Trump Has Failed America-- Badly-- So It Would Be Nice If The Democratic Party Stepped Up To The Plate For The Country

Die For Him Granpa by Nancy Ohanian

Frank Bruni's question-- Has Anyone Found Trump’s Soul? Anyone? in his Monday column seemed cheeky-- until you read it. He started by reminding his readers of how George W. Bush and Barack Obama demonstrated leadership in pulling the country together, the former after 9/11 and the latter after the Newtown murder of 28 children and teachers. Then he asked "Do you remember the moment when President Trump’s bearing and words made clear that he grasped not only the magnitude of this rapidly metastasizing pandemic but also our terror in the face of it? It passed me by, maybe because it never happened. In Trump’s predecessors, for all their imperfections, I could sense the beat of a heart and see the glimmer of a soul. In him I can’t, and that fills me with a sorrow and a rage that I quite frankly don’t know what to do with."

Americans are dying by the thousands, and he gloats about what a huge, rapt television audience he has. They’re confronting financial ruin and not sure how they’ll continue to pay for food and shelter, and he reprimands governors for not treating him with adequate adulation.

He’s not rising to the challenge before him, not even a millimeter. He’s shriveling into nothingness.

...In the Washington Post a few days ago, Michael Gerson, a conservative who worked in Bush’s White House, wrote that Trump’s spirit is “a vast, trackless wasteland.” Not exactly trackless. There are gaudy outposts of ego all along the horizon.

When the direness of this global health crisis began to be apparent, I was braced for the falsehoods and misinformation that are Trump’s trademarks. I was girded for the incompetence that defines an administration with such contempt for proper procedure and for true expertise.

But what has taken me by surprise and torn me up inside are the aloofness, arrogance, pettiness, meanness, narcissism and solipsism that persist in Trump-- that flourish in him-- even during a once-in-a-lifetime emergency that demands something nobler. Under normal circumstances, these traits are galling. Under the current ones, they’re gutting.

“I don’t take responsibility at all.” “Did you know I was number one on Facebook?” To bother with just one of those sentences while a nation trembles is disgusting. To bother with both, as Trump did, is perverse.

...And while I’m not looking to Trump for any panacea, is it too much to ask for some sign that the dying has made an impression on him, that the crying has penetrated his carapace and that he’s thinking about something other than his ratings? I watch. I wait. I suspect I’ll be doing that forever.

Different people are looking for different things from Trump. Surely, though, the Democratic Party is looking for ways to kick the shit out of him with his own actions and words and inactions. Yesterday, Politico's David Siders and Elana Schneider wrote that the party seems to have found a rallying cry: Trump tanked the economy... even if "framing a coherent economic argument that all the party’s factions can rally around is proving thorny." Yep... the ole problem of a tent too big coming to mean nothing at all. They wrote that "It’s already become a source of friction within the Democratic Party, even as some major Democratic outside groups begin pummeling Trump for the economic fallout of the pandemic. It‘s a message Democrats plan to amplify in coming months, long after the immediate health effects of the crisis subside."

The left flank is increasing pressure on Joe Biden, the party’s likely nominee, to adopt more progressive economic policies. Activists accuse Trump of prioritizing corporate America over low-wage workers, while many moderate Democrats are leery of drawing such distinctions, training their criticism of Trump solely on his initial mishandling of the pandemic.

“This is not just about saying, ‘Trump is not doing a good job,’” said Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a prominent supporter of Bernie Sanders, who remains in the presidential race. “That is absolutely a piece of it, but it's also about, what are you going to do? What is your vision? … We should be talking about a payroll guarantee, like a bold pay payroll guarantee program, we should be talking about canceling student debt. I mean, these are the things that, they're not just progressive priorities anymore, they are going to be desperate needs for the survival and the recovery of our people in our economy.”

Jayapal added that Biden, should he become the nominee, will “absolutely” come under pressure from progressives to reconsider those policies ideas in light of the crisis.

Democratic establishment SuperPACs, stinking of corruption and conservatism-- Priorities USA, American Bridge, PACRONYM and Biden's Win the West-- are highlighting unemployment statistics alongside coronavirus deaths, and Trump's inadequate response to the pandemic.

“Democrats, ever since before 2016, haven’t really had an economic profile. People couldn’t name what the Democratic economics was, and it was a major reason why Trump won in 2016,” said Celinda Lake, a leading Democratic strategist and pollster who works with Biden’s presidential campaign but was not speaking for Biden or his advisers.

In the coronavirus response, she said, “there’s a real opportunity to define … what is a people-centered economy, what is an economy that works for everyone, and we should be leaning into this.”

Robert Reich, the Clinton-era Labor secretary, said the crisis presents Biden with a unique opportunity to make policy changes that he might otherwise have difficulty explaining.

“Even if he wants to be perceived as cautious and prudent on issues like income support and health care, the pandemic gives him more room for being bold than he had before the pandemic,” Reich said. “A national trauma such as we are experiencing and definitely will experience over the next month or two enables a politician … to say, in effect, ‘I’ve now seen what the country needs in a way that the country has also experienced, and therefore I’m modifying the position.’”

While the general election is still seven months away, the effect on the electorate is likely to endure after weeks of deaths, stay-at-home orders, job losses and business closures.

“When we come out of this, millions of Americans will have a very different experience of what happened than they had at any time in their lifetimes before,” Reich said. “It’s almost like going through the Great Depression or World War II in the sense that the direct experience of a traumatic event changes attitudes towards government and public policy, sometimes in profound ways.”

In response to criticism from Democrats, Trump’s campaign has highlighted the relief measures he has signed into law, while accusing Biden of “sniping from the sidelines.” The president has suggested the economy will be moving again before the general election, and direct payments to millions of Americans-- even if late arriving-- could benefit him in November.

But the economic damage from the pandemic has already proved severe, and it is widely expected to worsen this month. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Friday for an expansion of the $2 trillion relief package Trump signed, including more money for small businesses and more direct payments to Americans.

Barry Goodman, a Democratic National Committee member and bundler for Biden, said Democrats should clobber Trump for his hesitance to embrace public health measures detrimental to the stock market, saying that “his infatuation with the stock market and keeping the economy running and humming … he believed that over the science.”

“He ended up tanking the economy worse than it ever could have been tanked,” Goodman said.

This is a brilliant video presentation. I really want you watch it so you can imagine someone playing it at the virtual Democratic Convention this year. Nevermind about that; it's as likely to be played by the Democratic Party as it is likely to be played by the Republican Party-- and that's a travesty. "Unite in solidarity with your fellow workers and press your demands" is something you could have heard at a Democratic Convention a few decades ago. "Capitalism is the root of all of today's evils and cannot solve the problems it creates." Ypu've have to go back a little further to have heard that at a Democratic Convention. "Those in power will listen to the rest of us if we can organize and really pressure them to enact our demands. Whether you make $15,000 a year of $150,000, if you sell your labor and hours of your life for a wage, you are working class. That should be a mark of pride because it's the working class that keeps this country running. The parasites at the very top don't care if you die. They would rather kill millions of Americans than lose a single percent of their wealth. It's time to remember the language of class struggle and fight for dignity and a livable future." You think you can get your garden variety Democratic Congress Member behind those sentiments? Like I've said before... the tent's too damn big. And the thermometer above? If you listen to the video, you'll know why I put that there; I guarantee it.

