There Has Always Been A Republican Wing Of The Democratic Party. In The 30s They Called Themselves The American Liberty League

Al Smith is known primarily as having been the first Roman Catholic presidential nominee (1928). He was also a 4-term governor of New York. He was defeated badly for the presidency in ’28, winning just 8 states— 6 from the Deep South + Massachusetts and Rhode Island, even losing New York. While Smith was losing New York, Franklin Roosevelt, an ally was winning the gubernatorial seat created by Smith’s run for president. Roosevelt was reelected in 1930 (in a landslide) that propelled him towards the 1932 presidential nomination. The problem was that Smith, with the support of the conservative wing of the party, wanted to run for president again. As governor of New York Roosevelt had endorsed the idea of unemployment insurance, massively popular with a working class struck by Hoover’s Great Depression, hated by Republicans and conservative Democrats. FDR beat Smith at the convention and although Smith supported him in the general, Smith opposed the New Deal in general, which he felt wasn’t cooperative enough with business interests.

Smith joined the brand new American Liberty League, an organization founded in 1934 primarily by business elites and conservative Democrats but also with a handful of Republicans. What bound them all together was intense hatred for the New Deal. They worked ceaselessly to rally public opinion against it and against Roosevelt. The League was funded by wealthy business executives and Smith became a major player. They published pamphlets and sponsored radio programs, arguing that the New Deal was destroying personal liberty and private property rights and was socialistic. As the New Deal grew in popularity, the League— and well as the Republican Party— began to shrivel and die. It was officially dissolved in 1940, only to spring back to life decades later as the DLC, the Blue Dogs, the New Dems and Third Way.

In 1936, the League was rabidly anti-Roosevelt and attacked the New Deal nearly as shrilly as the GOP did. The problem was that the general public love the New Deal and the more the League and the GOP screeched “Socialism!!” the more popular the New Deal became. The conservative Dems became objects of scorn and the Republicans were circling the drain. Roosevelt was reelected 27,747,636 (60.8%) to 16,679,543 (36.5%). He won every state but Maine and Vermont— 523 electoral votes to 8. In Mississippi, FDR took 97.06% of the vote and did even better in South Carolina (98.57%). When the dust cleared there were 334 Democrats in the House and just 88 Republicans. There were also 13 actual socialists. In the Senate, it must have seemed like the end of the world for the Republicans. Confident that their anti-socialism campaign was finally going to bear fruit, they stepped up the shrill nonsense, lost 5 more seats to the Democrats and ended up with just 17 senators to the Democrats’ 74. (There was also 3 socialists.)

Prominent conservative Democrat Jouett Shouse of Kansas was a congressman, on the executive board of the DNC and married into a fortune. He was the only president of the League and FDR noted that the American Liberty League put “too much stress on property rights, too little on human rights.” When FDR talked about “economic royalists,” he wasn’t just referring to the Republican Party but also to the League, whose leaders, beside Shouse and Smith, also included former Democratic presidential candidate John Davis, former DNC chair John Jacob Raskob, “ex”-Republican and wealthy businessman, Irénée du Post and two of his brothers, Lammot and Pierre, former NY Republican Governor Nathan Miller, Congressman James Wadsworth (R-NY), Alfred Sloan of General Motors and Howard Pew of Sun Oil. At its peak there were 125,000 members but after the FDR landslide of 1936 it began to rapidly dwindle.

It was the League that tried, unsuccessfully, to recruit Major General Smedley Butler to lead a military coup against Roosevelt. League members lost their collective shit over Social Security, which they claimed would “mark the end of democracy.” Vehemently anti-union/anti-working class, these conservative Democrats sued the government over the National Labor Relations Act and the AFL accused them of hiring thugs to infiltrate local unions to incite violence.

Other Democrats who opposed the New Deal included conservative shit heads like Senator Rush Holt, Sr (WV), Senator Harry Byrd (VA) and Senator Carter Glass (VA). Today this wing of the Democratic Party is being led by Joe Biden, although Wall Street financiers are also intrigued by McKinsey Pete (should gaffe-prone Biden self-destruct before the convention, as many expect) and both John Delaney (MD) and John Frackenlooper (CO) are trying to offer themselves up as leaders of this faction. In Congress, the worst of the current crap would be Steny Hoyer (MD) plus rabid Blue Dogs like Henry Cuellar (TX), Collin Peterson (MN), Josh Gottheimer (NJ), Cheri Bustos (IL), Dan Lipinski (IL), Tom O'Halleran (AZ), Jim Costa (CA), Joe Cunningham (SC), Jefferson Van Drew (NJ), Kendra Horn (OK), Ben McAdams (UT) and Anthony Brindisi (NY), as well as Senators Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Joe Manchin (WV), Doug Jones (AL), Jackie Rosen (NV), Mark Warner (VA) and Tom Carper (DE). Biden is trying to hide what is from Democratic primary voters, primarily by avoiding the media and counting on everyone remembering him as part of Obama. He’s counting on Democrats being willing to buy a pig in a poke. Former Obama chief strategist, David Axelrod, told the Daily Beast yesterday that Biden’s strategy isn’t tenable. “His message is that he’s the guy who can beat Donald Trump and he is viewed as the least risky choice. Over time, if the only interactions he has is around these screwups and gaffes, then he is going to start losing that message… I think that it is never a good idea to sit on a lead. That rarely works out well, and that's what they’re doing.” Biden has assiduously avoided TV or any media situation where people will realize he’s well down the senility road and no more capable of running the U.S. than Trump is.

2020 Presidenty Stuff

Last night Marianne Williamson announced her presidential campaign

Thank God Gina Raimondo isn't running for president. Everyone else is. Expect to see the DWT series The Worst Democraps Who Want To Be President grow and grow. The most recent was on the Starbucks Guy, about whom Señor Trumpanzee tweeted a dare yesterday. He hasn't dared Hillary Clinton to run again though-- and CNN reported that she's threatening to.

