If You Hear Someone Call David Brock A "Liberal," Just Ignore Them; They're Imbeciles

If the '90s doesn't see like ancient history, you may remember David Brock as one of the most vile of the right-wing villains. He was paid by the far right to write books and articles smearing Democrats and progressives. He was particularly virulent in his screeds against President Clinton. And became a far right hero for a racist and misogynistic characterization Anita Hill as "a bit nutty and a bit slutty." After he broke with the far right and started sucking at the tit of centrist establishment Democrats, he admitted he had been a habitual liar. In regard to the arguments over Anita Hill, he wrote in Blinded by the Right that "When I wrote those words, I knew they were false. I put a lie in print." That's what he does professionally-- for whomever pays him best.

Actual progressives understood what a pile of wretched turds he always was and always would be and he was largely spurned by progressives-- and, of course-- embraced by the disgusting and corrupt Democratic Party establishment. It was hilarious to see Hillary, who he helped destroy as a viable political figure, become one of his biggest cheerleaders inside the party. His SuperPACs, American Bridge and Priorities USA, led her 2016 to its demise in such a way that some wondered if he was actually a GOP mole.

On Friday, the Daily Beast published an exposé by the two Lachlans-- Mackay and Cartwright-- explaining how Brock built a personal fortune by ripping off establishment-oriented Democratic suckers who contributed to his PACs. A right wing group, the Patriots Foundation, snitched on him to the IRA for "illegally profiting from the vast network of groups he has built within the Democratic Party’s infrastructure.  They found "a series of transactions that, the group says, show the injection of money from a tax-exempt group Brock founded [American Bridge 21st Century Foundation] into a private, for-profit news business [True Blue Media LLC] that he owns."

Over the next two years [2018, '19], American Bridge’s nonprofit arm invested more than $2.6 million in True Blue Media, according to tax filings. Those filings list Brock’s ownership stake in the LLC as greater than 35 percent. The structure appears to have resembled a convertible note; in exchange for that cash infusion, American Bridge was promised future equity in the media company. It’s not clear if that equity was ever provided.

The Patriots Foundation alleges that those transactions ran afoul of Internal Revenue Service rules barring the use of a nonprofit’s funds (in this case, American Bridge’s) to financially benefit those who run it. “We’re calling on the IRS to conduct a thorough investigation of Brock’s organizations and to hold them accountable for all violations,” Robinson said.

...The complaints filed this week underscore the often murky relationships between the various nodes in Brock’s network of advocacy outfits. American Bridge’s super PAC and dark money arms, for instance, share executives, employees, and office space, according to audited financial statements for the latter.

That’s fairly common for advocacy groups with political and nonprofit arms, but best practices generally call for a clear delineation of how shared resources are divided up among those groups, so as not to commingle tax-exempt resources with those devoted to outright politicking. According to its most recent publicly-available financial statements, covering 2018, “the Foundation and American Bridge did not have a formal agreement relating to the allocation of expenses between the two entities.” A source familiar with the arrangement told the Daily Beast that a more formal agreement to that effect was put in place last year.

While such arrangements are common among various forms of nonprofit groups such as charities, dark money advocacy groups, and political action committees, they can be even more legally dicey when for-profit entities are added to the mix.

True Blue Media is just such an entity. In late 2015, it acquired an 80 percent stake in the website Blue Nation Review, which was subsequently renamed Shareblue. Late last year it changed its name again to The American Independent.

The outlet has been determined since the start of the Trump era not just to advance Brock’s political advocacy efforts, but also to generate financial returns.

"Impact and monetization are not mutually exclusive at Shareblue," declared briefing materials circulated to donors at Brock’s early 2017 retreat. "In the second half of 2017 we will move the focus to monetization with the goal of bringing in revenue in Q2 of 2018.”

Those briefing materials spelled out a host of ways that the company would look to bring in revenue, including renting out email lists, offering advertising and sponsored content, selling merchandise, and even creating a “Twitter-like” website available only to paying subscribers.

"Renting out email lists"-- what a piece of shit... or do you like getting 20-30 pieces of spam a day? And by the way, even in the reporting on this story, the media inaccurately keeps referring to Brock as a "liberal," which he may have been in his freshman year at U.C., Berkeley... but not since. He was one of the "liberals"behind knifing Bernie-- both times.

Krystal Ball v Neil Bluhm And The MSNBC Never Trumpers--- Ball Hits One Of Out The Park On Biden's Establishment Backing

Chicago billionaire realtor and casino magnate Neil Bluhm owns the two best hotels in Chicago, the Four Seasons and the Ritz Carlton. But he's probably best known, outside of billionaire real estate circles, for having thrown a 49th birthday party for Obama where the minimum price for admission was $30,000 (checks made out to the DNC). He's shoveled immense amounts of money into the political careers of neo-liberals and crooked pols like Rahm Emanuel, Hillary Clinton, Rod Blagojevich, the Madigans, Melissa Bean, etc. He writes big checks too. In 2016, he gave the DSCC $66,600 in July and then Schumer's Senate Majority PAC a million dollar check in August-- and another $350,000 in October. On Halloween of that same year, he gave the DNC $100,000. He's written 25 separate checks for $20,000 or more to federal Democratic committees and he's made maximum contributions to conservative neo-liberal Democrats like Biden, Frackenlooper, Hillary, Schumer, Brad Schneider, Kirsten Gillibrand, Tammy Duckworth, Ben Nelson, Michelle Nunn, Joe Lieberman, Robert Menendez, Max Baucus, Mary Landrieu, Tim Mahoney, etc. He's made 277 federal campaign contributions.

On Thursday, Biden was in Chicago, collecting big checks from the super-rich... at three separate events. The first one was hosted by Bluhm.

At the first fundraiser, Biden stopped by a luncheon at Bluhm’s sprawling downtown residence near the Mag Mile. Biden was introduced by Bluhm, who told his high-profile guests that both presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Sanders “don’t represent the Democratic Party” that Bluhm supports. Bluhm said Biden “has the best chance of defeating Trump.”

That prompted a response from Sanders’ campaign: “Mr Bluhm is right-- the Democratic Party I represent is the party of the working class, not billionaires. That’s why we’re going to win,” the Sanders campaign said in a statement to CNN.

Sanders statement hit as Biden-- considered the most centrist of the Democratic frontrunners-- visited the homes of wealthy donors in Chicago. And it came as Sanders-- vying with Warren for the party’s more progressive wing-- announced his campaign had received donations from more than one million individual donors.

