Can Someone On The Far Left Vote For Biden? It Turns Out... Yes-- And With Eyes Wide Open

 

Matthew Grimm is a musician who has done a lot of work with Blue America. Maybe you recognize some of the songs on this page. They're all him. Now, you may already know that, although I voted against Trump of course, I could not bring myself to vote for Biden. I'm not trying to persuade anyone to follow my lead. Do what your heart tells you to do. But I thought it would be nice to present a pro-Biden point of view from someone as left-wing as I am. And Matthew already wrote one for his Facebook page. It makes a lot of sense and he said it would be ok to re-publish it.


GOTV Appeal
-by Matthew Grimm

Oh hi, it's me, the most left-wing guy most of you - but def not all of you - know, and, with a week left in early voting before Nov. 3, I would like to make a particularly pointy tl/dr appeal to my brethren of that political stripe, and ALL political stripes, I suppose, as voters.

I don't particularly like some of the modus operandi of the higher-up leadership of the Democratic Party and don't see eye-to-eye with them on some things philosophically. Now here's the but-- BUT-- I recognize we need allies and to make coalitions because what makes me left-wing is not abstract clubby crap or fevered dogma but the policy outcomes I want to see to make people's lives better. That and stopping America's slide into actual no-shit fascism are pretty big motivators for me, but this is not quite a Vote Blue No Matter Who argument. It's an argument that says, whatever issues I may have with certain party apparatchiks, I reside in the Democratic Party because that's where the people I genuinely believe in, who I think are brilliant, smart people, who I think are heroes because they fight for everybody, not just rich assholes who bankroll political parties, reside. As PART of aforementioned coalition. And I every much want them to have roles making policy in America, and this is the big thing I want to impart here: THEY CAN.





If you love Bernie and Rashida and Katie and Ayanna and AOC and Liz Warren and the many genuine progressives (of various shapes and flavors) in congress, guess what? THEY'RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE. THEY ARE LAWMAKERS. GIVE THEM ALLIES TO MAKE GOOD LAWS. GIVE THEM INVESTIGATORY POWER AND COMMITTEE CHAIRS. GIVE THEM THE POWER TO FIX THIS SHIT AND A DENAZIFIED JUSTICE DEPARTMENT. GIVE THEM ALLIES, IN MAJORITY PROPORTIONS. Will Joe Biden always be that? No. Will they have to make some compromises with center-right people? Sure, but guess what again? President Ocasio Cortez will have to do that too. That's the coalition thing. But ask yourself how much good legislation, that genuinely solves problems and helps normal Americans, that genuinely addresses criminal justice reform and enforces voting rights for everyone, that doesn't grease the skids for corporate predators and funnel taxpayer dollars to crony capitalists, they will be able to enact if this bulwark of actual fascists retains control of the White House, doing everything possible to make things worse?

I think the odds probably go down, no? To nothing.

Obviously, the downside is bad, even apocalyptic-- Trump has publicly "joked" about a third term, but we know that's not joking because he's the exact kind of amoral, narcissistic piece of shit who thinks he should reign unquestioned and unaccountable, and we know the craven folksy concentration-camp-rubberstamping sociopaths of the Klan rally that passes for the contemporary Republican Party have ceded any honor or integrity in fealty to the most vile human any fiction writer could even imagine-- but even if you just want to stick to the positives here, to vote FOR something versus AGAINST something, it is this. We want policy outcomes, that help our neighbors and that stop our neighbors from being preyed upon, and we want government to play a role in that because times are awful and it should. That is what makes me progressive, not as a label or an abstract belief, but in truly advocating SHIT TO DO to realize the vast potential of our country and our neighbors even in the face of legitimate horrors like COVID and a very real American fascist movement.

A single election won't fix everything magically, and it never does and the weird essence of our blanket fairy-tale conditioning is we still expect it to. It's just the start, and we need to start looking at it that way and, yes, holding our in-party allies to their promises. There will be work to do after. I want Liz Warren and Bernie and Kara Eastman and Jamaal Bowman and Mondaire Jones and Mike Siegel and Katie Porter doing that work, and I want their plans made into real problem-solving. There is only ONE way that is remotely possible.

Give them allies, in numbers too big to fuck with.

Vote like it's pulling a trigger. Thank you.

Who-- No, WHAT-- Comes After Pelosi?

 

If next Tuesday comes and goes and Shahid Buttar hasn't pulled off the biggest political upset of 2020-- you can help him do that here-- Pelosi is almost definitely headed back to the speaker's chair, as what Politico calls "may be the most powerful congressional leader in modern U.S. history." I don't mean to quibble and I'm not certain how they define "modern," but Sam Rayburn (1940-1960 with two brief interludes) and Tip O'Neill (1977-1987) in the House and Lyndon Johnson (1953-1961), Mike Mansfield (1961-1977) and Mitch McConnell (2007-present) in the Senate have been pretty impactful and historically powerful. But Heather Caygle, John Bresnahan and Sarah Ferris wrote that "In the 22 months since she’s returned to the speaker’s chair-- an enormous achievement in itself-- Pelosi has centralized power in an unprecedented way. It’s due not just to her own maneuvering, but to a variety of circumstances: a chaotic president, a paralyzed Senate, and a national health emergency that’s spurred the most serious economic crisis in decades." Yep, that and a too big of a tent congressional party-- to the point of near dysfunction-- that no one else could probably hold together for more than a month.

It helps that she's had Trump as an adversary-- and a non-entity as minority leader-- but she has been successful in placating a progressive wing and the Republican wing of her own party-- the New Dems and Blue Dogs-- and in balancing the needs of the spineless careerists (and incrementalists) with the serious reformers and idealists. There are rot gut conservatives, devotees of the status quo and real life socialists in that tent and somehow Pelosi has kept the whole structure from the inevitable collapse.

But Politico's point is more along the lines that "Pelosi will no longer be the party’s leader if Biden wins the White House on Nov. 3, but her influence may only grow. If Democrats also win the Senate, the incoming president is expected to rely heavily on the Democratic agenda passed by the House that’s been blocked by Trump and Mitch McConnell during the last two years. On everything from health care to climate change to money in politics, the markers laid down by House Democrats may prove every bit as important as the policy goals Biden laid out during the campaign. Yet Pelosi also faces questions about her own future. In order to win over a handful of skittish Democrats following the party’s landslide victory in the 2018 midterms, Pelosi committed to serving only two more terms as speaker. That would make the next Congress her last after 20 years in power, and this upcoming election her final appearance on the ballot, unless she goes back on her commitment."

Pelosi, 80, is expected to easily secure another term as speaker in January-- very likely without even a challenge, according to interviews with a dozen House Democrats.

...Even with all of her success, some Democrats have quietly begun considering a post-Pelosi era. It’s a topic that no lawmaker will discuss publicly for fear of backlash from the speaker-- the oldest person to hold the office-- though such discussions continue quietly inside a caucus where roughly 80 percent of Democrats have only served under Pelosi’s leadership.

Nearly a dozen Democrats are clamoring for one of their caucus’ few open leadership posts in January, a perch that many hope could position them for bigger roles in case of a potential exodus by the troika of Pelosi, Hoyer and Clyburn in the next cycle.

“I think people are starting to think what’s the team going to look like two or four years from now,” said Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI), who is running to be assistant speaker, the No. 4 spot in leadership.

“I think people are beginning to think who will be the next generation of leaders in the Democratic Caucus,” he said. “I think that’s kind of natural.”

There are still Pelosi critics, including roughly a dozen Democrats who opposed her second tour as speaker in 2018. But it’s not even clear how many would vote against her now.

“In the last go around, there was some opposition,” said Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA), a longtime Pelosi friend. “There was a lot of talking, but there wasn’t any candidate.”

Eshoo said it’s possible that some of the incoming Democrats from swing districts may stage some sort of opposition to Pelosi next Congress. But Eshoo said it would not weaken her ability to govern.

“Every single one of them will have received her considerable support, monetarily and otherwise,” Eshoo said. “She always says, ‘Just win.’”

