A Conservative Is A Conservative, Whether He Calls Himself A Republican Or A Democrat And It Doesn't Matter If He Passes Himself Off As A "Moderate"-- They Own All Society's Problems

The two parties aren't "the same." Democrats aren't the same as Republicans. There are some good Democrats. There are no good Republicans. The identity politics Democratic politicians play-- pro-woman, pro-gay, anti-racism, for example-- is better, way better, than the identity politics Republicans play. As for corruption... well corruption is part of, and even lionized by, conservatism. Liberals at least feel guilty about their own corruption, for whatever that's worth.

When he was younger than I am now, my grandfather told me that the only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican. I'd say he hit that one out of the park. A few days ago, The Independent published an OpEd by North Carolina academics Kevin Singer and Alyssa Rockenbach, People worry that 'moderate' Democrats like Joe Biden are the same as Republicans. Our study suggests they may be right. They offered a new set of criteria to look at politicians. It helps explain why there is so much energy around the Republicans for Biden movement right now and so much more enthusiasm from that direction than from progressives, who generally dislike him less than they dislike Trump and will hold their noses and vote for him, deceiving themselves into thinking they will be able to have an impact on his neoliberal agenda after he's in the White House.

Friday, we put together a ritual denunciation of consevative Democrats-- misnamed "moderates" by the media and misguided academics like Singer and Rockenbach-- who had just accepted, and celebrated, endorsements by the very right-wing U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Singer and Rockenbach, though, address the idealization of "moderatism" as the ultimate political virtue. "When it comes to addressing climate change," they wrote, "Eric Levitz of New York Magazine argued that 'a major [obstacle] is the tendency of moderate Democrats to mistake their own myopic complacency for heroic prudence.' Political researcher David Adler found that across Europe and North America, centrists are the least supportive of democracy, the least committed to its institutions, and the most supportive of authoritarianism. Furthermore, Adler found that centrists are the least supportive of free and fair elections as well as civil rights-- in the United States, only 25 percent of centrists agree that civil rights are an essential feature of democracy. This finding dovetails with observations made by Martin Luther King Jr. in his letter from Birmingham Jail: 'I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the… great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Klu Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice.' Even Arthur Books, a self-avowed moderate, admits to 'the failure of the mainstream, moderate, progressive formula for how to create a more equal pluralist America,' adding, 'I’m a moderate guy, but the evidence doesn’t support moderation when it comes to racial equity.' That’s all well and good. But what does the data show?"

They reported on a study of beliefs and attitudes of college students across the country (IDEALS) and found that "as America battles a global pandemic and an economic collapse and reckons with systemic racism, IDEALS suggests that moderate men may be the least likely to make a positive difference. When broken down by political leaning, IDEALS found that moderate male students in their senior year were time and again the least likely, or among the least likely, to somewhat or strongly agree with the following statements":

Strikingly, in almost every case, the responses of moderate men are very similar to conservative men and women. Their level of agreement with the statements above is as much as 14 percent lower than moderate women, who are more likely than men to lean Democratic, or liberal men and women.

This IDEALS finding is on par with a recent Gallup study encompassing over 29,000 interviews with American adults, which revealed that moderates and conservatives remain closely aligned in their ideological preferences.

This raises important questions heading into the election: Is a moderate male candidate a bait-and-switch for Democratic voters? Are they actually casting their votes for a conservative?

That moderate men most resemble Republicans has been confirmed, of all places, on dating apps. Brittany Wong of HuffPost writes, “It’s almost become a coastal cliche at this point: If someone lists their political views as ‘moderate’ on a dating app, the thinking goes, go ahead and assume the person is a conservative.” One interviewee noted, “It’s just in my experience, even ‘moderate’ guys tend to have extremely different views on topics that matter to me, like gun control, women’s reproductive rights and immigration.” Sometimes, moderate men who appear to bend liberal turn out to be “faux woke,” according to one interviewee who was initially attracted to someone whose profile featured photos at a women’s march. Eventually “he slowly started to drop his facade,” revealing behaviors inconsistent with his professed political beliefs.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has grown increasingly frustrated with moderate Democrats during her tenure, saying at a recent event, “The Democratic Party is not a left party. The Democratic Party is a center or a center-conservative party.” Her [ex] chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, recently deleted a tweet comparing two moderate Democrat coalitions-- consisting mostly of men-- to Southern Democrats who favored segregation and opposed civil rights. During this election cycle, a recurring criticism of Vice President Biden has been his record on school desegregation.

