Cheri Bustos Is Stoking Racial Tensions Among Democrats In Congress

Cheri Bustos and Marcia Fudge

"Cheri has proven herself a flawless leader... of the Congressional Women's Softball Team," a member of Congress told me this afternoon. "Making her head of the DCCC was a big mistake-- at least for us... They should make her captain of the softball team and get her to walk away from the D-Trip." Bustos, a Blue Dog who switched to the New Dems before making her move for Democratic leadership is the most conservative member of Pelosi's leadership team-- by far. According to ProgressivePunch her strong "F" is based on a lifetime crucial vote score of 52.55%, the worst of any Illinois Democrat-- yes, worse than Lipinski's-- and making her 24th worst Democrat in Congress.

As head of the DCCC, she's recreated the committee in her own image-- basically as a quasi-KKK chapter, with the most worthless, right-wing staff in anyone's memory. One source of frustration is her inability to take minorities any more seriously than the NRCC does. On Thursday, Jake Sherman, Heather Caygle and Laura Barrón-López, reporting for Politico, wrote that the DCCC "is locked in a long-simmering battle with prominent black and Hispanic lawmakers who believe the party committee and its chair have short-changed minorities." They wrote that Senior Hispanic and black members of Congress have been privately clashing with Bustos "over her personnel decisions, what they say are tone-deaf comments on race and whether she's lived up to the promises she made during the campaign to win the chairmanship."

“There is not one person of color-- black or brown, that I’m aware of-- at any position of authority or decision making in the DCCC,” said Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-OH), a former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. “It is shocking, it is shocking, and something needs to be done about it.”

Bustos sought a meeting with Fudge, and Fudge said no.

“Until they show me they are serious about diversity, there’s no reason for me to meet with them,” Fudge said.

And Fudge isn’t alone. Interviews with more than two dozen Democratic lawmakers, aides and strategists detailed months of frustration and unanswered questions about Bustos’ efforts to retain minority staffers in top positions, boost Latino voter outreach and hire firms run by people of color. They charged Bustos of being tactless when challenged by lawmakers of color.

“The overall plan for Latino outreach seems to be some 1980s playbook, which doesn't work anymore,” Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) said.

...[T]he depth of discontent with the DCCC, and some of the problems it has faced in the early days of this Democratic majority are out of the ordinary, raising concerns in the party ahead of a tough fight to hold on to the House.

The latest sign of DCCC dysfunction: an exodus of key aides.

Bustos’ then chief of staff, Jalisa Washington-- an African American woman-- left the committee after just two months for a job with the Kamala Harris campaign. Sonia Kim, the party’s director of mail, left for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Just last week, Nancy Zdunkewicz, the party’s polling director, left the committee.

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) said concerns about diversity among the senior ranks of the DCCC was one of “the biggest issues” he tried to deal with as CBC chair nearly a decade ago and remains a problem.

“My hope is that the CBC will be as concerned about the Latino deficit in the staff at the DCCC as we would about an African-American [deficit],” Cleaver said.

The complaints from members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus are, by far, the loudest and most significant. Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA) has met with Bustos multiple times, including this week, to relay ongoing CHC concerns about staff diversity at the campaign arm. Aguilar declined to comment for this story.

CHC members were inflamed in late June when the Washington Free Beacon published a story revealing that DCCC aide Tayhlor Coleman sent a series of derogatory tweets roughly a decade ago, including one that portrayed as her being afraid of Mexicans. (Coleman publicly apologized for the tweets late last month.)

The day after the story ran, Bustos announced in a caucus meeting at the party headquarters that Coleman was getting a promotion to run the Cycle of Engagement, a minority outreach program. Some lawmakers-- well aware of the spate of controversial tweets-- turned to look at each other in shock, according to multiple sources present.

Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, a second-term Texas Democrat shocked by the tweets, said he asked Bustos the next day if they were “fake.” Bustos texted Gonzalez back, saying “I want you to know I listened, I acted. She is no longer in the job.” Coleman is, however, still working at the DCCC.

House Minority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC) said in an interview that he asked Bustos to keep Coleman on staff.

