Indiana: Lesser Of Two Evils To The Rescue?

Joe Donnelly greets a right-wing rapist Trump wants confirmed

Thus cycle, I have very mixed emotions when it comes to writing about conservative Democrats. I am fully aware about what kind of damage they do to progressivism by relentlessly pulling the Democratic Party towards the right and usually reject less-of-two-evils politics-- the #1 organizing principle of the 21st century Democratic Party. But, this cycle... Trump. If you believe, as I do, that he really is an existential threat to our democracy, our families, our country you've got to be thinking about how to defend against him. One way-- the easiest way-- is through the ballot box. Electing even the worst Democrats-- Blue Dogs and New Dems, the whole corrupt Democrap garbage that makes up the massive and growing Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- is something that has to be seriously considered to stop Trump. Or does someone have a viable post-primary alternative?

Normally I wouldn't be cheering, for example, Tim Kaine's massive lead over neo-fascist Republican Corey Stewart in the Virginia Senate race, nor the fact that Republican Winsome Sears, an ex-Delegate just jumped into the race as a write-in candidate to give more mainstream Republicans an alternative to Stewart. Obviously. Blue America isn't about to add Tim Kaine to our 2018 Senate contributions page, but... I'm glad Kaine's going to win this one without breaking a sweat... and that Trump will probably be spending/wasting time campaigning in Virginia and turning out more Democratic voters there.

And I find myself hoping that Andrew Gillum has strong enough coattails in Florida-- where his gubernatorial campaign against neo-fascist Ron DeSantis is surging-- to pull elderly, bumbling conservative dullard Bill Nelson, who should have retired, over the finish line. Gillum has been leading DeSantis in every poll and in even poll by more than the last one. The new Reuters/Ipsos poll released yesterday shows Gillum leading DeSantis by 6 points (outside of the margin of error), while Nelson lags by one point.

All that leads to the Indiana situation. The Republican, Mike Braun, is a hopeless Trumpist. The Democrat, Joe Donnelly, is not exactly my cup of tea. He's an accidental senator who succeeded with a Hail Mary pass is 2012 when he was going to lose his House seat and decided to make a long-shot run for the Senate instead. Because of events that had virtually nothing to do with him-- the Indiana GOP imploded-- it worked and a House Blue Dog came over and became one of the Senate's most conservative Democrats, not as bad as Heidi Heitkamp or Joe Manchin... but almost. On the other hand, the Democrats can't afford to lose him if they're going to take back control of the Senate in November. The Associated Press did a report on the state of the race in Indiana yesterday, GOP frets about prospects for picking up Indiana Senate seat. It should be relatively easy-- Pence's home state, PVI of R+9 (same as Mississippi and Missouri), Trump beat Hillary 57-38%. But... Donnelly has been out-working Braun and is hardly rolling over and playing dead.

Groups that typically back GOP candidates, such as the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, are sitting on the sidelines. Braun’s recent three-stop “solutions” tour-- spread out across three days-- was ridiculed by Democrats, who pointed to Donnelly’s seven-day, 40-stop trek in August.

And while Braun, a multimillionaire businessman, took out $6.4 million in loans to fund his primary campaign, he also publicly groused about the cost. Now, with less than two months until the election, he has yet to purchase air time for October, while Donnelly has outspent him by almost double on TV and radio since June, records show.

That’s cause for concern, according to a half-dozen GOP officials, operatives and commentators familiar with the race, most of whom spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to offer candid assessments of the contest. They say Braun appears to be coasting at a time when he ought to be investing more of his own money and rallying the base.

Conservative talk radio host Rob Kendall summed up the GOP’s worries by pointing to Braun’s recent appearance with President Donald Trump at a rally in Evansville.

“He’s in front of (thousands of) people at the Ford Center and it sounds like you’re at a funeral,” said Kendall, who is a producer and has a show on Indianapolis-based WIBC radio. “I would have been like James Brown and the Blues Brothers shouting out ‘Do You See the Light’ to the congregation. And this guy, you have to check him for a pulse.”

Republicans have viewed Donnelly’s seat as a prime pickup opportunity in a state Trump won by nearly 20 points in 2016. The criticism of Braun’s performance reflects a sudden sense among the GOP that Senate contests in several states Trump carried may be tougher than expected and that control of the Republican-led chamber could be at stake-- a prospect that was unthinkable just a few weeks ago.

...While commuting back-and-forth between Indiana and Washington, Donnelly has held more than 190 campaign events since May-- more than double the number attended by Braun, who resigned from his seat in the Indiana Legislature to focus on campaigning.

Bob Grand, a GOP fundraiser and Indiana powerbroker, said Donnelly has done a “phenomenal job” campaigning, but doubted it will be enough to win in an overwhelmingly Republican state.

“He’s even featuring Donald Trump in his ads. What does that tell you?” Grand said.

Still, groups that have enthusiastically supported GOP nominees in the past are uncharacteristically absent.

In addition to the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, which opted against issuing an endorsement, the U.S. Chamber was mum over whether it will get involved. In 2016, the group spent at least $3.7 million backing GOP Sen. Todd Young in his race against Democrat Evan Bayh, a popular former Indiana governor and senator who previously worked for them.

Americans for Prosperity, the political arm of billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, interviewed Braun but decided not to directly support him. Two years ago, they launched a door-knocking and phone-bank operation that helped Young win.

On paper, Braun has everything the GOP wants: He built a national auto parts distribution company from the ground up, speaks with a subtle southern Indiana twang and is a virtual outsider to politics, despite his brief stint in the Legislature.

He also has the ability to self-fund.

During the GOP primary, Braun used his wealth, worth somewhere between $37 million and $95 million, to bury U.S. Reps. Todd Rokita and Luke Messer with more than $6.2 million worth of radio and TV spots, Federal Election Commission records show.

But Braun-- whose wife once described him to the Indianapolis Star as the “tightest guy I know”-- said after his May 8 victory that he wasn’t looking to do the same in the general election.

With November looming, his campaign only started to ramp up spending on TV ads this week. Meanwhile, Democratic groups and super PACs are set to spend $22 million, much of it ruthlessly attacking Braun’s business record.

They’ve seized on stories by the AP that revealed his companies racked up safety violations and were sued by employees for unfair treatment, including a worker kicked off health insurance days after he suffered a heart attack.

Democrats also labeled Braun a hypocrite for attacking Donnelly’s family business for outsourcing jobs to Mexico while using Chinese goods for his own brand of auto accessories.

This looks very optimistic. I wonder how Donnelly will vote on Kavanaugh, don't you?

Progressives Must Prepare for TPP-Passage; Pres. Kaine’s VP Selection; & Parties’ Realignment

-emorej a Hong Kong

Progressives need to prepare, psychologically and organizationally, for the likelihood that election day will not be the last, or even the biggest, road-fork of the next six months. Others, when progressive responses can be influential, will include the following:

• Post-Mortem debates on reforming the Presidential nomination process;
• TPP being "considered" and passed by lame-duck bribed and bullied Congress;
• Impeachment of President Hillary (TPP + ongoing leaks + recession = zero honeymoon);
• President Kaine nominating a new Vice-President (from options discussed below);
• Realignment of the present two-party dominated national electoral landscape.

