The Social Justice Criticism of Amy Coney Barrett Hides All of the Rest of What's Wrong with Her Nomination

Donald Trump's next gift to the nation, strong pro-corporate Supreme Court Justice nominee Amy Coney Barrett

by Thomas Neuburger

It's difficult not to be cynical about the Democratic Party these days. Their leaders talk like Donald Trump is the worst threat to America since Hitler, then grant his almost every wish — except the wish he floated recently about giving money to struggling Americans. That wish was withheld so he "wouldn't gain an electoral advantage" by giving money to some without also giving money to others on Nancy Pelosi's wish list — these people, for example — or so I hear.

But their lack of struggle against the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett is concerning. First they appeared to give up — "Faced with a moment with apocalyptic implications, leading Democrats fall somewhere on a spectrum that runs from oblivious to resigned. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) wants to appeal to the GOP’s 'sense of decency' and Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) is complaining about procedural maneuvers that could delay the confirmation process," write David Segal and Zephyr Teachout in the NY Daily News.

Then, under pressure from progressives and others, they promised to "do something" — "Let me be clear," announced Chuck Schumer to his caucus, "if Leader McConnell and Senate Republicans move forward with this, then nothing is off the table for next year" — but they still didn't specify what or when, unless Schumer's "next year" is a promise of surrender this year.

This lack of struggle against Barrett's nomination is a problem for many reasons. One is the effect she will have on the nation's social justice agenda, currently under heavy conservative attack. An Internet search turns up any number of links related to Barrett's likely views on abortion, gay rights, and the Court's recent attempts to craft a "religious freedom" exception to any of the country's laws. (I truly hope, if this exception becomes widely recognized, that progressives take full disruptive advantage of it.)

But as bad as her rulings on justice issues will likely be — and they are likely to be very bad — the most sweeping changes will be those directly affecting the economy and nation's hundreds of millions of working people, almost every single person in the country, in other words.

As a foretaste, consider this recent ruling authored by Barrett from the bench of the 7th U.S. District Court:

Amy Coney Barrett wrote the 7th Circuit opinion last month siding with Grubhub to say drivers cannot press for minimum wage and overtime pay as a class action, they must use arbitration agreements, a decision that limits gig workers across the country. https://t.co/WG5DOaQk9g

— Lee Fang (@lhfang) September 25, 2020

The case for dismissal turns on a technicality that could have been decided either way, and it's just the tip of the iceberg in Barrett's rulings. It's also a perfect example of what will soon come from John Roberts' newly reconstituted, very corporate-friendly Court majority. 

Roberts himself is the perfect "business friendly" justice for the Right to have installed on the bench. Barrett will be his perfect complement. A new report looked at Barrett's rulings and found that "Judge Amy Coney Barrett has faced at least fifty-five cases in which citizens took on corporate entities in front of her court and 76% of the time she sided with the corporations. She clearly sided with people in just 11 of these identified cases." (The report lists each case.)

A Common Dreams write-up of the report found these troubling examples:

• Barrett ruled in favor of a major pharma company over a woman who was forced to get a hysterectomy following a faulty IUD.
• Barrett voted against rehearing a case one judge said upheld the “Separate But Equal” doctrine on racial segregation.
• Barrett ruled that protections against age discrimination for employees do not also extend to job applicants.

Barrett will, in short, look for any reason, however razor-thin, to deny workers relief from the predations of corporate America. As David Sirota wrote recently in the Guardian:

Only a month before Barrett was nominated to the high court by Donald Trump, she delivered a ruling that could help corporations avoid paying overtime to gig workers. That ruling followed her other rulings limiting the enforcement of age-discrimination laws, restricting the government’s power to punish companies that mislead consumers and curtailing consumers’ rights against predatory debt collectors.

The UCLA law professor Adam Winkler said that if Barrett is confirmed, the consequences could reverberate for decades. “This would really push the court over the top ... You would have a very strong 6-3 conservative majority. And unlike previous times where conservatives had most of the seats on the court, none of the conservatives on [this] court really swing liberal on business or corporate power issues."

The nation was already near to breaking before the pandemic. Economic pain and its secondary effects — despair, addiction, suicide — haunt the mass of American workers and arguably led to the election of Donald Trump in 2016.

Now, in 2020, their backs and spirit will surely be broken through by the millions of lost jobs, most permanently, and the brave new post-Covid economy, an economy where Jeff Bezos can add $87 billion to his fortune and two-laptop professionals can work at home, while those who deliver food to them ... starve.

As Amy Coney Barrett's GrubHub ruling shows, her elevation to the bench will mean none of our working class "heroes" will get an ounce of economic relief if it has to come from the pocket of a billionaire.

The cries for social justice, important as they are, are drowning out the equally important cries for economic justice and relief. Is it "all hands on deck" time, Ms. Pelosi? Mr. Schumer? It soon will be for those to whom the Democratic Party is selling itself as salvation. I think if the Party wants to avoid growing a massive audience for the next Donald Trump — the better smarter one, a Trump who actually wants to rule, and can — they should heed those cries as well.

As Sirota says, if Democrats don't pursue a "this is a hill to die on" strategy (my phrase), "the court could become a corporate star chamber for the rest of our lives – which is exactly what business interests want."

I pity the fool (to coin a phrase) that has to live in the nation they will create.

  

Establishment "Democrat" Jamie Dimon Joins Mitch McConnell On The Losing Side Of History

 

The "Losing Side of History" phraseology comes from yesterday's column about #MoscowMitch in Politico Magazine by John Harris. Harris wrote that McConnell's (and the GOP's) "sprint to install a justice for a lifetime appointment this year, either days before a presidential election or in the lame-duck session afterward, looks a lot like the dying spasms of a political movement that began five decades ago."

Now, at 78, McConnell is leading a party that depends on exploiting every avenue to preserve power despite not commanding national majorities. Starting in 1992, in seven presidential elections, Republicans have won the popular vote just once.

