Will Anyone Care-- Or Even Notice-- That Delaney Is Dropping Out Of The Race?

After crackpot neo-liberal Congressman John Delaney (New Dem-MD) sold his seat to multimillionaire New Dem David Trone, he declared he was running for president, packed his bags and "moved" to Iowa. He also gave his campaign a personal loan of between $11 and $16 million, which quickly started spending. In a YouGov poll released this week, his favorability among Democrats was at 17%-- but 60% of the respondents didn't know who he is. More people know who non-politicians Andrew Yang, Howard Schultz and Marianne Williamson are. And none of them spent anywhere near what Delaney has spent. The Real Clear Politics national polling average shows him sitting at 0.6%, beating Frackenlooper but no one else competing for the conservative lane for when Biden self-destructs. Kamala is at 12.6%, McKinsey Pete at 4.8%, Beto at 2.8%, Klobuchar at 1.0% and Steve Bullock and Michael Bennet each at 0.8%.

In Iowa, where Delaney has spent most of his money, he's at 1.3%, still far from the top contenders for the conservative lane-- with Pete at 10.3%, Kamala at 9.3%, Klobuchar at 2.7% and Beto at 2.3%, Delaney isn't a factor in New Hampshire, Nevada or South Carolina or in any of the Super Tuesday polls. So who could have been surprised by Axios' scoop Friday morning that Delaney staffers are telling him to drop out? Normally staffers urge wealthy pigeons like Biden to stay in so they continue getting their weekly paychecks.

Alexi McCammond wrote that "On July 9, John Delaney's senior team sat him down and told him to drop out of the presidential race by mid-August.... He's been running for president for 721 days. He's spent nearly $19 million as a 2020 candidate since 2017. He's loaned over $11 million of his own money to his campaign this year. He's visited all of Iowa's 99 counties already, including at least 14 stops in Carroll Country alone. And it's all been for nothing." Delaney says he'll make up his mind after the debates at the end of the month.

The staffers all hate his interfering wife and say the sooner they never see her or hear from her again the better. Like many failed candidates, the spouse calls the shots. But what his staffers told him is that "he flopped at the first debate in Miami. There was no real breakout moment-- nor even an unreal one-- which is what everyone in leadership had been hoping for. One of McCammond's sources said, uncharitably that "'Every other day he would have a different position,' whether on economic policies or racial issues. That's a common refrain that came up in my conversations with these sources close to the campaign, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution. Some said he's not spending enough money to run a competitive race, and that all the money he's spent so far hasn't moved the needle for them. One source close to the campaign argued he'd be better positioned to run for governor or get a Cabinet position if he drops out before September. And others, who made sure to tell me they 'genuinely' like the guy, painted Delaney to be the most Republican-Democrat who's just 'not made for the moment.'"

Delaney, a New Dem, never made much of an impression in Congress-- just another back bencher kissing up to Wall Street and corporate special interests. In 2015 one of his colleagues told me that "He is my poster child for what's wrong with the Democratic Party. Recruiting clueless, rich people who have no real values is almost always a failure." He'd always be writing virulently anti-progressive OpEds for the Washington post and whining to anyone who would listen that "both sides are equally wrong." Never a fan of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt values you could always count of Delaney to say something like "[W]e need a philosophical shift in the Democratic Party, a new willingness to support programs that create pathways for nongovernmental and philanthropic innovation and investment to help solve the problems of society. We should embrace approaches, such as social impact bonds, that combine private-sector capital and expertise with public-interest goals to produce better government services. Such changes will require Democrats to leave our ideological comfort zone and move away from the idea that government, and government alone, is the answer to our problems But instead of being used to voice an agenda that can bring the country together, the party microphone has been hijacked by people more interested in scoring points than in solving problems. They propose expanding Social Security rather than prioritizing serious efforts to preserve the program-- even though it will be unable to provide full benefits as soon as 2032, the Congressional Budget Office has made clear. The only way a large-scale expansion could work is by allocating new revenue away from needed investments in the next generation or by shifting the financial burden to workers or our children."

You could always depend on hearing Republican Party talking points from Delaney, attacking things like Social Security and, in more recent times the Green New Deal and Medicare for All. He was a big advocate for raising the retirement age and for Chained CPI-- each part of the anti-working class Republican Party agenda. "[W]e should do the hard work required to reach a long-term grand bargain," he wrote for the Washington Post in 2013. "This means three things: (1) reforming entitlements by adopting a form of 'chained CPI' to lower the long-term costs of these programs, adjusting the retirement age for those not engaged in manual labor and raising the cap on Social Security taxes; (2) generating more revenue through a 'Buffett rule' approach that makes sure high-earners pay a similar rate to that of the middle class and by closing certain corporate tax loopholes while lowering corporate tax rates; and (3) adjusting discretionary and defense spending to better reflect our country’s priorities, which are vastly different from the indiscriminate cuts imposed by the sequester. With this framework, we can manage our fiscal trajectory in the next 10 years, and beyond, while also investing in our children, caring for the less fortunate and protecting our nation."

One of the bills he wrote (HR 2084)-- thankfully it failed, like all of his bills-- was designed to reward big corporations that avoid taxes through overseas accounting tricks, encourage more future offshore tax dodging, while failing to create jobs in America and increasing the deficit was another tax holiday for the wealthy like Delaney himself that is nothing more than a blatant attempt to escape their tax obligations and shift the burden onto taxpaying Americans, small businesses and domestic firms. His co-sponsors were a dozen conservative Republicans like Ted Yoho (FL), Luke Messer (IN), Steve Stivers (OH) and Andy Barr (KY) and a pack of Blue Dogs and New Dem DINOs like Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Ami Bera (CA), Ron Kind (WI) and Scott Peters (CA).

Delaney was always a bad fit for the Democratic Party. One of his former colleagues in the House told me "no one liked him and no one trusted him... everyone was glad when he announced he was retiring. Now he feels the only way forward for him is to tear down Biden," who dominates the conservative lane Delaney had hoped he would have to himself. Delaney goes on Fox to criticize Bernie and Kamala and Elizabeth Warren and to rage against progressive policies. Recently he praised Biden as "very well known and he’s very well liked, and I admire him greatly." BUT... "I think my ideas are better. I think I’m a new face, which I think is what the party really wants. I think we want new ideas and new people... I think in many ways it’s a reminder that we need a moderate candidate who can win the center to beat Donald Trump... The only way we’re going to beat [Trump] is with a candidate the center believes will not derail the progress we’ve made economically. For example, if you put socialism on the ballot, we’re not going to win. If the economy’s doing well and we’re running on socialism, I think that’s a disaster for us."