To be sure, Vice President Biden also aligns with more progressive Democrats on key policy issues, prompting Paul Waldman of the Washington Post to assert, “Biden is getting more progressive in substance, yet it has done nothing to change his image as a moderate.”

Nevertheless, Biden’s popularity among Republicans has grown consistently in recent months. A number of prominent former GOP officials, and even some of Trump’s ex-staffers, have voiced their support for Biden, including former Governor John Kasich and former Senator Jeff Flake. Their support, however, seems less driven by the good things they believe Biden will do, and more by the bad things they believe Biden won’t do. In his speech at the Democratic National Convention, for example, Kasich remarked that Republicans and Independents may fear that Biden will “turn sharp left and leave them behind,” but assured viewers, “I don't believe that.”

Let's take San Diego City Council president Georgette Gómez, a congressional candidate-- running for an open seat being contested by an hereditary multimillionaire conservative Democrat-- as an example. Gómez has been endorsed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, while the Wall Street-owned and operated New Dem Caucus has embraced and endorsed her opponent, Sara Jacobs, granddaughter of mega-GOP donor Irwin Jacobs, whose money is largely financing her campaign against Gómez. Jacobs stands for nothing at all except getting elected. In the primary, she pretended to be a progressive-- a laugh-- and now she is showing her true colors as another corporate suck-up, opposing everything and anything that will help working families.

Why Don't Democratic Leaders Support Verifiable Elections? The Reason Is Simple and Obvious

The original Mayor Daley wasn't the first, but he was the best at election manipulation. Daley would have not supported verifiable elections for the obvious reason. Why don't today's Democrats support verifiable elections?

by Thomas Neuburger

"Everyone I know wants Trump to lose. Do you know anyone who actually wants Biden to win?"
—Howie Klein, here

I've often contended that neither political party — not the Democrats, not the Republicans — wants free, open, verifiable and uncorrupted elections.

Both parties, of course, say they want fair elections. The Republicans use these pronouncements, though, as cover for creating obstacles to voting by Democratic-leaning citizens based on demographics like race and place of residence. That much is a given, and this hypocrisy is obvious to everyone, including Republicans.

But what about the Democratic Party? There the situation is more mixed, but it's not unmixed. I cut my adult teeth in Chicago, the perfect model, if not ground zero, for election manipulation, and there are many Chicago's in the country.

There are also many approaches to stealing elections, but one of the most common is faked and manipulated vote totals, and for that, the solution is well known: hand-counted paper ballots. Given that fact, you have to ask yourself: If Democratic leaders really wanted uncorrupted elections — as opposed to just elections they could win — wouldn't they demand a national return to hand-counted paper ballots, the gold standard for honest elections?

And yet they don't. Year after year they keep the same corruptible voting systems in place, often expanding them, and focus their fire instead on Republican gerrymandering and voter list purges as evidence of the other party's evil and their own goodness.

It's likely there's a simple and obvious reason for Democratic leadership not seeking to secure our elections with hand-counted ballots, but it's not a pretty one: Like the Republicans, Democratic leaders, many or most of whom hate progressives with a passion, also want the ability to "fix" elections when they wish to.

"Ballot-Stuffing" in Philadelphia

For example, consider this, from the Philly Voice:

South Philly judge of elections pleads guilty to stuffing ballot boxes, accepting bribes

Prosecutors say Domenick DeMuro, 73, inflated results for Democratic primary candidates

A former judge of elections in South Philadelphia pleaded guilty this week to fraudulently stuffing ballot boxes for Democratic candidates in recent primary elections, accepting bribes from a political consultant hired to help influence local election results.

...During the 2014, 2015 and 2016 primary elections, DeMuro admitted that he accepted bribes ranging from $300 to $5,000 per election. A political consultant hired by specific Democratic candidates gave DeMuro a cut of his fee to add votes for these candidates, who were running for judicial and various state, federal and local elected offices.

DeMuro would "ring up" extras votes on machines at his polling station, add them to the totals and later falsely certify that the voting machine results were accurate, prosecutors said.

U.S. Attorney William M. McSwain said, "DeMuro fraudulently stuffed the ballot box by literally standing in a voting booth and voting over and over, as fast as he could, while he thought the coast was clear."

