The Republican Wing Of The Democratic Party-- Plus Some Republicans-- Make Their Move: STOP BERNIE!

Everyone knew Bernie would win yesterday, but no one predicted his win would be as decisive and sweeping as it turned out to me. You almost feel sorry for all the right-of-center, anti-working class pundits on MSNBC. I thought Chris Matthews was on the verge on moving on to the next world while the caucus votes were coming in, not to mention former Bush staffer Nicolle Wallace, and the man who has never been right about anything for two decades, James Carville. I don't know what Joy Reid or Claire McCaskill had to say since I press mute as soon as either one of them starts talking. Bernie spent the weekend not celebrating in Las Vegas but campaigning in some of Texas' bluest cities, El Paso and San Antonio yesterday and in Houston and Austin today. The RealClearPolitics Texas polling average had Bernie leading even before the Nevada bump kicks in:

• Bernie- 23.5%
• Status Quo Joe- 21.0%
• Elizabeth- 14.5%
• Bloomberg- 14.0%
• Mayo Pedro- 7.0%
• Klobuchar- 6.0%
• Tulsi- 3.0%

Front-runner status has some unique perils. Third Way, the heart of the Republican wing the Democratic Party, is trying to organize a Stop Bernie Movement, asking Status Quo Joe, Bloomberg, Mayo Pete, Klobuchar and even Elizabeth Warren to band together in South Carolina to work together to kill the candidacy of the one candidate who champions the working class. The reactionaries' letter, titled "Stand up to Bernie or You-- and We-- All Lose," was the same kind of claptrap that the Wall Street-owned conservative Democrats hurled at FDR and used, unsuccessfully, to try to derail him and the New Deal.

At the Las Vegas debate, each of you took aim at one another, often to withering effect. But with few exceptions, you declined to really challenge Senator Sanders. If you repeat this strategy at the South Carolina debate this week, you could hand the nomination to Sanders, likely dooming the Democratic Party-- and the nation-- to Trump and sweeping down-ballot Republican victories in November.

The reasons for this dire prediction are many, as we note below, but one is paramount: Bernie Sanders is a socialist, and the political toxicity of his self-selected brand cannot be overstated. As recent polling from Gallup shows, 53% of voters, including 51% of Independents, say they would not vote for “an otherwise well-qualified candidate for president” if that candidate is a socialist. That’s game over.

Senator Sanders seems aware of the problem. Lately, he’s argued that Republicans are the real socialists, since they provide corporate giveaways through tax breaks. He’s said that regular Americans have socialism already, in the form of Social Security and Medicare. He claims, without evidence, that socialism is so popular that it would bring out younger and low-propensity voters at unprecedented levels. And he has tried to append the meaningless modifier of “Democratic” to his “socialist” label.

But none of this will work. Senator Sanders has said it many times, including in past political debates: “I am a Socialist. Of course, I am a Socialist.” His attempts to redefine the term or parse the nuances of his socialism, which has run from his early nearTrotskyism to his latter-day Nordic style, will be utterly lost. What voters will know, after nearly one billion dollars of negative ads from Team Trump, is that Bernie Sanders and his Party have embraced socialism.

To be sure, Donald Trump will call any Democratic nominee a “socialist”. But if it’s one of you, that charge will not stick, because it will be an obvious lie. You are Democratic capitalists. Your words, ideas, and histories are clear on this point, and voters will know it. By contrast, if Trump’s opponent is, as his team fervently hopes, a proud socialist, he will make the entire election-- for president and for every other office on the ballot-- a referendum on socialism. That is a fight that Democrats cannot win.

In this campaign-- and in his 50 years in public life-- Bernie Sanders somehow has skated past any serious, sustained scrutiny of his ideas and his record. Yet those are so extreme-- so far outside the mainstream-- that they simply must not be ignored during the remaining fight for the 2020 nomination. Either you will air and debate them now, and deny Sanders the nomination, or they will come roaring out of the Trump machine in the fall, when they will prove fatal.

On Friday, Open Secrets explored the question, Who is funding the anti-Bernie Sanders super PAC? "Several outside groups are trying to slow the momentum of current Democratic presidential frontrunner Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) by spending millions on ad buys, as he continues to dominate the polls," wrote Ilma Hasan. "The campaign against Sanders originated with hybrid PAC Democratic Majority for Israel, a pro-Israel moderate group, that spent over $1.4 million against Sanders. The group spent over $800,000 running ads against the frontrunning Democratic presidential candidate in Iowa and it’s spending $600,000 in Nevada, according to recent filings with the Federal Election Commission." But who, exactly are the scumbags putting up the money to harm them working class?

Most of the PAC’s contributors have a clear history of giving money to candidates on both sides of the aisle. Its biggest donor is Stacy Schusterman, CEO of Samson Resources, an oil and gas company, who donated $1 million to the group in 2019. Schusterman has a long history of donating to Democratic candidates, except in 2016 when she contributed almost $130,000 to 25 Republican lawmakers including $2,700 to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI).

Venture capitalist Gary Mark Lauder was the second highest donor to the hybrid PAC giving $500,000. New York businessman Milton Cooper was the next highest at $150,000. Active in donating to various Democrats, he also contributed $4,000 to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and $2,000 to Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) in 2019.

Ron Zeff, founder and CEO of Carmel Partners, a real estate investment firm, gave the group $100,000. He previously contributed over $70,000 to the GOP. Zeff also donated to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s campaign in 2012 against President Barack Obama.

The Sanders campaign said it raised $1.3 million within a day of the super PAC ads airing. Of the non-billionaires in the race, Sanders is the only candidate to report substantial cash on hand through January.

On Wednesday, Mark Mellman, president of Democratic Majority for Israel, announced the group will no longer be running any ads against Sanders or contribute in the presidential race after its ad buys in Nevada run out. The group will focus on Democratic congressional races instead, Jewish Insider reported.

“We will be involved in congressional races and in some cases those are Democrats running against Republican and in some case, those are pro-Israel champions running against anti-Israel challengers,” Mellman reportedly said.

The pro-Israel super PAC is closely affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC] and some of it’s largest donors are top members of the group, according to The Intercept.

While Mellman’s group will be taking a backseat, the committee has been running an anti-Sanders campaign through Facebook ads since last year. It recently came under scrutiny for accusing “radicals” in the Democratic Party of “pushing their anti-Semitic and anti-Israel policies down the throats of the American people.” The group later apologized for “the ad’s imprecise wording (that) distorted our message and offended many.”

Another group meant to boost moderates, The Big Tent Project, reportedly has a budget of $1 million to run ads against Sanders. Big Tent has spent $200,000 of the budget running two test ads in Nevada and South Carolina, as both states will hold upcoming primaries. Sanders is projected to win both states according to FiveThirtyEight’s average of polls.

While one ad accuses the frontrunner of dumping waste in Latino communities, the other criticizes his healthcare policy. “The cost? Another four years of Trump,” the ad says. Run by Jonathan Kott, a former top aide to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Big Tent is classified as a 501(c)(4) and is not required to disclose its donors.

