Chamber of Commerce Quietly Supports a United Government Led by Democrats

Saagar Enjeti explains the importance of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's quiet decision to back Democratic candidates 

by Thomas Neuburger

One of the more underappreciated pieces of news in a week that exploded with news — leak of Trump's taxes, the presidential debate, the presidential disease — was this, that a long-time strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has resigned over the Chamber's decision to back 23 vulnerable House Democrats and to reduce financial support for Republican senatorial candidates.
From Politico:

Chamber of Commerce and top political strategist part ways amid turmoil

Scott Reed, who had been with the business organization for most of the past decade, said it was shifting toward Democrats. 

Scott Reed, the longtime top political strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said Tuesday that he left the organization after a political shift at the business lobbying powerhouse.

The move comes amid mounting fears among Republicans — including many within the organization — that the traditionally conservative Chamber is moving to the left after endorsing roughly two dozen freshman House Democrats for reelection this year.

Reed explained his departure (the Chamber said he was "fired for cause") this way: "I can no longer be part of this institution as it moves left."

Putting aside the dispute over whether Reed left or was fired, there are two explanations for what the Chamber is doing, and they're not the same. Reed says he departed because the Chamber "moved left." The Politico slugline writer says more simply that the Chamber was "shifting toward Democrats." 

Needless to say, "moving left" is not the same as "supporting Democrats."
Ryan Grim, writing at The Intercept, calls the Chamber's transformation a "slow migration of the elite wing of the Republican Party into the Democratic fold." This seems a much better explanation. 

Hedging Their Bets or Trying to Influence the Outcome? 

As Rising's Saagar Enjeti noted in the video above, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which spends $100 million per year, is the largest lobbyist by far in the United States, doling out 30% more money than its nearest competitor. 

In the past, all or almost all of that money went to Republicans — 93%, for example, in 2010. This year the Chamber is not only supporting many more Democrats; it's supporting Democrats in a way that will make a difference in the partisan makeup of Congress. While the Chamber also supports House Republicans, the 29 House freshmen it is backing "are running in some of the most competitive races in the country, including 14 in districts won by President Donald Trump in 2016" according to CNN.

On the Senate side, the Chamber has greatly reduced its spending on vulnerable Republicans, including Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). Politico notes that Reed's decision to resign "was linked to the Chamber’s unwillingness to spend significant money on Senate races in the closing days of the election" and adds that Ms. Collins is receiving "far less money in 2020 than ... in 2014, when [the Chamber] put tens of millions of dollars behind GOP Senate candidates."

Politico has Reed saying the Chamber is "hedging its bets." Voices on the libertarian right are much more virulent, calling this a "betrayal" and abandonment of "free market principles."  At the same time Republican leaders see the Chamber as, in House minority leader Kevin McCarthy's words, "part of this socialist agenda that is driving this country out, and ... fighting the president."

Those are angry, empty words. Biden to Trump at the first debate: "I am not a socialist." Progressives to world: "It's true. He's not. He's a moderate Republican."

Three Conclusions

From all this I think we can draw three conclusions, each leading to a different electoral thought.

First, that Ryan Grim is right when he says the elite wing of the Republican Party is being folded into the Democratic Party — not just in theory, but in practice, in dollars, as well. It's clear that the Chamber and those who give it their money have made the calculation, at least for this presidential cycle, that their interests will be genuinely served by a Biden White House and a unified Democratic Congress. 

In other words, they want a united government controlled by the Democratic Party. They know Trump is going to lose (Trump was scheduled to lose even before the recent Covid incident), and they're working to both maintain a Democratic House majority and to sabotage the current Republican Senate majority.

There's really no other way to read this news. 

Second, as stated above, the Chamber of Commerce and the big-league donors who support it know that a Biden White House and Democratic Congress will further their interest far more than a Trump-led divided or Republican government.

If the Chamber is right, progressives looking to "move Biden left" after the election, have their work cut out for them. The only "moving left" the administration will do is on identity issues. On issues involving money, it will "move left" only at the margins and for show. 

For example, will Biden ban fracking? Of course not; there are too many big-donor dollars (and banking dollars) involved in that industry. For all his recent words, Biden seeks a "middle ground" on climate issues. It's easy to promise carbon-free power by 2035," fifteen years into a future in which he'll be dead.

Finally, Biden will almost certainly be the next president. 

I mentioned a "Trump-led government" above for a reason. Earlier I wrote ("Civil War? What Civil War?") that almost everyone in the establishment regardless of party, from the military to the national security apparatus to the media to, now, the Chamber of Commerce, opposes a return of Donald Trump to the White House. While the Chamber's not working directly against him — that would be a bridge too far — they're not help out; in fact, they're working to give him a Congress he can't work with. 

The truth is this: Donald Trump is such a terrible, unpredictable and embarrassing steward of the American hegemony project that no one with Establishment power wants to see him back. #NeverTrumpers are just a tip of the Republican side of that iceberg. This "betrayal" by the Chamber of Commerce, one of the Republican Party's most stalwart and reliable supporters, strongly supports that contention. 

If this is true, it means I will be proved right in predicting the outcome of the coming election as follows:

• If Trump wins big, Trump's in.
• If Biden wins big, Biden's in.

But:

• If Trump is ahead in a squeaker and it goes to the courts, the Roberts Court will give the win to Biden unless there's no defensible way not to give it to Trump.
• If Biden is ahead in a squeaker and it goes to the courts, Biden will be handed the White House.

You can bet that if the election is closer than the number of disputed ballots in key electoral-college states, there will be a way to hand the election to whichever candidate the Roberts Court prefers. Will John Roberts, a Republican, give the election to MAGA Republicans or to Chamber Republicans, if he could pick one or the other? John Roberts is a Chamber Republican.

If you're worried about the 2000 election and you fear a Republican Court will back a Republican candidate, consider that George Bush was also the Establishment candidate. This time, the Establishment candidate is the Democrat.

Even if Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed this year, will she really want to oppose John Roberts in her first Supreme Court opinion ever, Roberts who will lead the institution she'll serve for the next 30 years of her life? If course not; there will be plenty of time for Amy Coney Barrett to screw the country later. Roberts will win the discussion, if he wants to, this time around.

Again, Trump is not the candidate of the oligarchy, of the small clutch of people who actually run the country. Biden is. In any close outcome, he has the edge. Biden will be the next president unless Trump wins by a significant margin — or dies and the rest of the country, including the Chamber of Commerce, falls suddenly in love with Mike Pence.
   

Progressives Team Up With Conservatives To Scuttle Pelosi's Orwellian Domestic Spying Bill

Progressives in Congress worked with the GOP Tuesday to torpedo an authoritarian domestic spying bill-- already passed by the Senate-- that Pelosi, Hoyer and Schiff were trying to push through the House. By late that night, Pelosi and her team read the tea leaves and pulled their own bill that was meant to reauthorize key parts of FISA. Trump, for his reasons-- remember he had signed the FISA legislation into law last year-- had threatened to veto the bill hours before Pelosi cancelled the vote on it.

