The Attacks Against Bernie And His Ideas Have Begun-- Not That They Ever Ended

I would be very happy seeing a President Elizabeth Warren or a President Jeff Merkley. I've spoken with both from early in their national political careers and I have no doubt whatsoever either would be an extraordinary president. Blue America has raised money for both of their Senate campaigns and if either is the Democratic nominee for president, the campaign would be Blue America's top priority for 2020. If Bernie doesn't run, I would happily support either in the primary.

For their NY Times piece yesterday, For Bernie Sanders, Holding Onto Support May Be Hard In A 2020 Bid, Jonathan Martin and Sydney Ember spoke to a gaggle of Democratic Party political operatives who were paid to work for Bernie in 2016. They don't like to think of themselves this way, but most of the names I read in the piece are hired guns who work for the highest bidder-- within certain constraints. I doubt any of them would work for Trump. I don't doubt most of them would work for almost any non-Blue Dog who was paying them well-- and some might work for a Blue Dog. I doubt either Martin or Ember knows that or understands it-- and that idea is alien to the mildly anti-Bernie narrative they were busy developing anyway. "Some of his top congressional supporters won’t commit to backing him if he runs for president again-- and two may join the 2020 race themselves." Fair enough... but Bernie hasn't hasn't decided if he will run or not. Perhaps they should ask the two-- Jeff Merkley and Tulsi Gabbard-- whether or not they would run if Bernie does. When the two reporters write that "a handful of former aides might work for other candidates," they should wonder if any of these staffers have been offered jobs in Bernie's nascent 2020 campaign. I haven't heard of anyone turning those jobs down, although I have heard some bitterness from the second raters who haven't been asked back. And, as for Bernie’s "initial standing in Iowa polls is well below the 49.6 percent he captured in nearly defeating Hillary Clinton there in 2016," there aren't just two or three candidates; there are twenty. Eventually there will probably be two-- a corporate status quo type like Biden, Hickenlooper, McAuliffe, Castro, Bloomberg or Klobuchar and a progressive, either Bernie or another actual progressive like Merkley or Warren or someone trying to pass himself or herself off as one, say a Gillibrand or Booker. There are also a load of candidates who haven't decided what they are yet, like Beto, Sherrod Brown, Kamala Harris...

They generously acknowledge that Bernie was "the runner-up in the last Democratic primary," but then pull some really insane crap out of their asses: "instead of expanding his nucleus of support, in the fashion of most repeat candidates, the Vermont senator is struggling to retain even what he garnered two years ago." He's not struggling and, more importantly, he been building a far more diverse following, especially among minorities who largely backed Clinton in 2016 and have come around towards Bernie in a very big way since-- although you might not know that by following main stream media (MSM) reports like these two.

“It’s not a given that I’m going to support Bernie just because I did before,” said Lucy Flores, a former Nevada assemblywoman who previously endorsed Mr. Sanders. “There are going to be plenty of people to look at and to listen to. I’m currently open at this point, and I think the majority of people are.”

OK, if she decides not to-- a big "if"-- that's one less vote Bernie will get. One. "There would also be candidates," they write, "who are newer to the national political scene than Mr. Sanders, offering fresh energy-- something many in the party prefer-- as well as those who echo his message about economic justice and the corrosive effects of money in politics." Perhaps... or not. It's a little early to say and different polls say different things-- like Bernie is the most popular political figure in the country for example. Dishonest MSM journalists can pick the poll that fits their narrative.

“Ironically, Bernie’s agenda for working families will be the Democratic Party’s message in 2020, but he may not be the one leading the parade,” said Bill Press, a progressive talk show host who was an early backer of Mr. Sanders in 2016.

Mr. Press said he thinks a candidate like Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio could carry the same populist message. “What I hear from a lot of friends is that a younger Bernie is what we need,” he said.

Sherrod Brown? The same guy who announced a few weeks ago, when he was scared he might lose his reelection bid-- that he doesn't believe in breaking up the too-big-to-fail banks any longer (because "no one" cares about that any longer.) That Sherrod Brown. Yeah, I remember him; he does really disgusting and stupid things during elections. The first Senate race featured him backing Bush's torture bill-- the only House progressive to do so-- and then apologizing after he won and promising to never do anything like that again. What a shit-bag candidate for president he'd make

Wait! Wait!. The 2 MSM guys have another concession before they continue undermining Bernie: "There is no doubt that Mr. Sanders, 77, would be one of the most formidable contenders if he does run. No other potential candidate would start with the foundation of a 50-state organization, a small-dollar fund-raising list that delivered $230 million and undying devotion from a core group of backers. His advisers note that these advantages could prove crucial in a splintered field when only a plurality may be needed to prevail at the end of a long race."