After President Hillary:

• Fails to credibly distance herself from Obama passing the TPP through post-election lame-duck session of Congress; and
• Is blamed for the pain of the (hopefully gradual) recessionary end of current economic recovery;

… The Republican majority in House of Representatives will impeach Hillary because this can:

• Win support from many Trump voters and non-voters; and
• Demonstrate alignment against "illegal" or "should be illegal" cover-ups and, more broadly, against business-as-usual;

… Senate vote on impeachment will probably pass (unless Hillary resigns "for health reasons") because:

• Senators of both parties will need to distance themselves from all the above; and
• Democratic Senators will need to overcome voters’ increased awareness of alternative policies and voting strategies in light of the establishment sell-outs, media cover-ups, election rigging;

... President Kaine, in selecting a new Vice-Presidential nominee, will need to choose between alternatives like the following:

• Double-down on identity-focused Democratic Party electoral coalition-building 
by nominating a "moderate" Black (Booker) or (more likely) Latino (Castro, etc.); or
• Keep Bernie-supporters in the Democratic Party 
by nominating somebody they respect (many Senators, and perhaps Wall Street, would be happy to end Senate committee appearances by Bernie or E. Warren, and resulting videoed interrogations of bankers and other malefactors); or
• Deepen recent realignment, under a single all-in centrist ruling party, 
by nominating an establishment Republican (OH-Sen Rob Portman would probably be his first choice, followed by OH-Gov John Kasich, from a policy perspective, while Latina Female NM-Gov Susana Martinez would be an identity two-fer).

Kaine’s decision will be influenced by the narrowness of Trump’s defeat, for example:

• A big Trump loss would:
(a) Give confidence to Portman & Kasich that they can regain control of the Republican Party, and 
(b) Give confidence to Kaine that he can be re-elected in 2020 by relying on an identity-focused coalition.
• A narrow Trump loss would: 
(a) Convince Trump voters that the election was stolen from him, 
(b) Convince Bernie-supporters and Bernie-sympathizers that the Democratic establishment is not only ever-more corrupt but also ever-less electable, and
(c) Convince Portman & Kasich that they need a home such as an even-more-centrist Democratic Party.

Lame-duck mobilization of anti-TPP sentiment will make a difference:

• If TPP passage in done in the face of Progressive-organized big anti-TPP demonstrations and strikes, which then get even bigger, then Kaine would probably regard a VP-nomination like Bernie or E.Warren as a small price to pay in order to restore calm.
• The rage of White tribalists supporting Trump will find outlets. The less of it that can be channeled into anti-TPP activism, the more of it will flow into racist sentiment and activities.

Trade Deal Update — TTIP Starting To Die; TTP Still Possible, Perhaps Likely, in Lame Duck Session

These are your Democratic Party Fast Track villains in the Senate, at least the visible ones. (Notice VP nominee Tim Kaine in the group, and Patty Murray, whose leadership star is rising.) If the part of the universe that loves actual people were just, each of them would be applying for work on K Street for their sins.

by Gaius Publius

While the big U.S–European Union trade deal (TTIP) is starting to die, the U.S.–Asian trade deal (TTP) still looks likely to get a vote in the lame duck Congress at the end of this year. TTIP first, then TPP.

France Calls for End of TTIP Talks

France has joined a growing list of EU nations increasingly dissatisfied by the heavy balance of TTIP benefits to the U.S. One French trade minister said the treaty contains "nothing but crumbs" for France and cites growing popular dissatisfaction with the proposed deal.

So France wants out. John Queally, writing at Common Dreams:

'Another Day, Another Death Knell' for TTIP as France Calls for End of Talks

Describing ongoing negotiations as producing "nothing or just crumbs," French Junior Trade Minister Matthias Fekl says there is "no more political support in France" for the corporate-friendly deal

Though the office of the U.S Trade Representative on Monday said efforts to seal a trade deal between the U.S. and the European Union were still "making steady progress," the attempt to put an optimistic spin on the struggling negotiations was undermined once again on Tuesday as France's financial minister called for the outright suspension of talks.

Describing the ongoing negotiations with the U.S. over the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) as producing "nothing or just crumbs," French Junior Trade Minister Matthias Fekl said on Tuesday there is "no more political support in France" for the deal at this point.

"France calls for an end to these negotiations," Fekl said during an interview on RMC radio in France. He indicated there is no longer any hope that the countries involved could secure an agreement by year's end. "France would rather see things as they are and not harbor the illusion that an agreement will be struck before the end of the U.S. president's term in office."

While backers of the corporate-friendly deal, including U.S. President Barack Obama, have vowed to push ahead, its critics see the wave of public declarations by top ministers as proof their campaigning against the deal is paying off.

It seems the Europeans too are wary of the loss of state sovereignty under ISDS provisions of the treaty, as well as the way it tilts the playing field on other corporate matters.

Just a few days earlier, Germany expressed similar sentiments, saying that the treaty had "de facto failed."

"Negotiations with the U.S. have de facto failed, because of course as Europeans we couldn't allow ourselves to submit to American demands," Sigmar Gabriel told the German news station ZDF in an interview that will air at 7pm German time Sunday, according to Der Spiegel.

"Everything has stalled," Gabriel said.

What does "de facto failed" mean in practice? According to The Independent, after 14 rounds of negotiation, three of those rounds in the previous six months, none of the 27 chapters being deliberated had been agreed to.

Your bottom line — If TTIP is to pass, the next U.S. president will have to take over the negotiations. Barring a drastic change, tt looks like the current one, President Obama, has failed.

TTP Still Very Viable in This Year's Lame Duck Session

The same is not true for TPP, the Pacific agreement, which is much further along. You're probably hearing about how Paul Ryan in the House and Mitch McConnell in the Senate are saying TPP will not get a lame duck vote. According to Public Citizen's trade expert, Lori Wallach, this is just a negotiating posture by the Republicans and their corporate backers to get Obama to sweeten the pro-corporate deal even further.

In other words, don't count TPP dead until the lame duck fails to bring it up or to pass it. (And even then don't count it dead, as I see it.)

Other things to keep in mind when contemplating the fate of TPP:

• Fast Track is a one-use tool per trade agreement. If Obama tries to force a vote this year, and that vote fails, Fast Track rules no long apply to TPP. So the stakes are high.

• Corporate donors to both parties, including the Republican Party, are desperate for TPP to pass. In Wallach's estimation (and mine), Ryan and McConnell are stalling to get Obama to make the deal even more corporate-friendly — by extending patent and IP protections, for example, which drug companies consider to be inadequate in the current agreement (meaning, those new provisions are very lucrative, but still not lucrative enough).