“I asked for her not to be terminated but to please be given different duties and responsibilities, but don’t terminate a young African American woman for something she may have done on social media when she was 19 years old,” Clyburn said.

Clyburn added that it was his “understanding” that Coleman was removed from her position as director of the Cycle of Engagement and moved to a different post internally.

Similarly, Rep. Tony Cardenas (D-CA) didn’t call for Coleman to be fired but wanted her moved elsewhere. The DCCC told Cardenas that Coleman would no longer be working on the minority engagement project or on any issues concerning minorities at all.

But Coleman was scheduling meetings regarding minority outreach strategy as recently as last week, according to messages seen by Politico. A DCCC aide said the committee does not discuss staffing issues.

“Wow, it was my understanding that that individual was no longer in the title that she’d recently been promoted to and that she was in a different position,” Cardenas said. “And also not in the diversity team.”

Cardenas said Bustos has made herself available for meetings with BOLD PAC, the campaign arm of the Hispanic Caucus which he chairs. “I want to see progress. Ben Ray really took it to another level in a good way but we can’t rest on our laurels and we can’t assume it’s going to stay that way,” he said.

Better representation for minorities has long been a central part of Bustos’ campaign. During the three-way race for DCCC chair, Bustos promised to boost Hispanic representation at the top of the DCCC.

After Politico began asking questions about the CHC and CBC’s relationship with the DCCC, the campaign arm sent emissaries to praise Bustos’ tenure as chair-- and argued she’d done more to diversify the DCCC than Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), the former chair who won back the majority just last year. Luján, himself, is Hispanic, and Dan Sena, his executive director, was the first Hispanic person to serve as the committee’s top staffer. [Is that ever a low bar!!]

“The representation within the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is higher now than during the previous chair,” Rep. Jim Costa (D-CA) said.

"I've got to work with four different chairs and I'm very happy with the work that [Bustos is] doing," said Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX). "I think she's doing a great job."

Costa, a Blue Dog of Portuguese heritage is petrified of being primaried by a Mexican-American woman of the Fresno city council, who is nearly as conservative as he is. And Cuellar is also consumed with being primaried and has been promised by Bustos that the DCCC will stand with him against the progressive grassroots Latina challenging him, Jessica Cisneros.

Meanwhile, progressive members of all races are also sick of the way Bustos marginalizes progressive candidates in favor of Blue Dogs and New Dems, longstanding-- though always denied-- DCCC policy going right back to Rahm Emanuel's stint as DCCC chair. Emanuel was Bustos' original role model and mentor in Illinois politics. One high-ranking and very respected senior progressive told me that "the NRCC couldn't find a better ally than [expletives deleted] Bustos... I've never seen any less capable chair. I voted for her, something I deeply regret now."

The GOP is have a field day with this whole horror show. While praying that no one remove Bustos, they are hooting  and hollerin' at the idea that someone in politics is getting an even worse rap for racism than Louie Gohmert and Marsha Blackburn. Michael McAdams, NRCC communications director, sent out a statement yesterday pointing out that thanks to Bustos the Dems "are heading home in a fiery heap of dysfunction, as Politico detailed the rampant incompetence within Cheri Bustos’ DCCC including an exodus of top staffers, overall mismanagement and concerns over a racist and homophobic staffer being promoted to run their diversity outreach program." Congratulations, Cheri Bustos, opening the DCCC up to this kind of criticism from a source like that! Not even in Rahm's or Steve Israel's worst days...

Will Pelosi Survive Wednesday's Leadership Election?

Congress already has one foolish Ryan too many in leadership

Until this past Wednesday, the only House Democrats who have publicly gotten behind Tim Ryan's challenge to Pelosi's leadership were a gaggle of reactionaries from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party: Blue Dog co-chairs Kurt Schrader (OR) and Jim Cooper (TN) and rot gut Wall Street-owned New Dems Kathleen Rice (NY) and Ed Perlmutter (CO). As much as we criticize Pelosi's leadership here, she has been something of a bulwark against the corrupt, right-wing agenda espoused by the New Dems and Blue Dogs, who now see their opportunity-- under the guise of reform-- to replace her. She should be replaced, but not by someone even worse and far less capable.

