Careerism Vs Courage-- How Will They Play Out In The Impeachment Vote?

Saturday morning, I pointed out on Twitter that though Pelosi managed to hold the entire Democratic caucus together to pass H.R.-3, her rather weak drug price reduction bill, just before the vote, the Republicans offered a way to kill the legislation via a Motion to Recommit. That failed but 3 super-conservative fake-Democrats voted with all the Republicans for it-- Blue Dogs Josh Gottheimer (NJ), Mikie Sherrill (NJ) and Ben McAdams (UT). Another Twitter user, Maria, offered up a typical excuse for this kind of bad vote: "NJ is big Pharma territory."

What she meant is that several drug companies are based in New Jersey. The Big PhRMA companies-- Pfizer, Amgen-- Eli Lilly, AbbVie, Merck, AstraZeneca, Abbott Labs, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Milan, Bayer, etc-- give millions of dollars in bribes to many members of Congress annually. Last cycle, New Jersey's delegation did pretty well. Among the current House members, the biggest amounts went to:

• Frank Pallone (D)- $117,200
• Bonnie Watson Coleman (D)- $59,812
• Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog)- $49,280
• Bill Pascrell (D)- $45,500
• Don Norcross (New Dem)- $38,900
• candidate Mikie Sherrill (Blue Dog)- $35,311
• candidate Tom Malinowski (New Dem)- $24,097
• Donald Payne (D)- $20,800
• candidate Andy Kim (D)- $19,018
• Chris Smith (R)- $12,250
• candidate Jeff Van Drew (Blue Dog)- $7,228

But the impetus for bribery from these savvy companies--and from their lobbyists-- follows power, not geography. Pallone didn't get a lion's share of loot ($694,170 since he was elected) because he represents Middlesex and Monmouth counties, but because he is chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and can-- and does-- protect the drug companies from progressive legislation like Medicare-for-All. The 5 current House members who have taken the most in bribes from PhRMA are those who serve their masters best, not those who live in their districts:

• Fred Upton (R-MI)- former chair of Energy and Commerce- $943,531
• Anna Eshoo (D-CA), chair, Energy and Commerce's Heath Subcommittee- $891,815
• Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)- corrupt minority leader- $849,550
• Steny Hoyer (D-MD)- corrupt majority leader- $719,572
• Frank Pallone (D-NJ)- chair of Energy and Commerce- $694,170

A warning from progressive California congressional candidate Cenk Uygur: "Drug companies don't give politicians money for charity, they do it to buy them. And unfortunately it works. Everyone knows these are bribes. The only people who won't acknowledge it are corporate politicians on both sides and the corporate media. This is a sick system that lets people die for profit. Any politician that takes money from the drug companies is selling out their voters on behalf of their donors."

On Friday evenings, Chris Hayes has taken to doings his MSNBC shows in front of a live audience. This week one of his guests was Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown (D). In his last couple of seconds on the air, Brown managed to blurt out one of the most crucial things he has ever said about electoral politics and how it impacts American politics. Unfortunately an ad was calling and it never got discussed on the show: "If politicians are willing to lose an election, they're always better at their job." That idea goes beyond geography, beyond sources of campaign funds, beyond ideology, even beyond partisan affiliation. It goes to character-- integrity, honesty, sense of honor... courageousness. Nothing else much matters in politics without it.

It's the opposite of political careerism. And it speaks to the real reason why craven and cowardly political hacks like Gottheimer, Sherrill and McAdams were willing to cross the aisle and vote with the GOP to kill a bill that would reduce the cost of medicine for their constituents in Bergen County, in Morris County and in Salt Lake County.

In the next few days, Pelosi will tell Hoyer to call an impeachment vote. Several Democrats in difficult districts have already announced they intend to vote to hold Trump accountable for his on-going criminal behavior. One, putrid New Jersey Blue Dog Jefferson Van Drew (widely expected to bolt the party and seek reelection as a Republican) has said he is absolutely voting against impeachment. He's not even in a prohibitively red district. Obama won the NJ-02 district comfortably both times he ran. Trump won in 2016-- 50.6% to 46.0%-- not because the district had suddenly turned red, but because Hillary was such a lousy candidate for the working class voters who dominate the district. The PVI is just R+1, not that much of a stretch for a Democrat.

There are no normal Democrats talking about voting against impeachment, but there are around a dozen from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party who are... all Blue Dogs and New Dems, of course. These are the other Democrats besides Van Drew who are most likely to vote against impeachment... along with their districts' PVIs. (Notice that 3 are in blue districts.)

• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)- R+12
• Anthony Brindisi (Blue Dog-NY)- R+6
• Ben McAdams (Blue Dog-UT)- R+13
• Kendra Horn (Blue Dog-OK)- R+10
• Chrissy Houlahan (New Dem-PA)- D+2
• Mikie Sherrill (Blue Dog-NJ)- R+3
• Angie Craig (New Dem-MN)- R+2
• Dan Lipinski (Blue Dog-IL)- D+6
• Elissa Slotkin (New Dem-MI)- R+4
• Xochitl Torres Small (Blue Dog-NM)- R+6
• Ed Case (Blue Dog-HI)- D+17

Some of the least courageous of the usual wafflers have aleady come out to say they are voting to impeach the bastard, including Elaine Luria (VA), Max Rose (NY), Conor Lamb (PA), Colin Allred (TX), Susan Wild (PA), Susie Lee (NV) and Tom O’Halleran (AZ). O'Halleran, a former Republican legislator currently pretending to be a Democrat, is now a Blue Dog. He has a very intense primary from progressive activist Eva Putzova and that has, of late, moved him towards the mainstream on issues-- like this-- where he would be more comfortable voting with the Republicans. In his announcement Friday, he said that "Trump abused the power of the presidency and broke his oath of office when he bribed the nation of Ukraine by withholding military aid they had already been promised in exchange for help investigating a political opponent. I will vote to impeach the President because this bribery and abuse of power violated the constitution and put our national security and our international relationships at risk." It's lucky we have Putzova pushing him so hard.

Last summer progressive Democrat Teresa Tomlinson called for impeaching Trump. She's running for a Senate seat held by an extreme Trump partisan, David Perdue. At the time, Tomlinson wrote that "It’s fear that cripples the Democratic Party. Fear of our policies, fear of who we are, and fear of the Republicans. Yes, fear is what has politically cost us in the last many election cycles. One cannot lead if one is afraid. The thing about leadership is that people want their leaders to be brave. They care less about what you think on the issues than whether you have the moxie to fight for them and the strength of conviction to tell them what you really think... That’s what the Right can’t stand about The Squad. Those women are fearless about their beliefs. They refuse to be bullied, and that is dangerous to the Republican playbook of shaming scared Democrats into milk toast, mealy-mouthed, baby-splitting positions that are equivocal and stand for nothing. American voters revile those who won’t tell the people what they think. Even if you don’t support the policies-- or certainly some of the statements-- of The Squad, you can’t deny that you appreciate that they unabashedly tell the world what they think." She continued with a statement all Democrats wavering and quivering in fear-- especially an arch-coward like Brindisi-- should study:

Impeachment is not about undoing the last election or impacting the next. It certainly is not about the polls as the Founding Framers made perfectly clear in Federalist Paper, No. 66. It is about stopping a president who would abuse and misuse the power of the presidency so that not another day passes-- not another circumstance presents itself-- where a president, unfit for duty because of the commission of High Crimes or Misdemeanors (defined as misdeeds) can inflict his/her poor judgment on the office, the country, or the people. Oh, if only impeachment proceedings had been instituted sooner, the damage that might have been averted.

Instead, Democrats are afraid of what the Republicans will say about it-- what the bullies will do to us on the way home. So, we cut through the alley to avoid the fight and controversy. We detour our duty of leadership and good government. Commencing impeachment proceedings is about employing the constitutional duty that our elected leaders were sworn to do-- not about mitigating to the finish line and hoping no one notices that we wouldn’t use the tools entrusted to us to keep the American system on the rails. All Democrats, and many Independents and Republicans, understand that Donald Trump has committed High Crimes or Misdemeanors, so if this conduct doesn’t warrant the commencement of impeachment proceedings, then what would? We must seriously consider the example of tolerance for harmful conduct at the highest levels of our government we are creating.

The key to winning is that you don’t aim to win, you aim to lead. If you lead, the winning takes care of itself-- or at least you move the needle so profoundly you set up the next winner, as did Stacey Abrams in Georgia with her heroic non-loss in Georgia. She was who she was and voters responded to that.

That’s not fear, that’s winning.

Why Would Anyone Expect A Political Careerist To Have A Worthwhile Campaign Message?

Politico was eager to remind its readers that "Democrats are just as divided as Republicans these days." When there's a lot of money at stake, isn't that always the case... not just "these days?" Some "big news" this weekend was that Hillary isn't going to run for office again. Oh. I guess there were some people who breathed a sigh of relief and some who wept a bitter tear after all that investment they put into her... but I suspect that most people just shrugged. Who ever imagined she would run again? There are plenty of corporate centrists ready to stand in for her-- from Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker, Joe Biden or Joe Kennedy III, to Jason Kander, a Castro brother or Seth Moulton. A friend of mine was at a Senate fundraiser for "former" Blue Dog Adam Schiff over the weekend and their were wealth conservaDems there yelling for him to skip the Senate run and just run for president. Adam Schiff! Can you imagine?!? I suppose a Trumpanzee in the White House sets the bar rather low.

But Politico's main point is that Democrats "are fighting over everything from their diagnosis of why Trump beat them in 2016 to how much to stake themselves on an oust-him-at-all-costs strategy now. Their internal battles may not be as sexy as the unprecedented hostile takeover of the GOP by an outsider president not beholden to it-- yet they are just as consequential."

