In Congress, There Is A Big Difference Between Bipartisanship And Waving A White Flag As You Cross The Aisle

 

Meet The Blue Dogs and New Dems

Working across the aisle in a bipartisan fashion in an art. Most Democrats in Congress do not have a clue about how it's done. The so-called "Problem Solvers"-- like Third Way and the Blue Dogs and New Dems-- make up the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, colloquially, "the Democraps." They are always the first to rush across the aisle and claim they are thereby bipartisan. Being a coward and having no values is not the same thing as being a smart, skilled bipartisan legislator. That's way over the heads of the conservative Democrats who vote the most frequently with Republicans when progressive issues come to the floor of the House. This dirty dozen is not a list of bipartisan heroes. It is a list of always craven, 100% cowardly, and usually corrupt DINOs.

• Joe Cunningham (Blue Dog-SC)- 23.46% (R+10)
• Anthony Brindisi (Blue Dog-NY)- 24.69% (R+6)
• Ben McAdams (Blue Dog-UT)- 27.16% (R+13)
• Abigail Spanberger (Blue Dog-VA)-28.40% (R+6)
• Kendra Horn (Blue Dog-OK)- 28.40% (R+10)
• Jared Golden (Blue Dog-ME)- 34.57% (R+2)
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)- 39.08% (R+12)
• Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog-NJ)- 39.11% (R+3)
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)- 40.02% (D+9)
• Cindy Axne (New Dem-IA)- 40.74% (R+1)
• Elaine Luria (New Dem-VA)- 41.25% (R+3)
• Abby Finkenauer (secret New Dem-IA)- 41.98% (D+1)

You'll notice that they are voting with the Democrats less than half the time on these crucial roll calls. I've included the PVIs of their districts so you can see how much each one is being pressured by the far right-- from Collin Peterson and Ben McAdams (a lot) to Henry Cuellar and Abby Finkenauer (not one bit).

Many people remember former Orlando Congressman, Alan Grayson as a fervent partisan and they especially remember his iconic Die Quickly-GOP Healthcare speech. But one of the things I always admired most about Grayson was his ability to pass prodigious amounts of legislation with bipartisan support. In fact, the Republicans controlled the House for much of the time Grayson was a member. And he still managed to write and pass more legislation than any other member of that body! I had a long talk with Grayson about this yesterday. He said that he tended to work with people-- regardless of party-- "who gave a shit." If someone cared, he felt there was a way to find some common ground without abandoning any principles or values. This is a small part of what he told me:

On our side the aisle, the political class is resolved to employ focus groups to try to validate meaningless phrases that sound good to them, and then to force-feed them to the electorate through ad-buys that give them their 15%. This resulted in Clinton’s “Stronger Together” motto, which no one understood, much less believed. (And I say that having voted for her, and having wanted her to win.) This sort of tasteless political oatmeal is what makes it hard for ordinary people to identify the Democratic Party with any tangible proposals that might improve their lives, and it creates a vacuum that the other side fills by promising that a Democratic victory would hasten the apocalypse.

But the most flavorless of all this flavorless oatmeal is the abuse of the term “bipartisanship” by, well, people who stand for nothing. Here is a very easy way to judge whether such a sentiment is real or not: has it resulted in any actual legislation? After all, that’s the job of a Member of Congress, according to the Constitution. If you see any actual legislation, then you can argue whether it made the world better or worse, but without that, the term “bipartisanship” is lipless lip service.

In my first term, with the Democrats in charge, I passed the only real bipartisan accomplishment of the 111th Congress, the law to audit the Federal Reserve. In my last two terms, with the Republicans in charge, I passed 121 laws through the House. I also accounted, personally, for ½ of all the amendments passed by the Science Committee, and 1/3 of all the amendments passed by the Foreign Affairs Committee. And EVERY SINGLE ONE of these was “bipartisan”; I couldn’t have passed any of them unless I had GOP votes. Further, in their own ways, every single one of them was progressive. When I passed a law extending mental health benefits to veterans-- after 250,000 of them came back from Afghanistan and Iraq with permanent brain abnormalities you could see with a CAT scan-- that was progressive to me, whatever may have led the GOP to vote for it. That’s real bipartisanship, not the “bipartisanship” that begins and ends with right-wingers calling right-wingers “my esteemed colleague from Whosits.”

Barney Frank had an interesting point to make in this regard-- he constantly reminded others than anonymous polling of Capitol Hill staff named him both the most partisan and the most bipartisan Member of Congress. Or, to put it another way, bipartisanship is judged not by words, but by deeds.

I haven't written much about Jody Hice, a radical Georgia teabagger, since he was first elected to Congress in 2014. In fact, I haven't heard much about him-- until yesterday, when he joined Ted Lieu to co-sponsor a bipartisan bill that's good for Lieu's constituents and good for Hice's constituents and good for the country in general. The transpartisan establishment may not be thrilled with it but it is neither a Republican nor a Democratic bill. The legislation-- the Oversite.gov Authorization Act-- is meant to increase transparency and accountability within the federal government. If passed and signed into law-- presumably by Biden-- it will formally authorize the establishment and maintenance of a website to help the public more easily access reports that have been generated by the independent work of Inspectors General.

In introducing it, Ted said that "Our bill will allow for crucial improvements to be made to Oversight.gov, a central online location for all federal Inspectors General to publish their reports. IGs are critical to rooting out waste, fraud and abuse in our government, and this website will make their findings more accessible to the American people. I am pleased to introduce this bipartisan bill to increase transparency in the IG community."

Hice was obviously proud to let his constituents know he was working in their interest with someone sane. "The inspector general community is on the frontlines in combatting waste, fraud, and abuse across federal agencies on behalf of the American taxpayer. The Oversight.gov Authorization Act is an important step in promoting and protecting the work of inspectors general, enabling the public to view firsthand the need for greater accountability and transparency in our government. This bicameral, bipartisan legislation is a commonsense measure that all of Congress can get behind, and I look forward to working with my colleague Rep. Ted Lieu, as well as Senators Chuck Grassley and Maggie Hassan, in seeing this bill across the finish line."

Previously, Ted and Hice have worked together to safeguard Inspectors General through their bill, the Inspector General Protection Act, which passed the House in July of 2019, to enhance the independence and integrity of IGs. As soon as Trump heard the word "integrity" he sensed the law would be bad for him and told McConnell to shit-can it in the Senate, which he promptly did.

Ted is co-chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, and he has been coming up with much of the messaging that is destroying the House Republicans this cycle. Like Grayson's description of Barney Frank, Ted is very partisan... and very bipartisan at the same time. Confusing? I asked him about it this morning. "I have always believed that people of good will, intelligence, and patriotism can disagree on policy. I think it's important to try to work in a bipartisan way where possible. I drive my staff crazy sometimes, but I am always asking them to find me a Republican co-lead for our legislative ideas. It is much easier to move legislation through the process if you have bipartisan support from the outset. There are some issues upon which I will most likely never agree with my Republican colleagues. But the truth is there are many issues where there is a fair amount of common ground to be reached. I also try not to let disagreements on one issue impact potential partnerships on other issues. Just because I disagree with a Republican colleague on gun safety or abortion doesn't mean I won't work with them on marijuana legalization or government transparency. I will not compromise on my principals-- but I can search for common ground on good public policy. In my view the key to being a good legislator is being able to tell the difference."

