Will African-American Voters Help Reform The Democratic Party?

Tuesday night, progressive reformer Morgan Harper lost her congressional primary to a corrupt, middle of the road Democratic incumbent, Joyce Beatty in Columbus, Ohio. The final result was a two-to-one rout-- 43,727 (68.29%) to 20,301 (31.71%). As of the April 8th FEC reporting deadline, Beatty had spent a massive $2,149,875 to Harper's $696,001.

The third district is entirely in Franklin County and was created to concentrate Democratic voters, allowing Republicans to protect the 12th and 15th districts. OH-03, almost the whole city if Columbus, has a PVI of D+19, while OH-12 and OH-15 each has a relatively safe R+7 PVI. The Democratic primary is dominated by African-American voters and they've been electing and reelecting Beatty, despite her utter worthlessness as a Representative, since 2012. A shill for shady financial interests, Beatty has been a darling of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC).

It isn't just the CBC, of course, protecting their incumbents, regardless of how bad the incumbent is or how good the challenger is. After all, Morgan Harper, also an African American woman, has been considered one of the brightest stars running for Congress this cycle. At 36, the former Obama administration official at the CFPB, has no ties to the incompetent and fully corrupt Ohio Democratic Party. She ran a campaign based on Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, Jobs Guarantee, tuition-free public college, universal child care, racial justice, affordable housing and a living wage-- all things that separate old line liberals, like Pelosi, Hoyer and their clique from today's progressives. The Ohio Democratic establishment has all but destroyed the Democratic Party in the state. Many people say it is the worst state party in America with one corrupt idiot following another, each losing more and more of the state to the Republicans. But they would much rather fight progressives-- who they routinely trash-- than Republicans.

There wasn't a crooked Democratic pol in the state who didn't back her, even if, during Rick Neal's campaign against Republican hot-shot Steve Stivers in the next district over, Beatty helped Stivers, making joint appearances with him, pushing "civility." Beatty has been heavily supported by the Columbus Partnership, the corporate powers-that-be in central Ohio, and she was the only Democrat who Victoria's Secret billionaire Les Wexner-- another character in the Jeffrey Epstein saga-- donated to since she was elected. Wexner and his wife have hosted fundraisers for Beatty at their home and contributed large sums of money to her. Their L Brands PAC is one of Beatty's largest donors along with Nationwide Insurance, JP Morgan Chase and other banks, American Bankers Assoc. etc.

Beatty is probably best known for having been a steadfast ally of payday lenders-- which Morgan has fought so hard to to rein in. (Beatty's husband was a payday lenders lobbyist-- a step up from his father who just flat out ran numbers.) While minority leader in the state legislature, Beatty held up a bill that would have regulated payday lenders. Her net worth an estimated $6 million. The district, though, ranks among the poorest congressional districts in the country (#378 out of 435)-- 60,000 children living in poverty. She uses her perch on the House Financial Services Committee to protect predatory banksters and further kick her own working class constituents to the curb.

And there was Beatty's picture at the top of a Politico story on Tuesday, Black Caucus seeks to squash liberal insurgents. Reporters Ally Mutnick, Heather Caygle and Sarah Ferris wrote that "Senior black Democrats are mounting an aggressive defense of Rep. Joyce Beatty in Tuesday's delayed Ohio primary, hoping to quash not only her left-wing primary challenger but the liberal insurgents gunning for a number of their colleagues. Leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus have framed the fight as greater than just defeating Beatty’s opponent, Morgan Harper, a well-funded attorney backed by the progressive group Justice Democrats. They are eager to show they can smack down any primary challengers nationwide who conspire against senior members of color who have spent decades fighting to the top."

“What is that all about? Is it attacking us?” Beatty said in an interview. “Well, let me make the message strong and clear: When you attack a hard-working member of the Congressional Black Caucus, we fight back. We are the conscience of the caucus, and we represent people.”

The CBC is stepping up to protect Beatty in an unpredictable race that some Democrats privately fear could be close, with turnout expected to be far lower amid the coronavirus outbreak that has shut down much of Ohio since mid-March.

