iraq war and he has been on the wrong side of every policy issue in the last several decades-- perfect for Status Quo Joe (or Hickenlooper or Delaney). The thermometer on the right will take you to an ActBlue page for Bernie and congressional candidates who are running on the progressive platform that Bernie helped develop. It is crucial that when Bernie is in the White House, he have as many progressive members of Congress as possible. That's something we have to work on now, not when Blue Dogs and New Dems are working with Republicans in Congress to sabotage all of Bernie's initiatives like Medicare for All, raising the minimum wage, free public colleges and, of course, the Green New Deal. Please give what you can to Bernie-- and to the congressional candidates who support him.