This Is True: The Democratic Party Isn't As Bad As The Republican Party. But For How Long?

The Democratic Party establishment is conservative in the sense of defending and bolstering the status quo-- not as perniciously as the GOP, but perniciously enough. It is also incredibly corrupt-- no less so than the Republican Party. Of course there are notable exceptions-- like House members AOC, Jamie Raskin, Ro Khanna, Pramila Jayapal, Ted Lieu, Ilhan Omar, Andy Levin, Barbara Lee, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, a few others intermittently-- but they're exceptions. Last week, The Intercept published a piece that gets to the heart of the Democratic Party by Ryan Grim and Akela Lacy, New Jersey's Cartoonishly Corrupt Democratic Party Is Finally Getting Challenged. Before we get into it, I want to point out that New Jersey has a Democratic member of Congress who isn't corrupt and doesn't belong in a federal penitentiary-- Bonnie Watson Coleman, who represents the Trenton area.

Grim and Lacy start with Albio Sires, but could have started anywhere in the state other than, ironically, Trenton, the state capital that is one of the biggest founts of corruption on the planet. "A quintessential New Jersey game of musical chairs brought Albio Sires to Congress," they wrote. "The music started in November 2005, when Sen. John Corzine was elected governor. To fill his Senate seat, the party machine tapped Rep. Bob Menendez, which created an opening for Menendez’s House seat. Albio Sires, the mayor of West New York, had previously run for Congress in the 1980s as a Republican, but was by then also state assembly speaker and a loyal member of the Democratic machine. He won a special election in 2006 with 90 percent of the vote and has represented the North Jersey district, home to the largest Cuban diaspora outside Miami, ever since."

Party identification-- partisanship-- gets these scumbags elected. Simply put-- they're not Republicans, so they must be better or, at least, the lesser evil. It isn't always the case and one day, suddenly, the New Jersey electorate will wake up and switch their idea of partisanship and it will be too late for the Democrats to do anything about it-- even if they want to, which is far from likely. They hate their own reformers far more than they hate Republicans (who they can easily "do business" with). Bernie, to most establishment Dems, is a worse option than Trump. And AOC is more an enemy than any Republican. Both are too disruptive.

How AOC became the enemy of almost every Democrat in Congress

"Sires has kept a low profile," continued Grim and Lacy, "largely voting with the party on the House floor. It’s hard to measure obscurity, but fewer than 70 Democrats have served in the House as long as Sires, and suffice it to say that Sires has not managed to translate that seniority into a national profile or measurable power in Washington. Corzine, a Wall Street baron, was unseated by Republican Chris Christie after one term; Menendez remains in office, and both he and Corzine have escaped prison despite being the targets of federal investigators. Sires has hung on, but as New Jersey’s Cuban population ages and migrates south to Florida, his district has become more diverse, with growing Central and Caribbean American populations."

In South Jersey, the Norcross bosses, whose family has had a longstanding stranglehold on local politics, are holding on. George Norcoss, known as one of New Jersey’s most influential unelected bosses, holds an outsize influence over parts of the state legislature’s South Jersey delegation. An insurance executive, he’s been accused of pulling strings to benefit from a state corporate tax incentive program that came under federal investigation last year. His brother, Donald, represents parts of South Jersey in the U.S. House. Donald is a former labor leader who was elected to the state assembly in 2009. He was later appointed to fill a vacant state Senate seat, which paved the way for his eventual transition to Congress.

Now Sires, who did not respond to requests for an interview for this article, is facing his first serious primary election since 2006, from insurgent challenger Hector Oseguera, an attorney with roots in Honduras and the Dominican Republic who specializes in fighting money laundering. Oseguera, who attended Boston University at the same time as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but didn’t know her then, was one of the earliest volunteers on her 2018 campaign to unseat then-Rep. Joe Crowley in Queens and the Bronx.

Oseguera is part of a wave of challengers taking on the local machine in North Jersey. Sires, a functionary of the West New York/Union City machine, known as the Hudson County Democratic Organization, or, often, simply, “the Organization,” is just one of many targets, with a slate of six Hudson County Freeholder candidates allied with Oseguera challenging incumbents up and down the ballot.

