Sanders Takes the Campaign Against CAP to Eleven

From a Sanders fundraising letter sent after CAP's attack on him

by Thomas Neuburger

One of my biggest concerns about the 2016 Sanders campaign was that, at least at the beginning, it was too easily forced to apologize for attacks on supposed "allies of progressives" in the Democratic ecosystem — because "unity."

The prime example of that occurred when Sanders accused the Planned Parenthood Action Fund — not Planned Parenthood the health care organization, Planned Parenthood AF, the highly Clintonist political action committee, which had early-endorsed Clinton despite Sanders' excellent record on women's issues — of being "part of the establishment."

He was immediately accused by the rest of the establishment, falsely, of attacking Planned Parenthood clinics. And he backed down, unwisely in my view. (For more on that episode, read the first few paragraphs of this piece.)

Well, the highly Clintonist, highly corporate establishment is at it again, in the form of the corrupt Center for American Progress (CAP) and its online publication ThinkProgress. (For more on their corruption, see also here and here.) ThinkProgress published a video critical of Sanders, as Lee Fang (who also delves into their corruption) explains here:

The Center for American Progress, which sponsors ThinkProgress, is led by board president Tom Daschle, who is a registered lobbyist for Comcast CVS Health-Aetna, and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association. TP used to criticize those companies, now they carry their water.

— Lee Fang (@lhfang) April 11, 2019

In response to that video Sanders sent CAP a letter, saying in part:

Center for American Progress leader Neera Tanden repeatedly calls for unity while simultaneously maligning my staff and supporters and belittling progressive ideas. I worry that the corporate money CAP is receiving is inordinately and inappropriately influencing the role it is playing in the progressive movement. (emphasis mine)

Team Sanders then went a whole lot further than that in a public fundraising letter, parts of which are reproduced below. Note the expansion of the "corporate money" point from the CAP letter, and also the directness (emphasis mine throughout):

"We are under attack"

Sisters, Brothers, and Friends -

Just like that, our campaign is under attack from the corporate establishment.

This week, an organization that is the epitome of the political establishment — the Center for American Progress (CAP) — unleashed and promoted an online attack video against Bernie.

And behind the scenes on the day Bernie introduced his Medicare for All bill, they held a conference call with reporters attacking the bill.

That is the Center for American Progress’ real goal. Trying to stop Medicare for All and our progressive agenda.

CAP's leadership has been pretty upfront about their disdain for Bernie — and for all of us. They see our political revolution as a threat to their privilege and influence. ...

The Center for American Progress is an organization whose massive annual budget is bankrolled by billionaires and corporate executives that profit from finance, pharmaceutical companies, fossil fuels, and sending American jobs overseas.

Last year alone, they took funding from financial giants like Bank of America and Blackstone, whose CEO was chair of Trump's business council and is a leading Republican donor.

Before that, they cashed checks from companies like BlueCross Blue Shield, Pfizer, WalMart, and defense contractors like General Dynamics and BAE Systems.

They also took hundreds of thousands of dollars from the fossil fuel pumping United Arab Emirates while the country was bombing innocent civilians in Yemen – a war Bernie has led the fight to end.

The Center for American Progress has deep connections to the economic and political elites who have done so much damage to working families in every zip code. And what we must do today is send a message that we are prepared to fight back against those who are working day and night to defeat our movement....

In solidarity,

Team Bernie

That's powerful stuff, no-holds-barred truth-telling. Note the many bells it rings:

• "corporate establishment"
• "epitome of the political establishment"
• "real goal ... stop Medicare for All and our progressive agenda"
• "threat to their privilege and influence"
• "massive annual budget is bankrolled by billionaires"
• "deep connections to the economic and political elites who have done so much damage to working families"
• "working day and night to defeat our movement"

The letter also names a few of the companies and countries that bankroll CAP — Walmart, Bank of America, Blue Cross, Blackstone, the UAE. He could have listed a great many more. There are countless stories emerging from former ThinkProgress writers about CAP leadership squelching aggressive reporting because their reports were negatively affecting CAP fundraising. Read this twitter thread by former ThinkProgress reporter Zaid Jilani to see some of those. There are others as well.