As Ryan Grim pointed out, "earlier this month, the Republican-led Senate failed to pass a measure that would limit the FBI’s ability to access web-browsing history and other online activity without a warrant by a single vote... Civil libertarians, led by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) pushed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to allow an up-or-down vote on that amendment, then send it back to the Senate, where it could pass with all senators voting. Pelosi instead told Lofgren to negotiate with House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA) the New York Times reported, and Schiff watered down the legislation. The result drew criticism from the left and right-- and Trump’s attention to the fight. Had Pelosi agreed to a simple up-or-down vote on the Senate amendment, it likely would have passed easily, and reauthorization of the broad surveillance authorities, along with some real reforms, would be on their way to becoming law."

The politics of surveillance, even in normal times, scramble the typical partisan tendencies, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Pelosi, and Schiff often aligning on questions about the breadth and depth of state power to surveil and track Americans. Opposing those congressional leaders is the civil liberties community, which includes both progressives and conservatives with libertarian leanings, but which rarely can muster a majority in Congress for its defense of the Bill of Rights.

The civil liberties argument has gained new traction in recent months, with Trump’s outrage over the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance, or FISA, court’s handling of surveillance of his campaign, particularly the deeply flawed application for a warrant to surveil former adviser Carter Page. Although it was initially designed to review intelligence surveillance applications for suspected agents of a foreign power, after 9/11 the secretive FISA court signed off on expansive interpretations of surveillance law. Now, as Trump feels victimized by it, he and his allies have found religion on the question.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), a famously eccentric conservative in the House, remarked at a Rules Committee hearing Wednesday morning on the oddity of House Democrats fighting to give Trump surveillance powers he wasn’t asking for, despite his clear determination to use law enforcement for his own political ends.

“It sure seems strange to me. For Democrats to vote for this reauthorization, even with these amendments, would have to be sort of saying, we have so much trust in Donald Trump and the people he’s appointed that they would never lie to a FISA court. They would never just go after their enemies. We feel like he can be trusted and so can all the people he’s appointed,” he said. “We know he’s cleaned out some folks at the Justice Department, FBI, I mean, think about it.”

The unlikely coalition of Trump and the civil libertarians was enough to stall the legal reauthorization of the FBI’s “call detail records” program, an amended version of the Patriot Act that allowed federal law enforcement to collect phone records. The authority lapsed in March after McConnell was unable to force through an unamended reauthorization.

Earlier this month, the Senate reauthorized those programs with additional restrictions, but an amendment that would limit the government’s ability to collect internet browsing history without a warrant fell one vote short of the 60 votes it needed to pass.

Pelosi then instructed Schiff to come up with a compromise version with Lofgren, rather than allow an up-or-down vote on the Senate language. The result of those negotiations was an amendment, introduced by Lofgren and Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) that reintroduced the restriction on collecting browsing history, but applies it only to U.S. persons.

However, Lofgren’s and Davidson’s amendment leaves up to interpretation what federal agents should do when they don’t know ahead of time whether U.S. persons’ information would be swept up in information requests-- giving the secretive FISA court room to allow bulk collection and task the FBI with purging U.S. person information afterward. The agreement broke down when Schiff and Lofgren offered different interpretations of their measure.

“If the government wants to use a dragnet and order a service provider to produce a list of everyone who has visited a particular website, watched a particular YouTube video, or made a particular search query, it cannot seek that order unless it can guarantee that the business records returned will contain no U.S. person IP addresses, or other U.S. person identifiers,” Lofgren said at a Rules Committee hearing Wednesday morning. That interpretation was enough to win the backing of Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR).

In a statement, Schiff said that the amendment prohibited orders that “to seek to obtain” U.S. persons’ browsing information, leaving open the possibility that the FBI could seek to collect visitor logs from a website that contained Americans, as long as that was not their primary purpose.

Statements like that, noted Charlie Savage in The Times, can be used by judges to determine legislative intent and confounded what had appeared to be a settled issue.

That led to pushback from both the left and right, and the renewed attention not only risked reforms that had been won in the Senate and failed to win support for the amendment Schiff advocated for, but it also drew a veto threat from Trump. Wyden, who co-sponsored the failed amendment in the Senate, withdrew his support, saying in a statement that it “flatly contradicted the intent” of his amendment in the Senate, and urged the House to consider his version.

...David Segal, executive director of Demand Progress, which lobbied against the legislation, said that Pelosi and Schiff’s apparent own goal came from too close of an alliance with the national security establishment, which, he argued, “has led them to line up against reforms that could have passed, and in support of a bill that harms Americans, might not pass, and would likely be vetoed.”

...The opposition of a vast majority of Republicans gifted the CPC a fresh opportunity to flex its muscles in the House, after a disappointing effort to influence coronavirus relief packages. Trump’s turn against surveillance authorities has produced enough Republican opposition that a concerted effort by progressives could block passage. Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wisc., a CPC co-chair, told The Intercept that the caucus was urging its 92 members to vote no. “We have grave concerns that this legislation does not protect people in the United States from warrantless surveillance, especially their online activity including web browsing and internet searches,” said Pocan and fellow co-chair Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., in a statement later on Wednesday afternoon. “Despite some positive reforms, the legislation is far too narrow in scope and would still leave the public vulnerable to invasive online spying and data collection.”

...The opposition of a vast majority of Republicans gifted the Congressional Progressive Caucus a fresh opportunity to flex its muscles in the House, after a disappointing effort to influence coronavirus relief packages. Trump’s turn against surveillance authorities has produced enough Republican opposition that a concerted effort by progressives could block passage.

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) a CPC co-chair, told The Intercept that the caucus was urging its 92 members to vote no.

“We have grave concerns that this legislation does not protect people in the United States from warrantless surveillance, especially their online activity including web browsing and internet searches,” said Pocan and fellow co-chair Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) in a statement later on Wednesday afternoon. “Despite some positive reforms, the legislation is far too narrow in scope and would still leave the public vulnerable to invasive online spying and data collection.”

For now, the Patriot Act provisions remain dead-- as do the reforms included in the underlying bill (some of which extend beyond the Patriot Act). All because Pelosi and Schiff insist on letting the FBI access browser history without a warrant, not what people who don't watch carefully would ever expect from either Pelosi or Schiff.

Ryan Cooper asked a salient question that Democrats should be asking themselves: If Trump is a budding autocrat-- and we all know he is-- shouldn't Democrats limit his surveillance powers?. "Why in God's name," he asked, "did Democrats even consider giving President Donald Trump-- the man they recently impeached for abuse of power-- more unaccountable surveillance powers? Over his own objection, no less?"

Schiff himself was the leader of the impeachment prosecution of Trump just a few months ago. In a long speech before the Senate, Schiff argued that the Founding Fathers had put impeachment into the Constitution specifically to deal with someone like Trump: "a man who would subvert the interest of the nation to pursue his own interests. For a man who would seek to perpetuate himself in office by inviting foreign interference and cheating an election." Even on the extremely narrow grounds chosen by House Democrats (which left out his most egregious looting of public coffers) Trump undoubtedly deserved to be removed from office.

