Only 2 People Like The New Schumer Policy Attacking Progressive Candidates: Cory Gardner & Ben Ray Luján

Andrew Romanoff: "I signed the Fossil Fuel Money Pledge-- rejecting contributions from the oil, gas, and coal industry. Our campaign doesn't take any PAC money at all."

No one liked Cheri Bustos' decision to blackball all consultants and vendors who work candidates running against incumbents. It has been a disaster for the DCCC which no longer has an executive director and saw it's entire executive level staffers either quit or be fired. The DCCC isn't in turmoil since it doesn't actually exist other than as a money vacuum. And Bustos herself has been forced to go to see a professional therapist to help her with her racism problems. Everyone I know has been repulsed by this whole episode. And then there's one asshole in Washington who looked at it and said... hold my beer.

It should be breaking widely in the media today that Chuck Schumer and his DSCC puppet Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) at the DSCC have decided to go a step further than Bustos did. They are blackballing consultants and vendors who work for candidates other than candidates they back. Let's take Colorado for example. While Schumer's candidate, John Frackenlooper, was pretending to be a presidential candidate-- and who had an average preference score of 0.3% and was booed by Democratic audiences for his conservative policy stances-- there was a Senate race in full swing. There are close to 20 candidates running serious campaigns, including top tier candidates like former Ambassador Dan Baer, ex-state Senator Mike Johnston, ex-House Majority Leader Alice Madden, ex-House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, state Senator Angela Williams, who had hired staffers. Now Schumer and Cortez Masto are trying to force them-- on pain of blacklisting-- to quit the campaigns that some have been working on for months-- after Frackenlooper admitted he would make a shitty senator and pledged to not run.

This is insane. One political operative who I know pretty well, went nuts on the phone today and told me that he had "received calls over the last few days from campaign managers who are running races (now) against the DSCC's preferred candidate. To say they are livid would be a gross understatement. One manager used the term 'disgusting creature' to describe Schumer just two hours ago. Another called the staff at the DSCC 'Nazi youth' after he received a call from one of them demanding he quit the race. I have a feeling these anecdotes will get even fiercer over the coming days." These are the kinds of shenanigans one would expect from the fascist party, not from the Democratic Party. Schumer and Cortez Masto should both be removed from their leadership positions before anyone gives a nickel more to the DSCC or to Hickenlooper who was boasting yesterday that money is flooding into his campaign from the exact sources that real Democrats prefer to not accept money from.

The 74% who want to see progressive legislation pass are going to be mighty disappointed if Schumer helps Frankenlooper worm his way into the Senate

Ernest Luning, writing for ColoradoPolitics.com, reported that on Monday 6 women running-- Angela Williams, Diana Bray, Lorena Garcia, Alice Madden, Stephany Rose Spaulding and Michelle Ferrigno Warren-- wrote a "strongly-worded letter" to Schumer and Cortez Masto telling them that their endorsement of Hickenlooper in the primary was "premature" and should be rescinded. "Washington insiders should watch the race develop and hear from all of the candidates before getting involved. To be clear, this race is not a coronation of any candidate. We hope the DSCC will give strong consideration to rescinding its endorsement, and allow Coloradans to decide the outcome of this primary campaign... What is more troubling is Hickenlooper’s rhetoric throughout his failed Presidential bid he derisively referred to progressives as 'socialist' and paternally lectured us on how our progressive values will 're-elect Donald Trump.' Let us not forget that it was progressives who fought for the rights of women and communities of color in the 1960s and 1970s that we still enjoy today. Governor Hickenlooper’s statements have offended and angered many of the voters in Colorado. Just like Senator Gardner, Governor Hickenlooper is utterly disrespectful and tone deaf to the contributions of activists and communities that make Colorado a leader on progressive values."

Conservative Democrats who oppose progressive values and polices-- like Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Michael Bennet and Time Kaine-- have also endorsed Frackenlooper.

Reporting for the Denver Post, Justin Wingerter wrote that Scumer's moronic decision has "sparked an intense email discussion among state Democratic Party officers over the weekend, with allusions to Nazism, criticisms of Hickenlooper and calls for formal opposition. The emails offer a window into an intraparty conflict that is sure to spill out in public for weeks and months to come as Democrats debate who should be their nominee to take on Republican Sen. Cory Gardner.

“Hickenlooper has made it clear that he neither understands nor cares about the true problems in our country,” wrote Dana Torpey-Newman, chair of the Douglas County Democratic Party, “and I object to being told that I, as a party chair, am unable to take sides in a primary, but the DSCC… is able to put a thumb on the scale and force out our candidates who actually comprehend the deeper roots of the societal problems we face.”

...“It is getting to the point that people feel, why bother showing up, as decisions have already been made by the higher-ups?” wrote Paula Ozzello, chair of the Las Animas County Democratic Party in southern Colorado. She called the DSCC’s endorsement of Hickenlooper a “slap in the face” to other candidates, some of whom are “damn good.”

...Democratic Party officials in Clear Creek and Custer counties defended the DSCC. Elliot Jackson, who is listed as a second vice chair in the Custer County Democratic Party, said she has zero patience for intraparty warfare. Democrats should focus on beating Gardner in 2020, she said.

“The absolute ONLY thing I admire about Republicans is their unwavering devotion to doing whatever is necessary to gain power,” Jackson wrote. “They can’t govern worth a damn, because they don’t care about that, but they are masterly at getting into power. Part of that strategy is rallying behind their candidates, and convincing the public that the enemy is Democrats."

Jackson advised her fellow Democrats to study Nazi Germany, saying she was “haunted by the image of German communists and socialists at each other’s throats in the concentration camps, as they were waiting to be put to death by the Nazis they couldn’t be bothered to stick together to oppose.”

Peter Monson, secretary of the Clear Creek County Democrats, agreed with Jackson, saying he also had no interest in intraparty squabbles.

“So the DSCC came out in support of Hick. So what?” Monson wrote. “Maybe I am naive, but I don’t think that will have much sway among primary voters and caucus-goers one way or another. Voters are the ones who will decide, and my only hope is that they pick candidates for president and Senate with the best chance of winning in the general election. That is, or should be, our overriding priority for 2020."

Monson confirmed Monday that he sent the email. Several others in the chain declined to comment.

Much of the emailed discussion centered on how the Colorado Democratic Party should respond to the DSCC’s endorsement. Vinson, the party’s executive director, said the state party will remain neutral in the primary election, which is a Colorado Democratic Party policy. But others wanted a strong statement from the state party denouncing the DSCC endorsement.

“We should not submit this to the media but should send it to all of the national party leaders, in my opinion,” Torpey-Newman, of Douglas County, wrote. “Merely saying that the people of Colorado will decide is not enough, in my opinion. They must be told explicitly why this is unacceptable and what the potential consequences of doing so are."