Then Wednesday, a normal Democrat joined the ranks of the anti-Pelosi faction: Marcia Fudge (OH). Fudge pointed to the disaster the DCCC has become under Pelosi's leadership.

"I believe now is the right time for new leadership," Fudge said as she questioned the effectiveness of the party's strategy in recent years. "We continue to rely on consultants who know less than we about our districts and our states."

"I am now and have always been a loyal Democrat. I will support all those we elect to leadership positions. However, I do believe this is the time for a new direction and am confident my colleague from Ohio is the right choice."

When it became clear that DCCC Chairman Steve Israel had implemented his own racism in DCCC policies by refusing to fund African-American candidates-- including an incumbent-- in white-majority districts, the only prominent Democrat to call him out on it was Congressional Black Caucus then-chair, Marcia Fudge. Pelosi let her complaints pass.

The leadership election will take place in 4 days-- Wednesday, in a closed door Democratic caucus session. Pelosi has come up with a plan to have 5 elected DCCC co-chairs but is still clinging to her prerogative to appoint the actual DCCC chairman, unlike the Republicans, who elect their NRCC chair. Pelosi's 4 DCCC chairs-- Rahm Emanuel, Chris Van Hollen, Steve Israel and Ben Ray Lujan-- have all been complete catastrophes and are responsible for the loss of dozens and dozens of Democratic seats and the dominance of the GOP in Congress.

UPDATE: The Useful Idiot

The Blue Dogs and New Dems, far more eager to collaborate with Trump than Pelosi is, hope to use Ryan to take out Pelosi. No one thought it could happen but if the New Dems stick together they can cause a lot of damage. A notorious womanizer, some people find Ryan's presumption smacking of frat boy sexism.

Ryan’s challenge to Pelosi is remarkable in that despite his seven terms in Congress he has always been considered a backbench member. Typically, to aspire to leadership, a member needs to demonstrate a particular savvy to network with other members to get them on side, which requires a decent amount of skill and personality to pull off.

Ryan has the personality, he has yet to show the skill.

...But Ryan’s biggest challenge is also his best attribute; he is everything 76-year-old Pelosi isn’t. She is the progressive liberal from San Francisco, an affluent cosmopolitan city; he is the moderate New Deal Democrat from Youngstown, a former industrial giant trying to recover from decades of decline. She is a very wealthy political dynamo, he is upper-middle class at best and a novice.

Pelosi is a woman, Ryan is not.

This last difference was underscored in a recent tweet by justice editor Ian Millhiser at the left-wing Web site Think Progress: “This thing where an obscure male backbencher thinks he deserves to replace the most accomplished woman in Congress is how sexism works,” he declared.

The CBC Could Do A LOT Better Than Marcia Fudge-- And Should

Proving that she can’t read through an amendment that consists of one single sentence, Congressional Black Caucus chair, Marcia Fudge, declared at the annual CBC Legislative Conference last week that she and her lamer members had voted with the House leadership and the money-grubbing shills of the Military Industrial Complex against Grayson’s amendment to curtail the militarization of the local police “because it was a dumb amendment.” No wonder Bruce Dixon’s cutting Edge Black Agenda Report is so down on the inherent conservativism and corruptionism of the CBC!

It wasn’t a dumb amendment; she’s a dumb congresswoman— and a pawn for shady Big Money interests. No doubt she was offended at Grayson’s politically incorrect, plain-spoken tweet after the vote that “pigs feeding at the military-industrial trough killed" this amendment, a view that is widely accepted Inside-the-Beltway, albeit only in whispers.

Senior CBC members, John Conyers (D-MI), Bobby Scott (D-VA) and Hank Johnson (D-GA), who were among the 8 CBC members who broke with Fudge and the Military Industrial Complex bribe-takers to support the amendment are demanding Congress take up the issue again— an issue cowards like Fudge are now too frightened to oppose. The other CBC members who voted with Grayson and stood up for their constituents instead of their crooked donors were Keith Ellison (D-MN), Donna Edwards (D-MD), Barbara Lee (D-CA), John Lewis (D-GA), and Maxine Waters (D-CA).