But Schiff doesn't seem to actually believe his case against Trump. There is no possible justification for granting a corrupt, election-cheating president-- one who appointed a dishonest stooge as the nation's chief law enforcement officer-- the power to root through anyone's browser history without a warrant. Indeed, all the enormous powers of the surveillance state (which accomplish little or nothing of value) are exceptionally dangerous in the hands of Trump, and Democrats should be working frantically to scale them back. So far it appears we have gotten lucky in that Trump doesn't appear to grasp what these powers are for or how he might exploit them fully, but that situation is not guaranteed to hold.

Indeed, Trump's own objections remove the only possible political justification for passing this bill-- that Republicans would call Democrats soft on terrorism. They could shelve the bill, point to Trump, and shrug. Not their fault Trump didn't want these powers extended.

But in reality, Democrats like Schiff have completely swallowed the worldview of the national security establishment. Dragnet surveillance, like semi-randomly assassinating people up to and including American citizens, are some of the Important Tools that Keep Us Safe. The danger of a corrupt imbecile in the White House abusing those powers does not fit into this worldview, so it is ignored. If there is a choice between bowing before American imperial power and recognizing the danger of that power, they will choose the former, even when a game show demagogue is in the White House.

UPDATE From San Francisco: 

I just heard from Shahid Buttar, the progressive attorney and community organizer who is challenging Pelosi in November (having-- like her-- won the jungle primary in March). "It's entirely unacceptable—- and equally unsurprising—- that Nancy Pelosi has yet again used her formidable influence on Capitol Hill to enable authoritarian surveillance powers," he told us. "The reason I felt forced to run to replace Pelosi was her longstanding opposition to surveillance reforms on which I've worked for over a decade. What's new this year is the presence of a right-wing aspiring tyrant in the White House, and a bipartisan block of policymakers willing to do the right thing and challenge the institutional establishment that has rammed these powers through Congress on nearly a dozen occasions over the past decade without ever allowing a transparent debate. It is shameful that Pelosi supported the Republican position on FISA reauthorization. Pelosi's support for GOP positions also represents a profound threat to our democracy. Under the administration of a criminal president with no respect for the rule of law, we need resistance for real in Congress, not partisan posturing paving the road to fascism."

This Is True: The Democratic Party Isn't As Bad As The Republican Party. But For How Long?

The Democratic Party establishment is conservative in the sense of defending and bolstering the status quo-- not as perniciously as the GOP, but perniciously enough. It is also incredibly corrupt-- no less so than the Republican Party. Of course there are notable exceptions-- like House members AOC, Jamie Raskin, Ro Khanna, Pramila Jayapal, Ted Lieu, Ilhan Omar, Andy Levin, Barbara Lee, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, a few others intermittently-- but they're exceptions. Last week, The Intercept published a piece that gets to the heart of the Democratic Party by Ryan Grim and Akela Lacy, New Jersey's Cartoonishly Corrupt Democratic Party Is Finally Getting Challenged. Before we get into it, I want to point out that New Jersey has a Democratic member of Congress who isn't corrupt and doesn't belong in a federal penitentiary-- Bonnie Watson Coleman, who represents the Trenton area.

Grim and Lacy start with Albio Sires, but could have started anywhere in the state other than, ironically, Trenton, the state capital that is one of the biggest founts of corruption on the planet. "A quintessential New Jersey game of musical chairs brought Albio Sires to Congress," they wrote. "The music started in November 2005, when Sen. John Corzine was elected governor. To fill his Senate seat, the party machine tapped Rep. Bob Menendez, which created an opening for Menendez’s House seat. Albio Sires, the mayor of West New York, had previously run for Congress in the 1980s as a Republican, but was by then also state assembly speaker and a loyal member of the Democratic machine. He won a special election in 2006 with 90 percent of the vote and has represented the North Jersey district, home to the largest Cuban diaspora outside Miami, ever since."

Party identification-- partisanship-- gets these scumbags elected. Simply put-- they're not Republicans, so they must be better or, at least, the lesser evil. It isn't always the case and one day, suddenly, the New Jersey electorate will wake up and switch their idea of partisanship and it will be too late for the Democrats to do anything about it-- even if they want to, which is far from likely. They hate their own reformers far more than they hate Republicans (who they can easily "do business" with). Bernie, to most establishment Dems, is a worse option than Trump. And AOC is more an enemy than any Republican. Both are too disruptive.

How AOC became the enemy of almost every Democrat in Congress

"Sires has kept a low profile," continued Grim and Lacy, "largely voting with the party on the House floor. It’s hard to measure obscurity, but fewer than 70 Democrats have served in the House as long as Sires, and suffice it to say that Sires has not managed to translate that seniority into a national profile or measurable power in Washington. Corzine, a Wall Street baron, was unseated by Republican Chris Christie after one term; Menendez remains in office, and both he and Corzine have escaped prison despite being the targets of federal investigators. Sires has hung on, but as New Jersey’s Cuban population ages and migrates south to Florida, his district has become more diverse, with growing Central and Caribbean American populations."

In South Jersey, the Norcross bosses, whose family has had a longstanding stranglehold on local politics, are holding on. George Norcoss, known as one of New Jersey’s most influential unelected bosses, holds an outsize influence over parts of the state legislature’s South Jersey delegation. An insurance executive, he’s been accused of pulling strings to benefit from a state corporate tax incentive program that came under federal investigation last year. His brother, Donald, represents parts of South Jersey in the U.S. House. Donald is a former labor leader who was elected to the state assembly in 2009. He was later appointed to fill a vacant state Senate seat, which paved the way for his eventual transition to Congress.

Now Sires, who did not respond to requests for an interview for this article, is facing his first serious primary election since 2006, from insurgent challenger Hector Oseguera, an attorney with roots in Honduras and the Dominican Republic who specializes in fighting money laundering. Oseguera, who attended Boston University at the same time as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but didn’t know her then, was one of the earliest volunteers on her 2018 campaign to unseat then-Rep. Joe Crowley in Queens and the Bronx.

Oseguera is part of a wave of challengers taking on the local machine in North Jersey. Sires, a functionary of the West New York/Union City machine, known as the Hudson County Democratic Organization, or, often, simply, “the Organization,” is just one of many targets, with a slate of six Hudson County Freeholder candidates allied with Oseguera challenging incumbents up and down the ballot.

Elsewhere in the Garden State, similar battles are taking place, as the coalescing of activist groups and insurgent candidates launches a statewide assault on the cartoonishly corrupt New Jersey Democratic establishment, which long considered itself immune from the biannual annoyance of elections. So immune that the party did nothing to shunt aside Menendez in 2018, even as he faced trial for corruption charges in the midst of his reelection. Little-known challenger Lisa McCormick, with next to no financing, stunned the party by winning 38 percent of the vote in the primary that cycle against Menendez, who got off on a mistrial due to a hung jury and won reelection.

Now McCormick, a perennial candidate for local and federal office who has never disclosed the names of any campaign donors, is challenging state Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman. Coleman was elected in 2014 as the state’s first African American woman in Congress and has a pretty solid progressive voting record.

