I'm Sure There Are Also Good Obama Alumni Too, Right?

After Tuesday's post on the Rahm Emanuel column in The Atlantic, one of the cynics who comment at DWT got the point and wrote "Rahm laments that nobody ever was held responsible. He indicts himself here. It was his influence that was quite significant in writing and passing GLBA and CFMA (the latter to juice the Chicago mercantile exchange). And those became the foundation of the fraud schemes that blew up in 2008. If we did a true post mortem on 2008, Rahm should be first among equals who should have their heads mounted on pikes. Rahm is no idiot. He knows he's pure evil. Yet he also knows that his audience for this is sooooo fuuuuucking stuuuuuupid that they'll never connect anything back to him. He's golden. Skip Kaltenheuser also read the post and and noted that "despite Emanuel’s startling come-to-Jesus epiphany in The Atlantic, looks like CNN or MSNBC is looking to hire him to do hits on Bernie, perhaps The Atlantic article is an effort to establish himself with plausible deniability as he puts his icepicks in Bernie, Omar and AOC. And likely any other progressive with the temerity to criticize oppression of the Palestinians."

Curtis Black, did a little historical analysis at The Intercept as Chicago finally got rid of Rahm this week: The Definitive Guide For Cable Hosts, Bookers And Editors To The Fraud And Failure That Was Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. His brother Ari's talent agency has been trying to find him a suitable tigon TV. I wish they'd ignore cable news and go for a role on one of the many Game Of Throne prequels being planned, perhaps as an early white walker in The Long Night. Not likely. As Black said, he's already advising party leaders "to 'drive what I call a triangulation'-- using the term for the discredited strategy under which the Clinton administration (and a younger Rahm Emanuel) pursued punitive welfare reform and mandatory minimum sentences in order to win over Republican voters. He also famously advised grassroots party activists to 'take a chill pill' following Trump’s election, while Emanuel unsuccessfully tried to find common ground with the new administration on infrastructure spending and on limiting police oversight in Chicago. Emanuel appears to be 'developing a new side gig: warning Democrats about the dangers of 21st Century progressivism,' criticizing newly-elected U.S. Reps. Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and 'hoping there’s a demand for one last defender of the neoliberalism that defined his career-- a voice to warn his party against the perils of socialism,' according to Chicago Magazine. This, despite the fact that six socialists were elected to the City Council in Chicago’s recent election."

Emanuel has a set of talking points to claim a variety of accomplishments for his mayoralty, and he’s even writing a book on “why mayors rule the world”-- though one local pundit says the book “sounds more like a revisionist memoir about an egomaniac’s eight years in office building his personal brand and the fancy part of town while letting down struggling Chicagoans.”

Long known for his skill at attracting favorable media coverage, Emanuel seems to be doing quite well on that count. East and West Coast TV hosts from Fareed Zakaria to Bill Maher fawn over his tough-guy image and supposed strategic brilliance, but they never offer any reality checks.

So let’s do one. A national audience deserves to know what those of us in Chicago have already figured out: Emanuel’s mayoral administration is littered with failures and false claims, and the recent elections in Chicago represents a complete repudiation of the Emanuel years. The new mayor, Lori Lightfoot, was one of Emanuel’s foremost critics on police reform. Alderman Patrick O’Connor, Emanuel’s City Council floor leader, a 40-year incumbent, was one of several top mayoral allies who were defeated-- in O’Connor’s case, by a young Latino Democratic socialist. Meanwhile, Emanuel’s finance committee chair is now facing federal corruption charges, and his zoning committee chair disappeared in December when word leaked that he wore a wire for the feds after coming under investigation himself.

And on a significant range of issues, Chicagoans are turning away from Emanuel’s initiatives.

Black then goes into some depth about how Emanuel completely botched the 6 great crises that plagued Chicago while he was in city hall:

• The Mental Health Crisis
• The Environmental Crisis
• The Education Crisis
• The Housing Crisis
• The Infrastructure Crisis
• The Policing Crisis

Rahm, though, is hardly the only stinking pile of crap left over from the Obama years. About a month ago, we looked at Jim Messina in light of his backing for McKinsey Pete.

Yesterday, Judd Legum at Popular Information revealed the corporate conflicts of Obama's former campaign manager, now a prominent Democratic pundit. "On national television, Messina is harshly criticizing candidates like Elizabeth Warren, who has vowed to reign in corporate power. But Messina does not disclose that he is paid to advocate for some of the same companies that Warren wants to break up." Messina is a truly disgusting artifact left over from the Obama years-- every bit as malignant and toxic as Rahm Emanuel. And he very much wants you to know that "he thinks Elizabeth Warren is a hypocrite. In a Monday appearance on MSNBC, Messina blasted Warren for calling for the breakup of Facebook and other large tech companies but still buying campaign ads on the Facebook platform.'She's out there spending millions of dollars on Facebook, which she wants to break up,' Messina said, 'that logic doesn't make sense to me… stop playing games.' Messina also criticized Warren and Kamala Harris for refusing to participate in a Fox News townhall. Watch:





Messina's criticism of Warren was enthusiastically amplified by right-wing media outlets."

What Messina did not talk about is his day job as a "strategic consultant" for corporations. Among Messina's clients is Google, a company that Warren has advocated splitting up. He serves on the board of PillPack, a company owned by Amazon, which also has been targeted by Warren. According to Messina's website, he also represents "Uber, Airbnb, and Delta Air Lines."

But most of Messina's corporate clients -- he says he has more than 70-- are undisclosed. Messina says the mission of his consulting work is to be an "ally" to these corporations and give "businesses an edge."

In his pitch to potential corporate clients, Messina touts himself as the "mastermind behind President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign."

According to one client, Messina has a knack for stimulating public support for corporate agendas. "We have hired Messina to work on grassroots initiatives. Online gaming is one of those. Jim is as politically astute as they come and he will be a great resource for us," Geoff Freeman, president of the American Gaming Association, said.

Messina never disclosed his corporate work on the MSNBC segment and was introduced only as Obama's former campaign manager.

Messina's work across the pond

It's unclear why people should value Messina's views on the 2020 Democratic primary field. Messina's recent political work has been in support of right-wing candidates. In 2017, Messina worked for Conservative British Prime Minister Theresa May.

During the campaign, May whipped up anti-immigrant sentiment and vowed to slash immigration, sounding very much like Donald Trump. “When immigration is too high, when the pace of change is too fast, it’s impossible to build a cohesive society,” May said. May claimed that immigration drove down wages, strained public services, and created “close to zero” economic benefit.