• Obama can't force a vote; he can only "start the Fast Track clock." The clock allows a window of 90 session-days within which a vote must be taken. But since there aren't 90 session-days left in this Congress, the Republicans, if they wish, really can block the treaty by not bringing it up for a vote and letting time run out in this Congress. (Think of it like the shot clock and the game clock in basketball. The shot clock may show 20 seconds before they team with the ball has to shoot, but if there are only 10 seconds left in the game, the shot clock is moot.)

• Obama might call the Republicans' bluff and try to force a vote anyway by starting the clock without making changes. Remember, Fast Track can only be used once per treaty. If he does this, it then becomes a question of how much of the big-money pie do über-wealthy Republican donors want to settle for — all but the last small piece, or do they want that piece as well?

• Finally, the votes may not be there this time, as Wallach explains. Still, you never know. Congressional Democrats always finds enough people on their team willing to do the dirty work so the rest of the team can pretend to be opposed (looking at you, Schumer and Pelosi). This will take constant vigilance.

Now over to Lori Wallach, who really is the tireless, go-to expert on all of these really bad trade deals and the reasons to oppose them. Writing in the Huffington Post, she says:

TPP Is Not Dead, Unfortunately

The reports of the Trans-Pacific Partnership's death have been greatly exaggerated, unfortunately.

It would great news if the pact, which would mean more power for corporations over our lives and government, and fewer good jobs for Americans, were ready to be boxed and buried.

But more urgently, if last week's news stories convince the growing transpartisan movement fighting the TPP to stand down, the prospects that the pact's powerful proponents can succeed in their plan to pass it after the election [i.e., in the lame duck session] will increase.

Last week Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said at the Kentucky Farm Bureau: "The current agreement...which has some serious flaws, will not be acted upon this year." This generated a wave of press coverage declaring that there would be no lame duck vote on the TPP....

Note that McConnell said the "current agreement" would not get a vote. A few weeks ago House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) said: "I see no point in bringing up an agreement only to defeat it...it is not ready, the president has to renegotiate some critical components of it." Immediately after McConnell's speech, a Ryan spokesman said: "As we have said for months, timing will be determined by progress on the substance - and the administration has a lot of work to do there."

Wallach's reason for Ryan and McConnell's opposition is mine as well — "progress on the substance," or sweetness, of the deal itself (my emphasis):

Those statements need to be understood for what they are: negotiating for changes to obtain even more corporate goodies - longer monopoly protections for pharmaceutical firms' high medicine prices, elimination of an exception protecting some tobacco regulations from TPP attack, and more. So far the corporate "we-want-more-or-else" tactic has pushed the White House into caving on Wall Street firms' demands to "fix" TPP rules allowing governments to limit movement of financial data across borders. Since the administration has made no parallel moves to address criticisms coming from its own party, a very bad deal is getting even worse.

About the game of "chicken" Obama is playing with the money people pulling the GOP leaders' strings:

It's also possible congressional Republicans will jump into gear to pass the deal in the lame duck session even if they do not achieve that last one percent of corporate goodies for the one percent. Thanks to Fast Track, President Obama gets to decide if the TPP vote clock is started - not the Republican leadership. It is risky, but Obama could call the GOP leaders' negotiating bluff.

Fast Track is a one use tool. Failure to pass the TPP once a president starts the clock means that Fast Track for the TPP is "used up." Knowing that corporations that fund the Republicans want the TPP, Obama could gamble that the GOP leaders would fold on their demands and start pressuring their members to vote "yes" if he submits the implementing legislation....

Because there would not be the required 90 congressional session days to force floor votes under Fast Track, the Republican congressional leaders would have to bring the TPP to a vote quickly or run out of time. (That is why Sen. Bernie Sander's statement last week, praising McConnell for announcing he would "block" the TPP was so very sly, because of course McConnell said no such thing.)

Make no mistake, though. The entire U.S. corporate universe, which finances both parties, wants this deal to pass, as do almost all of the leaders of those parties, even while, as Wallach says elsewhere in the article, congressional votes for it are starting to disappear — or starting to appear to disappear ahead of the election.

Your bottom line — TPP is very likely not dead in the lame duck session. I consider it highly likely to come up for a vote.

GP
 

"You Broke It, You Bought It": A Sanders Activist Challenges Clinton Supporters

Carbon-loving TPP proponent Ken Salazar, Clinton's new head of her transition team. Salazar's group will will recommend names to fill thousands of Executive Branch jobs in the next Clinton administration, should there be one. What do progressive Clinton supporters have to say about his ascension? Anything? Will they push back against it?

by Gaius Publius

This really matters. That Clinton is a better progressive choice than Trump is not much contested. But was Clinton the better progressive choice against Sanders? Almost no Sanders-supporting Democratic voter would say yes to that. Not on trade, not on climate, not on breaking up too-big Wall Street banks, not on criminally prosecuting (finally) "too big to jail" members of the elite — not on any number of issues that touch core progressives values.

Yes, Clinton was and will be good on some progressive issues, but the list is expected not to be Sanders-long. Progressive vs. "progressive" was, in fact, the hill on which Sanders battled Clinton. Sanders was made to lose. Clinton supporters won.

So what happens if (or when) a newly installed President Clinton "pulls an Obama" — if she starts supporting job-killing trade deals, say, and sells them as "well managed" and "a way to keep China and Russia in check"? Or institutes a large, climate-killing, fracked-methane buildout and calls it a "bridge fuel to a safe and energy-independent future"? What will Clinton supporters, those who happily helped bring down Sanders, do then? The question matters.

(About trade deals: Sanders supporters say — no, they know — that all pro-corporate trade deals are job killers, no matter the words these deals are painted with. About methane expansion: If it's a "bridge fuel," will investors be told that the methane facilities they're investing in will be torn down in ten years to make way for the fuel that methane is a bridge fuel to? If so, why not just invest in that? Or is the "bridge fuel" talk just talk?)

Becky Bond on the Challenge to Clinton Supporters

Becky Bond has a unique place in the progressive ecosystem. As former president of the activist CREDO SuperPAC, she was at the center of a great many progressive actions, including the fights to stop TPP and the Keystone pipeline. As a senior advisor to the Sanders campaign, she saw the Democratic primary battle firsthand.

Now Bond looks at what the primary has wrought, and issues this challenge to activists who helped defeat Sanders: You broke it, you bought it. Will you now take charge in the fight to hold Clinton accountable? Or will you hang back (enjoying the fruits) and let others take the lead? ("Enjoying the fruits" is my addition. As one attendee noted, the Democratic Convention this year seemed very much like "a jobs fair.")

Bond says this, writing in The Hill (my emphasis):

Progressive Clinton supporters: You broke it, you bought it

It’s time for progressives who helped Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders in the primary to take the lead on holding her accountable.

With Donald Trump tanking in the polls, there’s room for progressives to simultaneously crush his bid for the presidency while holding Hillary Clinton’s feet to the fire on the TPP.