Sanders has long questioned American policy toward Israel and advocates an approach that addresses both Israeli security and a “pro-Palestinian” perspective. His criticism has made pro-Israel Democrats and supporters anxious, resulting in a surge of anti-Sanders ads.

As Sanders is projected to win the upcoming contests, big Democratic donors have concerns about him being the presidential candidate, Politico reported. The concern within democrats is that an anti-Sanders campaign could result in boosting his contributions from an already devoted support base. For others, it’s about Sanders’ possible inability to woo moderate and Republican voters.

How ironic-- and sad-- is it that Israel's neo-fascist criminal leader and all-in Trump ally, Benjamin Netanyahu, is directing his American puppets to derail the candidacy of the first Jewish candidate to have a realistic chance of winning the American presidency? Oh, and then there's the pretend "progressive TV channel" that is corporately owned and operated-- and not even pretending it's not anti-working class now:

Is There A Worse Political Reporter Than Sydney Ember Anywhere? Spoiler: No

Actual enemy of the people

Every now and then, I mention that this Belway reporter or that Beltway reporter is really nothing but a piece of runny dog shit. Sydney Ember is one of those and when I started writing about what a worthless scumbag she was I thought she was a he. It's hard to get away with calling a woman a worthless scumbag-- even if she obviously is one-- but no one objects much when it's a male. Now that I know Sydney is a woman, I have to think of new ways to describe her worthlessness. Katie Halper did a good job of describing one of the NY Times most anti-progressive fake reporters in a new piece for FAIR, Sydney Ember’s Secret Sources. Halper's piece is basically about a prejudiced journalist passing off her opinions as news. "NYT reporter hides corporate ties of Sanders critics she highlights," wrote Halper. "Ember has a problem with Bernie Sanders-- which may be why the paper has her cover him."

Journalist Skip Kaltenheuser wondered how, "with such a stacked deck against him, Bernie has the ability to keep punching. What has happened to The Times' editors that they accept this sort of propaganda rot off the editorial pages? I can’t imagine it doesn’t infuriate those Times reporters who still care about their integrity. Katie Halper’s article on Ember ought to be on the shelf next to Thomas Frank’s Swat Team."

"Ember," wrote Halper, "is supposed to write reported articles, not op-eds, but she consistently paints a negative picture of Sanders’ temperament, history, policies and/or political prospects in the over two dozen pieces she’s done on him. This makes sense, given the New York Times’ documented anti-Sanders bias, which can be found among both editors and reporters alike."

The paper was caught making significant changes, without acknowledging them, to a 2016 article on Sanders hours after it went up:  It changed the headline (from “Bernie Sanders Scored Victories for Years via Legislative Side Doors,” to “Via Legislative Side Doors, Bernie Sanders Won Modest Victories”); deleted a positive quote from a campaign advisor; and added two negative paragraphs. Even after the paper’s public editor chastised the Times for the practice known as stealth editing, the editors defended the changes because they “thought [the article]  should say more about his realistic chances.” In its original form, the article didn’t cast enough doubt on Sanders’ viability and ability to govern, in other words.

Ember came to the New York Times with a resumé limited to the finance industry: She was an analyst for BlackRock, the biggest global investment management corporation, and the largest investor in coal plant developers in the world. (Her husband, Mike Bechek, is also in the investment business; he was a senior associate consultant at Bain Capital, where his father was CEO.)

Bechek and Ember

Ember was hired by the Times in 2014 to cover advertising and marketing for the paper’s business vertical Dealbook. She started covering politics in May 2018, and immediately got the enviable assignment of covering one of the leading contenders for the 2020 Democratic nomination.

Ember has a multi-prong approach to undermining Sanders: She went to great lengths to avoid calling him the frontrunner until he was “no longer” one;  she attributes his political positions to attention-getting, self-serving ulterior motives; frames even his victories and the popularity of his ideas as weaknesses; cherry-picks polls; presents opinions as facts (claiming he’s “outflanked on the left by rising stars like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley and Beto O’Rourke”); and creates false equivalency between Sanders and Donald Trump.

But for the sake of time and length, this piece focuses on her selection and misrepresentation of sources, which have already drawn scrutiny. Brad Johnson, a political analyst with a background in climate science pointed out that Ember quoted a source without mentioning that she’s a corporate lobbyist; journalist Zaid Jilani noted that Ember failed to disclose that another source was a senior advisor for a Hillary Clinton Super PAC. Education scholar Diane Ravitch devoted a blog post to the reporter’s “shameful” reporting on Sanders’ education policy, questioning the authority of her sources.

Ember’s articles on Sanders (sometimes co-written with other Times reporters) often quote as neutral authorities individuals who are on the other side of a wide ideological divide, with longstanding antipathies to Sanders’ left socioeconomic perspective. Moreover, many of these “experts” are corporate lobbyists, whose work in a particular area is not guided by academic, journalistic or other professional standards, but by the economic and political interests of their clients. Ember spins the identity of her authorities, who are themselves professional spinners.

Consider Ember’s March 1 article, which opened with the kind of unflattering headline her stories often bear: “Bernie Sanders Is Making Changes for 2020, but His Desire for Control Remains.” (Headlines, of course, are chosen by editors, not reporters, but in these stories they reflect the slant of the text.) The piece ended on a typically ominous note: “Even if Mr. Sanders does talk more about himself, his competition presents a new set of challenges that his own biography may only compound,” Ember wrote. She brings in an expert to prove her point: “‘At the end of the day, he is still an old white man,’ said Tracy Sefl, a veteran Democratic strategist.”

Sefl is hardly a disinterested authority; she’s a paid political consultant and media specialist who worked as a surrogate and senior advisor for Hillary Clinton. Other outlets mention Sefl’s experience working for Clinton when they cite her, including the New York Times, which has identified her as someone “supporting Mrs. Clinton,” someone who “worked for Mrs. Clinton,” and a “Democratic consultant and Hillary Rodham Clinton supporter.”

A New York Times story (10/22/07) on the 2008 Clinton campaign’s relationship with the right-wing Drudge Report identified Sefl as someone “who has established a friendly working relationship with Mr. Drudge-- and through whom Mrs. Clinton’s campaign often worked quietly to open a line of communication.” The paper also noted that her “fingerprints are usually impossible to spot.” Sefl admitted in an interview (Chicago, 7/13/15):

My solo consultancy doesn’t have a name, quite purposely so. I do often collaborate with other consultants, including Republicans—within reason—when the work warrants it.

Reporter Zaid Jilani caught Ember’s omission, tweeting that she didn’t “note [Sefl] was senior adviser to Ready for Hillary Super PAC or that she was a hired gun at a Republican-led firm Navigators Global.” The piece has since been updated-- without notice-- to describe Sefl as “a veteran Democratic strategist and formerly a senior adviser to the Super PAC Ready for Hillary.”