The Less Than One Percent Club-- The Republican Wing Of The Democratic Party

The other day, I noted how there are six 2020 presidential candidates actively campaigning, each of whom has so little support than none of them even tops half a percent in the polls. One, former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, went to the California Democratic Party convention over the weekend to extol capitalism and undermine Bernie. This is what happened to the clueless asshole. Frackenlooper wasn't the only candidate to be booed at the convention. John Delaney-- who insists he's further right than either Frackenlooper or Status Quo Joe-- purposely baited the convention by using flase Republican Party talking points to demean Medicare-For-All-- and was roundly and loudly booed. Mission accomplished. Delaney, the first Democrat to announce his 2020 candidacy-- now having lent his campaign $16,280,000.00 (half of which is already flushed down the toilet)-- has a polling average of 0.5% nationally, 1.5% in Iowa (where he has been living for over a year and spending millions on advertising), and 0.3% in New Hampshire.


Eight elected officials being overwhelmingly rejected by Democratic primary voters:

• Rep. Tulsi Gabbard- 0.7%
• Rep. Tim Ryan- 0.7%
• Rep. John Delaney- 0.5%
• Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand- 0.3%
• Gov. John Hickenlooper- 0.3%
• Rep. Seth Moulton- 0.2%
• Gov. Steve Bullock- 0.2%
• Sen. Mike Bennet- 0.2%

It would seem that Delaney, who walked out of the San Francisco convention as the most hated candidate, really has a lot to lose-- having sold his House seat to another multi-millionaire and having already spent so much on his campaign. Was he trying to get boo-ed so that he can use the footage in ads showing how conservative he is? Is that how he thinks he's going to win the Democratic nomination? Or is he hoping for a job inside the Trump regime?

Yesterday, writing for The Hill, Scott Wong surveyed the biggest losers in the 2020 cycle. "Tim Ryan. John Delaney. Eric Swalwell. Their names," he wrote, "don't spark the same nods of recognition as former Vice President Joe Biden or Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), but these are three of the 24 Democrats running for president. Each is polling at less than 1 percent-- and they're hardly alone. Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock and Sen. Michael Bennet (CO) also have national polling averages under 1 percent, according to RealClearPolitics. So do two candidates with arguably more national name recognition. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio's polling average is 0.3 percent, just behind Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's (NY) 0.4 percent." For no apparent reason, Wong awarded Gillibrand an extra 0.01%... but who's quibbling? The main question most people ask about most of them is when will they get out of the race or why are they running in the first place.

All of these candidates, along with a few others in the crowded race, are decided long shots to win the nomination. But all stand to benefit from a race that will bring attention even to those candidates pulling in relatively few votes.

“There are candidates who are running to win, and there are candidates who are running to raise their profile,” said Chris Kofinis, who served as a senior adviser to the presidential campaigns of Wesley Clarke in 2004 and John Edwards in 2008.

The long-shot candidates say they don’t see themselves that way. They see a wide-open race for the Democratic nomination, arguing that if the front-runners falter, they have as good a shot as anyone at catching fire. With the unpredictability of Trump-era politics, they say it can pay just to have your name in the mix.

In reality, many of the candidates know they are doomed, say veteran Democrats, but see the race as a chance to boost their profiles and position themselves for future opportunities.

“The next six months are going to distinguish which ones are really running and which ones aren’t,” Kofinis said.

Some candidates are young and playing the long game. Eric Swalwell, the California congressman, and Tulsi Gabbard, the Hawaii congresswoman, are both 38; Julián Castro, the Obama-era Housing and Urban Development secretary, is 44; and Ryan, the Ohio congressman, is 45.

With the first Democratic primary debate just weeks away, experts say a failed presidential bid now could set some candidates up for a stronger run in 2024, 2028 or beyond.

Other White House hopefuls may be gunning for Cabinet posts in a new Democratic administration-- Commerce or Labor secretary-- or aiming for a future bid for a higher office, such as senator or governor. Most wouldn't mind being picked as a vice presidential running mate, as front-runner Joe Biden was after his failed 2008 White House bid-- though that seems highly unlikely for a candidate pulling in just 1 percent support.

The bottom line is these candidates see little downside in a failed shot at the presidency. A White House run in this never-ending campaign media cycle-- chock-full of CNN and MSNBC town halls, televised debates, and cable news hits-- will raise these candidates' profiles no matter how their campaigns fare. That could lead to future book deals, speaking gigs or cable news contracts.

Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-CA), who serves with many of the candidates but has yet to endorse, said the motivation is “all of the above.”

“Just as likely, it’s that running for president could be a stepping stone to other things,” he said. “Just the fact that they are a presidential candidate who throws their support ultimately to the person that wins” could lead to other opportunities.

Yet another possible explanation: Some long-shot candidates are running to draw attention to a pet issue or cause they feel is being ignored by some of the top-tier contenders.

Jay Inslee, the Washington state governor, is billing himself as the climate change candidate.

Seth Moulton, a Marine and Iraq War veteran who is a congressman from Massachusetts, launched his mental health plan this week by disclosing that he had personally been treated for post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD.

“I'm sharing my experience because I want people to know they're not alone and they should feel empowered to get the treatment they need,” tweeted Moulton, whose polling average stands at just 0.3 percent.

Ryan, the insurgent who challenged Nancy Pelosi for minority leader after Democrats’ 2016 drubbing, has turned his focus to job loss and the opioid epidemic in Rust Belt districts like his, which he says have too long been ignored by his party.

“Come to Youngstown, Ohio, and see what communities are actually going through, and you'll see why I'm running and why I have a shot,” Ryan told The Hill during an interview at the Capitol. “There's a lot of communities that look like that. And people are fed up and tired of being ignored.”

...One member of the long-shot pool who has had more time than others to get his name out there is John Delaney. The wealthy businessman and former Maryland congressman became the first Democrat to enter the race when he announced his campaign in 2017, planning to use his own money to build name recognition in places such as Iowa and New Hampshire. But so far, the strategy hasn’t paid dividends.

Asked if he’s running for some other political position, Delaney replied, “I’m running for president. That’s all I got to say about it. Opinions are like people’s mouths. Everyone has one.”

Still, he conceded that it has been a challenge to break through the news cycle when there are 24 Democrats vying for the nomination, including a former vice president and a handful of governors and senators.

Amid an increasingly prominent progressive wing of the Democratic Party, Delaney still sees a lane for a centrist, bipartisan, pro-business candidate like himself.

...“I think we’ve entered the theater of the absurd with this many candidates in the race, where reality and logic suggests the overwhelming majority simply won’t be competitive,” said one Democratic campaign strategist.

“Try to convince candidates they can’t win when they’ve convinced themselves they can is a losing proposition… A lot of it is ego, man. It's ego,” the strategist added.

Delaney was always a bad fit for the Democratic Party. One of his former colleagues in the House told me "no one liked him and no one trusted him... everyone was glad when he announced he was retiring. Now he feels the only way forward for him is to tear down Biden, who dominates the conservative lane Delaney had hoped he would have to himself. Delaney goes on Fox to criticize Bernie and Kamala and Elizabeth Warren and by raging against progressive policies. Recently he praised Biden as "very well known and he’s very well liked, and I admire him greatly." BUT... "I think my ideas are better. I think I’m a new face, which I think is what the party really wants. I think we want new ideas and new people... I think in many ways it’s a reminder that we need a moderate candidate who can win the center to beat Donald Trump... The only way we’re going to beat [Trump] is with a candidate the center believes will not derail the progress we’ve made economically. For example, if you put socialism on the ballot, we’re not going to win. If the economy’s doing well and we’re running on socialism, I think that’s a disaster for us."