Susan Newcomer, chair of the Grand County Democratic Party, agreed. So did Sheena Kadi, a vice chair in the Adams County Democratic Party, who is also deputy director of One Colorado. Kadi said Hickenlooper had made Colorado proud but party apparatuses should not endorse.

"I have received dozens of calls, texts, emails, and asks from fellow Democrats wondering why the DSCC is ‘interfering/meddling/obstructing’ in our primary process,” Kadi wrote. She worried the endorsement would convince Democratic voters the race had already been decided and stifle engagement in the election. “And if they don’t show up, unaffiliated voters won’t be persuaded and will not turn out to vote, and we will have another six years of Senator Cory Gardner.”

Jackson, the Custer County party official, said she wouldn’t mind telling national Democratic groups to hold off on endorsing until 2020, but any statement must avoid “trashing another Democrat.”

Morgan Carroll, chair of the Colorado Democratic Party, briefly inserted herself into the email discussion to say the party’s response to the DSCC “needs to be that the people of Colorado will decide who their nominee will be.” As of Tuesday morning, no public response to the DSCC endorsement had been issued by the state party.

"The Colorado Democratic Party has a strict policy of neutrality in primaries and we will not change that policy,” Carroll said in a statement to The Post. “There’s a lot of grassroots energy to defeat Cory Gardner, which is why so many excellent candidates have stepped up to run. At the end of the day, the people of Colorado will be the ones to decide who will run against the most vulnerable Republican senator in the country, and it will be the people of Colorado who lead us to another blue wave in 2020."

Heather Brewer, the campaign manager for Maggie Toulouse Oliver's U.S. Senate campaign, told me early this morning that "While we haven't had any direct efforts (yet) to threaten our consultants or otherwise put the squeeze on us, I believe it is only a matter of time. We are ready to fight back against any DSCC attempts to bully their way to victory." Pelosi immediately endorsed Luján, who, of course, lists no policy on his lame cut-out DCCC website. She slammed the DSCC and the DCCC for "this disgusting un-democratic and un-Democratic practice... Washington insiders don't get to decide who becomes the next U.S. Senator from New Mexico, the voters do. Washington is broken and desperate attempts to circumvent the democratic process to consolidate power with the D.C. elite aren't going to fix it. Only with new leaders, like Maggie Toulouse Oliver, who are beholden only to those they represent, can we begin to repair the damage and implement much-needed progressive policies like the Green New Deal and Medicare for All."

Help Colorado progressives defeat Frackenlooper-- and New Mewxico progressives defeat Ben Ray Luján-- by contributing to Andrew Romanoff's campaign and Maggie Oliver's campaign at the 2020 Senate thermometer above. Schumer has demanded that the big "progressive affiliated organizations and the in-the-pocket unions (like the firefighters, who are practically part of the Democratic Party establishment and always go for the worst candidates, be in Biden or Luján) and other institutional Democratic sources of campaign contributions, immediately stop giving contributions to Andrew Romanoff, Maggie Oliver and any of the other candidates other than the handpicked Frackenlooper and Ben Ray Luján.

Status Quo Joe's Opposition To Roe v Wade And To Brown v Board Of Education

God forbid

Yesterday, we took a look at the potential of Democratic primary voters making the fatal error of nominating an anti-Choice corporate conservative to go up against Trump. Wetalked mostly about Biden's decades-long support for the hideously discriminatory Hyde Amendment. Ryan Grim, over at The Intercept dug into another aspect of Biden's anti-Choice posture-- his more recent determination to undermine Obamacare's coverage of contraception. "As vice president," wrote Grim, "Joe Biden repeatedly sought to undermine the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate, working in alliance with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to push for a broad exemption that would have left millions of women without coverage. Biden’s battle over contraception is a window into his approach to the politics of reproductive freedom, a function of an electoral worldview that centers working-class Catholic men over the interests of women. The issue has been causing his presidential campaign some discomfort-- on Wednesday, Biden’s campaign clarified that he remains a supporter of the so-called Hyde Amendment, a provision that bars federal money from being used to fund reproductive health services. Biden had recently told an activist with the American Civil Liberties Union that he opposed the amendment, and wanted to see it repealed."

Grim doesn't discuss the marked propensity of Biden to lie as though he still lives in the 1950s, when lies were not as easily fact-checked and exposed as they are today. And while Biden doesn't lie as much as Trump, PolitiFact finds he and Trump are in another world of deceitful assholes and gaslighters compared to any of the other Democratic candidates.

On contraception, according to contemporaneous reporting and sources involved with the internal debate, Biden had argued that if the regulations implementing the Affordable Care Act were going to mandate coverage, it would have angered white, male, Catholic voters, and threatened Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012. Biden’s main ally in the internal fight over contraception was chief of staff William Daly; both men are Catholic.

Opposing Biden was a faction of mostly women advisers, joined by some men, who argued that Biden had both the policy and the politics wrong. On policy, they noted that if his broad exemption went into effect, upwards of 6 million women who happened to be employed by religious-affiliated organizations would lose contraception coverage. The politics were just as bad, they argued, given that women were increasingly becoming central to the party’s success. To turn on them on the issue of access to birth control-- embracing a fringe position not even adopted by most Catholics who aren’t bishops-- would put that support at risk.

Biden has long said that he is personally opposed to abortion, but supports the legal right. His support of Roe v. Wade has not always been full-throated.

“When it comes to issues like abortion, amnesty, and acid, I’m about as liberal as your grandmother,” Biden said in a June 1974 article. “I don’t like the Supreme Court decision on abortion. I think it went too far. I don’t think that a woman has the sole right to say what should happen to her body.”

Because Biden’s anti-Roe comments came so long ago-- more than four decades-- some have argued they are of little value in gauging his current politics. But his battle against contraception, and his unwillingness to join the bulk of the Democratic field and call for the repeal of the Hyde Amendment, puts him dramatically out of step with today’s party.

Biden is so out of step, in fact, that when he was shown polling data during the contraception fight, he dismissed it as inaccurate. He has a view of the American electorate’s politics on abortion that can’t be influenced by new facts. Jake Tapper, then reporting for ABC News, reported in February 2012:

The two sides couldn’t even agree about what they were debating. In the fall, [Planned Parenthood head Cecile] Richards brought in polling indicating that the American people overwhelmingly supported the birth control benefit in health insurance. She also highlighted statistics showing the overwhelming use of birth control.



The Vice President and others argued that this wouldn’t be seen as an issue of contraception-- it would be seen as an issue of religious liberty. They questioned the polling of the rule advocates, arguing that it didn’t explain the issue in full, it ignored the question of what religious groups should have to pay for. And they argued that women voters for whom this was an important issue weren’t likely to vote for Mitt Romney, who has drawn a strong anti-abortion line as a presidential candidate, saying he would end federal funding to Planned Parenthood and supporting a “personhood” amendment that defines life as beginning at the moment of fertilization.