Sefl’s choice of phrase, “an old white man,” is surely a crude description for someone who, as he has explained, has a strong Jewish identity, shaped in part by his father’s side of the family having been “wiped out” in the Holocaust, and growing up a working-class Jew in Brooklyn. If successful, Sanders would be the first Jewish president of the United States. But Sefl’s dismissive description is consistent with the way Clinton campaign loyalists and much of corporate media continue to weaponize identity politics against Sanders, erasing not only his Jewish identifty, but also his anti-racist record and his supporters of color.

Ember’s February 17 article, “Bernie Sanders Stumbled With Black Voters in 2016. Can He Do Better in 2020?,” published two days before Sanders announced his candidacy, predicted that “his weak track record with black voters-- a vital base in the Democratic Party-- could be a potential threat to his candidacy.” Echoing the conventional wisdom of the 2016 campaign, the piece made no mention of the CNN poll issued two months earlier that found Sanders had a higher approval rating with nonwhite voters than any other major candidate.

Ember’s March 29 article, “Bernie Sanders Says ‘No’ to Incrementalism, Highlighting Divide Among Democrats,” started with a neutral enough headline, but ended with a harsh critique by a fierce Sanders opponent, whose politics the reporter misrepresents:

“The path to the White House and to majorities has to be in a pragmatic, progressive area,” said Jim Kessler, executive vice president for Policy at Third Way, a center-left think tank. “If you go too far left, Donald Trump gets re-elected and Republicans control both houses of Congress.”

“Our heads are in the clouds, but our feet are also on the ground at the same time,” he added. He cited his group’s universal healthcare plan, which he said was “just as ambitious” as Mr. Sanders’ proposed “Medicare for all.” There was, however, a key difference.

“It just doesn’t blow up the system,” Mr. Kessler said. “It builds on the existing system.”

But Third Way is a fiscally conservative, not a “center left,” think tank. Given the state of public opinion, a group that pushes to cut Social Security and Medicare, and calls raising taxes on billionaires “soaking the rich,” is to the right of centrist. In 2013, of 29 trustees on Third Way’s board, 20 were investment bankers, three were CEOs and two were corporate lawyers.

Third Way’s “about” section reads, “Our work is grounded in the mainstream American values of opportunity, freedom and security.” They continue, “But we identify as center-left, because we see that space in US politics as offering the only real path for advancing those ideals in the century ahead.” For Third Way, identifying as “center-left” is lip service, a strategic necessity in a nation that has moved to the left and whose demographics promise a more diverse and left electorate to come.

Ember chooses the label that Third Way uses for itself, because if she accurately identified its corporatist mission and positions, she could not use one of its leaders as an objective authority on the efficacy of Bernie Sanders’ proposal of free healthcare for all. It would be obvious that Third Way’s healthcare plan was in no way as ambitious as Sanders’, and that it was using the term “universal” to undermine single payer.

Reflecting its function as a corporate advocate for moving the Democratic Party to the right, Third Way has consistently disparaged Sanders and progressive politics in general. In a 2013 Wall Street Journal op-ed (12/2/13), Kessler (and Third Way co-founder and president Jon Cowan) declared that “economic populism is dead,” urging Democrats not to follow Elizabeth Warren and Bill deBlasio “over the populist cliff.” Kessler singled out Sanders in a USA Today op-ed (12/15/17), declaring, “Take It From Voters, Democrats Don’t Want a Bernie Sanders.”

In October 2018, Third Way’s executive vice president Matt Bennet (who can be seen in this video (below) refusing to disclose how much money his think tank gets from Wall Street) disqualified Sanders as a presidential candidate: “The exception is Sen. Sanders. We’re open to everybody except for him.” That would seem to make the organization an odd source to go to to evaluate Sanders’ policy proposals.



But Ember turned to Kessler again in her April 27 article, “Bernie Sanders Opens Space for Debate on Voting Rights for Incarcerated People,” to comment on Sanders’ call to enfranchise the incarcerated:

“There’s a difference between felons who are in prison for nonviolent offenses and those who are in for capital offenses,” said Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at Third Way, a center-left think tank. Mr. Sanders’ remarks, he added, “seemed like a bit of a stumble.”

The comment seemed like a bit of a stumble for Kessler, into an area where he has no evident expertise, and, interestingly, where Third Way hardly wades.

Ember’s May 17 article, “Mayor and ‘Foreign Minister’: How Bernie Sanders Brought the Cold War to Burlington,” presented as problematic and incriminating the senator’s support of Nicaraguan Sandinistas and his opposition to the CIA-backed Contra rebels trying to overthrow them-- whose systematic pattern of gross human rights violations in the 1980s included death squad assassination, kidnapping, rape, mutilation and torture. In a subsequent interview, Ember’s first and apparently most pressing question to Sanders was whether he had heard an anti-American chant at a rally he and approximately 499,999 other people attended. Her second question was whether he would have stayed at the event if he had heard it.

While NBC’s Meet the Press (5/19/19) and New York’s Jonathan Chait (5/27/19) accepted and amplified Ember’s framing, other journalists and historians familiar with Latin American history condemned the piece as context-lacking  “neo-McCarthyite,” “‘anti-American’ baiting,” “only slightly more subtle than Fox News.” Calling the piece “fundamentally ahistorical” “bothsidesism,” the Long Version’s Jonathan Katz (5/20/19) wrote that Ember doesn’t “have much experience covering foreign affairs in general or Latin America in particular. It shows.” Journalist Ryan Cooper (The Week, 5/29/19) quipped, “Americans should be very concerned about Bernie Sanders’ record of opposing mass murder.”

For this article on Sanders’ foreign policy past, Ember thought it would be appropriate to get a quote from a significant player in the Iran/Contra scandal:

Otto J. Reich, a former special envoy for Latin America who helped oversee Nicaragua policy for the Reagan administration, said that by the middle of the 1980s a politician like Mr. Sanders “should have known better” than to fawn over Mr. Ortega.

Reagan’s “Nicaragua policy” involved illegally funding the terrorist Contras in an effort to overthrow the elected Sandinista government. And he oversaw it as director of the now defunct State Department’s Office of Public Diplomacy, working with CIA propaganda experts and Army psy-ops specialists, leaking hoaxes, spreading rumors, smearing, and pressuring and threatening reporters,  in order to whitewash the Contras and demonize the Sandinistas.

Reich’s office was condemned by the U.S. Comptroller General, the General Accounting Office, the Congressional Iran/Contra Committee and a House Foreign Affairs committee for conducting “prohibited, covert propaganda activities,” including psychological operations (psy-ops) “beyond the range of acceptable agency public information activities.”



Ember, though, offers Reich as an expert witness on Sanders’ Cold War activities:

“He has, by virtue of these travels and associations, joined up with some of the most repressive regimes in the world,” Mr. Reich said of Mr. Sanders, alluding to his visit to Nicaragua and subsequent trips to the Soviet Union and Cuba.

Speaking of travels and associations, as well as Cuba, Ember fails to mention that Reich has worked as a lobbyist for Bacardi-Martini and Lockheed Martin, and tried to get an anti-Castro terrorist a US visa. As historian Greg Grandin told me in an interview (Katie Halper Show, 6/4/19):

The Office of Public Diplomacy was one of the most corrupting and degrading instruments of democracy you can imagine…. It was a destabilization  and disinformation campaign.

