Trump Is Too Dangerous-- It's Time For Party Unity... So Why Are Conservative Democrats Still Undermining Progressive Candidates? Really, Why?

Lets keep our eye on the ball

Writing yesterday for Vanity Fair, David Drucker: reported that GOP insiders consider the House already lost. "Inside the swamp," he wrote, "Republican operatives have already made their peace with losing the House. But the coming Democratic wave won’t affect all Republicans equally, purging moderates and leaving only Trump loyalists behind. The result could be a divided Congress in which Trump, ironically, is more powerful than ever." For Republicans, widely viewed as Trump enablers and rubber-stamps, the wave "could be especially savage this year, given the sharp dissatisfaction with Trump in America’s usually Republican-leaning suburbs... Said one GOP lobbyist: 'Downtown, there is a sense that the House is already lost for Republicans. There is a hiring spree for plugged-in House Democrats who want to lobby. So, downtown is already planning on the Democratic takeover; the bets are on how big the flip will be.'"

Let's hope they scoop up lots of congressional New Dems who have been just waiting for the opportunity. I could easily see Sean Patrick Maloney (NY), Anthony Brown (MD), Darren Soto (FL), Vicente Gonzalez (TX) and Gregory Meeks (NY)-- all headed nowhere in Congress-- carefully considering a career that fits them better. The House Democratic caucus would be better off without any of them.

On Monday, David Sirota, writing for The Guardian had some words for the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. He reported that "insurgent progressives are not limiting themselves to dethroning Republicans: they are taking aim at corporate-friendly Democrats within their own party, too. Amid an upsurge of populist energy that has alarmed the Democratic establishment, a new wave of left-leaning insurgents have been using Democratic primaries to wage a fierce war on the party’s corporate wing. And, as in past presidential primary battles, many Democratic consultants, politicians and pundits have insisted that the party must prioritize unity and resist grassroots pressure to support a more forceful progressive agenda."

Today is our last federal primary-- in Rhode Island-- where there are no contested primaries. Tomorrow New York has a boatload of progressives challenging vile conservatives from top to bottom in state races. But after that, what happens? Will Democrats draw together to defeat Trump and his enablers? I hope so. Trump is too much of an existential threat to take on the Republican wing of the Democratic Party now. I hate picking between the lesser of two evils and I usually refuse to. But now... Trump. I'm prepared to hold my nose and back anyone (except Kyrsten Sinema, a dangerous sociopath, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who has a progressive independent opponent, Tim Canova, running against her) with a "D" next to their name. I may vomit in the process.

But will the establishment back progressives who won their primaries? The DCCC says it wants unity and asks progressive voters to back its shit conservative candidates like Jeff Van Drew (Blue Dog-NJ), Jason Crow (New Dem-CO), Ann Kirkpatrick (New Dem-AZ) and Anthony Brindisi (NY). Meanwhile the DCCC is still undermining progressives who won their primaries, like J.D. Scholten (IA), James Thompson (KS), Ammar Campa-Najjar (CA)... the list of the ones endorsed by Blue America is available by tapping on this year's Abandoned By The DCCC ActBlue thermometer on the right. Unity is a two-way street, isn't it? I can understand why Sirota wrote that "Dislodging those corporate Democrats, then, is not some counterproductive distraction-- it is a critical front in the effort to actually make America great again." He pointed out that "liberal America’s pattern of electing corporate Democrats-- rather than progressives-- has been a big part of the problem that led to Trump and that continues to make America’s economic and political system a neo-feudal dystopia."

"[L]iberal America," he wrote, "has often produced something much different and less appealing: Democratic politicians who constantly echo courageous populist themes in speeches, news releases and election ads, and then often uses the party’s governmental power to protect the status quo and serve corporate donors in their interminable class war." He's right.

Less than a decade ago, with Democratic majorities controlling both the House and Senate, it was the administration led by Obama and Emanuel that bailed out Wall Street, enshrined a too-big-to-jail doctrine for megabanks and-- by its own admission-- designed the Affordable Care Act to preclude Medicare for All. Obama’s administration did this while Democrats controlled both the House and Senate. It was Democratic lawmakers’ like Delaware’s Tom Carper and Connecticut’s Joe Lieberman who helped insurance and pharmaceutical lobbyists make sure the ACA also excluded any public healthcare option that could compete with private insurers.

Today, it is House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, from deeply liberal San Francisco, insisting that Medicare for All will not be any kind of litmus test for her party and promising that budget-cutting austerity will govern Democrats’ legislative agenda should they retake Congress.

It is 16 Senate Democrats voting to help Wall Street lobbyists gut post-financial-crisis banking regulations. Those include blue-staters like Colorado’s Michael Bennet and Delaware’s Chris Coons, the latter of which then went on to make national headlines slamming progressives for supposedly pushing the party too far to the left.

It is 13 Senate Democrats, including 2020 presidential prospect Cory Booker of Democratic New Jersey, beholding skyrocketing drug prices--and then voting to help pharmaceutical lobbyists defeat Bernie Sanders’ initiative to let Americans purchase lower-priced medicine from Canada.

It is most of the Democratic Senate caucus recently voting to confirm 15 of Trump’s judicial appointees, and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, from Democratic New York, vowing there will be no punishment for Democratic lawmakers who vote to confirm Trump’s supreme court nominees.

Recounting this sordid record is not to dispute Democrats’ occasional successes. Some blue locales continue to periodically pass progressive initiatives, most recently on climate change, net neutrality and minimum wages. These are undoubtedly important, but they have for the most part been incremental at a time when the economic and ecological crises we face demand far more radical action.

The current iteration of the Democratic party has proven time and again that it is not merely uninterested in that kind of radicalism, but actively opposed to it. Party powerbrokers and multimillion-dollar MSNBC pundits would prefer an election focused exclusively on the palace dramas surrounding Trump’s boorish outbursts and outrageous personal behavior. They don’t want an election focused on the bipartisan neoliberalism that has wrought the desperation and mayhem unfolding outside the palace walls.

...[P]rogressive challengers and others like them have each run unique campaigns, but all have embodied the core belief that anti-Trump rhetoric alone is not an adequate response to the emergencies at hand. Democrats’ record in liberal states and liberal cities over the last decade makes a strong case that they are correct-- and so now the revolution is on.

That may bewilder the Democrats’ permanent political class that has gotten used to steamrolling the public, losing elections and still remaining in charge of the party-- but, really, the only confusing thing about this uprising is that it took this long to finally ignite.

Back to that unity thing one more time. Henry Cuellar is a very, very right wing Blue Dog in a very blue Texas district (from Laredo and the McAllen suburbs up to San Antonio). Hillary beat Trump in his district 58.3% to 38.5% and Obama won it both times he ran. The PVI is D+9. But Cuellar consistently votes with the Republicans in Congress and sports an "F" from ProgressivePunch. It gets worse. With control of the House in play... Cuellar invited his supporters to a breakfast fundraiser for vulnerable Texas Republican John Carter yesterday in San Antonio. The invitation links to a "John Carter Conservative for Congress" contribution page with donor levels up to $2,700. I called the DCCC to ask about this-- since they have endorsed M.J. Hegar, the conservative Democrat running against Carter-- but couldn't get any kind of response. Of course.

Since The Beltway Democratic Establishment Refuses To Back Progressives Candidates, Why Should Grassroots Dems Unite Behind Their Crap Candidates?

Earlier today, we took a quick look at why Hillary isn't doing better in Florida. Last week, it was Ohio. The latest national polling of likely voters shows Hillary beating Trump 42-36% in a match-up that includes the third party candidates. Part of the reason she isn't doing better in Florida and Ohio is because the Beltway Establishment helped impose vile loser candidates locally-- Wall Street garbage like Patrick Murphy in Florida and pathetic walking corpse Ted Strickland in Ohio, neither of whom brings a single thing to the table other than a prayer that they can ride Hillary's coattails.

Meanwhile, on the generic congressional question in the same Morning Consult poll, about voting for a Democrat or a Republican, Democrats win 46% to 37%. Unfortunately many of the DCCC and DSCC recruits are far worse-- far, far worse-- than a generic Democrat and others, good, solid progressive ones, are being starved of resources by a DCCC more eager to keep progressives out of Congress than electing Democrats to Congress.