And yet:

She’s now appointed two pro-TPP politicians to key positions on her campaign  —  Tim Kaine as her Vice President and Ken Salazar to lead her presidential transition team. It’s time for progressives who helped Clinton beat Bernie Sanders in the primary to take the lead on holding her accountable.

Progressives who supported Clinton in the primary should use their leverage to ensure Clinton makes good on her vow to stop TPP and keep other promises she made on the campaign trail to win progressive votes. Bernie supporters will have your back, but it’s up to you to lead on this one.

It’s a serious matter, and it can’t wait until after the inauguration. From the perspective of progressives who supported Bernie in the primary, this election is a shotgun wedding. We’re going to vote for Clinton because we have to, but the honeymoon ends with the appointment of Salazar.

Bond has more on Salazar and why both he and Tim Kaine are a "tell," a signal of things to come from Hillary Clinton: "The choice of Salazar is a pretty good sign that as expected we’ll be seeing the 'revolving door' in full force in a Clinton administration. As head of the transition he’ll have enormous influence on who fills thousands of jobs at the White House and federal agencies."

Will Clinton-supporting activists take up the challenge?

To Clinton Supporters: "You have a special responsibility"

For Bond, the time to act is now and the primary responsibility for supporting progressive goals belongs to those who help kill the Sanders campaign:

So to progressives who supported Clinton in the primary  —  labor advocates, environmentalists, immigration reformers, anti-war activists  —  you have a special responsibility to lead efforts to hold your candidate accountable.

Yes, to "lead" efforts. But will they? That's the challenge. The response to that challenge will also be a test and a "tell," a sign of who Clinton activists actually are. Many will pass the test easily (I can name quite a few right now), but many will likely not.

The Split Among Democratic Activists

The "Becky Bond Rule" says progressives in the Clinton camp must be first in line to fix what Clinton does wrong, to aggressively and proactively lead the pushback. That seems only right. Yet there's a problem with this rule.

The problem: Applying this rule aggressively will expose those on the Clinton side who are really just centrists after all — or worse, just job-seekers — with only a few progressive positions. The dynamic within the "progressive" community was always complex (and pretty patched over), and will only become more so, more complex for sure, and maybe more patched over.

During the primary, a great many "progressives" got unmasked as mainly centrists (after all, Clinton allies held one of their big pre-Benghazi Committee strategy session in Third Way HQ). The reaction to Clinton activists by Sanders activists then, and the reaction going forward, was and will be the stuff of drama, or at least of daytime TV.

And this doesn't begin to touch the issues around war.

I predict a lot of "hanging back" from the Clinton-supporting camp — after all, no one butters their bread on both sides, the Clinton side and the anti-Clinton side, and the butter on the Clinton side is alluring. Thus it's easy to predict a lot of angst from Sanders activists about how much calling out to do. The Becky Bond Rule — "You broke it, you bought it" — is a challenge to take responsibility. Note that it implies wrong-doing ("you broke it"). A real gauntlet throw-down on matters of urgent and critical importance.

The progressive-"progressive" split is as real as it always was, and it's not going away. The next few years of activist interaction, especially among electoral and Party activists, will be revealing, especially when the real action, as I'll explain later, moves out of the electoral arena. If I'm right about that, the loss of the orderly electoral arena as a place to make large changes could also be laid to Clinton's ascendancy as well, and thus, to her supporters.

"You broke it, you bought it" is the right thing to say. But will Clinton's activist base own what they did when they need to? We're about to find out.

GP
 

Here Comes President Hillary

At the convention in Philly, Truthdig founder and editor Robert Scheer ran into Thomas Frank, whose latest book, Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened To The Party Of The People? is a must-read for all progressives and, hopefully, for some Democrats who aren't already too far gone. Frank admitted Democrats aren't paying the book any serious attention.. His critique-- "that what we have today is a liberalism of the rich... of the professional classes, these sort of affluent people who have developed a whole kind of pseudo-Marxist theory of why they’re affluent and why they deserve to be affluent, and why those who, you know, their former supporters in the working class don’t deserve to be affluent." He despairs that this new rationale behind the New Democratic Party "is a really ugly ideology, but it’s not something that they are prepared to change their tune on."

He analyzes Hillary's career in one chapter, even if he feels she's incapable of change. The New Dem wing types, the corporate Dems, don't want to hear "unconstructive" criticism of her and she really believes that folks who run the financial institutions in New York have a mission civilisatrice and those Wall Street banks "are in fact run by fine, upstanding individuals who are opening up the doors of possibility for the poor people of the world, or something like this. She really believes in what they’re doing. Democrats [from the Hillary wing of the party, which is obviously ascendent now] look at Wall Street and they see people like themselves. It’s not that they’re bribed to like these guys; it’s that they have an ideological kinship with them.

He didn't expect Bernie to make the case at the convention that the Clintons aren't to be trusted-- but he would have loved it. "When you want to talk about inequality, you want to talk about what’s gone wrong in this country, the sinking of the middle class-- everything that’s gone wrong, and I would include in my bill of complaints, my bill of grievances, the rise of Donald Trump-- all of these things are attributable to the Democrats’ abandonment of their traditional constituency and their traditional sort of Rooseveltian identity.

Hillary is a perfect example—a perfect specimen—of the kind of Democratic politics that I’m talking about. Very oriented towards the professional class; she really believes—I mean, how many times did you hear that word “innovation” from the podium yesterday? You know, people talking about education as the solution to every economic problem. This really is her ideology. She is a true believer in neoliberalism. It’s not an afterthought, it’s not something that she did in order to win the affection of the money men. This is who she is. And it’s who her husband is. And you know, I think that the Democrats have to deal with this, and I think it’s especially important in this year, because in some ways their abandonment of blue-collar people, or I should say the white working class specifically, is this really has allowed Trump to do what he’s done. This is what has made his success possible.

So I was just in the Republican convention in Cleveland. And the man, you know, is this kind of monster in many, many, many ways, but there’s this one issue where he has got, he is reaching out to working-class voters and he’s doing it really effectively. And this is trade. And he talks about it constantly. And he’s very ham-handed, and he doesn’t have a plan, but he talks about it in a way that is convincing to a lot of these people. And here’s Hillary-- and by the way, this is the perfect, I was saying just this morning—Hillary Clinton is the only Democrat that Donald Trump could possibly beat, and vice-versa. Right? Donald Trump is the only Republican that Hillary Clinton could possibly beat; they’re both, two of the least popular politicians ever to run for this office. But had it been any other Republican, Hillary would be in big trouble; had it been any other Democrat, i.e. Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump would be in enormous trouble. But when he goes against these trade deals, he’s always talking about NAFTA. And this is-- look, again, his party is largely responsible for free trade and for all of this stuff, for the free market theory and the reign of globalization. That’s his guys that did that. But NAFTA, and a couple of the other ones, he can blame on the Clintons. And Trans-Pacific Partnership, he can blame on Obama. And this is very, very, very effective. And Hillary Clinton is possibly the one candidate where this sort of thing would work.