Bernie Sanders is not backing down this time. Unlike 2016, this will be a battle with the enemy named out loud and its deeds detailed. Looks like the fight, the one our country has been avoiding for years, is finally on.
 

The Viciously Anti-Bernie Center For American Progress May Be Better Than The Heritage Foundation But It's No Friend Of Working Families

Podesta, Tanden, Clinton-- How We Got Stuck With Trump

If you've been reading DWT for more than a few days, you've probably noticed how pissed off I get when someone refers to a conservative Democrat as a "moderate." I get at least just as pissed off when someone uses the word "liberal" or "progressive" to describe someone or something that is notably neither liberal nor progressive. Sunday, Ken Vogel and Sydney Ember (a repeat offender) did exactly that in a NY Times piece about the Center for American Progress, Bernie Sanders Accuses Liberal Think Tank of Smearing Progressive Candidates. There may have been a time-- when dinosaurs walked the earth, or at least before people understood what a DINO is-- that the Center for American Progress (CAP) was considered "liberal." But that was well over a decade ago.

CAP is a garden variety, corporately-funded centrist-Democrat Inside-the-Beltway outfit. It was founded in 2003 by lobbyist and Clinton factotum John Podesta. Lobbyist Tom Daschle is the chairman of the board and Clinton operative Neera Tanden is the president. They take millions of dollars from corporate special interests-- Walmart, CitiGroup, Wells Fargo, Northrop Grumman, etc-- and push corporate special interest policies. CAP, for example, has rabidly opposed to single-payer healthcare while sucking up money from Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Eli Lilly, Health Care Service Corporation and the health insurance trade organization, America's Health Insurance Plans. CAP also carries water for the Saudis and Emeratis. Liberal? Not even close. Totally centrist, totally establishment, totally corporate, totally-money-obsessed (to the point of corruption), totally anti-progressive. They have been at the center of anti-Bernie poison inside the Democratic Party. And that brings us to the letter Bernie sent to their board last week:

Dear members of the Board of the Center for American Progress and CAP Action Fund:

I write to express my deep concern and disappointment with the destructive role that the Center for American Progress and its affiliated Action Fund arm are playing in the critical mission to defeat Donald Trump.

Last week, you published an article on ThinkProgress criticizing me for my appearance and for the income I earned from writing a book. Then, a day later, you published a video that dishonestly attacked me for hypocrisy in my effort to address income inequality in America-- a video that was excitedly discussed on many conservative websites.

Sadly, I’m not the only candidate in the 2020 field who has experienced personal attacks from your institution. My friend and colleague Elizabeth Warren was unfairly targeted by a November 2017 article on ThinkProgress that echoed Donald Trump’s bad faith claims that she was being a hypocrite about her ancestry. That attack that was linked on the Drudge Report and immediately immersed her into a rather unhelpful debate. Again in October 2018, you published an article stating that she was hurting Native American people.

That’s not all. In February of this year, an article on ThinkProgress attacked another friend and colleague of mine, Cory Booker, for moving in a progressive direction and joining with me on a prescription drug importation bill.

Center for American Progress leader Neera Tanden repeatedly calls for unity while simultaneously maligning my staff and supporters and belittling progressive ideas. I worry that the corporate money CAP is receiving is inordinately and inappropriately influencing the role it is playing in the progressive movement.

I and other Democratic candidates are running campaigns based on principles and ideas and not engaging in mudslinging or personal attacks on each other. Meanwhile, the Center for American Progress is using its resources to smear Senator Booker, Senator Warren, and myself, among others. This is hardly the way to build unity, or to win the general election.

I will be informing my grassroots supporters of the foregoing concerns that I have about the role CAP is playing. Should your actions evolve in the coming months, I am happy to reconsider what kind of partnership we can have.

This counterproductive negative campaigning needs to stop. The Democratic primary must be a campaign of ideas, not of bad faith smears. Please help play a constructive role in the effort to defeat Donald Trump.

Thank you for your attention to this important matter, and I await your reply.