Asked about the Bluhm comments about him-- at an MSNBC Climate Crisis event Biden skipped so he could suck up to the billionaires and multimillionaires-- Bernie responded, "I would say to him, 'Joe, we are not going to make the changes we need in this country when you go to three fundraisers in Chicago sponsored by multi-millionaires.' We are going to make the changes that we need in this country when the working people of America stand up to the corporate elite, not [back candidates who] take their money."

And it isn't only greedy, selfish billionaires like Bluhm trying to stop Bernie. As Krystal Ball pointed out in the video up top, Republicans and ex-Republicans who hate Trump are also pushing hard for Republican-lite Status Quo Joe. She focused primarily on the MSNBC Republicans. But last January Caitlin Johnstone was all over crooked ex-GOP hitman David Brock. She pointed out an NBC Op-Ed by the Clinton crony, Bernie Sanders’ fans can’t be allowed to poison another Democratic primary with personal attacks-- Bashing Beto O’Rourke (and every other Democrat) doesn’t help liberals’ cause in 2020. It only helps Trump. "The article," wrote Johnstone, "explicitly blames Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump on supporters of Bernie Sanders who criticized her during the primary, and makes it clear that such criticisms must be forcefully and aggressively fought against this time around.

“I’m hardly the only political observer who blames Hillary Clinton’s general election defeat to Donald Trump in part on personal attacks on Clinton first made by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and his backers,” Brock’s article begins. “Those attacks from her left laid the groundwork for copycat attacks lobbed by Donald Trump-- and, in the process, helped hand the Supreme Court to the right-wing for a generation.”

Citing no evidence, Brock goes on to accuse journalists and social media users of staging a “coordinated effort” to “attack” Beto O’Rourke and other presidential hopefuls, as though coordination would be necessary for criticisms and questions to emerge about the voting records and campaign donations of public officials seeking the highest political office on the planet. The implication, of course, is that no criticisms of any kind should be leveled at Democratic presidential primary contestants, leaving narrative-shaping authority solely in the hands of the plutocratic media and beltway manipulators like David Brock.

Brock concludes his screed as follows:

In 2016, I ran a pro-Hillary SuperPAC which attempted to defend the candidate against false attacks, many of which came from or originated to her left. Though they were hardly in charge of our messaging, it was made very clear to us by our allies at her campaign headquarters that any efforts on our part to push back against the left-wing anti-Clinton brigades were unwelcome assistance; they feared alienating Sanders’ voters.

That head-in-the-sand posture was ultimately self-defeating.

Today, Democrats are rightly laser-focused on picking a winner in 2020, and the stakes are just too high to let bad faith actors-- whose real aim is to smear Democrats as no different than Republicans-- stage inter-party schisms. If Sanders decides to run again this time, he should focus on policy and eschew character attacks on Democrats-- and admonish his supporters to do the same. Otherwise, they put the core values we all share at risk, yet again.

It is unclear what “character attacks” Brock is claiming Sanders made; the entirety of criticisms leveled by Sanders and the overwhelming majority of his supporters were directed at the policy decisions Clinton made in her political career and the shady places she took money from. What is clear is that the pro-Hillary SuperPAC he is referring to was the infamous “Correct the Record” troll operation, which employed literal shills to deceitfully pose as grassroots Hillary supporters online whose job was to attack anyone who criticized her. This despicable tactic was incalculably disruptive to online political discourse in 2016, and Brock clearly wants to implement a far more aggressive version of his operation in the 2020 primaries.

“Let’s be clear about what’s going on here: this is a deliberate Dem Party effort to try to intimidate journalists and advocacy groups into not reporting on voting records and campaign donations,” tweeted progressive investigative journalist David Sirota in response to Brock’s article, adding, “Wanna know why I rejected working for this guy? That’s why.” Sirota had agreed to work with Brock on a new outlet billed as “The left’s answer to Breitbart” in early 2017, but later backed out of the project. Brock’s liberal Breitbart never materialized.

If you want a quality illustration of what a manipulative sociopath David Brock is, contrast his obnoxious, dishonest accusatory screed with his open letter to Sanders at the beginning of 2017 titled “Dear Senator Sanders: I’m with You in the Fight Ahead”. Brock apologized for his harsh attacks on Sanders, gushed about the way Bernie “electrified millions” with his campaign and pledged to work with him to harness that energy against Trump. Brock wanted something from Sanders (control of his base in this case), so he smothered him in flattery; now people are criticizing Beto “Like Obama, only white” O’Rourke, and all of a sudden Sanders is back to being a red commie menace whose “character attacks” are to blame for Hillary Clinton’s loss. Brock has no relationship with truth beyond his ability to twist it to get things he wants.

Hillary Clinton is to blame for Hillary Clinton’s loss, actually, as well as the strategists like David Brock who were behind her spectacular failure to defeat a historically unpopular reality TV star Republican. Establishment Democrats are trying to sell the narrative that “You progressives disobeyed us in 2016 and what happened was your fault; you will obey us this time,” while progressives are saying “No, you ignored us in 2016 and what happened was your fault; you will listen to us this time.” The early 2020 presidential race is repeating the same battle of official narrative manufactured by corporate elites versus the organic zeitgeist–the way ordinary people are feeling inside as a result of the conditions their government has put them in. I’m not sure how much coverage I’ll be giving to the U.S. presidential election this time around, but it will be interesting to see how this dynamic plays out.

America has a Trump-Biden problem at the root of its current politics. As former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich explained in the video below. "It's oligarchy versus democracy. When oligarchs fill the coffers of political candidates, they neuter democracy. The oligarchs know politicians won't bite the hands that feed them. As long as they control the money, they can be confident there will be no meaningful response to stagnant pay, the climate crisis, military bloat, or the soaring costs of health insurance, pharmaceuticals, college and housing. There'll be no tax increases on the wealthy. They're be almost no anti-trust enforcement to picture the power of giant corporations, no meaningful regulation of Wall Street's addiction to gambling with other people's money, no end to corporate subsidies. CEO pay will continue to skyrocket. Wall Street hedge fund and private equity managers will continue to make out like bandits. So long as the oligarchy divides Americans." The solution is staring us in the face: Bernie is the agent of change we need, desperately need.

Bernie: Into The Fox's Den-- While Corrupted Rich Democrats Work On Their Stop Bernie Crusade

Jonathan Martin's headline in the New York Times this morning said it all: 'Stop Sanders' Democrats Are Agonizing Over His Momentum. He starts with "a closed door gathering of about 100 wealthy liberal donors in San Francisco last month" freaking out about Bernie winning the nomination. These are people who have been served well by the status quo. They all want women to be allowed to have abortions and they support gays marrying each other. But beyond that, they're not liberals at all; they do not want anyone touching the economic fundamentals of the status quo, their status quo. "How, some Democrats are beginning to ask," reported Martin, "do they thwart a 70-something candidate from outside the party structure who is immune to intimidation or incentive and wields support from an unwavering base, without simply reinforcing his 'the establishment is out to get me' message-- the same grievance Mr. Trump used to great effect?"