Rep. Cedric Richmond of Louisiana, a former CBC chairman, is among several top Democrats who has helped marshal support for Beatty from both Washington and Ohio in recent months, frustrated by liberal outsiders with lengthy progressive wish lists seeking to oust party elders.

"Being 'anti' is not enough. This is about results and not just rhetoric,” Richmond said. “And just because you run with a bunch of rhetoric doesn't mean you can get results. There are people here that are effective members of Congress.”

Richmond is a bullshit artist and New Dem, the conservative Democrat tasked early on with roping in anti-progressive Democratic House members for Biden. He's tight with K street and tells lobbyists who's for sale and who's not. Other conservative Democrats backing Beatty included Oralndo's Val Demings (who some are touting, besides the fact that she is a severe sufferer from brainlessness, as a VP contender for Biden), the Queens political machine boss Gregory Meeks, and Brooklyn's Hakeem Jeffries, a contender for the post-Pelosi speakership.

Beatty's primary is the first salvo in the primary battle between the CBC and liberal groups trying to oust longtime incumbents. Besides Beatty, at least four other members of the caucus in New York and Missouri will face credible primary challengers throughout the summer.

Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), chairman of the CBC’s political arm, is a longtime critic of the progressive groups’ approach to primaries and hopes Beatty’s victory on Tuesday will be a shot across the bow to other challengers.

“We worked hard,” Meeks said in an interview. “We’ve done it the old-fashioned way. And so, for people who seem to come out of nowhere, who have done nothing, have nothing to show for, to say, ‘We’re just going to challenge you for the sake of challenging you.’ Does that make sense?”

Meeks added that he has retooled the CBC’s political arm this year to better defend incumbents facing primary challenges. That includes hiring a dedicated political director for the PAC who will help boost digital and on-the-ground operations.

Harper, who said she launched her grassroots campaign last July with “no coordination with the Justice Democrats,” pushed back against the suggestion that her sole purpose was to attack a member of Congress. And Harper has pushed back when pundits have called her out for targeting black lawmakers, at one point, retorting on Twitter: "I am also black."

“I think we need to reframe that, in the idea that this is somehow a targeting of an individual,” Harper said in an interview last week. “Our campaign, we are presenting an alternative policy platform to the people of the 3rd District and that is not a personal exercise.”

Back in early March, Glen Ford, editor of the Black Agenda Report looked at why so many African American voters are supporting conservative Democrats over progressives this cycle. Referring to how Biden beat Bernie in conservative South Carolina, he wrote that "Although the craven Black Misleadership Class will no doubt shout hallelujahs that 'hands that picked cotton now pick presidents' and claim Black voters exercised brilliant 'strategic' judgment in making themselves indispensable to the corprate Democratic party establishment, the true motivator of Black Biden supporters is a pervasive and deeply corrosive fear. Not just dread of four more years of Trump, although that is central to Black political behavior, but abject terror at the very thought that the Democratic Party-- 'our' party, in many Black folks’ minds-- might fracture under the challenge of the Sandernistas."

Voluminous data over many years has shown that African Americans are to the left of Hispanics on issues of bread and butter and, especially, war and peace, and far to the left of white Democrats. But, unlike Hispanics, Blacks cannot be depended on to uphold their own historical political consensus in Democratic Party primary elections for fear of weakening the chances of defeating The White Man’s Party. Hyper-conscious of their minority and despised status-- and surrounded by hostile, race-obsessed white Republicans in the southern states-- older Blacks cling to Democratic Party structures as if their lives depend on it. The ascent of Donald Trump has only tightened the duopoly trap, causing Blacks to invest their votes in candidates they perceive as 'good for the party,' as if that is synonymous with Black interests.

...The rot is deep, a product of generations of capital-subordinate Black politics that followed the violent suppression of Black self-determinationist movements and the imposition of a counterinsurgency, mass incarceration regime at the end of the Sixties. Rather than resist the New Jim Crow/Same Old Rich White Man’s Rule, the Black Misleaderhip Class eagerly offered themselves as co-managers of oppression-- for a small cut of the spoils, and the privileges of racial "leadership."