“People like Sydney Ember,” he noted, are “the product of that reeducation.”

Back to domestic issues, Ember ended her May 23 article, “Sanders’ Education Plan Renews Debate Over Charter Schools and Segregation,” on a predictably down note:

But while the charter-school issue might be relevant in cities, Mr. Loadholt said, it was hardly top-of-mind for voters in the state’s expansive rural areas, where charter schools are rare. “To a hammer, everything is a nail,” he said. “And to Sanders, everything is an issue created by millionaires and billionaires.”

Ember describes Jarrod Loadholt as “a Democratic strategist who has worked on education policy in South Carolina.” This obfuscating description was one of the many things that led Diane Ravitch to write her blog post, “The New York Times vs. Senator Bernie Sanders. ” I’ll let Ravitch explain:

The real stinker in the Times’ article comes at the end, where the writers quote someone unfamiliar to me. I know many education activists in South Carolina, but I have never run across Jarrod Loadholt…. I googled. He is a lawyer and lobbyist in Washington, DC, who was born in South Carolina. I can find no evidence of any involvement by him in any education issues. His specialty seems to be consumer finance. Why was he called upon to put down Senator Sanders’ factual statement that the Waltons, the DeVos family and hedge fund managers are behind the push for charter schools? Senator Sanders made his statement in South Carolina, and Loadholt was born there. South Carolina has dreadful education policy. When did Loadholt work on it and with what results? To the naked eye, he was called upon as a Beltway insider to cut Bernie Sanders down with a false statement. Shameful.

In fact, there are no traces of Loadholt having worked on any education policy. When I tweeted out Ravitch’s piece, he responded, “Lol. I guess if you’re a lawyer or a lobbyist, you could at no point in your life worked on ed policy in SC.” When I asked him if he had worked on education policy, he replied, “My quote speaks for itself. And it’s like a month old.” Loadholt has also tweeted that Sanders is “like a rash.”

Loadholt does have experience as a lobbyist and currently works at Pine Street Strategies, a lobbying firm whose clients include Anheuser-Busch and the National Bankers Association (NBA). It was in his capacity as an NBA lobbyist that Loadholt defended a sweeping rollback of Dodd/Frank banking regulations.  Dubbed the Bank Lobbyist Act by critics, which included the NAACP, the bill made it easier for banks to discriminate against communities of color. Loadholt, however, dismissed the concerns: “[Black] banks don’t have the luxury of waiting on a perfect bill…. If we thought the [bill] did substantial damage to African-Americans, we would not support it.”

Then there’s the June 12 article, originally headlined “Sanders Delivers Defense of His Democratic Socialist Philosophy” and later renamed “Bernie Sanders Calls His Brand of Socialism a Pathway to Beating Trump,” where Ember quoted as an authority Mary Anne Marsh, whom she described as “a Democratic strategist in Boston who worked for Senators Senators John Kerry and Edward M. Kennedy.” Marsh did not mince words in her assessment of Sanders’ politics, policies and electability:

Most Democrats running don’t subscribe to Bernie Sanders’s democratic socialism and his economic policies. Ultimately, Bernie Sanders giving this speech will appeal to his base and no one else, and it gives fodder to Trump and the Republicans.

But the woman linking Sanders’ socialist rhetoric to a Trump victory is not just a Democratic strategist. When reporters at places like the Financial Times, CNBC, NPR, Yahoo! Business and Jewish News Services quote her, they cite her as a principal at the Dewey Square Group, a lobbying and public relations firm. Dewey Square’s corporate clients have included Allegiance Healthcare Corporation, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Coca-Cola, Collegiate Funding Services, Countrywide Mortgage, DuPont, General Motors Corporation, Grocery Manufacturers of America (GMA), Mortgage Insurance Companies of America, Purdue Pharma, Starbucks, United Health Group. The US Chamber of Commerce hired the firm to fight for caps on damages that can be paid in lawsuits; the National Restaurant Association paid them to fight against a law that made it easier for unions to organize workers; and Fix the Debt to push its austerity astroturf campaign to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

When Dewey Square was caught (CJR, 2/24/09) tricking senior citizens into signing letters to the editor on behalf of its client Medicare Advantage, Marsh tried to blame the hapless victims who had been lured to events with door prizes and free food and were unaware of what they were signing, positing, “The time that elapsed between the meetings when the seniors saw the letters and the letters’ arrival at the newspaper may have clouded some memories.”

Her career as a lobbyist for many of the industries that would be most impacted by Sanders’ proposals might explain Marsh’s obvious animus against the candidate, as displayed in the May 20 edition of her weekly Fox News column, “Bernie Sanders’ Incredible Shrinking Candidacy-- Why He Won’t Be Dem Nominee.” One of Sanders’ apparent insurmountable weaknesses, she wrote, is that people “remember Sanders didn’t support Clinton in the general election against Trump.” People with better memories recall that Sanders was one of the most energetic surrogates for Clinton on the campaign trail, campaigning constantly for her in battleground states (New Yorker, 11/4/16).

Marsh is right when she says that “most Democrats running don’t subscribe to Bernie Sanders’s democratic socialism,” which is why he’s seen as a unique threat to those who promote rapacious profiteering in the areas of finance, health care, education and the military. Third Way made that clear, once again, at a conference they held last week, where its co-founder Matt Bennett singled out Sanders’ vision from his opponents’: “One is a Democratic capitalist narrative…. The other is a socialist narrative,” notably omitting the “Democratic” descriptor for the latter.

By presenting her sources as objective authorities, instead of paid lobbyists and austerity ideologues, Ember both conceals and advances their agenda, undermining the integrity of the Fourth Estate, our democracy, and one of the most popular politicians.

The Progressive Policy Institute Sounds Like A Good Organization, Right? Don’t Get Fooled Again… This Is Biden Progressivism Not The Kind Bernie Or Elizabeth Warren Supports

The DeSmog blog endeavors “to clear the p.r. pollution that clouds climate science” and last week they worked on clearing it about the grotesquely misnamed Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), an operation currently supporting the fossil fools’ pushback against environmental lawsuits. Phil Goldberg is a former lobbyist for coal giant Peabody Energy. Today he’s running that PPI pushback. (Keep in mind Biden’s second rule of governance— lobbyists aren’t bad people and government officials who accept their legalistic bribes aren’t bad people— and keep in mind that most of Biden’s family are lobbyists trading on his name for decades. Biden’s first rule that if you work with racists, you can pass some racist legislation.)

The PPI— founded in 1989 by the DLC— has always been part of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party and was known as Bill Clinon’s “ideas mill.” Best known for his hawkish agenda on Iraq, conservative Lieberman crony Will Marshall— a founder of the Wall Street owned and operated New Dems— runs it. It is an arm of Third Way and has been funded by Chevron, British Petroleum, the Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation, AT&T, Eli Lilly & Company, Prudential, Ameritech, Georgia-Pacific and Eastman Kodak. People associated with the PPI include Biden, Lieberman, Mary Landrieu, Evan Bayh, both Clintons, Harold Ford Jr., Blanche Lincoln, nearly every conservative Democratic politician from Delaware, Ron Kind, Al From, Dick Gephardt, Jim Moran, etc.