This happens all the time and is rarely caught and punished. In this case, it's likely the bribes from a "political consultant hired by specific Democratic candidates" were the only reason DeMoro was prosecuted. A number of hand-made videos during the 2016 primary showed similar corrupt "certifications" at the local level, all of them disadvantaging Bernie Sanders, yet none of these videos sparked an ounce of indignation from "free election" Democratic leaders — whose preferred candidate, it should be noted, Hillary Clinton, benefited every time.

"Progressive Democrat" Blocks Gerrymandering Reform in Nevada

Or consider this sordid tale from Nevada, in which the local League of Women Voters attempted to eliminate gerrymandering following a recent Supreme Court decision that returned gerrymandering lawsuits to the states to resolve.

From the Nevada Current (emphasis added):

Apparently some Democrats think gerrymandering is fine in blue states

In June of 2019 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Rucho v. Common Cause that federal courts will no longer accept partisan gerrymandering cases. Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the majority that partisan gerrymandering is a political issue that must be resolved at the state level. In response, the League of Women Voters U.S. launched a People Powered Fair Maps plan to create barriers to partisan gerrymandering in each state.

The League of Women Voters of Nevada adopted the plan and reached out to our democracy partners to form the Fair Maps Nevada coalition. On November 4, 2019, Fair Maps Nevada filed a constitutional amendment ballot initiative to create an independent redistricting commission. Nevada’s constitution protects the right to circulate a ballot initiative as well as the right to vote on ballot questions.

So far, so good. But wait:

On November 27, 2019, Mr. Kevin Benson, a Carson City attorney, filed a lawsuit challenging the ballot question’s summary of effect for a “progressive Democrat.” His client argued that the summary of the amendment that appears on each signature sheet was misleading. Fair Maps Nevada offered to edit the summary to clarify the amendment’s intent, but Mr. Benson refused. The Judge James Russell ultimately agreed with Mr. Benson’s client and asked both parties to submit new versions of the summary to address the plaintiff’s complaints. 

It's suspicious that a self-proclaimed "progressive Democrat" would try to monkey-wrench the process, but still, so far, so good. However: 

Fair Maps Nevada submitted a new summary, but Mr. Benson did not. Instead, he argued that the whole amendment was misleading and so should be blocked completely from moving forward.

In other words, the whole exercise was a sham to get the entire process thrown out by the local judge.

Essentially, Mr. Benson was asking Judge Russell to deny the Fair Maps Nevada coalition our constitutionally protected right to circulate a petition. Judge Russell accepted Fair Maps Nevada’s new summary of the amendment and closed the case [in favor of Fair Maps Nevada].

Still, the issue didn't die there. Benson took his appeal to the Nevada Supreme Court, which allowed it to go ahead. Fair Maps Nevada eventually won, but not before they realized (wasn't it already obvious?) that this mystery litigant's real goal was to run out the signature-gathering clock on the initiative. Further, the state Supreme Court failed to close the legal loophole that allowed the appeal in the first place, preparing the way for similar future challenges on the same spurious grounds.

Why would a Democrat, in Democratic-controlled Nevada, want to block gerrymandering reform, if not to continue to benefit from the unreformed system?

The Danger for Democrats

The danger for Democrats in tolerating and continuing their own vote corruption is great. When voters say "both parties do it" — they're right. Perhaps Party leaders, national and local, think they can get away with these acts given that most of the mainstream media — busy people's only source of news — protects listeners and viewers from information that supports the "both are corrupt" frame.

But that protection can't be effective forever. While most Sanders supporters, for example, will vote for Joe Biden, most won't give him money, under the assumption perhaps that his billionaires have that covered. And this is widely seen as a race that most want neither candidate to win — especially if you include non-voters — even though even more voters want Trump to lose.

The bottom line is this: While Democratic leaders may think the situation — their current and safe control of their share of power — is well managed, the nation may easily become so alienated by both parties, and by the people's inability to vote outside the two-corrupt-parties framework, that they seek "other avenues" for change.

Ironically, a "back to the normal" Biden administration may be just the match Americans need to spark an active rebellion against the corruption of both political parties. One more round of mainstream Democrats in charge, may be the last straw for that national beast of burden, our suffering governed, to bear.

If that's the case, watch out. Democratic leaders are running out of time, as are we all. When a nation seeks "other avenues" for reform, that nation's in trouble.
 

This Is True: The Democratic Party Isn't As Bad As The Republican Party. But For How Long?