Sincerely,

Bernie Sanders

This is who CAP is, who they serve, how they operate

Podesta and Tanden have done enough damage to this country already. It's unlikely Trump would be in the White House now without them and people just like them playing their neoliberal games for their own profit. Watch who they back this cycle-- and run in the opposite direction as fast as you can. Bernie's campaign addressed his own followers in a very different kind of letter yesterday, pointing out that he "is under attack from the corporate establishment. This week, an organization that is the epitome of the political establishment-- the Center for American Progress (CAP)-- unleashed and promoted an online attack video against Bernie."

And behind the scenes on the day Bernie introduced his Medicare for All bill, they held a conference call with reporters attacking the bill.

That is the Center for American Progress’ real goal. Trying to stop Medicare for All and our progressive agenda.

CAP's leadership has been pretty upfront about their disdain for Bernie-- and for all of us. They see our political revolution as a threat to their privilege and influence.

...The Center for American Progress is an organization whose massive annual budget is bankrolled by billionaires and corporate executives that profit from finance, pharmaceutical companies, fossil fuels, and sending American jobs overseas.

Last year alone, they took funding from financial giants like Bank of America and Blackstone, whose CEO was chair of Trump's business council and is a leading Republican donor.

Before that, they cashed checks from companies like BlueCross Blue Shield, Pfizer, WalMart, and defense contractors like General Dynamics and BAE Systems.

They also took hundreds of thousands of dollars from the fossil fuel pumping United Arab Emirates while the country was bombing innocent civilians in Yemen-- a war Bernie has led the fight to end.

The Center for American Progress has deep connections to the economic and political elites who have done so much damage to working families in every zip code. And what we must do today is send a message that we are prepared to fight back against those who are working day and night to defeat our movement.

...The establishment is panicked because together we are building a campaign that is on its way to winning the Democratic nomination, beating Trump and transforming America.

Is The GOP Too Far Gone To Be Rescued From The Swamp Of Corruption?

A PPP survey released yesterday found that 61% of Arizona voters-- all parties-- want Governor Ducey to appoint someone more like John McCain rather than like Señor Trumpanzee, although 37% of crazy treanous voters do want someone more like Trump. Jesus! All they all on drugs? Or just stupid? Trump has aa 53% disapproval rating in the state; 44% approve.

Poor Ducey-- 42% of respondents said they be more likely to vote for his reelection if he picks someone more like McCain and 35% said they'd be less likely if he picks someone like McCain (a mainstream conservative). 35% want a neo-fascist bag of hot air like Trump. Half the voters polled said they’d be less likely to vote for Ducey in November if he picks a Trumpist.

With Trump almost certain to shut down the government right before the midterms, his corruption-- and the GOP's corruption in general-- will come into sharper focus over the next 2 months, as many Democrats campaign on it. Yesterday a conservative Democrat from the party establishment, Neera Tanden, published an OpEd in USAToday, about the GOP's cascading corruption problem. Tanden frames the problem well: "A basic and fundamental building block of our democracy-- the principle that our government should represent the people-- is currently under withering attack." Trump is certainly not living top to his promise to drain the swamp, though I'm certain that if you asked his brain-dead supporters if he drained it or not, they would all say he did. And that's despite the fact that his inner circle is stocked with criminals. Since he "assumed office," wrote Tanden, "a significant and growing number of Americans have increasingly recognized that the president, the members of his administration and Republicans at large have betrayed their trust. They say overwhelmingly that Trump has failed to set a high moral standard for his presidency and they have saddled top Trump administration officials with record low marks on ethics. They now see the Republican Party in its true light: as the Party of Corruption." Now, keep in mind that "they" refers to normal people, not Trump supporters. Tanden was a die-hard Clintonista and didn't understand that there were Trump supporters than and apparently still doesn't understand it. These people are impervious to the real word. Raised on reality TV, when we chuckle at the idea of "alternative facts," they eat it up as a way to explain their own miserable existences.

Our new research shows that more than 70 percent of the public want our government to take a more active role in solving the greatest issues confronting our nation. At the same time, more than 85 percent also say the federal government primarily serves the interests of large corporations, the wealthy, and campaign contributors.