...[W]hen I mentioned that Trump has this one issue where he is talking a good game, this makes people really mad, because they want to believe that he is, that he has this dark, diabolical, sort of Svengali power. And I’m saying to them, no; this is something unfamiliar, this is something new; this is not Marco Rubio, or if Ted Cruz had been the nominee. This is something different, this is a new beast. And I don’t think he’s a fascist, but it’s not a bad comparison, because the fascists had—you know, they also built the Autobahn. And they also, you know, had this enormous public works program. And they also did all these things that was kind of like, you know, there was a reason that they were sort of popular.

[T]he vast majority of people in this country still haven’t recovered from that recession that was brought about by those toxic derivatives. And the derivatives were explicitly deregulated by Bill Clinton. But it goes on and on and on-- it’s like NAFTA, it’s-- when I was listening to the speeches yesterday, it was like they’re promising, they’re running on a promise to reverse all the things that Hillary Clinton did the first time around, or that her husband did, I should say. But the crime bill of 1994, they’re going to, oh, they’re going to reverse mass incarceration-- it’s like, well, why didn’t you just not do it in the first place? You know, they’re going to fix the global economy-- well, why didn’t you just not fuck it up in the first place, you know? On and on and on, down the list. And you know, the trade deals-- we’re going to stop these terrible, these trade deals have been so bad for working people. It’s like, well, why did you sign off on them? Why do you go to Davos every year? Why is your sitting president, representative of your party, trying to get one passed right now? In the Democratic platform, there’s a big thing about the revolving door, where they’re really against the revolving door—do you know who the secretary of the Treasury is right now? Right now! It’s Jack Lew! Came from Citibank, where he oversaw their hedge fund division. You know? And then he’s in charge of the department that’s bailing out Citibank, because their hedge fund division that he managed dragged them down! This is insane! And he was put there by a Democrat. A Democrat who’s going to come here and give a speech on Thursday. This is-- yes, you’re exactly right. There’s enormous cognitive dissonance for these people, but they wipe it away, like so many-- I mean, there are so many examples of this, the way they think about Trump, the way they think about the working class, the way they think about NAFTA. It’s all this guilty stuff, they can’t deal with it, there’s something psychological going on. But this is the biggest. You know, they can’t deal with the legacy of the sitting president and the legacy of Hillary’s own husband. And they can’t talk about it in a straightforward way.

...[T]hings are going to get worse. Four more years of this? So Obama-- I voted for Obama with enthusiasm in 2008; I was excited, I thought he was my generation’s Franklin Roosevelt, I thought this was, we’d come to the turning point. And then he continued the policies of the Bush administration on the banks, on a lot of essential issues, and things got, for working people, things have gotten worse and worse and worse. Wages still don’t grow; the share of what we produce here in America is less than, is smaller than it’s ever been before, the labor share, what the economists call the labor share of GDP. Smaller than it’s ever been since World War II. This is under Obama, the most liberal, we’re always told, the most liberal possible president. Look, of course it’s going to continue with Hillary as president; nothing is going to change. This is going to get worse and worse and worse. You’re going to continue to see the recovery or whatever, all the gains, all the economic gains going into the banking accounts of the top 10 percent or so. The Dow might continue to go up, but who benefits from that? It’s the people at the top, of course. Four years of this, inequality’s going to continue. That’s always what it comes back to, is that word “inequality.” And that’s going to get worse. The Appalachification is going to keep going. And four years from now, you’re going to have another Trump. And a Trump who’s not a fool, a Trump who’s not an imbecile, who’s not a buffoon, who’s not an open racist, is a Trump that can win. Hell, this Trump might win [laughs] if the Democrats blunder into his hands, which they are presently doing. We’ll talk about that some other time. But a Trump minus all of these sort of features of Trump would actually be successful. Now, you could also have another Bernie in four years, and another Bernie, someone who plays the game slightly differently, could also be successful, although it’s really hard to beat a sitting president from...

Since then, Frank did a gruesomely pessimistic piece for The Guardian Sunday, With Trump Certain to Lose, You Can Forget About a Progressive Clinton. "Come November," he predicts, "Clinton will have won her great victory-- not as a champion of working people’s concerns, but as the greatest moderate of them all. And so ends the great populist uprising of our time, fizzling out pathetically in the mud and the bigotry stirred up by a third-rate would-be caudillo named Donald J Trump... Today it looks as though [Thomas Friedman's] elites are taking matters well in hand. 'Jobs' don't really matter now in this election, nor does the debacle of 'globalization,' nor does anything else, really. Thanks to this imbecile Trump, all such issues have been momentarily swept off the table while Americans come together around Clinton, the wife of the man who envisaged the Davos dream in the first place."

As leading Republicans desert the sinking ship of Trump's GOP, America's two-party system itself has temporarily become a one-party system. And within that one party, the political process bears a striking resemblance to dynastic succession. Party office-holders selected Clinton as their candidate long ago, apparently determined to elevate her despite every possible objection, every potential legal problem. The Democratic National Committee helped out, too, as WikiLeaks tells us. So did President Barack Obama, that former paladin for openness, who in the past several years did nearly everything in his power to suppress challenges to Clinton and thus ensure she would continue his legacy of tepid, bank-friendly neoliberalism.

My leftist friends persuaded themselves that this stuff didn't really matter, that Clinton's many concessions to Sanders' supporters were permanent concessions. But with the convention over and the struggle with Sanders behind her, headlines show Clinton triangulating to the right, scooping up the dollars and the endorsement, and the elites shaken loose in the great Republican wreck.

She is reaching out to the foreign policy establishment and the neocons. She is reaching out to Republican office-holders. She is reaching out to Silicon Valley. And, of course, she is reaching out to Wall Street. In her big speech in Michigan on Thursday she cast herself as the candidate who could bring bickering groups together and win policy victories through really comprehensive convenings.

Things will change between now and November, of course. But what seems most plausible from the current standpoint is a landslide for Clinton, and with it the triumph of complacent neoliberal orthodoxy. She will have won her great victory, not as a champion of working people's concerns, but as the greatest moderate of them all, as the leader of a stately campaign of sanity and national unity. The populist challenge of the past eight years, whether led by Trump or by Sanders, will have been beaten back resoundingly. Centrism will reign triumphant over the Democratic party for years to come. This will be her great accomplishment. The bells will ring all over Washington DC.

... My friends and I like to wonder about who will be the "next Bernie Sanders", but what I am suggesting here is that whoever emerges to lead the populist left will simply be depicted as the next Trump. The billionaire's scowling country-club face will become the image of populist reform, whether genuine populists had anything to do with him or not. This is the real potential disaster of 2016: That legitimate economic discontent is going to be dismissed as bigotry and xenophobia for years to come.