Even worse: John Frackinglooper. The conservative ex-Governor from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party is running. I need to finish a "Worst Democraps" post on him. And he surely is. He was in Iowa, pre-campaigning over the weekend. He's billing himself as a consensus builder, laughable in the age of Trump. He also claims to be the only one who can beat Trump, which is funny, since he may be one of the only ones who can't.

Before making a final decision, Hickenlooper has said, he and his team are evaluating his viability as a candidate, which includes polling, fundraising and identifying potential staff.

Perhaps the most salient question for Hickenlooper to answer before he jumps into the race is whether an “extreme moderate”-- a term the former governor uses to describe his left-of-center politics and temperament-- will resonate with enough Democrats in early states to propel him through the rest of the primary. [Note: he isn't "left of any centers except the center of the GOP and even then, just a wee bit.]

Put another way: Are Democrats, some of whom see Trump as an existential threat, more likely to gravitate toward a liberal firebrand such U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the runner-up in the 2016 Democratic primary who arguably pushed the entire party to the left, or a more mild-mannered moderate, such as Hickenlooper.

One Iowan who will help decide the outcome of that debate is Nick Kruse, a 24-year-old accountant and vice chair of the Iowa Democratic Party Stonewall Caucus.

Kruse, who supported Sanders during the primary, said he doesn’t think a centrist Democrat can win.

“We want to nominate a progressive candidate-- the most progressive we can get,” Kruse said in an interview with the Denver Post before he heard Hickenlooper speak Sunday. “That’s what’s going to excite the base.”

Kruse said Democrats must find the candidate who can deliver the best economic policies for the middle class. That means a single-payer health care system, higher minimum wage and tax reform, he said.

Kruse said he was impressed with some of Hickenlooper’s positions but he isn’t convinced he is the progressive the party needs.

For the sake of balance, The Register found someone with an extremely low IQ and no political knowledge at all to listen to Hickenlooper's speech. She said "I like the idea of working together." Hick did tell the Iowa Startling Line that he's not going to run on a getting-along ticket with John Kasich though.

Jonathan Chait, like most of America, doesn't like the Starbucks Guy at all, after that pathetic 60 Minutes interview. "Schultz," he wrote, "appears to be one of those rich people who has confused his success in one field with a general expertise in every other field that interests him. His apparently sincere belief that he can be elected president is the product of... an almost comic failure to grasp how he might accomplish this. That confusion is probably being spread by his hired staffers, whose financial incentive, conscious or otherwise, is to encourage him to embark on a costly political fiasco. We shouldn’t feel too bad if Schultz wants to waste some of his great-great-grandchildren’s inheritance playing political fantasy camp. The problem is that Schultz’s earnest confusion might succeed just well enough to have catastrophic consequences. Schultz initially contemplated entering the Democratic primary, correctly calculated that he stood no chance of success that way, and then incorrectly decided that he could win as an independent. His public comments reveal how little he grasps about American politics."

The other billionaire who's a)- confused his success in one field with a general expertise in every other field that interests him and b)- being sucked into an expensive race by avaricious and drooling political consultants, Michael Bloomberg actually put out a statement about the Starbucks Guy after 60 Minutes:

Now I have never been a partisan guy-- and it’s no secret that I looked at an independent bid in the past. In fact I faced exactly the same decision now facing others who are considering it.

The data was very clear and very consistent. Given the strong pull of partisanship and the realities of the electoral college system, there is no way an independent can win. That is truer today than ever before.

In 2020, the great likelihood is that an independent would just split the anti-Trump vote and end up re-electing the President. That’s a risk I refused to run in 2016 and we can’t afford to run it now.

No one's supposed to criticize Kamala Harris, I'm told. But David Axelrod kind of did. On Monday afternoon he wrote that "Harris' profile, as a potentially barrier-breaking candidate, has drawn comparisons to another first-term senator who went on to win the presidency. But glib comparisons to Obama mostly miss the mark. Blessed with prodigious political skills still unproven in Harris, Obama stood apart from all the Washington-based candidates as an early opponent of the war in Iraq. His distinctive message was a clear challenge to both parties and the conventional, divisive small-bore politics that many Americans felt had failed the country." Harris has no unique message at all-- just garden variety Democratic Party claptrap.

The best campaigns are tactically sound and strategically clear. They share a coherent and compelling narrative about the candidate, campaign and the country.

Harris' nascent message lacks the crystal clarity of, say, US Sen. Elizabeth Warren's. Why is Harris running? What is her vision for a rapidly changing world? Her announcement speech was powerfully delivered but laden with anodyne Democratic applause lines any candidate might offer.

Her provocative slogan, "Kamala Harris, For the People," derives from her career as a state and local prosecutor and speaks to her toughness and advocacy. But her record is a double-edged sword, providing potential fodder for opponents in an era and a party in which criminal justice reform has emerged as a central issue.

Look at this-- 22 candidates (without Hillary and without Marianne Williamson, who declared her candidacy last night); I'd say there are half a dozen who would make good presidents. Two who might be actual great presidents, Bernie, for sure, Elizabeth Warren, probably. Monday Bernie sent a secret signal to his followers that he's running:

We are living in a truly unprecedented moment in history and the actions we take now, together, will determine not only the future of our country but the entire world. If there has ever been a time in American history when our people must stand together in the fight for economic, social, racial and environmental justice-- now is that time.

The bad news is that we have a president who is a fraud, a pathological liar and a racist. The good news is that the American people are standing up, fighting back and are demanding fundamental changes in our economic and political system.

The bad news is that we have a president who just shut down the government for 35 days because he couldn't get an expensive and unneeded wall with Mexico, while 800,000 federal employees tried to survive without paychecks.

The good news is that federal workers and their unions fought back and, with the airline industry facing growing delays because of worker sickouts, the president relented and reopened the government.