Martin gets the crux of the story wrong though. He wrote that "From canapé-filled fund-raisers on the coasts to the cloakrooms of Washington, mainstream Democrats are increasingly worried that their effort to defeat President Trump in 2020 could be complicated by Mr. Sanders, in a political scenario all too reminiscent of how Mr. Trump himself seized the Republican nomination in 2016." He thinks it's about Trump. It isn't. To many of these wealthy establishment Democrats, Bernie is more of a threat than Trump is. After all, Trump may be an embarrassment... but he lowered their taxes. Bernie would raise them. For sure.

Hired political assassin-- once for the right, now for the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- David Brock, a vicious leader of the anti-progressive movement and a Bernie-hater, weighs in: "There’s a growing realization that Sanders could end up winning this thing, or certainly that he stays in so long that he damages the actual winner. He is chomping at the bit to organize the establishment into an overt anti-Bernie campaign immediately. Brock hissed that "the Bernie question comes up in every fund-raising meeting I do." Fellow plotters include rich party donors like Steven Rattner, Susan Swecker (chair of the Virginia Democratic Party) and former Clintonite operative.current Bloomberg factotum Howard Wolfson. This "discussion about Mr. Sanders," wrote Martin, "has to date been largely confined to private settings because-- like establishment Republicans in 2016-- Democrats are uneasy about elevating him or alienating his supporters."

Martin points out though that "to some veterans of the still-raw 2016 primary, a heavy-handed intervention may only embolden him and his fervent supporters. R.T. Rybak, the former Minneapolis mayor who was vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 2016, complained bitterly about the party’s tilt toward Mrs. Clinton back then, and warned that it would backfire if his fellow mainstream Democrats 'start with the idea that you’re trying to stop somebody.' If the party fractures again, 'or if we even have anybody raising an eyebrow of I’m not happy about this, we’re going to lose and they’ll have this loss on their hands,' Mr. Rybak said of the anti-Sanders forces, pleading with them to not make him 'a martyr.'"

The matter of What To Do About Bernie and the larger imperative of party unity has, for example, hovered over a series of previously undisclosed Democratic dinners in New York and Washington organized by the longtime party financier Bernard Schwartz. The gatherings have included scores from the moderate or center-left wing of the party, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi; Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader; former Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia; Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., himself a presidential candidate; and the president of the Center for American Progress, Neera Tanden.

“He did us a disservice in the last election,” said Mr. Schwartz, a longtime Clinton supporter who said he will support former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in this primary.

...“If he is consistently raising $6 million more than his next closest opponent, he’s going to have a massive financial advantage,” said Rufus Gifford, former President Barack Obama’s 2012 finance director, noting that Mr. Sanders will be able to blanket expensive and delegate-rich Super Tuesday states like California and Texas with ads during early voting there.

Mr. Gifford, who has gone public in recent days with his dismay over major Democratic fund-raisers remaining on the sidelines, said of Mr. Sanders, “I feel like everything we are doing is playing into his hands.”

But the peril of rallying the party’s elite donor class against a candidate whose entire public life has been organized around confronting concentrated wealth is self-evident: Mr. Sanders would gleefully seize on any Stop Bernie effort.

“You can see him reading the headlines now,” Mr. Brock mused: “‘Rich people don’t like me.’”

I ran this poll yesterday before Bernie did the Fox News town hall. 65% thought going on Fox and bringing their viewers the truth was a good idea. 35% thought it wasn't. The media and social media buzz after the event was about 99% favorable. Bernie knocked it out of the park.

Even his CAP-centered enemies-- already reeling from his polling success and the 10 years of taxes he had just released-- couldn't come up with anything negative to say. DC-based journalist Skip Kaltenheuser observed that "about half-way through, the FOX moderators started looking like deer caught in the headlights. I imagine the Democratic Party Grand Poobahs who watched had a similar look on their faces." By this morning, they were all weeping bitter tears over the Holly Otterbein piece at Politico, Sanders takes on Fox-- and emerges triumphant. "Bernie Sanders entered the Fox's den on Monday night," wrote Otterbein, "and he not only survived the hour-long encounter, but often dominated. Appearing at a Fox News-hosted town hall smack dab in the middle of Trump Country, the Democratic presidential front-runner played the part, swatting down tough questions from the hosts about health care, defense spending, and his newfound wealth. At one point, the Vermont senator even led the network’s audience in a call-and-response that found them cheering loudly for his policies." Part 1 of the town hall is up top and part 2 is below. You should watch them both. And if you like them, you can contribute to Bernie's campaign by clicking on the thermometer on the right.

Someone's frightened

In the days preceding the event, Sanders faced backlash from liberals who said he shouldn’t participate given the network's nativist bent and cheerleading for President Donald Trump. But when it was over, Sanders had received an hour of positive exposure on the highest-rated cable channel-- something none of his primary rivals have yet risked.

The town hall took place in a cultural center in the shadows of a former steel mill here, in a county in Pennsylvania that voted for Trump after twice supporting Barack Obama. But the room was packed with Sanders supporters, and the Vermont senator fed off the energy of the crowd.

Still, the image of an audience on Fox News rallying behind the democratic socialist and his left-wing platform gave Sanders the appearance of strong support in an area that was key to the president’s victory in 2016.

For the Sanders campaign, it was an ideal end to a four-day swing through the industrial Midwest that was meant to show that he's the presidential candidate best positioned to beat Trump. Significant numbers of Democratic primary voters are more concerned with a candidate's ability to win than his or her ideology, according to recent polls.

Some of the difficult questions asked by the hosts, Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, were about Sanders’ “Medicare for All” plan.

When asked how he would fund the program, Sanders didn't shy away from the fact that many Americans would pay more in taxes. But he insisted the “overwhelming majority” would end up spending less money overall because they would not pay for deductibles or other out-of-pocket costs. He also downplayed concerns that people would be kicked off their insurance, arguing that millions already lose their health insurance when they get fired from or quit their jobs.

His health care plan, he said, “gives you freedom of choice.”

One of the most surprising moments of the town hall occurred when Baier asked the members of the audience to raise their hands if they received health insurance through their employer. Most indicated they did. Then he asked how many would be willing to switch to Sanders‘ plan, and most people appeared to raise their hands again.