May promoted withdrawal from the EU, known as "Brexit," as a way to limit legal immigration from unskilled Europeans. This vision for the UK's immigration system matches a new immigration plan unveiled by Trump last week.

During her tenure as home secretary, the UK government detained and deported "longstanding Caribbean immigrants who had every right to live in the UK."

Messina played a similar role for May's Conservative predecessor, David Cameron, in 2015. In that election, Messina was "credited with playing a critical role for the Conservatives by targeting messages at specific voters who could be persuaded to switch from the Liberal Democrats." Cameron campaigned on a platform that would have virtually eliminated the ability of unions to strike.

Messina's work for Cameron put him at odds with another former Obama advisor, David Axelrod, who worked for the liberal candidate, the Labour Party's Ed Miliband.

The most homophobic ad of modern political history

Messina's willingness to leverage bigotry for political gain did not start in the UK. As the campaign manager for former Senator Max Baucus in 2002, Messina released "one of the more homophobic ads of modern political times." The ad, set to a soundtrack from a pornographic movie, "featured footage from a 20-year-old TV ad for a hair salon run by Baucus’s opponent, Mike Taylor...who was seen massaging a man’s face while wearing an open-front shirt, and hence was obviously supposed to be gay."

"Mike Taylor: Not the way we do business in Montana," the narrator says ominously.

In 2010, President Obama reportedly wanted to announce his support for same-sex marriage. But Messina allegedly warned him that speaking publicly could "cost you a couple of battleground states; North Carolina, for one."

But Messina continues to hold sway over powerful people in the Democratic party. According to the Washington Post, Messina appeared at a gathering of "107 of the Democratic Party's biggest bundlers" in March.

Hey! How about some equal time for a progressive viewpoint?

Messina plays favorites

The media regularly asks Messina for his views on the 2020 Democratic primary field. And Messina, under the banner of "Obama's former campaign manager," consistently trashes candidates seeking to reduce corporate power.

"He's an old, angry guy running against Donald Trump, who's an old, angry guy. That's not a contrast," Messina said of Senator Bernie Sanders in the Washington Post.

Messina told ABC News that Sanders, who is calling for single-payer health care and increased corporate taxes, couldn't beat Trump because he couldn't compete with Trump's economic message. "I think if you look at swing voters in this country they are incredibly focused on the economy... I think today you look at it and say that Bernie Sanders is unlikely going to be able to stand up to the constant barrage that is Donald Trump on economic issues," Messina said. Those comments were highlighted by Fox News.

Messina also criticized Warren's decision not to hold high-dollar fundraisers where wealthy people get access to her in exchange for large donations. "Here's the problem: The new map of having California and Texas so early means money is going to be even more important in the Democratic primary, unfortunately... And Senator Warren just decided to get rid of half of her fund-raising ability," Messina told the Washington Post.

After Warren and other candidates advocated for the elimination of the electoral college, which enabled Trump to win despite losing the popular vote, Messina spoke out against the idea, saying it would mean presidential candidates wouldn't visit small states.

Messina has had kinder words for Beto O'Rourke, who doesn't emphasize critiques of corporate America and is popular with the large tech companies that Messina represents. Messina said O'Rourke had a rare combination of "inspiration, aspiration, and authenticity" and praised him for playing the air drums. "He is authentic, and luckily, authentically cool. For him to play air drums to the Who or skateboard is both authentic and cool. People want to hang out with him."

See? Biden isn't the only garbage left over from the Obama years that threaten a progressive America. Just be careful.

McKinsey Pete

McKinsey is a worldwide management consulting firm which conducts qualitative and quantitative analysis to evaluate management decisions across public and private sectors. Their clientele includes 80% of the world's largest corporations. McKinsey's culture has often been compared to a religion or a cult because of the influence, loyalty and zeal of its members. McKinsey's fingerprints can be found at the scene of some of the most spectacular corporate and financial debacles of recent decades, from Enron, the 2008 financial meltdown and ICE to authoritarian regimes in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Ukraine.

Peter Pumpkinhead came to town
Spreading wisdom and cash around
Fed the starving and housed the poor
Showed the Vatican what gold's for
But he made too many enemies
Of the people who would keep us on our knees
Hooray for Peter Pumpkin
Who'll pray for Peter Pumpkinhead?
Oh my!
Peter Pumpkinhead pulled them all
Emptied churches and shopping malls
Where he spoke, it would raise the roof
Peter Pumpkinhead told the truth
But he made too many enemies...
Peter Pumpkinhead put to shame
Governments who would slur his name
Plots and sex scandals failed outright
Peter merely said
Any kind of love is alright
But he made too many enemies...
Peter Pumpkinhead was too good
Had him nailed to a chunk of wood
He died grinning on live TV
Hanging there he looked a lot like you
And an awful lot like me!
But he made too many enemies...
Hooray for Peter Pumpkin
Who'll pray for Peter Pumpkin
Hooray for Peter Pumpkinhead
Oh my oh my oh!
Doesn't it make you want to cry oh?

- One of Andy Partridge's crazier songs

Alas, a lot of people I know tell me they like Mayor Pete. I'm not going to called him "Mayor Pete" any longer. I'll stick to Pete Buttigieg, now that I can spell it, or McKinsey, Pete since it describes him better, in my mind, than "Mayor Pete." It was easy to persuade my youngest sister to forget about Pete. I asked her to read this so we could talk about his candidacy apart from the sharp and apparently very effective p.r. initiatives by the magical Lis Smith. My sister, I'm happy to relay, is back on Team Bernie and persuading everyone she knows that McKinsey Pete needs to be as well-investigated as Beto was before everyone she knows dropped him too. But my sister is easy. Next week I'll be speaking to a roomful of evangelical-pastors-for-Pete. That's going to be a much harder not to crack; many are absolutely smitten.

At one time folks who are falling for Pete, were falling for Jim Messina-- not the musician, the other one-- for the same reasons. I think Messina's fallen for Pete too. Just a hunch. Although someone seems to have dug up fellow management consultant Messina to spread a little Bernie-hate around this week. Jonathan Karl wasn't satisfied that every poll shows Bernie beating Trump and he wanted to ask Pete-dopplegänger Messina the burning question on his podcast

Messina: No
Karl: Why?
Messina: "I think if you look at swing voters in this country they are incredibly focused on the economy. I think today you look at it and say that Bernie Sanders is unlikely going to be able to stand up to the constant barrage that is Donald Trump on economic issues."