What a laugh! There are real issues at play in the battle for the soul-- and the levers of power-- within the Democratic Party... and Trump isn't part of it. Democrats, Inc. being devoid of "a shared mission" has nothing to do with Trump and everything to do with defining whether theirs is the party of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt or the party of the Blue Dogs, the New Dems, the Wall Street banksters and the corporate plutocrats. The whole idea of values and message get lost when some many incumbents are so indebted to and dependent on the bad guys. In the House, for example, there are 4 top-dog Dems (all conservatives, of course) who have accepted over $5,000,000 in bribes from the finance sector, each of them working to advance the interests of Wall Street:

• Crooked Joe Crowley (New Dem-NY)- $6,491,559
• Steny Hoyer (D-MD)- $6,094,848
• Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)- $5,774,077
• Jim Himes (New Dem-CT)- $5,773,452

And last cycle alone, Wall Street gave over a million dollars each to 5 House Democrats who were viewed-- because of their slimy records-- as being worth further investment:

• Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Senate candidate- $3,300,369
• Patrick Murphy (New Dem-FL)- Senate candidate- $2,380,989
• Joe Crowley (New Dem-NY)- future party Leader- $1,064,673
• Tammy Duckworth (D-IL)- Senate candidate- $1,044,388
• Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ)- 2018 Senate candidate- $1,003,940

14 other mostly corrupt conservative House Democrats were given between half a million and a million last cycle alone and that doesn't count Florida sleaze bag Debbie Wasserman Schultz's 2016 haul of $489,904. And the Senate... even worse. This is the list of current Democratic senators who have taken over $5 million from the finance sector:

• Chuck Schumer (NY)- $26,628,675
• Kirsten Gillibrand (NY)- $8,416,631
• Robert Menendez (NJ), currently on trial for taking bribes- $7,867,355
• Mark Warner (VA)- $7,793,321
• Michael Bennet (CO)- $6,574,477
• Ron Wyden (OR)- $6,062,499
• Bill Nelson (FL)- $5,970,386
• Dianne Feinstein (CA)- $5,627,426
• Cory Booker (NJ)- $5,002,925

Since 1990, Wall Street has handed out over 2 and a half BILLION dollars to members of Congress (including candidates for Congress). $1,412,008,344 went to Republicans and $1,079,408,308 went to Democrats. See, the Democrats aren't as bad as the Republicans. Maybe Democratic bribe taker should get cells with windows. But how does anyone expect a party that is led by bribe-taking leaders to embrace values and a message that's supposed to appeal to ordinary American working families?

It can't happen, not with party leaders like Schumer, Pelosi, Hoyer, Crowley, Wasserman Schultz. Quoting Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis-- "Sunlight is said to be the best disinfectant"-- the progressive running against Pelosi next year, Stephen Jaffe, told us today that his "campaign platform calls for the public financing of political campaigns, which will go a long ways towards mitigating the disastrous effects of the Citizens United decision.  Until that happens, more transparency in the political financing process must occur. To make informed decisions on candidates and ballot proposals, voters must have access to as much information as possible, especially who or what are financing their choices." Another progressive candidate, speaking on condition of anonymity, for obvious reasons, told me he hates the Democratic Party and wishes he could run as an independent. "With Party leaders like Pelosi and Schumer chasing special interest money 24/7, the Democratic Party will never agree to the platform I'm running on-- single payer, free college education, a living wage rather than a minimum wage, protection of Wall Street criminals. If WallStreet criminals are prosecuted, who will finance Schumer's career? And who will pay for Crowley's ascension to the party leadership?"

susan Glasser's Politico post made it clear that the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party and the Republican wing of the Democratic Party can't agree on much messaging "beyond agreement over their shared disdain for Trump and the extent to which animus toward the 45th president is the galvanizing factor behind the unprecedented mobilization of Democrats across the country." It's convenient for worthless-- and ambitious-- conservatives like, say Adam Schiff or Seth Moulton, to talk about what Democrats are against without having to get into the bold progressive vision that grassroots Democratic voters crave. Conservativeve Democrats are all about persuading low-info voters that antipathy towards Trump equals a progressive vision. It doesn't; not even a little.

Back in 2016, when Clinton was in the middle of her general election campaign and virtually no one expected her to lose to Trump, Democrats "were divided over whether to court [disaffected white working class] voters, or essentially write them off and emphasize instead Clinton’s appeal to the Democratic base of big-city liberals and minority groups. It was a debate, we later learned, that played itself out inside the Clinton campaign too-- with the play-to-the-base side beating out those like former president Bill Clinton who worried about not competing for such a wide swath of the electorate." They kissed goodbye to Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, North Carolina and Florida and picked up electorally meaningless votes in Orange County, California-- whose electoral college votes were going to Clinton without them anyway-- and in the suburbs around Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio-- whose electoral college votes weren't going to Clinton no matter what.

