Want To Stop Conservative Democrats From Betraying The Party? Take Part In The Nominating Process

In the 2006 midterm elections there was a huge wave against Bush and the Republican Party, Despite the DCCC running some really ghastly Republican-lite candidates-- tons of putrid Blue Dogs-- the wave swept them into office. The Republican House losses: 30 seats. The list below are districts that flipped from red to fake-blue and then subsequently flipped back to red once voters realized they been cheated (primarily by DCCC charlatan Rahm Emanuel):

• AZ-05- J.D. Hayworth to Blue Dog Harry Mitchell to David Schweikert
• FL-16- Mark Foley to Blue Dog Tim Mahoney to Tom Rooney
• IN-02- Chris Chocola to Blue Dog Joe Donnelly to Jackie Walorski
• IN-08- John Hostettler to Blue Dog Brad Ellsworth to Larry Bucshon
• IN-09- Mike Sodrel to Blue Dog Baron Hill to Todd Young
• KS-02- Jim Ryun to Blue Dog wannabe Nancy Boyda to Lynn Jenkins
• NY-20- John Sweeney to Blue Dog Kirsten Gillibrand/Blue Dog Scott Scott Murphy to Chris Gibson
• NY-24- Sherwood Boehlert to Blue Dog Mike Arcuri to Richard Hanna
• NC-11- Charles Taylor to Blue Dog Heath Shuler to Mark Meadows
• OH-18- Bob Ney to Blue Dog Zack Space to Bob Gibbs
• PA-04- Melissa Hart to Blue Dog Jason Almire to Scott Perry
• PA-08- Mike Fitzpatrick to Blue Dog Patrick Murphy to Mike Fitzpatrick
• PA-10- Don Sherwood to Blue Dog Chris Carney to Tom Marino
• TX-22- Tom DeLay/Shelley Sekula-Gibbs to Blue Dog Nick Lampson to Pete Olson

Who cares? Old news? Yeah... but. But the moron Pelosi put in rage of the DCCC is following ever single step Emanuel took in 2006 to "win," including openly recruiting Blue Dogs and New Dems from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. Many are pretending to be "progressives." So what will happen in 2022, the next crap Ben Ray Lujan candidates will all be beaten the same way Emanuel's crap candidates were beaten in 2010.

On Wednesday LaTosha Brown, southern activist and cofounder of Black Voters Matter, asked-- and answered-- an important question: How Long Does It Take a Southern White Democrat Elected by Black Voters to Shift to the Right? Less Than a Week. "Over the past few days," she wrote, "many voters in Alabama who helped carry Doug Jones to a historic election victory have expressed frustration over recent comments from the senator-elect regarding both President Donald Trump’s alleged history of sexual harassment and the GOP tax bill. In an interview this week with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Jones said that he doesn’t agree with the Democrats who argue Trump should resign from office over the allegations regarding sexual assault and harassment because the allegations 'were made before the election, and so people had an opportunity to judge before that election.' He also gave a less-than-clear answer on how he would have voted on the GOP tax bill, were he given the chance. That Jones would pursue a faulty strategy of shifting to the right is not surprising. In fact, many of those who voted for him expected such a shift, although we didn’t necessarily expect to see it before the election was even certified. What we also did not expect, and what may be more troubling, is the feedback from supporters within the progressive community asking us to 'be patient' with Jones. Such feedback is very reminiscent of the comments from white clergy members urging Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to wait-- comments which gave birth to Dr. King’s famous Letter From a Birmingham Jail.

Those of us who have dedicated our work and lives to engaging and empowering Black and marginalized communities know that once we allow white candidates to shift right, history shows that they never (or almost never) prioritize the policies and issues most deeply affecting Black voters’ communities. In fact, in most instances these electeds will use the distancing-from-Black-voters tool to build “white political caché” in the South. The cycle of abandonment and lack of accountability never stops because Black voters become their Southern white rallying tool. Unfortunately, Black voters have a long history of being the political pawns of both parties; in recent years we even witnessed and experienced this with our own beloved President Barack Obama. Because of the insidious nature and pervasiveness of racism in this country, Black political abandonment has always generated some level of white political support in the South and in the nation. We have to change this paradigm.

...As a Black woman and feminist, I’m no longer willing to continue to leave my fate and the fate of people in the Deep South who are hurting in the hands of those who don’t have the moral fortitude, courage, or forward thinking to create a shift in the current paradigm of power. Historically, Black voters have blindly supported white candidates we believed (or at least hoped) would “remember us” and our issues legislatively while they publicity shifted or positioned themselves on the right. This has not been an effective strategy for us. The strategy of depending on blind, unaccountable white benevolence for building political power has never quite panned out for Black people, women, or people of color in the South. And it never will.

Additionally, I believe the other severe damage of Jones’ apparent pivot to the right is the devastating and traumatic impact on the psyche and spirits of Black people who went beyond the call of duty to over-perform in the last election cycle in Alabama. What message do we want to send Black voters? Do we think this strategy is sustainable? Are we still imploring a “just wait and see”‘ strategy for Black people more than 50 years after the Voting Rights Act? We will continue to tell Black voters, “Just hold on and wait because this is simply the best you will have to work with.” Do we think young Black voters will stand for this?

We know that it is precisely the type of behavior from elected officials like Jones that creates an uphill burden for the Democratic Party, because it further alienates the Democratic base, feeds voter apathy, discourages civic participation, and supports a narrative that somehow Black people in the South are powerless and only pawns in this two-party system. It was by challenging and resisting this very faulty belief that we actually mobilized the tens of thousands of Black voters who participated in unprecedented numbers in the Alabama election.

No one was voting to guarantee a career for Doug Jones

Sometimes we will focus so intently on the battle before us that we will lose the war. Last week’s election wasn’t about helping the Democrats gain more power, but it was about Black voters sending a strong and clear message to America that we know our collective power, we know that we are the core base for advancing progressive politics in this county, and we will no longer continue to be taken for granted by either party. This election was not about Doug Jones. It was about us. We care about health care, affordable housing, mass incarceration, education, immigrant rights, and tax reform. And as the people who put Doug Jones in power, we will demand his attention to these and other priority issues.

It is for that reason that I think it is critically important that progressives think more deeply about the direct and indirect consequences of Doug Jones’ actions and the intended and unintended damage that his public kowtowing to the conservative right will have on eroding the base and further alienating the very same voters who put him in office.  

Just wait 'til grassroots Democrats get a load of the two corrupt right-wing crap candidates Schumer has picked to run for the Senate from Arizona and Nevada, respectively Blue Dog Kyrsten Sinema (who has the worst voting record of any Democrat in the House) and Sinema wannabe Jackie Rosen. Doug Jones is unlikely to ever be as bad as either.