Elsewhere in the Garden State, similar battles are taking place, as the coalescing of activist groups and insurgent candidates launches a statewide assault on the cartoonishly corrupt New Jersey Democratic establishment, which long considered itself immune from the biannual annoyance of elections. So immune that the party did nothing to shunt aside Menendez in 2018, even as he faced trial for corruption charges in the midst of his reelection. Little-known challenger Lisa McCormick, with next to no financing, stunned the party by winning 38 percent of the vote in the primary that cycle against Menendez, who got off on a mistrial due to a hung jury and won reelection.

Now McCormick, a perennial candidate for local and federal office who has never disclosed the names of any campaign donors, is challenging state Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman. Coleman was elected in 2014 as the state’s first African American woman in Congress and has a pretty solid progressive voting record.

Rep. Josh Gottheimer, among the most conservative House Democrats, is facing a serious challenge from Dr. Arati Kriebich, a neuroscientist and former Gottheimer volunteer. In South Jersey, Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a party boss elected in 2018 and concerned about losing a primary challenge from the left this cycle, switched and became a Republican. Democratic Reps. Bill Pascrell and Donald Payne Jr. are also facing primary challenges from Zina Spezakis-- who’s also running under the “Not Me. Us.” slogan--  and Alp Basaran, and Eugene Mazo and John Flora, respectively.

None of the challengers were rated good enough to be endorsed by Blue America, and I suspect they will all lose, not because the incumbents don't stink to high heaven-- they do-- but because most of the challengers are inept and incompetent candidates. Some of the country's worst House Democrats-- Gottheimer, of course, as well as Frank Pallone, Albio Sires, Mikie Sherill-- are from New Jersey, but not one of them has a primary opponent capable of winning a campaign.

I hope I'm wrong about Oseguera and I haven't spoken with him personally, so maybe I am. Grim and Lacy wrote that he "lucked into an advantage on the ballot-- or, more accurately perhaps, he made his own luck-- that may be consequential in a race between two people with such little name recognition. In New Jersey, machine politicians for decades have implored supporters to 'vote column A all the way,' a phrase that became synonymous with loyalty to the party machine. Column A on New Jersey ballots is reserved for candidates running as a slate, from the president down to the freeholder, a county legislative position. Typically, it is only the machine that is able to put together that sort of slate, as progressives rarely have a Senate candidate fielded, and even more rarely a body in the presidential primary. But this time, Sanders supporters recruited veteran activist Larry Hamm to run for Senate against Cory Booker, enabling a slate to be formed with Hamm and down-ballot insurgents. (They had wanted Sanders to sit at the top of their slate; his campaign, however, never filed the paperwork needed to join it.) The machine, meanwhile, was torn between various presidential candidates-- including Booker-- and so declined to make any endorsement. That meant that the progressive slate in Hudson and Union counties, the population centers of the 8th District, was eligible for the A column. Because there was more than one slate, the A spot was decided in an April 9 drawing-- which the insurgents won. Voters accustomed to casting their ballots “A all the way” will wind up supporting Oseguera." That's actually funny.

The Junta: Christie, Norcross, Sweeney-- New Jersey's Axis of Evil

“There’s going to be a set of voters that show up and do their regular Democratic duty of ‘vote A all the way,’ and they might swing this election,” said Oseguera, who was raised in the district by a mother who taught and a father who held a variety of jobs, from handyman to cashier to driver. Oseguera said that when his phone bankers end the call by reminding voters to “vote column A,” they often reply with a version of “Of course, we always vote line A.”

Ron Bautista is one of the six freeholder candidates running under the Sanders-inspired slogan of “Not Me. Us.,” in a district that largely covers Hoboken. “[Oseguera’s] campaign has brought together grassroots progressives like it has never been done before,” said Bautista, who last year challenged a 16-year city council incumbent, picking up a third of the vote without a slate or developer money, which the New Jersey establishment tends to rely on. “We are at the heart of machine politics in New Jersey, and sometimes progressives have run individually against the machine. For the first time, we have a progressive slate of candidates from Senate to county government.”