Is this the new face the Democratic Party is looking for? Trump will never get THAT lucky!

A Worse Democratic Candidate For President Than Biden? Let Me See-- Well, He's Not A Really Candidate, But There Is John Delaney

When I was on the air with David Feldman this week, he asked me if there are any candidates worse than Biden. I mentioned that there are a few on the right-fringe of the Democratic Party who have no traction and no chance to win but that certainly John Delaney would be almost as bad. Delaney, a slime ball multimillionaire, was one of the most virulently anti-progressive members of Congress, who sold his seat to an even richer dork, David Trone, the only member of Congress to have endorsed Delaney's hopeless presidential campaign. I don't even think I bothered doing a Worst Democraps Who Want To Be President piece on him because his bid is so pathetic and so under the radar. I did mention over a year ago, though, that he is functioning as someone making Biden look less reactionary by comparison.

In Congress, Delaney, a New Dem and devoted Wall Street ally, served their interests as a member of the House Financial Services Committee. He was always an outspoke anti-Bernie partisan and as soon as he bought himself a House seat he immediately became a fount of Republican ideas-- like forbidding the EPA from protecting clean drinking water in streams and lakes, raising the retirement age for the working poor and forcing chained CPI down the throats of Social Security recipients. Delaney has been the perfect Democrat for Fox News, always eager to blame progressives for everything, always eager to equate progressives with the extremists, Confederates and fascists that dominate the Republican Party. He's an advocate of the "both sides are equally wrong" simplemindedness. "Washington," he wrote in a Washington Post OpEd in 2015, "is paralyzed by extreme political rhetoric that creates powerful sound bites but poor policy... With Washington already broken, the last thing we need is a left-wing version of the tea party. But I am worried about where some of the loudest voices in the room could take the Democratic Party." Delaney is worried. Why doesn't he hop the fence and join the GOP officially? He continued, in a barely veiled critique of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie, Sherrod Brown and other progressive stalwarts that "some in our party continue to engage in time-consuming rhetoric attacking banks that has little chance of producing more financial reform and distracts from far more consequential areas of economic risk, such as climate change Climate Change..."

Oh, so he's interested in the climate crisis now? The anti-environmental fracking guy is concerned about climate Who knew? Is he talking about it in his fantasy campaign for president? Yes! Just yesterday he denounced the Green New Deal! Politico, desperate for "news" on a slow day, even covered it. On a hate-talk radio show hosted by Hugh Hewitt-- and sounding like he is auditioning for Fox News-- he denounced progressive policies, singling out the Green New Deal and Medicare-For-All. Hewitt goaded him by asking how he "planned to stand apart from those on the Democratic field's left flank on a debate stage."

"I'm just going to point out: Their policies are bad policies. Medicare for All-- in terms of the bill that’s been introduced in the Senate-- is fundamentally bad health care policy. Putting aside we have no way of paying for it, even if we were able to pay for it, it still would be bad policy... There’s a much better way to deal with climate change than the Green New Deal, which will in many ways crush working families... So I’m going to take them on hard on their policies, which I think are fundamentally flawed and are not going to move this country forward in the right direction and are going to hurt a lot of people. [If Democrats take on Trump with] "bad policy, we're not gonna win... The Democratic Party needs someone like myself who can actually go toe to toe with the president on the economy and where voters will believe with a Delaney administration that the economy’s not going to go off the rails by embracing some half-baked socialist policies."

Sounds like if he doesn't get the job at Fox, maybe a President Biden (God forbid) will give him a minor job for helping slander Biden's opponents in the primary.

By the way, Delaney wasn't the only right-of-center Democrat Politico showcased yesterday. Sarah Ferris highlighted the Velvet Hammer, Stephanie Murphy, head Blue Dog. I don't want to call anyone (other than Trump and everyone who enables him) a worthless piece of shit, but... Murphy is pretty worthless. She exists in Congress-- just as Delaney did-- to prevent the Democratic Party doing anything to help working families. As head of the Blue Dogs she can get them all 27 of then barking at the same time and get a little attention for the far right of the Democratic Party and their Republican perspective on issues. But that's it. She's never accomplished anything that helps her constituents-- and never will-- and is likely to lose her Orlando-area seat in 2022.

In a closed-door meeting about immigration policy recently, Pelosi chastised her for helping the GOP exploit fissures in the Democratic Party. She brags that she was able to stop a $15 minimum wage bill from going forward. I wonder if voters in her district know that; I hope so.

“She’s a low-key negotiator and power broker but don't mistake that for not having a lot of power,” said Rep. Ben McAdams, a Blue Dog Democrat from Utah. “As long as we’re organized and willing to say no to legislation that doesn’t advance good policy, legislation doesn't go forward without us being willing to support it.”

...McAdams, who won one of the closest contests last November, said he privately approached Murphy even before the Democratic whip team with his qualms about the caucus’s marquee campaign finance and anti-corruption bill, H.R. 1.

McAdams, like roughly a dozen other moderates DINOs, had issues with the idea of public financed campaigns, with taxpayer money going toward TV ads.

Within days, Murphy worked with the bill’s chief authors, Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and John Sarbanes (D-MD), to come up with a workaround so that all the money came from fees, not tax dollars. The tweak went almost unnoticed until a reporter noticed that a group of Blue Dogs had all become co-sponsors on the same day.

Back in the fall, Murphy withheld her vote for Pelosi as speaker until she and a band of moderates DINOs-- including some Republicans-- secured a promise from leadership to make it easier for bipartisan legislation to receive floor votes.

...And unlike many of her Democratic colleagues, Murphy has been happy to accept invitations to the White House. It has paid off: On one visit, she pitched Vice President Mike Pence to support loosening restrictions for federal funding on gun research, and she says that moment-- which came in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting in her home state-- helped get the provision ultimately signed into law.

Murphy has largely avoided direct clashes with the progressive firebrands who have dominated discussion of the new Congress, but she recently made something of an exception by publishing an op-ed condemning socialism that some on Capitol Hill saw as a rebuke to members of her own party.

I would pay real money to see Delaney and Murphy perform that lovely Garfunkel and Oates song up top together. And certainly either one of them would fit in perfectly in a modern day version of this scene from The History of The World in the Roman Senate:

When Will AOC Become President? Way Before John Delaney

John Delaney is a rich guy who bought himself a House seat in Maryland in 2012. After the state legislature made MD-06 nearly impossible for a Republican to win again, Delaney spent $4,423,738 against Republican incumbent Roscoe Bartlett's $1,362,902. Only $33,172 of Delaney's money came from small individual contributions. The biggest chuck came from his personal bank account: $2,370,556. He won a 5-way primary with 54.2% of the vote and then the general election 181,921 (58.8%) to 117,313 (37.9%). I asked a top Maryland Democrat which was the bigger factor in Delaney's 2012 general election victory, all the money or the gerrymandered district. "It was absolutely the new lines the General Assembly gave him. The money wouldn't have done it under the old boundaries," he told me.