It should come as no surprise that this crisis of confidence has worsened under the Trump administration. Just consider a small sample of their many suspicious and unscrupulous actions that have been performed by Trump’s allies since he entered the White House: Rep. Chris Collins, the first member of Congress to endorse Trump for president, was recently arrested for allegedly perpetrating an insider trading scheme while on the board of a foreign pharmaceutical company. Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, the second congressman to endorse Trump, was indicted last week for illegally using campaign funds for personal enrichment.

Tom Price resigned as Health and Human Services secretary after spending $400,000 in federal money on private jet travel. Scott Pruitt stepped down as Environmental Protection Agency administrator amid a dizzying list of abuses. And Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, has confessed that while serving in Congress, he only met with lobbyists after they ponied up a donation.

Yet it is not only the abuse of taxpayer dollars (or the rampant appearance of public corruption under Trump) that is eroding faith in our political institutions. Americans understand that Washington’s pernicious system of back-scratching produces policies that hurt working- and middle-class families. They know our elected officials are beholden to the corrupting power of their donors-- that they prioritize the interests of the top 1 percent by writing laws which mainly benefit these same donors.

The recent Republican Party tax cuts perfectly illustrate why such fears are completely justified. Even as Republicansstruggle to selltheir signature legislative achievement, they are reaping huge benefits from the law by collecting millions in donations from the rich donors and corporate interests who received its enormous handouts.

What’s clear is that the public is fed up with the status quo in Washington, and that this anger is transforming our politics. In many campaigns, we’re seeing that incumbency in Congress is a hindrance, not a help. Democratic candidates have successfully rallied support while rejecting donations from corporate political action committees-- from Conor Lamb’s shocking win in Pennsylvania to Beto O’Rourke’s surging momentum in his race to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz in Texas.

That is why, moving forward, bold political reforms must be central to the Democratic Party’s platform. Fortunately, there are three concrete steps our government can take to dramatically curb the insidious influence of donors and special interests.

First, lobbyists should be barred from fundraising on behalf of members of Congress.  This would end the kind of pay-to-play behavior embraced by the likes of Mulvaney, and prevent well-connected special interests and donors from playing the role of puppeteer in shaping the policy agendas of elected officials. Democrats in both chambers have already included such a ban as part of a sweeping proposal designed to strengthen our country’s ethics laws, reform our system of campaign finance, and empower American voters.

Second, members of congressional committees should not be allowed to accept campaign contributions from the same industries they are entrusted with overseeing. Until two weeks ago, Collins sat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and was responsible for regulating health care companies-- even as he allegedly orchestrated an insider trading scheme involving a pharmaceutical manufacturer. Our current system gives too many businesses the chance to exploit potential conflicts of interests by donating to politicians willing to put personal gain over the common good.

Third, members of Congress should be prohibited from sitting on the boards of for-profit companies-- whether in a paid or unpaid capacity-- or from owning individual stocks in such entities. Sen. Elizabeth Warren included this type of prohibition in the expansive anti-corruption package she introduced last week. Her rules would finally stop many lawmakers from abusing their official positions for financial gain.

These three proposals can be part of a new movement to exterminate the culture of corruption festering in Washington under Trump, and take the first critical steps toward restoring the strength of our democracy. Voters are demanding that Congress dismantle the stranglehold special interests hold over too many elected officials, and put power back into the hands of the people. It is time for America's leaders to answer their call.

Another aspect of political corruption is what Greg Sargent dealt with this morning, noting that Trump is literally trying to stoke up violence, just the way fascist tyrants in Europe, trying to gain and consolidate power, did in the 1930s. "Periodically in this country," he wrote in the Washington Post, "whenever there is violence with a political cast, or whenever political rhetoric strays into something more menacing than usual, we hold debates about the tone of our politics and their capacity for incitement. Whether rhetorical excess can be blamed for violence or the threat of it is a complicated topic with no easy answers. But even so, in most or all of these cases, whichever side is culpable, most of our elected leaders on both sides have used their prominence to calm passions in hopes of averting future horrors. This time, something different is happening. At this point, there is no longer any denying that Trump continues to direct incendiary attacks against working members of the free press even though his own language is being cited by clearly unhinged people making horrifying death threats against them."