As part of a growing trend of lawsuits over climate change impacts, cities and states across the U.S. are seeking damages from oil, gas, and coal companies whose products drive the crisis and which for years evidently engaged in disinformation and denial campaigns to stall climate action.

Now the fossil fuel industry is pushing back, taking a page out of Big Tobacco’s playbook to rein in that liability litigation, and getting help from an unexpected source.

Behind the scenes, politically affiliated groups are quietly providing support. One of the outfits promoting the efforts to counter the slew of climate lawsuits is none other than the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), a center-left Washington, D.C.-based think tank with links to the Democratic party.

Phil Goldberg, PPI’s director of its Center for Civil Justice, is leading the charge.

For over a year, PPI’s website has been showcasing Goldberg’s work attacking climate litigation, which he calls “copycat climate suits.” Goldberg is a former lobbyist for coal giant Peabody Energy, which his law firm still represents.

And while Goldberg’s bio on PPI’s website lists him as a partner in the corporate law firm Shook, Hardy & Bacon, there’s no mention of his hiring earlier this year by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) to serve as special counsel in its fight against climate litigation. NAM’s Manufacturers’ Accountability Project, which it launched in 2017, targets climate lawsuits against the manufacturing industry’s energy sector.

NAM’s members, many of which are facing litigation, include such fossil fuel powerhouses as ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Koch Industries, Phillips 66, Southern Company, Continental Resources, Marathon Petroleum, Dominion, Energy Transfer, and Devon Energy.

The states of New York and Massachusetts, as well as the U.S. Virgin Islands, have taken legal action against ExxonMobil, while a number of cities and counties across the country have filed a lawsuit against over thirty companies, including other NAM members ConocoPhillips, Phillips 66, Marathon Oil, and Devon Energy.

PPI’s website also does not disclose Goldberg’s recent work for Grow America’s Infrastructure Now (GAIN), a front group funded by several oil and gas trade associations. In a report for GAIN titled “Vigilante Regulation,” Goldberg, along with two other Shook, Hardy & Bacon attorneys, detail how tort law can be employed to stem what the authors call “anti-pipeline activism.”

“It’s just plain freaky that a hired gun for the fossil fuel industry would pretend to be neutral or, shockingly, even perhaps ‘progressive’ under the guise of PPI, which has a good reputation as a think tank,” said Denise Antolini, an associate dean at the University of Hawai’i-Manoa’s School of Law. “I guess the ‘tank’ is stronger than the ‘think’ with PPI’s embrace of Mr. Goldberg’s advocacy for big oil.”

Antolini, an expert in environmental law who supports climate litigation, recently found herself in a row with Goldberg, who last month emailed the academic with what she described as a “surprising” request she’s never received in her 23-year career. Goldberg asked Antolini to postpone a panel discussion in a conference on climate litigation she was scheduled to host and moderate that same day at the University of Hawai’i. His reasoning? The lack of opposing voices to climate litigation on the panel.

Then, after the pair sparred in two op-eds published in the Hawaiian press, Antolini, in a formal letter to Goldberg, rebuffed the lawyer’s request, which she called an attempt to “disrupt a public event.”

Criticizing Goldberg’s characterization of climate litigation as “controversial,” Antolini wrote: “It’s understandable that your client would take this position but that does not mean the lawsuits, brought by governments on behalf of injured communities, are ‘controversial.’”

Shook, Hardy & Bacon has a long history of working for industries that have been subject to controversy.

Goldberg previously served as an adviser to the Civil Justice Task Force of the “corporate bill mill,” the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), where he published reports against state-led climate lawsuits in the group’s publication Inside ALEC.

ALEC, which works secretively with legislators to produce model legislation on behalf of its corporate sponsors, has a history of climate change denial and funding from fossil fuel interests and the Koch brothers’ foundations.

Goldberg’s colleague at Shook, Hardy & Bacon, attorney Mark Behrens, currently chairs ALEC’s Civil Justice Task Force. Another lawyer at the firm, Victor Schwartz, previously chaired the task force and is currently a member of ALEC’s board of scholars.

After going to bat for decades for Big Tobacco, Shook, Hardy & Bacon is now a leading defender of the asbestos industry, whose product causes a type of cancer known as mesothelioma.

Goldberg did not respond to several requests for comment.

Growing out of the now-defunct Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), PPI is one facet in the Democratic Party wing that promotes “Third Way” free market, corporate-friendly policies to balance the party’s more leftist tendencies. Former President Bill Clinton previously chaired the DLC.

PPI’s website, which greets its visitors with the banner “radically pragmatic,” does not publicize its funding sources. But the group’s funding seems to come at least in part through its parent organization, the Third Way Foundation, whose tax forms states it is “doing business as the Progressive Policy Institute.”

In 2015 the Third Way Foundation received funding from the American Gas Association. The group receives other corporate funds, including from the pharmaceutical industry.

Evidently, oil and gas companies have for years donated to nonprofit institutions to further their own interests.

As DeSmog contributor Sharon Kelly recently revealed in an investigation for The Guardian, oil giant Mobil used its charitable giving to promote its interests through a range of universities, civic groups, and arts programs. She reported that a top Mobil official said: “I don’t know whether corporate philanthropy as I’ve sort of defined it, which is just to get a warm feeling, ever existed. But if it did, I’d have to say that it’s a dying concept in terms of corporate giving.” That was during a talk in 1987.

Third Way’s funding might, at least in part, explain why PPI supports fracking and the boom in building natural gas pipelines and other infrastructure.

A PPI spokesperson did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story.

PPI and others’ pushback against climate litigation will only intensify, predicts Robert Brulle, a sociology professor at Drexel University, who studies environmental movements and climate science disinformation campaigns.

“As these cases move toward discovery and eventual trial, the architects of the campaign to obstruct climate action, such as the National Association of Manufacturers, are gearing up for a long battle in the courts,” he said.

Brulle, who, along with other academics, filed a brief detailing what major fossil fuel companies knew historically about climate change as part of the ongoing litigation, thinks the industry has good reason to be concerned.

“The evidence of deliberate obstruction and promulgation of misinformation to preserve corporate profits is strong, and these energy companies and trade associations know it,” he said. “Not surprising to see them lawyering up.”

Today we're doing a fundraising effort for Eva Putzova, who is running for the Democratic nomination for Congress in Arizona's 1st district. Her opponent is Blue Dog, "ex"-Republican Tom O'Halleran, a PPI kind of politician. When we ask for contributions for Eva and other progressive leaders like her... well, this post helps explain why. Not all Democratic Party members of Congress support efforts to address the climate crisis. Eva Putzova does. Tom O'Halleran doesn't. Please consider contributing what you can to Eva's campaign by clicking on the Blue America 2020 Primary A Blue Dog thermometer on the right. Are Blue Dogs and New Dems as bad as Republicans. No... but if you would like to save the planet from Climate Change, the differences seem pretty negligible.