Beltway Villagers and establishment goons everywhere reached for their smelling salts when Tim Canova courageously refused to endorse Debbie Wasserman Schultz and when Grayson passed on endorsing Patrick Murphy after both were beaten in the Florida primary at the end of August. This past weekend, Elizabeth Warren had some establishment noses out of joint when she did a Senate Democrats fundraiser and very pointedly left out craven Wall Street shills-- and Schumer favorites-- Patrick Murphy (FL), Evan Bayh (IN), Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ) and Patty Judge (IA).

The problem is that neither Canova, Grayson nor Warren sees themevles as mindless cogs in a well-greased party wheel that goes round and round and round. Grayson and Warren have been beyond-the-call-of-duty loyal Democrats but there's a serious question as to whether or not Patrick Murphy fits any reasonable defination of "a Democrat" and there is no serious question about which interests Murphy, Bayh, Kirkpatrick and Judge would be working for were any of them to ooze into the Senate. Each of them could only be viewed as part of the problem Warren's career is built on tackling, not part of any reasonable solution. And her list of endorsed candidates doesn't just include progressives. Aside from Russ Feingold-- a sure-fired ally-- she's raising money for moderates like Katie McGinty (PA), Maggie Hassan (NH), Jason Kander (MO), Tammy Duckworth (IL) and Catherine Cortez Mastro (NV). Murphy, Bayh, Kirkpatrick and Judge, on the other hand, have records of working for the banksters and very much against the crucial issues Warren and Grayson and other progressives are working on.

Sunday, Kevin Robillard and Gabe Debenedetti reported that Bernie is refusing the help the crap-conservative Democrat, Sue Minter, running for governor in his own state-- and that it could cost her the race. They wrote that "Sanders' unwillingness to participate in the Minter race "is starting to generate ill will" with the state's Democratic establishment, according to "a top Vermont Democrat." Before Gov. Howard Dean put a stop to it, corrupt right-leaning Vermont Democrats like Minter and others from the Democratic Party establishment used to run right-wing Democrats against Bernie. In fact, in 1988 they ran someone just like Minter-- Democratic State Rep Paul Poirier-- against Bernie, draining away enough votes from him (19%), to throw the congressional seat to Republican Peter Smith and keep Bernie out of Congress.

How popular is Bernie in Vermont? In his last reelection race in 2012 he beat Republican John MacGovern 207,848 (71.1%) to 72,898 (24.9%). On that same day, Obama was reelected with 199,259 votes (67%). Yep! This year, Bernie beat Hillary in the state primary 115,900 (85.7%) to 18,338 (13.6%). He's been spending his political capital in Vermont trying to get a big turn-out for Hillary and for progressive allies like David Zuckerman (for Lt. Governor), Tim Ashe (for state Senate) and Mari Cordes (for state House). Howard Dean told the two Politico reporters that Minter is "very much a moderate Democrat"-- a polite way for Democrats to point out someone in their own party is a corrupt conservative piece of shit-- "which is probably why Bernie is sitting aside."

Minter, a technocrat who won a three-way Democratic primary by hyping her support for gun control and her role helping the state recover from flooding after Tropical Storm Irene, is still capable of winning without Sanders' help. But some observers believe the senator's endorsement would essentially guarantee a Democratic victory.

It's unclear exactly why Sanders hasn't backed Minter. He's been holed up with a top aide writing his book, mixing in travel to campaign for Hillary Clinton and higher-profile Senate candidates like Pennsylvania's Katie McGinty. Sanders also isn't fond of Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin-- who endorsed Clinton the day Sanders announced his presidential bid and scrapped plans to implement single-payer health care in the state-- and Minter worked in Shumlin's administration.

Minter also simply has a more moderate [again, that purposefully misleading Beltway word for "corrupt right-wing piece of shit"] profile than Sanders does.

“There is always an underlying question of who Bernie will support, but it isn't of the utmost importance,” said Dottie Deans, the state Democratic Party chair. “I certainly would welcome his support for any of our Democratic candidates, but what’s clear in this state is we have three parties: the Republican Party, the Democratic Party and the Progressive Party, and that makes it a little dicey.”

Sanders has marched to his own drumbeat on endorsements this year. National party leaders asked the Vermont independent to back two lower-profile Senate candidates over the summer-- Iowa’s Patty Judge and North Carolina’s Deborah Ross-- but they are not among the candidates Sanders has personally endorsed so far.

During the presidential primary race Schumer threatened Bernie with loss of a committee chair if he endorsed Grayson in Florida, Sestak or Fetterman in Pennsylvania or Sittenfeld in Ohio, where Schumer was desperate to have his conservative handpicked pro-Wall Street candidates-- respectively Patrick Murphy, Katie McGinty and Ted Strickland-- win the primaries. Bernie went along with it and the details of that will be a chapter in my "book" one day.

For establishment monsters like Steve Israel, Rahm Emanuel, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Ben Ray Lujan, Schumer, Tester, etc, "party unity" is always a one-way street. The thermometer below goes to a page that has progressive House candidates who won their primaries and have been completely and spitefully abandoned by the DCCC. All are in winnable districts, although some are very winnable and others are tougher shots. Please consider contributing to any-- or all-- of their campaigns:

The Corrupted Democratic Party Follows The Republican Party Further And Further To The Right

This morning, we quoted GOP billionaire Mike Fernandez, from his OpEd endorsing Hillary Clinton, that party loyalty should never come before cores values and principles: "No longer can we hide behind the excuse that party loyalty is paramount, and that a bad candidate of our own is always better than any candidate of theirs. Blind loyalty in this case is the ultimate definition of disloyalty to our beliefs." Gauis mentioned to me that any #BernieOrBust true believer could have written the same thing. Yesterday Thom Hartmann had Mike Papantonio on his show to talk about how it was possible for the Republican wing of the Democratic Party sweep the Florida Democratic primaries Tuesday, picking anti-working family reactionaries like Patrick Murphy, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Joe Garcia, Randy Perkins, Val Demings, Darren Soto, and Scott Fuhrman over progressive candidates. (ConservaDem Al Lawson's win over a liberal but criminally indicted Corrine Brown was a separate kind of case.) Ironically, the one congressional primary where a progressive beat a conservative, in the next-to-impossible 2nd district, it now looks like the margin has narrowed to 136 votes and progressive Walter Cartland may actually lose out to Steve Crapps, a crap Democrat every bit as bad as Murphy or any of the other garbage that won Tuesday. It'll be up to provisional ballots to determine which Democrat wins the nomination in this deep red district.

Papantonio's explanation is important to for progressives to hear and important to try to deal with-- because it isn't only about Florida. Bernie's movement, despite Bernie's pleas, turned in the direction of a cult-of-personality. It should never have been allowed to move in that direction because it made it too easy for supporters to ignore the issues that have animated Bernie's entire career. "The corporatist wing of the Democratic Party won the day; progressive candidates were sent packing, Papantonio told Hartmann. He blamed lazy progressive voters for not showing up for being willing to talk the talk but not walk the walk. "These are Republicans that won. Twenty years ago these characters would never have shown up in the Democratic Party. They are elitist, insider, Wall Street Democrats-- certainly they are insider, elitist DC Democrats. Reid and Pelosi have done everything they can to purge the party of anybody who looks different from that Wall Street Democrat, that Third Way Democrat. Think bout how active Reid was in going after Grayson. Thank about how active Pelosi has been in trying to say we have to stay with the establishment, which is the Wall Street Democrats. Progressives lost all over the country... this was the wish of the Democratic Party... Tim Caona, Alan Grayson, even Bernie Sanders were labeled the fringe candidates and they represent the real beliefs of what the Democratic Party used to stand for all the way back to FDR. But that party is no more. This Democratic Party is something I don't even recognize anymore."