"IF It Proves True" Is A Very Disingenuous Trope Republicans Are Using To Protect Their Own Asses

The Democrats were going to win big in the 2006 midterms. An anti-Bush/anti-GOP wave had been building in intensity and reach for months. In the end, the Republicans lost a net of 30 seats, and although the DCCC elected mostly Blue Dogs and New Dems from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party who were never going to be able to hold their seats-- they've pretty much all been subsequently defeated-- among the GOP scumbags who were defeated were real villains like Dick Pombo (R-CA), Jim Ryun (R-KS), Charles Taylor (R-NC), J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ), John Sweeney (R-NY), Curt Weldon (R-PA), Mark Green (R-WI) and Chris Chocola (R-IN). The cherry on the cake was the Mark Foley child molestation scandal. And, although Pelosi closed ranks with the Republicans to protect their colleague personally, the scandal was the last straw for many voters that year. Foley molesting underage boys-- no, he didn't just send them mash notes online-- damaged the GOP's brand.

Speaking of which... what more is there to say about that posterchild of Republican hypocrisy, Roy Moore? After a couple of days of moral ambiguity from most of them, Republican office-holders have finally started to distance themselves from him. Senators Mike Lee (R-UT), Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Steve Daines (R-MT) officially rescinded their endorsements of Moore. Bob Corker made it clear that he's glad he never endorsed the unfit Moore in the first place:

The most that most Republicans were willing to say was that "if" the charges were proven true, Moore should step aside. That cap includes Mike Pence, Ted Cruz (R-TX), Huckabee's ridiculous daughter, McConnell (R-KY), Cory Gardner (R-CO), Susan Collins (R-ME), Rob Portman (R-OH), Pat Toomey (R-PA), Richard Shelby (R-AL), Thom Tillis (R-NC), John Cornyn (R-TX),Lee Zeldin (R-NY). To anyone reading the Washington Post story-- instead of the Hannity or Breitbart translation for idiots-- the charges are as proven as they will ever be. There isn't going to be a trial with a judge and jury making an official determination, is there? Instead, you either believe the 30-some-odd women and witnesses or you believe the psychotic child molester. How many Republicans in the House have bothered distancing themselves from Moore? The only ones I could find public statements from are super-vulnerable members Barbara Comstock (R-VA), Peter King (R-NY) and Carlos Curbelo (R-FL). Curbelo pointed out that "this man is despicable and should step down. To call him 'unfit' is generous." Why can't some of them take the kinds of unambiguous stands that the party's last two legitimate presidential nominees took?

Barbara Comstock's anti-Moore screed was classic, though; I wonder why some of her Republican House colleagues don't follow her on this? Where's Speaker  Ryan? Too worried about how the child molestation charges will impact his tax cuts for billionaires legislation-- his own holy grail? Comstock:

Harvey Weinstein, Anthony Weiner, Roger Ailes, Roy Moore ... No Moore of this ... 4 woman have come forward with detailed stories about Roy Moore. Their stories are confirmed through numerous sources who knew of the actions at the time or well before now. I believe the stories from the victims of Harvey Weinstein, Roger Ailes and others because they were substantiated and consistent with the stories of how sexual predators operate. To date Roy Moore has not provided any credible explanation or response to the detailed allegations, particularly the allegations by a woman who was at the time a 14-year-old girl and Roy Moore was a 32-year-old district attorney. The defense from some of his supporters is beyond disturbing. Today, the National Review Editorial Board also set out the case against Roy Moore and why he should drop out. Roy Moore should not serve in the U.S. Senate

According to Teresa Jones who served as deputy district attorney for Etowah County, Alabama-- part of the time Roy Moore was molesting underage girls-- "It was common knowledge that Roy Moore dated high school girls, everyone we knew thought it was weird," Jones told CNN. "We wondered why someone his age would hang out at high school football games and the mall... but you really wouldn't say anything to someone like that."

Down in Alabama, Republicans are using God and Jesus and The Bible to excuse Moore's predatory behavior. The state auditor Jim Zeigler (R-AL): "Take the Bible: Zachariah and Elizabeth for instance. Zachariah was extremely old to marry Elizabeth and they became the parents of John the Baptist. Also take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus. There's just nothing immoral or illegal here. Maybe just a little bit unusual."

Last week, best selling author and ex-Evangelical Frank Schaeffer told us that he "grew up in the big time Evangelical subculture. Roy Moore’s penchant for child sex/assault and alleged rape was all too typical. There was always some nasty little sex secret with a pastor going on. In public-- like Moore-- it was all about godly lives. In private it was all about double standards. From rape to who got abortions, to how evangelical churches protected their pedophile molesters, one story emerged: Protect the 'Work' at all costs! The children who a pastor rapes are told to keep silent less they 'Hurt the Lord’s Work.' And the children are blamed: 'Your skirt was too short! You led him astray!' Roy Moore isn’t the abusive anomaly, he’s the patriarchal norm. This goes back to the Bible itself that puts brutal men in charge of churches where women must be silent. Voices raised in protest are exiled. Moore is a poster boy for evangelicals like Ralph Reed, who should be in jail for double dealings with the casino owners. He’s a poster boy for the professional hater Franklin Graham. Moore with his gun-waving, Bible-quoting is no different in hypocrisy than is Sarah Huckabee, as she quotes Jesus with one side of her mouth and lies for Trump daily out of the other."

Hogan is the Republican governor of Maryland

By Saturday, Schaeffer had time to think more about it and he wrote a post on his own blog: When Christian Cite The Bible To Defend Child Molestation We've Reached The Bottom Of The American/Evangelical Slide To Hell.

Moore suggested just this year that the 9/11 terror attacks were God’s punishment because “we legitimize sodomy.” He has said that homosexuality is “the same thing” as sex with a cow and should be criminalized, and argued that Representative Keith Ellison should not be allowed to serve in Congress because he is a Muslim.

Following Moore’s “logic” it might be time to ask when God will destroy America because it is filled with people claiming to follow Jesus who also-- like Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Roy Moore, Jim Ziegler and others-- sink to both blasphemy and outright lies in defending child molesting in the name of the Bible.

When Evangelicals defend an alleged pedophile saying Moore is as “clean as a hound’s tooth” and offer a defense of child abuse saying the Virgin Mary was a teenager when Joseph married her (in fact, the Bible does not indicate her age), adding: “They became parents of Jesus,” then maybe God really will strike down America… just for the hell of it, because-- like Trump grabbing women’s crotches-- He can get away with it.