Maybe you saw the Gallup poll released a couple weeks ago measuring the country's complete lack of enthusiasm for Clinton's completely mediocre corporate Dem running mate. He's even more of a snooze for most Americans than the dull-- dull and actively evil-- Pence. How's this for a little history of running mates?

Shall we end on a more upbeat note this evening? A Berniecrat who, like most, has gone over to the Hillary Brigade, Robert Reich, wrote on his Facebook page that Hillary is going to need Bernie's revolution. He naively assumes she wants to get some progressive stuff done when she ascends to the White House and claims she'll never revolutionists to help. Jesus! She's not going to flip the House and the Senate, which will be miserably led by self-serving Wall Street suck-up Chuck Schumer, will not be close to filibuster-proof... and worse.

She unlikely to have a typical presidential honeymoon because she won’t be riding a wave of hope and enthusiasm that typically accompanies a new president into office. She’s already more distrusted by the public than any major candidate in recent history. On Election Day many Americans will be choosing which candidate they loathe the least.

She hasn’t established a powerful mandate for what she wants to get done. Her policy proposals are admirably detailed but cover so much ground that even her most ardent supporters don’t have a clear picture of what she stands for. And she’s had to [interesting choice of words] spend more time on the campaign trail attacking Trump’s outrage du jour than building a case for a few big ideas.

To say nothing of the moneyed interests-- wealthy individuals, big corporations, and Wall Street-- that are more powerful today than at any time since the Gilded Age, and don’t want progressive change.

Even if Hillary sincerely intends to raise taxes on rich Americans in order to pay for universal child care, affordable higher education, and infrastructure spending, the moneyed interests have the clout to stop her.

They’ll also resist any effort to raise the federal minimum wage to $12 an hour, require employers to offer paid family leave, or get them to share their profits with employees.

The heart of American politics is now a vicious cycle in which big money has enough political influence to get laws and regulations that make big money even bigger, and prevent laws and rules that threaten its wealth and power.

Before Hillary can accomplish anything important, that vicious cycle has to be reversed. But how?

Bear with me a moment for some pertinent history.

As economist John Kenneth Galbraith noted in the 1950s, a key legacy of the New Deal was creating centers of economic power that offset the power of giant corporations and Wall Street: labor unions, small retail businesses, local banks, and political parties active at the state and local levels.

These alternative power centers supported policies that helped America’s vast middle and working classes during the first three decades after World War II-- the largest infrastructure project in American history (the Interstate Highway program), a vast expansion of nearly-free public higher education, Medicare and Medicaid, and, to pay for all this, high taxes on the wealthy. (Between 1946 and 1980, the top marginal tax rate never dipped below 70 percent.)

But over the last three decades, countervailing power has almost vanished from American politics. Labor unions have been decimated. In the 2012 presidential election, the richest 0.01 percent of households gave Democratic candidates more than four times what unions contributed to their campaigns.

Small retailers have been displaced by Walmart and Amazon. Local banks have been absorbed by Wall Street behemoths.

And both political parties have morphed into giant national fund-raising machines. The Democratic National Committee, like its Republican counterpart, is designed mainly to suck up big money.

So where can Hillary look for the countervailing power she’ll need to get the progressive changes she says she wants?

The most promising source of a new countervailing power in America was revealed in Bernie Sanders’s primary campaign: millions of citizens determined to reclaim American democracy and the economy from big money. (Donald Trump’s faux populism tapped into similar sentiments, but, tragically, has channeled them into bigotry and scapegoating.)

That movement lives on. Organizers from the Sanders campaign have already launched Brand New Congress, an ambitious effort to run at least 400 progressive candidates for Congress in 2018, financed by crowd-sourced small donations and led by a nationwide network of volunteers. Sanders himself recently announced the formation of “Our Revolution,” to support progressive candidates up and down the ticket.

Hillary Clinton has been relying on big money to finance her presidential campaign, but she’s always been a pragmatist about governing. “A president has to deal in reality,” she said last January in response to Sanders. “I am not interested in ideas that sound good on paper but will never make it in real life.”

The pragmatist in her must know that the only way her ideas will make it in real life is if the public is organized and mobilized behind them.

Which means that once she enters the Oval Office, she’ll need the countervailing power of a progressive movement-- ironically, much like the one her primary opponent championed.

Anyone want to buy a bridge? Or a unicorn? Any hope? Yeah, electing genuine progressives to Congress, not like Tulsi Gabbard, who just one her primary in Hawaii, real progressives... like these:

The Catholics Are Attacking... Already... Again

I love any excuse to embed one of my favorite old 415 Records songs-- my indie label in San Francisco-- "The Catholics Are Attacking" by the Pop'O'Pies. This time it has to do with a gaggle of right-wing bishops attacking Tim Kaine for not bucking under to their theocratic instincts and their bizarre interpretation of Jesus' religion as one where women are relegated to staying home, ignorant and pregnant. The Catholic Church should lose it's tax exempt status for attempting to round up votes for Trump by attacking Kaine on religious grounds.

FaithfulAmerica.org sounded the alarm:

Last night, America heard Senator Tim Kaine speak sincerely about how his Catholic faith has inspired his public service. But already, some Catholic church officials are attacking him.

While not mentioning Kaine's name, his hometown bishop used his selection as an occasion to issue a statement demanding that Catholic politicians obey the hierarchy's teaching on abortion.

Meanwhile, a Rhode Island bishop issued a statement explicitly questioned the authenticity of Kaine's faith, saying that he "has been widely identified as a Roman Catholic [but] his faith isn't central to his public, political life."

Finally, a high-ranking Catholic priest in Washington, DC was more blunt, tweeting: "Do us both a favor. Don't show up in my communion line."

This is exactly the kind of despicable rhetoric that Catholic bishops used to attack John Kerry and Joe Biden, and this year, with the stakes so high, we need to nip it in the bud.

The irony here, of course, is that Kaine is an anti-Choice Democrat who doesn't see eye-to-eye with Clinton on repealing the Hyde Amendment, which prevents Medicaid funds going towards abortions. Despite Hillary saying he would help her repeal the Hyde Amendment he told CNN (in the video below) that he has not changed his position in favor of the Hyde Amendment. NARAL called him out on it immediately, with this statement from Ilyse Hogue, president of the group:

"In this campaign, Hillary Clinton has broken new ground with her frank talk about the damaging effect of denying poor women basic reproductive healthcare. By doing so, Hillary continues to do what she has always done: fight to empower women and families and give us the tools we need to live healthy and secure lives.

"This is why Senator Kaine's statement earlier today that he opposes repealing the discriminatory Hyde amendment was deeply disappointing.

“Repealing the Hyde amendment and providing the full range of reproductive healthcare to low-income women is a top priority for NARAL. This is a principle embraced by the Democratic Party as a whole, and it was voted unanimously into the party platform that I personally worked to draft and pass.