Biden's Cabinet Will Suck-- But, As In All Things, Not As Badly As Trump's... And Looking Ahead To The 2022 Midterms

In 2008, John McCain's first choice for a running mate was Joe Lieberman, one of the only Democrats who could make a credible argument that he was the more conservative Joe among Dems, not Biden. They were both detestable senators and Lieberman was eventually kicked out of the party by the grassroots, even with the Democratic establishment sticking with him through his trials and tribulations. But McCain was talked out of selecting him by one of today's top #NeverTrumps, Steven Schmidt, who thought-- incorrectly, as he would tell you himself now-- that Sarah Palin would be the best choice.

The only time-- as far as I know-- that a presidential candidate chose someone from the other party as his running mate was in 1864, when Abe Lincoln dumped vice president Hannibal Hamlin (R-ME) for Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, in the name of national unity. When Lincoln was assassinated, Johnson became president, a disaster for the country and especially for the recently freed slaves, with whom he had no sympathy at all and against whose interests he worked tirelessly. He was impeached in 1868 but avoided being tossed out of office by one Senate vote. That same year, he lost the Democratic Party nomination for president and is remembered in history as one of America's worst presidents, some even say worse than Trump, although, obviously that's impossible.

It's much easier-- and more traditional-- for presidents to put members of the other party in their cabinets. Even Trump did as much-- if you want to count Michael Flynn and Peter Navarro as Democrats (they technically were). Obama appointed a ton of Republicans to his cabinet: Robert Gates (Secretary of Defense), Ray LaHood (Secretary of Transportation), Chuck Hagel (Secretary of Defense), Robert McDonald (Secretary of Veterans Affairs) and appointed Ben Bernanke as chair of the Fed and Jerome Powell as a member. George W. Bush's token Democrat was Norm Minetta (Secretary of Transportation). Bill Clinton gave Alan Greenspan the FED chair, made William Cohen secretary of defense and appointed Republicans Michael Chertoff, William Sessions, Sheila Bair, David Gergen, Lois Freeh, and John Negroponte to important sub-cabinet positions. Reagan had a fake-Dem, William Bennett, as Secretary of Education and another fake-Dem, Keane Kirkpatrick as UN ambassador. Jimmy Carter appointed Republican James Schlesinger as Secretary of Energy. Nixon had fake-Dem John Connally as Treasury Secretary. And JFK appointed Robert McNamara Secretary of Defense, Douglas Dillon Secretary of the Treasury, John McCone director of the CIA, McGeorge Bundy National Security Advisor and Christian Herter U.S. Trade Rep.

I predict that Biden's administration will be the most bipartisan in living memory. All these Republicans for Biden groups know what they're doing and many of the principals are top political players. If Jaime Harrison defeats Lindsey Graham in November-- not likely, but not impossible-- I wouldn't be surprised to see Graham get a top job, maybe even Secretary of Defense! Rahm Emanuel is so happy he's peeing in his tutu. Yesterday BuzzFeed reporter Henry Gomez looked into the motivations behind Kasich's DNC speech last night. Basically, after spending decades trying and failing to "shape and reshape" the Republican Party, Kasich would now like to help shape and reshape the Democratic Party. Most Democrats say "Screw you!" Gomez quoted a veteran Democratic operative who has experience in Ohio: "Maybe we shouldn’t have guys who tried to break unions and put gag orders on rape crisis counselors speak at our convention?"

Kasich’s welcome endorsement and the overall programming of the convention say a lot about Biden’s vision for the Democratic Party he now leads. Viewers may get a minute of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the young New York lawmaker who excites progressives, but they’ll also hear from John Kerry, an elder of the establishment. And Kasich is sharing a night with Sen. Bernie Sanders-- a democratic socialist and the runner-up for this year’s nomination-- in a scheduling move intended to demonstrate Biden’s ideology-spanning support.

“I think both parties have to have new ideas, and I think this country is moderate,” said Kasich, winding up to a gentle criticism of Ocasio-Cortez. “People on the extreme, whether they're on the left or on the right, they get outsized publicity that tends to define their party. You know, I listen to people all the time make these statements, and because AOC gets outsized publicity doesn't mean she represents the Democratic Party. She's just a part, just some member of it. And it's on both sides, whether it's the Republicans or whether it's the Democrats.”

...Kasich describes his alliance with Biden and the Democrats as a “team of rivals”-- a phrase borrowed from the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and her book on Abraham Lincoln’s Cabinet. Kasich acknowledged that his convention speech, which he prerecorded from Westerville, Ohio, will raise speculation that he might be in line for a post in Biden’s Cabinet.

“People say, ‘Well, he must have been promised something or he must have received something.’ I haven't been promised anything, nor have I received anything,” he said.

“I'd be more than glad to advise, but I'm not going back to Washington,” Kasich added. “Could you imagine my being Secretary of Commerce? I mean, I wouldn't survive. I'll try to keep my voice out there. And look, you know, we'll just see how it goes. Let's just see how it goes.”

When convention delegates-- the majority of whom are Biden delegates of course were asked to react to the statement, "We should support a comprehensive single-payer, government-run insurance system that eliminates all copays and deductibles, is not tied to employment, and does not require payment at the point of service," 75.3% agreed. And when asked to react to the statement "We should support expanding the current healthcare system to Medicare for All that is comprehensive in its coverage," 75.2% agreed. Remember, Biden threatened, during the primaries, that if Congress passes Medicare-for-All, he'd veto it. (But not as meanly as Trump?)

Yesterday, at Too Much Information, Andrew Perez and David Sirota wrote that Biden's team-- i.e., the Democratic Party-- is signaling a post-election cave to the GOP and the sickness industrial complex on health care.

On the eve of a Democratic National Convention taking place as millions lose health care coverage, the health care industry is launching a new ad campaign pressing Democrats to back off the party’s already compromised health care promises. That pressure seems to be having its intended effect on Capitol Hill as congressional aides say the party will not push the initiative if Biden wins. The signs of retreat come as health care industry profits are skyrocketing and the industry’s campaign cash has flooded into Democratic coffers.

The Partnership for America’s Health Care Future (PAHCF)-- a front group created by health insurance, pharmaceutical and hospital lobbying groups to oppose “Medicare for All”--  announced on Friday that it is launching a new national ad campaign to persuade Democrats to abandon their plans to create a public health insurance plan. The group said it will run ads during the Democratic National Convention (DNC) this week. PAHCF is led by a former Hillary Clinton aide and run out of the offices of a D.C. lobbying firm led by former top Democratic congressional aides.