Delaney only had to spend $937,912 of his own fortune in 2014 to win reelection and just $354,125 in 2016. He didn't run for reelection last year. Instead he sold his seat to another rich clown, David Trone, and moved to Iowa to run for president.

Delaney had gone on to be one off the most undistinguished back-benchers in the House, a worthless Wall Street suck-up with no future in politics. Moving to Iowa didn't do him any good at all. In his little world, it's worth celebrating if a poll comes out showing him cracking the 1% mark among voters there. It's even worse in New Hampshire, where he never goes beyond 0%. His old-school conservative platform in unattractive to voters.

It's still very early in the process but it's satisfying to see that voters have already definitively rejected Delaney. And he isn't the only politician putting himself forward who voters have turned down already. So far the candidacies not catching fire-- let's define "catching fire" as getting around 5% in polling surveys-- are mostly politicians who appear most self-serving and ego-driven-- with no real reasons for running that can be seen as impacting anyone's lives but their own. Not taking off:

• John Delaney
• John Hickenlooper
• Sherrod Brown
• Kirsten Gillibrand
• Michael Bloomberg
• Pete Buttgieg
• Tulsi Gabbard
• Cory Booker
• Amy Klobuchar

That leaves 5 candidates in serious competition: Bernie, Biden, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Beto. Bernie's the honest, well-liked reformer with the great platform. Biden is a hero for low-info voters looking for a return to normalcy and an Obama substitute-- or for voters who actually want a doddering conservative and corporate whore. Elizabeth Warren is brilliant and kind of the next best thing to Bernie, policy-wise. But she's faltering, possibly because she fell into Trump's vile Pocahontas trap and can't seem to get out of it.

Kamala Harris is the ultimate identity politics candidate and that seems to be working for some people incapable or unwilling to go beyond the most superficial attributes in looking for a candidate to give their heart to. And Beto... something like that too, except he's a white guy who his followers want to sell as the reincarnation of JFK.

So, let's see... Bernie serves a term--2021 to 2025. Vice President Warren serves from 2025-2033. AOC turns 30 this coming October. So she'd be eligible to run in 2024-- if Warren doesn't work out-- and assume office in 2025, the first woman president, the first Latina president, the youngest-ever president. Teddy Roosevelt was the youngest president when he took office (42) but that's because McKinley was assassinated. The younest elected presidents were JFK (43) and Bill Clinton (46). AOC would be 35. That would be good.

Sherrod Brown Thinks We're Looking For A No-Can-Do President-- He's Wrong

I didn't bother writing a Worst Democraps Who Want To Be President post about one of the very worst Democraps trying to run, New Dem multimillionaire John Delaney. That's because he's not really a threat to anyone any more. He sold his Maryland House seat to David Trone and then moved to Iowa about a year ago. He isn't gaining any traction. He rarely breaks 1% in the polls. He's a joke candidate and I spent enough time writing about how horrible he is when he was in Congress.

This is John Delaney, although he loves to say: "People have a hard time labeling me. Some of the things they hear me talking about are on the total progressive or liberal end of the spectrum, and in other ways I'm kind of a solutions-oriented moderate who wants to get things done," snidely implying-- the way Hillary did-- that progressives don't get things done.

Fact of the matter is, centrists like Delaney (and Status Quo Joe Biden), sit around with their fingers up their asses when it's time for action to get the big and important things done. It was the progressive movement, not the centrists, who fought for and passed Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, free public education, corporate regulations, union rights, women's suffrage, emancipation of the slaves, the Bill of Rights (which politicians like Delaney and Biden bitterly opposed) and... even independence from Great Britain. "Moderates" and centrists have had plenty of time to fix this (below). Why haven't they? Really, why?

So... where does that leave Sherrod Brown, the fella in the video up at the top of the page? I don't think he has the character to be a good president. He's not terrible and in many ways he has even been excellent from time to time on one thing or another-- particularly trade and labor. Worst Democraps Who Want To Be President? No, not at all. I just don't trust him to do the right thing as president-- #3 of Chris Hayes' diktat:

Yesterday he was on CNN's State of the Union and, once again, he defined himself as one of the "that's too hard to do" crowd. The time for Medicare-For-All is now. 70% of the American public backs it. But it's too difficult for Sherrod Brown? Sherrod Brown should stay in the Senate and debate and get nowhere near the presidency (and that includes the #2 spot). If the debate was over the Bill of Rights, Brown would be suggesting we just do 3 or 4 amendments and that 10 are way too many and we'll never get it through and it's going to cause people "angst and anguish." He's just the wrong guy as a person-- who sometimes backs good policy but... just watch that video. Do you want that stumbling fool in the White House? And he sounds like a Republican when he backs himself into a rhetorical corner.

This is CNN's tweet about the show. But make the effort to read those comments under it. Sherrod Brown For President is DOA.

John Delaney-- The Presidential Candidate To Make Joe Biden Look Like A Progressive

This morning David Siders started a column with a fair assumption for Politico readerts-- that Maryland Congressman is "little known." Few people even know he's running for president-- and few of those are taking his run seriously. He's a very wealthy New Dem, a devoted Wall Street ally who served their interests on the House Financial Services Committee... and who's already spending big.

Let me start with a little background. After the Democratic-controlled Maryland legislature gerrymandered the state, Delaney beat longtime congressman Roscoe Bartlett, a moderate Republican, in 2012. Delaney spent $2,370,556 of his own in the race, which was over half the $4,423,738 he spent and was the third most-- after Suzan DelBene and Scott Peters-- any Democrat that year spent to buy himself a House seat. Needless to say all 3 immediately joined the extremely corrupt, pro-business/anti-family New Dems. Delaney had beaten Bartlett handily-- 58.8% to 37.9%. But in the next cycle, a midterm, Democrats already had gotten a taste for what a total piece of shit Delaney is. After 2 years of watching him back the Republicans over and over gain, Democratic grassroots voters weren't interested in voting for him again. He was forced to spend $937,912 out of his own pocket and only beat Republican Dan Bongino 49.7% to 48.2%. In 2016 he spent another $354,125 of his own money to win again-- this time against a rich Republican, Amie Hoeber, who spent $787,000 out of her own wealth.