I call that one compelling cri-de-coeur! I hope Papantonio isn't planning on buckling under to that blind party loyalty Fernandez was writing about above. Is he going to vote for Hillary and the boatload of shit Democrats corrupt insiders like Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid, Steve Israel, Wasserman Schultz, Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi are trying to use to turn the Democratic Party into it's Republican wing. Speaking of which... Here's a current list of the House candidates-- not incumbents-- who are running as Republican wing Democrats, Each one of these worthless candidates has gone to the Blue Dogs and/or New Dems for an endorsement and each one was examined and deemed worthy of being allowed into the Republican wing. If you vote for them, Social Security and Medicare won't last beyond 2030. First the Blue Dogs:

• Lou Correa (CA)
• Gretchen Driskell (MI)
• Brad Schneider (IL)
• Shelli Yoder (IN)
• Josh Gottheimer (NJ)
• Gail Schwartz (CO)
• Kim Myers (NY)
• Pete Gallego (TX)
• Lon Johnson (MI)
• Doug Owens (UT)
• Tom O'Halleran (AZ)

And these are the New Dems who are masquerading as Democrats, every bit as bad as the New Dems and, in many cases, as you can see, identical:

• Isadore Hall (CA)
• Lou Correa (CA)
• Darren Soto (FL)
• Matt Heinz (AZ)
• Salud Carbajal (CA)
• Val Demings (FL)
• Monica Vernon (IA)
• Brad Schneider (IL)
• Emily Cain (ME)
• Josh Gottheimer (NJ)
• Pete Gallego (TX)
• LuAnn Bennett (VA)

Looks an awful lot like the DCCC's Red-to-Blue List, doesn't it? So while the DCCC has refused to back progressives like Mary Ellen Balchunis (PA), Mary Hoeft (WI) and Tom Wakely (TX), they have backed virtually all of the sewerful of candidates the Blue Dogs and New Dems are backing. You can still help progressives overcome this right-wing onslaught from within the Democratic Party that is making the party over as a quasi-GOP comfortable for ex-Republicans like Patrick Murphy and Hillary Clinton, by tapping on the thermometer on the right and giving generously to as many of these candidates as you can. And a little good news about two of these horrible candidates. In California, extraordinarily corrupt Blue Dog Lou Correa and even more corrupt Isadore Hall aren't up against Republicans in November, but against dedicated progressives, respectively, Bao Nguyen and Nanette Barragan, both of whom you can contribute to here.

Wednesday Michael Sainato, reminded his readers what an utterly contemptible den of corruption the Democratic Party has become under the hopeless and vile leadership in power today. "Despite the corruption Wasserman Schultz perpetuated at the DNC-- and her resignation-- Democratic Party leaders flocked to South Florida to assist her reelection campaign," he wrote. "President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton all formally endorsed Wasserman Schultz, ensuring the Democratic Party system that rigged the primaries for Clinton stays rigged and corrupt. Wasserman Schultz’s victory against Canova is not only a demoralizing defeat for Sanders supporters, but another step backwards for restoring democracy in America. Wasserman Schultz embodies all that is wrong with the current state of politics. The interests of her constituency invariably falls by the wayside in favor of the Democratic Party leadership’s will, and the wealthy, corporate influences that fund them." I disagree with only one word-- Sainato's first: "despite" should be "because of." They support her because of the corruption because corruption is their life's work. All of them.

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
 

Right-Of-Center Labour Party Careerists In The U.K. Are Every Bit As Sleazy As Wasserman Schultz And Steve Israel Here

Jeremy Corbyn rushed to hospital with multiple stab wounds in back

We've been writing for some time now about how the Democratic Party establishment sees "party unity" as a one way street. When someone from the corrupt-conservative wing of the party wins a primary-- or steals a win-- progressives must jump on board and back her (or him). But when progressives win primaries-- as, for example, Mary Ellen Balchunis (PA-07), Tom Wakely (TX-21), Mary Hoeft (WI-07) all did-- the establishment abandons them or even works to crush them and aid the Republicans.

In fact, Blue America just started a new ActBlue page (on the right), dedicated to progressive candidates in winnable districts who the DCCC has refused to help against the GOP. Many grassroots Democrats can't cope with the very concept that Pelosi and her henchmen, while begging for money to "help take back Congress," are sabotaging that very effort by trying to stamp out legitimate progressive candidates in tough races. (Yes, Pelosi used to be a progressive herself, but that was many years ago and has virtually nothing to do with the crass partisan hack she has willfully morphed into in recent years.) It should come as no surprise that these tactics employed by the Democratic Establishment here, are also being employed by the Labour Party establishment in Britain, where the Conservative wing of the Labour Party is attempting to annihilate progressives in general and Jeremy Corbyn in particular. Writing over the weekend for The Telegraph, Kate McCann exposed their shenanigans.

So called "centrists" are moving to expel thousands of Corbyn supporters in the run-up to a party leadership election in late September, smearing them as "anti-Semites" and conspiring with the Conservative Party to annihilate Labour in an early election.

Almost 6,000 people have been reported to the party’s National Executive Committee as part of a new initiative introduced in mid-July to curb threats and poor behaviour.

It came as Tory MP Andrew Bridgen revealed he had been approached by Labour MPs as part of an attempt to secure an early general election to “get rid of Jeremy Corbyn” as the party’s leadership contest continues.

Mr Bridgen said he has been approached by three Labour MPs in Westminster who have asked for him to continue his bid for a nationwide vote in order to oust Mr Corbyn.

The MP claims that the Labour members warned the only way to rid the party of Mr Corbyn would be for Labour to be “wiped out” at a general election and prove his unpopularity with the public.

One senior Labour source told The Telegraph: “The sad truth is the Labour Party is no longer a safe space for women and Jews. Party members who receive a daily barrage of disgusting abuse deserve better than for Jeremy Corbyn to attempt to downplay it or tell them to simply ignore it.”

It follows an appeal by Labour supporters who were banned from voting in the party’s leadership election, which was later overturned by the High Court. The decision means that 130,000 people will be barred from voting in a decision thought likely to hit Mr Corbyn hardest, as many of his ­supporters are not party members but activists.

Come on, you didn't think for one minute that self-serving careerist slime like Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Steve Israel, Ben Ray Lujan, Steny Hoyer and Rahm Emanuel only exist in America, did you? This kind of back-stabbing was, after all, invented in the United Kingdom, right?

Slimy Democratic Party bosses Hoyer and Wasserman Schultz

Bonus For Americans Who Don't Want To Read About The Foreigners: A Moral Test

Are you as moral as you think you are?

This test only has one question, but it's a very important one.

By giving an honest answer, you will discover where you stand morally.

The test features an unlikely, completely fictional situation in which you will have to make a decision.

Only you will know the results, so remember that your answer needs to be honest.

THE SITUATION:

You are in Florida, Miami to be specific.

There is chaos all around you caused by a hurricane with severe flooding.

This is a flood of biblical proportions.

You are a photojournalist working for a major newspaper, and you're caught in the middle of this epic disaster. The situation is nearly hopeless.

You're trying to shoot career-making photos.

There are houses and people swirling around you, some disappearing under the water.

THE TEST:

Suddenly you see a man in the water.

He is fighting for his life, trying not to be taken down with the debris.

You move closer.

Somehow the man looks familiar.

You suddenly realize who it is.

It's Donald Trump!

At the same time you notice that the raging waters are about to take him under forever.

YOU HAVE TWO OPTIONS:

You can save the life of Donald Trump or you can shoot a dramatic Pulitzer Prize winning photo, documenting the death of one of the world's most powerful Republican men hell bent on the destruction of America.

THE QUESTION:

Here's the question, and please give an honest answer.

"Would you select high contrast color film, or would you go with the classic simplicity of black and white?"

If The DCCC Continues Boycotting Progressives And Sabotaging Their Campaigns, Why Play Along With "Party Unity?"