The DCCC Sure Has Changed Its Tune On Impeachment! New Memo To All Democratic Members

This DCCC messaging memo on impeachment isn't something you would expect to come from them, considering it seems like just minutes ago when they were raging against Democratic candidates who dared to even talk about impeachment. Cheri Bustos sent this memo out to all House Dems last night. I wonder what she's telling candidates now. She wrote that she was sharing messaging based on "research conducted by the DCCC’s pollsters over the past weeks. It reaffirms the strong position Democrats hold on this issue, due to the focus and restraint with which our Caucus has approached this pressing and serious matter." She also said the research is not public but I don't think she meant to include DWT readers.

October 17, 2019

To: DCCC
Fr:  ALG + GBAO
Re: Message Guidance on Moving Impeachment Inquiry Forward

Recent polling in national and battleground surveys has demonstrated that voters’ views on impeachment have shifted since the summer, with support for the impeachment inquiry growing as Democrats consolidate support and independent voters reject President Trump’s actions regarding Ukraine.

Further, the numbers do not back up Republicans’ posture that impeachment worsens the political environment for House Democrats. National polling conducted by the DCCC finds voters back a Democrat who supports an impeachment investigation over a Republican who opposes an impeachment investigation by 11 points. Even in the 57 most competitive battleground districts, moving the inquiry forward is slightly favorable at 49-48. Additionally, Democrats’ lead in the generic ballot remains steady in national polling (+8 average) and in battleground districts (+3 average).

This shift toward support for an impeachment inquiry, coupled with the steady generic ballot over the course of many months, underlines the strong position Democratic congressional incumbents and challengers continue to hold as they pursue the facts and address voters’ concerns about Trump abusing his power and putting himself above the law.

Message Guidance:

1.    When discussing Trump’s actions, keep the language simple, direct and values-based: President Trump abused his power and put himself above the law when he asked the Ukrainian President to interfere in the U.S. election.

2.    Emphasize the core value that no one is above the law. Incumbent members who support the inquiry are simply working to uphold the rule of law and Republicans who oppose the inquiry are failing to fulfill their oath of office.

3.    The whistleblower did the right thing by coming forward – members of Congress have a duty to protect this person, and Trump is wrong to threaten this person and impugn their character or motives.

4.    Demonstrate your constant focus on the biggest issues facing families in the country, specifically health care and wages. These issues continue to out-rank impeachment as priorities for voters, especially swing voters. By focusing on these and local issues, you can show voters that you know how to focus on their top priorities, while also navigating the impeachment inquiry.

How Republican and Democratic messages test in competitive battleground districts:

Democrats’ best frames for kitchen table issues:

[HEALTH CARE]: Democrats are working to bring down the cost of health care and prescription drugs, while we protect people with pre-existing conditions from more attacks from Washington Republicans.

[JOBS AND THE ECONOMY]: The economy might be working for some Americans, but it isn’t working for many of us who are seeing the cost of living increase while paychecks don’t keep up. Democrats are working to invest in everyday people by prioritizing skills training and better access to trade school classes.

[ANTI-CORRUPTION]: Democrats are leading the fight to clean-up corruption and limit the power of special interests in Washington by forcing politicians to disclose where their dark money campaign funds come from.

Flagstaff progressive Eva Putzova is running for the vast Arizona district (AZ-01) that is currently held by a Republican pretending to be a Blue Dog Democrat, Tom O'Halleran. She applauds the DCCC finally joining progressives in moving to protect society from Trump and his regime. "I guess now we can welcome the better-late-than-never DCCC to the club of those of us who have been calling for Trump's impeachment for months now. Where was the DCCC earlier when the Mueller Report found Trump guilty of obstruction of justice? Or when he openly and deliberately referred to Mexican immigrants as rapists, etc? Or violated the law by putting children in cages? Now the DCCC is giving House Democrats 'message guidance' so they can carefully parse their words about impeachment in a clinical, sterile, poll-tested manner so as not to offend anyone. This is not leadership! It won't even win elections, since so many non-voters at least  see the Democrats as not much different than the Republicans. The 'best frames' they propose for Democrats to use is an example. One of the categories is 'Jobs and the Economy.' It says 'Democrats are working to invest in everyday people by prioritizing skills training and better access to trade school classes.' Are they kidding? Do they think that will raise wages and reduce inequality? Why not mention the House passage of the Raise the Wage Act which increased the minimum wage and the sub-minimum tipped wage to $15 per hour? Or mention House Democrats overwhelming support for the Protect the Right to Organize act which would result in millions of new union members who would be able to engage in real collective bargaining with their employers? Why be afraid to talk about what really might work and galvanize millions to vote for Democrats?"

Rachel Ventura is also running for Congress against a conservative DCCC favorite, New Dem Bill Foster (IL-11). "It is good to see the DCCC taking a more assertive stand against Donald Trump," she told me last night. "The president has broken the law and Nancy Pelosi should not be afraid to call a vote for a formal impeachment hearing in the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Jerry Nadler. It would be smart for Democrats to go on offense and ask the country to become engaged in holding Donald Trump accountable for his ongoing profiteering off the presidency, his clear cut efforts to ask foreign countries to interfere in U.S. elections, and his overt obstruction of justice. At a minimum, after I entered the race, my opponent shifted his position on impeachment and now has come out in favor of it. I wonder how this talking points memo will reflect his new position. Just last week in a closed door meeting he talked about the potential political ramifications of an impeachment vote; stating, 'Even if we are guaranteed success, it still might not be the right thing for the fortunes of the Democratic Party.' When discussing a formal vote on impeachment hearings he said, 'There’s a debate if we should have a formal vote the way they did as the Nixon impeachment proceeded. For example, [the hearings] allows the Republicans to call witnesses. Because everyone is convinced that they will call Joe Biden and Joe Biden’s son and try to change the narrative of this wonderful president.' I assume that Foster is joking when he references Trump as 'this wonderful president.' We need to uphold the rule of law, regardless of the politics, and go one step further than the talking points memo. We need to get Republicans on record for how they would vote for a formal impeachment hearing."

And the last of our trio of courageous pro-accountability challengers is Rebecca Parson, the progressive candidate in northwest Washington, running for a seat held by conservative New Dem chief Derek Kilmer. "It is sad," she said after she had read the memo, "that the majority of Democrats had to wait to receive permission from Nancy Pelosi to do the right thing instead of doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do. Now they finally have taken a 'stand,' they're taking a milquetoast, poll-driven approach to the matter. Facts are facts. Donald Trump is a domestic enemy of the Constitution and must be impeached." Please consider contributing to Rachel, Rebecca and Eva by clicking on the 2020 congressional primaries thermometer above.