The national electorate is younger, more diverse, and less traditional in cultural attitudes, and more enthusiastic about a robust role for government. The Republican Party for most of this century draws overwhelmingly from people who are older, white, and socially conservative. In recent years, college-educated voters are taking flight from the GOP.

Republicans have won power in significant measure through institutions that buffer the influence of national majorities: The Electoral College, the Senate, and, above all, the Supreme Court.

A conservative movement that in youth worked to rein in the Supreme Court’s unelected power in the name of democracy now hopes in old age to harness the Supreme Court’s unelected power to protect it from the hazards of too much democracy.

These institutions can slow long-term demographic and ideological trends but they are unlikely to halt them. This means that, in due course-- whether this year or sometime in the future-- we will learn how closely Democrats have been studying the McConnell methods and whether they will choose to emulate them.

So what's all that got to do with JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon? Well... do you recall when Team Biden was touting Dimon as a strong contender for Biden’s dream team-- Secretary of the Treasury was where they saw this Clintonite turd. There was such an uproar that Dimon put out a statement assuring voters he wasn't interested. Still, that was already about as alarming a statement about those advising Biden, and their kowtow to Wall Street, as one can imagine. Now Pam and Russ Martens have revealed that Dimon and JPMorgan's PAC are financially supporting McConnell's reelection bid. Nice, huh?

Dimon, a billionaire, and his PAC have given thousands of dollars to McConnell and McConnell operations. "McConnell doesn’t like taxes on the rich," wrote the Martens. "Perhaps that’s a good enough reason for Dimon to donate to his political campaign and not give a hoot about how that might earn him the hostility of his workforce or doom the country." Actually Dimon says he doesn't really mind if the rich get taxed on their incomes... just not on their wealth.

Biden should be careful to be aware when making cabinet picks of people, like Dimon, who say things like this: "I've gotten disturbed at some of the Democrats' anti-business behavior, the attacks on work ethic and successful people. I think it's very counterproductive... It doesn't mean I don't have their values. I want jobs. I want a more equitable society. I don't mind paying higher taxes... I do think we're our brother's keeper but I think that attacking that which creates all things, is not the right way to go about it." Or perhaps Biden has the same mindset.

In fact, yesterday, David Sirota suggested that Biden is jeopardizing the election by alienating progressives by shitting on them. He's beating Trumop in poll after poll but his enthusiasm gap is wide, even if Republican elites-- though not masses of GOP voters-- seem to like him. Sirota wrote that "he should stop triangulating against the base of his party and publicly dunking on the millions of Democratic voters who supported Sen. Bernie Sanders in the party’s last two presidential primaries.

During an interview with a local Fox affiliate in Wisconsin today, Biden took a shot at Sanders in response to a reporter’s loaded question about “voters that are worried about socialism and you raising taxes.”

There are plenty of ways to answer that question. You can reject the arguments over labels. You can pivot to talking about expanding health care and fighting the pandemic-- two issues that are top concerns to Wisconsin voters, according to the latest Ipsos poll.

Instead, Biden used the opportunity to dunk on Bernie Sanders-- the third most popular Democrat in America, ahead of Biden, according to YouGov’s national poll.

“I beat the socialist. That’s how I got elected. That’s how I got the nomination,” Biden said. “Do I look like a socialist? Look at my career, my whole career. I’m not a socialist.”

That’s certainly true-- Biden has tried to cut Social Security, supported bank deregulation, and is opposed to Medicare for All. The only part of Biden’s record that could be called socialist was his vote to bail out Wall Street executives-- but that was a form of corporate socialism that enriched the wealthiest and most powerful people in the country after they ruined millions of Americans’ lives.

So, yeah, while Biden is no socialist, none of his record proving that is anything to brag about. More important, Biden’s instinct to crap on progressives, rather than energizing them, is totally counterproductive to the effort to defeat Donald Trump. It not only helps Trump by validating his Red Scare framing of the election, but it also tells progressives that Biden may not be the ally he is promising to be.

...A few weeks ago, Biden’s campaign made headlines echoing Republican talking points about the deficit and insinuating that a Biden administration wouldn’t follow through on its budget promises. Biden also told his Wall Street donors that despite his public promises, “I’m not proposing any” legislation to change corporate behavior. That followed his previous promise to his big donors that “nothing would fundamentally change” for them under a Biden administration.

The Orange Menace Must Be Defeated-- Biden Needs To Rev Up The Democratic Base

I feel like Trump is slitting his own throat and, in fact, he's already a dead-man-walking in terms of the November election. That's my opinion and not everyone agrees with me. But polls show most voters have made up their minds and will not be swayed and a majority of them have made up their minds to oppose trump, whether they like Biden or not. In fact, stunning numbers of voters are just motivated to cast ballots against Trump, not for Biden. On his blog yesterday, David Sirota took it a step further and noted that "As Biden has ignored the Democratic base, polls now show he faces an enthusiasm gap. Progressive pressure is needed to force him to energize Democratic voters and defeat Trump. The survey data is clear: One of the biggest threats to defeating Donald Trump in the upcoming election is a Democratic enthusiasm gap. It exists, in part, because Democratic voters spent the last 12 years voting for change, and now they are exhausted after they kept getting a status quo that gratuitously kicks the face of humanity. The enthusiasm gap also exists because Joe Biden has seemed more focused on trying to court Republicans in ways that can demotivate Democratic voters. Progressives sounding alarms about these facts are periodically depicted as seditious Russian-backed assets nefariously trying to throw the election to Trump."

Most [progressives] criticize Biden not just because some of his policies are so wrong on the merits, but also because his wrongness is a clear and present danger to the effort to win the 2020 election.

A comparison of Biden’s positions and polling suggest that this danger is now very real, even though the Democratic ticket still could win.

Biden has continued to oppose Medicare for All, even as polls show the health care crisis has made that proposal even more popular.