This morning, I had the great honor of joining Joy Reid, Karine Jean-Pierre, Kurt Bardella, David Frum, Jason Johnson, and Bishop William Barber on AM Joy to discuss the desperate hypocrisy of the Republican party, which has become, unequivocally and enthusiastically, the party of Trump, Mass Shootings, Milo, Bannon, Rape, Neo-Nazis, White Supremacy, and most recently, the repeatedly disgraced Judge Roy Moore, whose actions have added a new word to the Republican lexicon: Pedophile.

Pelosi's DCCC Is Now Openly Admitting They Are Recruiting Blue Dogs Masquerading As Democrats

In 2006, the Republicans greeted the midterms as a spent force. George W. Bush was historically unpopular-- bogged down in an unpopular war and-- along with congressional Republicans-- an unending parade of scandals. Democrats defeated 22 GOP incumbents and won 8 open seats that had been held by Republicans who retired. And, for the first time since the GOP was founded, Republicans didn't beat a single Democrat or win a single open Democratic seat. The Democrats' popular vote was 42,338,795 (52.3%) to the GOP's 35,857,334 (44.3%). These were the Democrats first elected that year:

• Harry Mitchell (Blue Dog-AZ)
• Gabby Giffords (Blue Dog-AZ)
• Jerry McNerney (D-CA)
• Ed Perlmutter (New Dem-CO)
• Joe Courtney (New Dem-CT)
• Chris Murphy (New Dem-CT)
• Kathy Castor (D-FL)
• Tim Mahoney (Blue Dog-FL)- lost 2008
• Ron Klein (New Dem-FL)
• Hank Johnson (D-GA)
• Mazie Hirono (D-HI)
• Phil Hare (D-IL)
• Joe Donnelly (Blue Dog-IN)
• Brad Ellsworth (Blue Dog-IN)
• Baron Hill (Blue Dog-IN)
• Bruce Braley (D-IA)
• Dave Loebsack (D-IA)
• Nancy Boyda (rejected Blue Dog-KS)- lost 2008
• John Yarmuth (D-KY)
• John Sarbanes (D-MD)
• Tim Walz (D-MN)
• Keith Ellison (D-MN)
• Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH)
• Paul Hodes (D-NH)
• Albio Sires (D-NJ)
• Yvette Clarke (D-NY)
• John Hall (D-NY)
• Kirsten Gillibrand (Blue Dog-NY)
• Mike Arcuri (Blue Dog-NY)
• Heath Shuler (Blue Dog-NC)
• Charlie Wilson (Blue Dog-OH)
• Betty Sutton (D-OH)
• Zack Space (Blue Dog-OH)
• Jason Altmire (Blue Dog-PA)
• Joe Sestak (D-PA)
• Patrick Murphy (New Dem-PA)
• Chris Carney (Blue Dog-PA)
• Steve Cohen (D-TN)
• Nick Lampson (Blue Dog-TX)
• Peter Welch (D-VT)
• Steve Kagen (D-WI)

Of those 15 Blue Dogs, not one is still in the House. But I'll get into that in a moment. First let's fast forward two years to the 2008 election, with Obama at the top of the ticket for the first time. The Republicans lost 26 seats-- although they did beat 5 Democratic incumbents. The Democrats won a higher percentage of votes in 2008 than they had 2 years earlier-- 65,237,840 (53.2%) to 52,249,491 (42.6%) for the GOP. These were the newly elected Democrats:

• Bobby Bright (Blue Dog-AL)
• Parker Griffith (Blue Dog-- who turned Republican-AL)
• Ann Kirkpatrick (New Dem-AZ)
• Betsy Markey (Blue Dog-CO)
• Jim Himes (New Dem-CT)
• Alan Grayson (D-FL)
• Suzanne Kosmas (Blue Dog-FL)
• Walt Winnick (Blue Dog-ID)
• Debbie Halvorson (New Dem-IL)
• Chellie Pingree (D-ME)
• Frank Kratovil (Blue Dog-MD)
• Mark Schauer (D-MI)
• Gary Peters (D-MI)
• Dina Titus (D-NV)
• John Adler (Blue Dog-NJ)
• Martin Heinrich (D-NM)
• Harry Teague (Blue Dog-NM)
• Mike McMahon (Blue Dog-NY)
• Paul Tonko (D-NY)
• Dan Maffei (New Dem-NY)
• Eric Massa (D-NY)
• Larry Kissell (Blue Dog-NC)
• Steven Driehaus (New Dem-OH)
• Marcia Fudge (D-OH)
• Mary Jo Kilroy (D-OH)
• John Boccieri (Blue Dog-OH)
• Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR)
• Kathy Dahlkemper (Blue Dog-PA)
• Glenn Nye (Blue Dog-VA)
• Tom Perriello (D-VA)
• Gerry Connolly (New Dem-VA)

Of the 14 Blue Dogs elected that year, just one-- Schrader-- is still in Congress. The following year, 2010-- Democratic voters just stayed away from the polls in droves-- millions of them. All those crap Blue Dogs and most of the New Dems were defeated because Democratic voters realized they had been tricked by the DCCC and by their own leaders into backing Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. Democrats lost 63 seats and virtually the whole Blue Dog caucus. The Democratic turnout went from 65,237,840 (53.2%) votes to 38,980,192 (44.9%) while the Republican vote dropped far less-- from 52,249,491 (42.6%) votes to 44,827,441 (51.7%).

The Democrats, though, learned nothing at all. How do I know? I watch the DCCC carefully and see what kind of garbage they're recruiting to run again this year. Yesterday Arit John, reporting for Bloomberg, wrote that Democrats See Conservative Blue Dogs as Key to Winning House. Yep... they're doing it again. The DCCC, he reported "is now building close ties with the previously ignored Blue Dog Coalition-- which boasts that it’s not afraid to buck Democratic leadership-- to prepare for next year’s elections, when all 435 seats in the chamber are up for grabs... 'The DCCC has seen the light,' said Representative Kurt Schrader of Oregon, a Blue Dog coalition member. Representative Ben Ray Lujan, a [conservative and an idiot] New Mexico Democrat and chairman of the Democrats’ campaign committee, said in a statement that the Blue Dogs have 'been incredible partners,' helping develop a list of 79 Republican-held seats to target in the 2018 election."

Some Democratic activists aren’t pleased the party is embracing the Blue Dogs. Liberals aren’t keen on promoting candidates who may oppose traditional Democratic views on abortion rights, gun control and many other policies, saying those candidates will lose to Republicans.

"The days of the Blue Dogs are over," said Adam Green, the co-chairman of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a political action committee that works to elect liberal candidates. "The threat to progressives is a Democratic Party that rallies around people generally going in the right direction, but who think very small-bore and who are themselves milquetoast candidates who don’t inspire voters."