Huh? Obama was lucky Messina managed the re-elect campaign, not the election. Although, notably, the first time through, Obama 69,498,516 won (52.9%) to 59,948,323 (45.7%) with 365 electoral votes, and the Messina time he only won 65,915,795 (51.1%) to 60,933,504 (47.2%), with 332 electoral votes.

I remember Messina when he was Max Baucus' guy, when Baucus was a super-conservative Dem in the Senate, right up there with Joe Lieberman and Joe Biden, fucking up the country from his perch as chair of the Senate Committee on Finance, where he was able to prevent Medicare-for-All, while taking immense bribes from the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries-- something he now says he regrets. He also prevented DC from getting statehood, helped get the U.S. into war with Iraq and pass Bush's tax cuts, spread, ironically, his Messina-inspired homophobia, and was able to make sure Biden's anti-working family bankruptcy bill passed. What a legacy! Obama couldn't wait to work with Baucus' guy Messina, aka- "the fixer." After utterly ruining OFA, he opened his own lobbying firm, the Messina Group (although claims he doesn't personally lobby, only consults) and became a consultant to the British Conservative Party, helping them successfully beat the Labour Party in 2015 and then lose the Brexit vote soon after. (He was also a consultant for Spain's far right prime minister, Mariano Rajoy and, later, very unsuccessfully for Theresa May.)

A couple of years ago, Alex Nichols nailed him as a case study in political failure-- How did a Much-Hyped, Highly Paid Political Consultant Amount To Nothing? He exposes him and other "consultants, strategists, and data wonks" like him as "grifters and frauds"

Messina was a favorite of “wonks” until relatively recently. A 2012 Bloomberg profile titled “Obama’s CEO” provides a perfect distillation of Messina’s carefully cultivated image, comparing his storytelling abilities to TED Talks and praising him for learning from the executives at Google, Facebook, and Zynga. The article goes: “Messina is convinced that modern presidential campaigns are more like fast-growing tech companies than anything found in a history book and his own job is like that of the executives who run them.” This may have been the last time anyone was positively compared to Zynga, the mobile gaming giant that lost 85 percent of its value that year, but it was eerily prescient.

While Messina pushed Obama and Congressional Democrats to satisfy the every whim of corporate lobbyists, he took the opposite approach to the grassroots activists who propelled Obama to victory in 2008. Messina convinced Obama to stall his campaign promise to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell for nearly three years before he finally capitulated to increasingly furious progressives in 2010. Messina was designated the liaison to the Common Purpose Project, a coalition of progressive groups like Planned Parenthood and the Center for American Progress. Members of these groups complained that during meetings, Messina “used his influence to try to stifle any criticism of Baucus or lobbying by progressive groups that was out of sync with the administration’s agenda.” An anonymous Democratic strategist told The Nation in 2011 that “There is not a bone in [Messina’s] body that speaks to or comprehends the idea of a movement and that grassroots energy. To me, that’s bothersome.”

In hindsight, the string of spectacular failures Messina’s career has wrought seems inevitable. His successes were not exactly successes; he rose to prominence as the campaign strategist for a senator who had unlimited corporate funding and no opposition. Obama’s victories with Messina, it would appear, were the result of his remarkable charisma and speaking abilities, which Al Gore, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton sorely lacked. The grassroots support that Obama garnered in 2008 existed despite Messina’s campaign strategies, not because of them. In 2008, Obama was aided by Bush’s abysmal approval rating, Iraq War fatigue, the worst economic downturn since 1929, and Sarah Palin. In 2012, the GOP made the terrible decision to ignore the surge in grassroots anti-government hysteria and instead run a flip-flopping coward. The candidates in those elections won or lost mostly because of their individual qualities, not because of gifted strategists or lack thereof.

Messina’s disastrous failures are not his alone. The cottage industry of political consultancy is built to swindle campaigns. The expensive strategies recommended by top consultants bring to mind a mechanic selling a series of unnecessary repairs and upgrades to a car-illiterate customer. Everyone gets the premium windshield wipers -- the stock ones snap like a twig. Campaign in Labour strongholds rather than defending your own seats. Working-class voters will turn out if you promise to bring back the ivory trade and legalize fox hunting. But, like any form of embezzlement, this kind of salesmanship works best during an economic bubble, and when the bubble pops, everyone suddenly starts paying closer attention to the budget. Faced with the possibility that they may never win again, establishment politicians have no choice but to clean house. If even a faint shadow of meritocracy still exists in London and D.C., the closest Jim Messina will ever get to politics again is if the Capitol Building hires him as a janitor.

Unless the Establishment is able to make another soulless consultant, the dopplegänger, win. Harry Enten for CNN: "Buttigieg's core support may position him to seem more popular to national media than he actually is... Buttigieg does best among wealthier Democrats. Take a look at recent polling from California (Quinnipiac University), Iowa (Monmouth University) and nationally (Quinnipia). In all three cases, Buttigieg's support more than doubles as one goes from voters making less than $50,000 to greater than $100,000. The jump is rather dramatic in the Iowa poll, which had Buttigieg at 7% among those earning less than $50,000 and at 15% with those earning more than $100,000. The national media tends to live in the wealthiest areas. The New York City and Washington, DC, metropolitan areas are both in the top 3% for per capita incomes among metro or micropolitan areas. Buttigieg also seems to be doing his best among white Democrats. His support among white Democrats in the Quinnipiac poll of California and nationally stood at 8% and 6% respectively. Among the nonwhite crosstab listed in those places (Hispanics in California and African-Americans nationally), it was at 2% and 0% respectively."

But he sure understands the power of branding and marketing. How could you come out of McKinsey and not? I bet he's even better than Trump at it. Just what we need in a president!

Apart from being flavors of the week that no one knew anything about, Beto and Pete have something else in common: two gentrifiers. Reporting from South Bend for BuzzFeedNews, Henry Gomez wrote that Pete's gentrification plan included knocking down hundreds of homes in black and Latino neighborhoods. "Buttigieg, the improbable, suddenly upper-tier Democratic contender, treats the initiative as an unfailing example of his executive leadership and one that shows why the mayor of South Bend, Indiana (population 102,000), deserves a promotion to the White House. Buttigieg gave himself a nice, round-numbered goal and an urgent deadline: 1,000 vacant and abandoned houses bulldozed or repaired within 1,000 days. Then he finished ahead of schedule."