Biden has used the wildfire season to declare that he won’t ban fracking-- a move portrayed in the media as a way to court Pennsylvania voters, even though a new poll shows a majority of voters there oppose fracking.

I remember when Matt Cartwright challenged Blue Dog incumbent, Rep. Tim Holden. Holden basically represented the fracking interests inside the House Democratic caucus and Cartwright made his own opposition to fracking the issue. Blue America put up anti-fracking billboards all over the district. Thewhole Democratic establishment-- especially Steny Hoyer-- came out strong for Holden. The Democratic establishment said an anti-fracking platform would never win in northeastern Pennsylvania. In a leans-Republican district, Cartwright beat Holden 33,255 (57.1%) to 24,953 (42.9%) and then went on to beat pro-fracking Republican Laureen Cummings 161,393 (60.3%) to 106,208 (39.7%). The GOP has been throwing candidates up against Cartwright-- whip of the Congressional Progressive Caucus-- even since and, aside from screaming "Socialist!!!!" and "Pelosi" (and now "AOC and Ilhan"), they campaign against him on fracking as well. Since Cummings, he's beaten all 3 pro-fracking Republicans they ran against him-- even in 2016, when Trump won the district against Hillary by 10 points. They're trying again now and if you want to help Matt keep his seat, you can contribute here. 

Cartwright is backing Biden and I'm sure will be a good influence on him when he's in the White House. Back to Sirota:

Biden engineered a Democratic convention promoting GOP politicians as a way to try to make this “the year of the Biden Republican,” as Rahm Emanuel put it. And yet, a recent CBS/YouGov poll shows Biden is earning the support of just 5 percent of Republican voters and trailing Trump among independent swing voters.

The Biden-Sanders task forces produced some solid progressive economic policy recommendations, but Biden hasn’t campaigned on those proposals. Instead, his campaign publicly downplayed the recommendations, while Biden has continued to periodically echo his infamous “nothing would fundamentally change” theme by telling donors he may not actually push those policies. Now, one poll shows him underperforming among some Latino voters and another poll shows just 9 percent of his own voters say they are supporting him because of his position on issues.

...To be sure, enthusiasm may not determine the election outcomes-- an excited voter’s ballot is no less powerful than a depressed voter’s ballot, and as long as both ballots are turned in, then enthusiasm levels don’t matter. But enthusiasm tends to relate to turnout, and it could particularly determine turnout at a moment when some Americans will be required to be so psyched about the election that they are willing to venture out during a pandemic to cast their vote.

In that situation, enthusiasm probably matters a lot-- which means an enthusiasm gap could be a big problem.

...Voters aren’t unreasonable “purists” because they are unhappy that Democrats don’t seem to be offering policies that will prevent communities from being incinerated in climate-intensified wildfires. They aren’t “holier than thou” by expressing dissatisfaction with a Democratic Party still propping up a for-profit health care system that threatens to quickly bankrupt people when they need medical care.

At a moment of such pain and suffering, attempting to guilt, insult and bully voters into supporting the Democratic cause is moronic and ineffective-- and worse, it is ignorant of millions of Americans’ lived reality over the last 12 years. The Democratic electorate has voted over and over and over again for change, and their party’s leaders have returned the favor with bank bailouts, record oil exports during a climate emergency, an abandonment of the labor movement, corporate-written trade policies that crush workers and health care reform that props up insurance profits.

Who could experience the real-world consequences of that and not feel a wee bit frustrated?

Like? Click.

Yes, wanting voters to throw Trump out of office is totally understandable-- he is far more dangerous than Biden, he must be defeated, and there are plenty of constructive ways to make the case that voters should back the Democratic ticket (which I’ve said before is what I’ll be doing). But vote-shaming isn’t one of them. Indeed, throwing shade at voters for feeling burnt out and unenthused is the modern-day “let them eat cake”-- and the impulse to engage in as self-destructive a tactic as vote-shaming evinces the dangerous ideology at work here.

You’ll notice that Democratic vote-shamers rarely complain the other way. Typically, they lament progressive pressure, but don’t lament big donors constantly demanding ideological fealty to an incrementalist corporate agenda that makes sure nothing fundamentally changes-- which inevitably leads to voter disillusionment.

They celebrate efforts to policy pander to affluent conservatives, but scoff at the notion of having to do any work to secure support from disaffected lower income Americans who might consider sitting the election out or voting third party because they are so completely disgusted with both parties.

In this world view, Democrats promising tax breaks to wealthy suburbanites is seen as laudable pragmatism and shrewd politics to attract affluent Republicans. By contrast, the idea of having to promise a Green New Deal to young people who see a lifetime of climate dystopia and think about voting third party-- that’s seen as uncouth behavior and detestable pandering to petulant serfs who supposedly don’t deserve even minimal respect or attention. The political class tells us to pay them no mind-- they are the electoral arena’s “no real person involved.”

As an election strategy, this attitude presumes that Chuck Schumer was right in 2016 when he insisted that “for every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.”

Of course, that theory has been electorally shellacked for a decade. And yet, these Democratic elites adhere to it-- and vote-shame anyone who questions it-- not because it has been successful and is the best strategy to win back Congress, expand health care or save the planet from climate change. They cling to the hypothesis because it at least provides a rationale-- however absurd-- to continue running campaigns whose number one directive is comforting the donor class.

More than even defeating Trump, satisfying the big contributors is the top priority because at least that is guaranteed to keep their checks going to Washington super PACs, consulting firms, think tanks and advocacy groups that are the permanent full-time employment machine for the entire Democratic political class, regardless of whether that political class ever actually wins elections or materially improves the lives of voters.

As long as donor maintenance is the prime directive and the money keeps flowing, that political class will be safely insulated in their second homes in the Hamptons, still getting the big TV invites and the fat corporate lobbying contracts even if Trump wins.