Today Democratic Party leaders are still scratching their heads over whether "the economic fears Trump claimed to address really [are] just a cover for a darker Trump agenda of racial exclusion and immigrant-bashing that Democrats won’t and shouldn’t cater to?" And then the scary kicker for anyone interested in a sustainable Democratic Party useful as a vehicle for the legitimate aspirations of working families:

[T]he ideological debates will probably have to wait. The Trump show is such a spectacle that any talk about the politics of policy inevitably gets overwhelmed-- and quickly-- by the politics of the overwhelming personality now in the White House. Can the party get rid of Trump by pushing hard on the rapidly proliferating investigations of his campaign’s alleged collusion with the Russian hacking of the 2016 election? Would Trump’s historically high unpopularity boost them in 2018?

How do you know which Democratic candidates are worth supporting and which are just DCCC puppets who will-- as the Republicans love to point out (quite effectively)-- just be rubber stamps for Pelosi and her corrupt leadership team?

Notice the Democrats who campaign not on Trump but on the bread and butter issues Bernie raised in 2016. There is virtually no energy around any sad-sack DCCC recruits.

We reached out to the Blue America-endorsed congressional candidates-- and to a few who are successfully finishing the vetting process-- and asked each for a one-sentence summation of what motivates their campaign. First back to me was Wisconsin iron worker and union activist Randy Bryce, who mentioned neither his opponent, Paul Ryan, nor Trump. "I'm running for Congress," he told me flatly this morning, "to help raise everyone's standard of life; everyone is worthy of being healthy which is why Medicare-for-All is a top priority."

State Rep. Kaniela Ing, who will hopefully be running for the open Hanabusa seat in Honolulu, had a similar message-- and just as fast: "People need hope and inspiration, which is why Democrats must look beyond resistance and offer a bold progressive vision of Medicare-for-all, 100% renewable energy by 2050, and a future economy that leaves no one behind."

The rest of the candidate responses, in order of how fast they came in:

• Paul Clements (MI-06)- "To counteract the rising tide of money in politics, I'm running get our economy working for the people not the 1% through tax reform, single payer health care, dramatic improvements in education and infrastructure, and criminal justice reform."

• Jenny Marshall (NC-05)- "Our campaign is focusing on economic equity by supporting an increase in the minimum wage and jobs that provide security and stability for working families."

• Dan Canon (IN-09)- "I'm fighting for things that will strengthen the working class in America, such as: single-payer healthcare, comprehensive campaign finance reform, tuition-free public college, paid family/medical leave, and the decriminalization of cannabis."

• David Gill (IL-13)- "I'm fighting hard for a single-payer healthcare system, a $15 per hour minimum wage, and tuition-free access to public universities, colleges, and trade schools."

• Marie Newman (IL-03)- "It goes without saying that I will stand strongly against President Trump's cruel and dangerous agenda, but my days in Congress will be spent advocating for the working families and small businesses who deserve a fair shake."

• Katie Hill (CA-25)- "Working and middle class families in my district aren't interested in hearing about how we're not Trump, or how we're going to stop him; they want to hear about how we're going to rebuild the middle class, ensure health care for everyone, and most importantly, how we can fix our broken political system and allow people to trust government again-- that's what we're talking about, and it resonates with people regardless of party or anything else."

• Derrick Crowe (TX-21)- "We're fighting for liberty and justice for all-- and in practice that means tuition-free college, Medicare For All, real climate change action, a $15-an-hour minimum wage, and a pro-rural agenda that gets the Democrats back to their populist roots."

• Sam Jammal (CA-39)- "As an Arab American and Latino, Donald Trump makes you step back and pay more attention, but its not enough to just run against Trump; I am running because we need to get back to the basics and help the next generation achieve the American Dream-- this means focusing on wages, health care, home ownership, student debt and retirement security."

• James Thompson (KS-04)- "I'm running for Congress to restore the American promise-- equality must be our guide and justice our compass-- and the promise that if you work hard, do the right thing, make smart choices, and treat everyone fairly, you can achieve your dreams regardless of your race, sex, religion or sexual orientation, which means universal healthcare coverage for every American with control returned to the doctor and patient rather than insurance companies or the government; K-16 education for those who wish to pursue it; proper treatment of our nation's veterans and elderly; a livable wage that can support a family and a jobs program to rebuild and modernize our infrastructure-- this is my progressive vision for the American people."

• Tom Guild (OK-05)- "I will work to increase Social Security benefits, support public education, increase the minimum wage, reduce college student debt, keep our country's commitment to veterans, and invest in infrastructure by repairing crumbling roads, highways, bridges, and schools and I will fight to restore our economy and revitalize our political system to make them work for all Oklahomans, especially working people and the vaunted and disappearing American middle class."

• Tim Canova (FL-23)- "I am campaigning to put basic human needs and human values ahead of unfettered corporate greed and profits and I'm proud to support a people's agenda: election integrity reforms to ensure transparency and accuracy in vote counting, Medicare For All, federal subsidies for K-12 and tuition-free higher education, a voluntary national service program modeled on New Deal public works programs, rebuilding infrastructure with solar and other renewable energies, a new national infrastructure bank and other public banking institutions to finance huge investments in mass transit, public housing, healthcare, and education."