Rep. Josh Gottheimer, among the most conservative House Democrats, is facing a serious challenge from Dr. Arati Kriebich, a neuroscientist and former Gottheimer volunteer. In South Jersey, Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a party boss elected in 2018 and concerned about losing a primary challenge from the left this cycle, switched and became a Republican. Democratic Reps. Bill Pascrell and Donald Payne Jr. are also facing primary challenges from Zina Spezakis-- who’s also running under the “Not Me. Us.” slogan--  and Alp Basaran, and Eugene Mazo and John Flora, respectively.

None of the challengers were rated good enough to be endorsed by Blue America, and I suspect they will all lose, not because the incumbents don't stink to high heaven-- they do-- but because most of the challengers are inept and incompetent candidates. Some of the country's worst House Democrats-- Gottheimer, of course, as well as Frank Pallone, Albio Sires, Mikie Sherill-- are from New Jersey, but not one of them has a primary opponent capable of winning a campaign.

I hope I'm wrong about Oseguera and I haven't spoken with him personally, so maybe I am. Grim and Lacy wrote that he "lucked into an advantage on the ballot-- or, more accurately perhaps, he made his own luck-- that may be consequential in a race between two people with such little name recognition. In New Jersey, machine politicians for decades have implored supporters to 'vote column A all the way,' a phrase that became synonymous with loyalty to the party machine. Column A on New Jersey ballots is reserved for candidates running as a slate, from the president down to the freeholder, a county legislative position. Typically, it is only the machine that is able to put together that sort of slate, as progressives rarely have a Senate candidate fielded, and even more rarely a body in the presidential primary. But this time, Sanders supporters recruited veteran activist Larry Hamm to run for Senate against Cory Booker, enabling a slate to be formed with Hamm and down-ballot insurgents. (They had wanted Sanders to sit at the top of their slate; his campaign, however, never filed the paperwork needed to join it.) The machine, meanwhile, was torn between various presidential candidates-- including Booker-- and so declined to make any endorsement. That meant that the progressive slate in Hudson and Union counties, the population centers of the 8th District, was eligible for the A column. Because there was more than one slate, the A spot was decided in an April 9 drawing-- which the insurgents won. Voters accustomed to casting their ballots “A all the way” will wind up supporting Oseguera." That's actually funny.

The Junta: Christie, Norcross, Sweeney-- New Jersey's Axis of Evil

“There’s going to be a set of voters that show up and do their regular Democratic duty of ‘vote A all the way,’ and they might swing this election,” said Oseguera, who was raised in the district by a mother who taught and a father who held a variety of jobs, from handyman to cashier to driver. Oseguera said that when his phone bankers end the call by reminding voters to “vote column A,” they often reply with a version of “Of course, we always vote line A.”

Ron Bautista is one of the six freeholder candidates running under the Sanders-inspired slogan of “Not Me. Us.,” in a district that largely covers Hoboken. “[Oseguera’s] campaign has brought together grassroots progressives like it has never been done before,” said Bautista, who last year challenged a 16-year city council incumbent, picking up a third of the vote without a slate or developer money, which the New Jersey establishment tends to rely on. “We are at the heart of machine politics in New Jersey, and sometimes progressives have run individually against the machine. For the first time, we have a progressive slate of candidates from Senate to county government.”

Three of the slate’s nine freeholder candidates failed to qualify for the ballot, coming short on signatures, while a number of those who qualified did so by collecting electronic signatures amid the pandemic. Roger Quesada was one of them, drawing on his professional experience in e-commerce and marketing. “There’s no slate in recent memory that has ever been this organized and with a strong digital infrastructure,” he said.

...Oseguera's race against Sires presents intriguing parallels to Ocasio-Cortez’s, as well as divergences. Where Crowley was a local machine boss with national ambitions, on his way to becoming speaker of the House, Sires is merely a local machine boss. Like Ocasio-Cortez, Oseguera has raised precious little money, relying instead on a network of volunteers and local activist groups to power him to victory in what is likely to be an extremely low-turnout election against an incumbent with little name recognition in a community that has changed underneath him. (Crowley was far better known in Washington than in his home district, which cost him dearly in the primary.)

Oseguera, unlike Ocasio-Cortez, does not label himself a democratic socialist; given the number of refugees of the Cuban Revolution in the district, the term remains deeply toxic. But he supports the gamut of policies that tend to define more progressive Democrats: a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, a wealth tax, $15 minimum wage, and so on. He does not, however, have the support of Justice Democrats, the group that backed Ocasio-Cortez’s challenge and has been conservative in handing out endorsements since then. He said that when he appealed to the group for an endorsement, they told him that Sires’s voting record wasn’t egregious enough to merit the group’s scarce resources. (The group recently launched a Super PAC.) Unlike the incumbents whose challengers Justice Democrats has backed this cycle, like Dan Lipinski and Henry Cuellar, Sires is a reliable Democratic vote and has such a low profile that ousting him would barely make a ripple.

Like Ocasio-Cortez, Oseguera’s campaign, two months out from the primary, is broke, with $22,731 raised and less than $4,000 cash on hand, according to the latest filing. For Ocasio-Cortez, a viral campaign ad, combined with national coverage, helped elevate her profile and raise last-minute money, which she pumped into canvassing, phone and text banks, and digital ads. But Osegeura is campaigning amid a pandemic, with effective shelter-in-place orders, so there’s likely to be very little canvassing between now and the July 7 primary. The Oseguera-Sires contest will be fought out digitally and over the phone, a disadvantage for Sires, who has virtually no virtual presence and doesn’t even have a campaign website. Oseguera managed to buy Sires’s domain name-- AlbioSires.com-- and redirect it to his own fundraising page.

For a machine boss, Sires has little to show in the way of money, though he’s well ahead of Oseguera. This cycle, Sires has raised just $340,000 and had $237,000 cash on hand as of March 31. His biggest donors are the local trade unions and the Desert Caucus, an extremist, pro-Israel group that endorses settlements and the annexation of Palestinian territory.

...Oseguera's campaign is using its limited funds to target Democrats likely to vote by mail ahead of the primary, which was postponed from June. Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy has been pushing for an all-mail primary, but backtracked after pushback from machine leaders across the state. Because of their lack of cash, Oseguera said, his campaign narrowed its voter data purchase to 75,000 Democrats in the district who regularly vote in general elections but don’t show up for primaries. Vote-by-mail, he hopes, will make those people more likely to return a ballot if volunteers can get texts and calls in front of them enough. He expects 50,000 votes will be enough to win.

The postponement of the primary and the expansion of vote-by-mail add to the uncertainty around how the election will go, said Farmer of Rutgers University. While the changes could hamper the machine’s overall advantage, the insurgents’ fundraising barriers could also make it difficult to reach voters. “The burden of getting the information to the voters is greater because of the restrictions that we’re all operating under now,” he said.