...In the 2016 election, the Democrats picked up six House seats. Three of the incoming freshmen ran as Blue Dogs: Representatives Tom O’Halleran of Arizona, Stephanie Murphy of Florida and Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey. The DCCC is working with the Blue Dogs to replicate that success on a wider scale next year, said DCCC spokesman Tyler Law.

The DCCC has made a "robust and concerted" effort to include the Blue Dogs in recruiting candidates and let them take the lead in assisting potential candidates with messaging and finding consultants, said Representative Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, the chairwoman of the Blue Dog PAC.

“In the past it would be DCCC staff who would kind of drive the process and what we’ve said is ‘Well, we think we’re better at this than you guys,’” she said.

In previous election cycles, there has been little to no coordination between the Blue Dog caucus and the DCCC, but now there are weekly meetings between staffers to discuss recruitment, said Molly Allen, director of the Blue Dog PAC.

She said they are playing a role in lining up candidates in 50 to 70 districts. The Blue Dogs are also working on pairing potential candidates with the pollsters, advertisers and consultants that its members have worked with for years.

There’s enthusiasm among the tight-knit group of Blue Dogs and their staff about their influence within the party, she said. Allen pointed to a meeting early this year when the DCCC’s recruitment chairman, Representative Denny Heck of Washington, said the party won’t have a majority unless more Blue Dogs are elected.

Some party leaders appear to agree. After Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez said in April that support for abortion rights is "not negotiable," several Democrats, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, said there is room in the party for anti-abortion Democrats.

“She understands that in order to get the majority you’ve got to work with other folks,” said Representative Henry Cuellar of Texas, the Blue Dogs’ co-chairman for communications. Cuellar, who opposes abortion, said Pelosi’s office also reached out to him at the time.

Despite DCCC support, Blue Dogs will have to face opposition from Democrats’ newly ignited activist wing, which has rejected the idea of running from the center. While the caucus has “nowhere to go in 2018 but up,” its members risk losing primaries to more liberal candidates, said David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report.

Liberals say their key policy objectives, including a $15 an hour minimum wage and a single-payer health care system, poll well nationally. Conservative Democrats argue that progressives are trying to turn out Democratic voters who don’t exist instead of reflecting the priorities of the Republican-held districts they are trying to win.

"The Democrats have won every liberal seat in the country," Sinema said. "What the Democrats haven’t done is won all of the swing seats in the country."

The report mentions the 3 worst freshmen in Congress, Blue Dogs Tom O’Halleran (a "former" Republican), Stephanie Murphy and Josh Gottheimer. All three vote consistently against anything that smacks of progressive legislation. Each is rated "F" by ProgressivePunch. O'Halleran and Gottheimer are tied at 28.12 and Murphy is nearly as bad with a crucial vote score of 35.48. When Ryan and McCarthy boast that this hideous piece of legislation or that piece of destructive, toxic puke won with "bipartisan" support, they're talking about 7 very right-wing Blue Dogs: Stephanie Murphy, Dan Lipinski (IL), Josh Gottheimer, Tom O'Halleran, Collin Peterson (MN), Henry Cuellar (TX) and, worst of all, Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), who, for example sits on the House Financial Services Committee and votes with the Republicans to set Wall Street free to plunder Americans in return for taking $1,003,940 in bribes from the Finance Sector last year. When weak-minded scumbags like Lujan, who should have been kicked out of the DCCC after losing miserably instead of getting to be chairman again, talk about giving the Blue Dogs a role, they're not just talking about Republican-lite conservatives, they're talking about corrupt bribe takers. There are no Blue Dogs who don't take special interest payoffs for their votes-- none, not one, not ever.

A problem for progressive voters is that few Democrats run as Blue Dogs. They mouth the words normal Democrats say and then when it's too late, when they're in office, they take off the masks and expose the ugly truth. Chances are good that if the DCCC is backing a candidate in a primary, they're backing either a Blue Dog or New Dem. Chances are going when someone claims to be a "centrist" (like Dave Min in Orange County or Andrew Janz in the Central Valley) we're talking about Blue Dogs or New Dems not Democrats. Be careful-- and everyone on this list you get to by hitting the Blue America thermometer on the right is a progressive and not a Blue Dog and not a New Dem. And one more thing to remember, if an anti-Trump tsunami elects a batch of slimy Blue Dogs in 2018, they'll all be defeated in 2022 when their constituents realize they got tricked by the DCCC again.

California Blue Dog Ellen Tauscher Is Back-- Lock Away Your Wallet

She's back-- and up to no good again!

It’s 10 years later and right-wing Democrat Ellen Tauscher-- once the head of the New Dems, a vice chair of the DLC, and a proud Blue Dog-- is rearing her head in Democratic politics again. She’s the chair of the California 7 Project (AKA- Fight Back California), which purports to being trying to defeat 7 California Republicans in 2018: Jeff Denham and David Valadao in the Central Valley, Steve Knight in the L.A./Ventura 25the district and the 4 vulnerable GOPers in Orange County, Ed Royce, Dana Rohrabacher, Darrell Issa and Mimi Walters. Typical of crooked political operations, Tauscher’s outfit-- a shady SuperPAC-- is raising money for itself, not for any Democratic candidates. Tauscher told Roll Call she plans to raise $10,000,000, money that could be used to defeat conservatives that will instead be used to bolster conservatives and, in all likelihood, Tauscher’s and her cronies’ own accounts. You just have to trust she’ll spend it right. But you shouldn’t… because history shows exactly how she’ll spend it.

Tauscher is working with her original campaign manager, strategist Katie Merrill, who loses all her races, and they hiding who has already funneled 6-figures into their SuperPAC. So just what you would expect of a slimy character like Tauscher-- dark money fueling her efforts to sucker the grassroots into contributing to… probably herself and a gaggle of dreadful right-of-center Republican-lite candidates just like herself. Their main goal will be to make sure no Berniecrats win any nominations, just Tauscher-like offal from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. One source told me she’s getting money from the lottery winner the DCCC wants to sell the CA-39 nomination to, Gil Cisneros, but it’s impossible to confirm who’s giving Tauscher’s operation the cash, since she’s taking advantage of the dark money Supreme Court rulings to hide her sources.