The bad news is that the scientific community is telling us that climate change is the greatest global crisis facing the planet, while we have a president and Republican leadership who are working overtime for more deregulation of the fossil fuel industry-- and even more carbon emissions.

The good news is that at the grassroots level, here and around the world, more and more people, led by the younger generation, understand that we need bold initiatives to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and into energy efficiency and sustainable energy.

The bad news is that at a time of massive wealth and income inequality, when the 3 wealthiest Americans own more wealth than the bottom half of our country and 46% of all new income is going to the top 1%, we have a president and Republican leadership who want even more tax breaks for billionaires.

The good news is that poll after poll shows that the American people want the wealthiest people in this country and the largest profitable corporations to start paying their fair share of taxes. They understand that instead of giving tax breaks to billionaires we should be rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and investing in health care and education.

The bad news is that the middle class continues to shrink and millions of Americans today are working for starvation wages. Many of them are forced to work two or three jobs just to survive and receive little or no family leave or vacation time.

The good news is that in state after state, community after community, legislation is being passed guaranteeing a living wage to all workers of $15 an hour. It is very likely that a $15 per hour minimum wage bill will be passed by the U.S. House of Representatives this session. My Senate bill for a $15 minimum wage now has 31 co-sponsors.

The bad news is that we have a corrupt political system that allows billionaires to spend unlimited sums of money to elect candidates who represent their interests. We also see widespread voter suppression and extreme gerrymandering.

The good news is that there is overwhelming support to overturn the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision, and good progress is being made to strengthen our democracy. In the last election, voter turnout soared and young people participated in record-breaking numbers. In Florida, as a result of a citizen referendum, 1.4 million people who served time for a felony conviction will have their voting rights restored.

The bad news is that, tragically, institutional racism continues to remain strong in the United States. The already large wealth gap between whites and blacks is growing wider. There is a massive level of racial disparity in terms of health care, education, housing, social mobility and access to capital.

The good news is that the younger generation today, the future of our country, is the least racist in our history and is prepared to fight for racial justice. Further, we are seeing more and more people of color running for office-- from school board to Congress-- and many of them are winning. They, and all of us, will do everything possible to end the scourge of racism in the United States.

The bad news is that we have a dysfunctional health care system which leaves 30 million Americans uninsured, even more underinsured and costs far more per capita than any other country on earth. We are also forced to pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs.

The good news is that the American people now overwhelmingly support a Medicare for all, single payer program which guarantees health care to all Americans as a right, not a privilege, Medicare for all will also expand benefits for seniors by including dental care, audiology and optical care.

The bad news is that hundreds of thousands of young people are unable to afford to go to college, and millions more are leaving school deeply in debt.

The good news is that cities and states across the country are moving to provide free tuition at public colleges and universities, and there is widespread support for that idea. In a highly competitive global economy the American people know that we must have the best educated workforce in the world.

The bad news is that there is now a massive, well coordinated attack against women's rights. In many states it is increasingly difficult for women to exercise their constitutional right for an abortion, or to even receive the birth control they need. Pay inequality remains prevalent, as does sexual harassment on the job.

The good news is that there is widespread opposition in this country to repealing Roe v. Wade, and the newly elected Congress is strongly pro-choice. Further, as a result of the effort of the women's movement, in workplaces both large and small there are now new policies in place to protect a woman's right to do her job without discrimination or harassment.

The bad news is that we have a criminal justice system in this country which is severely broken. We have more people in jail than any other country on earth-- disproportionately African-American, Latino and Native American. Unbelievably, hundreds of thousands of Americans are in prison right now simply because they cannot afford cash bail.

The good news is that millions of Americans, including some conservatives, are coming together in the fight against mass incarceration, mandated minimum sentencing, the cash bail system, police brutality and the failed war on drugs. At long last, there are now district attorneys and prosecutors who want to reduce the prison population, not increase it. Americans increasingly understand that we should invest in jobs and education, not more jails and incarceration.

The bad news is that we have a demagogic president who is targeting undocumented immigrants in a racist manner for cheap political gain. This is a president who ended the DACA program and has authorized the separation of tiny children at the border from their mothers.

The good news is that the American people have consistently made clear their desire to see the restoration of DACA and comprehensive immigration reform and a path toward citizenship for the more than 10 million undocumented people in this country.

Let me conclude by thanking all of you for standing with me in the fight for justice. We should all be extremely proud that over the last few years, on issue after issue, we have made enormous progress in advancing the progressive agenda. Ideas that just a few years ago were considered "radical" or "extreme" are now supported by a strong majority of Americans.

In these very difficult times, despair is not an option. For the sake of our kids and grandchildren, the struggle must continue. Black, white, Latino, Asian-American, Native-American, male or female, gay or straight, let us proudly stand together and create the kind of country we know we can become.

In solidarity,

Bernie Sanders

Happy New Year-- The Battle Over Who's Taking On Trump In 2020 Is Getting Going For Real

We covered the Elizabeth Warren announcement-- and video-- on Monday morning. She's the first top-tier candidate to jump into the 2020 race. I don't get the feeling she's going to go all the way, primarily because most of the progressive wing of the party is dedicated to Bernie and when he announces, much of her support will become shakier.

Confirmation: Blue America has raised money for both Bernie and Elizabeth Warren but the thermometer on the right, the 2020 presidential thermometer is a Bernie fundraising tool. Click it, donate and the money goes to Bernie's federal campaign. With that out of the way, let me note that not everyone agrees with me about the Bernie/Warren dynamic. Writing for CNN early Wednesday morning, David Axelrod asks if she is "the new and improved Bernie Sanders, a woman AND a populist, who could combine these robust bases to ride to the nomination? Or is she too strident? Too stilted? Too old? Too reactive, as reflected by the ill-conceived video she released shortly before the midterm elections to try to quell doubts about her claim to Native American ancestry? All she seemed to accomplish was to give President Donald Trump another opportunity to gleefully trot out his tiresome Pocahontas routine yet again." Whatever else she is, we can all agree she will be-- unlike most of the two-dozen potential candidates-- "a major player among the cavalcade of Democrats now queuing up."