“Our confidence in the speaker is high,” added Rep. Katherine Clark (D-MA), another member of Pelosi’s leadership team seeking a higher post next year.

While Pelosi is firmly ensconced in the speaker's chair, there is speculation about possible successors whenever she does leave. The list includes Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (NY), the Democratic Caucus chair; Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA), a major player in Trump's impeachment; and Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA), whose national profile rose during the police reform debate, among others.

I suppose Caygle, Bresnahan and Ferris are speaking to different people than the ones I speak with, but I have been told in no uncertain terms-- and by Democrats willing to do it-- that if Pelosi tries to shove PAYGO down the Democrats' throats again-- and she will-- that there will definitely be a progressive challenger to her reelection as speaker. Good, there should be. That tents, in fact, needs to collapse if there is ever going to be a breakout from this country's miserable status quo.

And, although Cheri Bustos and the DCCC have carefully recruited and supported a cadre of careerist non-leaders for the class of 2021, there are a number of independent-minded candidates likely to win House seats a week from today, despite the party establishment. Several have told me they may only have one term to accomplish their goals in-- due either to gerrymandering or to the probable 2022 anti-blue wave-- and that they don't plan to use those two years playing nice with a party establishment that is not much more than just better than the Republicans, at least in terms of the systemic reform that these candidates are motivated by.

Abandoned By The DCCC 2020

 

With a tiny handful of exceptions-- basically Kara Eastman in Omaha, Joyce Elliott in Little Rock and Dana Balter in Syracuse (who is running in a D+3 district)-- Cheri Bustos and her DCCC have once again decided to spend all the big money primarily on corporate-friendly conservative candidates backed by the Blue Dogs and New Dems. To say movement candidates don't get a fair shake from Bustos, would be the understatement of the cycle.

Sri Kulkarni is a good example. He's running in TX-22, Tom DeLay's old district in the suburbs south and southwest of Houston, primarily Fort Bend County with a chunk of Brazoria and a sliver od Harris. With a PVI of R+10, Trump beat Hillary there 52.1% to 44.2%. Kulkarni lost to Republican Pete Olson in 2018-- 152,750 (51.4%) to 138,153 (46.5%), a good showing but not as good as Beto O'Rourke had. Olson is retiring now and it makes sense for the DCCC to chase the district. Kulkarni, though is an extremely flawed candidate on many levels. We'll just mention one: he's been endorsed by the Blue Dogs and New Dems. The Blue Dogs have been known to reject conservatives who they don't view as conservative enough. They see Kulkarni as right up their alley.

Kulkarni has outraised Republican Troy Nehls $4,863,231 to $1,532,299. But the big spending is the district is coming from the DCCC and Pelosi's House Majority PAC and from Kevin McCarthy's Congressional Leadership Fund. As of last week, the DCCC and Pelosi had spent $5,749,664 slamming Nehls and bolstering Kulkarni. Meanwhile McCarthy had put $5,692,407 into slamming Kulkarni and bolstering Nehls. Those are signals that the committees are serious about backing candidates. Corporate conservatives like Christy Smith (CA), Carolyn Bourdeaux (GA) and Amy Kennedy (NJ)-- all endorsed by the New Dems-- have also been benefiting from mega-DCCC independent expenditures. Progressives? Nope; with a couple of exception-- just peanuts that send a very different signal.

We've just re-activated Blue America's Abandoned by the DCCC ActBlue page, which you will find by clicking on the thermometer on the right. These are progressive candidates who won their primaries and each is on the verge of flipping a red seat blue-- without any real help-- or in most cases, without any help-- from the DCCC, which endlessly whines that progressives are "too liberal" for the districts they're running in.

I spoke with a movement candidate who looked over the list of the DCCC favorites. He said, "I think we can persuade some of them to vote progressive at least some of the time." OK, better than nothing, but what about candidates you don't have to persuade, leaders like Jamaal Bowman, Mondaire Jones, Beth Doglio and Cori Bush who have already proven that they don't need any persuading?

I'm thinking this is going to be the last Blue America ask before the election. So please read what history of ideas professor-- and Riverside County progressive candidate-- Liam O'Mara told me about what's behind the DCCC abandonment of progressive candidates.

"The idea that I am 'too progressive for the district' is rubbish... We currently have the best early return rate of any Democrat in recent memory, and that follows a primary cycle that saw more votes to the Dems than any previous primary in ages. Right now FiveThirtyEight gives my campaign a better chance of flipping the district than they've seen yet, and a higher chance of flipping the seat than quite a few candidates in the long list of candidates the DCCC is spending on. Progressive-populist leaders used to dominate in the most socially conservative corners of the country, because more people vote their wallets and their hopes than anything else. To say that we are out of touch with the needs and wishes of the electorate is to surrender preëmptively to Republican control and Republican arguments... when what we ought to be doing is standing out there and winning over hearts and minds. The Democratic party needs to stop focussing on safely blue seats and start trying to win people over... and we can't do that with tepid, half-baked conservatism."

The Florida Democratic Party never looked seriously at the north-central Florida district centered on Gainesville, but this year, after Ted Yoho announced his retirement, 27 year old Adam Christensen has made a real race out of it. If he win, the DCCC will be in shock-- especially because he's the kind of independent-minded progressive that the establishment fears. "The DCCC hasn’t spent a penny on this race," Christensen told me. "They wrote it off a long time ago and refused to even look our way. Even without their help we have managed to raise more money than anyone who has ever run here, all from small dollar donations, and have brought an 'unwinnable' within the margin of error. If we had $100,000 more this race would be over. It is the best Return-On-Investment of any race in the  country and would winning it would flip Ted Yoho’s R+9 district. So if anyone wants to make a good investment Florida CD-3 is about as good as you can find."

Despite Cheri Bustos, Some Progressives May Win Seats On November 3-- But Dozens Of Wretched ConservaDems Will For Sure

 

The bell is tolling loudly now-- and the Republicans finally-- albeit too late-- hear it, as their pollsters and operatives tell them that Democrats are turning out more low-frequency and newly registered voters than Republicans are. Marc Caputo and Zach Montellaro report that the early vote lead for Democrats is massive. As of yesterday, 52,718,496 people had already voted 36,518,179 by mail and I16,200,317 in person. "Democrats," they wrote yesterday, "have opened up a yawning gap in early voting over Republicans in six of the most crucial battleground states — but that only begins to tell the story of their advantage heading into Election Day... [T]he turnout disparity with new and less-reliable voters has forced Republican political operatives to take notice."

Democrats are ahead of Republicans by 10 points in Florida, 16 points in Arizona, 24 points in Michigan 14 points in North Carolina, a crazy 46 points in Pennsylvania (where a million and a half people have already voted) and 22 points in Wisconsin. Republicans better hope for sunny weather on November 3rd.

And this is not just about Biden. Even the DCCC is waking up to the fact that this is going to be the biggest wave since the DCCC's top IE recipient, Harley Rouda, was still a Republican. They're spending real money in districts that Trump won big in 2016, although exclusively on behalf of their conservative candidates with substantial spends being made for right-of-center (like Cheri Bustos herself who is working furiously to re-make the Democratic Party into an even more right-of-center, pro-corporate party) candidates like Dan Feehan (MN), Kathleen Williams (MT) Christina Hale (IN), Hiral Tipirneni (AZ), Jill Schupp (MO), Sri Kulkarni (TX)... each of whom has been endorsed by the Wall Street owned-and-operated New Dems.

Even without any help from the DCCC, progressives in similar districts-- like Mike Siegel and Julie Oliver in Texas, Audrey Denny and Liam O'Mara in California, J.D. Scholten in Iowa, Nate McMurray in New York, Jon Hoadley in Michigan and Adam Christensen in Florida-- also have good shots at winning "impossible" districts. You can contribute to their campaigns here.