...When MacCallum said some would argue Sanders that supported felons‘ having the right to vote because it benefited him politically, she was booed by the crowd. “Oh, come on,“ he said. Asked about those who say that he is too old to be president, he shot back, “Well, follow me around the campaign trail.”

Sanders was also asked by an audience member how he would challenge the idea that “socialism is bad.”

He replied with familiar talking points: “Democratic socialism to me is creating a government and an economy and a society which works for all, rather than just the top 1 percent. It means ending the absurd inequalities that exist today.”

On the hot-button topic of abortion, Sanders‘ responses prompted an immediate rebuke from conservatives on social media. MacCallum asked him whether “a woman should be able to terminate a pregnancy up until the moment of birth.” He replied: “I think that that happens very, very rarely, and I think this is being made into a political issue. So I think it’s rare, it’s being made into a political issue. But at the end of the day, I believe that the decision over abortion belongs to a woman and her physician, not the federal government.“

...As Sanders traveled to Rust Belt states that were essential to Trump’s victory this weekend, he called on the president to keep his vow to working-class Americans and ditch the new NAFTA agreement. If elected, Sanders also said he would deny government contracts to companies that outsource jobs to other countries, such as General Motors.

Sanders had a similar message throughout the Fox News town hall. He attacked Trump, arguing that he didn’t keep his campaign promise to be a different kind of Republican and avoid cutting programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

Feisty and confident, Sanders ended the engagement by gently ribbing the hosts of the network liberals despise. “Thank you very much," he told Baier and MacCallum, "and I hope I wasn’t too hard on you.”

Is David Brock's SuperPAC A Bridge To Nowhere?

American Bridge is a SuperPAC founded by David Brock, one of the oddest ducks in American politics. Once a right-wing journalistic assassin-for-hire and purveyor of Bill Clinton conspiracy theories, he turned against the GOP after coming out of the closet and was reborn as some kind of super-operative for the Republican-wing of the Democratic Party. Despite being one of the least trustworthy characters in American politics, he has been allowed to infiltrate multiple layers of the Democratic Party establishment to a degree that nearly every Democratic failure since the early 2000s has his fingerprints on it. Brock has been an especially effective Bernie saboteur and Edward Helmore used an article in The Guardian to note "residual unease among some liberal operatives that Brock's conversion story fits into a pattern of opportunism and self-promotion rather than ideological transformation." I don't know if he's a Republican mole or not, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out he's been enriching himself while sabotaging the Democratic Party from within for years.

Of the $20,460,398 American Bridge 21st Century collected in 2018, almost nothing was spent helping candidates, while $13,864,849 was spent on salaries, close to $3 million of administrative costs and over a million and a half on consultants. Everything about their balance sheet screams SCAM. It was the same pattern in 2016-- $19,894,876 raised; $143,186 to help candidates; $12,598,727 for salaries; and the rest for consultants, administrative costs and so on.

Yesterday, NBC News reported that one of his operations, American Bridge "is embarking on a $50 million effort designed to soften President Donald Trump’s support among the group that cost Democrats the White House in 2016-- white working-class voters in the Upper Midwest." Reaching out for cash from naive, wealthy Democratic donors, his memo states that "We understand that we may not win these voters back entirely, but if we don’t make inroads into these areas, we will win the popular vote, lose the Electoral College, and the Senate could be lost for a decade." He plans to drain $80 million from legitimate Democratic Party vehicles into his own super-shady SuperPAC, a $50 million expansion he claims will help the Democrats win rural and exurban voters in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and possibly Florida via commissionable and very profitable paid advertising campaigns on TV and radio and via digital dissemination.

The NBC News piece was written by an exceptionally inept reporter, Alex Seitz-Wald, who's never successfully grappled with the distinction between journalism and p.r.

"We're going to focus on real-life testimonials and putting them in front of voters," Brock said.

Trump has already spent tens of millions of dollars on his reelection campaign and held dozens of rallies while Democrats are just beginning the year-and-half-long process of selecting their nominee.

"While the strongest Democratic field in history brings their messages to primary voters and the American people, we are going to take the fight to Donald Trump, who has sold out hard-working Americans," said Andrew Gillum, the former Tallahassee mayor who ran for Florida governor last year.

Gillum is joining the board of American Bridge’s 501(c)4 non-profit arm, which is chaired by former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm. New additions also include former DNC Chair Ed Rendell and operative Jessica Mackler, who ran the independent expenditure arm of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in last year's midterm elections.

Since Hillary Clinton lost the formerly solidly blue Midwest states, Democrats have debated whether to focus on winning back those voters or doubling down on their more diverse base.

Progressives within the Democratic Party have instead focussed on making sure the party's next nominee is not another version of Hillary Clinton-- so an Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders (or even a Mayor Pete) rather than a Biden or Beto or Gillibrand. In other words, someone whose policy agenda will appeal to those Midwestern blue collar voters rather than chase them to a carnival barker like Trump again.

Has Hillary Changed Since She Unleashed The Clinton Machine On Obama In 2008?

An old friend, the guy who made the video above, came over for a visit Sunday. It reminded me of what Bernie has been having to go through as he tries delivering his message about the corruption that has gripped the transpartisan Beltway establishment. I want to ask you to watch that short video clip. I want you to see it so you can watch how the same ugly, deceitful and divisive tactics the Clinton Machine is using to destroy Bernie comes right from the playbook she used against Obama in 2008. I had to laugh when I saw crooked conservative lobbyist Ed Rendell-- the piece of shit she and Wasserman Schultz conspired to put in charge of the Convention in July-- standing next to her in 2008 when she launched into one of her endless smears against Obama.

Last week on NPR's Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me, conservative writer PJ O’Rourke announced that he plans to vote for Hillary if November comes down to the Lesser-of-two-evils contest between her and Trump many people expect. "I am endorsing Hillary," he told the audience. "And all her lies and all her empty promises. I am endorsing Hillary. The second worst thing that could happen to this country. But she’s way behind in second place, you know? She’s wrong about absolutely everything-- but she’s wrong within normal parameters!... I mean, this man just can’t be president of the U.S. I mean, they got this button, it’s in a briefcase, he’s gonna find it." And let's never forget the Evil Of Two Lessers.