A substantial “public option” plan-- which polls show is wildly popular-- was the centerpiece of recent policy negotiations between supporters of former Vice President Joe Biden and progressive Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who had been pushing for a more expansive Medicare for All program. A draft of the party platform, approved by DNC members late last month, includes a pledge to pass a public option, or a government-run health insurance plan that would compete with private insurers.

Within 24 hours of the launch of the industry’s new ads, however, anonymous Democratic congressional sources were telling The Hill that Democrats likely won’t bother with the public option fight next year if Biden wins the election. Instead, they said the party will instead work to tweak the party’s 2010 health care law, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which has done little to limit insurance or hospital costs and has failed to ensure universal coverage.

A DWT prediction: Biden won't be as bad a president as Trump but within a year, people will be hoping he dies and Kamala takes over. The Democratic-controlled Senate will be barely better than the Republican-controlled Senate in terms of getting anything done for working families. Pelosi's larger but impotent House majority-- where the Republican wing of the party will be dominant-- will also accomplish absolutely nothing the voters want. The result: massive Democratic losses in the 2022 midterms, massive enough to dwarf 2010.

This is a good ad and worth watching again. I'm just wondering if California GOP congressmembers Kevin McCarthy, Devin Nunes, Doug LaMalfa, Crooked Ken Calvert, Tom McClintock, Mike Garcia and former Reps Darrell Issa and David Valadao (nothing trying for come-backs) have had the guts to comment on Señor Trumpanzee's statement about cutting off FEMA funds to California yet. What would happen after an earthquake if that asshole wins again? Miles Taylor, the fellow in this video told ABC News that he's "not going to mention any other names yet, but the president can expect that in the coming weeks and months he is going to hear from more people that served in his administration," calling this video an "opening salvo" and making it clear there are other Republicans who will be saying similar things about Trump's corruption, dysfunction, incompetence and unsuitability for public office.

Naming The Names: The Democrats Working With Republicans To Gut Social Security And Medicare

Eva: "Back in 2015, my opponent switched parties from Republican to Democrat. But if you look at his track record, you couldn't tell the difference. He's voted to roll back important banking regulations adopted under Dodd-Frank, weaken the federal minimum wage bill, he accepts corporate PAC money from private health insurance companies and Big Pharma, and now wants to gut two of our most important and most popular safety nets. Clearly, my opponent still bleeds GOP red. Programs like these are essential-- we are seeing it now more than ever.  When I'm in Congress, I will defend and fight to expand Social Security. I will fight for Medicare for All. Our system needs a complete overhaul, and that starts with replacing representatives in Congress who aren't willing to put people first."

Conservative politicians-- entirely clueless and unable to learn from past mistakes, but dramatically-inclined-- many representatives of their own wealthy class-- are already talking the Austerity talk about how to deal with the economic blowback from the dual pandemics-- the coronavirus and Trumpism. Cutting what conservatives love to label "entitlements," as well as services depended on by the non-rich, come immediately to mind. Virtually all Republicans and the entire Republican wing of the Democratic Party, want to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and so on. Well, the Republicans want to eliminate them; the Democraps just want to cut them (liberals).

The nearest parallel is the financial crisis of 2008-- a story of unregulated market failure that in the UK the Conservative government somehow succeeded in turning into a story of state failure in the form of the allegedly spendthrift Labour government preceding them. This enabled it to follow low-spending, deficit-cutting austerity policies that, it’s widely acknowledged, only prolonged the economic pain-- though it did have the desired effect from the government’s perspective of most hurting the people it cared least about, and generally weakening public institutions to which it was ideologically opposed. Justifications for austerity are often informed by the so-called 'household analogy' that a country’s finances are just like those of an individual, debt-averse household-- the idea that ex-Prime Minister Theresa May had in mind when she said 'there is no magic money tree' to increase frozen public sector wages. This time around, plenty of commentators are warning against the siren song of austerity and the 'economically illiterate' household analogy as a response to the forthcoming economic crisis. But there are plenty on the right still trying to sing it. If they succeed once again in pinning the economic storms to come on lazy employees and install another round of austerity, I think I’ll give up whatever vestigial faith I still have in electoral politics.

Ever since Caitlin Emma's tweet promoting her password-protected PoliticoPro article Monday, people have been asking which Democrats are working with the Republicans to compromise Social Security and Medicare under the cover of Trump's ballooning deficit. Here's the letter conservative New Dem Scott Peters (San Diego) and right-wing freak Jodey Arrington (R-TX) sent to Pelosi and McCarthy.

No one wants to say it out loud, but what these people think is a "cure" is to raise the retirement age and reduce benefits, rather than eliminating the cap on contributions so that wealthy people (the people who finance their cushy lifestyles and careers) pay their fair share. These are the Democrats who signed on. Every single one of them-- notice, not any just normal Democrats, all Wall Street-owned New Dems and Blue Dogs, most with histories of wanting to work with the GOP to gut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid-- is a shit-eating conservative (shit-eaters in red have primaries pending):

• Ben McAdams (Blue Dog-UT)
• Dean Phillips (New Dem-MN)
• Ed Case (Blue Dog- HI)
• Stephanie Murphy (Blue Dog-FL)
• Kathleen Rice (New Dem-NY)
• Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR)
• Derek Kilmer (New Dem-WA)
• Jimmy Panetta (New Dem-CA)
• Cindy Axne (New Dem-CA)
• Tom O'Halleran (Blue Dog-AZ)
• Anthony Brindisi (Blue Dog-NY)
• Ron Kind (New Dem-WI)
• Kendra Horn (Blue Dog-OK)
• Abigail Spanberger (Blue Dog-VA)
• Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN)
• Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)
• Xochitl Torres Small (Blue Dog-NM)
• Dan Lipinski (Blue Dog-IL)
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
• Harley Rouda ("ex"-Republican/New Dem-CA)
• Ann Kuster (New Dem-NH)
• Colin Allred (New Dem-TX)
• Lou Correa (Blue Dog-CA)
• Chrissy Houlahan (New Dem-PA)
• Terri Sewell (New Dem-AL)
• Sharice Davids (New Dem-KS)
• Gil Cisneros ("ex"-Republican/New Dem-CA)

Lipinski's constituents already defeated him in the March primary but he still wants to do all the harm he can before he gies back to Tennessee to live. I might add that the Republicans on the list are all garden variety Trumpists like Jason Smith (R-MO), Roger Williams (R-TX) and Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA). I reached out to McMorris Rodgers Democratic opponent, Chris Armitage, a firm defender of Social Security and someone who wants to expand Medicare, not shred it. Yesterday, he told me that "Cathy thinks she can do anything to hurt people and never face consequences. Well, we are shining a light on the cockroaches with this bill. Make people show what they are really about, greed and corruption or compassion and integrity."