We live in times of revolutionary change. Technology and globalization have created enormous opportunity for some, and disruption and stagnation for many. Decades of policies in Washington, pushed by an army of special interest lobbyists, have accelerated these trends. This is a case Warren has been making since long before she left Harvard and entered public life.

Her pioneering book, The Two Income Trap, about the mounting economic pressure on working families, was required reading among Democrats and progressive politicians in the mid-2000s.

If biography is prologue, the cause of the embattled middle class is a natural one for Warren. Her hardscrabble upbringing in rural Oklahoma and struggle as a young single mother to raise her children and pursue an education are powerful validators.

I served in the White House when Warren, then a special House counsel, was pummeling treasury officials over treatment of Wall Street executives who were culpable in the financial crisis. I saw her inaugurate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the government watchdog that saved billions for consumers before the Trump administration relegated it to the sidelines.

She has offered a series of serious ideas about government and Wall Street reform, and is one of the most incisive members of the Senate.

Warren also has laid the groundwork for her candidacy more assiduously than most, running an extensive, sophisticated operation in 2018 to help Democratic candidates around the country, even as she ran for re-election to the Senate. She raised tens of millions for these dual operations and still has $12 million in the bank.

As Sanders proved on 2016, there is an audience for the hard-edged populism Warren loudly proclaimed in her announcement video. Many Americans are fed up with the hegemony of Wall Street and the stranglehold of lobbyists, a trend made worse by Trump, despite his iconic campaign pledge to "drain the swamp."

The 2018 elections demonstrated the powerful appeal of women on the ballot, both in Democratic primaries and general elections. And the nation's first primary will take place in New Hampshire, which shares the Boston media market with Massachusetts.

All this makes Warren a contender. It doesn't mean she'll win. If Sanders or other populists-- Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Jeff Merkley of Oregon-- enter the race, her climb becomes steeper. There will be other women, all younger than Warren, who is nearing 70. There will be candidates of color, better positioned to compete in the crucial state of South Carolina and beyond.

Democrats may, ultimately, choose a candidate with a more uplifting and unifying message in response to a relentlessly divisive President, or a candidate with a less edgy and dogmatic vision of capitalism than Warren's. Some fear Warren could drive away the suburban voters who delivered Democrats the House in 2018.

And, despite an extraordinary personal story and genuine, long-standing commitment to her principles, Warren's presentation sometimes can seem wooden and inauthentic.

Still, Warren is powerfully intelligent, and indefatigable in pursuit of her goals-- the very traits that helped lift the janitor's daughter from modest beginnings to this moment. These are indispensable qualities any winning candidate for president of the United States must own.

Nathaniel Rakich looked at her candidacy from a different perspective at FiveThirtyEight. "[I]f you listen to conventional wisdom-- and our favorite quasi-scientific tool, betting markets-- Warren’s star has dimmed in recent months. President Trump’s repeated references to her as “Pocahontas” have kept alive a seven-year-old controversy over Warren’s claims that she has Native American ancestry, which potentially helped advance her career. Her release of a DNA test in October 2018 that she hoped would settle the matter was not well received. And in a party reportedly thirsty for a new generation of leadership, the 69-year-old Warren may have missed her window. For the first but certainly not the last time this year, let’s take a look at the case for and against the chances of a major 2020 Democratic candidate.

Ideologically, Warren is right where a Democratic primary candidate should want to be-- it’s one of the strongest cards in her hand. According to FiveThirtyEight’s Trump Score, she votes with the president just 13.1 percent of the time, making her the third-most anti-Trump senator in the 115th Congress. Although she’s best known for her stands against income inequality and big banks, she is deeply liberal on both social and economic issues, according to an analysis of her votes and positions by OnTheIssues-- although not quite as liberal as Sen. Bernie Sanders, one of Warren’s potential 2020 rivals.

Warren’s base is likely to overlap quite a bit with Sanders’s, the self-described democratic socialist who turned heads in the 2016 presidential primaries by winning 40 percent of Democratic delegates. Warren even seemed to make an explicit play for Sanders voters when she devoted a full minute (mid-personal bio, no less) of her four-and-a-half-minute announcement video to an economic-populist message. “America’s middle class is under attack... Billionaires and big corporations decided they wanted more of the pie and they enlisted politicians to cut them a fatter slice.”

In fact, at least one poll suggests that Warren and Sanders (if he runs again in 2020) will be fighting over the same pool of voters. Back in April 2018, Suffolk University conducted a poll of two versions of the 2020 Democratic primary in New Hampshire: one without Warren and one with her. In the version without her, Sanders pulled 25 percent of the vote. In the version with her, he dropped to 13 percent; Warren got 26 percent. None of the other six candidates about whom the poll asked lost as much support as Sanders did with Warren in the field.

Sanders and Warren have something else in common: the support of small donors, or those who give $200 or less to a campaign. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, as of Nov. 1, small donors were behind 56 percent of all the money raised by Warren’s re-election campaign. The only 2018 Senate candidate whose fundraising was more reliant on small donors was Sanders himself.

And in terms of raw dollar amounts, Warren raised $10 million more from small donors than Sanders did, even though neither one was facing a competitive race. Warren’s $19.4 million small-donor haul was second only to Beto O’Rourke’s among 2018 general-election candidates for Senate or House. Presidential campaigns are expensive affairs, and being a strong fundraiser-- particularly among small donors, a well that is less likely to run dry-- is a huge advantage. It can also signal high voter enthusiasm for a candidate.