...In his vice presidential debate with Mitt Romney’s running mate, Paul Ryan, Biden attempted to portray it as a broad exemption. “No religious institution-- Catholic or otherwise, including Catholic social services, Georgetown hospital, Mercy hospital, any hospital-- none has to either refer contraception, none has to pay for contraception, none has to be a vehicle to get contraception in any insurance policy they provide. That is a fact,” Biden said in the debate.

In a rare public disagreement with Biden, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops shot back with a statement, accurately saying that Biden’s claim was “not a fact.” Indeed, many religious-affiliated entities that had hoped to win an exemption, and which had Biden’s support inside the White House, had failed. But with Biden now a frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for president, they may get another shot at denying access to contraception to their employees.

A dead giveaway to when Biden is trying to deceive his audience is when he says "That is a fact." That usually how he gives away the actual fact-- that he's lying. As PolitiFact discovered over the years, Biden lies far more than even most politicians (other than Trump, of course. But Trump is too low a bar for people who expect a public official to be basically truthful and ethical.

Another topic Biden tries to avoid these days-- but which Trump will not allow him to if he wins the nomination-- is his racism, the issue in the 1970s that first turned me against an upcoming right-wing Democratic politician-- and piece of shit-- from Delaware. I've watched Biden since the early '70s and never had a moments doubt that he is and has always been a vile, repulsive racist. Obama, for his own reasons, did a lot to lift that onus from Biden and many Democrats who pine for another Obama term mistakenly think Biden is another Obama. He certainly isn't. Yesterday, The Nation published an important piece by Jonathan Kozol, Joe Biden Once Made Common Cause With School Segregationists. We've talked about how Biden got his political start-- as a fighter against racial integration-- but let's look at how Kozol framed the issue, important because today Biden's top demographic support is coming from African-American women who didn't go to college and are over the age of 60.

Advocates for children and civil rights who have not yet given up entirely on the struggle to break down the walls of racial isolation in our public schools may want to take a good hard look at Joe Biden’s shameful record on school segregation. Despite his recent effort to allay concerns about that record, it cannot be expunged, nor easily forgiven.

In an education-policy proposal released by his campaign on May 28, Biden briefly spoke of encouraging diversity by giving grants and guidance to districts that are willing to pursue it. But he said nothing to disown his lengthy history as a fierce opponent of school busing and a scathing critic of the Warren Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

“We’ve lost our bearings since the 1954 Brown v. School Board desegregation case,” Biden said in 1975, in an interview that he gave to a newspaper in Delaware that was recently unearthed by the Washington Post. “To ‘desegregate’ is different than to ‘integrate.’”

In the interview, which captured an early unfiltered Biden, today’s Democratic front-runner picked through a grab bag of anti-integration canards to make his case against busing-- among them, the idea that a school where children of different races or multiple ethnicities sit in class together is doomed to be inferior. “The real problem with busing,” Biden said, “is that you take [white] people who aren’t racist, people who are good citizens, who believe in equal education and opportunity, and you stunt their children’s growth by busing them to an inferior school.” For Biden, it seems, the “stunting” of black children’s growth in the savagely unequal and deliberately segregated public schools I’ve been describing for years did not elicit the same sense of alarm.

Nor did Biden stop there. With bald disregard for centuries of American history, he said, “I do not buy the concept, popular in the ‘60s, which said, ‘We have suppressed the black man for 300 years and…in order to even the score, we must now give the black man”-- no reference to black women-- ”a head start or even hold the white man back.… I don’t buy that.”

He concluded, “I oppose busing. It’s an asinine concept, the utility of which has never been proven to me. I’ve gotten to the point where I think our only recourse to eliminate busing may be a constitutional amendment.”

Crucially, Biden didn’t just talk the anti-busing talk. He also took a leading role in fighting what he called “unnecessary busing” by pushing bills that would have forced the federal government to consider “other” ways of equalizing education-- ways that would not have required what old-fashioned bigots used to call race-mixing. In a series of letters, recently released by CNN, that Biden wrote to Dixiecrat Senator James Eastland in 1977, he expressed his thanks to Eastland for supporting anti-busing legislation he had introduced.

“I want you to know that I very much appreciate your help…in attempting to bring my anti-busing legislation to a vote,” he wrote the Mississippi Democrat, a virulent opponent of civil rights who frequently referred to black people as “an inferior race.”

Biden, moreover, did not simply reinforce the efforts of Southern segregationists. He also took a decisive role in fueling opposition to desegregation efforts in the Northern states and providing Northern liberals with a convenient rationale for joining him in these attempts. In a stunning piece of reportage in Politico in 2015, historian Jason Sokol surfaced Biden’s argument that busing children for the sake of integration was an insult to black people because, he said, it implies that they “have no reason to be proud of…their own culture” and cannot learn unless they’re sitting next to a white child. By dragging out this old and wrinkled chestnut, Biden sought to turn the tables on Senate integrationists.

Biden also argued that de facto segregation in the Northern cities, unlike de jure segregation in the South, could not be held to justify court-ordered busing programs, because there was no evidence that it was the consequence of governmental practices. In depicting Northern segregation as a matter of mere demographic happenstance and denying that it was occasioned by political intention, “Biden’s logic,” according to Sokol, “allowed the political center-left to coalesce around [his] brand of opposition” to school busing.

Senator Ed Brooke, a liberal Republican who served two Senate terms representing Massachusetts and was the sole black member of the Senate at the time, was outraged by Biden’s stance. “Perhaps,” says Sokol, “Brooke foresaw the new political consensus that would take shape in the ensuing decades: Liberals would pay homage to the civil rights movement and its dream of integration, but refrain from championing the legislation that would make the dream a reality.”

Biden has made no apologies for his willingness to rip apart the final remnants of the legacy of Brown at a seminal moment in our nation’s history. As The Washington Post candidly surmised, Biden’s “decision to stand by his views on the issue illustrates what some of his supporters think would be his advantage in the 2020 field: his ability to appeal beyond his Democratic base to some white working-class voters who voted for Donald Trump in 2016.” This may seem “smart strategy” to some. But it reeks of cynical contempt for social-justice values, even if his strategists attempt to dress it up as nothing more than shrewd consensus-building.

Like other careful centrists, Biden threads the needle on the subject of diversity by saying that he favors it in principle, even in the face of his decades-long resistance to letting children climb onto a bus in order to achieve it. This is simply doublespeak. In a nation in which residential segregation and unabated patterns of red-lining have guaranteed the seemingly eternal sequestration of black and Hispanic children in poorly funded schools within their own communities, Biden’s many years of strident opposition to letting children ride the good old yellow bus represent a throwback to the age of Plessy v. Ferguson.

All over America, every morning, we see the blinking lights of the yellow bus that’s picking up school children. At 2 or 3 pm, we see the lights again as the bus returns the children to their neighborhood, the departing kids waving to their friends. Some of those buses, unbeknownst to Biden apparently, are bringing children of color out of virtual-apartheid schooling districts into richly funded schools in affluent communities.