The rest of us, though, are screwed in a second Trump term. We don’t have vacation compounds, escape pods or endless cash reserves for the basic necessities of life-- and so we do not have the luxury and privilege of staying silent while Biden’s corporate-friendly politics and nothing-will-fundamentally-change message elicits an enthusiasm gap that could blow this election.

When, for instance, Bernie Sanders politely suggested that Biden needs to amplify a stronger economic message and “do more as a campaign than just go after Trump,” that wasn’t apostasy-- that was much-needed encouragement for Biden to do the most basic things to actually win the race.

When progressives criticized Biden for loading up his transition team with corporate cronies, that wasn’t some evil plot to tank the Democratic ticket-- it was an effort to root out the soft corruption that has defined Democratic politics for three decades and that has contributed to voters being unenthused about the party.

When progressives wondered aloud why Biden was giving a platform to unpopular Republican politicians like John Kasich at the Democratic convention, it wasn’t some pointless temper tantrum-- it was an attempt to steer Biden away from touting the GOP politicians who turn off Democratic voters and toward generating the massive Democratic turnout that will be necessary to defeat the current president.

When this newsletter spotlighted Biden’s campaign using GOP talking points and suggesting he will not follow through on his campaign promises, that wasn’t a display of purity trolling-- it was a warning that such messages were not only dishonest but potentially vote-depressing. And when Team Biden then backed off, that’s not something to complain about-- that’s a victory not just for better policy, but also for the campaign to defeat Trump.

That’s a different interpretation than you are probably used to seeing. After all, in our red-versus-blue, with-us-or-against-us tribalized politics, loyalty is venerated as the ultimate value. But here’s the thing: Loyalty is not falling in line and shutting up while leaders coddle donors and create a dangerous voter enthusiasm gap.

That’s political suicide-- and all of us who do not want to see another election-night disaster have an obligation to speak up and try to avert it before it happens.

How Much Better Off Would The Country Be If The Two Establishment Parties Just Disappeared?

Apparently George Washington was both prescient and correct when he warned, in his "farewell address" (1796), that political parties serve "always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection."

The Founders made a big mistake, though-- still not corrected all these years later-- in not including the choice "none of the above"-- in all elections. The country's politics would likely be a lot different-- and probably not worse.

Yesterday we had Washington's prescient on full display on day one of The Trump Show, a "convention" with no platform, just a shameful and repulsive pledge of allegiance to a cult of personality presidency. In effect, this is the 2020 Republican Party platform:

WHEREAS, The RNC enthusiastically supports President Trump and continues to reject the policy positions of the Obama-Biden Administration, as well as those espoused by the Democratic National Committee today; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda;

RESOVLVED, That the 2020 Republican National Convention will adjourn without adopting a new platform until the 2024 Republican National Convention;

RESOLVED, That the 2020 Republican National Convention calls on the media to engage in accurate and unbiased reporting, especially as it relates to the strong support of the RNC for President Trump and his Administration; and

RESOLVED, That any motion to amend the 2016 Platform or to adopt a new platform, including any motion to suspend the procedures that will allow doing so, will be ruled out of order.

Although no sitting Republican members of Congress have the guts to stand up to the Nazification of the GOP, yesterday Fox News reported that that a couple dozen ex members of Congress have endorsed Biden. Three are conservative former senators: Jeff Flake (AZ), John Warner (VA) and Gordon Humphrey (NH). And former members of the House include:

• Steve Bartlett (TX)
• Bill Clinger (PA)
• Tom Coleman (MO)
• Charlie Dent (PA)
• Charles Djou (HI)
• Mickey Edwards (OK)
• Wayne Gilchrest (MD)
• Jim Greenwood (PA)
• Bob Inglis (SC)
• Jim Kolbe (AZ)
• Steve Kuykendall (CA)
• Ray LaHood (IL)
• Jim Leach (IA)
• Connie Morella (MD)
• Mike Parker (MS)
• Jack Quinn (NY)
• Claudine Schneider (RI)
• Chris Shays (CT)
• Peter Smith (VT)
• Alan Steelman (TX)
• Bill Whitehurst (VA)
• Dick Zimmer (NJ)
• Jim Walsh (NY)

Former Staten Island Republican Congresswoman Susan Molinari spoke at the Democratic Convention last week and also endorsed Biden. Lookin' good for Biden, right? Yeah, I guess. Trump is down by about 10 points in the new CBS/YouGov poll. But-- look again-- independent voters seem to have drifted back in Trump's direction-- and that should be very worrying.

What did you make of the video up top? As someone who supports clean government, abhors corruption and doesn't believe in voting for lesser evils, there's nothing on earth that would get me to ever vote for Biden (let alone Trump), but I'm not trying to dissuade anyone from following their own conscience and telling themselves that getting rid of Trump-- the existential threat-- and then "dealing with" the lesser threat once Biden is in the White House, is paramount. Best of luck with that, kids.

This was an encouraging MI-06 poll result yesterday. Hoadley is a progressive state Rep and Upton is a hereditary multimillionaire and Trump enabler:

I posted it on Twitter and one wag replied: When is Biden going to endorse Upton, something he did in 2018, helping the conservative Republican win against a progressive Democrat.

Have you read about the People's Party convention coming up next Sunday, August 30? Speakers include Cornel West, Nina Turner, Jimmy Dore, Ryan Knight, Marianne Williamson and Mike Gravel. I won't argue with this and wish them all the best and will do what I can to help support them in my own small way. I mean doesn't this sound good?

Our vision is a major new progressive populist party that will deliver what regular people take for granted in so many other countries: single-payer health care, free public college, money out of politics, an infrastructure jobs program, a $15 minimum wage, financial regulations, and more.

We need actual representation in our government. A majority of people in the US don’t feel represented by either the Democratic or Republican parties. We’ve watched these parties turn their backs on us to answer every call of the billionaires and donors. Overwhelming numbers of Americans understand these parties cannot be salvaged. Polls show that almost two out of three Americans are now calling for a major new party.  It’s time to build the party we’re looking for-- one that brings us all together.