Whose sentence did you find most appealing? Really, which one? Please let us know by tapping on the Blue America 2018 congressional thermometer on the right and contributing a couple of bucks to the candidate (or candidates) you felt were most on target. Yes, they can all use the campaign contributions, BUT, we're going to share the results with each one of them, and that can be useful feedback to understand where the Democratic base-- at least the DWT portion of the Democratic base-- stands on the compelling issues being raised above. Thanks for the help-- and, of course, for the contributions. None of these candidates could do what they're doing without the help of grassroots donors who are themselves motivated by values and issues more than personalities and all the partisan media bullshit.

The Two Parties' Internal Civil Wars

Here at DWT, we spend a lot of time fretting about the future of a very divided Democratic Party, in which grassroots progressives are fighting to prevent the party from wandering off in the same old disastrous neoliberal direction its elites insist on in return for the financing they provide to bolster the careers of the elected officials who dominate the party's decision-making process. But not today. Today, we'll start by fretting about the future of the Republican Party instead, as it battles internally between the forces of conservatism and the forces of fascism that Bannon (and Trumpanzee) have let loose.

I cop, readily, to knowing more about the divisions that wrack the Democratic Party than those that plague the Republicans. So let's turn to someone who has a good understanding about the context of the Republican civil war and where it's leading, Weekly Standard editor-- and former Dan Quayle chief of staff-- Bill Kristol. "Many Trump critics," he wrote today, "relished a recent Quinnipiac poll showing that President Trump's job approval had fallen to a new low, at a net -23 percent (34 percent approve, 57 percent disapprove)." But he asserted that "the most notable finding in the poll... had to do with age. Donald Trump's job approval/disapproval was 40 percent, 54 percent among Americans 65 and over; it was an almost identical 39 percent, 55 percent among 50-64 year olds; it was slightly worse at 35 percent, 55 percent among those 35 to 49 years old; and among Americans 18 to 34, Donald Trump's job approval was 19 percent approve, 67 percent disapprove, an amazing -48 percent. That's the future of the GOP being flushed down the toilet, worries Kristol.

[O]ne would have to be blind not to see the political risk for Republicans and conservatives in these numbers. First impressions matter. Most people don't change their political views radically from the ones they first hold. For young Americans today, Donald Trump is the face of Republicanism and conservatism.

They don't like that face. And the danger, of course, is that they'll decide their judgment of Trump should carry over to the Republican party that nominated him and the conservative movement that mostly supports him. If he is indeed permitted to embody the party and the movement without challenge, the fortunes of both will be at the mercy of President Trump's own fortunes.

Perhaps the danger is exaggerated. One could argue, after all, that the worst-case scenario for Trump's first term is Nixon's second. Yet the Republican party and the conservative movement recovered quickly from that, didn't they?

Well, those of us who made the case for Nixon in the fall of 1972 on college campuses, who cast our first vote for him that November, who were tempted to rationalize his behavior for at least a while as Watergate unfolded, and who couldn't help but feel a pang of sorrow as he resigned amid victory whoops from his critics in 1974 remember those years all too well. They weren't the easiest of years to be on the right.

But we also remember that the new and exciting conservative columnists in the Washington Post and the New York Times, George Will (in his early 30s) and Bill Safire (in his early 40s), were tough on Nixon. We remember that one of the most prominent conservative Republican senators, James Buckley, who had won dramatically as a Conservative third-party candidate in New York in 1970, did not join other Republicans in rallying to Nixon's defense. We remember that Jim Buckley's younger brother Bill made sure National Review was no cheerleader for Nixon. We remember that John Ashbrook, an eloquent and principled congressman from Ohio, then 43, launched a quixotic primary challenge against Nixon in 1972 to ensure that voters understood Nixon didn't speak for conservatism. We remember Jack Kemp, a Republican congressman turning 40, who was shaping a new economic message for the party. We remember neoconservatives of all sorts who had very little history with Nixon or the GOP providing fresh thinking and new energy.

In sum, we remember that young Americans could look at the Republican party and the conservative movement and see fresh faces and other voices than those of Richard Nixon and his defenders.

One might add that dozens of those defenders in Congress were wiped out in the 1974 midterm elections. One could also note that the subsequent GOP comeback was made easier by the fact that Spiro Agnew had resigned, so that Nixon was succeeded by a vice president who had been in office for only a few months and who wasn't particularly identified with him. That incumbent was then challenged in the 1976 primary by a governor of California who had his own political identity distinct from Nixon's, and who won the Republican nomination in 1980. Thus the GOP and the conservative movement were quickly able to achieve real separation from Nixon.

Can they do the same from Donald Trump? It's urgent that Republicans and conservatives begin to try. The future of the Republican party and of conservatism depend on their standing for loyalties and principles more fundamental than the fortunes of Donald Trump.