Warren’s deep pockets may also be financing her apparent strategy of building up goodwill among state-level Democrats who will be instrumental in primary and caucus field organizing. According to the Washington Post, she directed at least $7.6 million to Democratic campaigns for offices like state treasurer and legislator in 2018 -- more than any rumored 2020 contender not named Michael Bloomberg. As of mid-October, Warren had also made 172 post-primary congratulatory phone calls to Democratic candidates, blasted her email list on their behalf 180 times, shared policy documents with them 63 times, held 61 one-on-one meetings, hosted 41 fundraisers and shot 36 videos. That is how you develop a network.

Central to Warren’s grassroots networking strategy may be New Hampshire-- less than an hour’s drive away from her home base and the second state in the country (after Iowa) to cast primary ballots. While she sent one staffer each to Iowa, South Carolina and Nevada for the 2018 election, two of her aides moved to New Hampshire despite it not hosting any particularly competitive major elections. (They assumed pretty major roles there, too-- as the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s political director and communications director.)

The final Granite State Poll of 2018 (pre-Beto) for the presidential primary in New Hampshire shows Warren doing well-- but not well enough:

• Bernie- 30%
• Biden- 19%
• Warren- 17%
• Kennedy III- 7%
• Booker- 6%
• Kamala- 3%

"It’s unclear," continued Rakich, "what’s cooling voters on Warren. The fallout from her DNA test just weeks before Election Day is a decent guess. But the controversy over her ancestry may also be a proxy for other, less socially acceptable reasons why people dislike her, such as her gender or age. 'I don’t think America’s ready for another Hillary. It has to be someone young and dynamic,' one interviewee told Boston radio station WBUR-FM. Warren has long polarized audiences and was never the world’s most beloved politician to begin with. That may be because she’s a woman with a confrontational style. It may be sexism mixed with other reasons. Whatever the cause(s), Warren isn’t in the best starting position as she enters the fray. But she’s not in the worst position either-- she’ll likely find a receptive audience for her message in terms of policy and ideology. A well-run campaign would put her among the field’s top contenders. We’ll find out soon enough: Warren says she’ll announce for sure whether she’s running 'early in the new year.'"

There are going to be a flood of campaign announcements this month. Mike Allen wrote yesterday at Axios that he's expecting Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand and John Hickenlooper to jump in quickly. A veteran of Democratic presidential campaigns told Allen that big-time hired guns-- he called them "aides"-- "will start to jump to campaigns this month. But many of the 'big-time consultants, many of whom have multiple possible 2020 clients,' will take longer."

For Better Or-- More Likely-- Worse, Hillary Still Walks Among Us

If you thought Hillary and the Clintons and-- more importantly-- whatever hybrid vision of governance they stand for, was going away: surprise! She's back, reminding millions of people what's so horribly wrong with the Democratic Party as to make an Obama voter switch to Trump. She's says it was Comey and Putin and she's got a point but does that adequately explain why her approval ratings were so jaw-droppingly bad all through the election. Too many people looked for a lesser of two evils and-- amazingly-- picked Trump. The country we live in!

David Axelrod seemed unimpressed with Hillary's excuse-making when he appeared on CNN's New Day this morning. He told Chris Cuomo and Alisyn Camerota that "it takes a lot of work to lose to Donald Trump... Jim Comey didn’t tell her not to campaign in Wisconsin after the convention. Jim Comey didn’t say, 'Don’t put any resources into Michigan until the final week of the campaign.' One of the things that hindered her in the campaign was a sense that she never fully was willing to take responsibility for her mistakes, particularly that server. She said the words 'I’m responsible,' but everything else suggested that she really doesn’t feel that way, and I don’t think that helps her in the long run. The fact that she was in a position to lose because of the Comey letter is something that deserves some introspection."

For those wondering if the resistance to Trump will continue to grow and gain momentum or start dying off and losing ground going into 2018 and 2020, remember, Hillary now says she considers herself part of the resistance. How's the for the ultimate buzz kill that's remind everyone about how repulsive and corrupt the Democratic Establishment is and how Hillary kept Wasserman Schultz in place at the DNC to make sure Bernie wouldn't get a fair shot in the primaries.

A recently-released transcript of Florida court documents has revealed that the Democratic National Committee’s first line of defense in their motion to dismiss a lawsuit against them by defrauded Bernie Sanders supporters is to state that they are under no contractual obligation to provide the American people with real party primaries.

Yes, really. That’s their Plan A. In order to avoid a situation where they could be forced to return some of the small-dollar campaign donations of Sanders’ base, representatives of the regulatory committee for the Democratic party have tacitly admitted in a court of law that they are running a fake political party using the lie of legitimate primary elections to manufacture political engagement, and that democracy is officially dead in America.

“[T]here is no right to-- just by virtue of making a donation, to enforce the parties’ internal rules,” said DNC attorney Bruce Spiva. “And there’s no right to not have your candidate disadvantaged or have another candidate advantaged. There’s no contractual obligation here.”

Mr. Spiva is of course referring to the charge that Sanders supporters were defrauded of millions of dollars when they poured donations many of them could barely afford into the campaign of a candidate that the DNC was actively conspiring to sabotage, in gross violation of the Impartiality Clause of their own charter. Rather than trying to deny that this act of sabotage took place, the DNC is instead arguing that it is perfectly within its rights to obstruct and favor any campaign it wants in order to ensure the nomination of the candidate that it prefers.

From the DNC Charter

...[T]he DNC and the Clinton camp were colluding as early as 2014 to schedule debates and primaries in a way that favored her, or then-DNC Vice Chairwoman Donna Brazile acting as a mole against the Sanders campaign and passing Clinton questions in advance to prep her for debates with Sanders can truthfully say that this Impartiality Clause was adhered to. It wasn’t. And, according to Mr. Spiva, that’s because it didn’t need to be.