When the pandemic hit, the Democrats and Republicans spent trillions of dollars bailing out Wall Street while leaving tens of millions of people unable to afford food and housing. Movement for a People’s Party, along with our partner organizations, led more than fifty rallies, on two different Saturdays in July, to let members of Congress know: “Do the right thing, help the people, or we will evict you from office!”

The Movement for a People’s Party continues to stand in solidarity with the communities whose pain and struggle have been deeply exacerbated these past few months.

At Too Much Information yesterday, David Sirota went after Rahm Emanuel and the corrupt Republican wing the Democratic Party he represents. "Progressives," wrote Sirota, "are told to keep quiet until after the election-- meanwhile, corporate Dems are blasting out divisive ideological messages that could demoralize Democratic voters and depress turnout... [A]t the very moment many good progressives are blunting their criticism and making clear that defeating Trump is of utmost importance, Corporate Democrats aren’t being asked to wait or hold their tongues. In fact, they are doing the opposite: Rahm Emanuel-- who has been advising Biden-- just went on television to show that the corporate wing of the party is intent on using the stretch run of the Most Important Election Of Our Lifetime™ not to doggedly focus on actually winning the election, but to instead try to predetermine post-election policy outcomes. Emanuel and his ilk depict themselves as evincing a non-ideological “just win, baby” attitude. But they are most decidedly pushing a very clear corporate ideology-- and they are doing so in dangerously divisive ways that could depress the big turnout that’s desperately needed to defeat Trump."





Emanuel was exulting in the defeat of popular progressive agenda items: "[T]here’s no new Green Deal, there’s no Medicare For All, probably the single two topics that were discussed the most. That’s not even in the platform."

Emanuel also isn’t just some random blowhard pundit spewing a corporate line. The Chicago Tribune in May reported that “Emanuel is having regular conversations with presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his top advisers about economic policy."

So when Emanuel is refusing to self-censor in the name of “unity” and making these kinds of divisive declarations that stomp on progressive voters, he’s speaking from a position of real power. And he’s not just tweeting these comments, which could depress voter enthusiasm. He’s making them to a giant national television audience.

Corporate Democrats Are Not Holding Their Tongues

Now sure, you could try to write off Emanuel’s rhetoric as just the anomalous bloviations of notorious super-villain who pushed NAFTA and anti-immigration policies and who famously called progressives “f-ing retarded.” But sorry, this isn’t a one-off-- this is part of a larger pattern over the last few weeks and months.

As progressives are told to keep quiet, Democratic Party officials engineered a convention light on policy proposals, but one that gave prime convention speaking slots to the anti-climate-science, anti-union former Republican Gov. John Kasich of Ohio and to Colin Powell, who lied America into a war that killed hundreds of thousands of people. In his CNBC interview, Emanuel said “this will be the year of the Biden Republican”-- and he noted that promoting these figures was designed to help Biden deliberately send an anti-progressive message to voters because “John Kasich and Colin Powell don’t exactly endorse (or) support big-P progressive policies.”

This is the kind of move that is potentially disillusioning for Democratic voters who were previously told that a Democratic victory isn’t just a return to status quo-- but a step forward in strengthening the movements for climate action, worker rights and a more sane foreign policy.

Similarly, as progressives are told to shut the hell up, Democratic aides on Capitol Hill leaked word that the party’s lawmakers may immediately replay the 2009 debacle and block a public health insurance option after the election-- a move that is potentially demotivating for millions of Americans currently losing their private health insurance.

As progressives are told to mute themselves, Team Biden last week publicly signaled that a new Democratic president might prioritize deficit reduction and budget austerity in the middle of an economic crisis-- a move that is potentially deflating for millions of voters who have previously been told that President Biden’s agenda makes him the next FDR.

As progressives are told to keep quiet, Biden’s campaign leaks to Politico that the transition team building Biden’s prospective administration is being advised by Wall Street pal Larry Summers and former corporate super-lobbyist Steve Richetti.

And as progressives are told to muzzle themselves, Corporate Democrats went scorched earth and spent $15 million to intervene in primaries, stymie progressive Democratic candidates and tilt intraparty contests to business-friendly candidates. Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi works to unseat Democratic Sen. Ed Markey, one of the Senate’s few progressive lawmakers, and to crush a spirited primary challenge to Rep. Richard Neal, who has used his committee chairmanship to block even modest health care reforms.

‘Hold the line. Win. Lead.’

Clearly, this is a coordinated campaign by the right-wing of the Democratic Party to prioritize its policy goals above everything-- even motivating core Democratic voters to turnout in record numbers during the general election.

The best response to such an onslaught isn’t to ignore it or succumb to dishonest unity-themed demands for silence and fealty. After all, the folks making those demands don’t actually want unity-- they are aiming for corporate victory at all costs, even if waging a war for that intraparty win could depress enthusiasm for the Democratic ticket.

The smarter response is to follow the lead of Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who last week pushed back against the Corporate Democrats’ attempt to resurrect GOP-style austerity politics. Rather than just sitting there and staying silent, she declared that if the party wins in November, it must make “massive investment in our country or it will fall apart. This is not a joke. To adopt GOP deficit-hawking now, when millions of lives are at stake, is utterly irresponsible. Hold the line. Win. Lead.”

The brilliance of this kind of response is that it accomplishes two objectives: It stands up for a real change, and it reassures Democratic voters that there are at least some people who are serious about going to Washington and fighting for what the party purports to believe in.

Put another way, it fortifies the progressive agenda and it helps energize Democratic voters to turn out, because it casts the election not just as a meaningless charade that won’t matter after November because everyone will sell out anyway. It instead depicts the election as an event with high stakes beyond Trump-- a turning point that can create new policies that will actually matter in people’s lived experience.