Delaney was, of course, an anti-Bernie Democrat who endorsed Hillary in the 2016 primary. Once he got into Congress he quickly became a fount of Republican ideas-- like forbidding the EPA from protecting clean drinking water in streams and lakes, raising the retirement age for the working poor and forcing chained CPI down the throats of Social Security recipients. Delaney has been the perfect Democrat for Fox News, always eager to blame progressives for everything, always eager to equate progressives with the extremists, Confederates and fascists that dominate the Republican Party. He's an advocate of the "both sides are equally wrong" simplemindedness. "Washington," he wrote in a Washington Post OpEd in 2015, "is paralyzed by extreme political rhetoric that creates powerful sound bites but poor policy... With Washington already broken, the last thing we need is a left-wing version of the tea party. But I am worried about where some of the loudest voices in the room could take the Democratic Party." Delaney is worried. Why doesn't he hop the fence and join the GOP officially? From his OpEd:

Rejecting a trade agreement with Asia, expanding entitlement programs that crowd out other priorities and a desire to relitigate the financial crisis are becoming dominant positions among Democrats. Although these subjects may make for good partisan talking points, they do not provide the building blocks for a positive and bold agenda to create jobs and improve the lives of Americans.

...[W]e need a philosophical shift in the Democratic Party, a new willingness to support programs that create pathways for nongovernmental and philanthropic innovation and investment to help solve the problems of society. We should embrace approaches, such as social impact bonds, that combine private-sector capital and expertise with public-interest goals to produce better government services. Such changes will require Democrats to leave our ideological comfort zone and move away from the idea that government, and government alone, is the answer to our problems.

But instead of being used to voice an agenda that can bring the country together, the party microphone has been hijacked by people more interested in scoring points than in solving problems. They propose expanding Social Security rather than prioritizing serious efforts to preserve the program-- even though it will be unable to provide full benefits as soon as 2032, the Congressional Budget Office has made clear. The only way a large-scale expansion could work is by allocating new revenue away from needed investments in the next generation or by shifting the financial burden to workers or our children.

In a barely veiled critique of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Sherrod Brown, Alan Grayson, Raul Grijalva, Keith Ellison, Mark Pocan and other stalwart progressive fighters, Delaney wrote that "some in our party continue to engage in time-consuming rhetoric attacking banks that has little chance of producing more financial reform and distracts from far more consequential areas of economic risk, such as climate change, chronic underinvestment in the next generation and our broken immigration and housing finance systems."

He's painting an entirely false picture, especially when you consider that the same legislators attacking his Wall Street pals happen to be the most determined fighters for immigration reform, for low-income housing, for reforming the education system, for restoring American infrastructure and, of course, for battling against climate change. But painting false pictures is John Delaney's stock-in-trade. It's what he does; it's all he seems capable of doing.

Two of Congress' most dedicated and enlightened progressives, at the time, reacted badly to Delaney's nonsense. Alan Grayson mused that "corporate tax breaks, corporate welfare, corporate trade giveaways and sucking up to Wall Street... 'New Democrats' sound a lot like old Republicans." Mark Pocan told us at the time that "The surest way to avoid the creation of a tea party on the left wing is to stop the Democratic Party from moving to the right. It's clear people are for progressive values and the Democratic Party should reflect that or face defeats at the polls."

Another Democratic congressmember who asked for anonymity fumed that Delaney is the "poster child for what's wrong with the Democratic Party. Recruiting clueless, rich people who have no real values is almost always a failure."

Delaney's district was blue enough for him to have the breathing space to act like a real Democrat without any worries but instead he's always represented the interests of his own socio-economic class: rich assholes. He introduced a bill Wall Street loves. It would grant a tax amnesty to multinational corporations bringing home billions of dollars of profits now offshore.

Delaney's bill, H.R. 2084, was designed to reward big corporations that avoid taxes through overseas accounting tricks, encourage more future offshore tax dodging, fail to create jobs in America and increase the deficit-- another tax holiday for the wealthy like Delaney himself that is "nothing more than a blatant attempt to escape their tax obligations and shift the burden onto taxpaying Americans, small businesses and domestic firms." His co-sponsors were all Republicans and a gaggle of corrupt New Dems like Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Ami Bera (CA), Gerald Connolly (VA), Patrick Murphy (FL) and Scott Peters (CA). And now he's "running" for president. Siders wrote that "Delaney-- a wealthy, little-known congressman from Maryland-- has spent more than $1 million on TV in Iowa, hired staffers and opened a campaign office in Des Moines. Since announcing his bid last July, he’s made 110 campaign stops in 48 of Iowa’s 99 counties. He has visited New Hampshire six times, and on Friday made his second trek to South Carolina... [I]n his massive investment of time and resources-- his Iowa TV buy marks the earliest significant paid advertising from a presidential candidate in memory-- he is testing the limits of a virtually unknown politician’s ability to gain early-state traction by starting first and spending heavily."

The odds confronting Delaney are enormous. The Democratic field is shaping up to be historically large-- and it’s likely to be filled with some of the party’s biggest stars-- while the former banker is barely known outside his home state.

He runs so far under the radar that his name has not even been included in many early national polls. In the latest Granite State Poll, in February, conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, Delaney registered at less than 1 percent among likely Democratic primary voters. That ranked behind every major prospective candidate, and also “other,” at 4 percent.

Still, Delaney runs undeterred.

“I think I’m the right person for the job, and I have the right vision, but not enough people know who I am,” Delaney, 55, said before arriving in South Carolina. “The way you solve that problem is by getting in early.”

Delaney added, “I think I’m going to win.”



In his TV advertisements, Delaney first introduced Iowans to his blue-collar upbringing and business and government credentials, while pledging to usher in a new era of bipartisanship. This month, he went up with a more pointed ad criticizing Trump’s decision to set new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, saying “his trade war could devastate our manufacturing and farming economies and raise prices on hard-working Americans.”

Iowa media markets are so inexpensive that by spending more than $1 million on television, Delaney has mustered significant reach. Jeff Link, an Iowa Democratic strategist who hosted an event for Delaney at his house in March, said that when he asked people if they were coming, many told him, “Oh, that’s the guy on TV.”

In Iowa, Link said, $1 million “goes a long way.”

“I think getting here early is helpful in that people get to see you a couple of times,” he said. “He’s a smart guy, he’s a very serious guy … And, he has a good message.”

Price said Democratic activists in Iowa are focused on this year’s midterm elections but that Delaney is “doing a good job kind of building his name ID and recognition out there... Certainly among the activists, I hear people talking about him.”

In New Hampshire, Jim Demers, a longtime fixture in the state’s Democratic politics, said that while Delaney remains largely unknown to most voters, “with Democratic activists, he’s sort of in the middle category of ‘somewhat known,’ and he moved up to that category by coming to New Hampshire and doing a lot of visits.”

With so much time before the 2020 primaries, Demers said, Delaney’s stock could improve. However, he said, “I do think that when you look at some of the people who may be in this race, it’s going to be a struggle.”

Delaney left South Carolina on Saturday to speak at a Democratic summit in Maryland, then planned, as he does every Monday, to convene a staff meeting in Washington to plot campaign strategy for the week. He is focused almost exclusively on Iowa and New Hampshire.