Three of the slate’s nine freeholder candidates failed to qualify for the ballot, coming short on signatures, while a number of those who qualified did so by collecting electronic signatures amid the pandemic. Roger Quesada was one of them, drawing on his professional experience in e-commerce and marketing. “There’s no slate in recent memory that has ever been this organized and with a strong digital infrastructure,” he said.

...Oseguera's race against Sires presents intriguing parallels to Ocasio-Cortez’s, as well as divergences. Where Crowley was a local machine boss with national ambitions, on his way to becoming speaker of the House, Sires is merely a local machine boss. Like Ocasio-Cortez, Oseguera has raised precious little money, relying instead on a network of volunteers and local activist groups to power him to victory in what is likely to be an extremely low-turnout election against an incumbent with little name recognition in a community that has changed underneath him. (Crowley was far better known in Washington than in his home district, which cost him dearly in the primary.)

Oseguera, unlike Ocasio-Cortez, does not label himself a democratic socialist; given the number of refugees of the Cuban Revolution in the district, the term remains deeply toxic. But he supports the gamut of policies that tend to define more progressive Democrats: a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, a wealth tax, $15 minimum wage, and so on. He does not, however, have the support of Justice Democrats, the group that backed Ocasio-Cortez’s challenge and has been conservative in handing out endorsements since then. He said that when he appealed to the group for an endorsement, they told him that Sires’s voting record wasn’t egregious enough to merit the group’s scarce resources. (The group recently launched a Super PAC.) Unlike the incumbents whose challengers Justice Democrats has backed this cycle, like Dan Lipinski and Henry Cuellar, Sires is a reliable Democratic vote and has such a low profile that ousting him would barely make a ripple.

Like Ocasio-Cortez, Oseguera’s campaign, two months out from the primary, is broke, with $22,731 raised and less than $4,000 cash on hand, according to the latest filing. For Ocasio-Cortez, a viral campaign ad, combined with national coverage, helped elevate her profile and raise last-minute money, which she pumped into canvassing, phone and text banks, and digital ads. But Osegeura is campaigning amid a pandemic, with effective shelter-in-place orders, so there’s likely to be very little canvassing between now and the July 7 primary. The Oseguera-Sires contest will be fought out digitally and over the phone, a disadvantage for Sires, who has virtually no virtual presence and doesn’t even have a campaign website. Oseguera managed to buy Sires’s domain name-- AlbioSires.com-- and redirect it to his own fundraising page.

For a machine boss, Sires has little to show in the way of money, though he’s well ahead of Oseguera. This cycle, Sires has raised just $340,000 and had $237,000 cash on hand as of March 31. His biggest donors are the local trade unions and the Desert Caucus, an extremist, pro-Israel group that endorses settlements and the annexation of Palestinian territory.

...Oseguera's campaign is using its limited funds to target Democrats likely to vote by mail ahead of the primary, which was postponed from June. Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy has been pushing for an all-mail primary, but backtracked after pushback from machine leaders across the state. Because of their lack of cash, Oseguera said, his campaign narrowed its voter data purchase to 75,000 Democrats in the district who regularly vote in general elections but don’t show up for primaries. Vote-by-mail, he hopes, will make those people more likely to return a ballot if volunteers can get texts and calls in front of them enough. He expects 50,000 votes will be enough to win.

The postponement of the primary and the expansion of vote-by-mail add to the uncertainty around how the election will go, said Farmer of Rutgers University. While the changes could hamper the machine’s overall advantage, the insurgents’ fundraising barriers could also make it difficult to reach voters. “The burden of getting the information to the voters is greater because of the restrictions that we’re all operating under now,” he said.

Partial vote-by-mail “does put an additional burden on the parties if they want to maintain their encouragement of straight-ticket voting that they really have to be sort of out there and more aggressive in encouraging that then probably they have been in the past,” he said, noting that campaigns’ inability to do in-person canvassing is another complicating factor.

The shift toward vote-by-mail has made the machine nervous. DeGise told the New Jersey Globe that she opposes mail-in voting and was pushing for an all in-person vote because loyal machine voters are more likely to turn out to the polls, whereas making mail an option would bring more voters in. Mail-in voting, she said, is “just not in the culture here. … Our strongest voting blocks are not going to vote by mail,” adding that voting by mail is more popular among Democrats who don’t typically vote.