This is how you avoid the 1988-Dukakis-collapse debacle and motivate the big turnout that can defeat Trump.

You don’t tell voters that “nothing would fundamentally change.”

You don’t blast out a story about how the Democratic presidential nominee told his Wall Street donors that he isn’t proposing new legislation to change corporate behavior.

You don’t turn your party convention into a pageant for Republican icons.

You don’t have the disgraced-mayor-turned-Wall-Street guy advise your presidential candidate-- or have him go on Corporate America’s favorite television station during a health care emergency and a climate crisis to effectively laugh at progressives who are pushing Medicare for All and a Green New Deal.

To paraphrase one of the best tweets in history, you don’t try to turn the election into a centrist rally for the idea that better things aren’t possible-- and you sure as hell don’t ask progressives to shut up.

You instead focus intently on telling your party’s voters how the election will materially improve their lives.

Of course, the Democratic Party machine and the Biden campaign aren’t really interested in doing that right now. They want to run an anti-Trump campaign, and nothing else.

In light of that, progressives shouldn’t unilaterally disarm and stay silent when Corporate Democrats are getting bolder and more brazen about using this pre-election period to push their depressing, better-things-aren’t-possible policy agenda.

Staying quiet in the face of that pablum doesn’t help. The real way to help boost turnout and energize voters is for progressives to push back against the corporate propaganda and make clear that-- whether the establishment likes it or not-- this election can and will offer the opportunity to achieve something even bigger than just getting rid of Trump.

What If Biden Governs Like... His 4 Decades-Long Record?

Biden really is the Lincoln Project candidate, the candidate of what Rahm Emanuel called, approvingly, "the Biden Republicans." Wall Street Journal reporters Ken Thomas and Eliza Collins were being kind when they predicted unity in the Democratic Party won't last. The only "unity" I can detect beyond party hacks is the unification across the party and beyond to rid the country of the toxic malignancy in the White House. "Joe Biden," they wrote, "has united disparate factions of the Democratic Party behind a message of defeating President Trump and rebuilding from the coronavirus pandemic. The detente might not last past the Nov. 3 election, no matter who wins."

Hitting the nail on the head, they continued, "Interviews with Democratic lawmakers and strategists show that the internal battle over what the party stands for wasn’t resolved by Mr. Biden’s primary win-- but merely postponed. If the former vice president succeeds in his bid for the White House, he will preside over the fight on how the party governs. If he loses, the party is likely to go through an extensive soul-searching process that will test the liberal-moderate divide... Biden won the nomination after resisting calls from more liberal candidates to create a Medicare-for-all health-care system, extend free public university tuition to everyone and overhaul the economy to eventually eliminate fossil fuels..." But Biden's status quo positions are all far from the mainstream of the Democratic Party. Even the elected party delegates overwhelmingly disagree with him on just about everything.

On Monday, Eugene Daniels and Holly Otterbein wrote in Politico that Biden "was just about the last Democrat that progressives wanted as the nominee. But now that he’s the one taking on President Donald Trump, they’re working harder to put him in office than they ever did for Hillary Clinton-- then planning to give him hell the minute he sets foot in the White House. In conversations with more than two dozen left-wing elected officials, labor leaders and strategists in the days before the Democratic National Convention, progressives described an attitude toward Biden that is strikingly different from their previous relationships with either Clinton or former President Barack Obama-- and which could have enormous consequences with regards to the shape and power of a Biden administration. The Democratic Party’s left flank is firmly united with moderate Democrats behind the goal of ousting Trump, with former Bernie Sanders aides and allies creating super PACs and promising to spend millions to elect Biden in a way they never did for Clinton. But progressives, who are emboldened after successfully ousting several entrenched Democrats in recent primaries, are also clear: Unlike with Obama, there will be no honeymoon for Biden. If they follow through, Biden's ability to cut deals with Republicans-- a central pledge of his campaign-- would be hemmed in from day one."

And isn't that the idea? Keeping Biden from realizing his second biggest dream-- the grand compromise of wrecking Social Security and Medicare. (No one knows what "we" get in the compromise.) "[E]ven before they’ve defeated Trump," Daniels and Otterbein continued, "progressives are warning Biden that he-- or his running mate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA)-- might be challenged in the 2024 primary if they’re not sufficiently progressive."

“Our movement is ascendant,” said Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of the Sanders-founded group Our Revolution. “The risk that Biden or Harris faces is a challenge from the left in 2024 if they govern as Third Way-ers or do Clinton-esque triangulation.”

While progressive members of Congress are not yet willing to threaten their party’s 2024 ticket with an electoral challenge the way activists are, they are already alerting Biden that they will challenge him legislatively. Two of their top priorities are a massive green jobs plan and a health care proposal that makes Biden’s public option as robust as possible.

“We have to continue to push for our values, continue to push and advocate for people to join the administration [that] are progressive,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), Sanders’ 2020 campaign co-chair, told Politico. “I'm confident that progressives will have a big, big role in a Biden administration.”

Mondaire Jones, the Sanders-endorsed Democrat who won the primary this year in New York’s 17th Congressional District and is expected to carry the general election, was more blunt: “In Congress, progressives must act as a voting bloc. We should be withholding our support for legislation that” they consider too watered down.

Even if Biden wins and Democrats take back the Senate, however, progressives will face serious hurdles: To pass major legislation, Biden will need the votes of conservative and moderate Democrats such as Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. And while Biden may be eyeing an FDR-like presidency, he is also still a longtime deficit hawk who opposes left-wing priorities such as Medicare for All.

Cori Bush, a Black Lives Matter activist who just unseated Rep. Lacy Clay of Missouri in a Democratic primary, has talked about creating a Social Justice Caucus. With the so-called Squad poised to grow after the victory of Bush and Jamaal Bowman, who toppled longtime Rep. Eliot Engel in New York, some progressives are strategizing about forming a Freedom Caucus for the left. Many are frustrated with the Congressional Progressive Caucus for, in their view, not wielding enough power or taking bolder stands — and they think a smaller but more disciplined group could be more effective.