“I view us as running a full scale campaign at this point,” Delaney said. “The way I think about it kind of simply is, there are six congressional districts in Iowa and New Hampshire … I’m doing all the things you would do to run a congressional campaign times six in those states.”

Jeffrey Zients, a former economic adviser to President Barack Obama and a friend of Delaney, said, “He’s decided there’s an opportunity, and he’s executing on it. He’s working hard.”

Delaney’s supporters often point to Jimmy Carter as an example of a candidate able to capitalize on early campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire. But Carter was a governor. And that was more than 40 years ago. The last time a member of the House won the presidency was 1880, when James Garfield pulled off the feat.

Yet precedent is the least of Delaney’s obstacles. Aside from his low profile-- even by House standards-- the three-term congressman cuts a more moderate profile than much of the Democratic Party’s increasingly leftward-shifting base.

He is skeptical of single-payer healthcare and supported President Barack Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, which was opposed by both Sen. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton in 2016. But Delaney said divisions within the Democratic Party are overblown, with most of America disinterested in “a lot of the things that people are obsessed with here in Washington.”

“I think the central question facing the United States of America in 2020 is how do we take this terribly fractured nation and begin to unify it so that we can start to work for the American citizens,” Delaney said. “And I think I’m the person to answer that question.”

On Friday, Delaney spoke at the South Carolina Democratic Party’s Blue Palmetto dinner, then walked several blocks to Rep. Jim Clyburn’s annual fish fry, a mainstay on the presidential circuit.

“I didn’t know who he was,” said Phil Noble, a Democratic gubernatorial candidate who met with Delaney during his visit. “But so what? Everybody’s got a chance in presidential politics.”

Will Economic Populism Work In Western Maryland? Meet Andrew Duck

Maryland's 6th congressional district used to be Republican territory. Maryland Democrats are as prone towards partisan gerrymandering as the GOP sleaze bags in North Carolina, Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania. In 2011, the 6th got a big chunk of blue Montgomery County and suddenly the 6th was less like West Virginia and more like the DC suburbs. The following year crooked multimillionaire Democrat, John Delaney, ousted longtime moderate GOP incumbent, Roscoe Bartlett. Obama won the district by over 10 points both times he ran and even Hillary managed to beat Trump in the district, 55.3% to 40.2%. Delaney has been one of the most overtly anti-progressive Democrats in Congress. One of his Democratic colleagues once told me, after reading a Delaney OpEd in favor of chained CPI, that Delaney "is my poster child for what's wrong with the Democratic Party. Recruiting clueless, rich people who have no real values is almost always a failure."

Good news: the reactionary avatar of greed and selfishness is probably leaving Congress. He wants to run for governor, where he would be unlikely to beat either progressive hero Benjamin Jealous or moderate GOP incumbent Larry Hogan. But even if Delaney backs out of running for governor, he already has 3 primary challengers-- Aruna Miller, state House Majority Leader Bill Frick and local activist Andrew Duck-- with 2 more prepared to jump in: state Senator Roger Manno and multimillionaire beer distributor David Trone, a right-of-center, self-absorbed mini-Trump who just got crushed after spending more of his own money than any other candidate running for a House seat-- $13,414,225-- in history. Trone's mansion, of course, is nowhere near the district.

Andrew Duck, who was a Bernie activist in 2016 served in the U.S. Army (with multiple tours of duty in Bosnia and Iraq) for 20 years after enlisting as a teenager. For the past four years, he's been working as the director of operations for a green energy start-up company and has studied economics at the graduate level. He makes a good case for himself as the polar opposite of New Dem John Delaney; Duck is an economic progressive. I asked him to introduce himself to DWT readers.


Guest Post
-by Andrew Duck

Years have passed since the economic collapse of 2008, but our economy remains mired down with slow growth, stagnant wages, and increasing inequality. While parts of our country are improving, our economic recovery continues to be uneven.  While the stock market is at a record high, workers are earning less now, adjusted for inflation, than before the recession. It feels like the system is rigged against working people. That is because the system is rigged against working people.

We need progressive economic policies that will put us back on a path to growth that benefits working people. Increasing the minimum wage is a first step toward addressing wage stagnation and inequality, so we need to support the Fight for $15. Health care costs continue to rise, and we need to move to the only health care system that works, a single payer system like MEDICARE for All. The current incumbent does not support these policies.

We will also have to address the systemic issues which have rigged the system against working families to advantage the top one percent. We need to address our tax policies, which allow millionaires like Mitt Romney to pay a lower tax rate than almost anyone in the country. We will also need to address the rigged financial system by strengthening and enforcing the Dodd-Frank Act. Congressman Delaney has voted multiple times to weaken the Dodd-Frank Act.(H.R.992 2013, H.R. 83 2014) This is movement in the wrong direction. We should be passing a new Glass-Stegall Act, not rolling back the progress we have made.

But we have not made as much progress as we should have. Dodd-Frank has not been fully implemented, with 20% of the rules not proposed as of 2016. The banking system has stabilized, but that stability masks the underlying weaknesses that continue to exist. We need to take action now if we want to ensure we do not have another collapse like the one we saw in 2008.

We need to start with breaking up the big banks. Any bank which is “too big to fail” is too big to continue to exist. When we have a system where if a bank takes risks, they get a “heads the bank wins, tails the taxpayer loses” deal, it is inevitable that we will have another economic collapse. All of the incentive is for the bank to assume more and more risk, because they get all the gain and none of the loss. Eventually, the banks will assume so much risk that they will collapse. But because they know they are “too big to fail” they know they will be bailed out, and not take the loss themselves.

We also need to address the mechanics of our financial markets. We need to ensure that we can identify and prevent “front-running” of trades. The big financial companies have built a system where their transactions will be processed before the small investor’s, rigging the game. We need more vigorous enforcement to address this issue.

High Frequency Trading has also added volatility to the market, resulting in wide swings in market value. These swings are not a normal response to supply and demand. The machines doing the trading not only shave some value off of the transaction of regular small investors, they also push the market to extremes rapidly, because they can make even more money both on the way up and the way down. A small tax per transaction would make this technique less profitable, and reduce the volatility that we are seeing today.

The best way to make these fundamental reforms would be to pass a new Glass-Steagall Act. This would force a bank to do banking, and not run a hedge fund. If you want to be a hedge fund, you can be, but you cannot be a bank, with federal insurance, at the same time. While Dodd-Frank has provisions which could be used to break up a large bank, the process is cumbersome and requires extensive review and approval by the Federal Reserve. A new Glass-Steagall Act would go further and mandate the breaking up of the big banks. To do this, we will need some new people in Congress.

I am running for Congress in Maryland’s Sixth District, to take the seat now held by Congressman Delaney. But Congressman Delaney, who does not even live in MD-06, is exploring other options, and may not run for re-election. Also looking at running for MD-06 is another multi-millionaire, David Trone, owner of a large wine and beer distributor. David Trone also does not live in MD-06, but having spent $14 Million to lose in his district, he now has his eyes set on the district I live in. We cannot have millionaires treat our government like their play-thing.