UPDATE: From the comments section

Mark Karlin's good-bye post for BuzzFlash is unsettling. I wish I could say he's wrong; I can't.

​The Liberal Meritocracy at Work

Liberal meritocracy in action. Slick new buses like these ferry high tech workers to and from Bay Area jobs, using city bus stops as pickup points. The city gets "a pittance" for each "stop event" while the city's less-connected citizens get no right at all to ride them (source).

by Gaius Publius

Thomas Frank has made the point many times that the modern Democratic Party has abandoned the working class, and indeed most of the middle class, and that today its true constituency is really just the "professional" class, the upper 10%, more or less.

That makes a kind of sense if, cynical electoral financing decisions aside, people who actually run the Democratic Party inhabit a culture that considers only the "smart" and "accomplished" truly deserving. Consider the constant praise from mainstream Democrats, for example, of the "entrepreneurial" or "creative" class and how these wannabe billionaires — riders of Google Buses in San Francisco, a kind of alt-transportation system to which only high tech workers have access — can be counted on to lift the rest of the country out of the depths and into a new age of job creation (in China).

There could not be a more striking example of this kind of meritocracy than the following email from the Podesta Wikileaks archives (h/t commenter John Wright in this Naked Capitalism thread). It was sent from Clinton supporter and UC Berkeley Professor Brad DeLong during the primary season to Clinton supporter and Center for American Progress chief Neera Tanden:

From:brad.delong@gmail.com
To: ntanden@americanprogress.org
CC: john.podesta@gmail.com
Date: 2015-07-31 15:42

Subject: So my 25-year-old Michael DeLong has applied for a Firearms Safety Policy job at CAP…

Dear Neera (and John)—

So my 25-year-old Michael DeLong has applied for a Firearms Safety Policy job at CAP…

I think he is a very, very strong candidate on the merits, given what he has been doing in Portland at Ceasefire Oregon in the three years since he graduated from Reed College, and how effective he has been there. But I find myself somewhat anxious [that] somebody already in Washington and with better connections might crowd him out…

May I beg you to reassure me?

Yours,

Brad DeLong

When the working class does this, of course, it's called nepotism. I'm sure at Neera Tanden's level it's called "networking."

There were several notes about DeLong's son's job availability sprinkled among the Podesta emails that involved Professor DeLong, and it's certainly true that fathers and mothers everywhere have attempted to ease their children's entry into the job market by asking for a boost from friends. I don't fault the act.

What makes this stand out, though, is not DeLong's interest in seeing his son hired, but his stated fear that his son would be lose his slot at CAP, not to someone better qualified, but to someone better connected.

Thus the "meritorious" competition seems recognized as not between the talented and connected; just between the connected. "I find myself somewhat anxious [that] somebody already in Washington and with better connections might crowd him out… May I beg you to reassure me?"

A small thing perhaps, and certainly not a strike against DeLong for asking. Every father should love his children, and DeLong's son does sound accomplished.

Nevertheless, this is a striking reminder of what concepts like "democracy" and "rights" mean to mainstream (Clinton wing and Obama wing) Democrats as a group, as they struggle with the problem of offering to the rest of us — or working to deny it — the same "rights" that the Party elite and its servicing ecosystem already enjoy as privileges of class, like access to affordable, quality medical care.

Schedule note: I'll be reading but not writing for about two weeks, restarting after Labor Day.

GP
 

Bill Black & Norman Solomon: Clinton's Transition Team Foretells a Corporate Presidency

Economist William Black discusses the Clinton transition team with The Real News. Continue playing after my programmed stopping point to hear Black discuss Trump's transition team.

by Gaius Publius

There is no question that if Donald Trump becomes president, corporations will have the run of the place. Trump is not a populist; he just plays one on TV. There are other negatives to a Trump presidency as well — rampant nativism, religious intolerance and bigotry, and the full Pandora's list of right-wing evils, coupled with the right-wing's eager willingness to go full-speed in the wrong direction every time they have real power.

That doesn't mean a Clinton presidency will be peaches and roses. Analyzing Clinton's recently announced transition team, it looks like corporate rule will be a feature of her regime as well, at least as a number of writers see it — for example, progressive Norman Solomon (below) and economist and professor Bill Black (quoted below and in the video above).