But... but... but... what about conservative Democrats and corporate Democrats? That isn't what Bernie is looking for. He's looking for Democrats, independents and Republicans who are sick and tired of being lied to and fleeced by the establishment-- political, financial and media.

Mark Longabaugh, one of Mr. Sanders’s top strategists, said he had no expectation of winning over the more cautious factions of the Democratic Party.

“Insurgent candidates never come back and become the establishment favorite,” said Mr. Longabaugh, noting that Gary Hart, after shocking the political world with his success in 1984, nevertheless had plenty of company when he ran again in 1988.

And some of Mr. Sanders’s most dedicated devotees are already moving to resurrect his organization.

“We have an opportunity to start organizing, and missing out on this moment is not an option,” Spencer Carnes, a leader of the volunteer “Organizing for Bernie” group, wrote in an email promoting the group’s first volunteer organizing call last week.

Melissa Byrne, who did digital and get-out-the-vote work for Mr. Sanders in 2016, said she’s eager to work for him again and noted, “We’re all more experienced and battle-tested.”

...The senator’s views on issues like universal health care and his willingness to shun corporate contributions have increasingly become not only part of the Democratic mainstream but also litmus tests within the party.

...Mr. Sanders does still enjoy some bedrock support in states like Iowa and New Hampshire. Unlike some of his lesser-known rivals, his unwavering base of progressives will guarantee him a floor of support should he enter the race.

But the first surveys of Iowa caucus-goers indicate he has lost some of his less-ardent backers. He is polling in the teens there even though he has universal name recognition and won nearly half the state’s vote in the Democratic caucuses in 2016. And while he is in second place at the moment, he is closer to Mr. O’Rourke, who was virtually unknown outside Texas until this year, than he is to the early front-runner, former Vice-President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Of course, Mr. Biden may not run, leaving even more votes up for grabs. But other likely candidates will work just as aggressively to step into that vacuum. And this surfeit of contenders may keep some institutional pillars of the left on the sidelines.

Then there's the chance that voters who don't know anything about Biden other than that he was Obama's VP will start learning about his repulsive corporatist record for even more years than Bernie's progressive record. After all, Biden's first Brush with political fame was as a poster-boy for segregation, an ardent fighter against racial integration. I bet most of the Democratic base doesn't know that. And how many people have seen the videos of him going after Anita Hill. And how many have looked at his record as the most banister-friendly Democrat in the party? Biden is more than the friendly gaffe-machine from the Obama administration-- much more. And, yes, "organized labor, for example, is unlikely to rally around Mr. Sanders should another populist like Mr. Brown enter the race, according to multiple union officials." Did they last time? Or did most of organized labor rally around the status quo candidate? The establishment is the establishment is the establishment. And those who benefit from the status quo will do all they can to deny agents of real change, like Bernie.

Speaking of whom... did you get this note from him today? "Whenever I am asked about running for president in 2020," he wrote, "I answer that if I am the best candidate to beat Donald Trump, then I will probably run. That is the truth." That's what those close to him tell me and it's what he tells them as well-- the real Bernie supporters and staffers that our two MSM hacks didn't bother interviewing. But, he wrote...

If that happens, the political, financial and media elite of this country will stop at nothing to defeat us. You know that. We’ve lived through it together once before. Our ideas terrify them. So what they will do is try to divide us up with attacks-- some old, some new-- and our political opponents will spend obscene sums of money on ads to defeat us.

I just did not expect the attack ads to begin before I even made a decision. But they have…

Right now, a group of Wall Street Democrats known as the Third Way is running ads in early primary states-- Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada-- calling me out by name and saying our ideas, like Medicare for all, are a path to defeat in 2020.

They not only want to discourage or defeat a Sanders candidacy, they want to make sure that the progressive agenda is not advanced by anyone. They want us to go back to their failed corporate approach which has led to a massive level of income and wealth inequality, a bloated military budget and a failure to address the crises of climate change, a broken criminal justice system and inhumane immigration policies.

...Our agenda terrifies the political and financial establishment of this country.

But the truth is, their agenda should terrify all of us.

Our ideas will lift people out of poverty, they will guarantee health care as a right for every man, woman and child, and they will make certain that every person in this country with the ability and the desire can get the education they need, regardless of the income of their family.