Instead they have an outrageous political coward in Paul Ryan leading their party over the cliff. The sooner the better. But going back to the Democrats for a moment and the Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin Times piece linked at the very top, the fight on the left is between liberal activists dreaming of transforming the health care system, reinvigorating FDR's vision of a New Deal (and impeaching President Trump), while the establishment and their candidates are just looking for some good old fashioned personal career advancement. Burns and Martin are creatures of the establishment and aren't really able to understand what the woke Democratic base wants, so their reporting is flawed with years of wrong-headed assumptions straight from the strategy sessions of the conservative opportunists like Rahm Emanuel, Chuck Schumer and Debbie Wasserman Schultz who have largely wrecked the party's brand.

The growing tension between the party’s ascendant militant wing, and Democrats in conservative-leaning terrain, where the party must compete to win power in Congress, was on vivid, split-screen display over the weekend: in Chicago, where Senator Bernie Sanders led a revival-style meeting of his progressive devotees, and in Atlanta, where Democrats are spending colossal sums of money in hopes of seizing a traditionally Republican congressional district.

It may be essential for Democrats to reconcile the party’s two clashing impulses if they are to retake the House of Representatives in 2018. In a promising political environment, a drawn-out struggle over Democratic strategy and ideology could spill into primary elections and disrupt the party’s path to a majority.

On the one hand, progressives are more emboldened than they have been in decades, galvanized by Mr. Sanders’s unexpected successes in 2016 and empowered by the surge of grass-roots energy dedicated to confronting an unpopular president and pushing the party leftward.

Mr. Sanders rallied his youthful, often-raucous coalition Saturday night at a gathering dubbed the “People’s Summit,” where supporters hailed him in worshipful language. One Colorado couple hauled a small banner through the hangar-size McCormick Place, pleading with the still-independent Vermont senator to create a new “People’s Party.”

Mr. Sanders and many attendees enthused over the surprise showing of the British Labour Party, under the left-wing leader Jeremy Corbyn, in last week’s election. Democrats can electrify voters, they warned, only by embracing the Sanders agenda of universal health care, free college tuition and full employment.

Speaking for just under an hour, Mr. Sanders, who was met with chants of “Bernie, Bernie” and pleas of “2020!,” crowed that while he may have lost the 2016 primary, “We have won the battle of ideas and we are continuing to win that battle.”

He assailed President Trump in blistering terms, but earned some of his loudest cheers for attacking the party whose nomination he sought last year. “The current model and the current strategy of the Democratic Party is an absolute failure,” Mr. Sanders said to booming applause, arguing that Democrats need “fundamental change.”

“The Democratic Party must finally understand which side it is on,” he said.

Yet the party’s elected leaders, and many of its candidates [though not the ones-- with the exception of Ossoff, a special, somewhat expedient exception himself-- you'll find by tapping on the Blue America thermometer on the right], are far more dispassionate, sharing a cold-eyed recognition of the need to scrounge for votes in forbidding precincts. They have taken as a model the Democratic campaign of 2006, when the party won control of Congress in part by competing for conservative corners of the country and recruiting challengers who broke with liberal orthodoxy.

Outside Atlanta on Friday, Jon Ossoff offered a decidedly un-Sanders-like vision of the future in Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District, a conservative-leaning patchwork of office plazas and upscale malls, where voters attended his campaign events wearing golf shirts and designer eyewear.

In a special election that has become the most expensive House race in history, Mr. Ossoff, a 30-year-old former congressional aide, presented himself as essentially anti-ideological. Greeting suburban parents near a playground and giving a pep talk to volunteers, he stressed broadly popular policies like fighting air and water pollution and preserving insurance coverage for people with pre-existing conditions.

Bucking the left, Mr. Ossoff said in an interview that he would not support raising income taxes, even for the wealthy, and opposed “any move” toward a single-payer health care system. Attacked by Republicans for his ties to national liberals, Mr. Ossoff said he had not yet given “an ounce of thought” to whether he would vote for Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, in a future ballot for speaker.

His own race, Mr. Ossoff told supporters, was about “sending a message to Washington.” But that message, he said, was about “decency and respect and unity, rather than division.”

“There’s a coalition of folks here in Georgia who want representation that’s focused on local economic development and on accountability,” Mr. Ossoff said in the interview, “and not on the partisan circus in Washington.”

The tension between Mr. Ossoff’s message and the appetites of the national Democratic base has not appeared to hinder his bid for Congress. He has raised more than $23 million, an astonishing sum, largely in small online donations from Democrats seeking to put a dent in the Republicans’ House majority. Several polls over the last week showed Mr. Ossoff leading his Republican opponent, Karen Handel, though both parties agree that the race remains a tossup.

Winning over Republican voters remains a critical task. Though he launched his campaign pledging to “make Trump furious,” Mr. Ossoff did not bring up the president in his campaign events, and he has called talk of impeachment premature.

Stephanie Runyan, a business consultant who is a precinct captain for Mr. Ossoff, said he had recognized the limits of a liberal message in the affluent Atlanta suburbs.

“A lot of us are not true-blue liberals,” said Ms. Runyan, 46, who is a Democrat.

It is unclear, however, whether Democratic activists across the country will tolerate an army of Ossoff-type candidates in 2018, when party leaders believe the path to capturing the House runs through purple-hued suburban districts that are somewhat less Republican than Georgia’s Sixth.