I write this (a) in the full expectation that a Clinton presidency is fully in our future (assuming none of the remaining black swans land), and (b) that the Becky Bond Rule — which requires anti-Sanders Clinton activists to be first in line to fix what she breaks — is still in place.

So, what might be broken if the next four years are Clinton-controlled? No one can know for sure, of course, and the candidate is still on the stump, so we won't hear wicked plans even if there are some, which if we're lucky there won't be.

But a candidate's transition team is a strong indicator of future policy, since the transition team basically stocks a new administration with people, or at least, strongly suggests candidates — a lot of them. With that in mind, here's Norman Solomon, writing at the Huffington Post, on the recently announced Clinton transition team. Solomon quotes economist and professor Bill Black, from the video above, and offers his own analysis (my emphasis throughout):

Clinton's Transition Team: A Corporate Presidency Foretold

... Clinton is showing her solidarity with the nemesis of the Sanders campaign -- Wall Street. The trend continued last week with the announcement that Clinton has tapped former senator and Interior secretary Ken Salazar to chair her transition team.

After many months of asserting that her support for the "gold standard" Trans-Pacific Partnership was a thing of the past -- and after declaring that she wants restrictions on fracking so stringent that it could scarcely continue -- Clinton has now selected a vehement advocate for the TPP and for fracking, to coordinate the process of staffing the top of her administration.

But wait, there's more -- much more than Salazar's record -- to tell us where the planning for the Hillary Clinton presidency is headed.

On the surface, it might seem like mere inside baseball to read about the transition team's four co-chairs, described by Politico as "veteran Clinton aides Maggie Williams and Neera Tanden" along with "former National Security Adviser Tom Donilon and former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm." But the leaders of the transition team -- including Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, who is also president of the Clinton-Kaine Transition Project -- will wield enormous power.

"The transition team is one of the absolute most important things in the world for a new administration," says William K. Black, who has held key positions at several major regulatory agencies such as the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. Along with "deciding what are we actually going to make our policy priorities," the transition team will handle key questions: "Who will the top people be? Who are we going to vet, to hold all of the cabinet positions, and many non-cabinet positions, as well? The whole staffing of the senior leadership of the White House."

Black's assessment of Salazar, Podesta and the transition team's four co-chairs is withering. "These aren't just DNC regulars, Democratic National Committee regulars," he said in an interview with The Real News Network [video above]. "What you're seeing is complete domination by what used to be the Democratic Leadership Council."

What are the politics of this group, according to Black? 

[Black:] "So this was a group we talked about in the past. Very, very, very right-wing on foreign policy, what they called a muscular foreign policy, which was a euphemism for invading places. And very, very tough on crime..."

Black added: "And on the economic side, they were all in favor of austerity. All in favor of privatization. Tried to do a deal with Newt Gingrich to privatize Social Security. And of course, were all in favor of [trade agreements] like NAFTA."

Another writer looking at the same subject (and quoting the same Bill Black interview), Paul Street, offers this about other members of Clinton's transition team:

It Takes a Ruling-Class Village to Staff the White House

... Also on Clinton’s transition leadership team is [Tom] Donilon, a member of the Bilderberg Group’s steering committee. After serving as Obama’s national security adviser from late 2010 through the spring of 2013, he became a distinguished fellow at the CFR [Council on Foreign Relations] and resumed his prior longstanding position as a partner in the leading multinational corporate law firm O’Melveny & Myers.

Other senior Clinton transition officials are longstanding, Democratic Leadership Council-style operatives Neera Tanden (a Yale Law graduate and president of the CAP), Maggie Williams (partner in a leading Washington, D.C., management consulting firm and former director of a top mortgage lending firm that collapsed in late 2007) and Harvard Law graduate Jennifer Granholm (whose pro-Big Business record as a two-term Michigan governor helped score her lucrative positions on the boards of Universal Forest Products Inc. and Dow Chemical).

I don't want to turn this into an essay. I just want to give the short strokes and list some names to watch — Tom Donilan, Neera Tanden, Maggie Williams, Jennifer Granholm — along with the truly terrible, pro-TPP, pro-fracking Ken Salazar. We'll have more about these fine people in due time, I'm sure. (About Neera Tanden, we've already written a little bit.)