The amendment Fudge couldn’t understand and called “dumb” instead: “An amendment to prohibit use of funds to transfer aircraft (including unmanned aerial vehicles), armored vehicles, grenade launchers, silencers, toxicological agents, launch vehicles, guided missiles, ballistic missiles, rockets, torpedoes, bombs, mines, or nuclear weapons through the DOD Excess Personal Property Program established pursuant to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1997.”

Fudge, who has a decent progressive voting record, is, basically, a hack Democratic politician devoid of leadership talent. She was working for Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones when Jones suddenly died from a cerebral aneurysm in 2008 and was selected after calling all the members of the district’s Democratic Executive Committee. In a horrifyingly gerrymandered D+30 district (designed specifically to concentrate as many African-American voters as possible into one electoral ghetto in order to make OH-14 and OH-16 safe for racist white Republicans, respectively David Joyce and Jim Renacci), the Democratic Party nomination is tantamount to election. The district has a 54.2% African-American population and Obama won it with 82% against McCain and 83% against Romney. Fudge had no opponent in the special election and won “reelection” in the next general with 85%. Republicans didn’t bother to put up a candidate against her in 2012. This year the GOP candidate is Mark Zetzer, a graphic artist, who, as of June 30, had raised less than the $5,000 that would trigger an FEC fundraising report. Fudge has raised $670,846, a full 80% of it from PACs.

Aside from calling Grayson’s amendment dumb, she also implied African-American voters are dumb: “The black caucus fights for you every day. Even when you won’t fight for yourself. We fight for you. Whether it’s immigration or education, whether it’s food stamps, whether it’s housing, we fight for you every day. So my message to you is to contain your complaining. Contain your complaining.” Grayson’s amendment to prohibit the militarization of the police is what fighting for her constituents means, not her vote with the Republicans and the other corrupt Democrats against it. That’s exactly why the most admired African American legislators— from Barbara Lee and John Conyers to John Lewis and Keith Ellison— backed it. Fudge is a disgrace and she should step aside as CBC chair and let someone who would have fought to prevent tragedies like Ferguson happen take up the chair going forward. Oh, yeah, if she isn’t just plain dumb… she’s a liar and misrepresented the amendment she says she’s glad she opposed. She claims the CBC opposed the amendment (see video above), even though the 8 most prominent members of the CBC all voted for it.

Fudge, not fighting for Cleveland residents

How Safe Does A Safe Seat Have To Be To Keep A Congressman From Being A K'az'r?

Can you think of the last time we backed the DCCC on anything? I can't. And Steve Israel? Never. But in the case of Floridian gerrymandering, the DCCC is correct and the Congressional Black Caucus is wrong. CBC Chair Marcia Fudge may be right about Steve Israel not valuing minorities-- hello? Blue Dog?-- and I'm delighted Fudge is going to try to block his rise in the House leadership.

Do you know what a kʼazʻr is? Well, ok? That's the Yiddish spelling. Let me trying an English transliteration: chazzer… but the "ch" has a guttural sound like you're about the spit out a deep throatful of phlegm-- rather than Rickie and Lucy doing the cha-cha-cha. Anyway a kʼazʻr is a greedy pig. And the CBC, I'm afraid is taking a kʼazʻr-ish position on this gerrymandering thing.

Corrine Brown's ridiculous district twists and turns down from the African American neighborhoods of Jacksonville-- that aren't even contiguous-- along a narrow strip a mile or two wide along Rt 17 (which then disappears into Ted Yoho's district and through some sparsely populated rural areas until finally finding Palatka in the east and African-American neighborhoods of Gainesville in the west before chugging down into Sanford and Pine Hills in the Orlando metropolitan area.