My history with Tauscher goes back a ways. In 2006, she recruited an “ex”-Republican to run against the grassroots candidate in California she and Rahm were eager too defeat, Jerry McNerney. They decided McNerney was too liberal to beat Republican Natural Resources Committee chair Richard Pombo and they dug up a Republican masquerading as a Democrat instead. McNerney slaughtered the interloper in the primary and Tauscher and Rahm put a hex on the district, calling donors and telling them not to contribute to McNerney in the general. That’s how Rahm taught the DCCC to play-- a practice continued by Steve Israel and whoever tells the hapless Ben Ray Lujan what he should do. In any case, McNerney pulverized Pombo, shocking the GOP (and Tauscher’s and Rahm’s Republican wing of the Democratic Party). It was one of the biggest races of the year and McNerney, propelled by grassroots enthusiasm, took 109,868 votes (53.3%) to Pombo’s 96,396 (46.7%). Pombo spent $4,629,983 that year, to McNerney’s $2,422,962. The NRCC came to Pombo’s defense with a then-massive $1,442,492, while Rahm grudgingly allowed the DCCC to spend a mere $295,366, less that the Sierra Club or even the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund.

The media has always white-washed Tauscher and given her favorable treatment. Ten years ago, I wrote about a Washington Post puff piece on her.

Eilperin and Grunwald have written an inherently dishonest piece-- pure Inside-the-Beltway ass-kissery for the powers-that-be. Reading their whitewash you would never know that Tauscher recruited and pushed a pro-corporate, anti-grassroots shill to run against Democratic grassroots hero Jerry McNerney, only that she's being victimized by some left wing bullies for being a hard-working "moderate." From Eilperin and Grunwald a reader would reasonably conclude that Tauscher had merely "supported McNerney's centrist opponent in his primary, to the disgust of the Net roots." Not a word about the Tauscher-inspired financing that nearly caused McNerney to have to spend all his non-corporate, grassroots money in the primary, endangering his bid to oust the hated Pombo.

And every time Eilperin and Grunwald vomit out "moderate," as though the 135 House Dems with more progressive voting records than her are not moderates, but extreme leftists and dangerous communists, my skin crawls. Only reactionary Democrats have voted more frequently with the Republican extremists on substantive issues than Tauscher has, yet in the Post they phrase it a little differently: "Since 2003 she has voted with her party more than 90 percent of the time. This year, she has marched in lock step with Pelosi. But to Net-roots sites such as Daily Kos, Firedoglake, and Crooks and Liars, she's Lieberman in a pantsuit. 'I don't think it's a fair comparison,' Tauscher said. 'My colleagues look at this and say, "If they're going after Ellen Tauscher, holy moly!'" Yeah, holy moly! What's next? Will someone challenge Jim Marshall or John Barrow or David Scott, 3 Georgia Democrats who spend an awful lot of time voting with Republicans?

…This oversimplification to the point of willful distortion is a perfect example of how the Eilperin and Grunwald have delivered for Tauscher today. The Democratic grassroots' dismay with Tauscher is not about "a vote" in 2002 for Bush's Iraq War. Between October 10, 2002 and May 25, 2005, the House voted on 44 Iraq War bills. Tauscher's Iraq voting record is one of the worst of any Democrat's, and far from being in "lockstep" with Nancy Pelosi's, as Eilperin and Grunwald deceitfully attempt to convey. Starting on October 10, 2002 with Roll Call 454 on H.J. Res. 114, the final resolution authorizing Bush to use force against Iraq, Tauscher didn't vote with Nancy Pelosi and other progressive Democrats-- and the majority of Democrats in the House; she voted with Tom DeLay and Roy Blunt and the worst reactionary, warmongering scum in the Congress to give Bush the authority to do what he's done in Iraq. Bad enough to remove Tauscher? Absolutely. But that was just the beginning. Since then she voted with the right-wingers 13 more times to carry out Bush's war policies.

As one of McNerney’s top campaign staffers in 2006 told me yesterday, "Tauscher’s backing a former Republican against McNerney in 2006 almost saved Pombo's hide." Like me, he’s very wary of her current efforts. A former investment banker at Bear Stearns and Drexel Burnham Lambert, Tauscher is now on a number of corporate boards, like Southern California Edison, and, unfortunately, a few weeks ago Jerry Brown appointed the former Ready For Hillary corporate shill to the University of California Board of Regents. While she served in Congress, she was a virulent anti-progressive on every possible level, including, of course, policy. She worked with the Republicans to gut the estate tax and to screw consumers with a reactionary bankruptcy law written by credit card company lobbyists. She was also a bug proponent of NAFTA and every other unfair trade policy that helped wreck the Democratic Party brand and impoverish working families. A long-time war-monger, she voted against most Democrats to back Bush’s attack on Iraq. But she’s pro-Choice and pro-gay, so she can pass herself off as a "liberal," which is patently absurd... and dangerous to the serious efforts going on to win these seats and swap out conservatives for actual progressives.

The DCCC Has Another Terrible Idea-- Copying The 2006 Midterms, A Recipe For Catastrophe

When Politico needed a writer do do a story on the false narrative of how successful Rahm Emanuel was in 2006 and how it's the model for 2018, ultimate DC establishment shill Edward-Issac Dovere, the most superficial reporter in Washington, was the obvious choice. Mr. Superficial: "An unpopular president, the scent of corruption in Washington, a riled-up liberal base-- to House Democrats, 2018 is already looking like 2006 on overdrive. Now Democrats see the same ugly storm forming for Republicans that delivered them the majority 11 years ago, and they’re digging out the blueprint. The party is vastly expanding the number of districts it plans to contest, recruiting veterans and business owners to compete in conservative terrain as it did back then. Three senior House Democrats are soon heading to Chicago to seek advice from Rahm Emanuel, the party’s 2006 master strategist."

Before we look at the statistics of what actually happened, one apocryphal story. First a little from CNN: Rahm knew Foley was molesting underage pages a full year before he finally blew the whistle on the very day it would be too late for the Republicans to be able to replace Foley on the ballot. Blue America was working with a progressive union candidate at the time, Dave Lutrin, in the very red district. Suddenly, long before anyone had any inkling that Foley was about to be exposed, Rahm and Hoyer started pressuring Lutrin to drop out of the race. That was confusing; why would they care about this district? But they had recruited a wealthy Republican, Tim Mahoney, talked him into switching his registration to "D" and promised to clear the field so he wouldn't have a primary. Long story short: Lutrin dropped out, Rahm leaked the Foley story, Mahoney won, Mahoney joined the Blue Dogs and spent his miserable one term in Congress voting with the Republicans and chasing women, Mahoney got caught up in a sex scandal, Mahoney was defeated in 2008. Dovere forgot to mention that one-- or any of the stories that challenge the establishment narrative he is helping his beloved crooked conservaDems to push.