It has always been clear to Black Agenda Report that the post-Sixties betrayals of the Black Misleadership Class necessitated that a future Black liberation movement must be largely an internal Black struggle to uproot the corrupted elements in our polity. False unity has become Black folks’ Achilles Heel, allowing Black charlatans free rein in our communities and reserving most elected positions for servants of Capital. The Democratic Party is a predatory edifice of Black disempowerment, from which our people must either free themselves, or become agents of their own perpetual oppression and accomplices in the degradation of humanity, worldwide.

Black youth see the truth, and will act on it, we are certain.

Agents Of Our Own Oppression

Did you happen to notice the Wall Street Journal headline just before voting closed in Michigan yesterday-- Black Voters Hope To Deliver Key Victory For Biden In Michigan? And they did. Biden took Michigan and 3 of the other 4 primary states. Washington state is too close to call and Bernie appears to have won the North Dakota caucus.

• Idaho- 48.86% to 42.48%
• Michigan- 52.87% to 36.50%
• Mississippi- 81.04% to 14.89%
• Missouri- 60.12% to 34.56%
• Washington- 32.75% to 32.54% (Bernie leading)

• North Dakota- 48.54% to 42.38%

In 2016, the Michigan primary was a godsend to Bernie. He beat Hillary 595,222 (49.8%) to 576,795 (48.3%)and the headlines we're all about how he won. The reality wasn't as sanguine. Clinton and her DNC allies has already fixed the primary so that Bernie got 65 delegates to her 73 delegates. But that wasn't what the headlines were about the next day.

Bernie won a lot of rural counties and a lot of white counties and Hillary won a lot of counties with big African American populations. She beat him handily in Genessee County (Flint)-- 31,284 (51.7%) to 28,117 (46.5%). She beat him in Oakland County (Detroit suburbs)-- 92,296 (51.4%) to 84,158 (46.8%). And, most of all, she beat him in Wayne County (Detroit), where over 40% of the residents-- and more than half the Democrats-- are African-American.

Last Thursday, Glen Ford, editor of the Black Agenda Report explained why African American voters-- especially the most dependable voters, seniors-- support status quo establishment candidates like Hillary... and Biden. "Black voters in South Carolina," wrote Ford, "kicked off Joe Biden’s political resurrection last Saturday, and stuck with the worthless corporate hack through Super Tuesday’s primary contests. Although the craven Black Misleadership Class will no doubt shout hallelujahs that 'hands that picked cotton now pick presidents' and claim Black voters exercised brilliant 'strategic' judgment in making themselves indispensable to the corprate Democratic party establishment, the true motivator of Black Biden supporters is a pervasive and deeply corrosive fear. Not just dread of four more years of Trump, although that is central to Black political behavior, but abject terror at the very thought that the Democratic Party-- 'our' party, in many Black folks’ minds-- might fracture under the challenge of the Sandernistas."

Voluminous data over many years has shown that African Americans are to the left of Hispanics on issues of bread and butter and, especially, war and peace, and far to the left of white Democrats. But, unlike Hispanics, Blacks cannot be depended on to uphold their own historical political consensus in Democratic Party primary elections for fear of weakening the chances of defeating The White Man’s Party. Hyper-conscious of their minority and despised status-- and surrounded by hostile, race-obsessed white Republicans in the southern states-- older Blacks cling to Democratic Party structures as if their lives depend on it. The ascent of Donald Trump has only tightened the duopoly trap, causing Blacks to invest their votes in candidates they perceive as "good for the party," as if that is synonymous with Black interests.

"Older Blacks cling to Democratic Party structures as if their lives depend on it."

Ruling class panic at the prospect of losing control of the top of Democratic ticket has deeply infected the party’s most loyal constituency. Thus, Black folks over 40, and many younger ones, are behaving like Malcolm X’s “house Negro,” who asks with genuine concern, “Is we sick, boss?” when the master is feeling poorly. The screechingly raucous, out-of-control Democratic debate in Charleston just days before the South Carolina primary appears to have scared the hell out of Black voters--and lots of white ones, too-- who perceived “their” party coming apart at the seems and blamed the mayhem on Bernie Sanders. With Sanders and Michael Bloomberg bearing the brunt of the assault, Joe Biden appeared like the tranquil eye of the storm, a safe haven for fearful party loyalists. Biden’s endorsement by Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg on the eve of Super Tuesday, enveloped Obama’s former vice president in an aura of consensus.