I bet Horn will be sad when she she passes by No. Western and Britton Rd in OK City

Another staunch progressive, Tom Guild, is running for the Oklahoma seat Blue Dog Kendra Horn is disgracing with her conservative approach. Tom told us he's "extremely disappointed that Ms. Horn is undermining the security of America’s and the Fifth District’s seniors. It was just a few days ago that I received a slick and very expensive mailer paid for by one of Horn’s Super PACs praising her for her alleged work on behalf of senior citizens. Raising the retirement age and reducing benefits rather than eliminating the cap is simply a power play that feathers the nests of her well-heeled New York, San Francisco, and Washington, DC mega donors. Horn opposes Medicare for All. Instead she wants to give more public money to Big Insurance Corporations to prop up the failing profit-driven health care insurance industry. Social Security should be expanded, not weakened. Benefits should be increased, not undermined. With alleged friends like Kendra Horn, who needs enemies?"

Just down the road from Tom's OK City district, Texas progressive Julie Oliver is taking on Trump enabler Roger Williams in a gerrymandered district that stretches from the suburbs south of Ft. Worth right into Austin. "Every American," she said after hearing Williams was one of the signatories, "should be able to retire with dignity. Not only should we eliminate the Social Security wage benefit so that the ultra-rich do their patriotic duty and pay into it like the rest of us, we should expand Medicare to every person in this country so that we all get the care we need.

Cathy Ellis is running for the seat occupied by Trumpist Jason Smith in the rural southeast Missouri district. "Cutting Social Security," she told us this morning, "would dramatically hurt districts like mine, where the population leans older and folks rely on Social Security to live, eat, and survive. Jason Smith continues to make it clear that he doesn't have the interests of his constituents at heart-- he only works on behalf of the big corporations that fund him, including many that have a vested interest in cutting Social Security."

Alex Lawson, executive director of Social Security Works, told us today that "This is both incredibly stupid and extremely dangerous. Austerity prolonged the Great Recession and weakened the recovery. If Wall Street billionaires and the politicians they own are successful in bringing back austerity, it will prolong the pandemic and lead to economic catastrophe. We need much more government spending right now-- to save lives in nursing homes, and to prevent state governments from having to make catastrophic cutbacks. The last thing we need to do is cut Social Security and Medicare, which are more essential than ever in the midst of a pandemic. Shame on every Member of Congress who signed this letter."

Campaigning For Congress In Indiana, Jennifer Christie Asks: "What If We Just Had A Genuine Conversation Focused In Solutions?"

Jennifer Christie is running for an open Indiana congressional seat north of Indianapolis. It's generally considered a "red" seat-- the PVI is R+9-- so, as usual, the DCCC insists on a Republican-lite politician as their candidate. That isn't Jessica, a full-throttle progressive. So while the DCCC candidate raises big bucks from DCCC mailing lists and parrots tired talking points, Jennifer is discussing real problems with Democrats, Republicans and independents-- including other candidates-- and looking for sensible common ground.

I always wind up admiring political leaders who understand how to work across the aisle. The DCCC Blue Dogs and New Dems have no idea what bipartisan means-- though they use the word more than anyone. To a corporate Dem-- who generally holds few, if any, Democratic values to begin with-- working across the aisle just means giving in to Republican ideology, maybe softening it around the sharpest edges. But some of the most successful congressmembers in our time have been progressives-- many who got their training in state legislatures-- who knew what it meant to find common ground without selling out. Former state legislators like Ted Lieu, Karen Bass, Pramila Jayapal and Jamie Raskin understands what it means to look for solutions to solve problems for constituents without discarding principles. They did it in their legislators and they do it in Congress. Alan Grayson, Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna have been incredibly successful working across the aisle with Republicans on issues that benefit everyone-- and no one can accuse any of them of the kinds of sell out tactics that define the Blue Dogs.

Jennifer Christie is that kind of a candidate, which is why I'm so especially hoping she wins her primary a week from Tuesday. She's talked with me about her ideas on this frequently, especially in regard to the Climate Crisis, and I asked her to write a guest post on it, which she did (below). Please give it a read through-- and if you like what you see, consider clicking on the Blue America 2020 congressional thermometer and chipping in what you can for her campaign.


Working Towards Solutions, Not Just Counting Coup
-by Jennifer Christie

Our election is in just over a week, and I have thought about what the general election will be like. Most predict that it will be ugly. But what if it weren’t? What if it were a genuine discourse on solutions to the issues of our time?  What if we just had an intelligent discussion?

I recently authored a letter to our state government regarding election ballots alongside three Republicans who I believe would welcome such a discourse. I have had the privilege of meeting each of them at public forums as well. They are running for the same seat as I am.

  I may not agree with these candidates on all solutions, but we care about many of the same issues. What if we had a public conversation focused on solutions? Has this ever happened on America or has the age of Trumpian politics made that impossible?

After interacting with a few of the more grassroots Republican candidates, I am a more optimistic. One of these candidates even has Climate Solutions as a top priority. As someone who has worked on climate change for years, I know that this is a bipartisan issue that opens the door to solution-oriented discussion about infrastructure, economic growth, and jobs. We also all agree that our health care system isn’t working for everyone. What if we start there, with the agreement that our goal is that everyone has quality healthcare? What if we started with the goal in mind? What if we behaved as problem-solvers instead of politicians?

I know where I stand in issues. I am the only candidate to support Medicare For All in my race as well as a Green New Deal. I also know that I cannot walk into Congress and just get everything I want; there is debate to be had. So let’s have it then-- genuine, fact-based, authentic debate!  What do we need to do to get there to have the debate in the first place?

The answer is in the grassroots. We not only need to speak up, we need to involve the grassroots, and we need authentic people in Congress. When I considered running, I almost talked myself out of it because I am not a politician. Then I thought how much I would love to be represented by a smart or hard-working person down the street. We would have entirely different discussions - and decisions.  Likewise,  the three Republican candidates that signed the letter with me talk about the need to get money out of politics which is a critical to an honest grassroots approach.

So what if we had a general election focused on ideas and authentic conversation....wouldn’t that be refreshing? We can only start with ourselves, so let’s begin.

Is Republican-Lite Better Than Republican?

Two ass-sucking Blue Dogs, Collin Peterson (MN) and Jeff Van Drew (NJ)-- who is expected to quit the Democratic Party and join the GOP-- have already announced they're voting against impeaching Trump. Next week we'll find how many fellow Blue Dogs they're dragging along with them. The Washington Post's Rachel Bade and Mike DeBonis reported that the Democrats are expecting to lose as many as 6 of their members. "Predictions about some defections comes as a core group of centrists from districts Trump won in 2016 are having second thoughts. While many knew impeachment would never be popular in their GOP-leaning districts, some have been surprised that support hasn’t increased despite negative testimony about Trump from a series of blockbuster hearings last month."

On Wednesday, New York Magazine published an essay by Eric Levitz, The Democrats’ Love of Bipartisanship Is Dangerous... and is he ever right! "House Democrats," he began, "announced Tuesday that Donald Trump has become such a menace to American democracy, Congress has a constitutional obligation to remove him from office.