“In some ways, it was a classic example of data-driven management paying off,” Buttigieg writes in his recent political memoir. “But the most important impact of the effort was unquantifiable. Hitting such an ambitious goal made it easier for residents to believe we could do very difficult things as a city, at a time when civic confidence had been in short supply for decades.”

But the story of what happened in between-- of an ambitious white leader literally plowing ahead before addressing concerns in the community of color-- is not the story Buttigieg, 37, tells. You won’t read about that part in his book. You likely won’t hear about it when Buttigieg, who would be the youngest and first openly gay president, preaches “intergenerational justice,” or Sunday, when he's expected to officially launch his campaign from the city's revitalized downtown.

The fallout from his approach to urban redevelopment has relevance in a primary where candidates promote economic and racial equality. The “1,000 Houses in 1,000 Days” program promoted neither, at least not at first, in the minds of critics who spoke to BuzzFeed News.

... The mayor’s data-driven approach, which he nurtured in his twenties as a consultant for the global management firm McKinsey & Co., has impressed the council president. “There’s a lot of concern sometimes to try new things,” Scott said. “Pete was really good about trying new things. He always has data.”

To others, the Buttigieg way is often too rigid, and devoid of the human touch.

“If you’re going to argue with him, you better have some good data,” said one critic, who requested anonymity for fear of political retaliation in a city where Buttigieg easily won reelection in 2015. “But he’ll still tell you he has better data.”

One thing before we get to Type O Negative. When Messina told Jonathan Karl that he feels Bernie can't beat Trump because if you just "look at swing voters in this country they are incredibly focused on the economy [and] Bernie Sanders is unlikely going to be able to stand up to the constant barrage that is Donald Trump on economic issues," there was virtually no sense at all being made. And Karl didn't challenge him. Did they not watch the Fox News town hall from Bethlehem, PA, Trump-country? Everyone else seems to have been watching it. According to Nielsen it was the most-watched town hall of the 2020 campaign so far (2.5 million viewers), totally beating MSNBC and CNN town halls, for Bernie and for all of the other candidates. It brought in 489,000 viewers between the ages of 25 and 54-- a key demographic for cable-news advertisers-- trouncing CNN’s 281,000 tally and MSNBC’s 208,000. So... McKinsey Pete's handlers are already negotiating with Fox for his own town hall.

Who was in that audience that wound up chanting "Bernie, Bernie, Bernie" by the end, that audience where it looked like everyone was ready to tear up their private insurance card and sign on for Medicare-For-All on the spot?

Looks like someone's gettin' a lane 

Bethlehem is a small city of around 75,000 that spans the border between Leigh and Northampton counties, just east of Allentown. Charlie Dent had represented the area since 2004 but he retired and Democrat Susan Wild beat Republican Marty Nothstein to replace him. In 2016, Hillary beat Bernie in both counties during the primary and then in the general, Hillary beat Trump by just over 4 points in Lehigh County and Trump beat Hillary by around the same margin in Northampton County. There were lots of Trump voters and Hillary voters and they don't seem to have the same problem with Bernie that the consulting class does. OK, you earned it-- Type O Negative, goth from Brooklyn. (Spoiler: they changed Joe to Pete in the song, not because of Buttigieg but because the lead singer is Peter Steele.)

Can Jim Messina's And Señor Trumpanzee's Ineptness Help Jeremy Corbyn Win Tomorrow?

Tomorrow is election day in the U.K. And John Nichols thinks you should be as excited as Bernie is about Jeremy Corbyn's anti-austerity campaign. Bernie even went over there to campaign for him, probably hoping Trump would deliver the coup de grâce for the Conservative Party by endorsing Theresa May. Like Bernie, Corbyn "was written off as too far left, and too fiercely opposed to austerity." The same way we have a dominant Republican wing of the Democratic Party here-- the Blue Dogs and New Dems-- muddying up the Democratic brand, over there they have the same garbage, "New Labour," wrecking the Labour Party brand with their Conservative-lite agenda. And they really hate Corbyn, enough so that they're working hard to help Therea May's hapless, floundering campaign. Obama shithead Jim Messina-- a Rahm Emanuel protégé-- has been running the Conservative campaign... all the same corrupt Big Money politics.

But Corbyn and his Labor comrades have mounted a potent challenge to British Prime Minister Theresa May and her Conservative Party. May’s Tories retain a lead in the polls as the campaign races toward Thursday’s vote, but several surveys have Corbyn’s team within striking distance of upsetting expectations.

Corbyn’s stronger than expected run on a “For the Many, Not the Few” manifesto-- which proposes to tax the rich, reverse privatization schemes and invest in health care and education-- has excited the British left. And it has excited Sanders. “I have been very impressed by the work that Corbyn has done and the campaign that he is running and I wish him the very best,” the senator declared in a speech at the Brighton Festival... “I am aware of what Corbyn not only is doing now, but what we has done for the last several years.” That is true; when Corbyn’s left-wing challenge upset the calculus in the 2015 contest for leadership of the Labour Party, Sanders said: “At a time of mass income and wealth inequality throughout the world, I am delighted to see that the British Labour party has elected Jeremy Corbyn as its new leader. We need leadership in every country in the world which tells the billionaire class that they cannot have it all. We need economies that work for working families, not just the people on top... What has impressed me-- and there is a real similarity between what he has done and what I have done-- is he has taken on the establishment of the Labour Party and he has gone to the grassroots and he has tried to transform that party and take on a lot of establishment opposition,” he said of Corbyn. “That is exactly what I am trying to do in the US with the Democratic party.”

“I am also impressed by his willingness to talk about class issues,” added Sanders, who explained that: “Too many people run away from the grotesque levels of income and wealth inequality that exist in the United States, that exist in the UK, and I believe we will never make the kinds of changes that we needs unless we take on this issue of income and wealth inequality and create an economy that works for all of us.”

So another hopeless, utopian dream? Not at all. When Therea May called the election, it looked like she would bury Corbyn. But if there's one thing Jim Messina knows how to do-- with every fiber of his body-- is lose. Messina has run a filthy smear campaign against Corbyn, just like Rahm taught him. It's backfired against his dreadful candidate. When the campaign began, polls were predicting that the Conservatives with em up with over 400 seats with maybe 150-160 for Labour. Today's YouGov poll tells a very different story-- the Conservatives with 42% of the vote (302 seats, not enough to form a government) and Labour with 38% and 269 seats. With the Scottish National Party winning 44 seats, the Liberal Democrats with 12 seats and Northern Ireland with 18 seats, the Theresa May could be looking at a hung Parliament-- or worse, an anti-conservative coalition led by Corbyn.