One more thing before the statistics: primary season, 2006. Rahm was on the warpath against progressive and grassroots candidates coast to coast. And when the progressive candidates defeated his pathetic corporate and Wall Street shills, he abandoned their districts to the Republicans with a vengeance. But from Carol Shea-Porter (NH) and John Hall (NY) in the northeast to Jerry McNerney in California's Central Valley, the candidates Rahm worked so hard to sabotage, beat his candidates and then went on to beat Republican incumbents without his help. That's not part of Dovere's narrative either.

There were 30 seats that flipped from Republican to Democrat that year:

• Arizona Blue Dog Harry Mitchell replaced GOP arch-villain JD Hayworth. Mitchell was defeated in 2010
• Arizona Blue Dog Gabby Gifford won an open Tucson seat and was shot, replaced by Blue Dog Ron Barber, who was defeated in 2014 after one Republican-lite term
• Grassroots Dem Jerry McNerney defeated powerful GOP chairman and is still serving his California district in Congress
• Colorado New Dem won an open seat in Denver's suburbs and is still serving
• Connecticut New Dem Joe Courtney defeated GOP incumbent Rob Simmons and is still serving
• Connecticut New Dem Chris Murphy defeated GOP incumbent Nancy Johnson and was later elected to the Senate
• Florida New Dem Ron Klein beat GOP incumbent Clay Shaw and lost his seat in 2010
• Florida "ex"-Republican won Foley's open seat and was immediately defeated in 2008
• Indiana Blue Dog Joe Donnelly defeated GOP incumbent Chris Chocola and would have been defeated in 2012 but tried a hail Mary pass, running for the US Senate against a far right lunatic who lost
• Indiana Blue Dog Brad Ellsworth defeated GOP incumbent John Hostettler and was defeated in 2010
• Indiana Blue Dog Baron Hill defeated GOP incumbent Mike Sodrel and was defeated in 2010
• Iowa populist Bruce Braley won an open seat and was defeated for the US Senate in 2014
• Iowa populist Dave Loebsack defeated GOP incumbent Jim Leach and is still serving
• Kansas conservaDem (rejected by the Blue Dogs when she tried to join) Nancy Boyda beat far right incumbent Jim Ryun and was defeated in 2008
• Kentucky progressive Democrat John Yarmuth-- not a Rahm candidate-- defeated GOP incumbent Anne Northup and is still serving
• Minnesota Democrat Tim Walz defeated GOP incumbent Gil Gutknecht and is still serving
• Despite DCCC sabotage, New Hampshire grassroots progressive Carol Shea-Porter defeated GOP incumbent Jeb Bradley and was re-elected last year despite Trump winning her district
• New Hampshire New Dem Anne Kuster defeated GOP incumbent Charlie Bass and is still serving
• New York grassroots progressive John Hall defeated GOP incumbent Sue Kelly and was beaten in 2010
• New York Blue Dog Kirsten Gillibrand beat GOP incumbent John Sweeney and was appointed dot the Senate to replace Hillary Clinton in 2009
• NY Blue Dog Mike Arcuri won an open seat and was beaten in 2010
• Anti-immigrant North Carolina Blue Dog Heath Shuler beat scandal-ridden (like Trump, heavily involved with shady Russian banks) GOP incumbent Charlie Taylor and avoided defeat in 2012 by retiring
• Ohio Blue Dog Zack Space defeated scandal-plagued GOP incumbent Bob Ney. Hey went to prison and Space was defeated in 2010
• Pennsylvania Blue Dog Jason Altmire defeated GOP incumbent Melissa Hart and was defeated for reelection in 2012
• Non-Rahm candidate Joe Sestak defeated GOP incumbent Curt Weldon and left the seat in 2010 to run for the Senate
• Pennsylvania New Dem Patrick Murphy defeated GOP incumbent Mike Fitzpatrick and was defeated for reelection in 2010
•Pennsylvania Blue Dog Chris Carney defeated GOP incumbent Don Sherwood and was defeated for reelection in 2010
• Texas Blue Dog Nick Lampson won the open Tom DeLay seat and was defeated for reelection in 2008
• Ciro Rodriguez defeated GOP incumbent Henry Bonilla in a run-off but was defeated in 2010
• Wisconsin Democrat Steve Kagan won the Green Bay/Appleton open seat and was defeated in 2010.

In other words, the vast majority of Rahm's much-touted-- to this day, at least by a numbskull like Devore-- recruits were so terrible that when their constituents realized they had been tricked into electing Republican-lite candidates, they didn't show up at the polls for them and they were defeated. And that's exactly what the DCCC is literally planning on doing in 2018-- electing bunch of rich self-funders, "ex"-Republicans, Blue Dogs, New Dems, identity politics garbage candidates... most of whom will lose in the 2022 midterms. They never learn-- not the corrupt, dumb establishment hack politicians and certainly not their imbecile stenographers at the political trade press.

Yesterday the DCCC announced that they had added 20 new "target" districts, most of which they will never actually fight in-- but it looks good for donors. These are the 20 new ones:

• AZ-06- David Schweikert
• CA-22- Devin Nunes
• CA-50- Duncan Hunter
• FL-06- Ron DeSantis
• FL-16- Vern Buchanan
• GA-07- Rob Woodall
• IL-12- Mike Bost
• IN-02- Jackie Walorski
• MI-01- Jack Bergman
• MI-06- Fred Upton
• MO-02- Ann Wagner
• NC-02- George Holding
• NM-02- Steve Pearce
• NY-21- Elise Stefanik
• NY-23- Tom Reed
• OH-10- Mike Turner
• OH-14- Dave Joyce
• VA-05- Tom Garrett
• VA-07- Dave Brat
• WV-03- open

I just asked a top DC consultant what he thinks of the list and he laughed and predicted they won't win a single one of these seats. "I wonder if they plan to campaign on transgender youth in Snowshoe and Beckley in that West Virginia district," he said unkindly.

