Partisan Realignment-- Is The Working Class Up For Grabs?

 

Cheri Bustos-- Worst DCCC Chair since her mentor Rahm by Nancy Ohanian

Blue Dog/New Dem Cheri Bustos, DCCC chair, who represents a northwest Illinois congressional district gerrymandered by the Democratic Party-controlled state legislature to elect Democrats, finally eked out a victory on Friday morning. She beat little-known Republican Esther Joy King 153, 947 (51.9%) to 142,621 (48.1%). Bustos spent $4,573,839 to King's $1,634,304. Pelosi's House Majority SuperPAC just in $1,044,002 to save Bustos in the last days of her meaningless campaign. It's tragic for the Democratic Party that she didn't lose; it would have taught them a lesson they badly need.

George HW Bush tried hard but failed to pass Reagan's NAFTA for their wealthy Republican donors. There were just too many Democrats in Congress standing up for the working class back then. When Bill Clinton defeated Bush in 1992 one of the very first things he did was to assign one of his campaign thugs, Rahm Emanuel, to force reluctant Democrats in Congress to join the Republicans to pass the bill. Members were bribed, threatened and blackmailed and it finally passed November 17, 1993, 234–200, 102 Democrats joining 132 Republicans in the House and, 3 days later, 27 Democrats (including Biden-- though certainly not Wellstone) joining 34 Republicans in the Senate in favor of ratification. What cluster fuck-- but most of the Democrats depending on working class votes and union support voted no despite Clinton and Emanuel. (And, yes, of course Pelosi and Hoyer voted for the bill.) It would be a lot easier for the Democrats to pass something like that now, although it would be more difficult to get enough Republicans behind it.

Yeah, there's been a reversal of support since then-- starting then-- for the working class, as Clinton made a play for Wall Street and corporate donors and acceded to the strings attached-- with the cooperation of congressional Democratic leadership. Don't expect any reversal of that trend with Biden in the White House. The Democrats who lost their seats on Tuesday-- or who are struggling to hang on-- were all Blue Dogs and New Dems from the Republican wing of the party, none of whom could be called a friend of the working class-- anti-progressive chumps like Joe Cunningham (Blue Dog-SC), Max Rose (Blue Dog-NY), Xochitl Torres Small (Blue Dog-NM), Kendra Horn (Blue Dog-OK), Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (New Dem-FL), Abby Finkenauer (IA), Susan Wild (New Dem-PA), Gil Cisneros (New Dem-CA), Anthony Brindisi (Blue Dog-NY), Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN), Angie Craig (New Dem-MN), Abigail Spanberger (Blue Dog-VA), Harley Rouda (New Dem-CA)... That's a big glaring problem-- an existential one, no less-- that neither Nancy Pelosi nor Chuck Schumer understands, let alone addresses.

Yesterday Matt Taibbi asked which party is the real working class party now? What an about-face that a question like that could even be taken seriously, which, of course, it must be. "Trump lost the election," he wrote, "because of his handling of the pandemic, the top issue for 41% of voters, who chose Biden by a nearly 3-1 margin. But among people whose top concern was the economy-- 28% of the electorate-- Trump won an incredible 80% of the vote... Democrats’ conspicuous refusal to address economic inequality and other class issues in a meaningful way created an opening."

Now, Trump is likely to leave the White House, but he created a coalition that some Republicans already understand would deliver massively in a non-pandemic situation. As Missouri Republican Josh Hawley put it the night of the election, “We are a working-class party now. That’s the future.”

What happens from here is a race to see which political party can make the obvious dumb move faster. Will the Democrats, emboldened by the false high of a Biden victory, blow off the clear need to revamp their economic messaging before 2022, when they risk losing both houses of Congress?

Or will the Republican opposition give away the Trump coalition just as fast, by choosing Mitch McConnell’s donor list over Hawley’s insight?

Mayo Is White And Formless-- Ever Hear Of Anyone Ask For A Mayonnaise Sandwich On Wonder Bread?

In 2016, Wisconsin's 10 electoral votes went to Trump. He bear Hillary in a fairly solid blue state 1,405,284 (47.22%) to 1,382,538 (46.45%). That's 22,746 votes. Participation in black neighborhoods in Milwaukee was way off. Voters didn't switch the Trump they just stayed home. What happened? Were people so sure Hillary would win that they didn't both to show up? Were GOP voter suppression regulations aimed at African-American voters successful? Or did black voters find Hilary as meh a choice as lots of white Democrats did, myself included?

Milwaukee County delivered Wisconsin for Obama both times he ran, with 319,819 votes in 2008 and 332,438 votes in 2012. In 2016 though, Hillary only took 288,822, enough to win the county, of course, but not enough to win the state. In 2008, 475,1892 voters participated. Four years later, voter participation shot up to 492,576. It collapsed when Hillary and Trump were the candidates-- down to 441,053. (Both McCain and Romney out-polled Trump.)