The slowest, most cautious prognostication outfit in the biz, Cook, now rates 17 Republican-held seats as tossups, which is safe to interpret that Democrats will win just about all of them:

• AZ-06- David Schweikert (R+9)
• CA-25- Mike Garcia (even, but with a Democratic voter registration advantage)
• IL-13- Rodney Davis (R+3)
• IN-05 Susan Brooks (open) (R+9)
• MI-03 Justin Amash (open) (R+6)
• MN-01- Jim Hagedorn (R+5)
• MO-02 Ann Wagner (R+8)
• NE-02- Donald J Bacon (R+4)
• NJ-02- Jeff Van Drew (R+1)
• NY-02- Peter King (Open) (R+3)
• NY-24- John Katko (D+3)
• OH-01- Steve Chabot (R+5)
• PA-10 Scott Perry (R+6)
• TX-21- Chip Roy (R+10)
• TX-22- Pete Olson (Open) (R+10)
• TX-24- Kenny Marchant (Open) (R+9)
• VA-05- Denver Riggleman (Open) (R+6)

They also identify 15 GOP-held seats to be what they call "lean Republican" and some of these are also very likely to flip blue

• AK-AL- Don Young (R+9)
• AR-02- French Hill (R+7)
• CA-50- (Vacant) (R+11)
• CO-03- (Open) (R+6)
• FL-15- (Open) (R+6)
• MI-06- Fred Upton (R+4)
• MT-AL- (Open) (R+11)
• NC-08- Hudson (R+5)
• NC-09- Bishop (R+7)
• NC-11- (Vacant) (R+9)
• NY-01- Lee Zeldin (R+5)
• PA-01- Brian Fitzpatrick (R+1)
• TX-03- VanTaylor (R+13)
• TX-10- Michael McCaul (R+9)
• WA-03- Jaime Herrera Beutler (R+4)

So what could go wrong? THe voters could figure out that the DCCC recruited the most putrid roster of candidates in history. But I doubt the voters care. They're just totally driven by animus towards Trump and his enablers. By the way, do you feel inspired by Matthew Grimm's song and video up top?

Reforming Government-- Raúl Grijalva Wants To-- Pelosi And Her Team Want To Pretend They Do Too... But They Don't

 

McConnell's never going to allow the Senate to debate it and even if he did and it passed, Trump would never sign it. But that didn't stop Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) from introducing new legislation to end the common practice of hiring lobbyists in a revolving door scheme that swampifies the executive branch-- and it's not just something corrupt Republican do. Corrupt Democrats do it too. Last week, writing for the American Prospect, David Dayen showed how Grijalva is forcing corporate conservative Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party "to take a stand on whether they will hold a potential Joe Biden administration to at least the same anti-corruption standard that Barack Obama held for himself as president."

Grijalva's new bill would "deny confirmation of any nominee to an executive branch position who is currently or has been a lobbyist for any corporate client or officer for a private corporation, in this or any future administration. That would include all Cabinet officials, and any of the roughly 1,200 Senate-confirmed positions throughout the federal government. The letter, endorsed by Demand Progress, the American Economic Liberties Project, the Revolving Door Project, and the Sunrise Movement, represents a baseline request for personnel in the next administration. Groups had proposed something similar to this for months, but not this sweeping a ban, and not with the full-throated support of a House committee chair."

The Grijalva rule is a stronger version of President Obama’s lobbyist ban. Under Obama, any registered lobbyist was barred from government service in the issue area where they lobbied until they had been unregistered for two years. On the way out, these officials couldn’t lobby the government for the remainder of the administration. Obama’s rule was a little leaky, as it didn’t apply to unregistered, de facto lobbyists who were obviously engaged in influence-peddling, lobbyists registered outside the two-year ban, or lobbyists hired for a government job outside their lobbying area.

It’s been long forgotten and is now somewhat risible, but Donald Trump also has a lobbying order in place, which replaced his predecessor’s. The Trump rule allows lobbyists into the government as long as they recuse themselves from anything they lobbied on for two years. It also allegedly bans former executive branch members from lobbying the government for five years, though it only applies to the agency where they worked.

According to one count, 281 lobbyists had worked in the Trump administration as of last October, including the secretaries of defense, interior, energy, labor, and homeland security, along with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler. In addition, several former Trump officials found a way around the modest post-government lobbying ban.

The Grijalva rule tightens the Trump and even the Obama standard significantly. Not only is there no safe-harbor period for former lobbyists-- they’re out of government no matter how long ago they lobbied-- but the rule includes all officers of private corporations, of which there have been many in the past two administrations.

...Biden hasn’t committed even to restoring the weaker Obama-era order on lobbying, despite promising a kind of Obama restoration throughout his campaign. Numerous business types have been pitched for top slots in a Biden administration, and his transition team includes former Apple lobbyist Cynthia Hogan, Facebook director Jessica Hertz, and Jeffrey Zients, former Facebook board member and president of Cranemere, a conglomerate that buys and sells businesses. TIAA-CREF CEO Roger Ferguson and co-CEOs of Ariel Investments John Rogers and Mellody Hobson have also been mentioned as potential Cabinet-level officials.

Yesterday Grijalva told me that "No democracy can survive if it has one set of rules for the public and another for insiders. Americans have seen decades of special corporate favors and billion-dollar giveaways, and they won’t accept that as the natural state of things any longer. If we’re going to restore faith in our government, we have to end the revolving door, not just reverse it, and we have to end corporate government once and for all." We need to ask ourselves what the leaders of both parties find unacceptable about that premise-- and why they are so doggedly in favor of the status quo. 

Wednesday, the Washington Post ran a Pelosi-generated piece on House Democrats' unveiling "a sweeping package of reforms... designed to strengthen Congress’s ability to check the executive branch and prevent abuses of power, especially by the president." No mention of Grijalva or his proposal-- just more bullshit from Pelosi and her disgustingly GOP-like, corrupt leadership team. "The package," wrote Karoun Demirjian, "which its architects have informally referred to as “post-Trump reforms,” includes measures to restrain the president’s power to grant pardons and declare national emergencies, to prevent federal officials from enriching themselves, and to accelerate the process of enforcing congressional subpoenas in court. It also includes provisions to protect inspectors general and whistleblowers, increase penalties for officials who subvert congressional appropriations or engage in overt political activity, and safeguard against foreign election interference. Taken together, the proposals represent the Democrats’ long-awaited attempt to correct what they have identified as systematic deficiencies during the course of President Trump’s tenure and impeachment, in the style of changes Congress adopted after Richard Nixon left office. Unlike the post-Watergate reforms, however, which took years to enact, today’s House Democrats have collected their proposed changes under one bill reflecting several measures that have been percolating piecemeal through the House."

It's all about Trump and doesn't touch any of the systemic corruption that has made DC one of the swampiest cities on the planet. Pelosi and Hoyer should have learned a lesson from all the millions of Americans who voted for Trump in 2016. They're incapable of learning any such lesson.

Shahid Buttar is the San Francisco reformer running for Pelosi's seat in November; there's no progressive, just a contest between a corrupt garden variety Democrat and a real fighting progressive. Today, Buttar told me that "Unfortunately, Democrats have followed the Republican playbook in Washington for years. The bipartisan revolving door between K St. and Capitol Hill is the dirty secret of Washington-- and a big part of the reason why our government has grown so unresponsive to the needs of voters struggling to endure the compounding crises of our times."

He said he's "running to replace the leading corporate Democrat in part to help the party grow more responsive to grassroots concerns, and to help make our government more responsive to We the People. I’d be eager to support Rep. Grijalva’s bill in Congress, and to promote other checks and balances to limit and counteract corporate influence peddling in Washington."

Demirjian continued that "In a joint statement, seven committee chairs [though not Grijalva] signaled their legislation is intended to 'prevent future presidential abuses, restore our checks and balances, strengthen accountability and transparency, and protect our elections. It is time for Congress to strengthen the bedrock of our democracy and ensure our laws are strong enough to withstand a lawless president,' the statement says. 'These reforms are necessary not only because of the abuses of this president, but because the foundation of our democracy is the rule of law and that foundation is deeply at risk.' All good stuff... except for the steaming pile of hypocrisy sitting in the middle of the room in plain view.