Third Way Failed The Test-- Again... Third Way Always Fails The Test

I admit I hadn't heard about David Doel's show, the Rational National before. But here are two from consecutive days last week-- one up top and one at the bottom-- and he's talking about the same thing we were on those same days-- attacks on Bernie by the Wall Street Democrats, the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. I went so far as to list-- in the Meet The Scumbags section of this post-- the members of the Third Way Board of Directors and their Wall Street origins. They're the ones running the Bernie smear campaign-- and he hasn't even declared he's running yet-- in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. As Bernie pointed out in his e-mail to supporters on Thursday, these crooked conservative banksters-- defenders of the status quo-- not only want to defeat him, "they want to make sure that the progressive agenda is not advanced by anyone... Our agenda terrifies the political and financial establishment of this country."

Ironically, the crooks at Third Way say that "Bernie failed the test" in 2016 and now they need to put someone up who can beat Trump. I say ironically because it was the Third Way candidate, Hillary Clinton, who ran and failed, not Bernie, who many people feel was cheated out of the nomination by Debbie Wasserman Schultz and other party bosses who rigged the primary against him. One of the Third Way crooks told the media that "By far the most important question that Democrats should be asking is which candidate and which set of ideas has the best chance of beating Trump. The midterms proved conclusively that the Sanders ideas fail that test." That isn't what the midterms proved at all. Even relatively conservative Democrats were running on Bernie's ideas, especially Medicare for All, which is overwhelmingly supported by Democrats and independents and even by 52% of Republicans!

If the Third Way crooks, and their puppets among the Blue Dogs and New Dems, think the Democratic Party is going to embrace their candidate again-- this time either Bloomberg, Gillibrand, Biden or Beto-- they must be high. Let me recommend Nicole Goodkind's piece-- also from last week-- in Newsweek: Bernie Sanders Will Face Donald Trump in 2020 Election, Democrats Say. This one is about party pros, based on a survey The Hill conducted. They rank Bernie #1, followed by Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Sherrod Brown and Deval Patrick (who isn't running and is barely known outside of Massachusetts).

“His people have never gone away,” Democratic strategist Brad Bannon told The Hill. “And he has a loyal core following out there that will be with him come hell or high water.” Sanders is the most popular politician in America, with an approval rating of 75 percent, according to a recent Harvard-Harris poll.

The dumbest comment of the pros came from Phil Singer, who runs a third rate p.r./lobbying firm, Marathon Strategies, and was Hillary's press secretary in her stupendously failed 2008 primary run against Obama. His company mostly does greasy corporate pr and his top clients are Delta, IBM, Barnes & Noble, Chuck Schumer, Tesla, Bloomberg's anti-gun PAC, a low-end sandwich chain and a charter school outfit. He says the Democrats have a "weak field"-- and in the stupidest possible analogy only an out-of-touch old white man would make: "You have a bunch of Celine Dions but there’s no Beatles."

The Attacks Against Bernie And His Ideas Have Begun-- Not That They Ever Ended

I would be very happy seeing a President Elizabeth Warren or a President Jeff Merkley. I've spoken with both from early in their national political careers and I have no doubt whatsoever either would be an extraordinary president. Blue America has raised money for both of their Senate campaigns and if either is the Democratic nominee for president, the campaign would be Blue America's top priority for 2020. If Bernie doesn't run, I would happily support either in the primary.

For their NY Times piece yesterday, For Bernie Sanders, Holding Onto Support May Be Hard In A 2020 Bid, Jonathan Martin and Sydney Ember spoke to a gaggle of Democratic Party political operatives who were paid to work for Bernie in 2016. They don't like to think of themselves this way, but most of the names I read in the piece are hired guns who work for the highest bidder-- within certain constraints. I doubt any of them would work for Trump. I don't doubt most of them would work for almost any non-Blue Dog who was paying them well-- and some might work for a Blue Dog. I doubt either Martin or Ember knows that or understands it-- and that idea is alien to the mildly anti-Bernie narrative they were busy developing anyway. "Some of his top congressional supporters won’t commit to backing him if he runs for president again-- and two may join the 2020 race themselves." Fair enough... but Bernie hasn't hasn't decided if he will run or not. Perhaps they should ask the two-- Jeff Merkley and Tulsi Gabbard-- whether or not they would run if Bernie does. When the two reporters write that "a handful of former aides might work for other candidates," they should wonder if any of these staffers have been offered jobs in Bernie's nascent 2020 campaign. I haven't heard of anyone turning those jobs down, although I have heard some bitterness from the second raters who haven't been asked back. And, as for Bernie’s "initial standing in Iowa polls is well below the 49.6 percent he captured in nearly defeating Hillary Clinton there in 2016," there aren't just two or three candidates; there are twenty. Eventually there will probably be two-- a corporate status quo type like Biden, Hickenlooper, McAuliffe, Castro, Bloomberg or Klobuchar and a progressive, either Bernie or another actual progressive like Merkley or Warren or someone trying to pass himself or herself off as one, say a Gillibrand or Booker. There are also a load of candidates who haven't decided what they are yet, like Beto, Sherrod Brown, Kamala Harris...

They generously acknowledge that Bernie was "the runner-up in the last Democratic primary," but then pull some really insane crap out of their asses: "instead of expanding his nucleus of support, in the fashion of most repeat candidates, the Vermont senator is struggling to retain even what he garnered two years ago." He's not struggling and, more importantly, he been building a far more diverse following, especially among minorities who largely backed Clinton in 2016 and have come around towards Bernie in a very big way since-- although you might not know that by following main stream media (MSM) reports like these two.

“It’s not a given that I’m going to support Bernie just because I did before,” said Lucy Flores, a former Nevada assemblywoman who previously endorsed Mr. Sanders. “There are going to be plenty of people to look at and to listen to. I’m currently open at this point, and I think the majority of people are.”

OK, if she decides not to-- a big "if"-- that's one less vote Bernie will get. One. "There would also be candidates," they write, "who are newer to the national political scene than Mr. Sanders, offering fresh energy-- something many in the party prefer-- as well as those who echo his message about economic justice and the corrosive effects of money in politics." Perhaps... or not. It's a little early to say and different polls say different things-- like Bernie is the most popular political figure in the country for example. Dishonest MSM journalists can pick the poll that fits their narrative.

“Ironically, Bernie’s agenda for working families will be the Democratic Party’s message in 2020, but he may not be the one leading the parade,” said Bill Press, a progressive talk show host who was an early backer of Mr. Sanders in 2016.

Mr. Press said he thinks a candidate like Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio could carry the same populist message. “What I hear from a lot of friends is that a younger Bernie is what we need,” he said.