My longtime friend and co-worker in civil rights in Boston, Julia Walker, 86, whose kids and grandkids rode the bus from inner-city Boston to well-funded suburban schools, thanks to an inter-district integration program that she helped to fight for starting more than 50 years ago, looked at Biden’s language and made the observation that activists for civil rights have made for many decades: “It’s not the bus. It’s the color of the children that it’s bringing to your neighborhood.”

The program Walker and other activists and leaders in Boston’s black community struggled to make possible, known as METCO, is the longest-running program of its kind in the nation. It serves more than 3,000 children who ride the bus to more than 30 suburbs and have a graduation rate of approximately 95 percent. It’s always had its critics among those who share Joe Biden’s views, but not among the thousands of black families whose kids have been on waiting lists to get into the program, and not among the many teachers like myself (I taught in the program for two years) who have seen its students go on to higher education and then into professional careers or leadership positions in the business world.

Several of the children whom I came to know in the first years of the program later became teachers, and frequently the first black teachers, in the same school districts they’d attended or other districts in the Boston area, and helped to build the structures of multicultural support that are essential features of good integration programs. An enlightened nation would not turn its back on this kind of program but would see it, for all its imperfections, as a realistic model for a more extensive metro-wide desegregation effort in which no kids of color are left to sit on waiting lists until their childhood is over and their parents’ dreams of equal education have been lost forever.

Bitterly enough, the tide seems to be heading in the opposite direction. Political elites in Massachusetts, instead of working to expand the program, have frozen it for several decades at its present level, while many programs like it elsewhere in the nation have been phased out altogether. A president who champions school desegregation, with no reservations about the only present way in which to make it possible, could reignite the sense of ethical imperative that inspired programs such as METCO more than half a century ago. Biden is not likely to be that kind of president.

Unlike Bernie Sanders, who recently proposed a “Thurgood Marshall Plan” for public education that calls for a renewal and expansion of desegregation plans by means of transportation, Biden still believes his original position was correct and, according to one of his aides, Bill Russo, sees no reason to revise it. No matter how he tries to blur the edges of his past or present-day beliefs, no matter how he waffles in his language in order to present himself as some kind of born-again progressive, Biden has not shown that he can be trusted to confront our nation’s racist past and one of its most urgent present needs.

As the mainstream media repeatedly remind us, Biden is a likable man in many ways: even his critics often speak about his graciousness. But Biden’s likability will not help Julia Walker’s grandkids and her “great-grands” and the children of her neighbors to go to schools where they can get an equal shot at a first-rate education and where their young white classmates have a chance to get to know and value them, and learn from them, as children do in ordinary ways, when we take away the structures that divide them.

Biden will probably always be the lesser of two evils when it comes to Trump. But Democratic primary voters who want to see Trump defeated would be fools to gamble on someone like Biden who will be such an easy target for Republicans and Russians when it comes to holding down Democratic base turnout.

Bad Combination: Rising Housing Prices + Stagnant Wages

A little over a week ago, Taylor White penned an article for MarketWatch that alarmed me, This is why Americans are losing confidence in the housing market. Basically a combination of rising house prices, salary stagnation, generational trends and higher interest rates have hurt consumer confidence in the housing market. Today Ben Casselman narrowed in one one factor: rising prices outpacing wages.

With unemployment below 3% and construction everywhere, Denver is booming. "Yet," wrote Casselman, "Denver’s once-soaring housing market has run into turbulence. Sales and construction activity have slowed in recent months. Houses that would once have drawn a frenzy of offers are sitting on the market for days or weeks. Selling prices are rising more slowly, and asking prices are being slashed to attract buyers. Similar slowdowns have hit New York, Seattle and even San Francisco, cities that until recently ranked among the nation’s hottest housing markets. The specifics vary, but economists, real estate agents and home builders say the core issue is the same: Home buyers are reaching a breaking point after years of breakneck price increases that far exceeded income gains." The problem is clear: wages are not keeping pace with increased prices and would-be buyers are being pushed out of the market.

Nationwide, sales of previously owned homes fell 1.5 percent in August from a year earlier, according to the National Association of Realtors. Residential building permits were down 5.5 percent over the past year, according to the Department of Commerce. Many economists say the housing market may have turned into a drag on the gross domestic product.

...Introductory economics textbooks suggest that high prices should attract more supply or suppress demand-- or both. Inventories of unsold homes have risen in Denver and other markets in recent months, and the real estate site Zillow found that price cuts have become more common.

Over all, however, the housing market is not behaving as the textbooks say it should. Inventories remain low despite the recent increases, and new construction is slowing, not picking up.

Part of the problem, local real estate agents say, is that the furious pace of price growth has essentially gummed up the market, making homeowners reluctant to sell for fear of being unable to find a new home.

Rising interest rates are compounding the problem because would-be sellers do not want to give up their low interest rates, a phenomenon economists call the lock-in effect.

...Ultimately, the key to breaking the logjam is to build more homes. Downtown Denver is crawling with cranes, many of them erecting amenity-filled apartment complexes aimed at young professionals. A drive in almost any direction from downtown reveals freshly built subdivisions with names like Tallgrass, The Enclave and Green Gables Reserve.

Most of those new homes, however, will list for more than $400,000. And hardly any builders are selling properties for under $300,000 without government subsidies. Even many home builders worry they are pricing themselves out of the market.

“I see the biggest threat to our business as the affordability challenge, that we are building houses that people can’t afford,” said Gene Myers, chief executive of Thrive Home Builders.

The problem, Mr. Myers and other local builders say, is cost. The price of land, building permits and other fees can run close to $150,000 for a single-family lot-- before construction.

Some of the challenges are specific to Colorado. Quirks in state law, for example, make it easy for condominium buyers to collectively sue builders over construction defects, making developers reluctant to build condos.

But other issues are common to many cities. Building materials have become more expensive, in part because of tariffs on lumber and other products that President Trump imposed this year. Labor costs are rising, too, especially for skilled trade workers. Restrictive zoning makes it hard to build denser developments that make cheaper homes profitable for builders.

“They’re producing what they can produce,” said Sam Khater, chief economist for Freddie Mac, the government housing-finance company. “The problem is, it’s uneconomic for them to produce affordable.”

This big-city conundrum is spreading. People priced out of San Francisco moved to Seattle and Portland, driving up prices and displacing people who moved to Denver and Austin. Next on the list: Boise, Nashville and other cities offering some of the same attractions at lower prices.

Sure enough, the online real estate site Redfin this spring found that Denver had joined Seattle and San Francisco as cities with a “net outflow” of users-- that is, there were more people on the site looking to leave Denver than to move there.

“City after city is going to face this,” said Glenn Kelman, Redfin’s chief executive. “At some point, the buyers step back and say, ‘Enough is enough.’”