Ours is not a radical agenda. It's the agenda the American people want.

Their agenda, paid for by wealthy campaign contributors, has led to record levels of inequality, a health care system that costs more per capita than any other developed nation while leaving millions uninsured and underinsured, and grotesque amounts of student debt that rob many of our young people of their futures.

Theirs is the agenda that made Donald Trump possible. Ours is the agenda that will defeat him. Want to chip in for Bernie's campaign? That's what the thermometer on the right is for. If you dion't want to commit to $1,000 or even $100 until after he officially declares, how about $5 or $10 now to show him you're still with him?

Because I mentioned this on Nicole Sandler's radio show yesterday, people have been asking me who's behind the smear efforts against Bernie in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. This is the board of directors of Third Way, basically a cabal of banksters and one of the most destructive forces from inside the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. Meet the scumbags:

• John L. Vogelstein, Chairman- Chairman of New Providence Asset Management, LLC and Senior Advisor to Warburg Pincus, LLC.

• Jonathan Cowan, President- Andrew Cuomo's ex-Chief of Staff

• David Heller, Vice Chairman- formerly the Global Head of Equity Trading for Goldman Sachs

• Bernard L. Schwartz, Chairman Emeritus- former Chairman of the Board and CEO of Loral Space and Communications Inc., now the Chairman and CEO of BLS Investments, LLC.

• William D. Budinger- founder and former chairman and CEO of Rodel, Inc.

• David A. Coulter- Managing Director and Senior Advisor at Warburg Pincus, formerly chairman of J.P. Morgan & Chase Co.

• Lewis Cullman- engineered the very first leveraged buyout (LBO) — with $1,000 cash, he and a friend bought Orkin Exterminating Company for $62.4 million.

• William Daley- Prior to being appointed Chief of Staff by Obama, he was Vice Chairman and Chairman of the Midwest for JPMorgan Chase

• Robert Dyson- Chairman and CEO of the Dyson-Kissner-Moran Corp, an investment firm

• Michael Edwards- a partner at Arrowgrass Capital Partners

• Andrew Feldstein- CEO and Co-CIO of BlueMountain Capital Management

• Brian Frank- funder and Managing Partner of Declaration Partners LP, an investment firm. Previously, he was a Partner and Portfolio Manager at MSD Capital, the private investment firm founded by Michael Dell.

• David Greenwald- chairman of Fried Frank since 2013. Before that he was the international general counsel of Goldman Sachs.

• David Horvitz- Chairman and CEO of SouthOcean Capital Partners, LLC and SouthOcean Investment Partners, LLC.

• Peter A. Joseph- Chairman of Trenton Fuel Works LLC, previously a private equity bankster

• Derek Kaufman- Head of Global Fixed Income at Citadel, previously a Managing Director at JPMorgan Chase

• Derek Kirkland- Managing Director and Co-Head of the Global Financial Institutions Group at Morgan Stanley’s Financial Institutions Group in Investment Banking.

• Daniel R. Lewis- former insurance executive for Progressive Insurance and former real estate developer

• Thurgood Marshall, Jr.- partner and lobbyist for Bingham McCutchen LLP and a principal of Bingham Consulting Group

• Susan McCue- Lobbyist, Harry Reid's former Chief of Staff

• Rachel Pritzker- a Pritzker

• William Reeves- co-founder of BlueCrest Capital Management Ltd., former managing director of JP Morgan

• Marc Spilker- Founding Member of GPS Investment Partners LLC and chair of Chiron Investment Management LLC., previously co-head of at Goldman's Investment Management Division

• Ted Trimpa- lobbyist and head of Trimpa Group, LLC

• Barbara Manfrey Vogelstein- venture capitalist and "someone's" wife

• Joseph Zimlich- CEO of Bohemian Companies, family-owned real estate and private equity holdings

New Series: The Worst Democraps Who Want To Be President-- Part I, Tulsi Gabbard

As I mentioned a few days ago, there are a shitload of really terrible candidates jumping into the quest for the Democratic nomination for president (and vice president). Today starts a new series to introduce you to the worst of them. Tulsi Gabbard may be the worst-- or maybe the 2nd worst of 5th worst-- but I only picked her to start with because someone today told me she would never run against Bernie, which caused me try to explain the role opportunism plays in the life of careerist politicians like Tulsi. So she was fresh in my mind. And also because she plans to raise millions of dollars online from Bernie supporters before anyone realizes she's a fraud.