Sherrod Brown? The same guy who announced a few weeks ago, when he was scared he might lose his reelection bid-- that he doesn't believe in breaking up the too-big-to-fail banks any longer (because "no one" cares about that any longer.) That Sherrod Brown. Yeah, I remember him; he does really disgusting and stupid things during elections. The first Senate race featured him backing Bush's torture bill-- the only House progressive to do so-- and then apologizing after he won and promising to never do anything like that again. What a shit-bag candidate for president he'd make

Wait! Wait!. The 2 MSM guys have another concession before they continue undermining Bernie: "There is no doubt that Mr. Sanders, 77, would be one of the most formidable contenders if he does run. No other potential candidate would start with the foundation of a 50-state organization, a small-dollar fund-raising list that delivered $230 million and undying devotion from a core group of backers. His advisers note that these advantages could prove crucial in a splintered field when only a plurality may be needed to prevail at the end of a long race."

But... but... but... what about conservative Democrats and corporate Democrats? That isn't what Bernie is looking for. He's looking for Democrats, independents and Republicans who are sick and tired of being lied to and fleeced by the establishment-- political, financial and media.

Mark Longabaugh, one of Mr. Sanders’s top strategists, said he had no expectation of winning over the more cautious factions of the Democratic Party.

“Insurgent candidates never come back and become the establishment favorite,” said Mr. Longabaugh, noting that Gary Hart, after shocking the political world with his success in 1984, nevertheless had plenty of company when he ran again in 1988.

And some of Mr. Sanders’s most dedicated devotees are already moving to resurrect his organization.

“We have an opportunity to start organizing, and missing out on this moment is not an option,” Spencer Carnes, a leader of the volunteer “Organizing for Bernie” group, wrote in an email promoting the group’s first volunteer organizing call last week.

Melissa Byrne, who did digital and get-out-the-vote work for Mr. Sanders in 2016, said she’s eager to work for him again and noted, “We’re all more experienced and battle-tested.”

...The senator’s views on issues like universal health care and his willingness to shun corporate contributions have increasingly become not only part of the Democratic mainstream but also litmus tests within the party.

...Mr. Sanders does still enjoy some bedrock support in states like Iowa and New Hampshire. Unlike some of his lesser-known rivals, his unwavering base of progressives will guarantee him a floor of support should he enter the race.

But the first surveys of Iowa caucus-goers indicate he has lost some of his less-ardent backers. He is polling in the teens there even though he has universal name recognition and won nearly half the state’s vote in the Democratic caucuses in 2016. And while he is in second place at the moment, he is closer to Mr. O’Rourke, who was virtually unknown outside Texas until this year, than he is to the early front-runner, former Vice-President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Of course, Mr. Biden may not run, leaving even more votes up for grabs. But other likely candidates will work just as aggressively to step into that vacuum. And this surfeit of contenders may keep some institutional pillars of the left on the sidelines.

Then there's the chance that voters who don't know anything about Biden other than that he was Obama's VP will start learning about his repulsive corporatist record for even more years than Bernie's progressive record. After all, Biden's first Brush with political fame was as a poster-boy for segregation, an ardent fighter against racial integration. I bet most of the Democratic base doesn't know that. And how many people have seen the videos of him going after Anita Hill. And how many have looked at his record as the most banister-friendly Democrat in the party? Biden is more than the friendly gaffe-machine from the Obama administration-- much more. And, yes, "organized labor, for example, is unlikely to rally around Mr. Sanders should another populist like Mr. Brown enter the race, according to multiple union officials." Did they last time? Or did most of organized labor rally around the status quo candidate? The establishment is the establishment is the establishment. And those who benefit from the status quo will do all they can to deny agents of real change, like Bernie.

Speaking of whom... did you get this note from him today? "Whenever I am asked about running for president in 2020," he wrote, "I answer that if I am the best candidate to beat Donald Trump, then I will probably run. That is the truth." That's what those close to him tell me and it's what he tells them as well-- the real Bernie supporters and staffers that our two MSM hacks didn't bother interviewing. But, he wrote...

If that happens, the political, financial and media elite of this country will stop at nothing to defeat us. You know that. We’ve lived through it together once before. Our ideas terrify them. So what they will do is try to divide us up with attacks-- some old, some new-- and our political opponents will spend obscene sums of money on ads to defeat us.

I just did not expect the attack ads to begin before I even made a decision. But they have…

Right now, a group of Wall Street Democrats known as the Third Way is running ads in early primary states-- Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada-- calling me out by name and saying our ideas, like Medicare for all, are a path to defeat in 2020.

They not only want to discourage or defeat a Sanders candidacy, they want to make sure that the progressive agenda is not advanced by anyone. They want us to go back to their failed corporate approach which has led to a massive level of income and wealth inequality, a bloated military budget and a failure to address the crises of climate change, a broken criminal justice system and inhumane immigration policies.

...Our agenda terrifies the political and financial establishment of this country.

But the truth is, their agenda should terrify all of us.

Our ideas will lift people out of poverty, they will guarantee health care as a right for every man, woman and child, and they will make certain that every person in this country with the ability and the desire can get the education they need, regardless of the income of their family.

Ours is not a radical agenda. It's the agenda the American people want.

Their agenda, paid for by wealthy campaign contributors, has led to record levels of inequality, a health care system that costs more per capita than any other developed nation while leaving millions uninsured and underinsured, and grotesque amounts of student debt that rob many of our young people of their futures.

Theirs is the agenda that made Donald Trump possible. Ours is the agenda that will defeat him. Want to chip in for Bernie's campaign? That's what the thermometer on the right is for. If you dion't want to commit to $1,000 or even $100 until after he officially declares, how about $5 or $10 now to show him you're still with him?

Because I mentioned this on Nicole Sandler's radio show yesterday, people have been asking me who's behind the smear efforts against Bernie in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. This is the board of directors of Third Way, basically a cabal of banksters and one of the most destructive forces from inside the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. Meet the scumbags:

• John L. Vogelstein, Chairman- Chairman of New Providence Asset Management, LLC and Senior Advisor to Warburg Pincus, LLC.

• Jonathan Cowan, President- Andrew Cuomo's ex-Chief of Staff

• David Heller, Vice Chairman- formerly the Global Head of Equity Trading for Goldman Sachs

• Bernard L. Schwartz, Chairman Emeritus- former Chairman of the Board and CEO of Loral Space and Communications Inc., now the Chairman and CEO of BLS Investments, LLC.

• William D. Budinger- founder and former chairman and CEO of Rodel, Inc.

• David A. Coulter- Managing Director and Senior Advisor at Warburg Pincus, formerly chairman of J.P. Morgan & Chase Co.

• Lewis Cullman- engineered the very first leveraged buyout (LBO) — with $1,000 cash, he and a friend bought Orkin Exterminating Company for $62.4 million.

• William Daley- Prior to being appointed Chief of Staff by Obama, he was Vice Chairman and Chairman of the Midwest for JPMorgan Chase

• Robert Dyson- Chairman and CEO of the Dyson-Kissner-Moran Corp, an investment firm

• Michael Edwards- a partner at Arrowgrass Capital Partners

• Andrew Feldstein- CEO and Co-CIO of BlueMountain Capital Management

• Brian Frank- funder and Managing Partner of Declaration Partners LP, an investment firm. Previously, he was a Partner and Portfolio Manager at MSD Capital, the private investment firm founded by Michael Dell.