More people are moving to Denver than leaving it, but migration has tapered off in recent years. J. J. Ament, chief executive of Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation, said he had seen no sign that rising home prices were making the region less attractive. Last month, VF Corporation, an apparel maker that owns brands like The North Face and Vans, announced it would move its headquarters to Denver from North Carolina, partly because of the area’s reputation for outdoor activities. The state also offered $27 million in incentives.

“I wouldn’t use the word ‘crisis,’” Mr. Ament said. “The work force is still willing to move here.”

Plenty of people in Denver do use the word “crisis,” however. A January report from Shift Research Lab, a local research group, concluded that years of under-building have left the region with a shortfall of tens of thousands of housing units.

That shortfall could threaten Denver’s growth, said Phyllis Resnick, a Colorado State University economist and one of the report’s authors. The skilled workers moving to the area, who have been so important to attracting companies and jobs, want to be able to eat out at restaurants, drop off their dry cleaning and send their children to school, all of which require lower and middle income workers. If they cannot afford to live in the area, Ms. Resnick said, Denver will not retain its allure-- and the economy will not keep growing.

“My concern is, at some point it sort of breaks because we can’t house the folks that we need to fill out all the economic activity in the region,” she said. “I’m not convinced that in the near term it will correct itself just through market forces, unless that’s through people moving out.”

Unmentioned is that in some of the most desirable markets-- particularly New York, San Francisco/San Jose, Los Angeles/Orange County, Seattle, San Diego, the DC area... huge amounts of money from Asia and Russia have flooded into housing as a safe investment or a place to launder and park shady money. [Trump's entire business model was based on this.] Condos and houses in all these markets sit unoccupied while housing prices rise so high that American workers can't buy them. Back in June, the Wall Street Journal reported the western cities want to slow the flood of home buying by Chinese nationals-- but can't. The flood of capital "washing over cities" is distorting home prices and irritating locals who are squeezed out of the market.

Violence... Non-Violence... What About When It Comes To Nazis?

That's American Nazi leader Richard Spencer pretending to be Dave Gahan a couple months ago in front of a crowd of drunken fascists who appear to have left their tiki torches at home that night. As a longtime, devoted Depeche Mode fan, that doesn't give me the right to kill him-- even if I'm going to be haunted for weeks after I watching him mincing around the stage like that. Even punching him in the face is... well, just something to laugh about. I've been a non-violent kind of guy for my whole life (except once).



The video's funny. I wish it went on longer. But I don't mean to advocate violence-- just Depeche Mode's music (mostly). Ryan Clayton is the president of Americans Take Action, a populist network formed to restore free and fair elections in America, create a purpose driven economy, and save the free and open internet-- but not to advocate violent action. Definitely not, in fact. Yesterday, on a provate e-mail listserv, Ryan wrote that since Charlottesville he's been seeing "a radical uptick in the number of people on the left calling for us to reciprocate the violence, the most notable example being a new t-shirt campaign called Punch More Nazis. Here's how the argument generally proceeds: 'Practice love and non-violence, except where Nazis are concerned. You must punch Nazis, as they don't speak any other language than violence. Therefore, we much be violent towards them so they understand we mean serious bizness. Yeah, bruh.'" Tempting, right? Ryan says NO-- and you know he's right.

"Punch More Nazis" = Promotion of Violence.  Period.  Full stop.

The Young Turks showed a video of Ryan being attacked by some neo-Nazis a few months ago. Watch:



Ryan:

Honestly, going into this action, I thought they might get violent, but the most I imagined they may was punch us in the face once or twice-- that was the upper limit of what I considered a room full of conservatives might do. But this is a different breed of political animal, folks, these people are straight up right-wing white nationalist fascists, and they heartily embrace violence as a means to an end. Red hats are the new brown-shirts. "Alt-right" just means new nazis, same as the old nazis. I get it. So later on, when having a conversation with a political ally on the left who's a friend, they asked me what it would take to commit violence? I responded simply, "Nothing." After giving me a few scenarios that evoked the same response, he delivered his final salvo, "Yeah, but what about self-defense. What if you thought someone was going to kill you, what would you do then?" I responded, I've actually been in that situation recently, where I thought people were going to kill me, and I held on to my camera; I didn't strike back. The temptation was there that day to ram the person restraining me into the window and free myself from their grip (it ended up being a woman holding me from behind, imagine the delight that O'Keefe would have in flaunting that violent reaction to the world).  When I was being choked, the temptation was there to use training I've received to free myself from such a choke-hold, but that could have been interpreted as an attempt to strike back and escalated the violence. The temptation was definitely there to fight back as I was being thrown down a stairwell, where the thought crossed my mind in that instant that I could end up paralyzed for life from what was about to happen.

I did not resist, I did not strike back, the only violence in that room was in their hands. I allowed them to monopolize the violence, and I called the police instead... The police have failed to pursue any serious charges (even though it's plain as day on the video), and frankly, the community that should be supportive in punishing O'Keefe and his minions haven't really stepped up to the plate to make them pay for their assault on the two of us, including some of the people who got us into the midst of this fracas in the first place. The compendium of these factors had me revisit the wisdom of nonviolence, I've spent time recently re-litigating the debate over and over again in my mind. I say this to relate to those who are softening in your stance toward a commitment to nonviolence, I understand how you feel, I've been there. You're angry, you feel threatened, you feel responsible, you feel duty bound to do something to protect yourself and others. I get it.

But let me ask you something, do you believe in science? Like, there's science that says the world is warming and the climate is changing, 99% of scientists agree, it's a fact backed up by reams of data. I believe in science, so when a scientist investigates the last 100 years of conflicts on planet Earth and discovers that nonviolent conflicts are 3x more effective than violent conflicts, I listen. When she shows us data demonstrating that violent conflicts are becoming less common and less effective, and opposition movements that gain power through violence usually end up more violent against their own people once in power, I listen. When she shows that violence is effectively a barrier to entry for all but males between the ages of 18-45 who are willing to harm other people, it means a revolution grounded in violence will leave out (most) women, artists, intellectuals, civic servants, religious leaders, young people, etc (i.e. all the people who make a movement). When she says that every movement, violent or nonviolent, that achieved the active and sustained participation of 3.5% of the population has succeeded in the last 100 years, I am filled with great hope (btw, no violent campaign has achieved that percentage of active participation). So listen, the science of nonviolence is here, you can read it, analyze it, and you can even disagree, but your gut feeling that violence is still an effective tool for political conflict is the exact same thing as those people denying the scientific consensus surrounding the reality of global climate change.