The DPCC Messaging Needs To Defeat Trump-- How Will Ted Lieu, Debbie Dingell And Matt Cartwright Manage?

Liz Cheney, considerably to the right of her father, now holds his old Wyoming House seat. Recently, she leap-frogged over all her colleagues into House GOP leadership as Chair of the House Republican Conference, the 3rd highest-ranking job in the GOP caucus after McCarthy and Scalise. She bumped Cathy McMorris Rodgers out of the position. Jonah Weiner’s piece for the New York Times Magazine, Why The Director of ‘Anchorman’ Decided To Take On Dick Cheney isn’t exactly a celebration of the Cheney family.

Adam McKay, the filmmaker behind Anchorman and Talladega Nights and, more recently an Oscar-winning adaptation of Michael Lewis’s financial-crash caper The Big Short has a new film, Vice, “a grim account of the life of Dick Cheney, with Christian Bale-- smoldering beneath prosthetic jowls and the ample weight he gained for the role-- in the lead.

Far from a grateful tribute, Vice-- which co-stars Amy Adams as Cheney’s wife, Lynne-- proceeds in a spirit of frenetic and ferocious irreverence… Vice is, in tone and form, one of the wildest movies he has made-- and one of the wildest movies ever made about politics, period.

…What is unambiguous, by the end, is McKay’s conviction that the American right, in its post-Reagan consolidation of power, has set our country and our planet on a path to ruin-- and that no single figure illustrates this better than Cheney. “He was the expert safecracker who opened up the safe,” McKay said, alluding to Cheney’s deft dismantling of checks on executive power, “and now the orangutan is in there, throwing around the money and the jewels.” McKay knows that a conservative backlash to his film is very likely, and while he emphasized how diligently he grounded the film in research, he also argued that making a less confrontational movie, hewing to a measured realism would have felt not only boring but also incommensurate to the task.

“I’ve never dealt with a tone like this, and I don’t think it’s by accident,” McKay said. “We’re living in a world with a tone that none of us has ever experienced. Pipe bombs are being sent to the leaders of a political party, and the guy who made Dilbert is saying, You know the bombs were really made by left-wingers because they didn’t work.” He made an incredulous face. “So, you’re claiming the assassination attempts are a false flag operation while slamming the liberals and you’re the guy who did Dilbert?” When it came to the movie’s protean tone, he said, “All I can tell you is that we were very conscious of it, we knew it was challenging and indefinable-- and we knew it had to be.”

This was true, he added, not in spite of the material’s seriousness, but because of it. “I’m suspicious of anything that feels like an old form,” he said. “We’re discovering new styles and forms, because this era we’re in demands it. The world has gotten so cartoonishly exaggerated and over the top. Why be subtle anymore?”

…Like many self-identifying progressives, McKay-- who grew up on food stamps and was raised in suburban Pennsylvania by his waitress single mother (his father, a musician, left the family when McKay was 7)-- has grown steadily disenchanted with what he calls “the corporate left.” This summer he joined the L.A. chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. He thinks that capitalism must come under greater, Scandinavian-style regulatory control, “especially if we’re going to do anything about climate change.” Earlier this year he left Funny or Die, a comedy website he co-founded in 2007, after it entered into a sponsored-content agreement with Shell, a deal he called “disgusting.”

…In The Big Short, the narrator, played by Ryan Gosling, puts it this way: “Mortgage-backed securities. Subprime loans. Tranches. It’s pretty confusing, right? Does it make you feel bored? Or stupid? Well, it’s supposed to. Wall Street loves to use confusing terms to make you think only they can do what they do. Or, even better, for you just to leave them the [expletive] alone.” Last year, McKay directed the pilot for and served as an executive producer on Succession, an HBO drama about a Murdoch-style media-empire patriarch and his reprobate heirs-- their nefarious business dealings and abject power moves.

In Vice, he uses Cheney’s life to tell a broader tale about what McKay describes as “the Republican revolution and how it changed our country.” He sees Cheney as a “Zelig-style” figure of the right. His career in national politics began in the Nixon administration as a congressional intern and then apprentice to Donald Rumsfeld and, from there, intersected and coincided with the rise of key conservative figures: among them the Fox News founder, Roger Ailes, who first floated the idea for a conservative news network while working for Nixon; right-wing megadonors like the Koch brothers; conservative strategy shops like the Heritage Foundation; and, finally, George W. Bush, over whose administration-- and over whose decision to invade Iraq after Sept. 11, despite paltry intelligence linking the two-- Cheney exercised unprecedented influence for a vice president.

One of McKay’s models was The Power Broker, Robert Caro’s landmark biography of Robert Moses. “He’s in the middle of all this stuff,” McKay said of Cheney, “and finally he gets his hand on the wheel.” Unlike Caro, McKay had to tell his story through a camera, and so there are compressions, elisions and metaphors in Vice that reflect both a filmmaker’s desire to enthrall the crowd and a prosecutor’s desire to nail the defendant. Reading journalistic accounts of Cheney’s move, in 2000, from the private sector back into public service, we learn that he took elaborate steps to divest from Halliburton, the oil conglomerate where he was C.E.O., to avoid the appearance of conflict; here, the relationship between Cheney and the energy sector is presented as one of clear cronyism. Or take Sept. 11. In Barton Gellman’s play-by-play of that morning in Angler, it’s strongly implied that Cheney usurped Bush’s authority, ignoring the chain of command and giving fighter jets the O.K. to shoot down commercial airliners if they appeared to be hijacked. The official White House version was that Bush gave Cheney permission to pass along this order, and Gellman, poring carefully through communications records and notes taken by administration staff members, leaves open the extremely slim possibility that this is true. In Vice there is no such equivocation. We see Cheney give the order to take out the planes himself. Compression, of course, isn’t the same as distortion: Jane Mayer, the investigative journalist, described this scene to me as “a perfect gem,” and told McKay, after he screened the movie for her, that he “got it right.”

One way McKay might have buttressed Vice against possible charges of liberal bias would be to include the sorts of political critiques he readily offers up in conversation. “When Clinton was elected, he cut welfare and deregulated banks, just like a Republican would have done,” he said, from his couch. “Obama waged a war against whistle-blowers, he let the banks off the hook and he expanded executive power.” McKay did tinker for a while with stitching points like these into Vice-- making it “the story of Dick Cheney and the rise of the Republican Party, and how they got so big they swallowed the Democrats.” To this end, he pieced in footage of Hillary Clinton supporting the Iraq war. “But it’s hard,” McKay went on. “The audience only has a certain amount of oxygen in their lungs.” As he said earlier: “I could have made the movie three and a half hours long, but you can thank me that I didn’t.” (The film runs just over 130 minutes.)

…On the subject of villainy, McKay said: “Cheney and Bush did kill, conservatively, half a million civilians in Iraq. Some estimates have it at more than a million. So he’s pretty bad.” But, he said, “I think you have to humanize him, because unless we see how a regular human being can go down these roads, it’s useless.” (McKay has heard nothing from the Cheneys, who did not participate in the making of the film, although he noted that Mary started following him on Twitter.)