Nate McMurray is the progressive Democrat in western New York taking on the newest slimy little Trumpist in Congress, hereditary multimillionaire Chris Jacobs, a complete knee-jerk kind of politician. Nate, in contrast, is an independent-minded leader who told me yesterday that "The Democratic leadership is not really well connected to working people and communities. And it really shows-- Democrats lost a lot of ground over the years at the state and local level. But the situation is fixable. The grassroots of the Democratic party has bold initiatives that excite and inspire voters to get involved, and the Democratic Leadership would do well to really listen."

Liam O'Mara is running for a southern California seat occupied by one of the most overtly corrupt members of Congress, Crooked Ken Calvert. When Fox News was looking for a corrupt slimebag to use as an example of DC corruption, they did a Mike Wallace special on Calvert's corruption. This morning Liam told me to call him old-fashioned or "an idealist; call me whatever you like-- but I believe that a government of the people, by the people, and for the people ought to serve only the people-- not corporations and wealthy special interests. Our elections need to be publicaly funded, and all lobbying, in the sense of contributions, needs to end." The topic boils his blood. He continued:

Lobbying used to mean catching someone in the lobby and pressing your case-- that's it! And advocates for bills make perfect sense to me. But when someone can come at you flush with cash from a corporation and say, please vote for things we like, and here's a million bucks to keep your job... that shit needs to be illegal. Now. Right fucking now.

We have hundreds of congresscritters taking vast amounts of cash for their campaigns, and that should be understood as bribery, plain and simple. A bribe is something offered in exchange for a decision in your favour. What else can we call it when someone takes a corporation's money, then votes to advance that same corporation's interests? It's a damned bribe!

I don't care which party you call home-- if you take a big wad of cash from someone and then push their legislative agenda, you are violating your oath to serve the people and the Constitution of this country. It's way past time for some changes. We need to apply the laws properly against bribery, pass a total ban on cash lobbying, introduce publicaly-funded elections, and, as the president disingenuously put it, drain the swamp!

 

Think Of All The Reasons You Detest Trump-- Many Of Them Are The Reasons His Base WIll Never Abandon Him

Peter Wehner served in the administrations of 3 presidents-- Reagan and each Bushs. Now he's a #NeverTrumper and yesterday he did a piece for The Atlantic, Why Trump Supporters Can’t Admit Who He Really Is, concluding that many Republicans believe-- despite "the corruption, chaos, and general insanity that is continuing to engulf the Trump campaign and much of the Republican Party right now"-- that if Biden wins the presidency "America dies," although I think what Wehner meant to say is they fear that if Biden is elected the America of white privilege dies. He wrote that the "chthonic portrait... allows Trump and his followers to tolerate and justify pretty much anything in order to win. And 'anything' turns out to be quite a lot," beyond just "a four-year record of shame, indecency, incompetence, and malfeasance." He painted a stark picture of severe mental illness in the Oval Office as well. "Trump," he concluded, "because of the corruption that seems to pervade every area of his life and his damaged psychological and emotional state, has shown us just how much people will accept in their leaders as a result of 'negative partisanship,' the force that binds parties together less in common purpose than in opposition to a shared opponent." [That pretty much describes the entire 2020 presidential race-- on both sides, I'm afraid to say.]

In an interview by CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick yesterday, John Bolton warned that Trump's inability to think strategically, is the blame for the severity of the pandemic in America and he warned that if Trump is reelected it could-- he really meant would but was unable to say it-- get worse.

Bolton said that during his tenure, “In many cases, the president came to decisions in the national security space that I agreed with.” “But he did it not because of the merits of the argument in favor of a particular policy, but because of the fear of the political blowback he would get domestically if he went in a different direction,” said Bolton.

He said that if Trump is re-elected, “that political guardrail is, if it’s not eliminated entirely, it’s certainly minimized.”

“And so I think the possibility for erratic decisions centered on what Trump perceives as his own personal good fortune increases and the political pressure to move in other directions decreases,” Bolton said.

Andrew Sullivan may not have been watching, but he noted yesterday that Trump is a metastasizing cancer and urged his readers to vote for Biden as quickly as possible. He wrote that "the complete loss of any moral authority the United States might have once had, along with the collapse of a system of alliances that rallied liberal democracies against foul tyrants for decades, are the consequence" of having elected a man sympathetic to authoritarians to the presidency... Gone is "the kind of basic moral clarity that the West once tried to advance, even if we often failed, and has now been sacrificed tout court for one wannabe tyrant’s depraved, delusional psyche... He has delegitimized capitalism by his cronyism, corruption, and indifference to dangerously high levels of inequality. He has tainted conservatism indelibly as riddled with racism, xenophobia, paranoia, misogyny, and derangement. Every hoary stereotype leveled against the right for decades has been given credence by the GOP’s support for this monster of a human being."

The only way out of this spiral is an unlikely figure, Joe Biden. An old-school moderate representing a party fast moving leftward, he is, quite simply, the least worst we’ve got. I’m worried the far left will eat his lunch in office, but that is a less pressing worry than the potential destabilization of the entire system if Trump wins in November. The potential for spiraling unrest in a Trump second term could prompt the dictatorial nightmare many of us have been worried about for years.

Biden is not perfect. He’s too old. But he understands our democratic system; he loves this country and has a grasp of the Constitution. He’s trusted by African-American voters who gave him the nomination, and has not alienated white voters in the middle who loathed Hillary Clinton. He is not deranged; he is not lacking in basic human empathy; and he does not treat all his opponents as enemies.

Some Democrats mock his vow to restore a semblance of dialogue with some Republicans. And I understand their position. It is not without reason. But I reject it. If Trump is defeated, and a modicum of reason and decorum returns, and the embers of liberal democracy are not completely extinguished, we have a chance to rebuild the republic. But it may be our last one.

CNN analyst Stephen Collinson is seeing a Trump "close to full derailment." So this isn't full derailment, just close to it? This is going to be a scary couple of months! "Trump," he predicted, "will ignite a new uproar soon enough. It's clearer than ever that his platform for this election is his own wild behavior that animates his hyperbolic claim that a Democratic presidency would see the suburbs torched by rioters-- not the statesmanlike script choreographed at the RNC. No President in modern history has gone into a reelection race warning that the process of choosing a government that is the bedrock of American democracy is illegitimate. Trump's conduct risks a full-on post-election constitutional crisis."

[W]hile Trump's constantly disruptive behavior and refusal to play the role of a traditional president horrifies Beltway elites, it's exactly what makes him attractive to supporters who long ago soured on conventional politicians. The more he trolls the media, the more his base and his conservative media cheerleaders love it. The question is whether a President who looked every day for four years like he's waging an endless GOP primary campaign can secure a path to victory without broadening his base.

No Evil Foods-- Union Busters

In a dimly lit room on a cold Asheville night in February, workers at vegan, plant-based, meat company No Evil Foods gathered around and listened to what would be the final mandatory anti-union speech from CEO Mike Woliansky. "I had one of our current investors say this week, I've seen hundreds of companies come across my desk, and I've never seen an investment in a unionized startup, especially not at this stage. If I was looking at this business for the first time I would run the other way."

Fears peddled by management about investors were a huge part of the reason why workers ended up voting the union down, but who exactly are these mysterious backers?

No Evil Foods has several investors, but one of their most important seems to be Blue Horizon, a firm that claims to be supporting, "game changers that are disrupting the largest market in the world: food." According to their website, Blue Horizon's goal is to help vegan companies stamp out factory farming, and overtake meat producers with plant-based products. On the surface, getting rid of the industries that routinely pollute waterways, torture animals, and subject workers to hellish conditions sounds like an honorable set of objectives. But how noble of a goal is this if the companies replacing meat packers remain more concerned about the bottom line than the workers who create all the wealth?

No Evil Foods co-founder, Sadrah Schadel, told the captive audience of workers that joining the United Food and Commercial Workers union would be joining a union that has members working in slaughterhouses, specifically Smithfield Foods, and she argued that if workers care about the company’s mission than they should should be appalled by the idea of being in such an organization.

Either Schadel was somehow impaired when taking the venture capitalists’ money or she is a hypocrite.