Put plainly, violence is not more effective than a movement commitment to nonviolence. It's settled science. There's this great saying I've heard in trainings, "In God we trust, all others bring data." So I've shown you mine, now you show me yours. Also, I'll give you the follow up argument too: "But King had Malcolm. Mandela had the Spear of the Nation. They were armed Indians fighting for what Ghandi wanted too. You need both to win." Yeah, I used to make this argument too, before I read the science surrounding this. Thankfully, even a few of the examples mentioned here are addressed and/or debunked in the book of Why Civil Resistance Works (referenced above). The authors even did a follow up study on this line of argument, since so many bruhs were like, "But c'mon, there must be empirical validation of my gut feeling that violence is useful in some way and it always works better cause that makes me feel so good and manly, bruh." Actually, that's completely wrong, their follow up study showed that nonviolent movements that had simultaneous violent movements were prolonged and less successful over time, and I believe that this is increasingly true in the later half of the century. Their scientific data and analysis trumps your gut feeling, bruh.

Coming back to the topic of the day, my partner in progressive pranks was also in the crowd that got rammed by the car in Charlottesville (while I was on the phone with him). Much of his political involvement prior to me hiring him was doing work with anti-fascists in DC. He still knows some of them and attends rallies/protests occasionally, which is why he was there that day, but since working for me, he has accepted and adhered to a strict code of nonviolence-- part of a requirement for the job, but he's also genuinely come around on the issue. Personally, he will tell you how he now believes that violent responses in the streets are counterproductive and how he's seen how powerful nonviolent actions can be, such as dropping Russian flags with Trumps name on them into CPAC. He has been successfully making the argument in some of those networks that violence is really just a testosterone fueled explosion of emotional release (mostly by men), rather than an actual strategic tactic employed to achieve actual political goals. The main problem I personally have with black bloc violence is that they're usually doing it around the corner from a nonviolent protest. When they break windows on one corner of the street, the police start cracking skulls on the next street over. The violence, once associated with a small group of protesters, can be used to paint all protesters and justify violence against them. It takes a lot of conversations and a lot of listening to bring the younger generation of activists around to seeing the virtue and strategic value of nonviolence, and we all pay a price when protesters are subjected to increasing volumes of violence from police as well as our political opponents, so if you're doing anything that is undermining the former and promoting the latter, then you're doing it wrong.

So, let's bring it all together now... When Donald Trump tweets out that there is violence on many sides, he's watching and waiting for you. He wants you to fuck up the response to this. He didn't mess up his response. He was planting a seed, and you're playing directly into Donald Trump's tiny hands. When someone on the left encourages violence, they can point and make the false equivalence, "See, both sides are doing it. Both sides are guilty. Both sides are violent." Then it's a competition to see who can be more violent to win. And make no mistake, they want a violent conflict-- conservatives believe that violence is a perfectly acceptable way to solve political disputes. They have guns and they want to use them (btw, per capita gun ownership has declined while gun sales have increased, so less and less people are owning more and more guns... and it ain't progressives locking and loading up). You're the key to them changing the terms of the debate from words into violent actions and unlocking all those gun safes to head down to the local protest. They know both sides will lose, but we will lose more-- not as many of us are willing to be violent, our active and passive supporters mostly reject violence, the uncommitted in the middle will throw their hands up because "both sides are doing it" robbing us of any moral high-ground, it will embolden their supporters and swell their ranks with people who believe in violence as a means to an end, it will sap our enthusiasm and our people's will to resist. So, when you say, "Punch More Nazis," you are a recruitment mechanism for alt-right neo-nazi fascists and delivering psychological death blows to the new ranks of the resistance.  You are becoming the handmaiden of the oppressor. So, congratulations, I hope you sell some shirts, because you're going to get us all fucking killed.

Lastly, some will also say, "Yeah, I normally am against violence, but it's okay as a last resort."  Isaac Asimov once said, "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."  If the use of violence is morally justifiable in your book and you reject the science of nonviolence, then you are as Mr. Asimov says.  

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral,
begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.
Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence you may murder the liar,
but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.
Through violence you may murder the hater,
but you do not murder hate.
In fact, violence merely increases hate.
So it goes.
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness:
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Will Kid Rock Use His Sex Tape With Scott Stapp As Part Of His Campaign For Michigan Senator?

Julian Carroll turned 86 last April. He's even older than Pelosi, Hoyer and Clyburn-- and until this weekend he was the Democratic minority whip in the Kentucky state Senate. In 1968 he was elected Speaker of the Kentucky House and in 1974 he was elected governor of the state in a 470,159 to 277,998 landslide. His credibility suffered a severe setback when he was accused of taking insurance kickbacks and took the Fifth Amendment in front of the Grand Jury. He ran for governor again in 1987 but came in fifth in the Democratic primary. He's been in the state Senate since 2004.

The reason he's no longer minority whip is because Saturday he was accused of propositioning and groping a 30-year old man in 2005. The Senate Democratic Caucus is also urging him to resign from the Senate. Funny how no Republicans urged Mitch McConnell to resign from office when he was caught groping a much younger man during the few weeks he served in the Army (and was then booted out). A spokesman for the Kentucky Democratic Party said, "We are terribly concerned by the events described in the Pure Politics piece concerning Sen. Carroll. While we acknowledge and greatly appreciate Sen. Carroll’s life-long career of public service, we cannot overlook the severity of these allegations and take them seriously." Carroll says the charges are false.

When approached in a hallway in the Capitol by Spectrum reporter Nick Storm, Carroll denied the allegations. “It is ridiculous,” said Carroll. “It did not happen.”

Spectrum obtained a copy of a Kentucky State Police investigation into the matter, including a letter indicating that the Lincoln County Attorney decided not to prosecute the case.

“Without proof of more than a request for sexual contact, I do not believe a criminal case could or should be sought,” the letter from April 2005 said.

Carroll was married and had four children at the time.

As to why the recording is surfacing publicly now, Spectrum pointed to an article last August by Washington D.C.-based Roll Call about Kentucky’s 2016 U.S. Senate race. In that article, Carroll was interviewed about whether Lexington Mayor Jim Gray’s sexual orientation mattered in the Senate race. In that interview, Carroll was asked whether he thought being gay is a choice.

“I know my Christian friends don’t approve of it,” Carroll told Roll Call. “And quite frankly, it’s not a choice I choose to make.”

He added: “You can choose to ask God to convert you and heal you of that choice.”

A few days ago, a friend of mine told me he was about to interview a very senior congressional Democrat and asked for suggestions about the interview. I suggested he wait 'til the last question-- since it would probably be the last no matter when he asked it-- and they say something along the lines of "It's 2017; is it still appropriate for you to be living a lie in the closet and pretending to not be gay? Since everyone knows anyway, doesn't that expose you to a political attack or even blackmail? Why not just get the hell out of the closet already?"

It's so... Republican for Democrats to still be creeping around in the closet. [Here at DWT we don't out him because his voting record on LGBT issues in absolutely fine.]

Anyway, you've probably heard all that chatter about Kid Rock, a Republican, threatening to run for senator in Michigan. Republicans are very excited and encouraging him to declare his candidacy. None of them seem to care that Kid Rock and Scott Stapp singer in the fake Christian band Creed caused a messy little scandal with a sex tape from 1999.