Is Vice part of the story Democrats need to be telling between now and 2020, when there’s an historical imperative that Trump be sent packing in no uncertain terms and certainly no with any kind of uncertainty that will encourage fascism to rear its ugly head in our country again any time soon? Wednesday, the L.A. Times published an interview with George Lakoff on what Democrats don’t understand-- and Republicans do-- about how voters think. She kicked it off by asking him about what the story Democrats have to tell to voters for the next two years.

Thursday the Democratic caucus in the House elected Ted Lieu, Matt Cartwright and Debbie Dingell co-chairs of the DPCC-- the Democratic Policy and Communication Committee. It’s their bailiwick. This is what Lakoff would like them to know:

The story has two parts, and they have to do with progressive values. One of them comes from Abraham Lincoln, that in a democracy, you have a government that is of, by, and for the people.

“Of” means the ordinary folks are in charge, and “by” means that the people who are governing you have the same life experiences that you have and understand that, and “for” means that the role of the government is to take care of people.

The second thing is that the private depends on public resources, both private life and private enterprise. You can’t have a business without public resources like roads and bridges and airports and the electric grids. But private life is like that too. You need the same roads and bridges and airports and electric grid and much more. Without public resources, you can’t have private enterprise or private life.

And that's something that is rarely said. If you ask a Democrat if that’s true, they’ll all say yes and they’ll give examples. But if you ask them, “Have you ever said it?” the answer is, no.

And that’s the point. They haven’t said it.

…Every Democrat should deliver the same messages and repeat them over and over and over. Not only that, they should repeat them every time they have a policy, and they should point out how the policy relates to these values.



You want to say this over and over so that people understand, after a couple of years of hearing it-- maybe getting tired of it. But the point is that they would understand that’s what democratic values are, and why they are so crucial.

…It’s not just democratic values. It’s the values of living in a democracy. You can’t have a business without public resources; that affects every business. It affects Republicans as well as Democrats. When you talk about what Lincoln’s words mean-- of, by and for the people-- that affects all sorts of people, Republicans as well as Democrats.

There is a way of talking to people, to say, “Imagine that you don’t have public resources. Imagine that there were no roads, that there were no airports, that there were no air traffic controllers and so on. Here’s what a public resource is. Imagine that it wasn’t there.”

And the Republicans might just say, “Well, privatize them-- privatize roads, privatize airports.”

All very nice except that that won’t happen. If you privatize them, they become a matter of profit for people, and since you absolutely require them, [the private owners] can bilk you for as much as they want. That’s why they’re public resources.

Framing is a concept you brought to the table-- the way you tell the story, the way you make your point. Democrats don’t seem to be as good at it as [Republicans]. Democrats don’t know how people think. It’s really sad. The problem is what I call the Enlightenment reason. [Former President Barack] Obama, in his [recent] speech, talked about the importance of Enlightenment reason. And a week later, Hillary Clinton is talking at Wellesley about how it was important that Wellesley teach Enlightenment reason.

Enlightenment reason says everybody reasons the same way; that’s what makes them human. Whereas if you have different world views, you’re going to reason differently. Enlightenment reason says that all you need to do is get the facts, and everybody will reason to the right conclusion, since everybody has the same reason. No. If they have different worldviews, they’ll reason to different conclusions.

Enlightenment reason does not recognize different worldviews. Enlightenment reason doesn’t admit framing. It doesn’t admit metaphorical thought. It doesn’t admit the way people really work.

The Democrats don’t understand this. They think that if you just tell people the facts, they will all reason to the right conclusion. That’s why they keep coming up with fact after fact after fact, rather than framing things in a way so that people will understand why these things are important.

Is PAYGO The Messaging Pelosi Thinks The Democrats Can Win On?

Sometimes a political tent can get so big that it stops having any meaning at all. The messaging coming out of the GOP pup tent is at least clear: they're white nationalists with a fascist bent who want to cut taxes on the rich and end social spending on things they consider wasteful-- Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, environmental protection... you know the old story. These are a few of the things conservatives have vehemently opposed over the years:

• the American Revolution
• the Bill of Rights
• public education
• the emancipation of the slaves
• women's suffrage
• the breakup of monopolies
• the abolition of child labor
• food safety
• rural electrification
• land grant colleges
• national parks
• the weekend
• unions
• the minimum wage
• Social Security
• civil rights and voting rights for minorities
• clean air and water and consumer safety
• Medicare and Medicaid

That's who they are-- and they still think they're right for opposing most of these things. Progressives backed the same list. So where's the business-friendly, careerist-oriented DC Democrats? Somewhere in between and struggling to find an identity-- or not. Messaging this cycle is abysmal. People wonder what the Democrats stand for. Pelosi said PAYGO, an old discarded Republican idea that basically means no real progress can ever get done that involved money. A friend called the other day and asked me to define PAYGO, since it is likely to be on Pelosi's political headstone one day. Here's how wikipedia did:

The PAYGO compels new spending or tax changes not to add to the federal debt. Not to be confused with pay-as-you-go financing, which is when a government saves up money to fund a specific project. Under the PAYGO rules, a new proposal must either be "budget neutral" or offset with savings derived from existing funds. The goal of this is to require those in control of the budget to engage in the diligence of prioritizing expenses and exercising fiscal restraint.

There are far better messages to take to the electorate. Medicare-For-All-- or even just adding dental and vision to Medicare-- Job Guarantee, free state colleges, $15 minimum wage...

Back in March, American Prospect writers Mark Paul, William Darity Jr., and Darrick Hamilton, handed Pelosi and her tent-mates a cohesive platform they should have used for the campaign. Obviously, they didn't. Pelosi was only 4 years old when then-President Franklin Roosevelt "proposed constitutional amendments to guarantee Americans’ fundamental economic rights. It was never adopted-- and today, is more necessary than ever." It's going to take someone-- a big thinker (which she has never been and will never be)-- far more radical than Nancy Pelosi to ever try achieving it but here's what today's version would look like:

In his groundbreaking 1944 State of the Union address, President Franklin Roosevelt called for an expansion of the Bill of Rights to recognize economic rights as well. “Necessitous men,” Roosevelt observed, “are not free men.” Those “who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.” Moreover, real freedom, freedom to “pursue happiness,” he said, required a “second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all.” For Roosevelt, full citizenship demanded more than the political rights designated in the nation’s original Bill of Rights: It required economic rights. Roosevelt outlined those rights-- which sounds very much like the Bernie Sanders platform-- as follows:

1.     The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation.
2.     The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation.
3.     The right of every family to a decent home.
4.     The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.
5.     The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment.
6.     The right to a good education.

We need to rethink public policies, breaking out of the straightjacket that overemphasizes market-based solutions. We have thought big before—but have compromised big as well. During the Great Depression, FDR and liberals made a Faustian bargain with southern segregationists to provide a New Deal and beyond, rewriting the rules of our economy. But only for some of our citizens. Ira Katznelson’s excellent book When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America documents how U.S. public policy implicitly and sometimes explicitly excluded black people from opportunity during the so called ‘golden age’ that followed. The racial apartheid that existed under slavery was renewed under another name-- Jim Crow-- for decades. The exclusions from the guarantees of the New Deal contributed to the highly unequal outcomes we observe today.