On April 26, Pennsylvania held their presidential and congressional primaries. One of the hottest Democratic primaries was in the extreme southeast of the state, PA-07-- parts of Delaware, Chester, Montgomery and Berks counties, Joe Sestak's old district, currently held by 3-term, garden variety Republican Pat Meehan. Early in the cycle, the DCCC identified it as a must-win district if the Democrats were to stand any chance whatsoever of taking back the House this decade. Obama had beaten McCain there in 2008-- 53-46%-- and Joe Sestak had defeated entrenched GOP incumbent, Curt Weldon, in 2006 and held the seat until running for the Senate in 2010. (It's worth noting that then-DCCC head Rahm Emanuel had attempted to sabotage Sestak's campaign in 2006 but he won anyway and Emanuel claimed the credit.) Anyway, this year the brain surgeons who run the DCCC, Steve Israel and Ben Ray Luján, decided to ignore the local Democratic party activists and recruited "some guy" and declared him the nominee and gave him Red-to-Blue status.

Israel got busy urging Democratic donors to ignore the grassroots candidate, Mary Ellen Balchunis, a local professor who described herself as "from the Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic Party." Israel has shown a remarkable inability to elect Democrats to Congress but he has refined the fine art of political sabotage within the Democratic Party to something he can do in his sleep. His Wall Street-backed candidate, Bill Golderer, who was overwhelmingly rejected by all the Democratic and allied organizations in the district, brought in $375,402 for the primary. Israel's negative onslaught made it impossible for Mary Ellen to spend even $50,000. But local Democrats decided to stand up and tell the DCCC what to do with their candidate and their attempt to take over PA-07. On primary night Mary Ellen beat Golderer and the DCCC by a stunning 51,525 (73.8%) to 18,276 (26.2%).

The DCCC immediately removed all mentions of PA-07 from their boards and website. They removed Golderer from Red to Blue of course but didn't replace him with Mary Ellen. They just decided to pretend that the once "must-win" district no longer exists-- like Pelosi's sometime mantra, "when women win, America wins."

Blue America hadn't endorsed Mary Ellen during the primary. She checked every single progressive box policy-wise but we never really got to know her and we were busy looking for more "Berniecrats." She is a personal friend of Hillary's and although policy-wise she's more a Bernie person, she felt a personal loyalty to Hillary who had come to her class to lecture her students.

After the primary, we made a point of getting to know Mary Ellen better and getting a feel for her commitment to the key economic and social issues that motivate her. That and a sense that PA-07 is a winnable district-- far more so that almost any district the DCCC is engaged with-- helped make us decide to jump into the race and try to help. The latest Maris poll of Pennsylvania voters may show a close race between Trump and Clinton statewide, but in the Philly suburbs where Mary Ellen is running, the polling now favors a massive Clinton landslide-- 55-26%. All of the issues of economic fairness, social equality, gun safety, environmental protection that we talk about all the time are highlighted in this clear race between the reactionary Republican incumbent and the progressive Mary Ellen Balchunis. This is someone openly aspiring to go to Congress and bring another voice to the issues Elizabeth Warren, Alan Grayson, Barbara Lee and Raúl Grijalva have been advocating for.

With Israel, Luján and Pelosi still refusing to put the concept of "party unity" into practice, even as they demand it from progressives for Hillary's campaign, Mary Ellen really needs some serious help in the fundraising department. Joe Sestak is vigorously campaigning among his former constituents for her and there may be some big surprises coming this month from other top Democrats. Meanwhile, though, we're asking you to please dig as deep as you can for Mary Ellen.

And it isn't just Mary Ellen's campaign being singled out and targeted by the DCCC. Nope, while Pelosi's political arm prepares to spend tens of millions of dollars to rescue the failing careers of incumbents hated by Democratic voters-- like Collin Peterson and Brad Ashord, each of whom votes far more with the GOP on core issues than with the Democrats-- the DCCC has adamantly refused to get behind progressives like Mary Ellen who have already won their primaries and will face Republicans in November. Blue America is trying to help Tom Wakely who's opposing Lamar Smith in TX-21, Alina Valdes who's trying to oust Mario Diaz-Balart in FL-25, Paul Clements, once again opposing GOP hereditary multimillionaire Fred Upton in MI-06, or DuWayne Gregory, Peter King's opponent in NY-02. Their primaries are over; now it's time for the lazy, corrupt, incompetent DCCC to help them beat their Republican opponents.

Do You Consider Yourself A Democrat In A Party Sense? Why?

Monday, Bill Press wrote that "Sanders was right in arguing that the primary system is rigged against him. It is!" THe super-delegate system, though, wasn't invented just to prevent Bernie from becoming president. It was a full frontal attack against the grassroots of the Democratic Party, meant to thwart any populist uprising that offered changes unacceptable to the party establishment. The system is indefensible by anyone short of a universally discredited harridan like Debbie Wasserman Schultz-- universally discredited, that is, outside the careerist and corrupted establishment, where they recognize the Wasserman Schultz imperious impulses as their own. So far, state Democratic parties in Wisconsin, Colorado Maine, Vermont, Utah, Alaska, and West Virginia have all passed resolutions insisting 2016 be the last year of the super-delegate system. Elizabeth Warren has joined Tulsi Gabbard and Bernie is demanding the same.

Corrupt party bosses like the Clintons, Rahm Emanuel, Wasserman Schultz and the Big City garbage machines may have to find some other way to allow lobbyists and corporate interests to exert anti-grassroots pressure on the party.



This year there are 718 super-deleagtes-- 30% of the 2,383 votes needed to nominate a candidate. Under the watchful eye of Wasserman Schultz, this year's convention procedures have been carefully crafted not just to deliver the nomination to Clinton, but to keep the party establishment and it's policy agenda firmly in control. Anyone who falls for the calls for Democratic Party unity is a simple-minded idiot ready to enable the establishment and cast their power and their corporate agenda in stone within the party we like to deceive ourselves into thinking represents the interests of "the people." At best the Democratic Party is merely the lesser of two evils. Trump is just an exaggeration to the greater evil but that this election is even remotely competitive shows just how low the Democratic Party establishment has fallen.

I suspect that if Trump and Clinton are the party nominees, Jill Stein and Gary Johnson are going to do far better than anyone expects. DCCC and DSCC handpicked congressional candidates are no less odious in most cases-- not some cases, most cases. If you're not planning on voting for Hillary Clinton, be careful about the garbage congressional candidates Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer are saddling the party with. These are candidates you can trust; almost none are being backed by the DSCC or DCCC. They're among the only ones left upholding values and principles that have made us ever think of ourselves as members of the same party that includes a Rahm Emanuel or a Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Donald Trump-- A Truth-Free Zone... And Psychotic

Who would have ever thought David Brooks would be making more sense in the NYTimes than Paul Krugman? And we still have almost 5 months to go before we vote! Friday Brooks took on the GOP's Unity Illusion-- which is different from the Democrats' unity illusion, but just as threatening to the status quo, if not more so. Both parties' address disunity behind the two least popular candidates in history by appealing to the need to win Congress, despite their own awful candidate and because the other party's candidate is surely the greater of two evils. Paul Ryan asks himself and his wing of the GOP to suspend their disgust for Trump's racism and the rest of Trumpism. "Unity," he pleads, "will be good for the conservative agenda," wrote Brooks. "As a Wall Street Journal editorial put it this week: 'There’s no guarantee Mr. Trump would agree to Mr. Ryan’s agenda, but there’s no chance if Mr. Ryan publicly refuses to vote for him.'" Brooks' column is why Ryan's arguments "are philosophically unsound and completely unworkable."

For starters, this line of thinking is deeply anticonservative. Conservatives believe that politics is a limited activity. Culture, psychology and morality come first. What happens in the family, neighborhood, house of worship and the heart is more fundamental and important than what happens in a legislature.

Ryan’s argument inverts all this. It puts political positions first and character and morality second. Sure Trump’s a scoundrel, but he might agree with our tax proposal. Sure, he is a racist, but he might like our position on the defense budget. Policy agreement can paper over a moral chasm. Nobody calling themselves a conservative can agree to this hierarchy of values.

The classic conservative belief, by contrast, is that character is destiny. Temperament is foundational. Each candidate has to cross some basic threshold of dependability as a human being before it’s even relevant to judge his or her policy agenda. Trump doesn’t cross that threshold.