Partial vote-by-mail “does put an additional burden on the parties if they want to maintain their encouragement of straight-ticket voting that they really have to be sort of out there and more aggressive in encouraging that then probably they have been in the past,” he said, noting that campaigns’ inability to do in-person canvassing is another complicating factor.

The shift toward vote-by-mail has made the machine nervous. DeGise told the New Jersey Globe that she opposes mail-in voting and was pushing for an all in-person vote because loyal machine voters are more likely to turn out to the polls, whereas making mail an option would bring more voters in. Mail-in voting, she said, is “just not in the culture here. … Our strongest voting blocks are not going to vote by mail,” adding that voting by mail is more popular among Democrats who don’t typically vote.

Eleana Little, a Hudson County freeholder candidate, cited the machine’s machinations as evidence that they’re nervous about insurgents harnessing that strength. “We’ve got people,” she said. “We’re building a grassroots movement and have over 100 volunteers. We’re phone-banking every day and hearing from people that they’re excited about what we’re doing. Hector comes from a working-class background and has mountains of student loan debt, like so many millennials. He didn’t have $50,000 to drop on his own campaign like some candidates do, and he doesn’t have wealthy family connections. So the war chest is small, but there are a lot of people involved. I think the fact that the machine is so nervous shows that we’ve built substantial momentum, and it’s not just all in our heads.”

As the pandemic worsens it's not just the virus itself that threatens human life. The corruption, cronyism and incompetence of those in power is adding fuel to the fire.

It's been said that the virus doesn't discriminate, but politicians and CEOs continue to prioritize their own power and profits over the lives of the most vulnerable.

Whether you consider Josh Kraushaar journalism's version of a silly clown or not, he really is the voice of the Inside-the-Beltway political establishment. He writes, at the National Journal their reality. His column yesterday, for example, began exactly the way any establishment ass-licker would begin a post if he was starving to lick more ass: "Joe Biden's decisive drubbing of Bernie Sanders in the presidential primary squelched the socialist stirrings that had been percolating within the Democratic Party. It’s probably no coincidence, then, that three of Congress’s most far-left members, all aligned with Sanders, are facing credible challenges of their own in upcoming House primaries. Three of the four freshmen members of the left-wing "Squad" that President Trump calls “AOC+3”-- Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota-- have drawn opponents who have made the case that they’re too extreme for the districts they represent. Tlaib is at risk at losing her seat to an experienced [and utterly corrupt and incompetent] African-American official in her Detroit-area district. And while Ocasio-Cortez and Omar are favored to prevail, they will face their first serious test over the popularity of their progressive messages in deep-blue districts." Oh gee, he forgot to mention that the Democratic establishment recruited a Republican pretending to be a Democrat to run against AOC. The hopes of the corrupt party establishment channelled through their boy Josh:

The unusual and unpredictable turnout patterns for upcoming summer primaries taking place during a pandemic will also add some uncertainty to these races. New York Democratic officials have been working to cancel the presidential primary for their June 23 elections, a decision overruled by a federal judge and currently under appeal. Without a presidential race driving turnout and with the coronavirus keeping many voters home, tiny turnout for state and local primaries raises the likelihood of unpredictable outcomes. Indeed, the low turnout in the 2018 New York primary was a major factor in Ocasio-Cortez’s upset of longtime Rep. Joseph Crowley.

Ocasio-Cortez’s primary against former CNBC anchor Michelle Caruso-Cabrera hasn’t drawn a lot of attention, but it’s worth watching closely. The congresswoman’s district, which spans Queens and the Bronx, has been one of the hardest-hit areas in the country from the pandemic. But Ocasio-Cortez was the only House Democrat to vote against the coronavirus-relief bill, a lonely and unpopular position on Capitol Hill. She told the New York Times that, after the vote, she felt more alienated in Congress than ever before and was facing a personal existential crisis.

Those personal feelings are undoubtedly authentic, but by making the crisis about herself, it offers a tempting opportunity for Caruso-Cabrera to portray her as someone driven more by ego than the needs of her constituents. Caruso-Cabrera is no novice: The granddaughter of Cuban and Italian immigrants, she served as the chief international correspondent for CNBC for nearly a decade. More notably, she raised over $1 million in the first three months of the year, an impressive amount for a seemingly long-shot challenger. Her strong fundraising gives her enough cash to run a professional campaign. Ocasio-Cortez, one of the best-funded members of Congress in the country, raised $2.7 million during the same period and has $3.5 million in the bank.

Ocasio-Cortez’s supporters appear to be taking notice of her upstart challenger. The Intercept, an antiestablishment publication that promotes left-wing candidates like Ocasio-Cortez, published a hit piece against Caruso-Cabrera this month for serving on the board of directors for a life-insurance company that “profits from death.” For a campaign that hasn’t drawn much attention, especially during the pandemic, the piece looked like a sign that they were taking Caruso Cabrera’s insurgent campaign seriously.

There has been no recent public polling of the race. When I reached out to Ocasio-Cortez pollster Celinda Lake to get her perspective on the race, she declined comment. An April 2019 Siena poll found her support in the district surprisingly lukewarm, with 52 percent of district voters viewing her favorably and 33 percent viewing her unfavorably. This, in a district that Hillary Clinton carried by a 57-point margin (77-20 percent).

With turnout expected to be very low-- and without a presidential campaign to drive Sanders supporters to the polls-- this is a race that’s worth watching. Even a weaker-than-expected showing by Ocasio-Cortez might tempt the congresswoman to run for president in 2024 instead of remaining as a lonely voice in a party that’s rediscovered the merits of political pragmatism.

While Ocasio-Cortez is the biggest name of the three renegades, Tlaib is the congresswoman facing the toughest challenge. She’s facing a rematch against Detroit City Council president Brenda Jones, whom Tlaib defeated by fewer than 1,000 votes in the 2018 primary. The congresswoman benefited from numerous African-American candidates splitting up the black vote on the primary ballot, allowing her to win with a 31 percent plurality. Tlaib won over the white voters in the Detroit district, but struggled to win support among African-Americans. Jones is hoping to consolidate the black vote behind her this time around.

Tlaib holds a fundraising advantage, with $1.4 million in the bank at the end of March. Jones, who announced her candidacy in March, is starting her fundraising from scratch in the middle of a pandemic.

Tlaib has faced criticism from her fellow Democrats over her anti-Israel activism and support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. But pro-Israel Democratic voters and donors are wary of Jones as well, given her past praise of anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

Between Tlaib’s underwhelming electoral history and the racial dynamic in the district, it’s clear that she’s vulnerable. A March survey conducted by longtime Michigan pollster Ed Sarpolus found Tlaib only leading Jones 43 to 34 percent. Her 9-point lead was down 28 points since the survey’s last poll in June. Being well under 50 percent as a high-profile incumbent is a glaring warning sign. Another reason why Tlaib should be worried: Joe Biden comfortably defeated Sanders in her district despite her high-profile surrogacy for Sanders.

The other Sanders-supporting member of the squad, Ilhan Omar, looked like she didn’t have too much to worry about. While she’s drawn plenty of criticism for her use of bigoted tropes to attack Jewish supporters of Israel-- and faced the risk of censure from her own party-- she’s been insulated by support from both white progressives and a Somali-American base in her heavily Democratic Twin Cities district.