Today, we must transcend the racial, ethnic, and regional divisions exacerbated by post-Depression and post-World War II-era policies by building universal policies that are cognizant of identities and intersectionality, and inclusive of race, gender, nationality, sexuality, and ability.

The first six rights outlined by FDR above are still all too germane today, but to update these economic rights to facilitate an inclusive economy for the 21st century, we add:

7.     The right to sound banking and financial services.
8.     The right to a safe and clean environment.
9.     The right to a meaningful endowment of resources as a birthright.

The Prospect article goes on to define all 9 planks of what should be the Democratic platform. They're all very much worth reading-- and each would be vehemently opposed by the Republican Party and by the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- the New Dems and Blue Dogs-- but I'm going to just publish the final three that they added to FDR's list:

The Right to Sound Banking and Financial Services

Wall Street profit incentives are often not aligned with Main Street economic development, and nor are the more conservative Federal Reserve’s financial policies, such as the Fed’s staunch opposition to full employment. We must offer an alternative to the predatory nature of the current system of finance. The financial system has continued to redline opportunity in this country, particularly for financially vulnerable groups who have been deprived from asset-development by the banks’ policies of housing discrimination, limited or high cost basic banking services, last resort exploitive lending practices (such as payday lending), and the pushing of subprime loans even on creditworthy Latino and black borrowers.

Recent estimates indicate that 20 to 40 percent of the U.S. population relies on some form of non-traditional financial services, such as payday lending, which disproportionately preys on vulnerable and low-income Americans. Moreover, 53.6 percent of black households and 46.4 percent of Latino households are unbanked or underbanked, which is likely related to the high costs of banking for low-income individuals and the scarcity of banks operating in black and Latino neighborhoods.

A recent US Postal Service report found that the average underserved household spends almost 10 percent of its income on alternative financial services and interest. Converting one’s paycheck into cash should not bear a penalty, particularly for those with limited resources.

There are currently 53 million “credit invisible” households in the United States-- households that do not frequently participate in forms of financial services that the major private credit bureaus incorporate in credit scores. This “credit invisibility” results in the further marginalization of this group, limiting access to credit and employment, and increasing costs associated with financial services. According to the think tank Demos, while most low-and middle-income white households with credit card debt report good or excellent credit, the opposite is true for African Americans. Further, evidence from the Federal Reserve indicates that less than one quarter of blacks reported prime scores, compared with roughly 65 percent of whites. As a result, blacks are more likely to receive sub-prime mortgages and pay more for accessing other financial products such as car loans. This need not be the case.

A public option for banking and basic financial services could provide all Americans with the right to a minimum, non-exploitative standard of banking and financial services. Like the job guarantee, public banking would generate a floor in the financial sector-- if private banks don’t provide services at least as good as those provided by the public option, we expect consumers to close their accounts at private banks and choose the public banks.

Public banks are not a new idea. In 1910, Republican President William Howard Taft introduced the U.S. Postal Savings System to fight against the predatory-lending practices of the finance industry at the time, providing Americans an alternative that they could trust. This system functioned till 1966, when the banking lobby helped convince lawmakers to end the public option for banking and financial services. One state, North Dakota, still operates its own public bank. The state uses tax revenues to fund the bank, providing high-quality loans to farmers, students, and local businesses. Other countries, including Japan and Germany, currently have more extensive public banking options, and Germany’s municipal banks are a chief source of funding for that nation’s thriving small-and-medium-sized manufacturers.

One approach for public banking is to revive the postal banking option. The US Postal Service already provides alternative financial services via money orders (to the tune of $21 billion in 2014). In a recent white paper, the office of the USPS Inspector General noted that “while banks are closing branches all over the country, mostly in low-income areas in both rural communities and inner cities, the physical postal network is ubiquitous.” A postal bank in the U.S., including workers from the FJG program, can bring banking services to the unbanked while providing an important revenue stream for the USPS.

To provide Americans with access to reasonable financial services, another reform would be to federalize the credit score industry. Credit reports and scores have a direct and growing impact on Americans’ economic security and opportunity. Credit scores, which in theory represent the “credit worthiness” of consumers, are used to govern access for a range of basic economic needs—ranging from a car loan, to a lease on an apartment, to a job. These scores function in part as a gatekeeper to credit, which is central in today’s economy to build wealth and fully participate in the economic system. However, the credit scoring system has long been opaque and deeply flawed. Something as influential as a credit score in determining life outcomes should not be left in the hands of the for-profit, unaccountable private sector.

The Right to a Safe and Clean Environment

The environment is perhaps our greatest inherited collective resource. Yet like income and wealth, this resource—our planet and its environment-- are not shared equally. The link between environmental quality and economic inequality is clear. This was elucidated in a memo by Lawrence Summers, then the chief economist of the World Bank, which stated “the economic logic of dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.” The same logic has been applied to the lowest income counties in the United States. We do not accept this logic.

Our environmental policy should protect Americans against this logic, as well as assaults on the environment such as those waged by the Trump administration. As the Federal Water and Pollution Control Act makes clear, water quality should “protect the public health.” Clean water and clean air should not be something Americans need to purchase-- rather they should be rights, provided to all.

 In 1994, President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 12898, which ordered federal agencies to identify and rectify “disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects of its programs, policies, and activities on minority populations and low-income populations.” Despite this landmark victory, the racial and income-based pollution patterns and health disparities associated with exposure to environmental hazards remain prevalent. Researchers at the Political Economy Research Institute released a report identifying the Toxic 100-- the top corporate air and water polluters across the country. The verdict? The “logic” of dumping on the poor and vulnerable racial/ethnic groups persists.

The ongoing Flint water crisis is only one tragic example. In Flint, decisions made by local and state authorities demonstrated that money and power matter more than public safety and human lives. A right to a clean environment for current and future generations is needed. That requires a rapid transition away from fossil fuels in the face of climate change-- the greatest threat we have faced collectively as a species. The #KeepItInTheGround campaign is just beginning. A clean and safe environment should not be commodified, something we put up for sale to the highest bidder or the one with the most connections. Instead, we need to enshrine a mechanism that provides a clean and safe environment as a basic human right.

The Right to Seed Capital to Build a Lifetime of Asset Economic Security

The reports keep stacking up-- income inequality has been growing rapidly since the late 1970s. The degree to which income is unequally distributed is shocking—yet income is less unequally distributed than wealth. Wealth is a paramount indicator of social well-being. Wealth-- what you own minus what you owe-- is critical to the economic security of Americans. With almost half of all Americans unable to afford an emergency expense amounting to $400, the average household is not resilient to economic shocks.