Conventional wisdom accepts that white working class voters rejected Hilary's status quo message. How about black working class voters? Black women didn't and they turned out and voted for her. Black men on the other hand... they started away and the Trump vote was higher among black men then it was among black women. Nominate Mayo Pete is you want to see that black women's vote shrink down almost as much as the black male vote did-- and will do even more if Mayo's the candidate. We'll come back to him in a moment. Let's look at Alexi McCammond's Axios post, 2020 Democrats turn focus to black men first. "Black voter turnout," he wrote, "declined in 2016 for the first time in 20 years. And 13% of black male voters supported Donald Trump-- over three times the rate of black women who did the same. An estimated 30 million black Americans will be eligible to vote next year. While black men share some of the same concerns as black women at the ballot box, they are not the exact same voting bloc."

In the 2018 midterms, the overall turnout was 53%, while among blacks, 55% of women voted but only 47% of black men. McCammond asserts that "Black men may be more likely than black women to stay home or cast a vote for the GOP-- but represent more untapped potential for individual candidates.

Adrianne Shropshire, executive director of BlackPAC: "We have seen some movement across black voters, frankly, in not as strongly identifying with the Democratic Party as they may have previously. Where that sentiment is the strongest is among black men... There is a concerted effort to try to win over black men by the Trump campaign... Black men feel like they’ve been forgotten about within the party and when it comes to this election."

Outreach from Bernie's campaign towards black men has been very strong and an out-sized proportion of the Biden support among African Americans is among women and seniors. Before throwing in the towel yesterday, Kamala Harris was also making a big push to win over black male voters, at least in South Carolina, in the hope of breathing life into her already moribund campaign.

Mayo Pete has the least support-- like virtually none-- from black voters. He tried to explain it away by calling them bigoted against gay people but that didn't work out too well and he's been trying a new tack lately. He's skipping the voters in South Carolina and trying to charm the influencers instead, inviting them to small, more intimate, invitation-only soirees.

In recent weeks, Buttigieg’s missteps with African American voters-- both in his campaign’s outreach to them and his own previous statements about the black community in South Bend-- have threatened the picture of a candidate on the rise in the early states. In the November debate, Buttigieg’s rivals were asked about his campaign’s usage of a stock photograph of a Kenyan woman. South Carolina officials said Buttigieg botched the roll-out of local endorsements for his Douglass Plan, a policy aimed at lifting up African Americans, by putting out a list of supporters that included some people who said they weren’t backing his policy plan.

Meanwhile, video footage of the mayor’s 2011 comment that low-income, minority students lacked role models triggered a scathing essay in The Root, followed by another post, released hours later, that featured a conversation between author Michael Herriot and Buttigieg.

To fix those mistakes in the minds of African American voters, Buttigieg has had to go person-to-person to “clean it up. Clean it up,” said Louise Brown, an 84-year-old union activist who came to see Buttigieg speak at a 30-person “Fight for $15” town hall event in North Charleston on Sunday.

“You aren’t going to convince people who are skeptical of you by holding some big town hall in some big venue where two or three hand-selected people get to ask a question,” said state Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, who is not planning on endorsing a Democratic primary candidate.

...The small, invitation-driven events also avoid the awkward dynamic that plagued past Buttigieg events in South Carolina, where mostly white audiences showed up at events in mostly black cities. In May, Buttigieg  held a meet-and-greet in Orangeburg, a city that is 76 percent black, and an overwhelmingly white crowd showed up.

...Buttigieg’s push in South Carolina won’t come just from events. The campaign announced its first statewide TV ad in South Carolina Monday morning, part of a $2 million ad buy. The spot features Buttigieg quoting Scripture at the Iowa Liberty and Justice dinner earlier this fall.

On this swing through South Carolina, Buttigieg also brought South Bend City Councilwoman Sharon McBride, who is African-American and wanted “to be a witness” to the Buttigieg’s work with people of color in South Bend. After Jennings’ question in Allendale, McBride took the microphone and called Buttigieg’s lack of support a “myth.”

“A lot of things that you’re hearing on the national media and a small portion of people who are negatively talking, that’s their reality and maybe their truth, but my experience of being on the council has not been that,” McBride said.

But Jennings, for her part, still found the mayor’s answer “not entirely satisfying.”

“He really did say nobody knew him, and that is the truth,” said Jennings, who is still undecided in the primary, but likes Biden and Sen. Cory Booker. “No one knows him, and it’s going to be difficult to get that done by the primary. That’s going to be difficult.”

Mark Ruffalo endorsed Bernie today and explains why in this video below. Please watch it. "We need a movement leader," he said. "We need a movement organizer. We need a leader who’s actually one of us, and Bernie is one of us and he’s always been one of us." In every way, Bernie is the polar opposite of Mayo:





According to the RealClearPolitics national polling average, Mayo is in the 4th place, after Biden, Bernie and Elizabeth. And that's where he is in South Carolina as well, but in single digits. And he's one of the 6 who has qualified-- at least so far-- for the Democratic debate this month, the other 5 being Status Quo Joe, Bernie, Elizabeth, Klobuchar and get spending billionaire Tom Steyer. My friend Roland suggests that Yang will qualify if he adds a free narwhal tusk for every voter-- along with their thousand dollar check-- as part of his platform.