Eleana Little, a Hudson County freeholder candidate, cited the machine’s machinations as evidence that they’re nervous about insurgents harnessing that strength. “We’ve got people,” she said. “We’re building a grassroots movement and have over 100 volunteers. We’re phone-banking every day and hearing from people that they’re excited about what we’re doing. Hector comes from a working-class background and has mountains of student loan debt, like so many millennials. He didn’t have $50,000 to drop on his own campaign like some candidates do, and he doesn’t have wealthy family connections. So the war chest is small, but there are a lot of people involved. I think the fact that the machine is so nervous shows that we’ve built substantial momentum, and it’s not just all in our heads.”

As the pandemic worsens it's not just the virus itself that threatens human life. The corruption, cronyism and incompetence of those in power is adding fuel to the fire.

It's been said that the virus doesn't discriminate, but politicians and CEOs continue to prioritize their own power and profits over the lives of the most vulnerable.

Whether you consider Josh Kraushaar journalism's version of a silly clown or not, he really is the voice of the Inside-the-Beltway political establishment. He writes, at the National Journal their reality. His column yesterday, for example, began exactly the way any establishment ass-licker would begin a post if he was starving to lick more ass: "Joe Biden's decisive drubbing of Bernie Sanders in the presidential primary squelched the socialist stirrings that had been percolating within the Democratic Party. It’s probably no coincidence, then, that three of Congress’s most far-left members, all aligned with Sanders, are facing credible challenges of their own in upcoming House primaries. Three of the four freshmen members of the left-wing "Squad" that President Trump calls “AOC+3”-- Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota-- have drawn opponents who have made the case that they’re too extreme for the districts they represent. Tlaib is at risk at losing her seat to an experienced [and utterly corrupt and incompetent] African-American official in her Detroit-area district. And while Ocasio-Cortez and Omar are favored to prevail, they will face their first serious test over the popularity of their progressive messages in deep-blue districts." Oh gee, he forgot to mention that the Democratic establishment recruited a Republican pretending to be a Democrat to run against AOC. The hopes of the corrupt party establishment channelled through their boy Josh:

The unusual and unpredictable turnout patterns for upcoming summer primaries taking place during a pandemic will also add some uncertainty to these races. New York Democratic officials have been working to cancel the presidential primary for their June 23 elections, a decision overruled by a federal judge and currently under appeal. Without a presidential race driving turnout and with the coronavirus keeping many voters home, tiny turnout for state and local primaries raises the likelihood of unpredictable outcomes. Indeed, the low turnout in the 2018 New York primary was a major factor in Ocasio-Cortez’s upset of longtime Rep. Joseph Crowley.

Ocasio-Cortez’s primary against former CNBC anchor Michelle Caruso-Cabrera hasn’t drawn a lot of attention, but it’s worth watching closely. The congresswoman’s district, which spans Queens and the Bronx, has been one of the hardest-hit areas in the country from the pandemic. But Ocasio-Cortez was the only House Democrat to vote against the coronavirus-relief bill, a lonely and unpopular position on Capitol Hill. She told the New York Times that, after the vote, she felt more alienated in Congress than ever before and was facing a personal existential crisis.

Those personal feelings are undoubtedly authentic, but by making the crisis about herself, it offers a tempting opportunity for Caruso-Cabrera to portray her as someone driven more by ego than the needs of her constituents. Caruso-Cabrera is no novice: The granddaughter of Cuban and Italian immigrants, she served as the chief international correspondent for CNBC for nearly a decade. More notably, she raised over $1 million in the first three months of the year, an impressive amount for a seemingly long-shot challenger. Her strong fundraising gives her enough cash to run a professional campaign. Ocasio-Cortez, one of the best-funded members of Congress in the country, raised $2.7 million during the same period and has $3.5 million in the bank.

Ocasio-Cortez’s supporters appear to be taking notice of her upstart challenger. The Intercept, an antiestablishment publication that promotes left-wing candidates like Ocasio-Cortez, published a hit piece against Caruso-Cabrera this month for serving on the board of directors for a life-insurance company that “profits from death.” For a campaign that hasn’t drawn much attention, especially during the pandemic, the piece looked like a sign that they were taking Caruso Cabrera’s insurgent campaign seriously.