Obama won the district both times with 73%. With a PVI of D+21 this district defines "safe." Republicans have trouble winning R+1 districts and they don't try-- not ever, not anywhere, when a district is D+6 or above. Brown is screaming and threatening to go to the Supreme Court because Judge Terry Lewis ordered the legislature to remove Sanford from her district, which might take her down from a D+21 to a D+19, depending on other factors. Republicans didn't bother running candidates against her in 2004, 2006 and 2008 and last year, when there was a Republican running with no support (and a campaign war chest of $19,941 against Brown's $613,190), Brown won with 71%. "We will go all the way to the United States Supreme Court," she thundered, "dealing with making sure that African Americans are not disenfranchised."

Give me a break. Instead of making deals with Republicans in states to create marginally red districts by agreeing to have ethnically-cleansed districts, Democrats like Brown could spread around some of her Democratic voters, still keep a deep blue district that she would never lose, and help the Democrats defeat John Mica, Dan Webster and Ron DeSantis. Marcia Fudge should know better, even if Corrine Brown can't see beyond her own careerism.

There are 43 congressional districts that have PVIs of D+20 and above. Many of them are specifically gerrymandered to keep minority voters inside an electoral ghetto that makes surrounding districts safe for Republicans. Brown's is one of them. Each of these is a minority majority district that could shed some Democratic voters, still be perfectly safe and help elect a Democrat or two in another district:

• AL-07 (33.6% white)- Terri Sewell (could threaten Matha Roby and Spencer Bachus)
• SC-06 (38.4% white)- Jim Clyburn (could threaten Tom Rice and Mark Sanford)
• GA-04 (31% white)- Hank Johnson (could threaten Tom Price)
• LA-02 (30.6% white)- Cedric Richmond (could threaten Bill Cassidy)
• MD-07 (36.1% white)- Elijah Cummings (could threaten Andy Harris)
• TX-09 (39.4% white)- Al Green (could threaten John Culbertson)
• TN-09 (28.2% white)- Steve Cohen (could threaten Steve Fincher)
• NC-12 (39.6% white)- vacant (could threaten Robert Pittenger, Howard Coble or Virginia Foxx)
• VA-03 (35.8% white)- Bobby Scott (could threaten Rob Wittman, Scott Rigell and Randy Forbes)
• TX-30 (41% white)- Eddie Bernice Johnson (could threaten Pete Sessions or Joe Barton)
• IL-01 (40.6% white)- Bobby Rush (could threaten Adam Kinzinger)
• MO-01 (44.9% white)- William Lacy Clay (could threaten Ann Wagner)
• MI-14 (33.6% white)- Gary Peters (could threaten Kerry Bentivolio)
• IL-02 (36.7% white)- Robin Kelly (could threaten Adam Kinzinger)
• FL-20 (39.9% white)- Alcee Hastings (could threaten Mario Diaz-Balart)
• OH-11 (40.1% white)- Marcia Fudge (could threaten David Joyce or Jim Renacci)
• GA-05 (33.4% white)- John Lewis (could threaten Tom Price)
• MI-13 (37.6% white)- John Conyers (could threaten Kerry Bentivolio)
• NJ-10 (29.8% white)- Donald Payne (could threaten Leonard Lance or Rodney Frelinghuysen)
• FL-24 (37.7% white)- Frederica Wilson (could threaten Mario Diaz-Balart)
• PA-02 (31.7% white)- Chaka Fattah (could threaten Pat Meehan)

Fudge to Steve Israel (on behalf of Corrine Brown): “On behalf of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), I write to express our ongoing concern with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s (DCCC) support of lawsuits challenging the validity of minority Congressional districts.Per our prior discussion, we are extremely disturbed by the DCCC’s efforts to dismantle CBC districts in states that have historically proven to be difficult to elect minority members. Considering the history of discrimination through efforts such as gerrymandering, the recent actions reflect the discrimination of days past."

So looks like these Republicans in the districts created by the electoral ghettos will be safe and sound until someone sits down with Democrats like Fudge and Brown and has a heart to heart with them. Fudge could easily lose 50,000 Democratic voters, take on 50,000 Republican votes, still win in a landslide-- Romney got 16% in her district) and swamp David Joyce in the 14th district next door, who won his last race 183,657 to 131,637.