The backing of these investors was directly linked to increasing production to supply grocery stores nationwide, including Walmart, which is not only one of the largest meat and animal based product retails on the planet, but also a company that carries Smithfield products as well. Walmart is also known for abusing its workers in many ways, including forcing them to sign up for food stamps.

Like Blue Horizon, No Evil Foods bills itself as a "revolutionary" company, and yet their "do no harm" mentality stops where the needs of their venture capitalist investors begins.

In an interview for Capital at Play magazine, Schadel said, “Our seed round in 2018 was focused on finding a small group of like-minded, mission-oriented investors to help us fund both the new facility, as well as start building the team we needed to support our growth.”

Beyond connections with retailers such as Walmart, Blue Horizon, through its LiveKindly collective of plant-based brands, is linked to Cargill-- the largest producer of beef products in North America. Additionally, the CEO of LiveKindly, Kees Kruythoff, was previously the president of Unilever North America, a company made up of dozens of meat based brands (not to mention Axe body spray).

Makes you wonder what Schadel considers to be “like minded.”

Blue Horizon has also invested in plant-based manufacturer Hampton Creek, known best for their egg replacement and eggless mayo products. Hampton Creek has also been cited for workforce violations, many of which were the result of ramping up production following large influxes of venture capital. Employee whistleblowers at Hampton Creek, not unlike those from No Evil Foods, exposed machinery that could not safely handle the production demands and product being rushed to market.

So, unsurprisingly, when those investors shelled out their first major financing round to the tune of a modest $4.1 million in August of 2019, production floor workers at No Evil Foods felt the crunch.

Before August, "the bond between production workers on day shift was amazing," says a former No Evil Foods employee, who was employed at the time the union drive first started in the summer of 2019. This worker asked to remain anonymous fearing additional retribution. "We were hitting the highest numbers of units/cooks that we could have with the equipment we had and overall things felt so good."

But things quickly changed when the investor money started flowing: "Then we were given target goal numbers for each day, week, month. If we were lucky enough to reach those numbers, Mike [Woliansky] would greet us with a fucking cowbell at the monthly meetings as a celebration. It honestly felt embarrassing."

Schadel of course saw it differently. According to the Capital at Play article, Schadel said, “We’ve been focused on sustainable growth for a couple of years now, and that’s right in line with our mission statement. We want to build a company that not only produces food that is good for us and sustainable for the environment, but a company culture that is inherently good for our team, which includes our investors.”

Workers say they experienced something else.

"There were at least three different 'consultants' that would pop in on the floor and fuck shit up, time test certain areas, add logs for every possible thing, which really pissed off the crew that had been working there a while who felt that we didn't need outside help. There were whispers of wanting to unionize pretty early on due to lack of raises and the review structure, safety, communication breakdowns, and not having a voice to speak about these concerns."

Just a month later, the schedule switched from a four-day to a five-day workweek.

"Individuals met with Mike [Woliansky] and were told that if they missed two, maybe three Fridays, they would be terminated. That was the day I decided I was done and this wasn't the job or the company I wanted to support or represent."

In mid August, workers were also subjected to the first of what would eventually be many anti-union meetings. In fact, No Evil Foods kicked off the start of 2020 by plucking their workers off the production floor and shoving them into mandatory, anti-union meetings.

"We heard time and again pro-union workers being sworn at and talked over by management during the meetings, and then management would say those of us asking questions were the ones being hostile," another anonymous No Evil Foods worker told Industrial Worker back in March.

To this day Schadel and Woliansky continue to claim the union drive was a free and fair process, even though No Evil Foods hired a union busting law firm which directed management to use every textbook tactic for harassing workers into voting no. Even though a leaked audio compilation of mandatory anti-union meetings has made its way around the internet, neither Schadel or Woliansky have owned up to their own words.

Shortly after the union was voted down, employees responsible for creating a petition for guaranteed, immediate hazard pay were fired for bogus complaints such as dress code violations or failing to social distance. Since the union election concluded on February 13th, about one-third of the production staff eventually left either by their own recognizance or because they were culled in the witch-hunt. No Evil Foods management worked overtime to snuff out any signs of organizing efforts, all in an effort to satisfy their wealthy venture capitalist investors, not only at Blue Horizon, but also at Siddhi.

The person sitting at the top of Siddhi is Brian Finn, a man who boasts on his company profile about having "over 35 years of experience in financial service and private investments", mostly at Credit Suisse, a global wealth manager, investment bank and financial services company with a troubled history.

"They're a bunch of white people using a Sanskrit word as their name," another former worker told Industrial Worker regarding Siddhi. "That kind of appropriation is right up No Evil's alley."

In the early 1990s, Credit Suisse was targeted by divestment activists for its operations in apartheid-era South Africa. In 1998, the company agreed to pay $870,000 to settle SEC charges of having misled investors. Throughout the 2010s, Credit Suisse was slapped with even more fines for misbehavior over charges ranging from tax evasion to misleading investors.

Brian Finn himself also held a position on the board of Scotts Miracle Grow, the same company that used Monsanto's cancer-causing "Roundup" ingredient.

Siddhi also invests in a company called Somma Foods, an "ethical" producer of chicken and beef, which is interesting considering one of No Evil's arguments against unionizing with the UFCW was that it didn't want to be associated with a union that also represents workers at a meatpacking plant.

"It's greenwashing capitalism," another former worker said when asked for a comment about No Evil Food's investors. "These investors claim to have a progressive mindset but they only care about money - pumping money into businesses to make them more money. You can paint it like its a pretty picture of kind, wealthy people trying to make the world better with the money they have, but when you look deeper, a different picture is painted."

In a recent interview on the podcast Eat For The Planet, Schadel explained that the name “No Evil Foods” is aspirational, and really means that Schadel and Woliansky strive to “do better every day”. In that same interview, Schadel mentioned being fortunate to be able to offer jobs under the current economy but failed to mention it is because of the high rate of turnover.

When examining the activities and histories of No Evil's investors, the reason for branding as a "revolutionary" plant meat company becomes a little bit more clear. With a focus only on the bottom line, a penchant for union busting, and investors with questionable backgrounds, it should come as no surprise that they would want to hide behind the “world-changer” facade while effectively maintaining the status quo as much as possible.

As of the writing of this article, No Evil Foods remains without a living wage certification that they had so proudly touted throughout their union busting activities. The Industrial Worker continues to monitor for a decision from the National Labor Relations Board regarding two cases submitted by fired organizers.

Is The Tent So Big That The Party Has Become Meaningless As Anything MoreThan A Vehicle To Save The Country From Trump?

Can you see who's driving the truck in this Nancy Ohanian drawing?

In 1945, when the legislation that finally became Medicare twenty years later in 1965, was first seriously pushed by Harry Truman, it was Medicare for All. It covered all Americans' doctor visits, hospital visits, laboratory services, dental care and nursing services. The Democrats had just won 20 more seats in the House and controlled it 242-191; Sam Rayburn was speaker. The Senate consisted of 58 Democrats (+ one Progressive) and just 37 Republicans. 3 more GOP incumbents had been defeated-- including unabashed fascist Gerald Nye (R-ND). But Medicare failed. Why? The Republican wing of the Democratic Party, which very much controlled the Congress and was always happy to work with the Republicans to stop progressive legislation. It finally passed-- albeit horribly watered down-- in 1965 because the 1964 blue wave gave the Democrats a net of 37 new seats and massive 295 to 140 seat majority. In the Senate, there were 68 Democrats and 32 Republicans. The new President, Lyndon Johnson, used his massive mandate, to push Medicare through, the Republican wing of the party unable to muster the strength to work with the GOP to stop it.

But, unfortunately, the Republican wing of the Democratic Party wasn't dead, just laying low. When Obamacare came to a vote, the filthy, corrupt Blue Dogs and New Dems and fellow travelers were at it again-- killing, for example-- the public option. The Republican wing of the party whines and scratches and kicks and threatens anytime anything remotely progressive is brought up. I've been told by half a dozen congressional Democrats that their conference-- and some mention our country as well-- would be better off if Anthony Brindisi, a detestable whiny Blue Dog from New York, is defeated in November since all he ever does is work against even modestly progressive proposals from inside the party.