Before a feud with Debbie Wasserman Schultz at the DNC exploded and brought her over to Bernie’s then-struggling campaign, few people outside of Hawaii had ever heard of Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. But once she endorsed Bernie, she became an instant hero to his grassroots army of supporters. That grassroots army that was so quick to embrace her was largely unaware of a long record of political conservativism going all the way back to her days in the Hawaii legislature where, among other things, she led the fight against LGBTQ equality and as a crusader against anti-bullying efforts. (Yes, led, which is quite different from “voted badly once or twice.”) In fact, like her mother and father, she won office primarily on anti-gay campaign messaging.

Now that she’s about to declare a bid for the presidency— a ploy to get on a ticket as vice president— it’s important to take a closer look before her p.r. people re-define her. Few people know she first won a seat on the Honolulu City Council with the backing of the Hawaii Rifle Association, the local NRA affiliate. She was a conservative who shifted left to run against another— better-known— conservative. More than a conservative or a liberal, Gabbard is, above all else, an inauthentic opportunist. One week she’s a regular Fox guest bashing Democrats for not being xenophobic enough, dating Michael “Mikey Suits” Grimm and trying to get a job in the Trump Regime… and then she’s a Berniecrat. Now she’s organizing an L.A.-based presidential campaign for herself. Will her pals the Adelsons support her? Steve Bannon?

As I warned Bernie supporters 2 years ago, ProgressivePunch's algorithm grades Gabbard's voting record an "F," while giving Bernie’s voting record an "A" (and both Hawaii's senators also "A"). An "F" isn't a "B" or even a "C." You have to be really bad, really anti-progressive, to get an “F.” No one is more of a Putin booster and a Barack Obama detractor than Señor Trumpanzee. But Gabbard was ranking a close second. A few months early, while bizarrely invoking 9/11 as a basis for bombing Syrian civilians ("them," in her terminology), she praised Putin for his willingness to bomb and blasted Obama for his alleged unwillingness to do so. That's strange behavior for any Democrat. But it was working for her. Gabbard's willingness to attack Obama from the right on foreign policy has made her a darling of Fox News, which she proudly acknowledges.

In Hawaii, she earned a reputation among her former colleagues in the State Legislature as one of their most bigoted contemporaries. She defined her local career as an outspoken anti-gay and anti-reproductive rights politician. Volumes of official records from the Hawaii State Legislative Reference Bureau tell Tulsi’s story in her own words. Here, Tulsi, then Representative Tamayo, presents a floor speech against a measure supported by local hospitals that resolved to study the needs of LGBTQ students, who suffered the highest rates of suicide in the state:

In this same speech, Tulsi is also recorded as describing gay rights advocates as “homosexual extremists.” Tulsi is no grassroots phenom. She represents the state’s main conservative political dynasty, which successfully campaigned to ban same-sex marriage through constitutional amendment. Her father, Senator Mike Gabbard, led the anti-gay movement in the state and also founded Stand Up For America, a non- profit that promoted nationalism through “the concept of how we are one nation under God.”

Tulsi was also defined by her consistent opposition to basic rights for women. Here, Tulsi joins a Republican bloc to oppose emergency contraceptives for rape victims. This was one of several instances where she attempted to restrict reproductive rights for women on the grounds of religious freedom.

In 2016 she used her speech at the People’s Summit not to advance anything to do with a progressive agenda, but to advance any progressive cause, but to defend the murderous and tyrannical Assad regime. At the time, people started noticing that despite her willingness to chastise Obama, she was making it a point to avoid criticism of Trump. This is all she would say when pressed by the Honolulu Civil Beat: "The problem with Donald Trump is that no one really knows what Donald Trump stands for and what his polices will be if he’s elected. So, I’ll leave it at that."

Her gentle treatment of Trump, her attacks from the right on the Obama Administration and her admitted ambition for national prominence led some to wonder whether she was angling for a spot on the Republican ticket or a cabinet post in the Trump Administration. At the time, the Trump-Gabbard affinity was based on their shared Islamophobia. And a shared admiration for Steve Bannon. She joined with Republicans to vote against Syrian refugees. She was regularly using the resources of her congressional office to promote disdain for Muslims.



John Bickel, treasurer for Progressive PAC, a Hawaii state organization that endorses candidates on the left, doesn’t trust her and sees the gross opportunism shining through. “Tulsi Gabbard shows up in places and gets in front of the camera, spinning herself as a progressive-- but I’m not sure her record backs up what she’s created as a public persona. I am little skeptical about how deep her progressive roots run.”

