Do You Consider Yourself A Democrat In A Party Sense? Why?

Monday, Bill Press wrote that "Sanders was right in arguing that the primary system is rigged against him. It is!" THe super-delegate system, though, wasn't invented just to prevent Bernie from becoming president. It was a full frontal attack against the grassroots of the Democratic Party, meant to thwart any populist uprising that offered changes unacceptable to the party establishment. The system is indefensible by anyone short of a universally discredited harridan like Debbie Wasserman Schultz-- universally discredited, that is, outside the careerist and corrupted establishment, where they recognize the Wasserman Schultz imperious impulses as their own. So far, state Democratic parties in Wisconsin, Colorado Maine, Vermont, Utah, Alaska, and West Virginia have all passed resolutions insisting 2016 be the last year of the super-delegate system. Elizabeth Warren has joined Tulsi Gabbard and Bernie is demanding the same.

Corrupt party bosses like the Clintons, Rahm Emanuel, Wasserman Schultz and the Big City garbage machines may have to find some other way to allow lobbyists and corporate interests to exert anti-grassroots pressure on the party.



This year there are 718 super-deleagtes-- 30% of the 2,383 votes needed to nominate a candidate. Under the watchful eye of Wasserman Schultz, this year's convention procedures have been carefully crafted not just to deliver the nomination to Clinton, but to keep the party establishment and it's policy agenda firmly in control. Anyone who falls for the calls for Democratic Party unity is a simple-minded idiot ready to enable the establishment and cast their power and their corporate agenda in stone within the party we like to deceive ourselves into thinking represents the interests of "the people." At best the Democratic Party is merely the lesser of two evils. Trump is just an exaggeration to the greater evil but that this election is even remotely competitive shows just how low the Democratic Party establishment has fallen.

I suspect that if Trump and Clinton are the party nominees, Jill Stein and Gary Johnson are going to do far better than anyone expects. DCCC and DSCC handpicked congressional candidates are no less odious in most cases-- not some cases, most cases. If you're not planning on voting for Hillary Clinton, be careful about the garbage congressional candidates Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer are saddling the party with. These are candidates you can trust; almost none are being backed by the DSCC or DCCC. They're among the only ones left upholding values and principles that have made us ever think of ourselves as members of the same party that includes a Rahm Emanuel or a Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Real Democrats Don't Run Away When Right-Wingers Attack-- Meet Ohio's Michael Wager

OH-14, just east of Cleveland, is another swing district that Steve Israel is ignoring. It's a winnable seat and there's an exceptionally good Democratic candidate, Michael Wager, and a weak and vulnerable Republican, David Joyce. Joyce, a backbencher who other Republicans have noted is just a puppet of Boehner and the Republican Beltway Establishment, isn't well known by his constituents, who tell pollsters that are very much open to replacing him with a Democrat.

Yesterday morning Michael Wager was on the radio with Bill Press (above) and when Press asked him, he immediately said he thought the Affordable Care Act was a step in the right direction and would have voted for it. Press also asked him if he would invited President Obama and Nancy Pelosi to OH-14 to campaign for him. Since he's a real Democrat, not a Blue Dog, not a new Dem and not some kind of corporate shill from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, he said he would be proud to campaign with either or both.

The NRCC melted down. Someone get Katie Prill some smelling salts, STAT! "Ohio families finally have confirmation that Michael Wager in Congress means more of the liberal Pelosi agenda for them in Northeast Ohio," she shrieked in distress. "It’s still too hard to tell if Wager couldn’t help but let his extreme liberal flag fly or if he just made the biggest mistake of his political life. Either way, Wager has successfully tanked his own campaign."

The NRCC asserted that "Wager, the Democrat running for Congress in Ohio’s 14th District, has just ended his own congressional campaign on the Bill Press radio show." Michael, who Blue America endorsed as a strong progressive candidate isn't backing down-- in fact, quite the contrary. On the show he said was happy to talk about his friendship with Nancy Pelosi and said "She stands for the things I stand for…" The first thing Michael ever told us when we first met him early this year was that the core motivation for his candidacy "is concern about the future of American participatory democracy as a result of protracted and worsening income equality. The oft-discussed issues of gerrymandering, election law abuses and campaign finance laws are certainly challenges to meaningful choice in our elections; however, it is unjustifiable economic inequality that weakens our social cohesion and erodes the American middle class. This is not a necessary consequence of American capitalism. Rather, it is mostly attributable to a federal tax and expenditure policies that favor narrow interests over most Americans."