“If the Squad doubles in size this year, which seems very well like it could happen, that's a pretty remarkable transformation,” said Karthik Ganapathy, a Democratic strategist who worked on Sanders’ 2016 campaign. “And if we do that for another couple of cycles, suddenly the left has its own version of the Freedom Caucus. And on the right, that was enough to change how politics worked in Congress.”

Ganapathy pointed to the fight over the Keystone oil pipeline as a place where progressives spent a ton of resources with almost no payoff under Obama. The left has to find smarter ways to achieve its goals, he said.

“It's honestly less about being a thorn in their side and more just about being really strategic and tactical,” Ganapathy said. “I feel like a lot of what the progressive left did in the Obama years was sort of just waving our arms around, trying to get the Obama administration to pay attention to different things and to take progressive activists seriously.”

...[Moderate, non-progressive] Ritchie Torres, the New York City council member who is poised to be the first Afro-Latino openly gay member of Congress next year, said he’s wary of a potential hostile takeover of the Democratic Party by what he called “the new left.”

You know, white elites like AOC, Ayanna Pressley, Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman, Ro Khanna, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar... Believe me, there was a reason Blue America didn't endorse the "first Afro-Latino openly gay member of Congress" in the primary but chose a real progressive instead, one who Torres, a corporate-friendly centrist-- at least in the context New York politics-- beat.

They also noted that "Wendell Potter, a former health insurance executive who recently launched the pro-single payer Center for Health and Democracy, is talking about possibly creating a PAC to help elect Medicare for All supporters. Former Sanders aides are discussing a super PAC to help progressive congressional candidates."

Welcome to the party-- Blue America has raised around $7 million from small dollar contributions to candidates backing Medicare-for All (click the thermometer on the right) and for progressive candidates running for the House, the Senate and for state legislatures... and even for small number of progressive incumbents who live up to their progressive pledges.

At Too Much Information, David Sirota wrote that he believes Trump must be defeated and that he's decided to vote for Biden. I respect his decision and the decision of any other progressive who decides to vote for the lesser evil, something I personally have no intention of ever doing. His post about not being excited about having to hold his nose at the ballot box is worth reading.

I’m told I should be bouncing up in the morning, uplifted by the Democratic convention and its promise of a new era soon-- 75 days. But at least for me, watching the cable TV snippets, the convention speeches and the celebratory Twitter dunks has left me with that feeling you get after eating junk food-- full, but not nourished, bloated, tired and vaguely nauseous.

I’ve worked on a lot of Democratic campaigns, wins and losses. I’m literally married to a Democratic elected official. Over 20 years, I’ve put in an almost embarrassing amount of time working to support the Democratic Party. So these feelings are somewhat new for me, and I don’t think I’m having them just because Democratic officials decided to turn this year’s convention into a promotional platform for Republican icons who attacked unions, laid off thousands of workers, promoted climate denial, endangered 9/11 survivors and lied us into a war that killed hundreds of thousands of people.

I’m also not glum just because the Democrats’ presidential standard-bearer is often an uninspiring mishmash of incoherent here’s-the-deal colloquialisms that mean nothing.

I think the despair is deeper-- and has something to do with the now-yawning gap between social expectation and reality.

Right now, if you are following politics at all, you are asked to feel chipper and energized. We are expected-- no, required-- to conjure 2008-level enthusiasm during this even darker time than the financial crisis, all so that we can move into a new, glorious moment of Hope™.

Enthusiasm, though, comes from the assumption that the the process is authentic and that what we’re told by our leaders is real. But that feeling has waned, because there is no pretense. For all the high-minded rhetoric, everyone on all sides of this situation-- and I mean literally everyone-- knows that Democratic politics today is more about brand and pantomime than about power and legislative action. You may not say it out loud, you may not like thinking about it-- but I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, because somewhere deep down in there, everyone senses the fraudulence at hand.

This is a moment of apolitical crises-- that is, crises that aren’t just manufactured by and confined to the political soundstage, but instead life-and-death, out-here-in-the-real-world emergencies in the realms of money, biology and ecology. We’re facing an economic and environmental collapse in the midst of a lethal pandemic. And we’re going through this cataclysm with a legislative branch controlled by right-wing senators, a court system that rubber stamps corporate demands and an authoritarian president whose major crisis-management experience was firing people on The Apprentice.

And yet, in the middle of this five-alarm garbage fire, we’re asked to white-knuckle it and feign excitement for an opposition party machine run by insiders, lobbyists and careerists who keep letting us know that they think campaign promises are distinct from policy. In so many ways, they keep telling us over and again that the most we can hope for is, in the words of the nominee himself, that “nothing would fundamentally change.”

...[T]he constant, incessant demand to be happy about fraudulence-- the insistence that we put on a smile and insinuate that the New Deal is on the ballot-- is shamefully dishonest. It helps make the whole process into exactly what Ohio Sen. Nina Turner described: “It’s like saying to somebody, ‘You have a bowl of shit in front of you, and all you’ve got to do is eat half of it instead of the whole thing.’ It’s still shit.”

This is demoralizing for obvious reasons, but to feel demoralized is to feel like you’re crazy and alone-- because it requires you to deviate from the norm of blissful and willful ignorance. It requires you to pay attention and reject a culture that tries to turn you into a goldfish, forgetting your entire world every 15 minutes.

To be demoralized at this political moment is to remember that for all the great progressive oratory during the convention, the Democratic presidential ticket is the guy who wrote the crime bill, spearheaded the bankruptcy bill and worked with Republicans to authorize the Iraq War-- and, oh yeah, a runningmate who blocked her law enforcement staff from prosecuting Steve Mnuchin.