...The elites of the Democratic party are trying to have it both ways. They’re trying to maintain the system which obstructs independents and third parties from finding meaningful purchase within the political process, while at the same time ensuring that no democracy is happening within that rigid two-party system. They’re trying to maintain the “A vote for a third party is a vote for the Republican!” narrative from one side of their mouths while saying “It’s our party, we can rig the primaries however we want!” from the other. If Americans want to say that they live in a democracy, the major political parties can’t have it both ways. Either change the system so that other parties are viable, or give the people the ability to choose the nominees of the only two parties they’re able to choose from. Both of these would be ideal, one would be workable, but right now they have neither. Calling America a democracy is a joke.

...This is what happens when a political party places money above all else; they find themselves in a situation where they’re making politically catastrophic admissions rather than lose a few dollars. I was active in a lot of Bernie forums during the primaries, and the gut-wrenching stories I saw shared by participants there were what got me involved in this political commentary gig in the first place. There were people who could not afford to donate to a political campaign, but they found ways to do it anyway in the desperate hope of creating a more economically just future. Bernie received donations from people living out of their cars. From unemployed people with kids who could have used the money for groceries but chose to try and invest in a better world for their children. The DNC is now openly admitting that it took actions to make sure that that money went to waste, all so that they won’t have to give it back to these people who so desperately need it in the exploitative corporatist nightmare that the DNC has helped create.

Even after Anthony Weiner was exposed as a dangerous sociopath, Clinton chose to cling to her favorite aide, Huma Abedin, Weiner's wife. Did Hillary lose the election because of that terrible, lunk-head decision? Are the country-- and the world-- now stuck with Donald Trump because of that fateful decision? The American people very clearly did not want Weiner and Huma anywhere near the White House and didn't want crooked political hack Debbie Wasserman Schultz anywhere around it either. Who in their right mind would? I released this album and eponymous song by Rochester-based psychedelic rockers New Math in 1981 on my label, 415 Records, and, I admit, I wasn't thinking about Hillary at all at the time.

Is It Fair To Blame The Disintegration Of The Republican Brand On Trumpy The Clown?

Right-wing nut Marlin Stutzman (R-IN) made an interesting observation on Twitter yesterday. He reminded his 4,000 followers that Trump is a disaster and can't even poll above the Republican registration in California. He was referring to the new USC/L.A. Times poll that shows Hillary beating Trump in a head-to-head 59-28%. Not only is Trump failing to make any headway among Democrats or Independents, he's likely not even locking up Republicans! Both McCain and Romney took 37% of the vote and even the weak 2014 Republican gubernatorial candidate, Neel Kashkari, won 40%. And remember Carly Fiorina got all the way up to 42% when she ran for the Senate in 2010. Trump's 28% is a low-water mark for Republicans in the Golden State. At the moment, there are 17,660,257 Californians registered to vote:

• Democrats- 43.6%
• Republicans- 28.7%
• Independents- 27.7%

Trump's problems stem from his inability to turn what he insists the great love The Latinos have for him into votes. In a head-to-head match-up Hillary beats him among registered Latino voters 78-13%. As a point of comparison, Kasich would take 21% of Latino voters against Clinton and Cruz would win 20%. The Latino voters must not realize this Donald Trump is the one that they love.

David Axelrod, an Obama political operative, points out that the GOP's problems aren't confined to California-- and not just the fault of Trump. In fact, Axelrod claims, the Republican Party is imploding in slow motion in front of our eyes. McConnell's and Grassley's strategy of stonewalling President Obama's nomination of conservative Justice Merrick Garland is widely disliked by the public. And he claims that the GOP seems "resigned to death in November by fire or by hanging. The prolonged nominating process is merely a means of determining the nature of the execution and limiting the risk to other candidates on the ballot."

Having stoked anti-Obama fever in order to score midterm victories at the polls and then failed to deliver on pledges to derail major elements of the President's agenda, the party elite now finds itself overrun by a wave of outrage and discontent.

That wave has carried Donald Trump to the brink of the nomination, a hostile takeover that so horrifies the Republican establishment that many are now turning in desperation to a man they dislike almost as much as the prospect of Trump as their standard-bearer.

Sen. Ted Cruz's entire tenure since his arrival in Washington in 2013 has been dedicated to taunting a Republican leadership he views as accommodationist.

He called Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a "liar" on the floor of the Senate. He led the party over the cliff of a government shutdown in a vain effort to derail Obamacare. To this day, he casts his campaign as one to upend "the Washington cartel" of insiders and lobbyists who he says have betrayed the GOP and the country.

Now, that same "cartel" is slowly and grudgingly embracing Cruz, who is currently running a distant second to Trump, as their last, best hope to deprive the bilious billionaire of the 1,237 delegates he needs to win the nomination.

Sen. Lindsey Graham's painfully tepid "endorsement" of Cruz last week, followed by Mitt Romney's announcement that he would stand up for the Texas senator in Tuesday's Utah caucuses, reflected the dilemma in which the GOP finds itself.

In backing Cruz, neither of these pillars of the Republican establishment spent a whole lot of time extolling his virtues, focusing instead on the man they are desperate to stop.

"Today, there is a contest between Trumpism and Republicanism," Romney said. "Through the calculated statements of its leader, Trumpism has become associated with racism, misogyny, bigotry, xenophobia, vulgarity and, most recently, threats and violence. I am repulsed by each and every one of these."

So he's for the other guy.

Jeb Bush followed in similarly measured fashion on Wednesday.

...Many are gravitating to Cruz, arguing, as Bush did, that his predictable views are more plausible in a Republican nominee than the philosophically promiscuous, cult of personality spectacle that is Trump.

"I don't like Cruz, but I can defend most of his positions with a straight face," one prominent Republican leader told me. "I don't know how I go on TV and make an argument for Trump."

There is a potential bonus of a Cruz nomination, this party leader explained. For the past several cycles, conservative activists have complained that by nominating relatively moderate candidates-- Romney in '12 and Sen. John McCain in '08-- the party spurned its base and depressed Republican turnout.