A Different Kind Of Democrat-- A Republican Kind

Max Baucus, an Obama kind of Democrat

The PCCC has a wonderful list of 97 Democrats-- over half the caucus-- who, they say are committed to voting against the chained CPI. And some of them won't. But I'm betting a great many on that list won't even think twice about doing whatever Obama, Pelosi and Hoyer tell them to do. "We," writes the PCCC "did a cross-check of the two lists and found that 97 sitting and voting Members (we excluded non-voting delegates) of the House Democratic caucus have signed onto statements either last year or this year saying they would not vote for legislation that uses chained CPI to cut benefits. That’s a majority of the caucus, which includes 191 members." Does it sound like when they wouldn't ever, ever, ever agree to health care reform that didn't include-- at the minimum-- a public option? I remember that battle and saw how easy it as for so many of them-- mostly the same names as the ones on this list of 97-- abandoned that "pledge" or whatever you want to call it... and I've seen how that lack of a public option has jeopardized the entire health care reform package and made it barely worth fighting for.

There are names on this list who will certainly stick to the fight to save Social Security to the bitter end because they understand it and embrace it-- men and women like Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Judy Chu (D-CA), Maxine Waters (D-CA), John Conyers (D-MI), Keith Ellison (D-MN), Jerry Nadler (D-NY), José Serrano (D-NY), Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Brad Miller (D-NC), and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) who are in Congress primarily to work for the interests of ordinary American families. But, not everyone on that list is so trustworthy and many have bigger (careerist) priorities. There are some extremely untrustworthy names on the list that make it a farce-- corrupt Philly political machine boss Bob Brady, mediocre political hacks like Kathy Castor (D-FL), Gene Green (D-TX), Eliot Engel (New Dem-NY), Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), Nick Rahall (D-WV), Mike Thompson (Blue Dog-CA), André Carson (New Dem-IN), even a Blue Dog, Joe Baca!

Marcia Fudge (D-OH) is in Congress fighting for the interests of working families. She's not going to punk out the way so many on that list will. Marcia was elected chair of the Congressional Black Caucus and last week she released this powerful sttaement that flies in the face of the bullshit we're hearing from Obama, Pelosi and Hoyer (who has already announced he'd whip for any deal that Boehner could agree to even if he can't deliver Republican votes, offering up the universally hated (universally outside of Wall Street and K Street, where these people's souls reside) TARP as a model:

Let’s call it for what it is; the chained CPI index is a reduction in Social Security benefits over time, a benefit older Americans earned through a lifetime of hard work. The notion that seniors need less of an increase because they can reduce their living expenses is out of touch with reality. Health care costs consume a disproportionate share of their meager income and those costs continue to rise faster than inflation.  Moreover, since Social Security benefits do not contribute one dime to the national debt, they have no place in deficit reduction negotiations. I will not throw America’s seniors over the cliff to avoid the fiscal cliff.

Anything less than that kind of statement indicates the speaker is... well, a "different" kind of Democrat, a Republican kind of Democrat-- like Obama loves painting himself. In fact, this week, writing in the Fiscal Times Bruce Bartlett, tries to explain exactly what kind of a Democrat Barack Obama is. [If you're a proud Obamabot, save yourself the heartache and don't read it.]

Many on the left are puzzled by Barack Obama’s apparent willingness to support dramatic reductions in federal social spending. It is only because Republicans demand even more radical cuts in spending that Obama’s fiscal conservatism is invisible to the general public. But those on the political left know it and are scared.

Yesterday, left-leaning law professor Neil Buchanan penned a scathing attack on Obama for abandoning the Democratic Party’s long-held policies toward the poor, and for astonishing naiveté in negotiating with Republicans. Said Buchanan:

“The bottom line is that President Obama has already revealed himself to be unchanged by the election and by the last two years of stonewalling by the Republicans. He still appears to believe, at best, in a milder version of orthodox Republican fiscal conservatism-- an approach that would be a fitting starting position for a right-wing politician in negotiations with an actual Democrat. Moreover, he still seems to believe that the Republicans are willing to negotiate in good faith.”