The Blue Dogs and New Dems like Brindisi-- there are over 100 of them, though just one or two as bad as him-- continue to crap on the Democratic brand to such an extent that many people don't know what the Democratic Party even stands for any more. Is the future of the party with AOC, Andy Levin and Pramila Jayapal-- who are all sailing to smooth reelections-- or with Brindisi, Joe Cunningham and Kendra Horn, who are all in danger of losing... and in the midst of a massive anti-red wave?

The progressive Democrat, taking on Trumpist yes-man Ken Calvert in Riverside County is Liam O'Mara, a history professor. This morning he told me that "We win elections when we stand for something, not when we stand against something. Hope and belief are what motivate the kind of voters open to our messages. It saddens me that after all the work out there on voter psychology, we still need to scream at establishment Democrats who think fear of Trump is a good election strategy. Should we fear Trump? Absolutely. The man is a menace, and his ideology will finish off this country quicker than any other. But few voters will ever know enough of why they should worry, and most of those are already our voters. To rebuild this country-- to move past not only Trump but Trumpism-- we need to tackle the real issues and win over undecided voters, and that means presenting a positive vision of where we could go as a society. Is the Democratic party a big tent? Sure. Does that mean we roll over for a regressive agenda and stop dreaming? Only if the goal is more Trumps in our future. For myself, I say we get back in the trenches and win the war of ideas. Voters can and will listen if you come at them openly, honestly, and present a compelling vision for their future. Pretending that all we need to do is yell 'Orange Man Bad!' and expect people in the middle to stick with us is the height of hubris. If we want those voters in our corner, we need to tell them why."

"Crooked Ken Calvert," O'Mara continued, "is trying to win his race with two things: money and fear. He's going to suck in as much dirty cash as ever, and spend it to call me a radical hippie commie God-hating son-of-a-bitch terrorist anarchist-- whatever he thinks will stick. I'd rather spend time talking about what we could do if we had a government that gave a crap about human welfare, civil rights, and a thriving economy. I'll continue to show that my policies will save the voters money, raise their standard of living, and drain that damned swamp in DC. And I'm going to hope enough listen so we can keep building a government of the people, by the people, and for the people."

Yesterday, yet another life-long Republican, former Bucks County Congressman Charlie Dent, endorsed Biden, not because he necessarily believes in much of anything that has to do with Democratic values; it's just that he recognizes the existential danger Trump-- and his party-- have put the country in. The current congressman from Dent's old district, Brian Fitzpatrick (R), refuses to say whether he'll vote for Biden or Trump, and not a single current member of the House-- all of whom face the voters in November-- has come out against Trump. All cowards. You want them in the Democratic Party? One big party? No! One big union? Yes! Who do you feel solidarity with? Tonight billionaire Republican Michael Bloomberg addresses the boring, unwatchable Democratic Convention, which will surely cause the already horrifyingly ratings to further plummet.



Also yesterday the Washington Post published a piece by Marc Fisher, William Wan and Jeff Stein noting-- in the midst of a convention where this should be clear-- that some Biden voters are wondering what the party stands for beyond just dumping Trump. They introduced voter in Georgia who "has had it with Trump," but who wants fundamental change and told them she found the convention "very disappointing, a kind of People magazine personal interest story. I’m not voting for a roommate. It’s very easy to show a lot of people’s faces, but that doesn’t tell anybody what you’re going to do for working-class people... [M]aybe I’ll just stay home. Last time, I gritted my teeth and voted for Hillary Clinton, and I really don’t know if I can do that again for another corporate Democrat."

In opinion surveys and dozens of interviews, Democrats see a nation adrift, a people in pain. Together, they yearn for hope and inspiration. They want to be able to trust again-- trust their leaders, institutions and their fellow Americans. Yet like the country as a whole, they fall into sharply divided factions with decidedly different perspectives on what needs to be done and who ought to do it.

...The pandemic, Black Lives Matter and the protests have made it obvious to everyone that we’re in such a tough situation because everyone in the country is not equally protected,” said David Sinaiko, who teaches theater and English at a high school in Marin County north of San Francisco.

Sinaiko has three children in their 20s, and “they’re all dying to see what the future of the Democratic Party will look like,” he said. “So it’s really disappointing that they have their convention and it’s Hillary and Bill Clinton speaking again. The Clintons represent something young people are eager to move on from-- economic policies that created this vast inequality in the country.”

...For the many Americans who don’t follow politics closely, this week is the first major opportunity to see what the Democrats stand for. In Portland, Ore., Andrea Haack hopes the convention will clarify whether the Democratic message is primarily one of relief from Trump or is an assertion that issues such as health care, homelessness, immigration and police reform must be addressed.

Haack, a 45-year-old staffer at Portland State University, grew up believing politics was a tool for change.

“I’m a typical Portland person,” she said. “I wear lots of black. I’m tattooed everywhere. And of course I protest.” She’s been to dozens of marches since high school-- for gay rights, against President George W. Bush, for labor unions.

Haack believes it will be necessary to keep protesting under a Democratic president, to assure that the issues she cares about stay front and center, but she worries that putting too much emphasis on difficult issues during the campaign might backfire.

“The anti-Trump message might work better to pull in right-of-center people, but the policy positions are what are important to people already left-leaning,” Haack said. “How do you thread that needle? I honestly don’t know. Because, to be honest, I don’t know very many Republicans, so I don’t know what would appeal to them.”

Democrats don’t agree on what policies will get the country back on track, but many are united in their craving for a sense of belonging and for a rekindling of the trust they once had in the system and in each other.

Many cited the divide over how to address the coronavirus crisis-- the wildly different attitudes toward wearing masks, opening stores or holding school in-person-- as evidence that too many Americans no longer trust their neighbors, medical and scientific experts or government authorities.

Fifty-seven percent of Americans said in a Pew Research Center poll earlier this year that people mostly look out only for themselves, a number that didn’t vary much according by party affiliation.

Celia Sgroi, a retired city judge in Oswego, NY, near the Canadian border, wants the convention to restore her faith in America. The party’s previous two White House occupants won with messages of hope-- Clinton’s “man from Hope” campaign and Barack Obama’s “hope and change” theme-- and Sgroi now seeks a similar approach from the man who would be the country’s oldest president ever.

“I’m not proud of being American anymore,” she lamented. “I never had the feeling like I do now that people in the world are absolutely disgusted with us. I want a vision for the country, for what I used to think of as America-- a leader in education, science and technology, a country that helps others.”

The country needs an emotional boost, Sgroi said, and so does she.

“I watch MSNBC a couple hours every night, and lately the tone has been ‘We’re all going to die,’ ” she said. “I can’t take much more of that. I don’t want to be hanging black crepe all the time. What I need from the convention is the tiniest sense of hope.”

For three years, Sgroi, 71, has felt as if she were in a waking nightmare.

“I’d like to be able to sleep again,” she said. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve woken up in the middle of night with my mind racing about Trump policies.” Children in cages, bullying, lying, denigrating nicknames for everyone-- “he’s come to be too much of a negative influence in my life, and he’s everywhere. I want him out of my life.”

...At 15, Dhruvak Mirani is already a veteran of several political campaigns; the junior at Glenelg High School in Howard County, Md., sent tens of thousands of texts on behalf of Sanders before he dropped out of the race.

Mirani shifted his support to Biden, if reluctantly. “Look, Joe Biden is a far better alternative than Trump, but it’s not what a lot of people like me were looking for,” he said.

The teen is casting his eye beyond this fall, hoping that the convention will signal what might come after Biden. “I’m curious how long the progressive wing will be okay supporting mainstream centrist candidates that keep undermining progressive movement,” Mirani said. “The primary goal right now is to get Trump out. But what happens after that?”

Levi Bradford, a third-year student at the University of Florida law school, doesn’t want to wait for his party to change.