The Wall Street banksters didn't just start financing her after Trump became the nominee. In fact, she's taking more money from the Finance Sector than anyone who ever served in Congress with the exception of Barack Obama, who has been collecting money from Wall Street for the last 7 years was president. Her $44,416,534 haul from Wall Street to date indicates she will soon catch up to Obama, just as she's left bankster shills John McCain and Chuck Schumer in the dust. Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal noted that she's "consolidating her support among Wall Street donors and other businesses ahead of a general-election battle with Donald Trump, winning more campaign contributions from financial-services executives in the most recent fundraising period than all other candidates combined... [Her] ability so far to draw the support of business donors, even those who lean Republican, suggests she is reversing the flow of Wall Street money toward the GOP ever since big banks, investment firms and hedge funds fell out of favor with President Barack Obama."

Mrs. Clinton’s popularity on Wall Street could prove a liability with some liberal voters, as primary rival Bernie Sanders has attacked her for being too cozy with the financial industry. But winning back a sizable chunk of money that went to Mr. Romney four years ago would likely give Mrs. Clinton a big fundraising advantage in the general election.

...The super PAC backing Mrs. Clinton, Priorities USA Action, is also heavily backed by Wall Street donors, who gave $18.7 million to the group through March, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. No other industry has given more to the super PAC.

Meanwhile another Clinton SuperPAC, the sleazy David Brock outfit, Correct the Record, apparently illegally funded by and coordinating with the Clinton Machine itself, is taking on the roll of social media enforcer for the slimy operation. As Evan Halper reported Monday for the L.A. Times "[w]hen "the Internet’s legions of Hillary hecklers steal away to chat rooms and Facebook pages to vent grievances about Clinton, express revulsion toward Clinton and launch attacks on Clinton, they now may find themselves in a surprising place-- confronted by a multimillion dollar super PAC working with Clinton. Hillary Clinton's well-heeled backers have opened a new frontier in digital campaigning, one that seems to have been inspired by some of the Internet's worst instincts. Correct the Record, a super PAC coordinating with Clinton's campaign, is spending some $1 million to find and confront  social media users who post unflattering messages about the Democratic front-runner. In effect, the effort aims to spend a large sum of money to increase the amount of trolling that already exists online."

[U]sing a super PAC to create a counterweight to movements that have sprung up organically is another reflection of the campaign’s awkwardness with engaging online, digital pros said.

“It is meant to appear to be coming organically from people and their social media networks in a groundswell of activism, when in fact it is highly paid and highly tactical,” said Brian Donahue, chief executive of the consulting firm Craft Media/Digital.

“That is what the Clinton campaign has always been about," he said. "It runs the risk of being exactly what their opponents accuse them of being: a campaign that appears to be populist but is a smokescreen that is paid and brought to you by lifetime political operatives and high-level consultants.”

The task force designed to stop the spread of online misinformation and misogyny is the brainchild of David Brock, a Clinton confidant who once made a career of spreading such misinformation and misogynistic attacks against her and Bill Clinton. His critics say he kept his taste for dirty tricks when he switched sides to become one of the Clintons’ most valued operatives.

The mere mention of Correct the Record makes some critics seethe. Super PACs are typically prohibited from working in tandem with candidates, but Correct the Record is doing just that by exploiting a loophole in campaign finance law that it says permits such coordination with digital campaigns.

“Clinton, herself, is saying we need campaign finance reform,” said Paul Ryan, deputy executive director of the Campaign Legal Center, an advocacy group. “Yet her lawyers are pushing the boundaries to get around campaign finance laws.”

Hey... what can I say? Watch the video again and then consider helping make sure Bernie wins next week's primaries in Oregon and Kentucky. Today Bernie faces off against her Machine in West Virginia and Nebraska where people really have come to just hate her and everything she stands for.

Lesser-Of-Two-Evils Politics Doesn't Serve America Well

Yesterday at this time we asked, rhetorically if you wonder why voters hate politicians, focusing on Republican conservatives. However, there's a prominent conservative Democrat who voters are growing less and less enamoured with the more they see her in action. The NY Times editorial board, a bastion of her kind of status quo establishmentarianism, warned her to stop the ugly, deceitful tactics that have come to define her smear campaign against Bernie. Even late night comedy hosts, who sympathisize with her politically, can't help but comment on her awkward, unsavory character. Maybe it has something to do with her conservative Republican upbringing and her fist political experiences as a right-wing Republican.



A headline at the Daily Beast summed up what more and more Democrats are finding hard to stand about her: Hillary Clinton’s Hit Men Target Bernie Sanders at Blue Nation Review. As we've mentioned before, Blue Nation Review, was bought by ex-Republican smear artist-turned Hillary smear artist David Brock and transformed into a transparent Clinton propaganda tool.

Back in the summer of 2014—when Blue Nation Review was a fledgling blog dedicated to creating “a place where progressives can debate where we want to be as a movement,” per the website’s mission statement-- it treated Sanders as a liberal hero.

This was 18 months before BNR, as it’s known, started attacking the 74-year-old Sanders with a zeal normally associated with the Republican assault on Benghazi and the former secretary of state’s private email server. These days the blog celebrates all things Clinton and relentlessly blames the socialist senator from Vermont for nearly every misguided, corrupt, hypocritical, or wretched thing in American democracy-- though it does admit, from time to time, that he’s no Donald Trump.

Even before Sunday night’s CNN-sponsored Democratic debate had ended, BNR’s lead story was accusing Sanders of rudeness and sexism under the headline “Women React to Bernie Sanders Telling Hillary ‘I’m Talking.’”

BNR is “the pond scum of American politics,” said Democratic political consultant Tad Devine, a top strategist for Sanders’s campaign against the Democratic frontrunner. “I’m sure they’re going to do whatever it takes to throw mud at Bernie and discredit him and lie about him, and deceive people. And that’s their business. That’s what they do for a living.”

...As with an increasing number of political whodunits during this election cycle, the fingerprints of Hillary hit man David Brock are all over the crime scene.

There's no chance you'll find the PolitiFact analysis of one of Hillary's most recent smears (Tuesday in Florida) on Blue Nation Review. The Hillary lie: "The Clean Power Plan is something that Sen. Sanders has said he would delay implementing." Of course he never said anything like that, but Hillary, a recipient of legalistic bribes from pollution industries and a career-long foot-dragger on Climate Change, must have felt she had no choice but to lie about Sanders' record. Like her friend and crony, Donald Trump, she doesn't know how to debate without lying. It's what all conservatives of her ilk do. Linda Qiu analyzed the smear for PolitiFact Thursday: Hillary Clinton wrongly says Bernie Sanders wants to delay the Clean Power Plan.

Debating in a city where rising sea levels are a concern, Hillary Clinton suggested Bernie Sanders wants to set back a major climate change policy of the Obama administration.