But she’s facing a spirited challenge from Antone Melton-Meaux, an attorney and mediator who has criticized the congresswoman for her divisive record and has courted support in the district’s Jewish community. “Omar has made statements that have been reckless and harmful to the Jewish community," Melton-Meaux told Jewish Insider last month. "There’s a deep sense of betrayal by her actions and displeasure with the way that she has handled herself in the process with regard to the residents in this district.”

Melton-Meaux raised $210,000 in the last fundraising quarter, a respectable amount that will allow him to get his message across. Omar ended March with $1.3 million in cash on hand, giving her a significant advantage.

But in a sign that Omar may be sensing a backlash, she quietly signed onto a letter urging the Trump administration to extend a United Nations arms embargo against Iran. While it was signed by over 380 members of Congress, the document backed by The American Israel Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC] was a departure from her previous positioning on the Middle East. Indeed, she drew backlash from her anti-Israel supporters for supporting the policy.

It’s still hard to see Omar losing in a primary after emerging as a progressive star in her first term. But it’s very possible that her sudden repositioning is a result of her looking to shore up political vulnerabilities.

These three competitive races are a reminder that even among liberal primary voters, many Democratic voters aren’t fans of the in-your-face brand of socialism that these three freshman members have promoted in their first terms in office. And with an establishment figure like Biden comfortably leading the presidential race, they’re at risk of being marginalized in a way they’ve never experienced-- even if they win their contested campaigns.

Please help defeat Kraushaar (and his ilk) by clicking on the Blue America 2020 incumbents thermometer above and contributing what you can. Kraushaar certainly makes a very convincing case to always beware of any candidate he endorses, whether implicitly or explicitly.

Dunn And Biden-- A Love Story

TIME Magazine, July 1942: "The richest gossip of his time died last week. On his deathbed, fat, vain little Maury Henry Biddle Paul, "Cholly Knickerbocker" of the New York Journal-American, could well reflect that he had made himself more famous than most of the puppets he wrote about in his quarter century as a society reporter."

Fast forward to today when SKDKnickerbocker, (did they name themselves after Cholly? Are they that self-aware?) PR firm to the stars of the policial firmament, can claim the same mantle-- more powerful than their "clients"-- showing no mercy to their opponents while protecting and enabling their benefactors-- aka, those they have made politically powerful so they can do the bidding of their even more powerful donors. Today's Knickerbocker is much more dangerous because shilling for politicians instead of mere celebrities can make a loser like Biden into the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party-- a candidate who will lose to Donald Trump! The latest ABC/Washington Post poll shows Biden and Trump in a statistical tie.

Case in point-- Anita Dunn, the "D" in SKD. Not only is she "senior advisor" to Joe Biden, but her firm is also the PR arm of the Time's Up movement, so when Tara Reade approached Time's Up for help in exposing Biden's sexual assault on her, the firm held out their 501(c)3 tax status as a reason to refuse to help her, saying that because Biden was a candidate they couldn't get involved. Really? Then all powerful candidates can assault women at will! No tax lawyer supports that claim!

When The Intercept first reported on Time's Up and Reade the details of the assault were not detailed but a subsequent tape and interview withe NewsOne made it clear that this went far beyond "touching" or "hair sniffing"-- it was sexual assault.

Last week, after the details of the assault became public, Krystal Ball interviewed Ryan Grim:





But yesterday she interviewed Tara Reade and followed up with a scathing commentary:





Krystal charges that CNN and MSNBC will "gladly provide a venue for allegations against the outsiders upon whom their status and access do not depend. They've got to be dragged kicking and screaming to do their job when it comes to their own ideological and class brethren." says Krystal Ball. "Why now?" the pundits ask. She's been trying to get her story out for months. Before she reached out to Time's Up, she tried reaching out to Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris but they too are members of the same club as Anita Dunn and Joe Biden.

Krystal again: "If a claim like this had been made against Bernie Sanders, or even Donald Trump, or another media villain like Edward Snowden, do you think the accuser would have any trouble getting press? Do you think it would fall to independent and alternative news to break the story if a woman who worked with Bernie in the 1990s made a credible claim of sexual assault? Do you think CNN and MSNBC would bury their heads in the sand? Every reporter in this town would be breaking down their door to be the first to tell that story." I might add that we could look at what happened to Julian Assange when he took of his condom during consensual sex...

It is beyond time for the Democratic Party to advocate for public funding of elections and get these "foul creatures" as a party insider described them, out of our politics for good!

"Tara is trending on Twitter and all the blue checks and the gender warriors are nowhere to be found," Ball said. "Their principles seem to have abandoned them now that it threatens their access to the Biden campaign and their ability to grift off their coziness and proximity to power." I would add that SDK Knickerbocker is not proximite to power-- I would say they ARE the power and Biden "grifts" off them. More coming.

Mike Siegel Heads To A TX-10 Runoff

As of the last FEC filing deadline in the TX-10 3-way primary-- February 12-- about $2 million had been spent by the Democrats' campaigns.

• Shannon Hutcheson- $915,411, of which $361,550 was self-funded
• Pritesh Gandhi- $772,486
• Mike Siegel- $348,908

The only outside sewer money that seeped into the race was $364,440-- much of it used to smear Hutcheson on behalf of Gandhi-- from the 314 Action PAC, a sham outfit pretending to care about Science while really devoted almost exclusively to lining the pockets of their principles. But as you can see, votes went to candidates inversely from money spent:

Mike Siegel's haul at the ballotbox Tuesday was significantly ahead of the 314 runner up-- but not enough to avoid a May 26th runoff. This isn't good. Siegel should be spending the next 3 months hammering Trump ally Michael McCaul, not being drawn into a battle with 314 and its anti-Medicare-for-All, anti-Green New Deal candidate. Please consider contributing what you can to Mike's campaign, which you can do by clicking on the Turning Texas Blue thermometer on the right.

"This campaign, Mike told me today, "continues to show how Democrats win in Texas: with people power! In 2018, we shocked countless observers when we held ultra-wealthy GOP incumbent Michael McCaul to 51% of the vote and turned the Texas 10th into a battleground district. And on Election Day we did the same: facing two well-funded opponents and an outside 'super PAC' who, together, spent over $2.5 million, we claimed a resounding victory. This is campaign is the only one that can beat the wealth and gerrymandered advantage of Rep. McCaul. We will keep working the district, knocking doors, and building an unstoppable coalition to demand real political change here in TX-10."