Today's Independent ran the provocative headline Jeremy Corbyn just ran the campaign of his life, while Theresa May led one of the worst in recent history, and an even more provocative story below it.

So many things, on the final day, illustrate the difference between the two campaigns. In a hermetically sealed community centre in Norwich, Conservative party staff gave lessons to activists on the correct way to wave centrally produced and distributed placards for the TV cameras. "Up. Down. Up. Down," was the advice. "Not side to side."

On a parade of shops in Watford, the two hundred or so, young looking, normal looking people that turned up had made their own. And as they waited, in the time that might otherwise have been spent on placard-waving tutorial, they chanted badly reworked football songs about Jeremy Corbyn.

Jeremy Corbyn, finally arrived, to whoops of great delight, and spelled out how, "The choice facing the country could not clearer,” a nine year old boy bellowed, "VOTE LABOUR!"

"That was, actually the conclusion I was leading to," Corbyn told him. "If you'll just let me take a bit more time to get there."

You don’t get that on the Theresa Tour.

When Corbyn had finished a rousing tricolon on Conservative police cuts, and yet "they act surprised there’s a shortage of police officers!" one young man shouted "Bastards!" while another offered "Wankers!"

You don’t get that in Theresa’s privately booked sports hall. Nor do you get Bangladeshi shopkeepers, leaning out of upstairs windows, filming on their smartphones.

The two realistic options on the ballot paper tomorrow certainly look more different than at any point arguably in living memory. Even Corbyn and May agree on that, the “choice facing the country has never been clearer.” Both of them said the same words.

Corbyn has been drawing bigger crowds than any UK leader since Churchill. That must infuriate his biggest detractor (Tony Blair).

Yesterday's NY Times ran an OpEd by Roger Cohen, A Case For Jeremy Corbyn, referring to May as the "Trump-coddling, self-important, flip-flopping Theresa May, ensconced at 10 Downing Street without ever being elected prime minister." It's clear he wants Corbyn to win so he can blame Trump. After the "two unspeakable terrorist attacks, one in Manchester and one in London... Trump tried to make cheap political capital from the blood on London’s streets. He quoted London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, out of context in a flurry of tweets aimed at buttressing the case for his bigotry. The president of the United States just felt like insulting a prominent Muslim."

Trump bears about the same relationship to dignity as carbon dioxide to clean air. And this is the man May and [crackpot Foreign Secretary Boris] Johnson have coddled, in the name of offsetting the Brexit debacle with increased U.S. trade.

Johnson, by the way, assured the world a couple of months back that British seduction of Trump had been so effective that efforts to convince the president not to quit the Paris climate accord “will succeed.” After all, Trump had been offered a state visit, horse-drawn carriage, the queen; all that British pomp for His Neediness. We know what the word of Johnson, who was for the European Union before he was against it, is worth. It’s worth zilch. No wonder Trump’s finger-to-the-planet Paris decision prompted scarcely a British whimper.

Of all the obscene spectacles one has had to endure over the past several months, the worst has been that of the United States and Britain-- their finest hour but a wan memory-- competing for the favor and lucre of despots. To heck with the European Union, there’s always Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Xi Jinping. So begins the post-American century. How we have fallen.

Disgust, at some level, must find an outlet. Suddenly, we have an election after all. The expected Tory landslide has evaporated. May has led an abysmal, blundering, eat-your-peas campaign.

The prime minister embraced a hard Brexit at a moment when some people are finally experiencing buyers’ remorse. She came up with a “dementia tax,” the essence of which was to punish people for living too long; it did not go down well. She has exuded “this sense of entitlement,” in the words of Parry Mitchell, a member of the House of Lords who quit the Labour Party last year over Corbyn’s radicalism.

Corbyn, by contrast, has made no campaign mistakes. His slogan-- “For the Many not the Few”-- was no less effective for having been borrowed from Tony Blair. The ardor of his followers, particularly the urban under-30s, is remarkable. To them he is a near Messianic figure, the righter of capitalist wrongs; the proud socialist who will nationalize the railroads, make universities free again and inject billions into the National Health Service (while somehow balancing the budget). Like Bernie Sanders, and indeed Trump, he’s the man who will upend the system that brought you the Iraq war, the 2008 financial meltdown, the euro crisis, rampant impunity and ever-more-unequal societies.

Opinion polls now put Corbyn within a few percentage points of May. There is the possibility of a hung parliament.

Who Thinks The DCCC Needs To Recruit More Republican-Lite Candidates To Win In 2018?

Brand New Congress put out that graphic just above, presumably as a reminder to House Democrats that Democratic voters very much favor H.R. 676, John Conyer's bill to make Medicare available to all Americans. Paul Ryan and his leadership team have it buried in the Subcommittee on Indian, Insular and Alaska Native Affairs but there were 51 original co-sponsors and since then over two dozen more have signed on. The graphic isn't strictly up to date.

Sure most of the names are the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- reactionary Bluye Dogs and New Dems and their fellow travelers, scum who all deserve to be primaried. But some of the names on it are absurd. I'm pretty certain, based now hat she's said in the past, that Maxine Waters (D-CA) supports Medicare for All. I called Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) and said something to the effect of, "Dude, this is got to be a mistake, right?" And he said something to the effect of, "Dude, that is totally wrong; I signed on as an official co-sponsor."

Two of the most right-wing Democrats in Congress are from Arizona and they're as far from Gallego as you could be politically. Freshman Tom O'Halleran is an ex-Republican who got into Congress-- thank Pelosi for spending $2,696,962 to elect him-- and immediately started voting with his old comrades in the GOP. According to ProgressivePunch, he doesn't just have an "F," he has a crucial vote score of 30.77, worse than any Democrat in Congress other than fellow Blue Dogs Josh Gottheimer (NJ) and Stephanie Murphy (FL), each of whom scored 23.08. Among non-freshmen, the worst Democrat in Congress is the loathsome Kyrsten Sinema with her lifetime score of 35.82. This year Sinema seems to be trying to break a record. Her crucial vote score is 7.69, not just the worst of any Democrat in Congress but worse than 11 Republicans and exactly tied with almost two dozen other Republicans-- like Freedom Caucus chairman Mark Meadows (R-NC) and laughable crackpot Louie Gohmert (TX). Most of the crap Democrats aren't subject to primary challenges. Sinema, however, has drawn a much-deserved prgressive opponent, Talia Fuentes.