"Let's have Cruz, and we will put that issue to rest," said this party leader, convinced that the Texan's appeal, pitched to evangelicals and the right, is too narrow to command a general election. "If it's Trump, there will be no resolution. Each side will blame the other for the disaster."

But all these efforts to stop Trump may well be too late. Even if they succeed in depriving him of the delegates he needs to clinch the nomination, his victory in Arizona's winner-take-all primary meant Trump probably will come close.

That would leave the party establishment in the unhappy position of either embracing the front-runner or courting a rebellion among his supporters by dumping him. And while a few weeks ago, many still talked hopefully about swapping in a fresh and more appealing recruit-- say, House Speaker Paul Ryan-- the somber realization is seeping in that it will be hard enough to topple Trump, much less bypass Cruz at the same time.

Though Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, would enter a general election campaign with historically high negatives, she is running well ahead of Trump, whose unfavorable ratings eclipse even hers.

Cruz runs a tighter race in early polls. But as a factional candidate, his ability to grow is very much in question.

Only Gov. John Kasich is outrunning Clinton in general election trial heats. But Kasich has won just one of the first 37 nominating contests-- his own state of Ohio-- and netted not one delegate in Tuesday's races in Arizona and Utah.

Kasich's brand of compassionate conservatism might sell in a general, and he would be a comfortable choice for the party establishment. But he has struggled to find traction within a party riven by anger.

The party leaders are prisoners of their base.

...Playing base politics-- tolerating nativism, birtherism and promising obstruction at every turn-- could cost Republicans the presidency and threaten control of the Senate.

And if the GOP crashes and burns, it will probably get a more liberal court nominee than Garland from the next President Clinton.

For seven years, the GOP establishment knowingly and cynically rode the anti-Obama tiger, feeding the beast with a steady diet of red meat.

Now, whatever happens at the Cleveland convention, the party elite may wind up as dinner.

Yesterday some idiot in Trump's campaign allowed him to walk into the lion's den, unarmed. He did a 17 minute interview with Wisconsin's most admired far right radio host, Charlie Sykes, not knowing that Sykes has been an outspoken Trump opponent who says he won't vote for Trump in November even in the unlikely event that Trump somehow manages to out-maneuver the establishment and win the nomination instead of Paul Ryan. List to how Sykes diced and sliced the floundering Trump:



A week from today, Trump is going to be roadkill in the Wisconsin primary. The problem for Republicans, though is that you can't blame the tarnishing of their brand solely on Trump. Conservative governance has been catastrophic, on one level or another, in almost every state where they've managed to seize power. They're not all as bad as Michigan, Kansas and Louisiana, but every GOP-controlled state experimenting with the "red-state model," is in big trouble. The latest example of inevitable conservative inability to govern is how the Kansas Republican crackpots are offering a $2,500 bounty to any student who rats out a transgender woman using an "incorrect" restroom. I suspect taxpayers in the bankrupt state might not feel that's the most appropriate way to use the state's diminishing resources! After one term of Republican rule in Harrisburg, Pennsylvanians decided to replace Gov. Tom Corbett. Voters flocked to the polls to elect progressive Democrat Tom Wolf, who beat Corbett 55-45%. Keep these crazy people out of the White House and replace them in Congress!

Who's Worse, Herr Trumpf or Cruz?

Late Sunday night, Nebraska freshman Senator Ben Sasse, got into a Trumpf twitter tantrum starting here. It started out nicely enough, Sasse acknowledging that Herr had "struck a chord" with the American people and saying he'd bet Trumpf will be the next president. But... "we have questions about how you would govern. Would like to ask you some questions, if you are willing?" And they came fast and furious:

• Does he still support single-payer and if not when did he change and why.
• Do you still "hate the concept of guns" and what does the 2nd Amendment mean to you?
• Does he still agree with a $6 trillion tax hike he proposed and with the proposition that "higher taxes = more patriotism?"

• Is executive unilateralism bad-- in light of how much Herr talks about "running the country?" And will he "commit to rolling back executive power and undoing Obama's unilateral habit?"

Then Sasse started tweeting about his concerns with Herr's authoritarian tendencies and how America "doesn't need a strongman." An hour in and he was giving Herr a civics lesson on how "the whole point of America is that THE PEOPLE are bigger than the government and how that's what makes us historically exceptional. Soon after, former Governor Rick Perry, who Herr Trumpf had banished from the campaign, endorsed Cruz. Her spokesperson, Amanda Carpenter, tweeted "The 'people hate Cruz' whining is so ridiculous. Right now it's Cruz or a tyrant, people. Get over the fact he didn't kiss your ring. Sigh."

Picking up where we left off late last night, so who exactly does the Republican Establishment hate more-- Herr Trumpf or Ted Cruz? It's a no-brainer for members of the Senate; up close and personal with Cruz, they all wish he'd fall off a cliff, a literal one. But what about non-senators? Some are even more worried about Trumpf and the authoritarian tendencies that Ben Sasse seemed concerned about. For many party aparachiks, what's most important is which nominee will be worse for down-ticket races. The GOP is probably going to lose the Senate anyway, but would Trumpf (or Cruz) make the loss deeper and make it more difficult for the GOP to regain control in 2018? How many House seats will go down the tubes? Legislative seats? Town clerks? How harsh is Trumpf on the Republican brand in moderate suburbs, where Trumpf's open embrace of white supremacists doesn't go over as well as it does in certain precincts of Mississippi and Alabama? Still, there are plenty of establishment Republicans who feel Cruz is even worse; Peter King and Rudy Giuliani know Trumpf personally and they vouch for him. People who have had to deal with Cruz all seem to detest him but Bob Dole and Trent Lott never served in the Senate with Cruz and they both see him as catastrophic to the Republican cause.