On Wednesday, Intercept politics editor Ryan Grim noted that "In 2018, the 10th Congressional District-- which stretches from the Austin suburbs to the Houston suburbs-- was written off by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, having gone to incumbent Michael McCaul in 2016 by 19 points. But Siegel, with a focus on organizing a major field operation, closed it to within 5 points. That drew the attention of deep-pocketed donors, who fielded corporate management lawyer Shannon Hutcheson to challenge Siegel for the nomination. Pritesh Gandhi, a doctor who is running to the left of Hutcheson but to the right of Siegel, also jumped into the race, setting up what looked like it could be a rerun of a knockdown, drag-out primary in California that followed a similar trajectory... The two other candidates spent the final weeks of the race attacking each other. A hybrid Super PAC backing Gandhi spent big attacking Hutcheson. Hutcheson, meanwhile, was the clear Washington favorite. She has been dogged in the primary by her corporate law work, particularly her defense of a prison guard accused of assaulting migrants, among other controversial cases. She voted in the 2010 Republican primary, the year of the tea party backlash to President Barack Obama, and has the strong support of her husband’s law firm, which is connected to the Texas GOP machinery."

Republican Oligarch Bloomberg Explains Why He Would Never Win A Presidential Race

Yesterday, in his often excoriating music business newsletter, Bob Lefsetz set his sites on... oligarchs in politics. "You’ve got to be rich," he wrote. "And it always comes down to who you know." That could've easily been the opening lines about a music business post. But not when he turned to the powerful dons who run the Nevada Culinary Union who "bargained for a blue chip health care plan" and have basically said SCREW YOU to anyone who doesn't have a plan as good. (NOTE: Medicare-for-All is better than any union-negotiated healthcare plan and for that matter, better than any healthcare plan offered to corporate presidents in any U.S. company.) Anyway, Lefsetz was quickly on to two detestable targets: Trump and Bloomberg, two beneficiaries of skillful marketing. "Trump," he wrote "won by being a renegade. By talking about how the government does not work and the game is rigged. The government has issues, but one thing’s for sure, the game is rigged. Let’s see, all the people Trump pardoned/commuted today… It’s not like they had public defenders, it’s not like they didn’t have the right to appeal, they were convicted, fair and square, there’s a system, based on laws, and if you sacrifice the law…you’ve got chaos. Which is what we’ve got today... [O]ne thing is for certain, if you’re not rich, you don’t count, you have no voice. Because they don’t want to let you have one. Oh, they’ll let you call in to talk shows, they’ll get you fighting about secondary issues, but they won’t let you challenge the system, which is imperfect but works just fine for them. Which brings me to last night’s John Oliver show, wherein he makes the case for Medicare for all:

Oliver goes through all the negative talking points, blows them away, and if you’re not for Medicare for all after you watch this, you’re greedy or, like members of the Culinary Union, have a blue chip policy.

But there can be no change.

But change happens. The last twenty years have been all about change. Digital disruption. It’s always outsiders with a creaky new way that is cheap and pooh-poohed that ultimately triumphs and kills what came before. Why can’t this happen in politics?

BECAUSE THOSE IN POWER DON’T WANT IT TO!

I’ll vote for any Democrat against Trump. But I must say, the DNC and the media are bending over backward to hand it to Michael Bloomberg. Today the polls came out and the stories were all about Bloomberg’s surge, when Sanders surged way ahead of the field.

Selective reporting.

It used to be different. There was the Fairness Doctrine, making sure the limited news outlets presented both sides.

And if you owned a megaphone, a newspaper, TV or radio station, you were powerful.

You’re less powerful today.

Those in power, the elite, hate technology, even though they selectively use it. I listened to NPR tonight wherein they sang the virtues of the independent bookstore, saying the digital book was neutered. But the sycophantic host even admitted he showroomed the Ron Chernow book on Ulysses S. Grant and bought the digital copy, because the physical book was just too heavy.

This is the establishment, they like it how it was, even though it’s no longer this way.

I get it if you’re a member of the Republican elite. The money and perks have always flowed upward. But the Democratic elite? They have contempt for those below them, believe they know better, spread their own disinformation in pursuit of their goals. There can be change, just as long as they don’t lose out.

And you wonder why the rank and file voted for Trump.

So it all comes down to hope. If Bloomberg is elected, we’ll get rid of the orange menace. But will the fundamental problems of this country be addressed? Of course not, because Bloomberg doesn’t even know how the hoi polloi live.

So Blagojevich broke the law. We don’t want our elected officials selling Senate seats. But we live in a country where our President can lean on Ukraine to neuter the campaign of Joe Biden, which he successfully did!

Mitt Romney did the right thing, and he was excoriated by the right, but…they still love him in Utah, because their society is built on the family and helping one another, morality.

Bernard Kerik was caught red-handed, as was Eddie DeBartolo, Jr. Commit a blue collar crime and you’re screwed, there’s a camera everywhere, you’re going up the river. But white collar crime is seen as less bad, these are good people, we don’t want to ruin their lives, like the judge said in the Stanford rape case. SO WHY DID THEY DO THIS?

That’s what you’ve got to ask. These people thought they were invulnerable, they’d been getting away with bending the rules for years, it’s just that this time they got caught. Whereas you’re lucky if you can get probation on the first offense.

So there’s a different legal system for the rich and poor. And unlike in the old days, the rich no longer worry about the optics. Trump doesn’t care how it looks, Kerik working with the Donald’s henchman Giuliani, Blagojevich appearing on The Apprentice, he just does what he feels like, with a vengeance, vindictively.

Susan Collins told us Trump learned a lesson…yeah, that he can do whatever he wants!

As for those who support him, it’s less about him than the tribe on the other side. They hate Democrats so much, they’ll endorse the behavior of any Republican, just ask the evangelicals.

So if you live online, you see contrary opinions.

But big media has told us it’s all cranks and their opinions don’t count. Meanwhile, Breitbart and the Daily Caller got Trump elected. Who cares about veracity, that demonstrates power.

And although the right decries authoritarianism in China, it refuses to publicize any story it doesn’t agree with, that doesn’t reinforce its position.

So, you can be an outsider, you can have the illusion of power, because you vote.

But for the first time in my life I’m starting to wonder if it matters. If we organize and come up with a contrary candidate, our own opinion, they shut us right down. Bernie Sanders is a socialist who loves Russia and will ruin the economy, after eliminating Democratic coattails.

Meanwhile, Trump is a guy who really loves Putin, and endorses/enables socialism for the rich, with low taxes, the carried interest rule, government handouts, but somehow that’s different.

It isn’t about Bernie Sanders the man, it’s about what he’s saying, telling the truth in a world where that is abhorred. The everyday person got screwed, and the playing field must be leveled, while everybody is taken care of while they get back on their feet.

But those on both the right and left say this can’t be so. Change must be gradual, and you know there can’t be change because the government is gridlocked, and you’re asking the impossible anyway.

Meanwhile, let’s hand the nomination to a billionaire who just recently was a Republican, who changed the law so he could serve a third term as mayor, who made the elites feel safe while his police force threw those less privileged up against the wall.

But that’s overlooked. Even the sexism. Because this is the guy the elites want, because he’ll just be the anti-Trump, who cares if he gets anything done.

And their plan is working. I was with three twentysomethings just now, all were Bernie fans, now they’re behind Bloomberg, the media has convinced them, they’re defeated. Even though it’s their future at risk.

So what we’ve found is despite our numbers, we ain’t got much power. Even if Bernie Sanders wins a primary, he loses. The owners of this country want it this way.