Bloomberg’s presidential persona was punctured, but he wasn’t really in it to win it. The odious oligarch knew he couldn’t win the nomination of a party whose rank-and-file overwhelmingly support Sanders’ austerity-busting agenda, even if they doubt Bernie’s chances against Trump or his ability to get his program through Congress. The formerly Republican Bloomberg’s candidacy was a necessary (and affordable) charade to certify him as a born-again Democrat, thus legitimizing his billion-dollar bid to buy control of the party’s machinery to insulate it against infection by more upstarts like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and her mentor, Sanders.

"Joe Biden appeared like the tranquil eye of the storm, a safe haven for fearful party loyalists."

On Tuesday night CNN pundit and former Virginia governor and Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe confirmed that the party welcomed Bloomberg’s billions. Bloomberg had already promised to pay the cost of 500 political operatives answerable to the DNC through the November election, no matter who wins the nomination. McAuliffe looked forward to Bloomberg putting his entire state-of-the art New York City headquarters in service to the party. The aim is to progressive-proof the Democrats by making the party a hostile environment for leftish politics.(See BAR, Feb. 19, “Bloomberg Wants to Swallow the Democrats and Spit Out the Sandernistas.”) Bloomberg’s presidential run is a way to “launder” his billion dollar purchase of the party infrastructure. Other oligarchs can be expected to make it a joint venture to shore up their class’s hegemony over the U.S. electoral system, to safeguard the ruling class agenda of endless war and the global Race to the Bottom.

The allure of Bloomberg’s gold has exposed the cockroaches of the Black Misleadership Class, hordes of whom scurried across the linoleum to enlist as mercenaries of Obscene Capital. This is the undiluted essence of Black Democratic “strategic” politics. Four members of the Congressional Black Caucus -- Meeks (NY), McBath (GA), Plaskett (VI), and Rush (IL), plus the despicable former Tennessee congressman Harold Ford, and the Black mayors of Little Rock AR, Compton CA, San Francisco CA, Stockton CA, Charlotte NC, Columbia SC, Houston TX and Washington DC, plus former mayors of Columbus OH, New York City, Baltimore MD, Philadelphia PA, and Flint MI-- whored for Bloomberg, and can be expected to be at his and the other oligarchs’ service for the duration of the party’s battles with leftish interlopers.

"Bloomberg’s gold has exposed the cockroaches of the Black Misleadership Class."

Bloomberg’s withdrawal from the race and endorsement of Biden only further sanctifies his larger mission to purge the party of any taint of leftism. Elizabeth Warren will now choose how she will express her “capitalist to the bone” sentiments. The Black Lives Matter elements-- notably, Alicia Garza-- that joined the party when they left the "movement," will follow.

The rot is deep, a product of generations of capital-subordinate Black politics that followed the violent suppression of Black self-determinationist movements and the imposition of a counterinsurgency, mass incarceration regime at the end of the Sixties. Rather than resist the New Jim Crow/Same Old Rich White Man’s Rule, the Black Misleaderhip Class eagerly offered themselves as co-managers of oppression-- for a small cut of the spoils, and the privileges of racial “leadership.”

It has always been clear to Black Agenda Report that the post-Sixties betrayals of the Black Misleadership Class necessitated that a future Black liberation movement must be largely an internal Black struggle to uproot the corrupted elements in our polity. False unity has become Black folks’ Achilles Heel, allowing Black charlatans free rein in our communities and reserving most elected positions for servants of Capital. The Democratic Party is a predatory edifice of Black disempowerment, from which our people must either free themselves, or become agents of their own perpetual oppression and accomplices in the degradation of humanity, worldwide.

Black youth see the truth, and will act on it, we are certain.