The scandal was over a tape of the two rock'n'roll Republicans getting completely drunk and having some random groupies blow them on camera, with Stapp moved to scream "It's good to be the king!" Stapp, kept the tape in a safe and back them he had a home-- which, he claims, was burglarized in 2002. (Kid Rock's camp claims Stapp was strung out and broke and that he actually sold the tape for drug money. Kid Rock has never spoken to Stapp again.) In 2006 the company Stapp sold the tape to, Red Light District-- yep the folks behind the Paris Hilton sex tape-- said they were releasing the tape and even did a YouTube promo, which Kid Rock's lawyers made YouTube remove. Meanwhile, Stapp-- in an autobiography-- has claimed that the tape was really just a Kid Rock tape with him digitally imposed... although that's been proven false. Will the sex tape come out during the Senate campaign? Will any Republicans care? I mean after Trump, are there any boundaries left anyway (at least for Republicans)?

Obama and the Perez Election — Are the Democrats Trying to Fail?

Bernie Sanders: "Are they going to welcome into the Democratic Party the working class in this country and young people, or is it going to be party of the upper middle class and the cocktail crowd and the heavy campaign contributors? Which to a significant degree it is right now."

by Gaius Publius

[Obama] called DNC members himself [on behalf of Tom Perez], and had aides including confidante Valerie Jarrett, former political director David Simas and his White House director of political engagement Paulette Aniskoff working members by phone through the votes on Saturday afternoon.

—Politico

I recently wrote about the recent race for DNC Chair between Sanders-endorsed and CPC co-chair Keith Ellison on the one hand, and Obama- and Clinton-wing-endorsed Tom Perez on the other (see "Field Notes from the Battle Within the Democratic Party"), and concluded the following.

Four points:

• Whatever his other merits, there's no question that Tom Perez is running at the behest of the Obama wing of the party as a counter to Keith Ellison, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

• There's also no question, whatever the organizational merits of any of the DNC Chair candidates, that for medium- to low-information voters this is seen as a proxy battle between the Obama-Clinton wing and the Sanders wing of the Party (search here for the phrase "proxy battle").

• And there's absolutely no question that one of Sanders' big issues in the primary was (a) the role of money in politics, and (b) the role of money in the way the Party does business. Needless to say, that message resonated with a great many supporters who had no interest in seeing the Party's current leadership continue. That was not only true for all Sanders voters in the primary; it was true for many Sanders supporters who failed to turn out in general election as well.

• Which means, finally, that if Perez wins this contest, those medium- to low-information voters may well think the Party hasn't changed much after all, and just stay home again in 2018.

After all, don't you think that if every Sanders supporter had pulled the lever for Clinton, she'd have won in a landslide instead of lost in a squeaker?

Whatever the merits of the two leading candidates, Perez and Ellison, with respect to this position, it could not be more obvious that the Party establishment, including and especially its outgoing, still-popular, eight-year president, really really wanted Perez to win.

Why?

Control, the Appearance of Control...

For whatever combination of reasons, the need of many long-time Party insiders, from the county level up through the national level, for control of the Party is extremely great. This may be in part due to the nature of humans to protect territory, especially long-held territory. The local clique that has always run Cub Pack 257 our of your local church, for example, may resent like hell the influx of a group of new parents who start thinking, "Why are you running things this way?"

(And imagine their irritation if those parents discovered that much of their Cub Pack money went into the hands of a "preferred supplier" of equipment who happened to be married to the Assistant Pack Leader?)

Of course, organizations don't always end up filled with insiders holding tight to power for its own sake. My local HOA, for example, went in two years from having a self-protective, angry, clique-led insider club to a welcoming, "let's hear from the owners" inclusive leadership group — but only after a series of electoral coups took out the lower-level insiders and finally, the board chair himself (who suddenly discovered a need to move to a penthouse in a different city).

But it happens often enough, and it's certainly — and for those with eyes, obviously — happening inside the modern (post-Reagan) Democratic Party. There may be any number of causes, but the result is the same.

Control of the Party. However it came about — I have a private opinion on the source of this need for dominance — starting with Bill Clinton in the 1990s, when the Democratic Party reshaped itself in response to 12 years of Republican rule, hatred by establishment Democrats directed at those to their left grew fierce. It also became quite noticeable.

For example, Matthew Karp recently wrote at Jacobin:

Two stark facts have defined the 2016 Democratic primary since the campaign began last spring. The first is the remarkable success of self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders, who appears to be mobilizing far more support from lower-income voters than any other Democratic underdog in a generation.

The second fact, evident since the beginning of the campaign but even more visible in recent weeks, is the fierce determination of the Democratic Party elite to nominate Hillary Clinton.

With both Sanders and Donald Trump surging in the polls, many observers have framed the 2016 race as one that pits insurgent populist campaigns against consolidated party establishments. It’s easy for this kind of insider versus outsider analysis to become sloppy and conspiratorial. In fact, the contours of “the establishment” are often difficult to define, and a closer examination frequently reveals several different elite factions facing off against each other.

Yet there is abundant evidence that the Democratic Party elite has thrown its full weight behind Clinton — and against Sanders — in ways that surpass any other primary campaign in recent history.

I won't comment here about the reasons for this animus, but I will state it as a fact. "Third way," establishment Democrats, by and large, hate "the left." Jesse Jackson and his supporters used to be the incarnation of those "to the left," which explains and accounts perfectly for Bill Clinton's cruel and public Sister Souljah moment.

Today, Sanders and his supporters are the current incarnation. Establishment Democrats' need to keep control of the Party — to keep the rest of the Party in line and under their thumb — is still clearly one of their guiding principles.

Top Clinton fundraiser who whipped votes for Perez says Ellison was blocked to stop the left https://t.co/juxHQxjeoY pic.twitter.com/O8Kq2X6flK

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) February 27, 2017

The Appearance of Control. Once a leadership elite seeks that degree of control  — as linked just above, Chuck Schumer reportedly preferred to see Republican Pat Toomey re-elected to the Senate than let someone as independent as Democrat Joe Sestak into the insider club he's in charge of — the appearance of control is also critical. (It should be noted that Schumer was an early supporter of Ellison's candidacy.)

Much of the press commentary about this race, in attempting minimize the split between the Sanders wing and the Obama-Clinton wing, saw either of the choices, Perez and Ellison, as good ones for the Party. For example, US News concluded prior to the voting, "Ellison would likely serve the party well, and his Muslim faith would serve as clear symbolic counterpoint to the policies of the Trump administration. However, the party should resist the factionalizing between Sanders and Clinton supporters and focus on the candidate who can build the infrastructure, organization, messaging and fundraising networks to make the party more competitive across the 50 states." Nathan Robinson writes much the same in the piece linked near the end. Neither is alone in this view.