The Democratic Party establishment is conservative in the sense of defending and bolstering the status quo-- not as perniciously as the GOP, but perniciously enough. It is also incredibly corrupt-- no less so than the Republican Party. Of course there are notable exceptions-- like House members AOC, Jamie Raskin, Ro Khanna, Pramila Jayapal, Ted Lieu, Ilhan Omar, Andy Levin, Barbara Lee, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, a few others intermittently-- but they're exceptions. Last week, The Intercept published a piece that gets to the heart of the Democratic Party by Ryan Grim and Akela Lacy, New Jersey's Cartoonishly Corrupt Democratic Party Is Finally Getting Challenged. Before we get into it, I want to point out that New Jersey has a Democratic member of Congress who isn't corrupt and doesn't belong in a federal penitentiary-- Bonnie Watson Coleman, who represents the Trenton area.

Grim and Lacy start with Albio Sires, but could have started anywhere in the state other than, ironically, Trenton, the state capital that is one of the biggest founts of corruption on the planet. "A quintessential New Jersey game of musical chairs brought Albio Sires to Congress," they wrote. "The music started in November 2005, when Sen. John Corzine was elected governor. To fill his Senate seat, the party machine tapped Rep. Bob Menendez, which created an opening for Menendez’s House seat. Albio Sires, the mayor of West New York, had previously run for Congress in the 1980s as a Republican, but was by then also state assembly speaker and a loyal member of the Democratic machine. He won a special election in 2006 with 90 percent of the vote and has represented the North Jersey district, home to the largest Cuban diaspora outside Miami, ever since."

Party identification-- partisanship-- gets these scumbags elected. Simply put-- they're not Republicans, so they must be better or, at least, the lesser evil. It isn't always the case and one day, suddenly, the New Jersey electorate will wake up and switch their idea of partisanship and it will be too late for the Democrats to do anything about it-- even if they want to, which is far from likely. They hate their own reformers far more than they hate Republicans (who they can easily "do business" with). Bernie, to most establishment Dems, is a worse option than Trump. And AOC is more an enemy than any Republican. Both are too disruptive.

How AOC became the enemy of almost every Democrat in Congress

"Sires has kept a low profile," continued Grim and Lacy, "largely voting with the party on the House floor. It’s hard to measure obscurity, but fewer than 70 Democrats have served in the House as long as Sires, and suffice it to say that Sires has not managed to translate that seniority into a national profile or measurable power in Washington. Corzine, a Wall Street baron, was unseated by Republican Chris Christie after one term; Menendez remains in office, and both he and Corzine have escaped prison despite being the targets of federal investigators. Sires has hung on, but as New Jersey’s Cuban population ages and migrates south to Florida, his district has become more diverse, with growing Central and Caribbean American populations."

In South Jersey, the Norcross bosses, whose family has had a longstanding stranglehold on local politics, are holding on. George Norcoss, known as one of New Jersey’s most influential unelected bosses, holds an outsize influence over parts of the state legislature’s South Jersey delegation. An insurance executive, he’s been accused of pulling strings to benefit from a state corporate tax incentive program that came under federal investigation last year. His brother, Donald, represents parts of South Jersey in the U.S. House. Donald is a former labor leader who was elected to the state assembly in 2009. He was later appointed to fill a vacant state Senate seat, which paved the way for his eventual transition to Congress.

Now Sires, who did not respond to requests for an interview for this article, is facing his first serious primary election since 2006, from insurgent challenger Hector Oseguera, an attorney with roots in Honduras and the Dominican Republic who specializes in fighting money laundering. Oseguera, who attended Boston University at the same time as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but didn’t know her then, was one of the earliest volunteers on her 2018 campaign to unseat then-Rep. Joe Crowley in Queens and the Bronx.

Oseguera is part of a wave of challengers taking on the local machine in North Jersey. Sires, a functionary of the West New York/Union City machine, known as the Hudson County Democratic Organization, or, often, simply, “the Organization,” is just one of many targets, with a slate of six Hudson County Freeholder candidates allied with Oseguera challenging incumbents up and down the ballot.

Elsewhere in the Garden State, similar battles are taking place, as the coalescing of activist groups and insurgent candidates launches a statewide assault on the cartoonishly corrupt New Jersey Democratic establishment, which long considered itself immune from the biannual annoyance of elections. So immune that the party did nothing to shunt aside Menendez in 2018, even as he faced trial for corruption charges in the midst of his reelection. Little-known challenger Lisa McCormick, with next to no financing, stunned the party by winning 38 percent of the vote in the primary that cycle against Menendez, who got off on a mistrial due to a hung jury and won reelection.