"The Clean Power Plan is something that Sen. Sanders has said he would delay implementing, which makes absolutely no sense," Clinton said.

"What? Tsk," Sanders said, laughing and shaking his head incredulously.

"Wait, what?" was our reaction too.

Looking at statements and actions by Sanders, Clinton’s statement is misleading.

Briefly, the Clean Power Plan aims to cut carbon emissions from coal-burning power plants by 2030 by 32 percent from 2005 levels, promoting clean(er) energy sources instead. This plan, hailed and criticized as a historic environmental initiative, was put on hold on Feb. 9, 2016, by the U.S. Supreme Court.

We searched Google, LexisNexis and CQ for comments Sanders has made on the plan and found no evidence that Sanders has said he wants to delay the implementation.

The Clinton campaign referred us to Sanders’ Feb. 21 interview with Grist, an environmental online magazine, in which he laid out what President Sanders would likely do on climate change.

Sanders said he would change the Clean Power Plan to incentivize renewables instead of gas and extend a two-year program for wind and solar credits all the way to 2030. And beyond carbon, he would also regulate methane through the plan.

...A day before it was unveiled, Sanders said in a press release, "It sounds to me like a step forward in ending our dependence on fossil fuel, and I support that effort.

" He also tweeted that day, "Pres Obama knows climate change is the great planetary crisis facing us & we must move boldly to transform our energy system #CleanPowerPlan."

And in November, Sanders voted twice against legislation to block the Clean Power Plan.

"It is an embarrassment that with few exceptions Republicans refuse to recognize the reality of climate change, and even fewer are prepared to do anything about it," he wrote in a press release following the effort to repeal the plan. "Today’s vote to block the Clean Power Plan is a stark reminder that instead of worrying about the future of our planet, Republicans are more concerned with their campaign contributions."

Our ruling

Clinton said, "The Clean Power Plan is something that Sen. Sanders has said he would delay implementing."

Sanders advocates for more ambitious action on climate change, which some experts argue could delay the plan. But Sanders himself has never said what Clinton is suggesting, and he has supported the Clean Power Act in words and action.

We rate Clinton’s claim False.

The environmental PAC, Climate Hawks Vote, polled their members about who to endorse in the presidential race. There were over 22,000 votes and 92% of those votes were for Bernie. I guess not enough people are reading Blue Nation Review... or maybe they are-- and seeing right through it. I don't look forward to a debate between Hillary and Herr Trumpf which will be analyzed based almost entirely on who is the bigger and more vile liar. Doesn't America deserve better? Let's make sure the more electable candidate is the Democratic nominee:

Bill Clinton, David Brock & the Kitchen Sink

Everything But The Kitchen Sink Soup (source)

by Gaius Publius

I hope this is wrong. From the middle of this Wash Post piece (emphasis in the original):

-- Did Bill [Clinton] go off the reservation with his attacks on Sanders? Or is he being strategic? We think the latter. Or, as Marco Rubio put it in a different context: Let’s dispel with the fiction that Bill Clinton doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing.

1. His seemingly off-the-cuff attacks got intense coverage yesterday, enough so that he did not need to repeat the lines of attack and could show restraint. “The hotter this election gets, the more I wish I was just a former president and, just for a few months, not the spouse of the next one,” he said. “I have to be careful what I say.”

2. WJC accomplished his goal of signaling to pro-Clinton outside groups that they should start throwing the kitchen sink. David Brock, whose outside group coordinates directly with the Clinton campaign, called Bill’s comments “a strong call to arms.” As Brock told Politico, “Senator Sanders is trying to live in the purity bubble, and it needs to be burst.”

Last night, when Bill introduced Hillary, he sounded liberated. “Finally, the dam broke in the polarization of the campaign, and we are finally free” to have a discussion of whose ideas are better, he said in Hudson.

I really hope this is just rumor-mongering and pot-stirring by the Post. But I'm not optimistic.

GP
 

Beware: The Clinton Trolls Are Out In Force This Weekend

Hillary's campaign against Bernie-- and that's all it has degenerated into-- is deceitful, vicious and ugly. Part of it is to project its own shortcomings and tactics onto Bernie's campaign and his followers. "The BernieBros are being mean to everyone" is part of the Clinton message now, even as Hillary-bots fan out across the media-- social and corporate-- with their litany of offensive lies about "NRABernie" and Bernie the racist, Bernie the misogynist, Bernie in the pocket of the banksters, Bernie the flip-flopper and Bernie the unelectable.

Clinton's political conservatism, her timidity about progressive issues, her position embedded deep in the heart of the Wall Street predatory establishment, her failed tenure as Secretary of State and her mundane and mediocre job as a U.S. senator-- plus the fact that she is widely disliked by independents-- make her the dream candidate for the GOP, the easiest to beat by Trumpf. Polling consistently shows that Bernie would beat each Republican while Hillary might scrape through if Trumpf were the nominee, she would lose to Rubio and possibly even to Cruz.

Her "ex"-Republican attack dog, David Brock, one of the most unsavory figures in American politics, has become the face of Hillary 2016-- and its a face no Democrat should want to consider for even two seconds. Hillary's top aides and surrogates have been saying that if their own flawed candidate loses they will try to get jobs working for the election of New York plutocrat Michael Bloomberg, slightly to the right of Clinton and, like her, a standard bearer for the Wall Street elites. Her vocal online supporters seem uniformly incapable-- both intellectually and emotionally-- to ask themselves why or to even look at the sordid collection of lobbyists, careerists and conservatives dominating her inner circle.

This weekend, her campaign is all about smearing Bernie in the same ways she attempted to smear Obama when she ran against him. Funny how her most ardent supporters never ask themselves why every Democratic NRA shill in Congress has endorsed her and not one NRA shill backs Bernie. In Ohio her campaign is indistinguishable with that of NRA long-time hero Ted Strickland, Hillary's endorsed NRA A+ candidate for Senate. Virtually every single congressional Democrat who has backed the NRA agenda also backs Hillary. None back Bernie-- not one. Yesterday we wrote about the primary in TX-29, where progressive Adrian Garcia is challenging NRA darling Gene Green. Green, of course, is for Hillary, while Garcia is neutral and positive about all three Democrats running. NRA-friendly congressmen like Tim Ryan, Henry Cuellar, Jim Cooper, Filemon Vela, Kurt Schrader, Tim Walz, Derek Kilmer, and Pete Gallego, a Texas Blue Dog endorsed by the NRA who lost in 2014 and is running again this year.

Who wants this as president?