Recent research by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman at Berkeley found that the top one percent of Americans held 42 percent of all wealth in 2012, with the top 0.1 percent holding 22 percent. Disparities are especially pronounced between races. The legacy of chattel slavery, where black people were literally a form of wealth for whites, and the discrimination encouraged and perpetuated through public policies, have left black families with minimal wealth. A report by the Center for Global Policy Solutions, entitled “Beyond Broke: Why Closing the Racial Wealth Gap Is a Priority for National Economic Security,” concludes that “[f]or every dollar in wealth held by whites, African Americans and Latinos held only 5 and 6 cents respectively.” In our in-depth study of The Color of Wealth in the Nation's Capital, we find that white families have 81 times more wealth than black families in Washington, D.C. A new collaborative study from the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity and Insight: the Center for Community and Economic Development finds that single older black women with a college degree hold a mere $11,000 in wealth to deal with their retirement, in comparison with similarly educated older white women, who have a median wealth of $394,400.

Conventional explanations of wealth disparities, relying on rhetoric around the dysfunctional behavior of blacks and their lack of education or financial literacy, simply do not hold up. Given the importance of wealth in determining life outcomes, public intervention is needed to address unjustly created distributions. One such solution, “baby bonds” would seed every American at birth with an initial endowment to be held in trust until adulthood. The program would be universal, through which every newborn would receive an account, starting at around $500 for those born into the most affluent families and progressively rising to $50,000 for children born into families with minimal wealth. The accounts would be accessible when the recipient reaches adulthood and used for some asset enhancing endeavor-- a down payment for a home, say, or capital to start a new business. Estimates show that the cost of the program would amount to about 2 percent of federal spending. If the average account is established at around $20,000, the cost to the government would not exceed $90 billion a year inclusive of administration costs. While that may give some sticker shock, keep in mind the relative size of other asset development programs cost much more. Capping the mortgage interest deduction would be much more than sufficient to cover the cost of the new program.

Hey Nancy! Hey Chuck!

Imagine How Brilliant The DCCC Would Be If It Could Learn From Its Mistakes!

With Trump failing so completely and so stupendously as a "president," Inside-the-Beltway imbeciles are wondering if the Democratic Party establishment should manufacture it's own billionaire outsider as a 2020 candidate. One of the politics trade publications, the Washington Post, suggested yesterday that "there is a real opportunity for an outsider to take over the party and challenge Trump, the first American to be elected president without political or military service, on his own terms. The problem has been finding the right person to do it, particularly in a party whose voter base is more inclined to favor government experience. The potential 2020 field already includes about two dozen traditional politicians, from mayors to governors to senators." They then suggest Disney chief Bob Iger, mega-mogul Oprah Winfrey, Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg. Don't forget-- or please do forget the coffee guy from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party.

I had a really pleasant Sunday, playing the part of auctioneer at an event for the Blue Momentum PAC, Ted Lieu's leader PAC. All the money collected goes to 2018 Democratic candidates. Ted was very eloquent in explaining the state the nation and his own role. And a good time was had by all. His events are always fun. (I think the next one is at the end off July and I heard that a mega super-star is performing at it. Whether that's true or not, if you're in the L.A. area, you should try to make it to a Ted Lieu event. One of the bidders who won a Nancy Ohanian drawing I was auctioning, "Active Shooter," was Paula Poundstone (below). When Politico mentioned yesterday that the Democratic Establishment, lost and confused, is turning to Hollywood for messaging help, I knew it would be too much to ask that by "Hollywood" they meant the congressman from thereabouts, Ted Lieu. They didn't. And if it's the group of naïfs I think it is, they literally do not know the difference between a progressive and a Blue Dog-- literally. I know them. Nice people but... oy veh!

Of course what everyone waits for at these events is an opportunity to ask their congressman questions-- and Ted loves that part too. One of the first questions came from a constituent wanting to know if the DCCC has any plans for an overarching, cohesive message so that voters, especially younger voters-- you know, the kinds who weren't alive when FDR was president-- will have any solid idea what the Democratic Party stands for.

That's a tough one. How does such a big tent party-- so big that's it's become a circus tent-- have a message that doesn't offend some of those inside the tent? The DCCC, for example, has been busy recruiting A+ NRA allies like Jeff Van Drew (NJ), Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ) and Anthony Brindisi (NY) to add to their list of current Blue Dog NRA allies, so how do you come out strongly against assault weapons? If the "party" does, it leaves these candidates outside the tent.

The most powerful congressional cohort inside the party used to be the Progressive Caucus. Now it's the Wall Street owned-and-operated New Dems. The DCCC and party leadership, in fact, is now, as Pelosi's grip has loosened, an arm of the New Dems. The party is now increasingly hostile to populist ideas and progressive policies. The establishment wing of the party now openly embraces a lesser-of-two evils case for itself in elections... literally. This came from the DCCC, not the DWT art director:

On Monday, the AP's Bill Barrow reported that Democrats are testing liberal messages in midterm House elections. Ted could have told his questioner that "Weeks [it's actually months] into the primary season, Democrats’ midterm class is shaping up to test what liberal messages the party can sell to the moderate and GOP-leaning voters who will help determine control of the House after the November election." Interesting, when the Democrats need to turn out their base with huge enthusiasm to have even a chance to win, along with independents who are sick of Trump and his Republican enablers. "Moderate" Republicans? A waste of time.

Straight from the DCCC press office, Barrow wrote that "Democratic voters typically aren’t tapping the most liberal choices in targeted districts. But, taken together, the crop of nominees is trending more liberal than many of the 'Blue Dog' Democrats swept away in Republicans’ 2010 midterm romp." I guess they didn't tell Barrow about how stalwart progressive Kara Eastman beat the DCCC's heavily backed Blue Dog, Ben Ashford in Omaha. Or how much-touted (and funded) DCCC Blue Dogs like Jay Hulings (TX), J.D. Huffstetler (VA) and Jim Grey (KY) were defeated by more progressive candidates. Last Tuesday in Orange County, an Elizabeth Warren backed progressive, Katie Porter, beat a Schumer-backed New Dem, Dave Min. The DCCC covers it's ears and yells 'na-na-na" if anyone tries discussing those races. They have no ability whatsoever to learn from their mistakes, only an ability to twist reality for gullible members of the media. Why not dig up one of the architects of DCCC failure and one of the personifications of why Paul Ryan is Speaker? Maybe Rahm was too smart to volunteer for the task, so...

[V]oters now represented by a Republican will be asked to consider some or all of the mainstream Democratic priorities that may have been considered “too liberal” in the past: more government involvement in health insurance, tighter gun laws, a path to citizenship for people in the country illegally, reversing parts of the GOP tax law, support for LGBTQ rights.

“You have ballpark 60 districts as diverse as Kansas and Staten Island. One bumper-sticker message will be self-defeating,” said former congressman Steve Israel of New York, who led Democrats’ national House campaign in 2012.

The question is whether that path results in Democrats gaining the 23 new seats they need for a majority.

Israel disputes that the current slate represents an overall leftward shift, and national party leaders have still angered liberals with some of their recruitment choices.