“I’m kind of conflicted,” said the 25-year-old from Sarasota. “I want them to send a message that we’re all on the same team, and we’re going to get this guy out of office. But at the same time, I want them to recognize that this is not the ideal ticket for a lot of us. I feel like, once we get Trump out of office, that’s great, we’re taking down a demagogue. But how are they actually planning to really revamp the party so it’s more representative of minority voters?”

State Rep. Jon Hoadley is running for the southwest Michigan seat held by Trump bootlick Fred Upton. "From the beginning," Hoadley told me this morning, "my work has been about advocating for people, and that's exactly why I'm running for Congress. I have a reputation as a state legislator as someone who will work with everyone but never lose sight of progressive values. That means making the case for why the old way of doing things isn't working for working people. The real issues facing our families - fighting to get healthy instead of fighting with insurance companies, the ability to trust the water coming out of the faucet, calling out racism and discrimination-- requires leadership. While Congressman Upton may talk the talk on bipartisanship, it's not lost on anyone that during the first two years of Trump's Administration Upton voted for his agenda 96% of the time. We need folks who will take on the challenge of tough policy changes that benefit our communities and working families, and I'm ready to take on that challenge."

A Gamble That Paid Off: When Bernie Was Riding High, Wall St. Saw A Distressed Asset In Biden-- And Bought Low

The Republican wing of the Democratic Party lined up behind Biden early, though it wasn't enough to animate his DOA campaign-- not until Obama stepped in and told the party establishment the enough time had been wasted and that Bernie could win and take away everything they had built for themselves if they don't unite behind Biden. So they did. Was anyone surprised? Was anyone surprised when Republican elites started flocking to Biden-- first in a trickle and now in a steady stream?

So why would anyone be surprised that Biden-- who has spent his entire career in politics fellating Wall Street-- would be embraced by the banksters and junior-banksters who were FDR's and the working class' sworn enemies but have been assiduously cultivated by the Bill Clinton breed of Democrats?

Over the weekend, the NY Times published a piece by Kate Kelly, Shane Goldmacher and Thomas Kaplan, The Wallets of Wall Street Are With Joe Biden, if Not the Hearts that will thrill many Democrats and chill many others. The story barely mentions Bernie-- just once when he and Elizabeth Warren were dismissed-- but Bernie, fear of Bernie to be precise, was the impetus for Biden's rise among the financial elites. This story though is about how Trump is pushing Wall Street into the Biden camp. After donating millions to Biden to beat Bernie, that money "helped him build a strong lead in national polls." But with the threat of Bernie off the table, what would Wall Street do next?

"Wall Street," wrote the Times trio, "has fared extraordinarily well under Mr. Trump: deep cuts to taxes, slashed regulations and, until the pandemic hit, record stock prices. But in recent months, dozens of bankers, traders and investors said in interviews, a sense of outrage and exhaustion over Mr. Trump’s chaotic style of governance-- accelerated by his poor coronavirus response-- had markedly shifted the economic and political calculus in their industry. More and more finance professionals, they say, appear to be sidelining their concerns about Mr. Biden’s age-- 77-- and his style. They are surprisingly unperturbed at the likelihood of his raising their taxes and stiffening oversight of their industry. In return, they welcome the more seasoned and methodical presidency they believe he could bring. They may not exactly be falling in love with Mr. Biden. But they are falling in line." And they know that the raising won't be too high and the stiffening won't be too painful. Biden said so himself. He's not called Status Quo Joe just because it rhymes.

Now... ready for silly?

“I’ve seen meaningful numbers of people put aside what would appear to be their short-term economic interest because they value being citizens in a democracy,” said Seth Klarman, founder of the hedge fund Baupost. A longtime independent, Mr. Klarman was at one point New England’s biggest giver to the Republican Party. But in this cycle, he has given $3 million to groups supporting Mr. Biden.

Or as James Attwood, a managing director at the Carlyle Group and a former investment banker at Goldman Sachs, put it, “For people who are in the business of hiring and firing C.E.O.s, Donald Trump should have been fired a while ago.” (Mr. Attwood contributed $200,000 in June to the Biden Action Fund, a joint committee with the Democratic National Committee.)

In May and June alone, the Biden Action Fund raised more than $11.5 million. That tally-- a good measuring stick for Wall Street support because it was set up in part to draw contributions from that industry-- included $710,000 from Josh Bekenstein, a co-chair of Bain Capital, and his wife.

But Wall Street money has proved to be a double-edged sword for Democrats, as Hillary Clinton discovered when she was hounded four years ago for delivering private speeches to Goldman Sachs and other firms. Progressive voters and activists-- many of whom backed Mr. Biden’s more liberal rivals in the primary-- are particularly leery of any appearance of coziness with the finance industry.

Leery... imagine that! Why would progressives be leery of the working class' historical enemies? Everything that is wrong with the world... follow the money. Our Times trio wrote that when asked about Wall Street’s role in Biden’s current bid, the campaign spits out all the Biden bullshit about how he fights for the common man, which is quite at odds with his repulsive record of fighting against the common man. Our trio hates Trump so they refrain from noting that although they reluctantly admit that "As a senator from Delaware, Mr. Biden has for decades had relationships with credit-card companies there, but less of a presence in the financial power center of New York. He has counted a small circle of finance executives as supporters. Marc Lasry, the co-founder of Avenue Capital, for example, held a fund-raiser for Mr. Biden during his first run for president in 1988, and continues to back him now. The former hedge-fund executive Eric Mindich and the short-seller James Chanos have been supporters from well before the pandemic began. It doesn’t hurt that Mr. Biden has also not crusaded against Wall Street, the way his primary rivals Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders did. Financial executives mostly seem to believe that while their taxes would rise in a Biden administration, they would not be subjected to the kind of 'fat cat' rhetoric that soured some of their relationships with former President Barack Obama." Feel better now? How about this then? "'Rich people are just as patriotic as poor people,' Mr. Biden told donors at a fund-raiser at the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan last year. At a Brookings Institution gathering in 2018, he said, 'I don’t think 500 billionaires are the reason why we’re in trouble.'" Biden is wrong; they are.

Biden’s more benign stance toward the finance industry has provoked skepticism among advocates for stricter regulation. “When the candidate doesn’t have a clear plan on something like Wall Street reform, it tilts the playing field toward what is probably the most powerful industry in the world,” said Carter Dougherty, a spokesman for Americans for Financial Reform, an advocacy group. “We need more than ‘not Trump appointees’ when it comes to financial regulation.”

While Wall Street financiers tend to be more socially liberal, they have collectively swung back and forth between parties. Data from the Center for Responsive Politics show the securities and investment community donating more to President George W. Bush in 2004, and then to Mr. Obama in 2008, and then to Mitt Romney in 2012, followed by Mrs. Clinton in 2016, than to their respective presidential rivals.

This year, it’s Mr. Biden. Financial industry cash flowing to Mr. Biden and outside groups supporting him shows him dramatically out-raising the president, with $44 million compared with Mr. Trump’s $9 million.

Last month, multiple Wall Street bundlers, including Alan Leventhal, the chief executive of Beacon Capital; Nat Simons, who runs a clean-tech investment fund; and Mr. Gray, Blackstone’s president, held virtual fund-raisers for Mr. Biden. The giving has been so robust that the Biden campaign is now asking for at least $1 million in donations before it will confirm the former vice president’s attendance at an event, say bundlers.

As the checks roll in, the Biden campaign has been carefully cultivating its relationship with the business community, with a focus on Wall Street. The outreach has included offering private briefings ahead of major policy rollouts and dangling various donor packages for the upcoming, and mostly virtual, Democratic National Convention.

In one call last month, two of Mr. Biden’s top advisers on financial policy, Ben Harris and Jake Sullivan, led a wide-ranging conversation to preview the candidate’s economic plan, which focuses on broad policy initiatives like investing in green infrastructure projects and minority-owned businesses. Two former Treasury secretaries, Robert E. Rubin and Jacob J. Lew, were part of the call.

Several major Wall Street executives and investors were also present, including Blair Effron, co-founder of the financial advisory firm Centerview Partners; Penny Pritzker, a fund-raiser and former commerce secretary; David Cohen, a top Biden bundler and Comcast executive; and Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive of Google.