Long before her sudden transformation into a Berniecrat, Gabbard called me to ask for a Blue America endorsement. She didn't really try to paint herself as a progressive and, other than sounding good on the environment, she came across as a garden variety careerist Democrat, not especially bad and not especially good. At the end of the interview, I asked her about the process by which she had come to change her position on LGBT equality. She immediately said she'd call back and then hung up abruptly and... never called back. And we never endorsed her.

Want To Start Fighting About The 2020 Nomination?

I'm sure Bernie will role out his 2020 presidential campaign carefully and on his own time table. In 2015 Blue America was the first independent PAC raising money for his 2016 campaign and this year we are the first independent PAC raising contributions for the 2020 campaign. You can contribute here. Disclaimer: No one from Blue America has talked with him about 2020. One of his top advisors did tell us to move forward-- though perhaps not as top as Jeff Weaver, who was on C-SPAN Tuesday morning talking about the "possibility" of a Bernie run. He didn't mention a Bernie-Elizabeth Warren ticket... which is what I've been told is pretty much set.

"He is considering another run for the presidency and when the time comes I think we'll have an answer for that. But right now he's still considering it."

That's both a) not terribly surprising and b) extremely important.

Not surprising in that Sanders has never really stopped running a national campaign since his primary loss to Hillary Clinton in 2016. Extremely important in that Sanders is-- and is likely to remain-- the prime mover in the Democratic presidential field.

That's not to say Sanders is the current frontrunner for the nomination. He's not. Former Vice President Joe Biden is-- as CNN's Harry Enten argues convincingly.

  What Sanders' status as the prime mover in the race means is that he will set the terms on which the race is likely to be fought. He will set the margins-- in terms of policy-- for what Democrats are willing to say and do. He will be the person who the race revolves around-- either in agreement with or reaction to.

It's already been happening. Earlier this month in a speech at the Brookings Institute, Biden used Sanders as a foil-- promising an alternate vision for both the problem and the solution to what ails the country. Here's the key bit from Biden: "I love Bernie, but I'm not Bernie Sanders. I don't think 500 billionaires are the reason we're in trouble. The folks at the top aren't bad guys. But this gap is yawning, and it's having the effect of pulling us apart. You see the politics of it."

And, following the 2016 election, a parade of would-be 2020 aspirants-- Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand--  signed onto Sanders' "Medicare For All" single-payer health care proposal. It's a role he played in 2016, albeit a somewhat unlikely one. Clinton, once she realized that Sanders posed a real threat to her chances, moved hard left on virtually every issue-- ensuring there was no space between her and the Vermont senator.

Rest assured that it won't be easy as pie for Bernie to win. If not Biden, there will be another conservative status quo Democrat pretending to be "progressive" while working for the special interests-- Cuomo, Gillibrand... perhaps something worse. Multimillionaire John Delaney is already in the race. You know who Delaney is? This is the kind of Democrat who will fight hard to keep Bernie away from the nomination. Is their any difference between Biden and Delaney? Not on policy; not on political values. Before Delaney decided to leave Congress so he could run full-time for Congress, one of his colleagues told me he is the "poster child for what's wrong with the Democratic Party. Recruiting clueless, rich people who have no real values is almost always a failure."

Meanwhile, Bernie and Elizabeth Warren continue doing what they do: talking about policy with the American people. Biden and the rest of the establishment Democrats who want to be president keep endorsing crappy Democratic House candidates all over the map on policy-- anti-healthcare conservatives, for example, while Bernie is fighting for candidates like Randy Bryce (WI) and Chuy Garcia (IL), progressives who he knows, when they get to Congress, will continue fighting for working families, not for Wall Street banksters, the way Joe Biden always has. Biden, for example just endorsed Darren Soto, lump on a log do-nothing Orlando seat warmer and longtime anti-Choice legislator and NRA ally who is in a contest against Alan Grayson. That's how Biden rolls. Is he as bad as Hillary? Worse.

How Democrats Can Win with a Mandate in 2020, and Why They Likely Won't

"With no emerging leaders, no clear message, Democrats flounder," says the headline (source). The headline is false. These Democratic leaders are firmly in charge.

by Gaius Publius

Thomas Frank, author of the widely acclaimed book Listen, Liberal — widely acclaimed at least among the insurgent, anti-corporate wing of the Democratic Party — recently published a long article in Harpers demonstrating that Donald Trump could well be reelected president in 2020. His reasons include the effect of economic prosperity as an offset to moral repugnance (see Bill Clinton in 1996) and Trump's still high (and increasing) popularity among his supporters.