One hour later, Nancy Pelosi’s caucus returned to the podium to announce that they would help the tyrannical president pass his top legislative priority. To Nancy Pelosi’s champions, this one-two punch was a savvy demonstration of her party’s capacity to 'walk and chew gum.' Republican ad-makers had been savaging vulnerable House Democrats for putting their 'partisan witch hunt' above bipartisan legislation. Now, that line of attack is null and void. Pelosi has proven that her caucus isn’t out to destroy the president by any means necessary. When Trump backs policy changes that represent an improvement on the status quo, Democrats are willing to support it-- even if doing so means handing the president a “win” on a key campaign issue. Far from undermining the party’s message on impeachment then, rallying behind the USMCA strengthens that message by affirming its sincerity: Democrats aren’t impeaching the president because they’ll do anything in their power to weaken him, but because his high crimes and misdemeanors left them with no other choice."

Pelosi’s liberal skeptics take a different view. If Democrats truly consider Trump a threat to America’s constitutional order, affording him a bipartisan victory on one of his defining causes-- and thus, increasing his prospects for reelection-- is unconscionable. Even if Trump’s new agreement is an improvement on NAFTA, its changes are quite modest in the grand scheme of things. And there is no reason why a Democratic president couldn’t broker an even more progressive rewriting of North America’s trade rules in 2021. If House Democrats believe what they’ve written into their articles of impeachment, then they have a civic duty to prioritize Trump’s removal from office-- and the disempowerment of the increasingly illiberal party he leads-- above all else. The fact that they refuse to honor that duty indicates that the Democratic Party is unfit to serve as a bulwark against authoritarian reaction.

In my view, the substantive benefits of the USMCA appear to outweigh its political costs. Although it is plausible that fulfilling his promise to renegotiate NAFTA will endear Trump to Rust Belt swing voters, it is also possible that a bipartisan policy enacted 11 months before an election will have little influence on its outcome. The real problem with the Democrats’ support for the USMCA, however, can’t be seen when the trade deal is viewed in isolation. If the party had otherwise given every indication that it recognized the severity of America’s democratic crisis-- and was willing to buck bipartisan comity and institutional tradition to resolve that crisis-- then its position on Trump’s trade deal would be unconcerning. But it has indicated the very opposite.

Before saying more about the Democratic Party’s failure to meet the demands of our democratic crisis, it is worth outlining its contours. The crisis that I reference extends beyond Donald Trump’s lawlessness and the GOP’s apologetics for his abuses. Rather, it consists of (at least) three overlapping and mutually exacerbating trends: the conservative movement’s increasing hostility to liberal democracy, the Senate’s growing overrepresentation of white rural voters, and runaway inequality in the distribution of wealth and income. Taken together, these developments pose an imminent threat of awarding an illiberal GOP a hammerlock on the Senate and judiciary for a generation — and a tail-risk of enabling conservatives to entrench minoritarian rule over the entire federal government.

...In the immediate term, the combination of the GOP’s extremity and the biases of America’s governing institutions threaten to make it impossible for Democrats to govern at the federal level. In the longer term, they threaten something much worse.

Thus, to mount any serious response to climate change, and forestall the worst-case scenarios for our republic, Democrats must do everything they can to make our government more democratic, and to minimize the GOP’s power (as nothing short of electoral devastation can plausibly shake the conservative movement’s grip over that party). In practice, this means that in the unlikely scenario that Democrats win control of the Senate, House, and Oval Office next year, they will need to (at a minimum) abolish the legislative filibuster and add several new states to the union.

Given the trends cited above, there is good reason to think 2021 will be the Democrats’ last shot at reforming the Senate. If urban-rural polarization continues to deepen, while ticket-splitting continues to decline, the party won’t have senators from West Virginia and Montana much longer. If the party is fortunate enough to win 50 seats in the upper chamber next year, they need to use that opportunity to rebalance the Senate before it is too late. A Democratic trifecta wouldn’t have the power to amend the Constitution. But it could add new states. Although this wouldn’t solve the Senate malapportionment problem at its root, it would mitigate its racial component. According to the progressive think tank Data for Progress, the voting-eligible population (VEP) of the U.S. is 29 percent nonwhite, while the VEP of the median state is just 23 percent. Fully enfranchising Washington, D.C.’s 633,000 Americans by awarding that city statehood is a worthwhile expansion of democracy in and of itself. But doing so would also have the effect of rendering the Senate a bit less biased toward white people, and thus, the Republican Party as currently constituted. And the same can be said for offering statehood as an option to the people of Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, and other U.S. territories that are currently subject to our nation’s quasi-colonial rule. Such moves would not guarantee Democratic or liberal control over the federal government. They would merely make it a bit harder for a white conservative minority to entrench control of the upper chamber.

But there is zero sign that Democrats would be willing to put fortifying democracy above performing bipartisan moderation in this manner. Forget adding new states to democratize the Senate; Democrats aren’t even willing to allow the existing Senate to operate on democratic principles. Only a tiny minority of Chuck Schumer’s caucus has evinced support for abolishing the legislative filibuster, which has established an automatic, anti-constitutional 60-vote threshold for all major bills. In fact, more Democratic senators have vowed to reimpose the judicial filibuster on their own caucus-- thereby ensuring that Republican senators have a veto over the next Democratic president’s judicial appointments, even as Mitch McConnell has denied Democrats any such input on Trump’s. As for D.C. and Puerto Rico statehood, Sheldon Whitehouse-- one of the Senate’s most liberal Democrats-- has rejected the former outright, while saying of the latter, “The problem of Puerto Rico is it does throw off the [partisan] balance so you get concerns like, who do [Republicans] find, where they can get an offsetting addition to the states.”

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party’s presidential front-runner has been actively encouraging soft Republicans who feel alienated by Trump to continue voting for the GOP in down-ballot races. “If you hear people on the rope line saying, ‘I’m a Republican,’ I say, ‘Stay a Republican,’” Biden recently told BuzzFeed News. “Vote for me but stay a Republican, because we need a Republican Party.”

In this context, it is reasonable for liberals to read House Democrats’ decision to award Trump a legislative triumph, on the same day that they hit him with articles of impeachment, as yet another confirmation that the party’s leadership is too comfortable and complacent to lead a genuine resistance movement. Whatever else the USMCA deal is, it is also a testament to the Democrats’ preference for projecting moderation over waging partisan warfare. In a healthy republic, that priority may have its virtues. But we aren’t living in one; and if Democrats continue guarding their bipartisan bonafides more zealously than our democracy, we may never.

Meanwhile (again), Norman Solomon asked a very salient question: Will the Democratic presidential election be bought by the oligarchs. And, don't forget, the oligarchs are spreading their money around; it isn't just Bloomberg and Steyer we're talking about, neither of whom is going to be the nominee. Solomon notes there are three different vectors showing the oligarchs on the march: one is Bloomberg spreading around his cash in a sick and decrepitly corrupt party, of course, but the other two are Mayo Pete's climb and Biden's last hurrah. "Those three men," wrote Solomon, "are a team of rivals-- each fiercely competitive for an individual triumph, yet arrayed against common ideological foes named Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. The obvious differences between Buttigieg, Biden and Bloomberg are apt to distract from their underlying political similarities. Fundamentally, they’re all aligned with the nation’s economic power structure-- two as corporate servants, one as a corporate master." Let's watch this Robert Reich video again:

For Buttigieg, the gaps between current rhetoric and career realities are now gaping. On Tuesday, hours after the collapse of the “nondisclosure agreement” that had concealed key information about his work for McKinsey & Company, the New York Times concluded that “the most politically troubling element of his client list” might be what he did a dozen years ago for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan-- “a health care firm that at the time was in the process of reducing its work force.”