So if these two candidates were presented as roughly equivalent (note the word "presented"), why did winning DNC Chair matter so much that Barack Obama, personally, whipped for Perez? Two of the three answers are obvious — not only did control of the DNC matter to him and his fellow insiders, but the appearance of control matters as well.

Put crudely, a machine boss can't be seen to lose, even when next to nothing is actually lost. To those for whom power matters very very much, they can't even seem to be losing it.

...And Money

Which bring us to the final point, the third reason Obama-insiders wanted Perez to beat Ellison for this position. It's not just about control. There are real dollars at stake if power within the DNC, the smaller than 500-member insiders club, passes into the "wrong hands."

Remember my Cub Scout example above, the one about the "preferred supplier" of equipment being the spouse of a pack leader? What if that "preferred supplier" derived all of his income from dealings with the scouts? How motivated would his pack leader-spouse be to keep complaining parents, all of them, off of her pack committee? The answer is obvious. Very motivated.

Nomiki Konst, investigative reporter for TYT Network, who covered the DNC Chair contest closely (see also here), had this to say via email after the election (my emphasis):

I keep saying to any reporters who plan on writing about Bernie vs Hillary/Obama Wing proxy fight that this was actually a proxy battle between Unity democrats vs. HRC & OFA elitists.

Keith had so many establishment Dems and progressives. Unions and even most state party chairs.

Perez still won because he had elitists Dems -- the biggest bundlers and political operatives, as well as the president and VP, working on his behalf.

Remember, Perez had barely any union endorsements, a couple state Party Chair endorsements, did not have the minority leader of the senate and absolutely NO Sanders supporter endorsements.

And he still won by 35 votes.

"The biggest bundlers and political operatives" means, first, the bag men and women ("bundlers," collectors of the millions that come into Party hands) and, second, those to whom that money goes ("operatives," consultants, pollsters, campaign advisors and very well paid media buyers). "Bundlers and operatives" are, in other words, the suppliers and recipients of what, in a presidential election year, amounts to billions of dollars spent per candidate, and all the political favors big money purchases for its ultimate sources.

Konst highlighted that problem in a striking interview with Perez just a few days before the election (written up here):

Konst: Aren't conflicts of interest a concern? If you're going to change the culture on the ground, how do you change it without banning these conflicts of interest who want to keep the party bloated?

Perez: When you say that someone wants to keep the party bloated, I don't know. The people that I talk to want to build a Democratic Party that works for everyone. ... The folks that are running the Unity Commission, there's going to be a lot of different perspectives that are put to bear — that's what we want!

Konst (incredulous): Including consultants?

Perez: We have a big tent in the Democratic Party....

Keeping the party "bloated" means keeping corporate money, hedge fund money and cash from very high wealth individuals (example, Haim Saban) flowing freely into Party hands so it can just as freely pass out to the hands of its friends — who in turn help Party insiders stay in power.

Few will write the story this way — Konst is one of the exceptions — but following the "flow of funds" explains much of what's behind the fierce determination of Democratic insiders (that is, the 447 women and men who actually vote for DNC Chair) to keep things just as Nancy Pelosi wants — the way they are right now, thank you very much.

The miracle is that Ellison got even 200 votes at all, and lost by only 35. Still, despite the support of "unions and most state party chairs," he lost by a significant margin. Ellison gained zero votes from the crowded first round of voting to the two-person second round, while Perez sprinted to a win.

What's Next for Democrats?

What's next for Democrats deserves an essay by itself. But needless to say, an increase in #DemExit is one of the anticipated options, even by several of the delegates Konst interview on the floor at the DNC meeting.

A worst-case scenario is painted below. First, consider this from NBC News on whether the public views insiders of either party favorably, (my emphasis): "One sentiment that unites the fractured nation is fury at the establishment in Washington. Fully 86 percent of those surveyed said they believe that a small group in D.C. has "reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. That includes 88 percent of Republicans and 85 percent of Democrats."

Then consider how that broad unpopularity of insiders may intersect with this DNC election. Of that, Nathan Robinson, editor at Current Affairs, writes, "By failing to appoint Keith Ellison to chair the DNC, Democrats have written their suicide note."

Here's just a taste of the longer piece:

They Must Be Trying to Fail

At this point, one has to conclude that the national Democratic Party has a death wish. ...

[I]t was incredibly important that the Democratic Party take some steps to indicate that it cared about progressives. Since the election, it hadn’t been doing a very good job of this. (Nancy Pelosi’s insistence that nothing needed to change, and her rebuke to a young leftist, demonstrated the prevailing attitude.) Appointing Keith Ellison to chair the DNC was the perfect opportunity. After all, chairing the DNC is a pretty minor role. It would mostly have been a gesture of friendship and unity, showing that even after the catastrophic mistake of ignoring leftist warnings not to run Clinton, the party was capable of valuing its leftmost members.

But no. Instead of granting the tiniest possible concession, the party has decided to affirm precisely what Nancy Pelosi has indicated: democratic socialists and social democrats don’t belong in the party. It’s not for them. What the party does depends on what billionaire donors want it to do.

This is politically suicidal.

As if that wasn't enough, Robinson adds, "Now, progressives in the party are further alienated. Good luck getting them to vote for Democrats. ... The progressives needed to receive some kind of gesture. And they have received one: an enormous middle finger." Indeed.

Your Bottom Line

Consider these facts:

1. It clearly mattered very much, to Obama, to high Party insiders, and to the support ecosystem around them, that no one representing the Sanders camp be allowed real power in the Party. (Sanders himself is in charge of "outreach" and reports in that capacity to Chuck Schumer.) Even when the role is highly visible but "minor." The DNC Chair does have a modicum of control, unlike those who hold "messaging" roles, but even that much control won't be allowed.

2. Yet all you hear from Democrats, correctly in my view, is "Defeating Trump is Job One." The nation, indeed the world, is at a crossroads — on the climate front, a crossroads of world-historical proportions.

3. Yet there's an obvious disconnect between the Party's rhetoric and its actions. Is control of the Party more important than bringing in the groundswell of popular support needed to defeat the Republicans in all branches of government?

4. And people do notice that disconnect, more now than before. Some might even call it, not a disconnect, but a contradiction. Or hypocrisy. Some, those who couldn't pull the lever for Clinton, may even call it that at election time.

5. If so — if the insider-controlled Democratic Party puts its own need for party dominance over the needs of the nation — the nation and indeed the world will suffer greatly. Will insider Democrats suffer to the same degree as the rest of us? If they think they're getting what they want, no.

So a question for those who gaze into the future. None of this dire predicting is certain, but it's certainly possible. Will there be a price, for the Party and the world, attached to adherence to power at any price? If there is, establishment Democrats sure are flirting with it.

Again.

Scheduling note: My comments appear regularly here on Monday and Thursday, or Tuesday and Thursday if Monday is a holiday.

GP