But look at the two dozen worst Democrats in the House-- based on their lifetime vote scores-- from bad to worse:

• Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR)- 60.77
• Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA)- 58.66
• Al Lawson (FL)- 58.33
• Dan Lipinski (Blue Dog-IL)- 57.83
• Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN)- 56.42
• Brad Schneider (Blue Dog-IL)- 52.07
• Filemon Vela (Blue Dog-TX)- 51.91
• Ami Bera (New Dem-CA)- 50.38
• Pete Aguilar (New Dem-CA)- 49.10
• Raul Ruiz (CA)- 49.10
• Scott Peters (New Dem-CA)- 48.99
• Cheri Bustos (Blue Dog-IL)-48.35
• Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY)- 45.11
• Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)- 43.63
• Charlie Crist (FL)- 41.67
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)- 39.71
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)- 38.96
• Lou Correa (Blue Dog-CA)- 38.46
• Jacky Rosen (NV)- 38.46
• Tom Suozzi (NY)- 38.46
• Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ)- 35.82
• Tom O'Halleran (Blue Dog-AZ)- 30.77
• Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog-NJ)- 23.08
• Stephanie Murphy (Blue Dog-FL)- 23.08

And how many of them have signed on to the Medicare for All legislation? None. Not one. And how many have primary challengers? Just two as far as I can tell: Sinema and Long Island freshman Tom Suozzi, who looks like he's getting a rematch from Jon Kaiman. Democrats should be able to do better than that-- much better. Weak incumbents in blue districts who should be targeted: Schrader (OR), Bishop (GA), Lipinski (IL), Cooper (TN), Schneider (IL), Vela (TX), Bera (CA), Aguilar (CA), Ruiz (CA), Peters (CA), Maloney (NY), Costa (CA), Cuellar (TX), Correa (CA) and Rosen (NV). Helluva lot of garbage in blue-blue California!

Did you read Nick Kristof's OpEd, In Trump Country, Shock at Trump Budget Cuts, but Still Loyalty, over the weekend? Democrats can't depend on buyer's remorse over Trump to win them back the House in 2018. He tells the story of a moron in Tulsa, Rhonda McCracken, who was beaten and choked by her husband, once until she was unconsciousness. A moron unable to deal in abstracts and connect that kind of behavior to Trumpism, she voted for him anyway and is now upset because his budget would cut federal funds for Tulsa Domestic Violence Intervention Services which she credits with saving her and her son's lives. She's praying Congress will step in and save the day. A brain-dead Republican, she's unaware that all 5 congressmembers from Oklahoma-- including her own, Jim Bridenstine-- are Republicans who are opposed to any spending on these kinds of services and would happy to see them abolished. (They also voted against the Violence Against Women Act.) But she's prayin'.

Kristof says he was interviewing people like her in Oklahoma-- "fervent Trump supporters who now find that the White House is trying to ax programs they have depended on, to pay for Trump’s border wall and for increases in military spending. And they’re upset." But not that upset. "These voters may be irritated, but I was struck by how loyal they remain to Trump." He wrote that he "talked to many Trump voters about the impact if Trump’s budget cuts go through, and none regretted their votes in November. They all said that they might vote for Trump for re-election." Although one of the bigoted morons-- who voted for Trump because she hates Hispanics-- acknowledged that Trump's proposed cuts to a Labor Department’s Senior Community Service Employment Program that she considers "her lifeline" might means that she's lose her job. "I'll sit home and die." That'll keep her from voting for Trump and his Republican enablers, but probably nothing else.

Some of the loyalty seemed to be grounded in resentment at Democrats for mocking Trump voters as dumb bigots, some from a belief that budgets are complicated, and some from a sense that it’s too early to abandon their man. They did say that if jobs didn’t reappear, they would turn against him.

One recent survey found that only 3 percent of Trump voters would vote differently if the election were today (and most of those would vote for third-party candidates; only 1 percent said they would switch to voting for Hillary Clinton).

Call me a hopeless idiot but maybe if the Democratic Party offered good candidates-- unlike the ones discussed above... What do you think? Maybe? We should try. What do we have to lose? Pelosi and her DCCC already lost dozens and dozens of congressional seats by offering dog shit quality Republican-lite candidates year after year after year. If people want something like Jim Bridenstine, that's what the Republican Party is for. How about a real alternative, rather than crap like Kyrsten Sinema or Jim Costa?

Koching Up Our World Very Badly

America has real enemies who are destroying the country from within-- and that's neither horrific Libyan tyrant Moammar Qaddafi nor-- if he's even alive-- religious fanatic Osama bin-Laden. Predatory and reactionary billionaires Charles and David Koch do more to harm our country at its essential core than any foreign enemy ever has. Yesterday Brave New Films launched the resistance. Take a look at the clip above.

Whether it's in Tripoli, Pakistan or Afghanistan, conservatives always get boehners over collateral damage-- or anywhere else for that matter.

As Congress struggles to negotiate a budget deal to keep the government running, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) told lawmakers Wednesday that the GOP version of the budget bill would result in the deaths of at least 70,000 children who depend on American food and health assistance around the world.

"We estimate, and I believe these are very conservative estimates, that H.R. 1 would lead to 70,000 kids dying," USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah testified before the House Appropriations State and Foreign Ops subcommittee.

"Of that 70,000, 30,000 would come from malaria control programs that would have to be scaled back specifically. The other 40,000 is broken out as 24,000 would die because of a lack of support for immunizations and other investments and 16,000 would be because of a lack of skilled attendants at birth," he said.

Why must these children die? Why must Americans struggle against forces of enslavement? Because the Koch Brothers and 399 other families have the power to have bought all of one political party-- and much of the other-- and can get away without paying their share of taxes. That the discussion in DC-- and in the Koched-up states like Michigan, Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin-- should be about cutting back on ordinary American families while giving away more and more to the 400 greediest and most predatory families is nothing less than criminal. And the Democratic Party-- conflicted and careerist-- is in no position to be our bastion against the determined onslaught.

Which reminds me, Democratic career pols-- even going all the way to the top-- seem to hate and disdain their party's base as much as the Republicans fear theirs. Yesterday The Nation published Ari Berman's great analysis of the role of Obama's enforcer, Jim Messina, someone we cavalierly usually just refer to as Rahm, Jr.