Others on the left, such as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich and others raise similar concerns. They cannot understand why Obama, having won two elections in a row with better than 50 percent of the vote-- something accomplished only by presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan in the postwar era-- and holding a powerful advantage due to the fiscal cliff, would seemingly appear willing to gut social spending while asking for only a very modest contribution in terms of taxes from the wealthy.

The dirty secret is that Obama simply isn’t very liberal, nor is the Democratic Party any more. Certainly, the center of the party today is far to the right of where it was before 1992, when Bill Clinton was elected with a mission to move the party toward the right. It was widely believed by Democratic insiders that the nation had moved to the right during the Reagan era and that the Democratic Party had to do so as well or risk permanent loss of the White House.

It is only the blind hatred Republicans had for Clinton that prevented them from seeing that he governed as a moderate conservative-- balancing the budget, cutting the capital gains tax, promoting free trade, and abolishing welfare, among other things. And it is only because the political spectrum has shifted to the right that Republicans cannot see to what extent Obama and his party are walking in Clinton’s footsteps.

One of the few national reporters who has made this point is the National Journal's Major Garrett. In a December 13 column, he detailed the rightward drift of the Democratic Party on tax policy over the last 30 years.

“In ways inconceivable to Republicans of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, Democrats have embraced almost all of their economic arguments about tax cuts. Back then, sizable swaths of the Democratic Party sought to protect higher tax rates for all. Many opposed President Reagan's 1981 across-the-board tax cuts and the indexing of tax brackets for inflation. Many were skeptical of Reagan's 1986 tax reform that consolidated 15 tax brackets into three and lowered the top marginal rate from 50 percent to 28 percent (with a "bubble rate" of 33 percent for some taxpayers). They despised the expanded child tax credit and marriage-penalty relief called for under the GOP's Contract With America.

“Now all of that is embedded in Democratic economic theory and political strategy. The only taxes that the most progressive Democratic president since Lyndon Johnson wants to raise are those affecting couples earning more than $267,600 and individuals earning more than $213,600 (these are the 2013 indexed amounts from President Obama's 2009 proposal of $250,000 for couples and $200,000 for individuals). Yes, some of this increase would hit some small businesses. But that can be finessed.”

I think that a lot of the Democratic Party’s rightward drift resulted from two factors. First is the continuing decline of organized labor from 24 percent of the labor force in 1973 to less than half that percentage in 2011. And the decline among private sector workers has been even more severe.

When the AFL-CIO was strong, it looked out for the working class as a whole. Its leadership understood that improving the pay and benefits of all workers was ultimately to the benefits of unionized workers. Labor support was critical to the passage of every important piece of social welfare legislation since the 1930s. Hence the decline of unionization has deprived liberals of their most important ally.

...[W]hatever the reason, the result is that the nation no longer has a party of the left, but one of the center-right that is akin to what were liberal Republicans in the past – there is no longer any such thing as a liberal Republican – and a party of the far right.

In a little-noticed comment on Spanish-language television on December 14, Obama himself confirmed this typology of today's political spectrum. Said Obama, "The truth of the matter is that my policies are so mainstream that if I had set the same policies that I had back in the 1980s, I would be considered a moderate Republican."

I think this is correct and explains a great deal about why Obama refuses to use his leverage to pursue liberal policies and keeps inviting Republicans back to the negotiating table again and again on the budget. He wants a deal, he wants to cut spending and balance the budget if possible. This may or may not be a wise course for a Democratic president to follow, but that is who Obama is.

That's what we're up against-- and Obama and his conservative allies have every intention of remaking the Democratic Party in their own image. Standing up to him and pressuring your two senators and your congressman to reject the Obama-Boehner sellout to the wealthy and their mania to balance the budget on the backs of the middle class is going to be very serious over the course of the next few weeks and months. Just think of Obama as Bush and proceed accordingly. Keep in mind something economist Dean Baker, not on Obama's short list to be Treasury Secretary, a position he's given America's worst and most deadly enemies-- the Wall Street predators-- veto power over: "Among voters across the political spectrum the chained CPI is a huge loser. It only wins among the DC money crowd."