Second, it just won’t work. The Republican Party can’t unify around Donald Trump for the same reason it can’t unify around a tornado. Trump, by his very essence, undermines cooperation, reciprocity, solidarity, stability or any other component of unity. He is a lone operator, a disloyal diva, who is incapable of horizontal relationships. He has demeaned and humiliated everybody who has tried to be his friend, from Chris Christie to Paul Ryan.

Some conservatives believe they can educate, convert or civilize Trump. This belief is a sign both of intellectual arrogance and psychological naïveté.

The man who just crushed them is in no mood to submit to them. Furthermore, Trump’s personality is pathological. It is driven by deep inner compulsions that defy friendly advice, political interest and common sense.

It’s useful to go back and read the Trump profiles in Vanity Fair and other places from the 1980s and 1990s. He has always behaved exactly as he does now: the constant flow of insults, the endless bragging, the casual cruelty, the need to destroy allies and hog the spotlight. “Donald was the child who would throw the cake at the birthday parties,” his brother Robert once said.

Psychologists are not supposed to diagnose candidates from afar, but there is a well-developed literature on narcissism that tracks with what we have seen of Trump. By one theory narcissism flows from a developmental disorder called alexithymia, the inability to identify and describe emotions in the self. Sufferers have no inner voice to understand their own feelings and reflect honestly on their own actions.

Unable to know themselves, or truly love themselves, they hunger for a never-ending supply of admiration from outside. They act at all times like they are performing before a crowd and cannot rest unless they are in the spotlight.

To make decisions, these narcissists create a rigid set of external standards, often based around admiration and contempt. Their valuing criteria are based on simple division-- winners and losers, victory or humiliation. They are preoccupied with luxury, appearance or anything that signals wealth, beauty, power and success. They take Christian, Jewish and Muslim values-- based on humility, charity and love-- and they invert them.

Incapable of understanding themselves, they are also incapable of having empathy for others. They simply don’t know what it feels like to put themselves in another’s shoes. Other people are simply to be put to use as suppliers of admiration or as victims to be crushed as part of some dominance display.

Therefore, they go out daily in search of enemies to insult and friends to degrade. Trump, for example, reportedly sets members of his campaign staff off against each other. Each person is up one day and belittled another-- always kept perpetually on edge, waiting for the Sun King to decide the person’s temporary worth.

Paul Ryan and the Republicans can try to be loyal to Trump, but he won’t be loyal to them. There’s really no choice. Congressional Republicans have to run their own separate campaign. Donald Trump does not share.

Maybe Brooks had been inspired by Timothy Egan's column, Lord of the Lies from the day before, another psychological analysis of the "Mt. Everest of liars... Trump lies about big things (there is no drought in California) and small things (his hair spray could not affect the ozone layer because it’s sealed within Trump Tower). He lies about himself, and the fake self he invented to talk about himself. He’s been shown to lie more than 70 times in a single event."

Egan proposes that, "given the scale of Trump’s mendacity and the stakes for the free world," the debate moderators should fact check everything Trump-- and presumably Hillary-- says and denounce them as lies in real time. He writes that we need a "debate referee" because "the debates are meaningless without a neutral party screening the garbage."

Professional truth-seekers have never seen anything like Trump, surely the most compulsive liar to seek high office. To date, the nonpartisan PolitiFact has rated 76 percent of his statements lies-- 57 percent false or mostly false, and another 19 percent “Pants on Fire” fabrications. Only 2 percent-- 2 percent!-- of his assertions were rated true, and another 6 percent mostly true. Hillary Clinton, who is not exactly known for fealty to the facts, had a 28 percent total lie score, including a mere 1 percent Pants on Fire.

The Washington Post’s Fact Checker has dinged Trump with 30 of its Four Pinocchio ratings-- lying 70 percent of the time. Trump cares so little about the truth that when the Fact Checker reaches out to him for an explanation, he never responds, the paper noted.

Trump got his start on the national political stage as a liar, playing to the birther fantasies of Barack Obama’s worst haters. One of the questions he might be asked in the three fall debates is what, exactly, he discovered when he claimed his investigators “cannot believe what they’re finding” in Hawaii five years ago.

With Trump University, he created a business model built on a house of lies. An executive called it “a total lie,” and a sales manager said it was a “fraudulent scheme” designed to bilk vulnerable clients, according to court testimony. It was that class-action lawsuit that got Trump into his present caldron of lies-- calling the Indiana-born judge in the case a “Mexican.” By that standard, Trump is a German, with a grandfather from Kallstadt.

Some of Trump’s lies are the everyday speech of a charlatan-- trade talk. At a bizarre news conference in March, he called Trump Winery “the largest winery on the East Coast.” Not even close, according to PolitiFact. Last month he said he had more employees in New Jersey “than almost anybody.” Not a chance. There’s a word for this kind of person, the guy who spits on your tie and then tells you he likes your sheen, but the New York Times does not allow me to print it.

...Sadly, a lot of voters don’t care if a candidate is a pathological liar. But most of us should. It’s up to the debate commission, as they set the rules for the fall, to ensure that truth has a place on the stage.

In a NY Times column Monday, Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, delineated the series of lies and manipulations that made up Trump's latest speech on Orlando, a speech that was not off-the-cuff, but carefully read from a teleprompter, pointing out that it was "rife with the sort of misstatements and exaggerations that have typified his campaign."

He repeatedly stretched the facts, for example, in describing the United States as overrun by dangerous migrants. He claimed the country has an “immigration system which does not permit us to know who we let into our country,” brushing aside the entire customs and immigration enforcement infrastructure. And he asserted that there was a “tremendous flow” of Syrian refugees, when just 2,805 of them were admitted into the country from October to May, fewer than one-third of the 10,000 Syrians President Obama said the United States would accept this fiscal year.

Mr. Trump described the gunman in the Orlando shooting as “an Afghan,” though he was born an American citizen in New York City to parents who had emigrated from Afghanistan to the United States over three decades ago.

Mr. Trump assailed the presumptive Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, accusing her of favoring immigration policies that would invite a flood of potential jihadists to the United States, which he warned could be “a better, bigger, more horrible version than the legendary Trojan Horse ever was.”

...Trump’s speech amounted to a rejection of the conventional wisdom that he must remake himself for the November election as a more sober figure and discard the volcanic tone and ethnic and racial provocation that marked his primary campaign.

Yet Mr. Trump has showed little interest in assuaging those concerns. He used the hours after the Orlando massacre to claim prescience about the attack and to demand Mr. Obama’s resignation. Then, in a television interview on Monday morning, Mr. Trump darkly suggested that the president was sympathetic to Islamic terrorists.

...Some Republicans said Mr. Trump’s determination to play to his hard-line base was undermining his standing as a general election candidate.

...It is enough to convince senior Republicans that talk of an eventual pivot is folly-- that he is unwilling or incapable of being reined in.

“Everybody says, ‘Look, he’s so civilized, he eats with a knife and fork,’” said Mike Murphy, a former top adviser to Jeb Bush. “And then an hour later, he takes the fork and stabs somebody in the eye with it.”

The GOP should just cancel their July convention and announce that they won't be fielding a presidential candidate until 2020. Have you checked out our nice new #NeverTrump page?

Learning The Wrong Lesson-- Meet The Establishment

The Clinton Machine, Obama Biden, Schumer, Reid, the media lobbying and donor elites that serve them... are sure at the apex of the Democratic establishment. Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi detects some heavy smugness among them and their wing of the party when it comes to the vanquishing of Bernie-- rather than the realization of what an unlikely close cll they just experienced. Taibbi explains what they barely avouded being swamped by as "no ordinary primary race, not a contest between warring factions within the party establishment, á la Obama-Clinton in '08 or even Gore-Bradley in '00. This was a barely quelled revolt that ought to have sent shock waves up and down the party, especially since the Vote of No Confidence overwhelmingly came from the next generation of voters. Yet editorialists mostly drew the opposite conclusion." They feel certain they can continue spitting in the face of the left, forever able to manipulate and seduce the lo-info voters of the Democratic base without having to fear a Trump coming along and taking it all away from them the way the GOP establishment lost it all this cycle.