“We appreciate Senator Kaine's commitment to upholding the nominee's position on this important issue, and we sincerely hope that he will continue to educate himself on what Hyde means to the most vulnerable women in this country and join us in fighting this injustice.

"We fully support Hillary Clinton in her commitment to repeal this law and as a champion for reproductive freedom. We will work every day to make sure that women and families are secure in this country by electing her President of the United States."

Didn't Hillary ask him when she was vetting him for the running mate slot? I guess not. Meanwhile, I can't wait to see how Trump tries to use this one against Kaine!

Who You Going To Trust On The TPP?

Terry McAuliffe is a long time crooked operator from the corporatist wing of the Democratic Party. Don't ask how I put myself in this awkward position, but Dick Gephardt once tricked me into shaking hands with him. But, of course, of course, of course, he's the lesser evil than whatever horrid diarrhea Satan crapped out in the form of a Republican opponent-- much lesser evil. So now he's the governor of Virginia and he gets to name the senator who will replace corporatist Time Kaine if Clinton/Kaine beats greater evil Trump/Pence. Appointed senators are routinely defeated for reelection so what;s in vogue now is to appoint a placeholder who pledges to not run. That way-- in this case-- McAuliffe can run. Feh!

when McAuliffe let the cat out of the bag Tuesday that his wing of the party need not worry because his very, very close personal friend Hillary will be back on the TPP side as soon as she and TPP fanatic Tim win the election, he really stepped in it and flipped out the Clinton Team who are working so hard to reinvent her as a quasi-progressive on trade. This is all about the lame duck session when Obama, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell will make their big TPP push. Clinton hasn't agreed to oppose that. Why not? That's the real battle over fair trade now.

Annie Karni broke the McAuliffe part in this story Tuesday night at Politico. "I worry that if we don’t do TPP, at some point China’s going to break the rules-- but Hillary understands this,” he told her candidadly, all pumped up after his dumb, empty speech about how personally close he is to the Clintons at the convention. “Once the election’s over, and we sit down on trade, people understand a couple things we want to fix on it but going forward we got to build a global economy." When Karni pressed him on whether Hillary would turn around and support the trade deal she opposed during the heat of the primary fight against Bernie Sanders, McAuliffe said: "Yes. Listen, she was in support of it. There were specific things in it she wants fixed." Not what Team Deceit Clinton wants out there... yet.

Later, McAuliffe’s spokesman sought to clarify the governor’s remarks after this story published, saying he was simply expressing what he wants Clinton to do if she is elected president. “While Governor McAuliffe is a supporter of the TPP, he has no expectation Secretary Clinton would change her position on the legislation and she has never told him anything to that effect.”

A top Clinton campaign official said the Democratic nominee never told McAuliffe she would be open to changing her position on TPP-- and campaign chairman John Podesta confirmed to Politico she never said anything like that to her longtime ally. “Love Gov. McAuliffe, but he got this one flat wrong,” Podesta tweeted. “Hillary opposes TPP BEFORE and AFTER the election. Period. Full stop.”

But Trump’s campaign immediately seized on the comments. “This should surprise nobody!” tweeted Donald Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

The battle over TPP was one of the most notable to erupt on the floor of the convention Monday, as Sanders delegates protested the fact that language opposing the trade deal was excluded from the party platform.

Sanders delegates started a cheer, “No TPP!” as Rep. Elijah Cummings was speaking and hoisted a banner that read “Economic Justice, Climate Justice, Trade Justice.”

And McAuliffe’s comments played directly into the image of Clinton that infuriates Sanders' delegates-- especially after her selection of Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine as her running mate, who vocally supports the Obama-backed trade deal. "I have no confidence she's against TPP," said Christine Pellegrino, a Sanders delegate from New York. "I haven't made up my mind about what options exist at the convention.”

McAuliffe said he feels confident Democrats will win back the Senate and even win back 30 seats in the House and be able to pass a tweaked version of the trade deal supported by President Obama. “If we get enough things done, enough opportunities to change TPP, I’m optimistic going forward,” he said. "We cannot let China write these rules for 11 other countries.”

Even as protesters headed for the exits of the Wells Fargo Center after the roll call made Clinton's nomination official, McAuliffe insisted the party was still on the road to unity.

"Sen. Sanders was a true champion," McAuliffe said. "He sent out texts, his speech last night said we have to come together. He's done everything we've asked him to do. This is a hard business, it just takes time. I think this convention made a lot of progress."

Just over a year ago, 158 House Democrats said no to Obama, Wall Street, Paul Ryan and the GOP on TPP. Only 28 Democrats crossed the aisle to vote with the Republicans, allowing fast track legislation to pass by 10 votes. These were the culprits:

• Brad Ashford (Blue Dog-NE)
• Ami Bera (New Dem-CA)
• Don Beyer (New Dem-VA)
• Earl Blumenauer (OR))
• Suzanne Bonamici (OR)
• Gerry Connolly (New Dem-VA)
• Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN)
• Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)
• Susan Davis (New Dem-CA)
• John Delaney (New Dem-MD)
• Suzan DelBene (New Dem-WA)
• Sam Farr (CA)
• Jim Himes (New Dem-CT)
• Rubén Hinojosa (TX)
• Eddie Bernice Johnson (TX)
• Derek Kilmer (New Dem-WA)
• Ron Kind (New Dem-WI)
• Rick Larsen (New Dem-WA)
• Gregory Meeks (New Dem-NY)
• Beto O'Rourke (New Dem-TX)
• Scott Peters (New Dem-CA)
• Jared Polis (New Dem-CO)
• Mike Quigley (New Dem-IL)
• Kathleen Rice (New Dem-NY)
• Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR)
• Terri Sewell (New Dem-AL)
• Debbie Wasserman Schultz (New Dem-FL)

Over in the Senate, it wasn't just Kaine who joined with the GOP to pass the fast track legislation for TPP. Almost all of the worst of the garbage Democrats-- Manchin is good on this issue, so he gets a pass-- were right there with Kaine and McConnell, from Rachel Maddow's favorite fake Democrat, loudmouthed reactionary Claire McCaskill (MO) to the richest slimeball in the whole Senate, Mark Warner. These, along with McAuliffe and the institutional Republican Party-- as opposed to the Trumpist crazy operation-- are pushing for a lame duck vote on TPP. Yes, these assholes, all on one lovely dartboard:

Oh, Mike Pence Is Much Much Worse Than Tim Kaine-- No Comparison! So?

It's an extraordinarily low bar but Kaine is better than Penzzzzzzzzz

Someone on Twitter was trying to promote the idea that putting Tim Kaine first in the line to presidential succession was not just less terrible than putting Mike Pence there but actually a good thing... and used as evidence a link showing that Pete Peterson's Fix the Debt operation-- whose ultimate goal is the destruction of Social Security and Medicare-- named Kaine a Fiscal Hero, along with other such well-respected and beloved political figures of the American center-right as John Boehner (R-OH), Jim Himes (New Dem-CT), Rob Portman (R-OH), Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ), Steny Hoyer (D-K Street), Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN), Dan Coats (R-IN), and Michael Bennet (D-CO). I had just cast the deciding vote on a committee discussing whether or not to endorse Bennet for re-election to his Colorado Senate seat-- another lesser-of-two-evils choice being forced on the voters. (Happy to report that, Bennet, easily the lesser evil, isn't being endorsed.)