Now McCormick, a perennial candidate for local and federal office who has never disclosed the names of any campaign donors, is challenging state Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman. Coleman was elected in 2014 as the state’s first African American woman in Congress and has a pretty solid progressive voting record.

Rep. Josh Gottheimer, among the most conservative House Democrats, is facing a serious challenge from Dr. Arati Kriebich, a neuroscientist and former Gottheimer volunteer. In South Jersey, Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a party boss elected in 2018 and concerned about losing a primary challenge from the left this cycle, switched and became a Republican. Democratic Reps. Bill Pascrell and Donald Payne Jr. are also facing primary challenges from Zina Spezakis-- who’s also running under the “Not Me. Us.” slogan--  and Alp Basaran, and Eugene Mazo and John Flora, respectively.

None of the challengers were rated good enough to be endorsed by Blue America, and I suspect they will all lose, not because the incumbents don't stink to high heaven-- they do-- but because most of the challengers are inept and incompetent candidates. Some of the country's worst House Democrats-- Gottheimer, of course, as well as Frank Pallone, Albio Sires, Mikie Sherill-- are from New Jersey, but not one of them has a primary opponent capable of winning a campaign.

I hope I'm wrong about Oseguera and I haven't spoken with him personally, so maybe I am. Grim and Lacy wrote that he "lucked into an advantage on the ballot-- or, more accurately perhaps, he made his own luck-- that may be consequential in a race between two people with such little name recognition. In New Jersey, machine politicians for decades have implored supporters to 'vote column A all the way,' a phrase that became synonymous with loyalty to the party machine. Column A on New Jersey ballots is reserved for candidates running as a slate, from the president down to the freeholder, a county legislative position. Typically, it is only the machine that is able to put together that sort of slate, as progressives rarely have a Senate candidate fielded, and even more rarely a body in the presidential primary. But this time, Sanders supporters recruited veteran activist Larry Hamm to run for Senate against Cory Booker, enabling a slate to be formed with Hamm and down-ballot insurgents. (They had wanted Sanders to sit at the top of their slate; his campaign, however, never filed the paperwork needed to join it.) The machine, meanwhile, was torn between various presidential candidates-- including Booker-- and so declined to make any endorsement. That meant that the progressive slate in Hudson and Union counties, the population centers of the 8th District, was eligible for the A column. Because there was more than one slate, the A spot was decided in an April 9 drawing-- which the insurgents won. Voters accustomed to casting their ballots “A all the way” will wind up supporting Oseguera." That's actually funny.

The Junta: Christie, Norcross, Sweeney-- New Jersey's Axis of Evil

“There’s going to be a set of voters that show up and do their regular Democratic duty of ‘vote A all the way,’ and they might swing this election,” said Oseguera, who was raised in the district by a mother who taught and a father who held a variety of jobs, from handyman to cashier to driver. Oseguera said that when his phone bankers end the call by reminding voters to “vote column A,” they often reply with a version of “Of course, we always vote line A.”

Ron Bautista is one of the six freeholder candidates running under the Sanders-inspired slogan of “Not Me. Us.,” in a district that largely covers Hoboken. “[Oseguera’s] campaign has brought together grassroots progressives like it has never been done before,” said Bautista, who last year challenged a 16-year city council incumbent, picking up a third of the vote without a slate or developer money, which the New Jersey establishment tends to rely on. “We are at the heart of machine politics in New Jersey, and sometimes progressives have run individually against the machine. For the first time, we have a progressive slate of candidates from Senate to county government.”

Three of the slate’s nine freeholder candidates failed to qualify for the ballot, coming short on signatures, while a number of those who qualified did so by collecting electronic signatures amid the pandemic. Roger Quesada was one of them, drawing on his professional experience in e-commerce and marketing. “There’s no slate in recent memory that has ever been this organized and with a strong digital infrastructure,” he said.

...Oseguera's race against Sires presents intriguing parallels to Ocasio-Cortez’s, as well as divergences. Where Crowley was a local machine boss with national ambitions, on his way to becoming speaker of the House, Sires is merely a local machine boss. Like Ocasio-Cortez, Oseguera has raised precious little money, relying instead on a network of volunteers and local activist groups to power him to victory in what is likely to be an extremely low-turnout election against an incumbent with little name recognition in a community that has changed underneath him. (Crowley was far better known in Washington than in his home district, which cost him dearly in the primary.)