A note about Trump's support: The most recent CNN/SSRS poll, for example, shows Trump's approval among all respondents at a near-term high, 42% approval, vs. 54% disapproval. More importantly, in the same poll his approval among Republicans is 86%. (The most recent Rasmussen Daily Presidential Tracking Poll shows Trump's approval among likely voters even higher, at 49%.)

As Howie pointed out recently, "If he's not king of America, he is king of the GOP." The implications of this are huge, as we watch the Mueller take-down operation turn the screws on Trump's money operation. On that, more later.

Democrats Can Elect the Next Fake-Populist Republican

One of the offshoots of Frank's thesis is that Democrats are quite likely to bring about this outcome — Trump's reelection — themselves. Here's the short version of this argument, from a follow-up interview with Thomas Frank by Jon Wiener and published in The Nation:

JW: Okay, what about Mueller saving us?

TF: Every Democrat that I talked to is counting on Mueller to deliver the midterms for them. This has worked for Democrats before. The famous Watergate class in Congress in 1974 was entirely the doing of Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal, and the Democrats are basically expecting that to happen again. It looks like it will work.

JW: What’s wrong with that?

TF: It breeds a kind of passiveness among Democrats where they never have to think about their own message. 

That's probably enough in itself to make the point clear. Since Trump's election, Democrats have only once concerned themselves with revising their message — their early, ill-fated, short-lived, badly-received PR effort known as the "Better Deal," with "better jobs" and so forth. This was especially rich after spending all of the previous two years laughing off Sanders' actual populism as impractical.

The Better Deal campaign died almost the day it was born, and Democrats today are doing nothing to revisit and learn from the failure of 2016, other than continuing to announce in every conceivable way their 2016 theme, "We're not him."

And lest you think the failure of 2016 should be counted successful thanks to the popular vote, consider: The Party turned a blowout into a squeaker, by rejecting a populist candidate who filled football stadiums in favor of an Establishment candidate who couldn't fill a gymnasium — in a change-year election.

Frank continues:

They [Democrats] may succeed in the coming midterms, but that’s a recipe for disaster in the long term. If Trump is not running for reelection three years from now, there’s going to be another Trump. The Republicans are never going to retreat from what this guy showed them in 2016. They now understand how you beat the Democrats. The next Trump is not going to be so vulgar, he’s not going to have affairs with porn stars, he’s not going to pick fights with NFL players. So the Democrats have to be thinking bigger. They can’t think “Oh, he screwed up. Great! Now we get back in.”

Frank believes Republicans now understand how to beat Democrats. The method is to run alongside the crowd that wants to overturn the Establishment — in both parties — and not against it. All they need do is find a candidate who will keep the base of Trump voters intact and attract enough independents who are both left-leaning and hate what the Democratic Party has become. In other words, all they need do is run a pro-change-appearing populist with a toned-down hint of the taint of Trumpian vulgarity — just enough to attract, not enough to repel.

If they offer such a candidate, and the Democrats offer their own pro-change-appearing candidate (for example, Cory Booker or Kamala Harris), the remaining left-leaning, betrayal-remembering independents will likely stay home. After that, it's anyone's call who wins. And God forbid the Democrats offer a likeable hack like Biden, or anyone else with his history of obvious subservience to money and power. It's over then for sure. 

How Democrats Can Win With a Mandate

So how can the Democratic Party claim victory from the jaws of opportunity in 2020? By offering an actual change candidate of their own to run against the Republican fake. By running alongside the crowd that still wants to overturn the Establishment, and not against it. By offering someone real for change voters to vote for.

By offering, in other words, the 2020 version of Bernie Sanders.

Frank again:

JW: How can we defeat this phenomenon once and for all? Don’t we need a progressive like a Bernie Sanders who would raise the minimum wage, make college tuition-free, bring Medicare for all—and actually make life better for ordinary middle- and working-class people?

TF: Yes. I don’t want to put any proper names on it, like a certain senator from Vermont, but the bottom line is this: If the economy booms and wages go up, it’s going to be hard to beat Trump in three years. The Democrats cannot stick with the Clinton and Obama approach where you identify yourself with what I like to call the ideology of the 1990s, the “catechism of tech, bank, and globe,” as I say in the article. There’s really only one set of successful politics for an age like this one: It’s the politics that we identify with the party of Lyndon Johnson, the party of the New Deal. What Trump has offered is a kind of weird replica of that. But as I have said many times, the real thing would beat the fake.