The Washington Post's James Hohmann's piece, Primary wins show Hillary Clinton needs the left less than pro-Sanders liberals think asserts that the Democratic establishment can "now safely return to their traditional We won, screw you posture of 'minor concessions' toward the 'liberal base.'" Another media shill for the establishment-- whose husband works for the Clinton campaign-- Jonathan Capehaeart wrote that "in the battle of the outsider egos storming the political establishment, Trump succeeded where Sanders failed."

"If," wrote Taibbi, "they had any brains, Beltway Dems and their clucky sycophants like Capeheart would not be celebrating this week. They ought to be horrified to their marrow that the all-powerful Democratic Party ended up having to dig in for a furious rally to stave off a quirky Vermont socialist almost completely lacking big-dollar donors or institutional support. They should be freaked out, cowed and relieved."

Taibbi doesn't entertain any of what are labelled "conspiracy theories"-- like how she and her allies-- from Wasserman Schultz and Reid, down to grubby political bosses in Brooklyn, Philly, Chicago, Essex and Camden-- cheated, rigged and stole state after state for the Machine.

But to read the papers in the last two days is to imagine that we didn't just spend a year witnessing the growth of a massive grassroots movement fueled by loathing of the party establishment, with some correspondingly severe numerical contractions in the turnout department (though she won, for instance, Clinton received 30 percent fewer votes in California this year versus 2008, and 13 percent fewer in New Jersey).

The twin insurgencies of Trump and Sanders this year were equally a blistering referendum on Beltway politics. But the major-party leaders and the media mouthpieces they hang out with can't see this, because of what that friend of mine talked about over a decade ago: Washington culture is too far up its own backside to see much of anything at all.

Democratic voters tried to express these frustrations through the Sanders campaign, but the party leaders have been and probably will continue to be too dense to listen. Instead, they'll convince themselves that, as Hohmann's Post article put it, Hillary's latest victories mean any "pressure" they might have felt to change has now been "ameliorated."

The maddening thing about the Democrats is that they refuse to see how easy they could have it. If the party threw its weight behind a truly populist platform, if it stood behind unions and prosecuted Wall Street criminals and stopped taking giant gobs of cash from every crooked transnational bank and job-exporting manufacturer in the world, they would win every election season in a landslide.

This is especially the case now that the Republican Party has collapsed under the weight of its own nativist lunacy. It's exactly the moment when the Democrats should feel free to become a real party of ordinary working people.

But they won't do that, because they don't see what just happened this year as a message rising up from millions of voters.

Politicians are so used to viewing the electorate as a giant thing to be manipulated that no matter what happens at the ballot, they usually can only focus on the Washington-based characters they perceive to be pulling the strings. Through this lens, the uprising among Democratic voters this year wasn't an organic expression of mass disgust, but wholly the fault of Bernie Sanders, who within the Beltway is viewed as an oddball amateur and radical who jumped the line.

Nobody saw his campaign as an honest effort to restore power to voters, because nobody in the capital even knows what that is. In the rules of palace intrigue, Sanders only made sense as a kind of self-centered huckster who made a failed play for power. And the narrative will be that with him out of the picture, the crisis is over. No person, no problem.

This inability to grasp that the problem is bigger than Bernie Sanders is a huge red flag. As Thacker puts it, the theme of this election year was widespread anger toward both parties, and both the Trump craziness and the near-miss with Sanders should have served as a warning. "The Democrats should be worried they're next," he says.

But they're not worried. Behind the palace walls, nobody ever is.

It helps explain why Pelosi's DCCC can piously demand "party unity" while ignoring progressive "outsiders"-- from Mary Ellen Balchunis in the Philly suburbs to Tom Wakely in the Austin-San Antonio corridor-- who beat more conservative establishment Democrats in primaries. For the Democratic establishment, party unity is a one-way street: get behind Hillary or risk being labelled a Naderite and helping to elect Trump, while they-- symbolized by Wasserman Schultz and Schumer-- eviscerate anything remotely populist or progressive about the Democratic Party. who would want to be part of that? The party of the Rahm Emanuels and Debbie Wasserman Schultzes and Harry Reids and the Clintons?

Reflections on an Election Year When It Finally Hit the Fan

Part of Last Conversation Piece by Juan Munoz, by the Hirshhorn Museum. Its conspiratorial feel, with panicked outsiders, seems apt for Washington.

- by Skip Kaltenheuser

Frustrations on the coverage of the Democratic primaries have been slow-cooking quite awhile. Not just with the networks, I’m also looking at you, National Public Radio. Does NPR have a clue as to how badly it's damaged its brand from reporters and commentators chirping regurgitations of Hillary talking points from the outset? For that matter do the NY Times and the Washington Post? They’ve sounded so long like self-appointed gatekeepers, queen-makers, charges of media malpractice now abound. Now brace for articles, already appearing, on how Bernie blew it, too little too late. Never mind media putting him in a box and for so long paying scant attention beyond socialist snowball in hell status.

We can take solace that the public’s collective tin ear to media fixes is well on its way to repair, but that doesn’t cure the frustration. I listened to NPR’s Scott Simon Saturday, interviewing (lecturing) RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United, over her group’s support of Bernie Sanders.

Ms. DeMoro acquitted herself well, plowing past Simon’s condescending entreaties to party unity, to getting the inevitability of math, to what’s really practical for health care in the political system, and to every other point he could squeeze in to call the game before the clock runs out. In his mindset there's only one game in town. Never mind pushing the party where it needs to go, never mind concern over game-changers that might wait in the wings. But I assure you in Washington there’s ample trepidation over what might next waltz out of the wings, and on its impact on voter turnout for down-ballot races.

Simon’s comments typify the drumbeat to make Bernie the fall guy for Hilary’s troubles. Apparently it’s now against the law to point out that occasionally the empress strolls buck-naked. And the commentariat now infuses Bernie with mystical powers to demand his supporters rise up for Hillary. If not, Bernie’s fault Hillary loses.

I don’t recall that loud a media pile-on when Ted Kennedy challenged Jimmy Carter, didn’t hear it as a major mutter when walking about the convention floor of the ’80 Democratic convention in NYC. Sure, it didn’t turn out so well, perhaps someone might have had a Dutch uncle talk with Ted early on. But Jimmy was a real incumbent, not the illusion of one.

Democrats are trying hard to find the soul of their party, and many may drift if they don’t. Independents are already the largest identification out there. More people get that with the skyrocketing wealth gap, Hillary’s specialty-- incremental change-- only locks in a status quo that speeds that gap.

Here’s a thought. If you want Bernie’s supporters to come around for Hillary, quit trying to stifle their voice at every opportunity, quit telling them from the outset their aspirations are hopeless, their efforts pointless, that they’re naive as to what’s possible, that if we end up in Trumpville it’s their fault for not folding early.

By the way, who told Chuck Todd of Meet the Press to play that corny triumph music when he breathlessly shows the latest transient polls? I keep waiting for Rocky to come out punching, demanding Todd change the tune. Todd landed the perfect theme music to go with Calvin Trillin’s description of Sunday talk shows, the Sabbath Gasbags.

So, plenty of resentment leftover from the death of a thousand slice-and-dice talking points directed at Bernie by Hillary’s minions. They’re well-placed in the media echo-chamber, including pundits financially tied to Hillary’s campaign and to super-pacs supporting her.

Most critiques boiled down to “single issue candidate,” “how does he pay for it?,” and “the Republican Congress will pour molasses on him.”

They’ll pour molasses on Hillary, too, as they do on President Obama. But if Bernie actually won, a number of seats would likely change in Congress, despite the gerrymandered districts that give the Republicans the House despite their losing the collective popular vote. We dream of a corrective algorithm that fairly redraws districts based on the census, letting the chips fall where they may. But that dream requires courageous state legislators. In any case, if Bernie triumphs, a sea-change cometh. Regardless, odds of Republicans losing the US Senate are decent, at least until the following midterm elections. Voter turnout takes the prize.