Friction has already flared between Democrats heavily invested in Mr. Ossoff’s race and activists closely aligned with Mr. Sanders. In April, Mr. Sanders declined to say if he considered Mr. Ossoff a progressive, causing an uproar that he calmed by urging Mr. Ossoff’s election.

Nina Turner, a former Ohio state senator who is on the board of Mr. Sanders’s political organization, suggested in Chicago that Democrats risked slumbering through the revolution, suggesting an unofficial slogan for the party: “Hashtag, ‘Not Woke Yet.’”

“Unity for unity’s sake,” she warned, “is not going to happen.”

Party strategists say they have taken steps to build a relationship with Mr. Sanders and his organization, and a top Sanders lieutenant, Jeff Weaver, attended a recent briefing hosted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, along with representatives from Planned Parenthood, the liberal group Swing Left and Third Way, a centrist think tank, according to a person involved in planning the meeting. [Note that The Times should have explained: Swing Left appears to be a DCCC front group and Third Way is a very corrupted right-leaning establishment outfit.]

...[S]ome Democrats competing in difficult elections have taken up ideas once associated with the hard left. Doug Applegate, a retired Marine colonel who narrowly lost a race last year to Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California, said he would endorse single-payer health care in a new bid for Mr. Issa’s affluent coastal district.

“Single payer has become a moral issue,” Mr. Applegate said, adding he would be delighted to campaign with Mr. Sanders.

Others are warier: Representative Emanuel Cleaver, a Missouri Democrat and former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus [very much a sold-out Clinton person], said the party should give “some leeway” to candidates to match the politics of their districts. Mr. Cleaver said he recently ran into former Representative John Barrow of Georgia, one of the last moderate [a poor choice of words since Barrow was first and foremost right-wing enough to be a Republican], white Democrats elected from the South, and recalled telling him: “We’ll know that we’re on the winning track when you can get back to Congress.” [The worst possible thing that could happen to the Democratic Party brand would be to bring back heaps or raw stinking sewage like Barrow and Chris Carney.]

“We are going to lose every possible winnable seat, in a year where there are many winnable seats, if we come across as inflexible left-wingers,” Mr. Cleaver said. “I respect Bernie-- I just don’t think we can become the party of Bernie.”

Cleaver could easily have joined Jim Messina, very much his kind of values-free/vision-free Democrat, in advising Theresa May's catastrophic Conservative campaign. I'd say he has a lot more in common with Messina (and May) than with Bernie, who had some much-needed words for Democrats this weekend at the Peoples' Summit in Chicago: "The current model and the current strategy of the Democratic party is an absolute failure. The Democratic party needs fundamental change. What it needs is to open up its doors to working people, and young people, and older people who are prepared to fight for social and economic justice. The Democratic party must understand what side it is on. And that cannot be the side of Wall Street, or the fossil fuel industry, or the drug companies." I wonder what Bernie will think when he hears the party is about to sell some guy who won the lottery the party nomination in CA-39.

Paul Krugman And Bruce Dixon Address The Scourge Of Beltway Politics: Careerism

Steny Hoyer and Al Wynn, a couple of good ole boy Maryland crooks

Actually, Krugman was only addressing right-wing careerism-- and it's role in the real-time unraveling of movement conservatism-- but much of what he says can be applied to the political hacks on both sides of the aisle. Patently dishonest Republican Party strategy has led to the recruitment, increasingly, of "apparatchiks, motivated more by careerism than by conviction," he wrote. And that m.o. certainly fits the corporate Democrats-- led by Steny Hoyer, Joe Crowley, Steve Israel, Ron Kind, Debbie Wasserman Schultz (practically the entire post-Pelosi House leadership)-- who lure voters with progressive stands on social issues-- the polar opposite of what Krugman says the Republicans do-- only to sell out their economic interests to their corporate donors… exactly the way Krugman says the Republicans do.

That’s certainly the impression Mr. Cantor conveyed. I’ve never heard him described as inspiring. His political rhetoric was nasty but low-energy, and often amazingly tone-deaf. You may recall, for example, that in 2012 he chose to celebrate Labor Day with a Twitter post honoring business owners. But he was evidently very good at playing the inside game.

It turns out, however, that this is no longer enough. We don’t know exactly why he lost his primary, but it seems clear that Republican base voters didn’t trust him to serve their priorities as opposed to those of corporate interests (and they were probably right). And the specific issue that loomed largest, immigration, also happens to be one on which the divergence between the base and the party elite is wide. It’s not just that the elite believes that it must find a way to reach Hispanics, whom the base loathes. There’s also an inherent conflict between the base’s nativism and the corporate desire for abundant, cheap labor.

And while Mr. Cantor won’t go hungry-- he’ll surely find a comfortable niche on K Street-- the humiliation of his fall is a warning that becoming a conservative apparatchik isn’t the safe career choice it once seemed.