"The real thing would beat the fake." In 2016 Republicans offered a fake populist, and the Democrats offered a fake Republican. In that contest of fakes, the populist won ... barely. The first party to offer a real populist to the same electorate will sweep into office with a mandate.

Will the Democratic Party actually offer such a candidate, offer the "next Sanders," or even the last one, to 2020 voters? Not as currently led.

GP
 

Joe Kennedy III Is Campaigning-- For Elizabeth Warren

“Is Joe Kennedy III a progressive?” is a question I get a lot-- including from some of his colleagues in Congress. He seems to have chosen progressivenessish as his identity, at least for now. As with anything, including the color tie he puts on what he has for dinner, everything is weighed in terms of a likely run-- at some point-- for president. He’s only 37 and hasn’t accomplished much, so he has time. He’s smart enough-- unlike, say Kamala Harris-- to know that too. Several Beltway insiders have told me he's running for president in 2020. Elizabeth Warren, who is also considering running for president, was one of his professors at Harvard Law-- Kennedy and his wife met in her class-- and Warren campaigned for him when he ran for Congress. He probably assumes Warren is going to be on the 2020 ticket-- many people have been buzzing that she and Bernie are running together-- and what he really wants now is her Senate seat. A lot of people don’t like legacy candidates. He has to prove something first, namely that he’s more than just RFK’s grandson and great-nephew (if there’s such a thing) of JFK. It’s easier to accomplish something in the Senate than in the House, especially if you want to do it in less than a decade or two.

This was the e-mail he sent out for her this week:

I had only one goal on my first day of law school: to escape unscathed. But roughly three seconds into my very first class, I got called on.



“Mr. Kennedy. What is the definition of assumpsit?”



My stomach sank. “I don’t know,” I said meekly to my professor.



“Mr. Kennedy,” she said, “You realize assumpsit is the first word of your reading?”



It went on from there, and I didn’t do any better.

I never showed up unprepared for Professor Elizabeth Warren’s contract law class ever again.



Elizabeth was the toughest teacher on campus, but the wait list for her class was a mile long. Professor Warren pushed us hard, because she believed in us. She brought out our very best.


She also believed in the law. Not as an abstraction, but as a real force with deeply human consequences. For Elizabeth, law was the difference between foreclosure and a roof over your head. The space between bankruptcy and second chances. The promise this country makes that no matter your struggles, your circumstances, or your mistakes-- you will be treated fairly. You will be given a shot to regroup, rebuild and rise.



Elizabeth believed in that fiercely American story because she lived it. It's what brought her to the halls of Washington to take on the country’s most entrenched financial interests-- and when she became a United State Senator, Elizabeth showed us how the law can be used to fight for an economy that doesn’t leave anyone behind.



Thanks to the hard work and grassroots support of countless people like you, we got a middle class champion back in the Massachusetts Senate seat in 2012. But powerful special interests have made it clear: they’ll spend unthinkable sums of money trying to silence Elizabeth in 2018.



We’re less than a year away from Election Day, and the attacks in Massachusetts have already started. We need to do all we can to keep Elizabeth Warren in the Senate. I stand with Elizabeth-- will you chip in and show you’re with her too?



Massachusetts families-- and families across the country-- need a champion now more than ever. We're fighting for a health care system that every American can afford. For tax policy that prioritizes workers, not just wealthy CEOs. For a justice system that protects all of us. For a government that respects each of us.



If we're going to do that and do it right, we need Elizabeth-- one of the toughest voices we have in Washington.



There's no question: Donald Trump and the Republican Party are worried. Why wouldn't they be? Elizabeth has built her career defending the working families Trump casts aside. It's no wonder the GOP is already pouring money into Massachusetts in an effort to take her down.

But Elizabeth has never backed away from a fight and she won’t start now-- and that’s why it is so important for us to stand with her today.

Always Count On Politico To Smear Bill De Blasio At Every Opportunity

Earlier we looked at the Washington Post’s silly list of potential 2020 presidential nominees. It’s not in the comedy section but it included Beltway nonsense non-candidates like The Rock (a wrestler who may be a Democrat… or not), Andrew Cuomo, Oprah Winfrey, Kamala Harris and Howard Schultz (the Starbucks guy) and Jerry Brown. Removed from The List: Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Kaine, Sheryl Sandberg and Trump hater Mark Cuban. Nowhere on any list: NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio. That’s sensible… but The Post list isn’t remotely sensible so… why not de Blasio. The Beltway, according to Politico, hates de Blasio. Too progressive for the Beltway and Politico’s most dependably ridiculous excuse for a journalist is here to reinforce that. “Friends and allies,” he wrote, “literally roll their eyes when they hear the New York City mayor is trying to go national again, and his own aides have become experts in stalling when he asks to do more, or at throwing distractions or making up excuses for why they weren’t able to pull something together. They hate it. They wish he would stop.” Do they? Friends and allies, no less. And impartial faux-journalists.