How does Bernie pay for it? C’mon. We’re way beyond flirting with the Roaring Twenties wealth gap. Adjustments are in order. That’s how to pay for needed infrastructure projcts, public college tuition, further improving health care and other investments in our future. According to the Institute for Policy Studies, the twenty (!!!) richest Americans own more wealth than the bottom half of all Americans-- the bottom 152 million in 57 million households. The wealthiest tenth of one percent owns more than a fifth of US household wealth, triple the percentage that rarified crowd owned in the 1970’s. Put differently, that top one-thousandth of Americans owns about what the bottom 90 percent of Americans own together.

An article in Scientific American notes that contrary to what most Americans think, America is the most unequal of Western nations, with far less social mobility than Canada and Europe. The Walton family is richer than 42% of American families combined. The bottom 40% of Americans have three tenths of one percent of US wealth. Not a misprint. Three tenths. Of one percent.

Many believe this disparity is greatly understated, that a tremendous amount of top tier wealth is not accounted for, that it’s hidden in off-shore holdings or shell companies, undervalued, etc…

Peel off some of this distortion, and reorient priorities, shucking waste like the F-35 fighter. We can find some money for Bernie. He might have to modify some plans as he goes along, everyone must, but there’s money.

Meanwhile, in the last fifty years the CEO/worker pay ratio has gone from 20-to-1 to 354-to-1. Maybe some CEO’s could take a haircut and put that money into apprenticeship programs.

Bernie’s a single issue candidate? Bull. The rigging of our country by our campaign finance system, flaming democracy long before the Citizens United accelerant was poured on, is far and away the biggest issue. Because it affects every other issue. It distorts every market, every decision on priorities. And it fertilizes a mindset attracting public servant “temps” aiming to flee Congress and government for big money in lobbying and legal jobs as soon as they’ve staked claim on an influence niche.

Here’s a column from the last election considering what the well-heeled want as they practice the low art of the thinly-disguised bribe. Nothing’s changed.

Side effects of this rigging even extend into state courts, where the lion’s share of court decisions affecting our lives take place, in states that have some aspect of judicial elections-- a majority of states. The result of the election money grab is that decisions are increasingly tilting against individuals in favor of corporations and their lawyers. You don’t think that widens the wealth gap? Also impacted are issues ranging from environmental regulation enforcement to drawing legislative districts. Here’s a column on equal justice slipping away.

Fundraising is big business in Washington, a vested interest in many quarters including media advertising. It takes on a life of its own as much as the military-industrial complex. Indeed, there’s ample crossover to that complex.

In 2016, the cost of the presidential election alone is expected to exceed $5 billion, doubling that of 2012. The cost of Federal campaigns together may reach $9 billion. That $27 dollar average contribution for Sanders is remarkable for the dent it’s made. But the big money and the dark money aren’t going away, any more than are the politicians raffling off their favors with a quiet wink.

If you believe, as I do, that the biggest threat to this country’s stability is the rapidly growing political clout of the finance sector, then steps must be taken to fracture that political power. Here’s a bit on finance sector influence, also written the last presidential campaign cycle. Again, nothing’s changed except it’s worse.

If you’d permit another digression, I interviewed Ralph Nader in 1999, for Bank Director magazine. Consider how prescient Nader was as to where the unshackled finance sector was taking us. Here’s the text.

When Hillary was First Lady, I wrote admiringly of her after watching her in the basement of a row house in the Adams-Morgan neighborhood of Washington, DC. She gave awards and a thoughtful talk to excited microfinance entrepreneurs. They’d been brought in for an international microcredit conference, and Hillary’s support was touching. Someone who gets it, I thought, who knows what reasonable access to capital means to the underprivileged.

But Hillary also gets what access to policy levers means to the finance sector, and what that means to candidates. The Clintons have always gotten that.

In one 16 month period ending last May, the Clintons earned 25 million dollars for 100 speeches, half of them by Hillary, according to FEC filings.

Why would Goldman Sachs or anyone pay Hillary five thousand or more beans per minute for speaking to them? Nothing new or insightful a politician can say is worth that amount of money, nothing riveting and novel in subsequent speeches. That kind of money is paid for only a few reasons, primarily thanking someone for past actions and influencing someone’s future actions. Maybe greasing revolving doors between the finance sector and key government positions. There’s limited value to bragging rights on hearing what everyone knows is a kowtow speech run once more through a speechwriter’s grinder, other than showing off the implicit influence and largess of paymasters that others might covet.

Never mind the political tone-deafness of giving speeches for such largess to an industry Bill Clinton gave the country’s car keys to, and which ran into a tree.

I wish Hillary would share those emerald-embedded platinum words. I doubt there’s a Romney-esque 47% sinker there, but I’ll bet there’s plenty to make Hillary’s recent Wall Street comments sound like lip service is all that’s moved toward Bernie. According to Politico, Hillary’s comments in one speech to Goldman Sachs included calling “banker-bashing” “foolish” as she defused Wall Streets role in the economic meltdown, saying “we all got into this mess together.”

Come to think of it, they did all get into this mess together. Rubinomics. Bill Clinton’s Secretary of the Treasury, Robert Rubin was kindly donated by Goldman Sachs. After deregulating the finance industry, Rubin returned to Wall Street, earning $126 million from Citigroup in the decade that included the financial meltdown and the taxpayer bailout of Citigroup. Thank you. Thank you very much.

We’ll always be indebted to Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone for knifing through public relations gauze with his graphic imagery of Goldman Sachs as a vampire squid.

Taibbi is among those who’ve written on how Goldman Sachs successfully uses the revolving door to salt the upper tiers of government(s). And if you want to drill deep, Money and Power… by William Cohan reveals in detail Goldman’s style and influence, and the scandal of what’s legal.

Goldman Sachs did get dinged recently for five billion dollars to resolve serious questions from Federal and state authorities over its sale of mortgage-backed securities. Sound like a real comeuppance? In 2010 alone, Goldman gave out over three times that much in bonuses. After all, they had to retain the talent that destroyed many trillions in assets of the little guy. Any jail time for those deceptions that garnered the ding? Nope. But the large-sounding number is a big PR splash for DOJ.

That’s a holdover from Eric Holder’s real legacy, kid gloves for banks. Hands-off Holder is now back making millions as a partner at Covington & Burling, a law firm servicing the biggest cheeses in the finance industry. Basically, Holder is part of a DOJ firm within a firm, as a half dozen other top officials at DOJ have also landed there.

Ever wonder what happened with the deadline Holder announced a year ago at the National Press Club as he packed up to migrate to a corner office in the the law firm he always knew he’d return to? Responding in part to a question I’d submitted on the lack of prosecutions, including of small banks, he announced a deadline for US Attorneys to submit potential cases against banks responsible for the economic crisis. That deadline came and went in mid-April of 2015. Forget specific cases, DOJ won’t even say if a significant number was submitted, or if any significant number will go forward. Any bets on how many are in the pipeline as the statutes of limitation roll on?

It’s not just banks. DOJ prosecutions of all white-collar crimes are the lowest in two decades. Who else tasked with financial enforcement is looking ahead to their post-public servant riches?

The Breadline by sculptor Georg Segal, part of the expansive FDR Memorial.
One of FDR’s quotes there, “THEY WHO SEEK TO ESTABLISH SYSTEMS OF GOVERNMENT BASED ON THE REGIMENTATION OF ALL HUMAN BEINGS BY A HANDFUL OF INDIVIDUAL RULERS… CALL THIS A NEW ORDER. IT IS NOT NEW AND IT IS NOT ORDER.”

Catch an insightful NY Times essay by Senator Elizabeth Warren explaining how enforcement of all kinds can be gutted by putting the insincere and self-serving in key roles in federal agencies.

Here’s Senator Warren’s new report, Rigged Justice, backing her essay with the twenty worst enforcement failures last year.

Remember, a hands-off tone is set entirely within the executive branch. No Congressional molasses need be poured. Consider the revolving door payback for fundraising, for speaking fees, for foundation contributions. The favor machine.

By the way, a year ago a Washington Post analysis showed the largest chunk of corporate donors to the Clinton Foundation was the financial services industry. Single issue, indeed.

Dwelling on payback, if you want to grasp the number of favors awaiting Bill and Hillary’s thank-you notes, read Inside the Clinton Donor Network, a Washington Post investigative piece last fall. It details the billions fundraised by the Clintons over four decades, for elections and for their foundation.