Greg Sargent pointed out that "whatever happens in Iowa, we can already reach this conclusion: Democrats, and Hillary Clinton, will have to engage in a serious, genuine effort to learn from the Sanders phenomenon and what it really represents.

The Sanders phenomenon raises possible warning signs for Clinton’s chances in a general election. His ability to engage, excite and involve younger voters-- his ability to make them feel invested in politics-- throws into sharp relief Clinton’s relative failure, at least for now, to do the same. Some Dem pollsters, such as Stan Greenberg, have already begun warning that Clinton will have to make extra efforts to excite millennials.

Sanders has figured out a way to speak to a sense that the system is fundamentally broken in very profound ways that put our future in doubt. Those two things may be related: Sanders appears to make young voters feel they have a stake in his candidacy-- and by extension, in this election-- because they think their future is the one that’s in doubt. By speaking in bold strokes about the need for gargantuan solutions, he seems to makes their deep concerns about the future feel heard and, perhaps, assuaged. (While Donald Trump’s diagnosis of the problem is very different, leading him to wallow endlessly in demagoguery and xenophobia, he also has flummoxed pundits who under-appreciate his ability to speak effectively to a similar sense that people feel the system is fundamentally failing them.)

Buying The Presidency?

-by Dorothy Reik,
President, Progressive Democrats of the Santa Monica Mountains

The curtain has been pulled aside. Money has been laid on the table. Bloomberg and Trump are in a bidding war for the presidency of the United States-- but they are bidding against the people as well as against each other. And the winner gets-- our country! In the past the buyers of presidencies hid behind PACS and SuperPACs, like the Koch brothers, but now Bloomberg and Trump have each pledged to spend whatever it takes to buy the presidency of our country. This is a truly terrifying proposition and we the people are the only ones who can stop it.

Bernie weighs in:



Crooks and Liars reports that Ed Rendell would consider support Bloomberg against Bernie-- as would Hillary's campaign chairman, lobbyist John Podesta-- so we can see that the party elite are getting scared. They'd rather sell the country to a plutocrat than let the people have it! The real candidate here is Wall Street-- that's where Bloomberg made his fortune. Polls show that Bloomberg would take votes from HRC and hand Trump a victory! Trump knows this so he is delighted. He doesn't care about Wall Street-- except as a building site!

So it's eminent domain vs eminent banksters. Trump will take our land and Bloomberg will take our money-- or make it a lot easier for his bankster friends to do it. And in the NYTimes' Charles Blow writes Hillary is "blowing" it. Her "campaign seems increasingly desperate and reckless."

I noticed the turn in the last debate as Clinton seemed to me to go too far in her attacks on Sanders, while simultaneously painting herself into a box that will be very hard to escape.

She wrapped herself in President Obama’s legacy so tightly that she could hardly breathe, and then built an image of herself as a practical politician who could build on Obama’s accomplishments by taking small steps and negotiating tough deals.

...[I]nstead of Clinton finding a way to express that her plans are more tangible than Sanders’s, and her chances in the general election are stronger than his, she and her campaign have made some incredulous inferences about Sanders’s honor.

The swipes at him as being soft on the gun industry as some way of cozying up to it, or of being anti-Obama because he wanted Obama to be stronger in pursuing a liberal agenda, or that he wants to scrap Obamacare, simply do not connect.

Sanders may be a dreamer, but he’s not dishonorable. Trying to sully him in this way only sullies her.

There are a tremendous number of echoes starting to be heard between the way Clinton ran against Obama, and the way she is running against Sanders.

Clinton has what political insiders call the “firewall”: Overwhelming support among black and Hispanic voters in Southern and some Western states. But a win by Sanders in Iowa and New Hampshire could supply a boost of momentum that could greatly erode the Clinton firewall.

If Clinton can’t find a positive, energetic message to project, and soon, she is going to be swept away by Sanders.

Some part of Sanders’s proposals and even his vision for this country may indeed be a fairy tale. But in the 2008 race, Bill Clinton criticized Obama and his position on the Iraq war as a “fairy tale.” Well fairy tales sometimes come true, particularly when Hillary Clinton stumbles.

Tom Hayden agrees:

Hillary Clinton is ill-served by unleashing an unsavory attack dog, David Brock, on her opponent Bernie Sanders. The irony, of course, is that Brock was a pretty rabid attack dog against the same Hillary he works for now. In those days Brock wrote one of the most personal, viscous pieces on Hillary in the modern form of old-school yellow journalism.

For some reason Brock has switched to become Hillary’s highly paid defender-in-chief, still paddling in the gutters of hyperbole and mud-slinging that have become his trademarks. It’s a mistake to employ this style against Bernie Sanders.

This week Brock was all over the news for attacking the Sanders' generic television spot as racially exclusive. He went over the top by declaring that “it seems black lives don’t matter much to Bernie Sanders.”

Why would a white Hillary opposition researcher like Brock want to pontificate like that? It seems to be his style. Who is he winning over? Its one thing to raise a careful argument over Sanders’ appeal in primaries that lie ahead. It’s a different thing to employ a slime attack about the same thing, out of his mouth, and it will be offensive to many black Democrats.

Hillary is a good enough debater to keep her team on a level of dignity and rationality. It’s not too late to reverse course to the more positive Hillary seen in the original debates.

And Brock should know by now that when you throw ink it drips on yourself.

So if she does, indeed blow it, we can look forward to a bidding war indeed-- but there is a third bidder here-- the American people!!! Go to either the Blue America Bernie page or to the Blue America page for Bernie and the congressional candidates who have endorsed him and are running on the same platform.

The Best Things Are The Most Difficult To Achieve And You Have To Work The Hardest-- Like A Bernie Presidency

The new CNN poll of likely Iowa Democratic caucus participants showing Bernie trouncing Hillary, sent Team Clinton off the deep end. Forget their insane claims that Bernie is an NRA shill and a woman hater. Now they''ve all been instructed to call him a racist. The last poll CNN poll had her leading 54-36% and now Bernie's ahead 51-43%. Momentum is important with the caucuses just over a week away. But at least the Clinton campaign has its own media outlet to shape the news any way it likes. Blue Nation Review, a website owned by professional slime machine David Brock and run by Peter Daou, Clinton's former digital director who is now consulting the campaign.

As HuffPo reported in early December, Brock, an ex-Republican operative who runs one of the shadier of the Clinton SuperPACs, bought 80% of Blue Nation Review and named Daou CEO. Since everyone knows it's just a propaganda site for the Clinton Machine, it isn't taken at all seriously. Yesterday their lede was typical, President Trump-- Get Used to It Unless Hillary Stops Him, written by the CEO himself, Daou, not Trumpf.