To be demoralized is to feel momentarily uplifted by Michelle Obama’s inspiring convention speech deriding our “greed is good” culture from her Martha’s Vineyard castle-- and to then remember that the Obama administration knowingly fortified that culture when it protected the Wall Street firms that destroyed millions of lives during the financial crisis.

To be demoralized is to make the mistake I made during my family break-- to sit along the shore of Lake Michigan and for some reason reject a mindless beach novel and instead read Ron Suskind’s old book Confidence Men. That tome meticulous recounts Obama and Biden promising real health care reform during the 2008 campaign, and then steamrolling a public option-- and dishonestly pretending they never even pushed such a modest reform in the first place (they did). The book reads like a cautionary tale of what could come during the next Democratic presidency-- especially if you believe the signals already coming from Capitol Hill.

To be demoralized, in other words, is to remember-- and that’s not what Democrats do in America.

Minds are wiped and Iraq War architects become Resistance heroes and Democratic convention speakers. Memories are scrubbed and Wall Street thieves become Democratic economic gurus and treasury secretaries. Amnesia takes hold and the Democratic governor of Mount Covid becomes a pandemic mancrush. Democrats lose a presidential campaign to Donald Trump by defending the Washington establishment-- and now four years later they are running the same Washington valor campaign again, telling themselves they’re too legit to quit, baby.

Our society is not interested in recollection and learning from the past. We are immersed in short-attention-span media and propaganda that doesn’t want us to remember, and therefore goes out of its way to omit mention of historical context.

...That doesn’t mean I don’t know what to do when I get my ballot. I know I’ll have to deliver it to a drop box rather than by mail if I want to make sure it gets there on time. And I know to vote the Democratic ticket because I live in a swing state and I know that fascism’s bid for reelection must be defeated.

But I also know that the threat of fascism isn’t going away after November, so don’t ask me to be excited or feel happy. I’m not and I don’t-- and I suspect it’s the same for many people.

Maybe that doesn’t make us crazy. Maybe it makes us human.

At least that’s what I’m telling myself when I have trouble rising and shining the morning after Joe Biden’s convention speech.

In a Slap in the Face to Progressives, Biden Appoints Larry Summers, a "Literal Architect of Neoliberalism," to Economic Advisory Role

Joe Biden has chosen as his economic adviser the main Democratic proponent of the China PNTR deal and Wall Street deregulation. Apparently, Biden may really have meant it when he said “nothing will fundamentally change.” https://t.co/UokamnmgyA

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) April 23, 2020

by Thomas Neuburger

Over the past three decades, Summers has amassed a policy record of almost unrivaled social ruin.
—Zach Carter, Huffington Post

In a slap in the face to progressives, Joe Biden, who has already announced that if he's elected "nothing would fundamentally change," has appointed the head of Barack Obama's National Economic Council, Larry Summers, as a key adviser to his campaign.

From Bloomberg, which occasionally still reports the news (emphasis added):

Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers is advising Joe Biden’s presidential campaign on economic policy, including its plans to revive the U.S. economy after the coronavirus pandemic, according to five people familiar with his involvement.

The Obama and Clinton administration veteran’s role roiled progressives who view his past work on the 2009 recovery as too favorable to big banks. That’s awkward for the Biden campaign at a time when it is trying to win the trust of former supporters of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

Five people confirming is a deliberate leak, especially since non of them are said to be "unauthorized to speak about the matter."

Progressive groups are aghast, of course:

Two Sanders-aligned groups, Justice Democrats and Sunrise Movement, said Friday they “hope Biden publicleconomic y rejects Summers’s role as an economic adviser to better earn the trust of our generation.” They said they also plan to start a petition calling on Biden to pledge to exclude Summers from his transition team or administration.

“Larry Summers’s legacy is advocating for policies that contributed to the skyrocketing inequality and climate crisis we’re living with today,” the groups said in a joint statement.

Summers is such a bad choice for the campaign to be aligned with that The American Prospect writer Robert Kuttner put Summers at the top of his "do not re-appoint" list. 

But as Rising's Saagar Enjeti points out, the real group that Biden needs to assure isn't Progressive Avenue, or even Main Street — it's Wall Street — and leaking via five sources to Bloomberg News that Summers is now in Biden's inner circle does just that. As Bloomberg put it, with this move Biden has "offered some reassurance [to] Wall Street that Biden is not moving too far to the left from the centrist positions that earned him his establishment support."

I'm not if sure this will get him elected, but it is certain to be noticed, even by not-well-read voters who nonetheless care about the direction of the country. Summers was a marquee name in the Obama administration. As Robert Kuttner points out:

Under Clinton, Summers was a prime architect and huge enthusiast of what proved to be fatal financial deregulation. He was also in charge of Clinton’s economic policy for post-Soviet Russia, and was responsible for pushing for early and catastrophic privatization of state assets, a fire sale that led directly to the creation of Russia’s oligarchs. As president of Harvard, he proved to be both arrogant and sexist, to the point where he got himself fired. ...

[As Obama's chief economic advisor, Summers] not only lowballed the necessary economic stimulus and ended it prematurely, but he successfully fought for rescuing the biggest banks rather than taking them into temporary receivership. Back at Harvard, Summers earns over $600,000 as a university professor but also moonlights at the hedge fund D.E. Shaw, where his compensation is well into the seven figures. (Some would say he moonlights at Harvard.)

There are so many ways that Summers is a bad choice, it's difficult to enumerate them, though both Kuttner and the HuffPost's Zach Carter try. (Carter: "Over the past three decades, Summers has amassed a policy record of almost unrivaled social ruin." Then he lists the ways.)

It's sufficient to say that his appointment is the economic-policy equivalent of bringing in Rahm Emanuel, who famously called liberals "fucking retarded," to handle the Biden's relationship with progressive groups.

If Larry Summers' appointment is part of the mainstream Democratic plan to unite the Party and rally "change voters" behind the Biden candidacy, good luck.