Raul Labrador (Tea Party-ID)

So whither movement conservatism? Before the Virginia upset, there was a widespread media narrative to the effect that the Republican establishment was regaining control from the Tea Party, which was really a claim that good old-fashioned movement conservatism was on its way back. In reality, however, establishment figures who won primaries did so only by reinventing themselves as extremists. And Mr. Cantor’s defeat shows that lip service to extremism isn’t enough; the base needs to believe that you really mean it.

In the long run-- which probably begins in 2016-- this will be bad news for the G.O.P., because the party is moving right on social issues at a time when the country at large is moving left. (Think about how quickly the ground has shifted on gay marriage.) Meanwhile, however, what we’re looking at is a party that will be even more extreme, even less interested in participating in normal governance, than it has been since 2008. An ugly political scene is about to get even uglier.

Meanwhile, the transactional Beltway Democratic leaders have learned how to play a nasty little game of identity politics, while not heeding the essential interests of the Democratic grassroots as fully as they can get away with. We just heard from Paul Krugman in the NY Times railing against the Republicans. Now let's hear from Bruce Dixon at the Black Agenda Report-- a post he published last week: Black Lobbyists, Black Legislators Leverage Their "Brands" For Banksters, Military Contractors, Corporate Interests. "When black politics emanated from the streets, not the suites," he wrote, "it was a force against imperial war, for full employment, better housing and public education. But now, black politics is a hollowed out brand, an empty signifier deployed by black lobbyists and congresscreatures to cover whatever their corporate donors want, while the black political class ceaselessly celebrates the civil rights era to renew its own legitimacy.

Ever wondered what the staffers of Congressional Black Caucus members do after their stints on Capitol Hill? The answer, according to a Huffington Post article by Ryan Grim and Zach Carter, is they do the same thing most of their white colleagues do. They go to work for the big corporations which fund the careers of their former bosses. They become lobbyists for giant telecoms, for greedy banksters, for military contractors, for agribusiness, Big Oil, Big Pharma, big gentrifiers and the rest, all of which are finding their black faces and their ties to the Congressional Black Caucus, and the CBC itself especially useful these days.

With Republicans controlling the House and Democrats the Senate these days, Grim and Carter explain, the appearance of bipartisanship is everything. Any measure that passes the House with exclusively Republican support will go nowhere in the Senate, and whatever sails through the Senate on the votes of Democrats alone is guaranteed dead on arrival in the House. But when particularly nasty pro-corporate measures-- the HuffPo article cites as examples bills to allow certain kinds of banned derivatives trading, and laws to aid for-profit schools and colleges-- when legislative turds like this are passed with lots of Republican votes and a smattering of Democrats, especially black Democrats, the moral authority of the Congressional Black Caucus protects those measures from attacks by white liberals in the House, the Senate and among pundits, reporters and policy advocates as well.

Nobody nailed the sense of it better than Breaking Brown's Yvette Carnell, a black former Capitol Hill staffer herself, with the title of her piece riffing on the HuffPo revelations, Revealed: How the CBC Leverages Blackness to Work as a Tool for Wall Street.

…Politicians who consistently stand up for the poor and oppressed in the halls of power do not attract big campaign contributions, because everyone knows how they'll vote. Without big campaign contributions they cannot rise to legislative leadership, and their ambitious staffers will not rise either. To be a player, you gotta play, and to get the big money you've got to command a respectable price when you sell out. Many CBC members and their employees want desperately to be fixers and players, like those on the TV series House of Cards, and they've learned exactly how. CBC members, goaded by black lobbyists, have been so eager to cross the aisle and make deals that they have often been leading co-sponsors and supporters of odious measures attracting few other Democrats. Carter and Grim show that when CBC members jumped on board with Republicans, these measures become law, or influence regulators. When CBC members hang back, most other Democrats do the same.

As the Huffington Post article says, the moral legitimacy of the Congressional Black Caucus, and by extension that of the entire black misleadership class is nothing but a hollowed out brand. The article is full of quotes from staffers and lobbyists about this or that CBC member's “brand.” In plain English, brands are purposeful, deliberate, manipulative lies. Branding is a marketing strategy intended to evoke a given response in a target audience, summoning real or imagined memories, tastes, feelings or desires in order to get a response from the target audience which could not be obtained by appeals to fact or logic. When political players proudly admit among themselves that they are mere “brands,” black politics as a progressive force in these United States is over.

There was a time not so very long ago when black America was where the left lived. Black politics emanated from the streets, not the suites. This kind of politics from the bottom up projected demands to end unjust wars, for better housing, more aid to public education, public transit and the public sector in general, and for voting rights, so that a class of black elected officials might look to the interest of the black masses. Now that a prosperous, empowered and ambitious class of African American officials and lobbyists has been called into existence, it has flipped the script and turned black politics into a top-down affair. Black elected officials, from state and local level to the CBC and its staffers-turned lobbyists has become the hinge swinging the politics of the Democratic party and the nation ever rightward.

We said it a while back-- black politics as we have known it is over, because black politicians and the black political class no longer believe justice or peace or full employment are possible. They haven't been working for us for a long time now.