A Way-Too-Early Look at Bernie Sanders' VP Choices

by Thomas Neuburger

What is Bernie Sanders looking for in a potential vice-presidential pick? What should he be looking for? These two questions, while it may be too early to ask them, are nonetheless worth considering.

For one thing, the issue of Sanders' age, for those who are inspired by his policies, can be easily countered if he chooses a vice-president who is a) younger and b) just as progressive or nearly so. Questions about his age are appearing now. So let's take an early look at potential Sanders vice-presidential picks.

Who Is Bernie Sanders Most Likely to Choose?

As the video below points out, Sanders has already said that he was looking for someone who is "maybe not of the same gender as I am, and maybe somebody who might be a couple of years younger than me, and somebody who can take the progressive banner as vice-president and carry it all over this country to help us with our agenda and help us to rally the American people."

These criteria produce many choices, and the video lists them:

• Kamala Harris
• Tulsi Gabbard
• Rashida Tlaib
• Ilhan Omar
• Pramilla Jayapal
• Nina Turner
• Stacy Abrams
• Marianne Williamson
• Elizabeth Warren

Of these, Harris is a strong campaigner but not very progressive. Though she's been presenting her progressive social justice side recently, she has a history in California as a tough prosecutor, including of minorities and including for minor drug crimes. She has enough negatives to make her vulnerable on social justice and prosecution of bank fraud, both important Sanders issues.

Gabbard is also a strong campaigner, but doesn't have much of a relationship with Sanders. Her background and résumé also raise questions that have yet to be answered, for example about her support for Modi in India. Her polling is also extremely low.

The young congressional women — Tlaib, Omar, Jayapal — seem unlikely choices. All are too unknown; Omar is too controversial (due in part to her own party's attacks on her); and Omar is not a natural-born U.S. citizen. Nina Turner is a possibility given her relationship with Sanders and Our Revolution, but may not pass the experience test. Marianne Williamson has no government experience at all (though she is an excellent speaker and might be a desirable choice anyway based on policies she supports).

Stacy Abrams is not polling very well, and while she's considered a progressive by the media, many of her policies are not, and she recently joined the Board of CAP, the Center for American Progress, where she said this: "Led by the extraordinary Neera Tanden, CAP has been at the forefront of progressive policy development and activism for years. Together, we will find and support bold solutions on health care access, voting rights, the economy, and other critical issues our nation faces."

CAP's positions on Medicare for All and economic issues, among many others, are decidedly neoliberal and decidedly donor-driven. For this reason, I'd be shocked and disappointed if Sanders chose Abrams.

That leaves Elizabeth Warren, who in many estimations is the most likely woman to be chosen, if Sanders chooses a woman.

Note: The video acknowledges (at 10:57) that "Bernie supporters remember her failure to back him during the 2016 primaries." I think this is one of the reasons that Warren hasn't gained traction this year among the strongest Sanders supporters on social media, and may partially account for her low polling. After all, in the early days of the 2016 primary, "Run Liz Run" was quite the rallying cry.

Warren has failed to recapture her 2015 "Run Liz Run" magic this time around, which helps explain her mid–second tier polling among 2020 Democratic candidates — she's below people like Harris and above people like Klobuchar, with the Pete's and the Beto's of the world floating up and down, above her and below, as the moment and local political winds may move them.

Yet Warren's weaker position may actually work out to Sanders' advantage, as I'll detail in a future piece. It may also work to Warren's advantage as well — given her lower polling, she's unlikely to feel she has to attack Sanders to capture his place alongside the ephemeral Joe Biden. 

Who Besides Warren Might Sanders Consider?

There are negatives, of course, to choosing Warren. Her favorability rating isn't particularly high — I know a number of Republican voters who would strongly consider Sanders over Trump but would not consider Warren — yet that may not be an issue were she second on the ticket. In addition, she doesn't add geographic diversity and she doesn't have special expertise, for example, in foreign policy, that supplements what Sanders offers.

Non-Warren alternatives suggested in the video include:

• Pete Buttigieg — a direct counter to the freakishly Christian Mike Pence in the VP debate

• Andrew Yang — a tech-savvy entrepreneur with many progressive policies who knows how to talk to rust-belt and disaffected workers (for example, see 15:05 in the video above)

But neither of these people, plus others like Beto O'Rourke, are choices Sanders would make. To start, Yang is too unknown (and male), Buttigieg is too neoliberal (and male). There are other reasons for Sanders to avoid them as well, and I think he will.

It looks almost certain therefore that Warren will be his VP choice. The question then becomes, when should he announce it?