...[H]ow Mr. Biden might affect their wallets is still a major concern for industry executives who aggressively fought the implementation of new regulations after the financial crisis of 2008. Some in the business community have suggested tweaks to the former vice president’s tax and economic policies in ways that might soften the impact for companies.

At a separate July meeting with campaign staffers and a handful of Wall Street participants, Charles Phillips, chairman of the software company Infor and a onetime Morgan Stanley tech analyst, argued that Mr. Biden shouldn’t make huge expenditures on infrastructure and other new programs without also identifying spending cuts. “We can fund some of this by getting more efficient and getting rid of waste that no one will miss,” Mr. Phillips recalled saying. He said he also argued for a simpler tax code with a corporate rate lower than Mr. Biden’s proposed 28 percent.

In addition to those watching the policy details, many financiers are closely attuned to Mr. Biden’s selection of a running mate, arguing that they might reconsider their votes if he were to choose someone like Ms. Warren, whose campaign sold coffee mugs that read “Billionaire Tears” in a nod to her proposed wealth tax on the superrich.

Some in the finance industry are concerned about Ms. Warren’s emergence as an informal policy adviser, and the possibility that she could be installed as Treasury secretary.

Mr. Biden’s policy platform on the issues affecting Wall Street’s most affluent players has been relatively sparse. He has proposed a series of tax increases on businesses and on wealthy individuals, including raising the top marginal income tax rate and taxing capital gains as ordinary income for the richest Americans. But he has not embraced a wealth tax like Ms. Warren’s, nor has he rolled out any kind of detailed policy plan focused on financial regulation.

Since Mr. Biden became the presumptive Democratic nominee, the campaign has appointed Rufus Gifford, a former finance director for the 2012 Obama campaign, as a deputy campaign manager overseeing the money operation nationwide. Mr. Gifford is in regular touch with Wall Street donors, coordinating a slew of virtual fund-raisers and discussing campaign issues with deep-pocketed financiers.

In recent meetings with donors, Mr. Biden has said that while the wealthy are going to have to “do more,” the details of his tax hikes are still being hammered out, according to someone who has attended multiple fund-raisers but requested anonymity to discuss private conversations. At a virtual fund-raiser held in July, the candidate spoke of the need for corporate America to “change its ways.” But the solution, he said, would not be legislative.

Back in February, Mr. Biden had taken a precious day off the trail to collect a critical $800,000 at two New York fund-raisers, including the one Mr. Gray co-hosted. “You’re putting me in a position to be able to be very competitive,” Mr. Biden said, thanking his Wall Street supporters.

A few of his finance industry donors, looking back, have privately remarked how the evening turned out to be the most quintessential of Wall Street plays: seeing a distressed asset at that time, and buying low.

Republican Phil Heimlich, a former Cincinnati City Council member and Hamilton County commissioner, is a principal in the #NeverTrump group, Republicans For the Rule of Law and a founder of Operation Grant, an offshoot of the Lincoln Project for Ohio. Over the weekend, USA Today published an OpEd he wrote about how Ohio conservatives are abandoning Trump for Biden. Trump, he complains, hasn't lead as a true conservative. "In 2016, many Ohio voters put their faith in Donald Trump, us included. That was an error of judgment, not intent. For these reasons, we’re joining with other Republicans in this state to vote against President Trump this November. He has created a culture of fear within the Republican Party as well as across the country, demonizing anyone with differing opinions. He belittles, berates, and ruins the careers of all who oppose him-- including his own appointed government agency heads, respected military leaders and war heroes. He has undermined the rule of law, obstructed justice, and issued pardons and commutations to personal cronies who helped cover up his misdeeds. He has demonstrated gross incompetence during the COVID-19 pandemic, causing needless suffering and death. He has run up a $2.7 trillion budget deficit, $1 trillion of which occurred before the pandemic unfolded..." And so on. And... how much of President Biden will all these conservative Republicans own? 50%? 75% 99.9% More? Maybe I'll be proven wrong. We'll know when Biden announces his VP pick. If he choses Elizabeth Warren, I'm wrong, wrong, wrong. You know I'm not.

Yesterday Juan Cole, in his Informed Consent newsletter, asked how Americans became such wimps, quietly watching Trump kill tens of thousands, destroy Social Security, Medicare, the environment and the post office and openly plot to steal the election. "Americans," he wrote, "are masochistic sheeple who let the rich and powerful walk all over them and thank them for the privilege... The rich figured out in the 1980s that Americans are all form over substance, and if you put up for president a Hollywood actor like Ronald Reagan who used to play cowboys, they would swoon over him. In 1984 when Reagan ran against Walter Mondale, I saw a middle aged white Detroit auto worker interviewed who said he woudn’t vote for Mondale because he was a “panty-waist.” Reagan took away their right to strike and took away government services by running up the deficit and cutting taxes on the rich simultaneously, then claiming the government couldn’t provide the services the people had paid for because it is broke. Reagan raised the retirement age from 65 to 67. Why? Most young people don’t realize that their health will decline in their late 60s and they often won’t actually get any golden years."

What did Americans do in response? They just bent over and took it.

Actually, it is the French who are much more like Americans imagine themselves to be. President Emmanuel Macron last December tried to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. I can’t understand why. France has persistently high unemployment as it is.

In response, all hell broke loose. Some 30 unions went on strike, and they supported each other. Trains were interrupted. Trucking was interrupted. Life was interrupted. A million people came out into the streets. But one poll had 61% of the French approving of the strikes. They went on for months, and were very inconvenient.

Macron backed down on raising the retirement age.

The French working and middle classes know how to throw a first class fit when the servants of the rich in government come after their lifestyles. They don’t always get their way (Macron used a parliamentary maneuver to make some changes in pensions, in late February), but they make damn sure the government knows it can’t get away with encroaching on them without a fight.

I actually think that one reason Europe has done much better in tamping down the coronavirus than Trump’s America is that the governments and corporations were afraid of a public backlash if the death toll went on rising. So they did their effing jobs.

In mid-April the Financial Times reported that the CGT workers union (which it darkly observed is under Communist influences) had filed a criminal complaint against the Carrefour supermarket chain and its CEO for not protecting its workers from the coronavirus. The unions also went to court to force Amazon to step back and only ship essential items until the courts could review the company’s safety procedures.

The only thing I know of like that in the US is the UCFW’s lawsuit against the Department of Agriculture’s waivers to poultry plants allowing them to speed up the assembly lines. During a pandemic! Workers breathing harder is undesirable with a respiratory disease floating about.

But in France, it wouldn’t have been one union filing a lawsuit (which one of Mitch McConnell’s unqualified Republican judges/ideologues will likely slap down). It would have been a massive set of mutually reinforcing strikes.

By feeding us decades of propaganda against unions and “socialism,” the American rich have broken the legs of the people, and left them to twitch helplessly as more and more indignities are heaped on them. They’ve divided us by race (Trump is not alone in this tactic, only the least subtle), they’ve convinced us to give the super-rich power because they will make us rich too. (How is that working out for you?).

There is now no mainstream political party in Western Europe that is anywhere near as far right as the GOP. The closest analogues to today’s Republican Party in Europe are the far right white supremacist parties, like Marie LePen’s National Front in France or the AfD in Germany.

It appears that a plutocracy produces fascism, since appeals to racialist superiority and playing on fears of a brown and black Other are the only things that can convince people to give up their basic human rights (like a comfortable life in retirement, which they have paid for, or the right to cast a mail in ballot during a pandemic).

But despite all the military parades and brave talk of master races, fascism is just the ultimate humiliation of the sheeple. Mussolini drove enormous numbers of Italians into poverty. The Axis used them for cannon fodder at the front. If the increasingly wimpy Americans don’t watch out, they will find that it is too late to fight back, since they have surrendered all their means to do so. So as to avoid being panty-waists and all. They will be left with a borrowed greasy cheeseburger they can’t even pay for.

Does this song and video make you cry? Human solidarity has always had such an incredible power over me.