We need representatives in Congress who will fight for the economic policies that will work to bring jobs and wage growth back to the working people of this country. I spent 20 years fighting for this country around the world. I am ready to fight just as hard here at home to get a government that will serve the people, not just the top one percent.

Maryland's Increasingly Messy Democratic Party Politics-- Delaney, Trone And... "The Stud Of The Statehouse"

Bernie with Ben Jealous-- the best news in this post about Maryland politics

Maryland Congressman John Delaney is barely a Democrat. Or, to be fair, he's the archetype member of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. A conservative multimillionaire serving the interests of the very rich, he's passionately anti-progressive and that's very much reflected in his atrocious voting record. ProgressivePunch rates him an "F" and this cycle Delaney's crucial vote score is an abysmal 45.83, not just the lowest of any Maryland Democrat, but way down at the bottom of the barrel among all House Democrats, tied, for example, with right-wing Blue Dogs Lou Correa and Cheri Bustos. The Five Thirty Eight new project that measures congressmembers' adherence to the Trump agenda shows him voting with Trump 19.4% of the time. (Hillary beat Trump in Delaney's district 55.3-40.2%.) Delaney is expected to announce that he's running for governor of Maryland later this month. The good news is that he'll be gone from Congress-- and likely to lose the gubernatorial bid.

First off, Marylanders are pretty happy with their Republican governor, Larry Hogan, who has one of the highest approval ratings of any governor in America. But before Delaney can even deal with Hogan, he has to face a crowded primary field, a field that includes former NAACP head Ben Jealous, who is rallying progressives and who was just endorsed by Bernie Sanders and by Our Revolution. Others in-- or likely to get into-- the race include Prince George's County Exec Rushern Baker, Baltimore Count Exec Kevin Kamenetz, former state Attorney General Douglas Gansler, tech entrepreneur Alec Rosss, attorney Jim Shea and state Senator Richard Madaleno.

As for Delaney's seat, Andrew Duck, an Iraq War vet and anti-Choice political "centrist" who ran for this seat in 2006, 2008 and 2010, Aruna Miller and state House Majority Leader (and stud of the statehouse) Bill Frick have already pulled papers and are soliciting campaign contributions. Although he hasn't officially declared yet, state Senator Roger Manno, is also running for Delaney seat. But the funniest candidate planning to run is another worthless right-of-center Democrat, multimillionaire beer distributor David Trone who recently made a fool of himself running for the MD-08 seat. Trone has the distinction of having spent more of his own money than any other candidate running for a House seat-- $13,414,225-- in history... only to lose the primary to progressive champion Jamie Raskin. Trone's millions bought him 27.1% of the primary vote, 35,400 votes or around $380 per vote. Maybe Trone thinks the more conservative 6th district will be a better match for his rich people agenda, but he also seems to think if he just spends a little more money... Yep he's already been bragging to the media that he's willing to spend a million and a half more of his fortune in MD-06-- $15 million-- than he wasted in MD-08. Trone has a long history of arrests and criminal behavior involved with building his beer and wine empire and I can't think of a better way the the Democrats to further tarnish their brand than by embracing someone like David Trone as a congressional candidate. On the other hand, Trone has written many hundreds of thousands of dollars in checks to the Democratic Party and has regularly contributed large sums to sleazy-- and influential-- Maryland Democrat Chris Van Hollen. He could be a role model for the Orange County lottery winner, who is currently working hard to buy endorsements from easily-bribed Democratic elected officials.

Still, the idea of getting Delaney out of Congress, will be worth every cent of David Trone's $15,000,000 in wasted self-funding. As for Ben Jealous... well, this is what Our Revolution president Nina Turner had to say in herr endorsement statement this morning:

Maryland deserves a leader who understands that social, racial, economic, and environmental justice are essential to building a better future for the next generation. It is imperative that we elect a bold, progressive governor who will fight on behalf of middle and working class families. Ben Jealous has spent his career fighting on behalf of communities who don’t have a seat at a table by working to strengthen voting rights and raise the minimum wage, advocating for an end to mass incarceration and the death penalty, and fighting to ensure health care as a human right. Ben has proven that he’s ready to roll up his sleeves and get to work for the people of Maryland.

Ben Jealous has been a dedicated civil rights leader since college, where he served local NAACP chapters in New York and Mississippi. After writing for and directing a variety of historically black newspapers, he went on to become the president and CEO of the NAACP from 2008 to 2012 where he was credited for reviving the organization by developing strong coalitions, implementing extensive voter mobilization efforts, and working tirelessly as a human rights advocate. In 2014, he became a senior partner at Kapor Capital, a firm that works to fuel progressive change through the tech industry. Jealous was one of the founding Our Revolution Board Members and an active surrogate for Sen. Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign.

Now is the time to elect unapologetic progressive voices across the country. Our Revolution is proud to support Ben Jealous in his run for governor.

Rich Maryland New Dem John Delaney Is On The Attack Again-- Against Progressives

John Delaney spent $2,370,556 in 2012 to buy himself a seat, the third most-- after Suzan DelBene and Scott Peters-- among the wealthy Democratic freshmen (all of whom immediately joined the extremely corrupt, pro-business/anti-family New Dems). Now a Maryland congressman in a safe blue seat, Delaney is often a fount of Republican ideas-- like forbidding the EPA from protecting clean drinking water in streams and lakes and raising the retirement age for the working poor and forcing chained CPI down the throats of Social Security recipients. He was at it again yesterday-- another op-ed in the Washington Post, this one to go on a deranged attack against the values and principles of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt that made the Democratic Party great.

Delaney is the perfect Democrat for Fox, always eager to blame progressives for everything, always eager to equate progressives with the extremists, Confederates and fascists that dominate the Republican Party. He's an advocate of the "both sides are equally wrong" simplemindedness. "Washington," he wrote, "is paralyzed by extreme political rhetoric that creates powerful sound bites but poor policy... With Washington already broken, the last thing we need is a left-wing version of the tea party. But I am worried about where some of the loudest voices in the room could take the Democratic Party." Delaney is worried. Why doesn't he hop the fence and join the GOP?

Rejecting a trade agreement with Asia, expanding entitlement programs that crowd out other priorities and a desire to relitigate the financial crisis are becoming dominant positions among Democrats. Although these subjects may make for good partisan talking points, they do not provide the building blocks for a positive and bold agenda to create jobs and improve the lives of Americans.

...[W]e need a philosophical shift in the Democratic Party, a new willingness to support programs that create pathways for nongovernmental and philanthropic innovation and investment to help solve the problems of society. We should embrace approaches, such as social impact bonds, that combine private-sector capital and expertise with public-interest goals to produce better government services. Such changes will require Democrats to leave our ideological comfort zone and move away from the idea that government, and government alone, is the answer to our problems.