When we reached him last night to ask him about the Republicans trying too raise money by screaming about the Bill Press interview, he laughed and told us this:

"From its inception, my campaign has advocated for American workers and stood up to right-wing attacks on the American middle class values. I will continue to stand proudly with Democrats and Independents that want economic growth that benefits all Americans, including a livable wage, fair trade and affordable healthcare. Moreover, I will continue to stand up to special interests that purchase influence in Congress and, then, attack those that oppose their dangerous agenda of lower taxes for the wealthiest and deep cuts to vital social programs serving our children, our seniors and our veterans."

He sounds a lot more like Justin Amash did in his now famous victory speech than Boehner Boy David Joyce does.

The DCCC added the race to their Red-to-Blue page but, as far as I can see from public records, they haven't done a thing to help Michael. He's been getting some assistance from Sherrod Brown, who won OH-14 in his 2012 Senate reelection battle. But he could use some Blue America love too. Here's the place.

Bill Press: Stupidest Punditry Of The Week

When I was president of Reprise Records I hired a guy to be the first online promotion man in the music business. People thought it was the funniest, kookiest thing they had ever heard. Online was just some silly gimmick that would never take off. The reaction was as if I had hired someone to be a promotion man for Mars, Venus and the moon... you know, just in case. (The guy I hired eventually went on to help develop iTunes for Apple.) But at the time, everyone was laughing. Still, all the trade magazines handled it delicately; no one was mean or disparaging at all. That's because Reprise spent thousands of dollars a month on ads in those magazines and because we used the consulting services tied to the magazines' owners. Some even said I was foward-thinking for my decision, though no one really thought I was anything but a kook-- like when I spent $400 in student money to hire The Doors for a concert (before they were well-known). But this isn't a post about me being a seer. It's about why the trade magazines Inside the contemptible Beltway treat Steve Israel and other clueless political hacks with kid gloves. They control the multimillion dollar ad and consulting budgets.

Even Nancy Pelosi, in defending her controversial and catastrophic decision to appoint "ex"-Blue Dog Steve Israel to head the DCCC couldn't think of anything more positive to say about him other than the well-known fact in DC that he's "reptilian." Last year while Patty Murray was performing like a champ at the DSCC and wiping the floor with the Republicans in one state after another, shocking anyone who was paying attention, Israel was bumbling and fumbling and making every mistake in the book, starting with atrocious candidate recruitment and ending with Boehner being sworn in for another two years as Speaker.

But Tuesday, Bill Press, writing for The Hill penned a pathetic kiss-ass puff piece on the imaginary Steve Israel of his dreams (instead of the one best explained by the Bravo TV series about his district, Princesses: Long Island). Press insists that the congenital loser from Long Island stands out above all others...[as] most brilliant political strategist" in Washington. No, he really wrote that. He claims Israel's humiliating loss last year was all a part of his (reptilian?) long term strategy "Plan B: win a handful of seats in 2012, while Republicans remain in charge, and wait for the GOP to overplay its hand." The DCCC press department is pushing this meme on clueless and lazy "journalists" and pundits like Bill Press.

And good for Israel. That’s exactly what’s happening. In the last few weeks alone, on three major issues, House Republicans have so marginalized themselves that they have left the majority of their party behind, let alone the majority of American voters.

It started last month, when Republicans forced through the most extreme anti-abortion bill in decades, legislation that went beyond Roe v. Wade by banning a woman’s ability to seek an abortion after 20 weeks. By most accounts, the bill, authored by Arizona’s Rep. Trent Franks (R)-- who famously asserted that the “incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low”-- is going nowhere. It probably won’t get a vote in the Senate. Were it ever to pass Congress, President Obama’s vowed to veto it.

Next, House Republicans thumbed their collective noses at immigration reform. Many leading Republicans, starting with former President George W. Bush, argued the double advantage of comprehensive immigration reform legislation: From a policy perspective, it’s the right thing for the country; from a political perspective, it’s the necessary thing for the Republican Party. Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) warned his fellow Republicans: “If we don’t pass immigration reform... it doesn’t matter who you run in 2016. We’re in a demographic death spiral as a party.”

But House Republicans don’t care. Even after immigration reform passed the Senate 68-32, with 14 Republican votes, they caucused and decided to kill any chances for comprehensive reform or anything resembling a path to citizenship for the 11 million people estimated to be living here illegally.

And then, there was the farm bill-- the biggest mistake of all. Since 1973, Republicans and Democrats have joined together on legislation designed to help the nation’s farmers and the poor. But not this year. House Republicans refused to approve a farm bill until it was stripped of any funding for food stamps, which 47.5 million Americans now depend on.

It makes you wonder: Who’s in charge? Is anybody in charge? What was the point of any of these moves, except to further alienate the Republican Party from mainstream America?

OK, I admit-- I don’t know for sure if Steve Israel planned it this way. But if so, he couldn’t have planned it any better. If and when control of the House changes in 2014, it won’t be because Democrats won it back. It’ll be because Republicans gave it away.