Peterson's operation defines Fiscal heroes as having "distinguished themselves by taking fiscally responsible votes, pushing their party leaders to make debt a priority, leading bipartisan efforts to work through policy options to fix the debt, using their town hall meetings to engage and educate constituents, delivering floor speeches to raise awareness about the issue, advocating to keep tough choices on the table, and introducing legislation to improve the nation's fiscal position. These elected officials have recognized that we will need to take a comprehensive approach to address the core drivers of the debt, such as entitlement reform and tax reform, to put it on a downward path in the long-term and allow the economy to thrive. Given that there is much more to be done to confront the nation's debt challenges, it is important that the work of those who focus on these issues is recognized."

Here, for example is wealthy, spoiled young Patrick Murphy, right after he was elected to Congress pretending to be a Democrat-- who didn't make the grade then but will soon, no doubt, going on TV and when asked what he would cut, twice volunteering Social Security and Medicare:



You know, one of the things that's wrong with settling for lesser-of-two evils candidates all the time-- we discussed it at greater length yesterday-- is that it means we have the wrong people making countless behind the scenes decisions daily. Tim Kaine is a shitty VP choice, not nearly as terrible as Pence, obviously, but certainly one I would ever want to see ascending to the presidency. His reasonable defenders-- not the ones bragging about how he's great for Wall Street and knows how to cut Social Security and Medicare-- point out that Planned Parenthood and NARAL have endorsed him (although he's "personally" anti-Choice), the Sierra Club supports him because he opposed the Keystone XL Pipeline, the AFL-CIO has given him a 98% lifetime rating, and that he stood up to the tobacco lobby and the gun manufacturers lobby while he was governor of Virginia. In fact, Kaine has a "F" from the NRA. That's all good... and I want to share something former Congressman Brad Miller of North Carolina sent me today, which he already published at HuffPo. Remember, someone appoints all these decision-making bureaucrats:

These are words that I have never written-- or thought-- before and expect never to again: House Republicans are right.

On July 11, House Republicans issued a report on an investigation into the Department of Justice’s 2012 settlement with HSBC, the British megabank, for laundering $900 million for the Columbian and Mexican drug cartels and for regimes under international sanctions for nuclear proliferation, genocide and support for terrorism. The DOJ touted the $2 billion civil penalty as a “record,” but the penalty amounted to five weeks of profits for the bank taken from shareholder funds. There were no criminal charges.

Lanny Breuer, the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, and Eric Holder, the Attorney General, both argued that the DOJ could not bring criminal charges because convictions might jeopardize the bank and the stability of the world’s financial system. But then Holder said his statement had been “misconstrued.”

Holder said “there are a number of factors that we have to take into consideration....Innocent people can be impacted by a prosecution....But let me be very, very, very clear. Banks are not too big to jail.” The DOJ would bring criminal charges where there was enough evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

The congressional report concluded there was ample evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The decision not to pursue criminal charges was entirely because HSBC was “too big to jail.”

Executive branch cooperation in congressional investigations is seldom cheerful, but the DOJ flatly refused to produce any subpoenaed documents. The Department of Treasury grudgingly produced some documents redacted at DOJ’s request. The stated reason was that the withheld information pertained to “prosecutorial decisions.”

The courts have never precisely defined “executive privilege,” the protection of the confidentiality of some discussions about some decisions between some executive branch officials to encourage uninhibited debate. But this much is clear: there is no blanket protection for “prosecutorial deliberations.”

There is no government power more susceptible to dangerous abuse or more in need of constant independent scrutiny than the power to bring, or not to bring, criminal charges.

An aggressive Senate investigation exposed the Teapot Dome scandal almost a century ago. The Secretary of the Interior went to prison for taking bribes for no-bid petroleum leases on federal lands. The Senate also examined the Justice Department’s failure to investigate and prosecute the people involved.

The Supreme Court upheld the Senate’s authority to hold a subpoenaed witness in contempt for refusing to testify on the Justice Department’s conduct. The Court said the question whether the Justice Department’s “functions were being properly discharged or being neglected or misdirected...concerned a subject on which legislation could be had and would be materially aided by the information which the investigation was calculated to elicit.”

A decade ago the Bush Administration fired federal prosecutors who had brought prosecutions that hurt Republicans or failed to bring flimsy prosecutions that would hurt Democrats. Administration officials refused to comply with House subpoenas and the House went to court. The court rejected the Administration’s argument that the decision to fire prosecutors was entirely up to the President and none of Congress’s business. Congress had a “unique ability to address improper partisan influence in the prosecutorial process,” the court said, and “[n]o other institution will fill the vacuum if Congress is unable to investigate and respond to this evil.”

There is no evidence that DOJ’s decision to settle with HSBC was criminally corrupt or the product of improper partisan influence. Wall Street critics hotly dispute that criminal prosecution of HSBC executives would have threatened the financial system, but DOJ’s decision to settle was likely based on that concern, as Breuer and Holder first said. The obvious injustice is deeply offensive to most Americans.

Savvy Washington insiders avoid public debate with Wall Street critics, so some political functionary told Holder that he was off message.

House Republicans’ concern for the injustice of the settlement is patently insincere. House Republicans’ only motive is to embarrass the Obama Administration, not to side with Wall Street critics.

Certainly the investigation could inform legislation. Most obviously, any institution that seeks the special treatment that HSBC received should immediately be broken into small-enough-to-jail pieces. That is legislation House Republicans will never enact.

But political embarrassment punishes misconduct, including the misconduct of staying on a message that deviates from the unvarnished truth. Americans are entitled to know how the power they confer by their ballots is used. And Americans are entitled to know if some powerful financial institutions receive special treatment in the criminal justice system.

A great American political scientist, Woodrow Wilson, wrote in 1885 that the “proper duty of a representative body [is] to look diligently into every affair of government and to talk much about what it sees...The informing function of Congress is to be preferred even to its legislative function.”

If congressional oversight causes political functionaries to hesitate to tell presidential appointees to stay on messages that are varnished versions of the truth out of fear of embarrassment, then that would be a wholesome result.

Can you keep this tucked away in the back of your mind? Some day we will will prevail on Miller to jump back into electoral politics-- so far we've come up short-- and at that time, we'll need to fight really hard for him. There aren't many Democrats willing to advance this kind of embarrassing narrative about the kind of corruption that has no place in democratic governance. Meanwhile, though, please consider helping get Alan Grayson into the U.S. Senate instead of either of the 2 Wall Street lackeys, Patrick Murphy and Marco Rubio, opposing him.