Still, resistance leaders are confident of their influence. “We are seeing grassroots action and organizing in a meaningful way,” said Maria Urbina, national political director of Indivisible, founded after Trump’s 2016 election. “We see the party apparatus coming in behind some of this action on the ground.”

To be clear, not every surviving candidate is a carbon copy of Bernie Sanders, the 2016 presidential candidate whose insurgent campaign emboldened the left with his calls for universal health insurance, a $15-hour minimum wage and tuition-free college. But the influence of Sanders’ inspired base is palpable, as winning nominees have adopted pieces, if not the whole, of an agenda that has become more typical within the party since it lost the House majority eight years ago.

At least to date, it’s staved off a Democratic version of the 2010 tea party rise, when GOP leaders, even as they marched in lockstep opposition to then-President Barack Obama, watched archconservative outsiders defeat incumbent Republicans and fundamentally reshape the party’s identity on Capitol Hill. The Democratic path seems to be more incremental evolution.

And now for the outright lie from the DCCC's propaganda shop-- which quickly moves to erase evidence of their failures, which superficial reporters always fall for. "Would the DCCC lie to me? I can trust what they tell me, right?" No, wrong.

A key indicator is the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s “Red to Blue” program, the party’s top candidates for flipping Republican seats. Twenty candidates with that designation have faced primaries already; only one of them-- among the party’s most conservative choices-- has lost. (About two dozen more Red to Blue candidates have upcoming primaries, and the DCCC could add to its list.)

And Mike Levin, who the DCCC is touting as "an environmental lawyer," eagerly picked up by saps like Barrow, is actually someone who worked as an attorney getting rich by fighting against environmentalists. Twisting messaging is a DCCC speciality. Just wait 'til they role out Jason Crow, the attorney for pay day lenders in Colorado, who the DCCC calls a fighter for the underprivileged.

And how does Barrow prove his independence after shilling for the DCCC so unashamedly for so many un-fact-checked paragraphs? Don't worry, it isn't by firing up a brain cell. His closing sentence: "Wacky, far-left positions," said Courtney Alexander of the Congressional Leadership Fund, a GOP super PAC aligned with Speaker Paul Ryan, "aren’t going to fly in suburban swing districts this fall." Take that! No DCCC shill I.

Why Would Anyone Expect A Political Careerist To Have A Worthwhile Campaign Message?

Politico was eager to remind its readers that "Democrats are just as divided as Republicans these days." When there's a lot of money at stake, isn't that always the case... not just "these days?" Some "big news" this weekend was that Hillary isn't going to run for office again. Oh. I guess there were some people who breathed a sigh of relief and some who wept a bitter tear after all that investment they put into her... but I suspect that most people just shrugged. Who ever imagined she would run again? There are plenty of corporate centrists ready to stand in for her-- from Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker, Joe Biden or Joe Kennedy III, to Jason Kander, a Castro brother or Seth Moulton. A friend of mine was at a Senate fundraiser for "former" Blue Dog Adam Schiff over the weekend and their were wealth conservaDems there yelling for him to skip the Senate run and just run for president. Adam Schiff! Can you imagine?!? I suppose a Trumpanzee in the White House sets the bar rather low.

But Politico's main point is that Democrats "are fighting over everything from their diagnosis of why Trump beat them in 2016 to how much to stake themselves on an oust-him-at-all-costs strategy now. Their internal battles may not be as sexy as the unprecedented hostile takeover of the GOP by an outsider president not beholden to it-- yet they are just as consequential."

What a laugh! There are real issues at play in the battle for the soul-- and the levers of power-- within the Democratic Party... and Trump isn't part of it. Democrats, Inc. being devoid of "a shared mission" has nothing to do with Trump and everything to do with defining whether theirs is the party of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt or the party of the Blue Dogs, the New Dems, the Wall Street banksters and the corporate plutocrats. The whole idea of values and message get lost when some many incumbents are so indebted to and dependent on the bad guys. In the House, for example, there are 4 top-dog Dems (all conservatives, of course) who have accepted over $5,000,000 in bribes from the finance sector, each of them working to advance the interests of Wall Street:

• Crooked Joe Crowley (New Dem-NY)- $6,491,559
• Steny Hoyer (D-MD)- $6,094,848
• Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)- $5,774,077
• Jim Himes (New Dem-CT)- $5,773,452

And last cycle alone, Wall Street gave over a million dollars each to 5 House Democrats who were viewed-- because of their slimy records-- as being worth further investment:

• Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Senate candidate- $3,300,369
• Patrick Murphy (New Dem-FL)- Senate candidate- $2,380,989
• Joe Crowley (New Dem-NY)- future party Leader- $1,064,673
• Tammy Duckworth (D-IL)- Senate candidate- $1,044,388
• Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ)- 2018 Senate candidate- $1,003,940

14 other mostly corrupt conservative House Democrats were given between half a million and a million last cycle alone and that doesn't count Florida sleaze bag Debbie Wasserman Schultz's 2016 haul of $489,904. And the Senate... even worse. This is the list of current Democratic senators who have taken over $5 million from the finance sector:

• Chuck Schumer (NY)- $26,628,675
• Kirsten Gillibrand (NY)- $8,416,631
• Robert Menendez (NJ), currently on trial for taking bribes- $7,867,355
• Mark Warner (VA)- $7,793,321
• Michael Bennet (CO)- $6,574,477
• Ron Wyden (OR)- $6,062,499
• Bill Nelson (FL)- $5,970,386
• Dianne Feinstein (CA)- $5,627,426
• Cory Booker (NJ)- $5,002,925

Since 1990, Wall Street has handed out over 2 and a half BILLION dollars to members of Congress (including candidates for Congress). $1,412,008,344 went to Republicans and $1,079,408,308 went to Democrats. See, the Democrats aren't as bad as the Republicans. Maybe Democratic bribe taker should get cells with windows. But how does anyone expect a party that is led by bribe-taking leaders to embrace values and a message that's supposed to appeal to ordinary American working families?

It can't happen, not with party leaders like Schumer, Pelosi, Hoyer, Crowley, Wasserman Schultz. Quoting Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis-- "Sunlight is said to be the best disinfectant"-- the progressive running against Pelosi next year, Stephen Jaffe, told us today that his "campaign platform calls for the public financing of political campaigns, which will go a long ways towards mitigating the disastrous effects of the Citizens United decision.  Until that happens, more transparency in the political financing process must occur. To make informed decisions on candidates and ballot proposals, voters must have access to as much information as possible, especially who or what are financing their choices." Another progressive candidate, speaking on condition of anonymity, for obvious reasons, told me he hates the Democratic Party and wishes he could run as an independent. "With Party leaders like Pelosi and Schumer chasing special interest money 24/7, the Democratic Party will never agree to the platform I'm running on-- single payer, free college education, a living wage rather than a minimum wage, protection of Wall Street criminals. If WallStreet criminals are prosecuted, who will finance Schumer's career? And who will pay for Crowley's ascension to the party leadership?"

susan Glasser's Politico post made it clear that the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party and the Republican wing of the Democratic Party can't agree on much messaging "beyond agreement over their shared disdain for Trump and the extent to which animus toward the 45th president is the galvanizing factor behind the unprecedented mobilization of Democrats across the country." It's convenient for worthless-- and ambitious-- conservatives like, say Adam Schiff or Seth Moulton, to talk about what Democrats are against without having to get into the bold progressive vision that grassroots Democratic voters crave. Conservativeve Democrats are all about persuading low-info voters that antipathy towards Trump equals a progressive vision. It doesn't; not even a little.