The hardball tactics used by Messina against CAF exemplified how the Obama administration would operate going forward-- insistent on demanding total control, hostile to any public pressure from progressives on dissident Democrats or administration allies, committed to working the system inside Washington rather than changing it. As deputy chief of staff, Messina held the same position once occupied by Karl Rove (and Josh Lyman on The West Wing). He worked as a top lieutenant for Rahm Emanuel and became the administration’s lead enforcer after Emanuel left for Chicago. White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer calls Messina “the most powerful person in Washington that you haven’t heard of.” Messina’s dream job was to become chief of staff. Instead, he recently got an arguably more important assignment-- manager of Obama’s re-election campaign.

...Unlike Plouffe, who became a revered figure among Obama supporters, Messina begins the re-election campaign with a significant amount of baggage. As a former chief of staff to Baucus and deputy to Emanuel, Messina has clashed with progressive activists and grassroots Obama supporters both inside and outside Washington over political strategy and on issues like healthcare reform and gay rights, alienating parts of the very constituencies that worked so hard for Obama in 2008 and that the campaign needs to reinspire and activate in 2012. Obama’s fixer has arguably created as many problems as he’s solved. “He is not of the Obama movement,” says one top Democratic strategist in Washington. “There is not a bone in his body that speaks to or comprehends the idea of a movement and that grassroots energy. To me, that’s bothersome.”

Yeah... bothersome, and as good an explanation as any about why progressives haven't made much progress since the 1940s.

Streams Of Consciousness, Christmas Eve Edition: Korea, Belarus, Jim Messina, et al.

Despite a disastrous meeting between White House political hack Jim Messina-- a kind of dense and clueless Rahm Emanuel sleazebag-- and the Democracy Alliance, a group of top progressive heavy donors (many vowing to never give another dime after hearing the White House's tone-deaf look forward, which apparently didn't include anything about job creation and didn't even mention the word "jobs"), the White House did lay out what many will consider a Christmas present for the nation yesterday, even before a major staff reshuffle. Not as likely to generate headlines as the success they had in repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell, getting a reasonable healthcare package passed for the 9-11 first responders, and getting the START Treaty ratified-- none of which impinged on the core demands of government by the Conservative Consensus ruling elite-- the White House reversed Bush's anti-environmental wilderness policy, restoring federal land managers' powers to curb development on vast tracts of America's back country, undoing what conservation groups called a "no more wilderness" policy put in place under Bush.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced on Thursday that the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will again have the authority to set aside large areas of federally owned territory in the West that it deems as deserving of wilderness protection.

It would still be up to Congress to decide whether to grant those areas formal wilderness status, thus putting them off-limits to energy development and other commercial uses on a permanent basis.

An official wilderness designation by law prohibits the building of roads or other structures, or any human activities that would alter the natural landscape, such as farming, logging, mining, or oil and gas drilling.

Hard to imagine either house of Congress getting behind this, though, financially controlled as each is by the extraction and development industries. It'll give us something to write about going forward, though. Already one of the worst special-interest whores in this area, Utah Republican crook-Senator Orrin Hatch denounced the policy shift as a "brazen" attempt by the Obama to usurp congressionalcontrol of wilderness designations. Hard to imagine Salazar fighting hard enough for the change to see it through to the end.

Bye-bye, Lynn Woolsey?

Lynn Woolsey has done more to retard the effective development of the Congressional Progressive Caucus than anyone else in Congress. As the caucus's co-chair, she sowed the kind of dissension and discord that have marked her entire political career. Long before she made herself famous by undermining the efforts of Raúl Grijalva to forge the CPC into an effective fighting force and long before she backed backed Blue Dog and warmonger Jane Harman against progressive acivist Marcy Winograd-- and long before becoming addled by her addiction to painkillers-- Woolsey had become such a divisive figure in Sonoma County politics that the Petaluma City Council did everything it could to "kick her upstairs" into an open congressional seat and get her out of their hair. It looks like she may actually retire now and get out of the way of real progressive change at a time it is most needed. It won't happen fast enough! (Imagine Norman Solomon replacing her!)

Plenty of Crime On Wall Street... And Punishment?

You're more likely to find a reasonable look at that by reading Rolling Stone than the Wall Street Journal, and Matt Taibbi reports on some real movement in bringing the evildoers to justice.

It took more than two years, but there might finally be some capital sentences handed out for crimes committed during the financial crisis. That’s metaphorically speaking, of course. Like the accounting firm Arthur Anderson, whose head was sacrificed during the Enron debacle, the once-proud financial auditing firm Ernst and Young now looks poised to take a spin down the toilet of history thanks to its role in the Lehman Brothers debacle.

New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is about to file civil fraud charges against E&Y for the work it did helping Lehman cook its books during 2007 and 2008.

Taibbi speculates that this suit is curtains for Ernst and Young and "may be the beginning of a series of investigations that ultimately take down the auditors and ratings agencies that made the financial crisis possible. Without accountants and raters signing off on all the bogus derivative math and bad bookkeeping, a lot of this mess would never have happened."

Belarus, A Nazi Hellhole That Never Dealt With Its Dark Past, In The News Again

I'm guessing most Americans couldn't tell you what or where Belarus is if their lives depended on it. The Republicans made the same bet right after World War II when they sponsored the illegal immigration of hundreds of Belarus Nazis to America, most of whom had been involved in extermination of that country's entire Jewish population. They moved to South River, New Jersey, and, contrary to federal law barring Nazis from immigrating, became citizens and staunch Republicans. Their resettlement was a pilot project for the GOP takeover of Florida with fascist Cuban refugees.

Former U.S. government prosecutor and Army intelligence officer John Loftus has a new book exposing the entire project, America's Nazi Secret. Right-wing elements in the State Department, led by the Dulles brothers, with powerful financial and ideological ties to the Nazis were able to subvert President Truman's policies and, once Eisenhower became president, move into high gear in bringing thousands of genocidal war criminals and Nazis from Belarus and Ukraine to America.

Today, never having dealt effectively with its past, Belarus is one of the world's worst authoritarian hellholes, and today the U.S. human rights organization Freedom House called on the European Union and our own country to renew full sanctions against Belarus.

More than 600 people were detained [including five presidential candidates] in the Belarusian capital [Minsk] during a police crackdown on demonstrators after the presidential vote that the opposition said had been rigged.

"The current situation is much worse than that in 2006, when the EU and U.S. together imposed sanctions against the regime," [Freedom House director David] Kramer added.