But instead of being used to voice an agenda that can bring the country together, the party microphone has been hijacked by people more interested in scoring points than in solving problems. They propose expanding Social Security rather than prioritizing serious efforts to preserve the program-- even though it will be unable to provide full benefits as soon as 2032, the Congressional Budget Office has made clear. The only way a large-scale expansion could work is by allocating new revenue away from needed investments in the next generation or by shifting the financial burden to workers or our children.

In a barely veiled critique of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Sherrod Brown, Alan Grayson, Raul Grijalva, Keith Ellison, Mark Pocan and other stalwart progressive fighters, Delaney wrote that "some in our party continue to engage in time-consuming rhetoric attacking banks that has little chance of producing more financial reform and distracts from far more consequential areas of economic risk, such as climate change, chronic underinvestment in the next generation and our broken immigration and housing finance systems."

He's painting an entirely false picture, especially when you consider that the same legislators attacking his Wall Street pals happen to be the most determined fighters for immigration reform, for low-income housing, for reforming the education system, for restoring American infrastructure and, of course, for battling against climate change. But painting false pictures is John Delaney's stock-in-trade. It's what he does; it's all he seems capable of doing. 

Two of Congress' most dedicated and enlightened progressives reacted badly to Delaney's nonsense. This morning Alan Grayson mused that "corporate tax breaks, corporate welfare, corporate trade giveaways and sucking up to Wall Street... 'New Democrats' sound a lot like old Republicans." And yesterday Mark Pocan told us, "The surest way to avoid the creation of a tea party on the left wing is to stop the Democratic Party from moving to the right. It's clear people are for progressive values and the Democratic Party should reflect that or face defeats at the polls." 

I guarantee you, Delaney will never find his name on this page, but maybe someone should show him this video Robert Reich released for MoveOn this week:




UPDATE: Anonymous Congressman

One Democratic congressman who asked that I not identify him, was fuming this morning after he read Delaney's OpEd. "He is my poster child for what's wrong with the Democratic Party. Recruiting clueless, rich people who have no real values is almost always a failure." Someone should introduce this guy to Steve Israel, Nancy Pelosi and Ben Ray Luján.

Multimillionaire New Dem John Delaney Wants To Give Rich Corporations Another Tax Holiday

Another entitled multimillionaire in Congress undermining the lives of ordinary Americans

If you caught the post Monday about how the DCCC recruits too many damned millionaires who have no way of relating to ordinary working families, you may have noticed that Maryland multimillionaire backbencher John Delaney spent $2,370,556 last year to buy himself a seat, the third most among the wealthy Democratic freshmen (all of whom immediately joined the extremely corrupt, pro-Business/anti-Family New Dems). In the battle over saving Social Security-- the importance of which these wealthy assholes don't comprehend-- they have almost all, and Delaney in particular, been on the wrong side. Delaney has been an aggressive advocate for the Republican Chained CPI scheme.

Adam Pase, the corporate-oriented Executive Director of the corrupt New Dems sent around a "dear colleague" letter in May, shilling an OpEd by John Delaney, who thinks-- like Republicans-- that working people need to have the retirement age raised and that the Chained CPI is a swell idea.

The last time Congress played politics with the debt ceiling, in the summer of 2011, we wounded our economy. We sent a message to the markets that we were considering destructive actions, and they listened. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 2,000 points, and August 2011 was the worst month for private-sector job creation in the past three years. For the first time ever, Standard & Poor’s downgraded the nation’s credit rating.

Instead of making the same mistake, we should do the hard work required to reach a long-term grand bargain. This means three things: (1) reforming entitlements by adopting a form of “chained CPI” to lower the long-term costs of these programs, adjusting the retirement age for those not engaged in manual labor and raising the cap on Social Security taxes; (2) generating more revenue through a “Buffett rule” approach that makes sure high-earners pay a similar rate to that of the middle class and by closing certain corporate tax loopholes while lowering corporate tax rates; and (3) adjusting discretionary and defense spending to better reflect our country’s priorities, which are vastly different from the indiscriminate cuts imposed by the sequester. With this framework, we can manage our fiscal trajectory in the next 10 years, and beyond, while also investing in our children, caring for the less fortunate and protecting our nation.

Although Delaney's ProgressivePunch crucial vote score (71.95) isn't as bad as some of the other New Dems, he does come from one of the most solidly blue districts of any New Dem. Obama won MD-06 55-43% and Delaney won his general election in the freshly gerrymandered district 59-38% against longtime incumbent Roscoe Bartlett. He has the breathing space to be a real Democrat if he wants to. But he doesn't want to. He represents the interest of his own socio-economic class, rich assholes. This week he introduced a bill Wall Street loves. It would grant a tax amnesty to multinational corporations bringing home billions of dollars of profits now offshore in order to fund an infrastructure bank was strongly criticized today in a letter to House members signed by 30 national organizations working to ensure that big corporations pay their fair share of taxes.

Delaney's bill, H.R. 2084, is designed to reward big corporations that avoid taxes through overseas accounting tricks, encourage more future offshore tax dodging, fail to create jobs in America and increase the deficit-- another tax holiday for the wealthy like Delaney himself that is “nothing more than a blatant attempt to escape their tax obligations and shift the burden onto taxpaying Americans, small businesses and domestic firms.”

The letter signers emphasized that past amnesties have failed to deliver for the American people, instead merely enriching executives and shareholders. The requirement in the current bill that corporations "repatriating" their profits invest part of them in an infrastructure bank does nothing to improve the legislation, since several tax dodging corporations will control the proposed bank, inviting collusion and financial game playing.

Many of the companies bringing home profits under a 2004 repatriation amnesty actually reduced employment, according to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations; of the corporate cash repatriated, 92 percent went to stock buybacks, executive bonuses and dividends, according to a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the letter noted.

Endorsing the concept of an infrastructure bank as a stand-alone idea, the letter signers wrote: "Congress should finance infrastructure investment by closing offshore tax loopholes, not by encouraging corporations to use them."

Delaney's co-sponsors are mostly as bad as he is, a collection of rich white people who constantly crusade against the interests of ordinary working families:

• Andy Barr (R-KY)
• Ami Bera (New Dem-CA)
• John Carney (New Dem-DE)
• Tom Cole (R-OK)
• Gerald Connolly (New Dem-VA)
• Rodney Davis (R-IL)
• Michael Fitzpatrick (R-PA)
• Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI)
• Joe Garcia (New Dem-FL)
• Chris Gibson (R-NY)
• Bill Johnson (R-OH)
• David Joyce (R-OH)
• Joe Kennedy (D-MA)
• Ron Kind (New Dem-WI)
• Adam Kinzinger (R-IL)
• Luke Messer (R-IN)
• Jim Moran (New Dem-VA)
• Patrick Murphy (New Dem-FL)
• Scott Peters (New Dem-CA)
• Robert Pittenger (R-NC)
• Jared Polis (New Dem-CO)
• Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD)
• Kyrsten Sinema (New Dem-AZ)
• Steve Stivers (R-OH)
• Mike Turner (R-OH)
• Ted Yoho (R-FL)