There has been no recent public polling of the race. When I reached out to Ocasio-Cortez pollster Celinda Lake to get her perspective on the race, she declined comment. An April 2019 Siena poll found her support in the district surprisingly lukewarm, with 52 percent of district voters viewing her favorably and 33 percent viewing her unfavorably. This, in a district that Hillary Clinton carried by a 57-point margin (77-20 percent).

With turnout expected to be very low-- and without a presidential campaign to drive Sanders supporters to the polls-- this is a race that’s worth watching. Even a weaker-than-expected showing by Ocasio-Cortez might tempt the congresswoman to run for president in 2024 instead of remaining as a lonely voice in a party that’s rediscovered the merits of political pragmatism.

While Ocasio-Cortez is the biggest name of the three renegades, Tlaib is the congresswoman facing the toughest challenge. She’s facing a rematch against Detroit City Council president Brenda Jones, whom Tlaib defeated by fewer than 1,000 votes in the 2018 primary. The congresswoman benefited from numerous African-American candidates splitting up the black vote on the primary ballot, allowing her to win with a 31 percent plurality. Tlaib won over the white voters in the Detroit district, but struggled to win support among African-Americans. Jones is hoping to consolidate the black vote behind her this time around.

Tlaib holds a fundraising advantage, with $1.4 million in the bank at the end of March. Jones, who announced her candidacy in March, is starting her fundraising from scratch in the middle of a pandemic.

Tlaib has faced criticism from her fellow Democrats over her anti-Israel activism and support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. But pro-Israel Democratic voters and donors are wary of Jones as well, given her past praise of anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

Between Tlaib’s underwhelming electoral history and the racial dynamic in the district, it’s clear that she’s vulnerable. A March survey conducted by longtime Michigan pollster Ed Sarpolus found Tlaib only leading Jones 43 to 34 percent. Her 9-point lead was down 28 points since the survey’s last poll in June. Being well under 50 percent as a high-profile incumbent is a glaring warning sign. Another reason why Tlaib should be worried: Joe Biden comfortably defeated Sanders in her district despite her high-profile surrogacy for Sanders.

The other Sanders-supporting member of the squad, Ilhan Omar, looked like she didn’t have too much to worry about. While she’s drawn plenty of criticism for her use of bigoted tropes to attack Jewish supporters of Israel-- and faced the risk of censure from her own party-- she’s been insulated by support from both white progressives and a Somali-American base in her heavily Democratic Twin Cities district.

But she’s facing a spirited challenge from Antone Melton-Meaux, an attorney and mediator who has criticized the congresswoman for her divisive record and has courted support in the district’s Jewish community. “Omar has made statements that have been reckless and harmful to the Jewish community," Melton-Meaux told Jewish Insider last month. "There’s a deep sense of betrayal by her actions and displeasure with the way that she has handled herself in the process with regard to the residents in this district.”

Melton-Meaux raised $210,000 in the last fundraising quarter, a respectable amount that will allow him to get his message across. Omar ended March with $1.3 million in cash on hand, giving her a significant advantage.

But in a sign that Omar may be sensing a backlash, she quietly signed onto a letter urging the Trump administration to extend a United Nations arms embargo against Iran. While it was signed by over 380 members of Congress, the document backed by The American Israel Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC] was a departure from her previous positioning on the Middle East. Indeed, she drew backlash from her anti-Israel supporters for supporting the policy.

It’s still hard to see Omar losing in a primary after emerging as a progressive star in her first term. But it’s very possible that her sudden repositioning is a result of her looking to shore up political vulnerabilities.

These three competitive races are a reminder that even among liberal primary voters, many Democratic voters aren’t fans of the in-your-face brand of socialism that these three freshman members have promoted in their first terms in office. And with an establishment figure like Biden comfortably leading the presidential race, they’re at risk of being marginalized in a way they’ve never experienced-- even if they win their contested campaigns.

Please help defeat Kraushaar (and his ilk) by clicking on the Blue America 2020 incumbents thermometer above and contributing what you can. Kraushaar certainly makes a very convincing case to always beware of any candidate he endorses, whether implicitly or explicitly.