Same ole/same ole reasons why Hillary is electable and Bernie's not, despite consistent head-to-head general election polling that shows Bernie doing much better than Hillary against Trumpf and against every other possible Republican nominee. DOA claims none of that matters because the Republicans haven't attacked Bernie yet-- actually they have; he was just too busy to notice. "Bernie," he warns, "will be turned into an aging cartoon Commie, a flip-flopping America-hater, a 60s holdover writing bizarre essays about free sex and child rape fantasies, a non-Democrat Democrat whose embrace of the NRA undermines his claims to purity, a politician who voted against the Amber Alert system, a draft dodger, and a man who thinks women’s rights are a distraction.  There’s an entire library of fresh, juicy opposition research on Bernie Sanders tucked away in RNC headquarters, awaiting the mother of all oppo drops." Actually that scenario is what Bernie has been laughing off from the Clinton campaign for the last 6-7 weeks. But Daou had more useful warnings:

My friend and business partner Eric Burns made a fascinating observation today: Trump is the master at taking down other men, but clueless when it comes to competing with a woman. He made a mess of his exchange with Fox’s Megyn Kelly and put his foot in his mouth with Carly Fiorina. He’s been flailing with Hillary, claiming she lacks “strength and stamina”-- perhaps one of the least believable political attacks of the entire cycle.

Trump eviscerates male opponents with a few tweets. He’ll have a field day with Bernie Sanders, and so will the GOP attack apparatus.

Elections are about choices, about weighing pros and cons, about picking a candidate judiciously. Hillary’s capacity to withstand direct hits from the GOP’s smear machine and come out stronger every time is a crucial asset.

President Obama faced John McCain and Mitt Romney, neither of whom were remotely as scary as Donald Trump. “President Trump” isn’t an option for America. And Democratic voters now have to decide who can face him should he remain on track to win.

I’ve spent the day fielding a torrent of outrage from Bernie fans who take any criticism of their candidate as a deep personal insult and who spew volcanoes of venom toward Hillary, revealing their obvious issues with powerful women. But my advocacy for Hillary is undeterred.

Electing the first woman president in American history won’t happen without a struggle. I want my young daughter to know I fought tooth and nail to elect Hillary. I’ll continue to do so until Election Day. And I do so knowing she’ll make an exceptional president who is more effective at advancing the progressive cause than Bernie or any other Democrat.

People think Joe Manchin (WV) is the most right-wing Democrat-- and he is pretty damn conservative-- but according to ProgressivePunch, the Democrat who has voted with the GOP most frequently against important progressive initiatives is Claire McCaskill (MO). She earned her overall "F" rating by voting against 2015-16 progressive bills 58.33% of the time. Yep, she's with the GOP more often than with the Democrats on crucial votes. And the Clinton campaign offered her as an example of "progressives" who back Hillary this week. Her backing includes red-baiting Bernie to the media. "The Republicans won’t touch him because they can’t wait to run an ad with a hammer and sickle," she babbled snidely to the NY Times.

There are basically two rational reasons to vote for Hillary: first woman president and lesser-of-two-evils, although the latter is just a general election rationale. I'd like the first woman president to be a great woman president so I'll pass on that one. And lesser-of-two-evils is still too evil. So... if it comes to that, I'll have to sit out another one. But it may not come to that because we have the opportunity to elect the greatest president since FDR and I didn't believe it would be possible at first and now I do. (You can contribute to Bernie's campaign here.)

Last week we asked whether it would be possible for Bernie and for Jeremy Corbyn to drag their respective parties into the new century. We may get to find out but yesterday Glenn Greenwald looked at the intense establishment backlash buffeting both men. "The British political and media establishment incrementally lost its collective mind over the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the country’s Labour Party," he wrote, "and its unraveling and implosion show no signs of receding yet. Bernie Sanders is nowhere near as radical as Corbyn; they are not even in the same universe. But, especially on economic issues, Sanders is a more fundamental, systemic critic than the oligarchical power centers are willing to tolerate, and his rejection of corporate dominance over politics, and corporate support for his campaigns, is particularly menacing. He is thus regarded as America’s version of a far-left extremist, threatening establishment power... For those who observed the unfolding of the British reaction to Corbyn’s victory, it’s been fascinating to watch the D.C./Democratic establishment’s reaction to Sanders’ emergence replicate that, reading from the same script."

Just as was true for Corbyn, there is a direct correlation between the strength of Sanders and the intensity of the bitter and ugly attacks unleashed at him by the D.C. and Democratic political and media establishment. There were, roughly speaking, seven stages to this establishment revolt in the U.K. against Corbyn, and the U.S. reaction to Sanders is closely following the same script:

STAGE 1: Polite condescension toward what is perceived to be harmless (we think it’s really wonderful that your views are being aired).

STAGE 2: Light, casual mockery as the self-belief among supporters grows (no, dears, a left-wing extremist will not win, but it’s nice to see you excited).

STAGE 3: Self-pity and angry etiquette lectures directed at supporters upon realization that they are not performing their duty of meek surrender, flavored with heavy doses of concern trolling (nobody but nobody is as rude and gauche online to journalists as these crusaders, and it’s unfortunately hurting their candidate’s cause!).

STAGE 4: Smear the candidate and his supporters with innuendos of sexism and racism by falsely claiming only white men support them (you like this candidate because he’s white and male like you, not because of ideology or policy or contempt for the party establishment’s corporatist, pro-war approach).

STAGE 5: Brazen invocation of right-wing attacks to marginalize and demonize, as polls prove the candidate is a credible threat (he’s weak on terrorism, will surrender to ISIS, has crazy associations, and is a clone of Mao and Stalin).



STAGE 6: Issuance of grave and hysterical warnings about the pending apocalypse if the establishment candidate is rejected, as the possibility of losing becomes imminent (you are destined for decades, perhaps even generations, of powerlessness if you disobey our decrees about who to select).

STAGE 7: Full-scale and unrestrained meltdown, panic, lashing-out, threats, recriminations, self-important foot-stomping, overt union with the Right, complete fury (I can no longer in good conscience support this party of misfits, terrorist-lovers, communists, and heathens).

Britain is well into Stage 7, and may even invent a whole new level (anonymous British military officials expressly threatened a “mutiny” if Corbyn were democratically elected as prime minister). The Democratic media and political establishment has been in the heart of Stage 5 for weeks and is now entering Stage 6. The arrival of Stage 7 is guaranteed if Sanders wins Iowa.

Just in case Bernie should need a tiny bit of help when Stage 7 arrives in just over a week...