There are lifelong Republicans out there already saying they won't vote for Trumpf even if he is the nominee. Doug Heye was the communications director of the RNC and has been a dedicated GOP operative but he wrote a scathing OpEd about why he'd never support Herr, whose candidacy, he asserted, "exists solely to exploit the genuine anxiety voters feel, without offering credible solutions to the problems that have made so many angry, instead appealing only to our worst instincts."

Because of Trump’s perversion of conservatism, along with the devastating impact he would have if nominated, I cannot support Donald Trump were he to win the Republican nomination.

As the GOP battles over what-- or who-- defines conservatism, it should be easy to define what doesn’t: angry populism, cheap sloganeering and bombast.

Credit Trump for this: when confronted with tough questions or bad poll numbers, he knows what to do: cynically create yet another outrage du jour taking the media’s focus away from Trump’s lack of knowledge or substance on the challenges facing America onto much more comfortable ground, the six-month running Mad Libs of calculated shocking comments-- attacking minorities, a candidate’s face, a reporter’s disability or even bathroom breaks. As every Trump interview shows, the Emperor not only does not have any clothes; he does not have any answers.

And while shocked, entertained or both, we all may be, with actual voting set to occur, it is time to state the obvious:

A supporter and donor to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, a candidate who has called for single payer universal healthcare, and flippantly confuses their position on abortion is no conservative and has no business being the stalwart of the Republican Party. Nominating him could cause an existential danger for the party.

Similarly, a candidate whose rhetoric has rightfully drawn comparison to extremist candidates in foreign countries, including Marine Le Pen in France, and earned criticism from our staunchest allies, while gaining praise from worldwide menace Vladimir Putin, and who cannot name military advisors other than those he watches on television, is dangerous to the United States and the world at a time when the world is at risk.

Donald Trump as the Republican nominee would be catastrophic for Republican hopes to win the White House and maintain control of the Senate and would damage the party and the conservative cause for years to come. His having the legitimacy that comes with the nomination of a major political party would cause greater instability throughout the world at a time when the world looks to America for leadership that is serious and sober.

As a longtime conservative Republican campaign and Congressional aide, and former official of the Republican National Committee, not voting for the Republican nominee is an unimaginable scenario. But for the sake of my party and indeed, my country, while I will certainly vote for some Republican in November, if Trump is the nominee, I cannot vote for my party’s nominee.

Cynics like to say America gets the politicians it deserves. If Republicans nominate Trump, that cliché may actually be true.

As a loyal and proud conservative Republican, I cannot help make that happen by voting for a Trump-led ticket in 2016.

Others feel that Trumpf can be "managed" and dealt with rationally, the argument conservative German industrialists made when they acquiesced to the rise of Hitler in the 1930s. They were proven very wrong.

Most establishment types seem to agree with Lindsey Graham's assessment: picking between them is like picking between "death by being shot or poisoning."

In yesterday's NY Times, former Obama strategist David Axelrod opined that "Trump has found an audience with Americans disgruntled by the rapid, disorderly change they associate with national decline and their own uncertain prospects. Policies be damned, who better to set things right than the defiant strong man who promises by sheer force of will to make America great again? ... The robust condemnations Mr. Trump has received from media and political elites have only intensified the enthusiasm of his supporters, many of whom feel disdained and forgotten by the very same people who regularly mock and chide their man for his boorishness. To his base, he’s a truth-teller, thumbing his nose at conventional politicians, whether they are liberal or conservative. Rebukes from fact checkers and purveyors of civil discourse? They’re just so much establishment claptrap."

Susie Madrak Is Walking Along When She And Jake Tapper, Blindfolded As Usual, See An Elephant...

Susie Madrak caught an interesting-- if obvious-- diatribe from David Axelrod yesterday on This Week:

Elections are about choices, though. They're not referendums. And on the other side of the ballot in November will be a party that has an economic theory, and it was tested, and it led to catastrophe. We lost 3 million jobs in the last six months of 2008. The financial market almost collapsed. They turned a $237 billion surplus that Bill Clinton left into a $1.3 trillion deficit. And they're running on the same policies.

If you watch Susie's video (above) you'll notice Jake Tapper, a typical Inside-the-Beltway worm, hoping to please the ruling elite and keep his miserable job, making sounds indicating that it was time for Axelrod to shut up. This isn't what the Village has decided is the appropriate political theme going into the midterms.

Instead it's supposed to be about how conservatives are right again and how important it is that the poor and middle class just buck up and pay for the outrageous excesses of the Masters of the Universe. More war, more tax cuts for the wealthy, less services for the poor and middle class. Anything less... just will not do. No one knows what's going to happen going forward, but I predict that this will be a theme at DWT from now until I leave for Marrakech (after the midterms are over).

In his own account at the ABC blog, the Tape Worm emphasized what it is the Village has decided is the proper way of framing the political environment:

White House Senior Advisor David Axelrod conceded this morning on ABC News’ This Week that there wasn’t “a great appetite” on Capitol Hill for more spending to stimulate the economy, but called on Democrats and Republicans to support more tax relief for small business.

In his February budget proposal, the president requested $266 billion for additional stimulus for the economy.  And just a month ago, the President called for $50 billion in emergency aid to states alongside the extension of unemployment benefits.  This morning Axelrod called again for extension of unemployment benefits, but aid to states was not on his list.

“It’s true that there is not a great desire” on Capitol Hill to spend more money, Axelrod said, “even though there is some argument for additional spending in the short-run to continue to generate economic activity.”

“There’s not a great appetite for it, but I do think we can get additional tax relief for small businesses-- that’s what we want to do-- additional lending for small businesses,” the President’s senior advisor said.

“They are an engine for economic growth. We’re hoping we can persuade enough people on the other side of the aisle to put politics aside and join us on that,” Axelrod told host Jake Tapper.

Quite the different emphasis than Susie's but, alas, also the one both Atrios and Krugman picked up on. The White House better get it's messaging straight. I suggest they call in Susie and get some pointers-- before it's too late.