The newspaper reported that “his work appeared to come at about the same time the insurer announced that it would cut up to 1,000 jobs-- or nearly 10 percent of its work force-- and request rate increases.”

This year, Buttigieg’s vaguely progressive rhetoric has become more and more unreliable, most notably with his U-turn away from supporting Medicare for All. Meanwhile, wealthy donors have flocked to him. Forbes reports that 39 billionaires have donated to the Buttigieg campaign, thus providing ultra-elite seals of approval. (Meanwhile, Biden has 44 billionaire donors and Warren has six. Forbes couldn’t find any billionaires who’ve donated to Sanders; he did receive one contribution from a billionaire’s spouse-- though that donation was later returned.)

Not surprisingly, the political orientations of the leading candidates match up with the spread of average donations. The latest figures reflect candidates’ proximity to the class interests of donors, with wealthier ones naturally tending to give more sizable amounts. Nearly two-thirds (64.9 percent) of Biden’s donations were upwards of $200 each, while such donations accounted for a bit more than half (52.5 percent) of the contributions to Buttigieg. Compare those numbers to 29.6 percent for Elizabeth Warren and 24.9 percent for Bernie Sanders.

The B Team-- the worst the Democrats have to offer

Buttigieg’s affinity for corporate Democrats—and how it tracks with his donor base—should get a lot more critical scrutiny. For example, Washington Post reporter David Weigel tweeted in early November: “Asked Buttigieg if he agreed w Pelosi that PAYGO should stay in place if a Dem wins. ‘We might want to look at a modification to the rules, but the philosophical premise, I think, does need to be there... we've got to be able to balance the revenue of what we're proposing.’”

But the entire “philosophical premise” of PAYGO amounts to a straightjacket for constraining progressive options. To support it is to endorse the ongoing grip of corporate power on the Democratic Party. As Buttigieg surely knows, PAYGO-- requiring budget cuts to offset any spending increases-- is a beloved cause for the farthest-right congressional Democrats. The 26 House members of the corporatist Blue Dog Coalition continue to be enthralled with PAYGO.

As for Joe Biden, since the launch of his campaign almost eight months ago, progressives have increasingly learned that his five-decade political record is filled with one repugnant aspect after another after another after another. Any support for him from progressives in the primaries and caucuses next year will likely come from low-information voters.

In sharp contrast to Sanders and Warren, who refuse to do high-dollar fundraising events, Biden routinely speaks at private gatherings where wealthy admirers donate large sums. His campaign outreach consists largely of making beelines to audiences of extraordinarily rich people around the country-- as if to underscore his declaration in May 2018 that “I don’t think 500 billionaires are the reason why we're in trouble... The folks at the top aren’t bad guys.”

One of those folks who presumably isn’t a “bad guy” is Bloomberg, who-- with an estimated net worth of $54 billion-- has chosen to pursue a presidential quest by spending an astronomical amount of money on advertisements. Writing for The Nation magazine this week, Jeet Heer aptly noted that Bloomberg “is utterly devoid of charisma, has no real organic base in the Democratic Party, and is a viable candidate only because he’s filthy rich and is willing to inundate the race by opening up his nearly limitless money pit.”

More powerfully than any words, Bloomberg’s brandishing of vast amounts of ad dollars is conveying his belief that enormous wealth is an entitlement to rule. The former New York mayor’s campaign is now an extreme effort to buy the presidency. Yet what he’s doing tracks with more standard assumptions about the legitimacy of allowing very rich people to dominate the political process.

Earlier this week, Bernie Sanders’ campaign manager Faiz Shakir summed up the BBB approach this way: “Today, Joe Biden’s super PAC went on the air with a massive television ad buy. Mike Bloomberg is blanketing the airwaves almost everywhere with the largest ad buy in primary history. And Pete Buttigieg is taking time off the trail for a trio of private, high-dollar fundraisers in New York City.”

Thanks to grassroots low-dollar donations, Warren and Sanders (whom I support) have been able to shatter the corrupt paradigm that gave presidential campaign dominance to candidates bankrolled by the rich. That’s why Bloomberg has stepped in to save oligarchy from democracy.

As Frederick Douglass said with timeless truth, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” Continual denunciations of anti-democratic power are necessary and insufficient. It’s far from enough to assert endlessly that the system is rigged and always will be.

Power concedes nothing. Fatalism is a poison that gets us nowhere. Constant organizing-- outside and inside the electoral arena-- is the antidote to powerlessness.

With the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination up for grabs, this chance will not come again.

The Democratic Party Should Not Be Nominating Republicans-- Not For Anything

Like Hillary, Biden started off as a Republican. He found himself in a Democratic environment at work-- and he didn't like Nixon-- so he re-registered as a Democrat. But, issue-wise, like Hillary, he's always been a moderate Republican at heart. He wants to run for president as one too-- and if he does, like Hillary, he will probably lose. Status Quo Joe's only real chance would be if voters decide he's the lesser of the two evils. In a post for In These Times last week, Reagan Lives On In Biden, Branko Marcetic reenforced something Georgia progressive Nabilah Islam wrote earlier today: "Growing up in the South, Democrats are indoctrinated early on to believe a specific type is what is electable. That type is usually white and even more often moderate or centrist. The strategy is to play to the middle and hope to get Republicans to vote for you. That’s not a winning strategy. When Republicans go to the voting booth, they vote for the real Republican, not the fake one." Biden, by the way, is on the record saying Delaware was part of the South and would have joined the Confederacy except Maryland was in the way." He spent a considerable part of his time palling around with Southern racists from both parties; he just gravitated to them. They're his people.

Marcetic cautioned Democrats trying to decide who to vote for in 2020 that "Amid warnings of a coming global recession, it’s worth asking what the 2020 presidential aspirants would do during an economic downturn. When it comes to Joe Biden, we may already know. Biden’s formative political years were spent in the shadow of economic crisis. After more than a decade of economic expansion and blissful, carefree consumerism, recession hit in 1973, the same year Biden entered the Senate. Two years later, 2.3 million jobs had disappeared. Americans also had to contend with runaway inflation that reached double digits by 1974. The United States had barely exited that recession when it plunged into another one in the early 1980s, with unemployment climbing past 10% by 1982. During this economically turbulent decade, Biden fended off Republican challenges to his seat by embracing right-wing doctrine--specifically, that restraining federal spending is more important during economic downturns than priming the pump."

This fiscal austerity would become a core conviction of Biden’s and help animate a lifelong belief that compromise and reaching across the aisle are the perennial solution to what ails America.