Here’s the paradox of Bill de Blasio: He’s the mayor of the biggest city in America, with now four years of a progressive record and just reelected with 66 percent of the vote, without any significant challenger, despite all the griping New Yorkers have been doing about him since Day One. He’s had major successes on universal pre-kindergarten and expanding affordable housing, while crime has continued to go down— stop-and-frisk, his predecessor’s hated police tactic, is all but gone— and development in New York has continued full swing. He was talking about progressive policy ideas literally decades before they became the Democratic Party mainstream. Between Eric Garcetti, Mitch Landrieu and Pete Buttigieg, it’s become normal to talk seriously about mayors making 2020 runs.

Yet among Democratic insiders, the reaction to putting de Blasio on that list tends to be, at best, an exhausted chuckle. Is he running for president? “No,” he said, simply and quickly. But because he’s Bill de Blasio, he takes pleasure in insisting that asking that question— even as he’s sitting at the Marriott Downtown in Iowa, recording one of several long interviews he did that day— is small-minded to the point of being ridiculous.

No, no. He’s up to something bigger, he says. Obviously.

“There’s a lot of people in the political media and the political class who can only think through the prism of elections and only the very next elections, rather than understanding that social change is made in a variety of fashions. It’s the electoral process. It’s what happens at the local level as well as the national level. It is through issue-organizing,” de Blasio argued on Politico’s Off Message podcast, describing his trip as the natural outgrowth of being “a progressive who wants to change things”— and therefore “needs to work with people who are trying to create that change all over the country.”

That was his official explanation for accepting an invitation to headline the recent Progress Iowa holiday party, where he talked about President Donald Trump sparking “the beginning of a progressive era,” but also about “my own personal grass-roots connection to Iowa”— his grandmother, born in Blanchard, Iowa in 1888— and all the “skeptics” and “doubting Thomases” who didn’t think a progressive could run a city.

That he could pull it off in New York City in this moment when progressive politics has been chased out of Washington and most state capitals is proof to de Blasio that he has earned the right to help set the direction of the Democratic Party going forward. He proudly bashes the Clintons, the post-2016 obsession with the loss of white working-class voters and the people who see the Ralph Northam and Doug Jones wins as proof that the party needs moderates to win. [In Politico-speak “conservative Democrats are always, always, always referred to as “moderates,” the most highly favored political description among American voters.]

“Part of why we’re in the mess we’re in is because we fell into a trap of triangulation and moderation, lost a lot of our identity and became unappealing to the very people who had been our support base,” he said in the interview.

The problem for de Blasio is that many progressives, Democrats and other mayors say they also don’t want him in this role— which adds up to a sort of national version of the public advocate job he held for four years in New York before becoming mayor. They’re already fed up with his pledge, now that he’s won a second and final term in City Hall, to make Iowa the first of many stops traveling the country to talk about progressive politics and progressive candidates.

“It’s laughable to think that the response to Trump is going to come from a progressive mayor whom progressives don’t rally around and mayors don’t respect,” said one high-placed Democratic operative.

They also don’t believe de Blasio will follow through. Remember that bold, but low-on-answers, “progressive agenda” he put out with a big news conference at the Capitol in Washington in May 2014? Remember the forum he was going to host in Iowa for presidential candidates to prove their progressive credentials? Remember the threats he made against other politicians— most prominently, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, his Tom & Jerry partner in the local media— to exact punishment against people whom he’d judge to have not followed through?

Nothing came of any of them.

…As long as they’re talking off the record, many Democratic leaders and operatives will trash de Blasio. They think he’s smug. Annoying. In it for himself without any follow-through. The rap on de Blasio is that he likes to make a lot of noise but doesn’t like to do a lot of work, that he has an oversize sense of his own importance.

It’s often visceral. One mayor, pondering why so many national Democrats don’t like de Blasio, took a long pause and could only summon, “I don’t know.”

Maybe it’s because they spend too much time reading Politico phony journalists who write “A number of them quietly pointed out that de Blasio spent much of that Saturday off to the side of the convention center hall by himself, checking emails on his phone.”