Of Crowns and Kings: Behind The Seen by Dr. Fahamu Pecou

UPDATE by emorejahongkong: After-Bern: Burn It down? Depends On What "It" Is-- And Will Be

• The Democratic Presidential primaries are proceeding without any waivering of the establishment’s determination to prevent nomination of Bernie Sanders by deploying all its powers-- whether formal or informal, and legal or illegal). In response, Bernie’s supporters will need to decide whether to obediently accept another lost game of "chicken," or to "burn down" the Democratic half of the two-party game that is sustained partly by their continued participation. The decision, of whether or not to "burn it down," largely depends on how they view the definition of "it"-- in the present and in the future.

• MainStream Media description of "it" is: anti-Bernie Democratic leaders in a loose and pragmatic coalition in which many are at least trying (constrained by their good-faith view of voter preferences) to deliver at least some progress towards:

• less economic inequality (less-dictated by identity),
• more climate and habitat preservation, and
• less global unilateralism,
• etc.

• An alternative description of "it" is: a top-down herding, into an increasingly conscious conspiracy, of political and economic power-holders and power-seekers, to continue doubling down on “manufacturing consent” while pushing in the following directions:

• Prioritizing the political class’s need, to "leave no Big Donors behind," over everybody else’s need to stop Big Pharma and health insurers from impoverishing and killing not only much of the American population, but also many other American industries;
• Subordinating the economic and health needs, of most people of every ethnic/etc. identity, to the political “benefits” strengthening and co-opting elite "representatives" of each ethnic/etc. identity; • Subordinating the climate & environment damage, to the global strategic “benefits,” of extracting, processing and exporting fossil fuels from North American shale and tar sands;
• Maximizing expenditure on military, surveillance and intelligence infrastructure and activities against foreign and domestic “enemies” (while blurring lines between these activities);
• Redefining dissent and debate as anti-American and anti-democratic (while blurring lines between allegations of conscious treason and unconscious dupe-ism);
• Redefining surveillance and censorship as "protecting democracy" (while eliminating transparency of vote counting and voter opinion monitoring);
• Formalizing National Security Bureaucracy’s power to decide even broad strategic goals of foreign policy (asserting this power was the tail wagging the "personal benefit" dog of testimony at impeachment hearings),
• Demonizing and provoking Russia (up to elevating, to top strategic priority, the "urgent need to fight Russia in Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine") even after collapse of a multi-decade strategy to strategically co-opt China; and
• Coronating, as Democratic Congressional candidates, many veterans (if they are not continuing formal or informal agents) of the Intelligence Community.

• Many elements of the above directions:

• Can be seen as a logical path of least resistance in response to (a) long-term trends, among "Left" and "Right" voters, towards opposing never-ending military interventionism abroad, and (b) feuding (originally driven by Trump’s personality, but potentially outlasting Trump’s individual role) between the National Security State and the Republican President.
• Can be understood as replacement, of the old two-party domination of electoral politics, with new domination by a single "Centrist" umbrella party, which can continually reinforce its power through feedback loops between a party-supporting-government and a government-supporting-party; and
• Can be summarized as a merger of the National Security State with the Democratic Party establishment and with the anti-Trump remnants of the Republican Party establishment.

• If the real "it" is closer to the above "merger" than to the MSM’s sports-style cheer-leading, then which would be more harmful, to Progressives’ local battles and national transition to post-Bernie leadership, between the following choices?

• Four more years of Trump feuding with the National Security State; or

• Eight years for the newly reconfigured system to fine-tune its elite consensus, to expand its technical and psychological capabilities, and to propagandize, bribe and bully the public into accepting the system as being inevitable and immutable and even as embodying "Progress."

Is Bloomberg Buying the DNC? If So, What Does He Plan to Do With It?

Paradise lost. One misstep is all it takes to take the proud down low.

by Thomas Neuburger

Whom the gods would destroy, they first make proud.
—With apologies to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

This is a small point that leads to a larger one. Consider what Mike Bloomberg is building within the Democratic Party, within the DNC. According to the following analysis he's turning the DNC into an anti-Sanders machine, a force loyal to himself, that will operate even after Sanders is nominated, even after Sanders is elected, if he so chooses.

With that he hopes to limit and control what Sanders and his rebellion can do. It's the ultimate billionaire counter-rebellion — own the Party machine that the president normally controls, then use it against him.