The range leaves one in awe. Foreign interests and those who advocate for them are thick in the donor mix.

Consider Haim Saban, Israeli and American billionaire who rose from the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers to owner of Univision and loads more. He’s been the Clintons' largest contributor over the years, donating and raising many millions for Bill and Hillary, and millions more for the Clinton Foundation.

Some months ago, Saban called for the US government to racially profile Muslims. He did all he could to oppose President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. Saban founded the Center of Middle East Policy, which should say something about its honest broker credibility. As it should about the Saban Center for Middle East Policy he founded at the Brookings Institute. Saban served on President Clinton’s Export Council, advising on trade issues. He and his wife had several sleepovers in the White House. Read up on Saban’s past efforts to derail investigations of pro-Israel lobbyists for espionage and to get a preferred congresswoman to head the House Intelligence Committee.

Donors at Saban’s level know how to play Washington like a violin. How does one escape worry that this highly lucrative pro-Likud bird chirping for decades in Bill’s and Hillary’s ears impedes cutting square deals in the Middle East peace process? That it might dampen efforts in a Hillary presidency? There are many elements to past failures of the Middle East peace process, I’m not accusing Bill Clinton of throwing the fight because of Saban or others.

But the will to succeed is everything in really tough challenges. It isn’t hard to undermine pushing boulders up a hill. Think what damage a perpetually failing peace process has done to Middle East stability and to this country’s image, and what that has cost.

Perhaps Diogenes was really seeking an honest broker.

Here’s a couple digressions in the foreign policy realm, on the future of US influence abroad and on corruption in Afghanistan, both sadly with evergreen shelf life.

At least we know Hillary would never turn to the likes of Kissinger for advice. Wait, what’s that?…

If you’d like an excellent summery of why Hillary’s embrace of Kissinger should give pause, here’s a piece by Greg Grandin, detailing a long relationship and what it wrought. NAFTA’s included, a side effect of which was the fracture of union bargaining power.

But what the hey, the White House recently gave Kissinger the Distinguished Public Service Award. Can the rest of us do less? Here’s my tribute.

Hillary’s African-American firewall confuses me. Plenty have written on the Clintons’ roll in ham-handed welfare reform and overkill legislation on crime. And thanks to a clever young protester, Ashley Williams, attention’s been paid to the ultimate dog whistle, bringing young “super-predators” “to heel.” Political personas seeking to look tough on crime and tough on welfare have played havoc with lives in a host of ways. Kind of like looking tough on foreign policy.

But what creeped me out early was was the execution of Ricky Ray Rector just before the 1992 New Hampshire Primary. To signal how tough he’d be on crime, then Governor Clinton returned to Arkansas to preside over the execution. Rector’s murder of a white policeman was horrific, but after the mentally-ill Rector tried and failed to completely blow his brains out, he was so mentally feeble that he put aside the pecan pie in his last meal so he could finish it later.

Now read up on Marc Rich, and consider a different quality of Bill Clinton’s mercy. And a bellwether of Holder’s legacy.

Meanwhile Bernie, who in the early sixties was a Chicago organizer for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), gets snide comments from Hillary surrogates that they never met him in the South. Yeah, there was no segregation up North. Getting arrested in Chicago is always a ticket to fun and games.

Or that his non-southern African-American backers are “a remove” from the South. Dissing Harry Belafonte? Spike Lee?

Mo’ money and prisons. Until last fall, and waves of criticism, Hillary was taking money from bundlers from the private prison industry, an industry that recently got notice for shoddy treatment of warehoused undocumented immigrants. Here’s a column tangential to those with vested interests in expanding prison populations.

A couple memories of different views on fundraising.

When I started scribbling, one of the first politicians I interviewed was Bill Proxmire of Wisconsin, then chair of the Senate banking committee. Few positions have more potential for fundraising. I asked him how he dealt with money in politics. He said in his last election he spent two hundred bucks, mostly on stamps mailing back contributions. His constituents knew he was like The Untouchables. Proxmire couldn’t be bought. And he always won by big margins.

I once asked the chief of staff of Senator Alan Cranston how his boss dealt with fundraising. He deadpanned, People think if they give you a lot of money, they’re buying influence, but all they really buy is access. Cranston was later damaged in an influence scandal involving a bank.

I think Bernie’s running a little closer in spirit to the Proxy model. Hillary, not so much.

Here’s a fine read from the New York Review of Books on how the Clintons prime the pump for the Clinton Foundation, and in turn how the foundation primes the pump for the campaign.

Bernie’s been more than a tilt at the windmill. Polls seem to indicate that Bernie will garner more independents than Trump. And more than Hillary would pick up against Trump. After Trump exhausts calling Bernie a socialist, Trump’s low on ammo.

Modern elections usually usher a different party into the White House when a two-term lessee departs. That’s not a vulnerability for Bernie. However you view him, he’s not more of the same. He’d be heading a new and improved party.

Think back to the two-for-one Clinton presidential offering in 1992. People forget that the Clintons ought to call third-party candidate Ross Perot “Uncle Ross.” It was Perot’s distaste for George Herbert Walker Bush, a former CIA Director who claimed to be “out of the loop” on Iran-Contra, that determined where Perot trained his sizable firepower. In 1996, Bill’s opponent was Bob Dole, who has a great class smart-ass sense of humor but at his core was Nixon’s hatchet man. After moving to DC I kept my Kansas voter registration for years so I could vote against him. Hillary is skilled and smart, but there is not a proven legacy of Clinton campaign juggernauts. 2008, not so great. At times her campaign seemed a Tower of Babel of advisors, consultants and contributors.

For those nostalgic for the Clinton administration’s golden era, Thomas Frank has a few words that bring that era up to date, connecting past glories to ongoing impacts.

Apologies to Gloria Steinem, but most folk, millennial women in particular, instinctively know voting for someone primarily because of gender, race, creed, ethnicity or sexual preference is the flip-side of voting against someone primarily for the same reasons. When I voted for President Obama twice, his being mixed-race was a non-factor. Despite disappointments like Holder, despite the unfulfilled promises of transparency and of journalistic access, despite the disgraceful treatment of whistleblowers, I thought and still think Obama was the best choice. I believe that’s how a growing majority of Americans ultimately choose who gets the top job.

As Bernie channels Teddy Roosevelt in the bully pulpit, his voice rings true against The Big Money.

It’s a precarious leap of faith to envision the Clintons biting the hands that lifted them into the oligarchy.
Torrents will pour forth on Trump realities. Some of those realities are plenty ugly. But people will also learn more of those pulling levers behind Hillary’s curtain. And of their resemblance to the heavies in The Big Short and 99 Homes.

If Hillary takes the nomination, her slogan might be Lie back, close your eyes, and think of the Supreme Court.

Critically important, but I’m not sure that’s the stuff of revolution. Or of voter turnout if cynicism flies off the charts.

My comments neglected the 800 pound orangutan in the room. I don’t want to hurt his feelers so one brief drive-by: Trump’s speech patterns will sound familiar to anyone ever hit hard by a con artist. His jumble of slip and slide phrases allow his marks to hear whatever they want. Until Trump’s responses to the crowd fervor of his base pull him past the point of no return once too often, he’s a better contender than Trump Plaza. Charlie Sheen, you could have been a contender. Winning!



Here’s a thought. If you want Bernie’s supporters to come around for Hillary, quit trying to stifle their voice at every opportunity, quit telling them from the outset their aspirations are hopeless, their efforts pointless, that they’re naive as to what’s possible, that if we end up in Trumpville it’s their fault for not folding early. Cynics might be forgiven for detecting a whiff of efforts to suppress Bernie supporter turnout. Earlier, when his supporters raised a legit question as to why southern primaries, in a region no Democrat will sweep in the general election, should be such an early determinant as to brand the primaries a done deal, some of the commentariat even tried to raise the specter of prejudice. That’s not a path to capture Bernie supporters' hearts and minds.

Now I’ll wait for my musings to implode as the race progresses, with the sudden twist of an economic cool-off.

Thanks for your indulgence and best luck to the country.