Back in 2016, when Clinton was in the middle of her general election campaign and virtually no one expected her to lose to Trump, Democrats "were divided over whether to court [disaffected white working class] voters, or essentially write them off and emphasize instead Clinton’s appeal to the Democratic base of big-city liberals and minority groups. It was a debate, we later learned, that played itself out inside the Clinton campaign too-- with the play-to-the-base side beating out those like former president Bill Clinton who worried about not competing for such a wide swath of the electorate." They kissed goodbye to Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, North Carolina and Florida and picked up electorally meaningless votes in Orange County, California-- whose electoral college votes were going to Clinton without them anyway-- and in the suburbs around Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio-- whose electoral college votes weren't going to Clinton no matter what.

Today Democratic Party leaders are still scratching their heads over whether "the economic fears Trump claimed to address really [are] just a cover for a darker Trump agenda of racial exclusion and immigrant-bashing that Democrats won’t and shouldn’t cater to?" And then the scary kicker for anyone interested in a sustainable Democratic Party useful as a vehicle for the legitimate aspirations of working families:

[T]he ideological debates will probably have to wait. The Trump show is such a spectacle that any talk about the politics of policy inevitably gets overwhelmed-- and quickly-- by the politics of the overwhelming personality now in the White House. Can the party get rid of Trump by pushing hard on the rapidly proliferating investigations of his campaign’s alleged collusion with the Russian hacking of the 2016 election? Would Trump’s historically high unpopularity boost them in 2018?

How do you know which Democratic candidates are worth supporting and which are just DCCC puppets who will-- as the Republicans love to point out (quite effectively)-- just be rubber stamps for Pelosi and her corrupt leadership team?

Notice the Democrats who campaign not on Trump but on the bread and butter issues Bernie raised in 2016. There is virtually no energy around any sad-sack DCCC recruits.

We reached out to the Blue America-endorsed congressional candidates-- and to a few who are successfully finishing the vetting process-- and asked each for a one-sentence summation of what motivates their campaign. First back to me was Wisconsin iron worker and union activist Randy Bryce, who mentioned neither his opponent, Paul Ryan, nor Trump. "I'm running for Congress," he told me flatly this morning, "to help raise everyone's standard of life; everyone is worthy of being healthy which is why Medicare-for-All is a top priority."

State Rep. Kaniela Ing, who will hopefully be running for the open Hanabusa seat in Honolulu, had a similar message-- and just as fast: "People need hope and inspiration, which is why Democrats must look beyond resistance and offer a bold progressive vision of Medicare-for-all, 100% renewable energy by 2050, and a future economy that leaves no one behind."

The rest of the candidate responses, in order of how fast they came in:

• Paul Clements (MI-06)- "To counteract the rising tide of money in politics, I'm running get our economy working for the people not the 1% through tax reform, single payer health care, dramatic improvements in education and infrastructure, and criminal justice reform."

• Jenny Marshall (NC-05)- "Our campaign is focusing on economic equity by supporting an increase in the minimum wage and jobs that provide security and stability for working families."

• Dan Canon (IN-09)- "I'm fighting for things that will strengthen the working class in America, such as: single-payer healthcare, comprehensive campaign finance reform, tuition-free public college, paid family/medical leave, and the decriminalization of cannabis."

• David Gill (IL-13)- "I'm fighting hard for a single-payer healthcare system, a $15 per hour minimum wage, and tuition-free access to public universities, colleges, and trade schools."

• Marie Newman (IL-03)- "It goes without saying that I will stand strongly against President Trump's cruel and dangerous agenda, but my days in Congress will be spent advocating for the working families and small businesses who deserve a fair shake."

• Katie Hill (CA-25)- "Working and middle class families in my district aren't interested in hearing about how we're not Trump, or how we're going to stop him; they want to hear about how we're going to rebuild the middle class, ensure health care for everyone, and most importantly, how we can fix our broken political system and allow people to trust government again-- that's what we're talking about, and it resonates with people regardless of party or anything else."

• Derrick Crowe (TX-21)- "We're fighting for liberty and justice for all-- and in practice that means tuition-free college, Medicare For All, real climate change action, a $15-an-hour minimum wage, and a pro-rural agenda that gets the Democrats back to their populist roots."

• Sam Jammal (CA-39)- "As an Arab American and Latino, Donald Trump makes you step back and pay more attention, but its not enough to just run against Trump; I am running because we need to get back to the basics and help the next generation achieve the American Dream-- this means focusing on wages, health care, home ownership, student debt and retirement security."

• James Thompson (KS-04)- "I'm running for Congress to restore the American promise-- equality must be our guide and justice our compass-- and the promise that if you work hard, do the right thing, make smart choices, and treat everyone fairly, you can achieve your dreams regardless of your race, sex, religion or sexual orientation, which means universal healthcare coverage for every American with control returned to the doctor and patient rather than insurance companies or the government; K-16 education for those who wish to pursue it; proper treatment of our nation's veterans and elderly; a livable wage that can support a family and a jobs program to rebuild and modernize our infrastructure-- this is my progressive vision for the American people."

• Tom Guild (OK-05)- "I will work to increase Social Security benefits, support public education, increase the minimum wage, reduce college student debt, keep our country's commitment to veterans, and invest in infrastructure by repairing crumbling roads, highways, bridges, and schools and I will fight to restore our economy and revitalize our political system to make them work for all Oklahomans, especially working people and the vaunted and disappearing American middle class."

• Tim Canova (FL-23)- "I am campaigning to put basic human needs and human values ahead of unfettered corporate greed and profits and I'm proud to support a people's agenda: election integrity reforms to ensure transparency and accuracy in vote counting, Medicare For All, federal subsidies for K-12 and tuition-free higher education, a voluntary national service program modeled on New Deal public works programs, rebuilding infrastructure with solar and other renewable energies, a new national infrastructure bank and other public banking institutions to finance huge investments in mass transit, public housing, healthcare, and education."

Whose sentence did you find most appealing? Really, which one? Please let us know by tapping on the Blue America 2018 congressional thermometer on the right and contributing a couple of bucks to the candidate (or candidates) you felt were most on target. Yes, they can all use the campaign contributions, BUT, we're going to share the results with each one of them, and that can be useful feedback to understand where the Democratic base-- at least the DWT portion of the Democratic base-- stands on the compelling issues being raised above. Thanks for the help-- and, of course, for the contributions. None of these candidates could do what they're doing without the help of grassroots donors who are themselves motivated by values and issues more than personalities and all the partisan media bullshit.