Western nations, including the United States, called the 2006 presidential elections in Belarus fraudulent and introduced sanctions against the country and travel bans on some Belarusian officials.

[Alexander] Lukashenko, 56, who has ruled Belarus with an iron rod since 1994 and has been dubbed by the United States "Europe's last dictator" for a clampdown on opposition and dissent, won 79.67% of the vote on Sunday. International monitors said the election was "flawed."

The United States and the European Union have called on Belarusian authorities to immediately release opposition activists who were arrested during the protests.

Wiping North Korea Off The Map Would Probably Guarantee Obama A Second Term-- A Popular Idea In Certain Circles

The U.S. won't be distracted by Belarus's fascism when it's busy provoking North Korea into a suicidal attack on South Korea so it can end the Communist regime there once and for all. Watch the video below explaining what's really happening in Korea and then read the U.S. propaganda version in the Washington Post, which is pushing a right-wing American line that South Korea's puppet-president, Lee Myung-bak, "looks weak" by not acting after all his bellicose statements attacking the North and his election promises to reunite the two countries.

We do remember who made the, um, amazing Jan Brewer governor of Arizona, don't we?

Is this some of that Hope 'n' Change we were proffered? Oh wait, no, it's Hope 'n' Crosby -- even less funny. Never mind.

by Ken

Just to be clear, for the benefit of readers who may not be totally up to date on Howie's ongoing coverage of the outer limits of loony-tune candidates in this election cycle, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is hardly the loopiest of them, bearing in mind just how high the bar for looopiness has been set -- and keeps being raised. One interesting difference, though, is that "Gov." in front of her name. Yessir, ladies and gents, our Jan is actually the sitting governor of one of the states of our United States of America!

At least as of this moment we can offer the mitigating qualification that she wasn't elected governor. It remains to be seen whether this will still be sayable come November 3.

In the more narrowly targeted note of shock regarding our Jan's recent debate "performance" I added to Howie's broader-themed pommeling of the accidental governor, I focused on all that dead air she produced, just standing there saying nothing -- most amazingly in her opening statement. This genuinely blew my mind, in a political season that's shaping up to be our craziest ever, and consequently I'm doing my darnedest to render my mind unblowable. The thing is, how do you go into a high-stakes political debate not knowing what the heck you're going to say in your opening statement?

I still don't get that. But as I said then, "It's not clear that Arizona voters will exact any price for the fact that their incumbent governor apparently has nothing to say either about the job she's done or the job she hopes to do if elected."

Our Jan did get elected secretary of state, though, and as I also wrote:

The attention that has been focused on the Arizona governor's race thanks mostly to Governor Brewer's debate performance has belatedly set me to thinking more about how exactly she came to be governor. Which takes me back to the, um, curious way President-elect Obama went about filling the high-level positions in his administration. I think we should talk about that one of these days.

I don't mean to make a big thing of this. I just want to make sure there's some note on the record somewhere concerning one of the decided unusualnesses of the formative phase of the Obama administration, namely the convulsions caused by the number of high-ranking Democrats plucked out of office in the assembling of the cabinet.

Of course to some extent this is to be expected when the out-of-power party retakes the White House. After all, aren't its governors and U.S. senators among its foremost talent banks? Still, nobody that I can recall could recall such a shock to a party's power structure.

The talk at the time, I'm sure we all recall was, of Abraham Lincoln's "team of rivals" -- all those onetime Republican rivals brought into the Lincoln administration and forced to work with one another. The people who most pointedly rejected the analogy were the Lincoln scholars, and sure enough, it has become increasingly clear that those folks were brought into the government to eliminate any potential outside power bases.

To focus for a moment just on two snatched-away governors, while neither Arizona's Janet Napolitano nor Kansas's Kathleen Sebelius is DWT's kind of Democrat, in their home states they were prime movers in revived state parties that were offering electorally serious alternatives to the increasingly whacked-out Republicans. And I have to say, my progressive friends in Arizona had a lot of respect for their Democratic governor -- and once it became clear that Napolitano was being considered seriously for a cabinet job, they had a great deal of dread at what would happen once she was gone. Sure enough, the Arizona Democratic Party has virtually collapsed, and the Kansas one is in a mess. Hey, it's a good thing that one of the first things that political mastermind Master Rahm Emanuel did when he got his hands on the controls was to dismantle Howard Dean's 50-state strategy.

Someday we might want to run down the individual cases to appreciate the depth and breadth of the damage done to, or at least the inherent structural weakness of, the Democratic Party in states where high-level officeholders were suddenly out of the picture, which extended even to the new president's and vice president's own states. And like so many of those other Obama appointees, they have precious little to show for their time in the executive branch.

In Napolitano's case, whether or not it accords with her own views on immigration (the feeling of the people who knew her record back home is that it doesn't), she has presided over an immigration policy worse than the Bush regime's, apparently built around the common administration delusion that pandering to Republican crackpots and sociopaths will somehow soften up, or prevent the hardening of, opposition to meaningful immigration reform. As with most everything else this adminstration has touched, the reality has been pretty much the exact opposite.

And Sebelius, as HHS secretary serving in the job that for its intended designee, Tom Daschle, apparently was going to be a position of real power, doesn't seem to have had much to contributed except standing firm during the health care "debate" to insist, any time anyone dared to mention any kind of single-payer insurance system, no way, no how.

That's quite a record: exposing if not actually creating chaos and rot in state Democratic parties while rendering the precious new executive appointees useless if not worse. (One shining exception: Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, a corporate shill who may actually be more ineffectual than his Bush regime predecessors. I'm sure Master Rahm misses him in the Senate, where he had the potential to develop into another Lieberman or Ben Nelson, but the payoff at Interior has been spectacular, at least as measured by the standard of corporate whoredom and thuggery.

(Even now, with the prospect of Master Rahm returning to Chicago to run for mayor, the accounts I'm hearing suggest that Jim Messina has developed himself into Rahm by Any Other Name. More importantly, I've yet to see any evidence that anything the Master has done in any way conflicts with the wishes of the president he serves.)

Since in the Rahm universe Arizona is apparently conceded to Republicans, in the way that the Great Powers in colonial days conceded spheres of influence to rival powers in order to protect their own, Arizona Democrats have been left to fend for themselves. Well, they certainly wouldn't want the only kind of help Master Rahm knows how to provide in the exercise of party-building. But we shouldn't forget that the decision to make Jan Brewer governor of Arizona was made by the Obama brain trust.

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