This is their whole list of original districts they announced on January 30, which includes many districts they will never contest:

·         AL-02- Martha Roby
·         AR-02- French Hill
·         AZ-02- Martha McSally
·         CA-10- Jeff Denham
·         CA-21- David Valadao
·         CA-25- Steve Knight
·         CA-39- Ed Royce
·         CA-45- Mimi Walters
·         CA-48- Dana Rohrabacher
·         CA-49- Darrell Issa
·         CO-03- Scott Tipton
·         CO-06- Mike Coffman
·         FL-18- Brian Mast
·         FL-25- Mario Diaz-Balart
·         FL-26- Carlos Curbelo
·         FL-27- open
·         GA-06- open
·         IA-01- Rod Blum
·         IA-03- David Young
·         IL-06- Peter Roskam
·         IL-13- Rodney Davis
·         IL-14- Randy Hultgren
·         KS-02- open
·         KS-03- Kevin Yoder
·         KY-06- Andy Barr
·         ME-02- Bruce Poliquin
·         MI-07- Tim Walberg
·         MI-08- Mike Bishop
·         MI-11- Dave Trott
·         MN-02- Jason Lewis
·         MN-03- Erik Paulsen
·         NC-08- Richard Hudson
·         NC-09- Robert Pittenger
·         NC-13- Ted Budd
·         NE-02- Don Bacon
·         NJ-02- Frank LoBiondo
·         NJ-03- Tom MacArthur
·         NJ-07- Leonard Lance
·         NJ-11- Rodney Frelinghuysen
·         NY-01- Lee Zeldin
·         NY-11- Dan Donovan
·         NY-19- John Faso
·         NY-22- Claudia Tenney
·         NY-24- John Katko
·         NY-27- Chris Collins
·         OH-01- Steve Chabot
·         OH-07- Bob Gibbs
·         PA-06- Ryan Costello
·         PA-07- Pat Meehan
·         PA-08- Brian Fitzpatrick
·         PA-16- Lloyd Smucker
·         TX-07- John Culberson
·         TX-23- Will Hurd
·         TX-32- Pete Sessions
·         VA-02- Scott Taylor
·         VA-10- Barbara Comstock
·         WA-03- Jaime Herrera Beutler
·         WA-08- David Reichert
·         WV-02- Alex Mooney

Please notice... no Wisconsin seats; no Paul Ryan, no Glenn Gothman, no Sean Duffy... Blue America will have to take care of some of that for them. Get to know Randy Bryce, the iron worker and union activist putting together a campaign to take down Speaker Ryan, no matter what the DCCC decides to do to protect Ryan's purple swing-district seat again.

And if you want to help real progressives win, please check out the candidates at the ActBlue thermometer on the right, some in districts the DCCC is targeting and some in districts the DCCC is ignoring, none, though, who are the kinds of corporate shills the DCCC prefers to back.

2018 Is Lining Up Nicely For Democratic Congressional Candidates, Except For One Thing: The DCCC

After it leaked out that Mark Foley (R-FL) was screwing underage boy pages, he resigned from Congress. That was September 29, 2006, just in time for the 2006 midterms. Rahm Emanuel was the devious head of the DCCC who timed it out perfectly-- even though boys were molested by Foley in between the time Emanuel found out what he was doing and the fatal Emanuel-inspired leak. Going into the midterms there were 232 Republicans and 202 Democrats in Congress. On election day, general revulsion with Republicans resulted in this national congressional vote:

• Democrats- 42,338,795 (52.3%)
• Republicans- 35,857,334 (44.3%)

The Republicans lost 30 seats and Pelosi replaced Hastert (who was also molesting under-age boys but that remained a "secret" for another decade) as Speaker. Emanuel claimed credit for the big win but most of the new Dems in Congress that year had nothing to do with him whatsoever and, in fact, several won despite his opposition! But, truth be told, Emanuel was responsible-- at least in part-- for the victories of several Democrats over Republicans.

In Foley's own district, Emanuel had timed the revelations about the child rapes to coincide with the day the GOP would be unable to get Foley's name off the ballot. Foley didn't run but his name was still in the GOP slot. Emanuel ran a corrupt conservative Republican, Tim Mahoney, who "switched" parties and ran as a Democrat, joined the Blue Dogs, voted with the GOP, got into a sex scandal immediately and was defeated 2 years later. That's the prototypical Rahm Emanuel "victory." It was all him from start to finish-- including the $810,685 the DCCC spent in 2006 to help him win the seat and the $440,076 the DCCC spent on his losing reelection campaign in 2008.

But Mahoney wasn't the only hideous conservative Emanuel recruited who won. He helped 2 Arizona Blue Dogs, Harry Mitchell and Gabby Giffords, replace 2 Republicans, respectively criminal, J.D. Hayworth, and another GOP molester of underage boys, Jim Kolbe. Three Blue Dogs won seats in Indiana-- Joe Donnelly, Brad Ellsworth and Baron Hill, all worthless. None are still in the House. Emanuel's candidate against extremist loon Jim Ryun in Kansas, conservaDem Nancy Boyda, won but was defeated 2 years later after voting with the GOP on virtually everything. I recall Emanuel involving himself in 4 upstate New York races. He was violently opposed to anti-war progressive John Hall and backed another of his Republicans-masquerading-as-a-Democrat, Judy Aydelott. Hall beat her in the primary and went on to beat the GOP incumbent, Sue Kelly, despite being outspent 2-1 and despite Emanuel only allocating a paltry $75,000 for the race. Two of Emanuel's Blue Dogs did win-- Kirsten Gillibrand and Mike Arcuri and the 4th-- a new Dem garbage candidate, Dan Maffei, lost. Emanuel also underfunded anti-war candidate Eric Massa ($58,500) who lost narrowly to incumbent Randy Kuhl. In North Carolina Emanuel's big coup was to recruit arch-conservative Heath Shuler (who the GOP was trying to recruit for a seat in Tennessee, where he lived) and who won and joined the Blue Dogs and voted with the GOP until he finally retired just as he was about to face certain defeat in 2012. Emanuel recruited 2 Blue Dogs in Ohio who won, Zack Space and Charlie Wilson. In Pennsylvania a bunch of crap conservatives were elected as Democrats and the one decent candidate who won-- Joe Sestak-- Rahm vehemently opposed.

Emanuel opposed Carol Shea-Porter as hard as he could and ran a crap nothing candidate against her, Jim Craig. She beat Craig 54-34% in a multi-candidate primary and then went on to beat Republican incumbent Jeb Bradley with not one nickel from the DCCC, Emanuel rooting for the Republican to be reelected.

Similarly in California, one of the biggest wins of the cycle was Jerry McNerney's win over powerful GOP incumbent Richard "Dirty Dick" Pombo. But Emanuel was anti-McNerney (too progressive for him) and backed some loser named Steve Filson. McNerney crushed Filson in the primary and went on to beat Pombo 53.2% to 46.8%. Unlike Emanuel's candidates, McNerney is still in Congress.

Most Democrats who won in 2006, from Yvette Clarke (NY) and Steve Cohen (TN) to Keith Ellison (MN) and Mazie Hirono (HI), had nothing to do with Emanuel or the DCCC. But he did back his disciple, Tammy Duckworth, against progressive Christine Cegelis in the IL-06 primary when Henry Hyde retired. Thanks to Emanuel, Duckworth won the primary and then was defeated by Peter Roskam in the general, someone the Democrats are still trying to evict from a seat he should never have won in the first place. And in Florida, Emanuel backed a Chamber of Commerce GOP-lite loser, Charlie Stuart in the primary instead of Alan Grayson. Stuart lost to weak GOP incumbent Ric Keller 52.8%-45.7% (Fortunately Grayson ran 2 years later, beat Stuart in the primary and then Keller in the general.)