• David Greenwald- chairman of Fried Frank since 2013. Before that he was the international general counsel of Goldman Sachs.

• David Horvitz- Chairman and CEO of SouthOcean Capital Partners, LLC and SouthOcean Investment Partners, LLC.

• Peter A. Joseph- Chairman of Trenton Fuel Works LLC, previously a private equity bankster

• Derek Kaufman- Head of Global Fixed Income at Citadel, previously a Managing Director at JPMorgan Chase

• Derek Kirkland- Managing Director and Co-Head of the Global Financial Institutions Group at Morgan Stanley’s Financial Institutions Group in Investment Banking.

• Daniel R. Lewis- former insurance executive for Progressive Insurance and former real estate developer

• Thurgood Marshall, Jr.- partner and lobbyist for Bingham McCutchen LLP and a principal of Bingham Consulting Group

• Susan McCue- Lobbyist, Harry Reid's former Chief of Staff

• Rachel Pritzker- a Pritzker

• William Reeves- co-founder of BlueCrest Capital Management Ltd., former managing director of JP Morgan

• Marc Spilker- Founding Member of GPS Investment Partners LLC and chair of Chiron Investment Management LLC., previously co-head of at Goldman's Investment Management Division

• Ted Trimpa- lobbyist and head of Trimpa Group, LLC

• Barbara Manfrey Vogelstein- venture capitalist and "someone's" wife

• Joseph Zimlich- CEO of Bohemian Companies, family-owned real estate and private equity holdings

Children In Cages

Reporting for The Hill the week, JulieGrace Brufke-- whose byline I've never seen before so maybe she's new and about to learn something valuable-- made a grievous error in the opening two words of an important story, Democrats in swing districts advised to avoid talking about immigration. The error she made-- common inside the Beltway where people don't know shit from shinola-- was in referring to Third Way, the far right of the Democratic Party and the far right of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party that works assiduously against progressives and progressive ideas, as "left-leaning." How about "right-leaning," a far more accurate description of the Wall Street-funded group? That said, let's take a look at what JulieGrace was reporting.

Basically the Republican wing of the Democratic Party avoids an issue that resonates with millions of actual Democrats: Trump's inhumane, racist, xenophobic immigration agenda. Doug Pagitt, the pastor and executive director of Vote Common Good in the video up top, just reminded me that "One of Jesus most famous quotes from Matthew 19 is 'what God has brought together no one should ever separate.'" Keeping families together goes beyond politics for tens of millions of American families. But when it does come to politics, Alan Grayson reminded me of something else, something darker: "The Democrats in charge," he warned me yesterday, "want other Democrats to run not as Democrats, but rather as not-Republicans. To do that, however, you have to be able to explain why you are not a Republican. And now our party leaders don’t want that, either. The issue-phobia that afflicts the party is now chronic, pervasive, and possibly fatal."

ICE, ICE by Nancy Ohanian

Melissa Byrne, a progressive organizer and strategist, is an old friend. She was incensed by the Third Way memo to candidates. She told me that "Third Way has a record of losing and being beholden to the Wall Streeters. They shouldn't be invited to anything within the Democratic sphere. We don't need them. We don't want them. Bravery wins and throwing immigrants under the bus is how we lose morally and at the ballot box. Shame on the Third Way." Another old friend, Murshed Zaheed, was no less incensed: "Folks in the establishment are perfectly comfortable with status quo and maintaining their little fiefdoms within the current parameters of white supremacy. Sorry, I am done being polite on this stuff after seeing what Schumer and the Congressional Democratic leadership has done the last few years... There are Democrats working pretty hard at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory... Notice that Third Way's VP of Policy [co-founder Jim Kessler] was formerly Schumer's legislative director. These people will stumble over themselves for good photo ops-- and show up at 'marches'-- but when it comes times for action-- they show their true colors."

The kinds of Democraps the Third Way memo appeals to are Blue Dogs like former CIA spy Abigail Spanberger who's running against immigration-hardliner and extremist arch-villain Dave Brat (R-VA). Spanberger is an Eisenhower-era Republican-- maybe slightly to the right of that, not an actual Democrat. She put out an ad distancing herself from the progressives and from mainstream Democratic Party ideas. She has fully embraced the DCCC's one strategy: "sure we suck but we don't suck as bad as the Republicans. WE ARE THE LESSER EVIL, so you suck that up, bitches!" It's why the Democrats have done nothing but lose, lose, lose for the last decade and why there is no Blue Wave, just an anti-red wave. Spanberger-- one of the most repulsive candidates the DCCC recruited this cycle-- and that is saying a lot-- referred to immigrants in her ad as "criminals" and "gangs." So how is she different from Trump and Brat? She is every bit as vile and detestable as they are... but with a "D" next to her name. Just imagine what that monster is going to be like in Congress!

Mike Lux is another old pal but you may remember him from an incredible book, The Progressive Revolution, that we covered here frequently. Before writing that, Mike worked in Nebraska and Iowa politics, and then in the Clinton White House, and has been an advisor to candidates like Elizabeth Warren. This morning I asked him about the Third Way memo. This is what he told me and said it was OK to share at DWT:

For many years, the conventional wisdom among the DC Democratic Party establishment has been to avoid tough issues in swing states and districts at all costs. That’s why Al Gore chose to never talk about gun issues in 2000, and two decades later why Democrats avoid talking about immigration and other racially charged issues in working class white areas today. The problem with this approach is that those same issues are the ones that Republicans talk about non-stop everywhere they go. The result is that their side builds the framing of the question at hand and defines the terms of the debate. So Gore lost his home state of Tennessee and the state of West Virginia, which has always gone for Democrats before that time, because the NRA said Gore would take folks’ hunting rifles away, and Gore never answered, so people assumed the NRA was right. Today, (while the same right wing drumbeat on guns is going on) Trump says immigrants are rapists and killers, coming to steal our jobs. If we fail to answer, if we fail to take the argument to the voters and make our case, we will lose those blue-collar voters once again.

Watch a right-of-center Third Way asshole, a real elitist piece of crap, arguing with Bernie campaign manager Jeff Weaver. Too bad Debbie Wasserman Schultz wasn't on stage to explain how she and her team at the DNC were able to rig primary after primary for her centrist candidate. These are exactly the people who refuse to understand that by refusing to draw a strong contrast on immigration and against white supremacist policy they manage to send the message to communities of color that Democrats won’t make meaningful progress on those issues.



Now watch the one below, when they get into specific policy and somehow Steven Rattner missed this little factoid in the graphic. The Third Way, No Labels and so-called "Problem Solvers" wolves in sheep's clothing folks from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party always do seem to, don't they? Meanwhile, today Pramila Jayapal told me she's working on the new version of the Medicare for All bill and including dental and eye care, an idea that will appeal to pretty much all normal Americans, if not Republicans and the Third Way establishment.