Biden had always been a somewhat ambivalent New Deal liberal-- fretting about government spending as early as 1975, even as he garnered positive scores from liberal groups for his voting record-- but the recession and his time in the halls of power nudged him in a more conservative direction.

“I must acknowledge that when I first came to the U.S. Senate at age 29, not too long out of college, many economists had been telling me why deficit spending was not all that bad,” he told the Senate in 1981.

“So I was not very convinced of the arguments made by my friends here, who I must acknowledge, were mostly on the Republican side of the aisle.” But, he went on, “as I listened over the years in this body, I became more and more a believer in balanced budgets.”

By the close of the 1970s, Biden began calling himself a fiscal conservative and introduced what he called his “spending control legislation”: a bill requiring all federal programs to be reauthorized every four years or automatically expire. He also voted for a large but unsuccessful tax cut introduced by Sen. William Roth, his Republican counterpart.

Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, pioneering the economic program of generosity to the rich and stinginess to the poor that became known as Reaganomics. Biden was right there with him.

Biden, Reagan and other conservatives pushed the flawed idea that the government is like a household and must take drastic measures to pay off debt to stay solvent. Six months into Reagan’s first term, Biden called the reduction of deficit spending “the single most important” path toward “an economically sound future.”

To curtail government spending, Reagan severely scaled back or eliminated federal programs-- even as he slashed tax rates for the rich. Biden voted for both (including an updated version of Roth’s failed tax cut). When the president proposed a budget freeze in 1983-- to cut the enormous deficits that, ironically, his tax cut helped produce-- Biden one-upped him, working with two Republican senators to propose an even more aggressive budget freeze doing away with scheduled cost-of-living increases for Medicare and Social Security.

This idea is contrary to what economists and experience tell us is the proper course of action in times of economic downturn. Economist Joseph Stiglitz credits Obama’s 2009 big-spending stimulus for ameliorating the recession (criticizing it only for being too small) and criticized austerity politics for undermining it. Meanwhile, countries like the United Kingdom and Greece stand as living monuments to the economic ravages of budget cutting during a recession, something even the International Monetary Fund belatedly acknowledged.

The economy under Reagan did recover-- even as he slashed programs for the poor and vulnerable, he ramped up defense spending, in effect creating an economic stimulus much larger than what would come in the wake of the Great Recession.

Meanwhile, Biden voted three years in a row for a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget. When the 2008 financial crisis plunged the world into recession, Republicans again called for cuts to entitlement programs. As ever, Biden stretched out a bipartisan hand. As Obama’s lead negotiator during the “grand bargain” negotiations, Biden-- to his Democratic colleagues’ horror-- capitulated to every one of Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell’s demands, including cuts to Medicare, Social Security and food stamps, and warned in 2013 that, left untouched, deficits “may become a national security issue.”

While that effort collapsed due to Tea Party obstinacy, a President Biden could get one last shot. Following the Reagan playbook, the Trump tax cuts have sent the national debt soaring, and Republicans and conservative groups are now pushing for stringent budget cuts. Biden stands alone among the leading Democratic presidential candidates in his insistence that Democrats can work with McConnell’s GOP. Add a recession into the mix and the temptation to resume what he and Reagan began may be too great. Who says the era of bipartisanship is dead?

Peter Wade, writing yesterday for Rolling Stone, gave another example of Biden's utter unfitness to be the Democratic candidate. During his "No Malarkey" tour of Iowa, the decrepit Status Quo Joe from another era told reporters he's rather share power with Republicans than wild power the way FDR did. I suppose when you have nothing important to do-- and the ego-driven Biden has nothing at all he wants to accomplish other than self-gratification-- you can embrace the kind of dysfunction that plagued the Obama administration. Has he already forgotten how McConnell blocked whatever Obama tried to do-- like the Merrick Garland Supreme Court nomination? Or, as I suspect, was that just find with Biden? Wade reported that "Biden expressed concerns about Republicans possibly getting 'clobbered' in the upcoming election mainly because" of Trump's toxicity. I can't remember ever seeing someone as politically out of touch with the moment as Joe Biden is today.

The candidate said he’s held back on his “ass-kicker” side because he knows the American people want someone who can get things done and work with the other side.

“I mean look, everybody, anybody who knows me in politics including Trump knows they’re not going to be able to screw around with me. Not a joke,” Biden continued. “But that’s not what this is about. I think what the American people want to know is how am I going to make their life better.”

Biden went on to say that he thinks it’s important to have a political balance and the possible lack thereof concerns him. “I’m really worried that no party should have too much power,” Biden said. “You need a countervailing force. You can’t have such a dominant influence that then you start to abuse power. Every party abuses power if they have too much power.”

This warm-and-fuzzy attitude toward divided government is surprising coming from the former President Barack Obama’s VP. During Obama’s first two years, Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and, briefly, had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Despite that, they relentlessly chased Republican moderates, begging to get just one to sign onto a health care plan that included no public option and was modeled after a system implemented by [checks notes] Mitt Romney. All those concessions to the middle gave them exactly zero GOP support.

Instead, they got Republican GOP leadership that decided on Day 1 to block everything Obama did and a tea party movement that claimed Obama was born in Kenya. Democrats lost the House in 2010, and for the final three-quarters of Obama’s presidency, he got damn near nothing of any importance through Congress. And when it was Obama’s turn to pick a Supreme Court justice, Mitch McConnell stole it because he could.

Republicans, meanwhile, used Trump’s first two years in office to ram through absolutely everything they could, including trillions in tax giveaways to corporations and the rich, despite having only the slimmest of Senate majorities.

For Republicans, “sharing power” is only important when Democrats have control-- and Biden should know that better than anyone.

Bernie and Elizabeth have powerful and compelling agendas of things they want to accomplish. Status Quo Joe, much like Trump, just wants to be president. There's virtually nothing he'd do if he were, except some vague, dysfunctional notion of a status quo ante which is at the heart of the rise of Trumpism. I'm sad so many of my countrymen voted for Trump. I'm just as sad that so many of my countrymen are preparing-- a few even eager-- to vote for an utterly worthless sack of crap like Joe Biden.

Career-Long Conservative Joe Biden Attacks Progressives, Extols Imaginary Bipartisanship And Middle Way To Nowhere And Nothing

The new poll from Monmouth released Wednesday makes it clear that most Americans do not want Trump to have a second term. 55% of registered voters want someone other than Trump in the White House; 42% say Trump should not be reelected.

Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are seriously looking at 3 replacements for Trump: Biden (23-- down 2% since late September), Warren (23%-- down 5% since September) and Bernie (20%-- up 5% since September).

The poll tested the perceived “electability” of eight candidates among Democratic voters. While Biden remains the candidate seen as having the best chance of beating Trump next year, both Warren and Sanders have narrowed the gap.  When asked to rate Biden on a scale from 0 (would definitely lose to Trump) to 10 (would definitely defeat Trump), 51% of Democratic voters give him an 8, 9 or 10 and just 11% score him less than 5. His average score is 7.3.  In June, 59% gave Biden a high score and 9% gave him a low score, for an average of 7.7.