So why bring this all up? This weekend the freshman class of 2006 had a reunion hosted by Ed Perlmutter (New Dem-CO), one of the only conservaDems elected that year still serving in the House. Most of the ConservaDems lost their seats in 2010, when many Democratic voters refused to turn out for the midterms to vote for what amounted to a bunch of careerist corporate conservatives. The Beltway conventional wisdom-- completely wrong as usual-- is that the Democrats lost because they veered too far left.

Over the weekend, Jennifer Bendery posted a piece to HuffPo announcing that Cheri Bustos (D-IL) "has a boot camp that’s training local progressives how to run for office." Bustos, one of the most right-wing Blue Dogs in Congress is another Rahm Emanuel protégée, who has been more responsible for Democratic recruitment failures than almost any other DCCC Dem. She doesn't help progressives; she sabotages them. She believes with all her heart and soul that what Congress needs is more conservative fake Democrats like herself.

Bustos doesn't understand that good candidates don't want to run for Congress because of the DCCC. She says she came up with the idea for Build the Bench last year, when, as vice chair of recruitment for the DCCC, she noticed the party was struggling to find good candidates. "I was like, how in the heck can we not find someone great to run when there’s 700,000 people who live here? But we couldn’t, in several areas." So now the losers who keep hemorrhaging seats and who send out the list-burning e-mails everyone HATES and who have made the people's party as remote from ordinary working families as the GOP is-- and as hated-- wants to teach candidates who to win? God save us!

She realized there may be lots of people interested in public service but they just don’t know how to get started, or they feel intimidated. She began personally recruiting people in her district ― sometimes just random people she met who impressed her ― for Build the Bench. She’s the only Democrat in Congress spearheading a program like this.

The boot camp is an intensive but casual affair. Bustos rented out a union hall in Peoria from 9 to 5 on a Saturday and provided granola bars, doughnuts and coffee. Turkey sandwiches arrived later for lunch. Campaign veterans rotated in throughout the day, giving crash courses on digital marketing and how to construct an effective stump speech. They gave insider tips on how to ask someone for $1,000 without making it totally awkward: Take a long sip of water immediately after asking, which seems bizarre (remember Marco Rubio’s swigs of water?) but apparently it keeps you from rambling. There were exercises, too, like writing a 30-second campaign pitch and practicing it in front of the room.

Prospective candidates cheered each other on throughout these exercises and offered advice on what worked and what didn’t. In between sessions, they mingled and traded stories about their political plans.

...Bustos is already planning her next Build the Bench boot camp in a different town in her district, and she’s hoping to franchise it for other Democrats. She’s been working with the DCCC to present a template to colleagues to roll out the program in their districts. She has also talked to newly elected Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez about it.

“This is not a major time commitment for anyone,” she said. “You just ask somebody to commit a full day, where they will walk away from that event and be prepared to run for office and to know what it takes to win.”

Counting on this trend to win back Congress is a bad idea from lazy operatives

There are two ways the Democrats will win back the House-- fate (like another Foley getting caught diddling children just before election day or... Trump and Ryan going so far overboard that people just can't take it anymore no matter how horrible the Democrats are) or blowing up the DCCC and starting over again with out idiots like Cheri Bustos imagining something can change without "a major time commitment for anyone." She can make the turkey sandwiches. I forgot to mention-- Bustos has an "F" from ProgressivePunch. Her lifetime crucial vote score is a horrid 48.35. In other words, on crucial matters she's more likely to vote conservative than progressive. And she's the teacher?

If the DCCC wants to actually win back Congress, maybe they should just e-mail the new issue of Jacobin to all the candidates and all the staffers at the DCCC itself-- or at least this post by Paul Heideman, Politicking Without Politics. "Democratic elites," he noted, are delusional-- you can't subdue the reactionary right without a robust alternative political vision." And that's always been the DCCC's weakest of their many weak spots. Heideman makes a lot of good points and plenty of lousy ones, but the basic premise is sterling and the Democrats will continue to struggle and flail until they get it.

For a distillation of the Democratic Party’s self-conception today, one could do worse than consult Nancy Pelosi’s recent pronouncement: “We don’t have a party orthodoxy-- they [the Republicans] are ideological.”

For some time now, this view of the political divide-- Democrats are consummate pragmatists, Republicans are rigid slaves to dogma-- has predominated in elite liberal circles. Hillary Clinton, after all, centered her campaign on competence and experience far more than any actual conception of politics.

And despite the resulting disaster, this desire to have a politics without politics-- this strategy to build a coalition bereft of any clear values or principles-- has continued to animate liberals’ opposition to Trump. Democrats really believe, it seems, that they can subdue the reactionary right without articulating any alternative political vision beyond prudent governance.

The irony here is twofold. First, in clinging to an obviously failing strategy, elite liberalism reveals itself to be an ideology every bit as impervious to contradictory evidence as the reactionary Republicans it defines itself against. And second, for all of the Democrats’ paeans to pragmatism, they are just as committed to their own version of neoliberal capitalism as the Republicans, and just as unwilling to brook dissent with it. In fact, only a few days before declaring the Democrats free of orthodoxy, Pelosi responded to a student’s question about socialism by effusing, “We’re capitalists. That’s just the way it is.”

When attacking the Right, the Democrats are non-ideological and pragmatic. As soon as a challenge from the Left is sighted, however, the party suddenly stops being coy, and declares itself forthrightly in favor of capitalism. The result is an ever-rightward-moving political landscape that ends up abetting the very forces and figures that Democrats oppose-- including Trump.

...While the liberal evasion of politics gives the impression that the Democrats have no ideas they are confident enough to defend, mobilizations like the refugee solidarity protests do the exact opposite. When thousands of people assemble with signs declaring “Refugees are Welcome Here,” they stake out a political ground that directly confronts Trump. They provide a political pole capable of further mobilization.

Ultimately, it is only mobilizations like these that can thwart Trump and the Republican Party. Left to their own devices, the Democrats will continue proffering anemic managerialism, punctuated by the occasional self-pitying snark (“but her emails”), all the while leading us down the road to defeat.

Instead, the anti-Trump movement will have to unabashedly voice the political principles, like equality and solidarity, that motivate it. This will mean both developing our own conceptions about what these principles look like today, and developing our own organizations capable of advancing them. While the Democrats seek to oust Trump and return the country to Obama’s status quo, our movement must base itself on a politics capable of confronting both Trump and the rotten elite liberalism that enabled his rise.

Inauguration Day-- real Democrats stayed away