Hillary Clinton may turn out to be a progressive's dream as president. That's certainly the claim, and perhaps the belief, of her most ardent activist supporters. If that turns out to be true, we'll all celebrate together.

But if it doesn't, remember the Becky Bond Rule — those who broke it (the campaign of the genuinely progressive Bernie Sanders) have the first obligation to fix what their own choice does wrong. Looking at the transition team, the odds that Clinton-supporting anti-Sanders progressives (and "progressives") will have their work cut out for them.

GP
 

Clinton Insider Neera Tanden: Sanders Did "Significant Damage"

Top Clinton insider Neera Tanden at a Google- and Elle-sponsored DC function (source)

by Gaius Publius

Short and bitter-sweet. The primary election is mainly over (but not quite; there's still a black swan or two hovering overhead). Clinton and her camp have vanquished the challenge from the left wing of her own voting base. We've listened to call after call for "party unity."

And yet we see this — Neera Tanden, a major Clinton insider, current head of the prominent (and Clintonist) thinktank Center for American Progress, someone in line for a significant job in a new Clinton administration, someone currently on Clinton's transition team, takes an unprovoked backhand swipe at Sanders and the left he represented during the primary, a punch in the gut for an offense long past.

The offense? Not surrendering to Clinton early enough.

Why?

Tanden, as quoted in The Hill:

Clinton confidante: Sanders did 'significant damage'

Longtime Hillary Clinton confidante Neera Tanden in a new podcast commends Bernie Sanders for the issues he raised during his campaign but notes his attacks on the Democratic presidential nominee were harmful.

“I actually have to say, I think he brought a lot of really important issues to the floor, but Senator Sanders was prosecuting a much tougher character attack” than Barack Obama did in 2008, Tanden said during Politico’s “Off Message” podcast.

“He did do significant damage to Hillary's negatives."

During the primary season, the Vermont senator often attacked the eventual Democratic nominee on the campaign trail — at points, questioning her judgment.

“I mean, he drove a lot of those negatives, and the truth of it, I mean, just to be candid — or honest about it, I think getting those kinds of attacks from another Democrat or another liberal or another progressive is much tougher for Hillary," said Tanden, who is the president of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress.

"If you look at her trust numbers the last six months of that primary ... those numbers took a much sharper dive and [were] hard to recover from.”

On the same story, Politico adds this:

[Tanden is] Clinton’s edgy public alter ego, whose stiletto-elbowed Twitter presence is said to closely echo the candidate’s own caustic private musings. And while Tanden respects Sanders and his staff (she helped negotiate the joint Clinton-Sanders college and health proposals and says “they were great”), she echoes Clinton’s own opinion that Sanders let the primary go on too long, too noisily and too nastily. [my emphasis]

“This primary was much tougher [than 2008]. There were many more open attacks on being 'bought and paid for' and all that stuff,” said Tanden, who didn’t like it, not one little bit.

Tanden's "stiletto-elbowed Twitter presence" — about that, more here. If you have a minute, do click. It makes a fascinating side story.

"Echoing the candidate's own caustic musings" — we'll have to take Politico's word for that, since there are no cited sources.

Clinton's opinion that "Sanders let the primary go on too long, too noisily and too nastily" — that's not hard to believe. Though it has a note of entitlement about it, I think — a note of complaining that your opponent should have quit earlier — and entitled is exactly what you don't want to be perceived as, no matter how far ahead of Donald Trump you are. So, on that score, bad move.

Which brings us back to Neera Tanden, and the question, why this slap at Sanders now? It apparently comes from nowhere, or from pique, a winner's swipe at a loser who's laying on the mat.

About that, two points. First, Tanden's comment adds credence to the perception of Clinton-camp entitlement that most Democrats think both Clinton and her team should avoid. Second, this incident has to give pause to that aforementioned Sanders-supporting base, that if this candidate and her new team can't resist unprovoked hippie-punching now, what will they do once they have real power?

Again, bad move, as I see it. This looks like an unforced error to me.

GP