Warren averages 7.1, which is up from a 6.4 score in June. This includes 49% who give her an electability rating of 8 to 10 (up from 32%) and 11% below 5 (down from 16%). Sanders averages 7.0, which is up from a 6.5 score in June. This includes 48% who give him an electability rating of 8 to 10 (up from 39%) and 10% below 5 (down from 17%).

Biden’s electability rating has declined mainly among self-described liberals (from 7.7 in June to 6.8 now) while it has remained stable among non-liberals (from 7.8 to 7.7).  Warren’s perceived electability has grown more among non-liberals (from 6.1 to 7.0) than among liberals (from 6.7 to 7.0). Similarly, Sanders’ electability score has grown more among non-liberals (from 6.1 to 6.8) than among liberals (from 6.9 to 7.2) since June. Harris has seen her rating decline more among liberals (from 6.4 to 5.3) than among non-liberals (from 5.7 to 5.4). Buttigieg’s electability score has declined among liberals (from 5.8 to 5.3) but remained stable among non-liberals (5.2 in both June and November).

Biden is tanking. We knew it was just a matter of time. His response is to lash out against Elizabeth Warren and the progressive agenda that motivated millions of voters Tuesday night. To Biden-- a career-long conservative, first as a Republican-leaning independent and then as a quasi-Democrat-- Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and their fight for working families looks "elitist," while his career as a dedicated servant to the privileged and well-off is... whatever it is he can twist it into in his own mind. This is a guy who said lobbyists representing special interests-- including most of his despicable corrupt family-- aren't bad people.





Just as you would expect from any conservative creep like Biden, he's now trying to eviscerate Warren by casting her as a snooty elitist from Harvard, out of sync with the middle class.

Biden’s comment, made in a Medium post on Tuesday and reiterated in a radio interview this morning, underscores a theme central to Biden’s candidacy: that he is the lone Democrat who can win back the white working class voters who swung the 2016 election to Donald Trump.

“If you don’t agree with Elizabeth Warren, you must somehow be not a Democrat. You must somehow be corrupt. You must somehow not be as smart as she is,” Biden said on SiriusXM’s Urban View. “It’s just something we don’t do in our party. It’s not who we are.

“She has things in her plan that are just not realistic, but if you question it, she says you don’t understand or you’re talking like a Republican,” Biden said on continued. “It’s just an elitist attitude that it’s either my way or the highway.”

Calling Warren “elitist” is an attempt by Biden to paint Warren as too extreme for the Democratic electorate. He's looking to stoke resentment among working class voters by casting Warren as a snooty, liberal Harvard professor and not the person she portends to be on the campaign trail: a scrappy Oklahoman taking on Washington corruption.

It comes as Biden is looking to blunt Warren’s momentum as she overtakes him in early state polling.

Biden’s play is centered on Medicare for All, long used as a wedge issue by his campaign to define the former vice president as the moderate battling a cast of Democrats who have moved too far to the left.

Biden built on an inflammatory Medium post he published Tuesday, in which he wrote, “Some call it the ‘my way or the highway’ approach to politics. But it’s worse than that. It’s condescending to the millions of Democrats who have a different view."

He continued, “It’s representative of an elitism that working and middle-class people do not share: ‘We know best; you know nothing.’ ‘If you were only as smart as I am you would agree with me.’ This is no way to get anything done.”

There are risks for Biden attempting to paint Warren as elitist, given the mechanisms in which they fund their campaigns. Warren has shunned big-dollar donors and fundraisers; her reliance on grass-roots money has helped catapult her to the top of the field in early states as she swamped Biden in fundraising from July through September. Warren has faced criticism because she made the move only after transferring $10 million out of her Senate campaign fund, which includes money raised through the very methods she now rails against.

Biden has also come under scrutiny over his use of private jets and for staying in posh hotels even as his campaign spent $2 million than it raised in the last fundraising quarter. While Warren relied on small dollar donors to bring in $25.7 million last quarter, Biden relied heavily on private fundraisers and raised just $15.7 million. What’s more, Biden took the unusual step of greenlighting a super PAC to support his candidacy, even as the rest of the field has moved away from a funding mechanism allowing unlimited contributions.

Though Biden did not name Warren in his essay, it was apparent that he was referencing the Massachusetts senator who snarked that the former vice president was running in the wrong primary after he criticized the vague contours of how she would pay for her $20 trillion Medicare for All plan.

"So if Joe Biden doesn't like that, I'm just not sure where he's going," she said Friday. "Democrats are not gonna win by repeating Republican talking points. … If anyone wants to defend keeping those high profits for insurance companies and those high profits for drug companies, and not making the top 1 percent pay a fair share in taxes, and not making corporations pay a fair share in taxes, then I think they're running in the wrong presidential primary."

The barb prompted Biden to write the essay outlining all his accomplishments for the Democratic Party throughout his career.

And he did not back down when asked about his criticisms of Warren in an interview Wednesday morning.

This is not the first time the two candidates have butted heads. They exchanged barbs in the October debate after Biden’s claim that he was the only candidate with major legislative achievements. Warren pointed to her own work, including helping create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau after the financial crisis.

“I convinced people to vote for it,” he insisted.

“I am deeply grateful to President Obama, who fought so hard to make sure that agency was passed into law.”

Biden, of course, still thinks the path forward is to work with Republicans. After all, down deep, it's what he is. In the Boston Globe this morning, Liz Goodwin enumerated see of the big ideas of the top candidates. "With Donald Trump out of the way," said Status Quo Joe, "you’re going to see a number of my Republican colleagues have an epiphany. Mark my words. Mark my words." Most of his Republican colleagues are dead or gone and he is clueless about the new breed of GOPer. Because I don't think he's talking about Moscow Mitch. "Now the people that are running against me tell me I’m naïve; one said I should be in the Republican primary, God love her. That’s not the way you get things done, man. You don’t go in and tell people that they disagree there’s something fundamentally wrong with them." Goodman tweeted that "Warren promises far bigger policy changes than Biden, and it's fair to question whether she's setting up voters for disappointment if she does win. But Biden's promise of an 'epiphany' (which he's been making for months) & bipartisanship is also dubious."

When Biden-- almost as big a liar as Trump-- wrote that "I have fought for the Democratic party my whole career" he was lying in the same manner he's been lying his whole life. [PolitiFact rates 15% of Trump's public statements "true" or "mostly true" and rates 37% of Biden's "true" or "mostly true," better than Trump for sure-- but that still leave most of what he says a lie. Most Democratic politicians mostly tell the truth, not most lie.] In the past, Biden has admitted that when he was just getting started in politics he "thought of myself as a Republican." The Delaware Republican Party was talking with him about running as a Republican but he was hesitant because he didn't like Richard Nixon. Because of that antipathy for Nixon, he registered as an Independent. After he went to work for a local Democrat, Sid Balick, he switched his registration to Democrat and soon after began running for office, appealing to white resentment of black people.