As for Michael Milken… Wasn’t he the first guy to make so much money on Wall Street? Isn’t he evidence of the basic problem? By pardoning him aren’t we endorsing this kind of behavior, especially if you employ your riches that remain for good causes?

It’s depressing. And everybody is telling us we know nothing and should do what they say. And however it plays out, they’re not gonna lose, but we are.

Meanwhile, we’re fighting each other for scraps and most have no idea how the game is really played anyway. Everybody believes they’re gonna be a successful entrepreneur, become a billionaire. Someone else did it, so why can’t they?

Because that other person had wealthy parents who gave them the best education at institutions where you can make relationships that pay dividends down the road. You never had a chance. And today, both parties are doing their best to snuff whatever light, whatever hope remains, out.

And you wonder why there’s a rash of suicides.

"I'm not a dictionary, but I know what words mean. And I'm not a clock, but I know what time it is." That was from Richard Eskow in his post for Common Dreams earlier this month, Of Course Bloomberg's an Oligarch-- and He's Coming For Your Social Security. "By any common definition," he wrote, "Bloomberg’s an oligarch. He wants to buy your vote. Based on his record, he’s also coming for your Social Security.

An “oligarch,” according to the Cambridge American Dictionary, is “one of a small group of powerful people who control a country or an industry.”

Is Michael Bloomberg such a person? Maybe he’s just really rich and doesn’t control that much. But let's have some background.

With an estimated net worth of more than $60 billion, Bloomberg is the twelfth-richest person on the planet and the ninth-richest person in the United States. That’s a pretty small group of people. But do they control the country? Ferguson et al. found that campaign cash drives election outcomes. That means campaign donors largely control the process.

Gilens and Page found that wealthy people and interests usually get what they want. The rest of us usually don’t, unless what we want is also what they want. The fact that progressives like some of Bloomberg’s positions doesn’t undermine these findings. In fact, it reinforces them.

Bloomberg hasn’t just given money to a number of campaigns. He also controls a media empire. In true oligarchical fashion, he decreed years ago that his news outlets would not cover his political career. He said recently that it would not cover his rivals’ campaigns, either-- a move that drew criticism from journalists and an ethics professor. Less than a month later, however, Bloomberg News violated that edict by running a hit piece against Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

That’s oligarchical behavior.

Bloomberg’s own political history is an exercise in the use of oligarchical wealth to change electoral outcomes. He was unpopular when he first ran for mayor of New York-- a situation he rectified by dramatically outspending his rivals. Even so, Bloomberg only eked out a two-point victory against Democrat Mark Green in his first mayoral race, after outspending him five to one.

The argument between Turner and Johnson involved another compelling example of Bloomberg-as-oligarch. The DNC’s rules said each candidate had to have a minimum number of donors to quality for the debate stage. That rule wasn’t overruled for Cory Booker or Julian Castro, despite calls for greater diversity in the race. But it was overturned for Bloomberg, who had donated more than $1 million to the DNC and a related organization a few short weeks before.

Will Michael Bloomberg Cut Your Social Security?

If you thought there were problems with Joe Biden’s Social Security record, wait until you see Bloomberg’s. His record of espousing austerity economics has including a special enthusiasm for cutting Medicare and Social Security.

As he told Face the Nation in 2013:

No program to reduce the deficit makes any sense whatsoever unless you address the issue of entitlements, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, interest payment on the debt, which you can't touch, and defense spending. Everything else is tiny compared to that.

Bloomberg has called for raising the retirement age, a move that would cut Social Security benefits for all retirees and create physical hardship for many older workers.

These are bad ideas. They make for even worse politics. Voters love Social Security. A Pew study released in March 2019 found that “74 percent of Americans say Social Security benefits should not be reduced in any way.”

And voters don’t like entitlement cuts, or the Bloomberg-endorsed thinking behind them. That can be seen in a GBAO/Center for American Progress survey conducted in October 2019. Less than half of Republicans, one-third of Democrats, and roughly one-third of independents agreed with the Bloomberg-like statement that “our national debt is way too high, and we need to cut government spending on the biggest programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.”

Trump has given Democrats an opening on Social Security. His administration is currently engaged in a de factor program to cut Social Security disability benefits, by forcing millions of disabled people to endure the punishing process of eligibility screening as often as every six months. Newsweek reports that the Social Security Administration concluded that this would lead to $2.6 billion in benefit cuts and an additional 2.6 million case reviews between 2020 and 2029. It’s a brutal assault on the health and security of a vulnerable population.

Trump also said he intends to pursue additional cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid after the upcoming election, when he no longer has to worry about public opinion. Worse, he did so at the annual gathering of billionaires in Davos. That reinforces the perception that he’s imposing hardship on the majority to help a privileged few.

Most leading Democrats understand that there is wide support for protecting and expanding Social Security. Most leading candidates-- including Joe Biden-- have offered some form of Social Security expansion. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has embraced the idea in principle. There’s an opportunity here-- if Bloomberg doesn’t stop them from taking it.

...Given his virtually unlimited resources, Bloomberg could theoretically win both the nomination and the presidency. By my calculation, Bloomberg could pay the same “unit price” he paid to make himself mayor of New York-- $88 per voter-- and make himself president for $12 billion. He’d even have $50 billion set aside for a rainy day.

The nomination would presumably cost less than the presidency, so he has a better shot at that. But it would be a bad look for the Democrats to become the first party in modern history whose candidate openly bought the nomination. But then, Bloomberg’s used to getting the rules changed just for him. When he wanted to run for a third term as mayor, Bloomberg used all the tools at his disposal (one of which led to an ethics complaint) to change the city’s rules. Once he got what he wanted, Bloomberg then pushed to change the rules back. It seems that some privileges should be labeled, “for oligarchs only.”

Am I saying that all the members of Congress who have endorsed Bloomberg are corrupt and should be defeated in primaries? Pretty much. YES! Right now there are a dozen of them, 10 Blue Dogs and New Dems and one-- Bobby Rush-- an outright criminal who takes bribes from everyone, not just Bloomberg. All these members should have the guts to withdraw their endorsements of Bloomberg today after his disqualifying performance last night. Instead, this morning, 3 other money-hungry Democrats endorsed him-- Blue Dog walking cesspool Josh Gottheimer (NJ), Pete Aguilar (New Dem-CA) and Nita Lowey, who is retiring from Congress and knows she'll never have to face the voters again.

• Harley Rouda (New Dem-CA)- F
• Juan Vargas (New Dem)- D
• Scott Peters (New Dem-CA)- F
• Stephanie Murphy (Blue Dog-FL)- F
• Ted Deutch (FL)- C
• Lucy McBath (New Dem-GA)- F
• Bobby Rush (IL)- B
• Haley Stevens (New Dem-MI)- F
• Mikie Sherrill (Blue Dog-NJ)- F
• Gregory Meeks (New Dem-NY)- F
• Max Rose (Blue Dog-NY)- F
• Ben McAdams (Blue Dog-UT)- F