Our source for this thought is Glen Ford at Black Agenda Report. Ford is one of the more vitriolic defenders of radical change in America, but in this analysis I don't think he's wrong, at least in making the case that Bloomberg is giving himself that option. But do decide for yourself.

Here's his case:

Bloomberg Wants to Swallow the Democrats and Spit Out the Sandernistas

If, somehow, Bernie Sanders is allowed to win the nomination, Michael Bloomberg and other plutocrats will have created a Democratic Party machinery purpose-built to defy Sanders -- as nominee, and even as president.

The details of his argument are here (emphasis added):

Bloomberg has already laid the groundwork to directly seize the party machinery, the old fashioned way: by buying it and stacking it with his own, paid operatives, with a war-against-the-left budget far bigger than the existing Democratic operation. Bloomberg’s participation in Wednesday’s debate, against all the rules, is proof-of-purchase.

In addition to the nearly million dollar down payment to the party in November that sealed the deal for the debate rules change, Bloomberg has already pledged to pay the full salaries of 500 political staffers for the Democratic National Committee all the way through the November election, no matter who wins the nomination. Essentially, Bloomberg will be running the election for the corporate wing of the party, even if Sanders is the nominee.

In an interview with PBS’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday night, senior Bloomberg advisor Timothy O’Brien made it clear that the DNC is in no condition to refuse being devoured by Bloomberg, even if they wanted to. O’brien predicted the Republicans will spend at least $900 million on the election, while the DNC has only about $8 million on hand. Even the oligarch’s underlings are telegraphing the takeover game plan.

Bloomberg is not so much running for president as making sure that the Democrats don’t go “rogue” anti-corporate to accommodate the Sandernistas. He is ensuring that the Democratic Party will be an even more hostile environment for anti-austerity politics than in the past – not in spite of the phenomenal success of the Sanders project, but because of it.

Ford has not much love for Bernie Sanders, as he finds Sanders (and his supporters) weak for sticking with the Democrats. Ford thinks Sanders should go "third party" in his opposition to the corrupt duopoly that owns our politics. That's a point on which we can disagree without disagreeing that the duopoly is indeed corrupt, or that Bloomberg is setting himself up for post-electoral mischief.

Ford also thinks the Party will split in the face of this anti-Sanders resistance, especially if the counter-resistance continues after a President Sanders is inaugurated.

We'll see about all that. Ford may be right in his estimate of Bloomberg's intentions. He may also be right in Bloomberg's ability to carry through if his intentions are indeed as Machiavellian as he says.

On the other hand, Sanders may gather to himself enough control of the DNC and other Party machinery that he does indeed transform it, and with it, slowly, the Party itself. That's certainly been his game plan, and if he does indeed have a movement behind him — a really big one — I wouldn't bet against him being right. I myself don't see a way for a third party to succeed in the U.S. unless it's a "virtual third party" — but more on that at another time.

The Larger Point

So this is our smaller point, that Mike Bloomberg may be positioning himself to "own" the DNC, and with it enough of the Democratic Party, so that he can himself rein in a President Sanders. Is that his goal? It certainly seems possible. "Mini-Mike" is certainly Machiavellian.

Which leads to the larger point: How much rebellion, within the DNC and elsewhere, with or without Bloomberg's interference, will someone like President Sanders encounter and how long will it last? If it lasts throughout his presidency, that's a horse of a different color — a much darker one.

In fact, the dark horse of today's American politics is the entrenched, corrupt (and frankly, pathological) über-rich and their death grip on all of our governing institutions, including the press. Will that death grip tighten as the Sanders movement grows? And will they continue to squeeze the throats of the working class, even as the victims find their own throats and tighten in response?

Would you bet, in other words, that the rich who rule us wouldn't kill the country that feeds their wealth — wouldn't spark such a confused and violent rebellion that even they would be forced at last to flee — won't do all all this out of animus, pique and world-historical hubris?

That bet is even money all the way. They just might try it, just might be willing to strangle the body itself, the political body, just to see how far it they can get by doing it.

Whom the gods would destroy...