Oseguera, unlike Ocasio-Cortez, does not label himself a democratic socialist; given the number of refugees of the Cuban Revolution in the district, the term remains deeply toxic. But he supports the gamut of policies that tend to define more progressive Democrats: a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, a wealth tax, $15 minimum wage, and so on. He does not, however, have the support of Justice Democrats, the group that backed Ocasio-Cortez’s challenge and has been conservative in handing out endorsements since then. He said that when he appealed to the group for an endorsement, they told him that Sires’s voting record wasn’t egregious enough to merit the group’s scarce resources. (The group recently launched a Super PAC.) Unlike the incumbents whose challengers Justice Democrats has backed this cycle, like Dan Lipinski and Henry Cuellar, Sires is a reliable Democratic vote and has such a low profile that ousting him would barely make a ripple.

Like Ocasio-Cortez, Oseguera’s campaign, two months out from the primary, is broke, with $22,731 raised and less than $4,000 cash on hand, according to the latest filing. For Ocasio-Cortez, a viral campaign ad, combined with national coverage, helped elevate her profile and raise last-minute money, which she pumped into canvassing, phone and text banks, and digital ads. But Osegeura is campaigning amid a pandemic, with effective shelter-in-place orders, so there’s likely to be very little canvassing between now and the July 7 primary. The Oseguera-Sires contest will be fought out digitally and over the phone, a disadvantage for Sires, who has virtually no virtual presence and doesn’t even have a campaign website. Oseguera managed to buy Sires’s domain name-- AlbioSires.com-- and redirect it to his own fundraising page.

For a machine boss, Sires has little to show in the way of money, though he’s well ahead of Oseguera. This cycle, Sires has raised just $340,000 and had $237,000 cash on hand as of March 31. His biggest donors are the local trade unions and the Desert Caucus, an extremist, pro-Israel group that endorses settlements and the annexation of Palestinian territory.

...Oseguera's campaign is using its limited funds to target Democrats likely to vote by mail ahead of the primary, which was postponed from June. Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy has been pushing for an all-mail primary, but backtracked after pushback from machine leaders across the state. Because of their lack of cash, Oseguera said, his campaign narrowed its voter data purchase to 75,000 Democrats in the district who regularly vote in general elections but don’t show up for primaries. Vote-by-mail, he hopes, will make those people more likely to return a ballot if volunteers can get texts and calls in front of them enough. He expects 50,000 votes will be enough to win.

The postponement of the primary and the expansion of vote-by-mail add to the uncertainty around how the election will go, said Farmer of Rutgers University. While the changes could hamper the machine’s overall advantage, the insurgents’ fundraising barriers could also make it difficult to reach voters. “The burden of getting the information to the voters is greater because of the restrictions that we’re all operating under now,” he said.

Partial vote-by-mail “does put an additional burden on the parties if they want to maintain their encouragement of straight-ticket voting that they really have to be sort of out there and more aggressive in encouraging that then probably they have been in the past,” he said, noting that campaigns’ inability to do in-person canvassing is another complicating factor.

The shift toward vote-by-mail has made the machine nervous. DeGise told the New Jersey Globe that she opposes mail-in voting and was pushing for an all in-person vote because loyal machine voters are more likely to turn out to the polls, whereas making mail an option would bring more voters in. Mail-in voting, she said, is “just not in the culture here. … Our strongest voting blocks are not going to vote by mail,” adding that voting by mail is more popular among Democrats who don’t typically vote.

Eleana Little, a Hudson County freeholder candidate, cited the machine’s machinations as evidence that they’re nervous about insurgents harnessing that strength. “We’ve got people,” she said. “We’re building a grassroots movement and have over 100 volunteers. We’re phone-banking every day and hearing from people that they’re excited about what we’re doing. Hector comes from a working-class background and has mountains of student loan debt, like so many millennials. He didn’t have $50,000 to drop on his own campaign like some candidates do, and he doesn’t have wealthy family connections. So the war chest is small, but there are a lot of people involved. I think the fact that the machine is so nervous shows that we’ve built substantial momentum, and it’s not just all in our heads.”

As the pandemic worsens it's not just the virus itself that threatens human life. The corruption, cronyism and incompetence of those in power is adding fuel to the fire.

It's been said that the virus doesn't discriminate, but politicians and CEOs continue to prioritize their own power and profits over the lives of the most vulnerable.

Whether you consider Josh Kraushaar journalism's version of a silly clown or not, he really is the voice of the Inside-the-Beltway political establishment. He writes, at the National Journal their reality. His column yesterday, for example, began exactly the way any establishment ass-licker would begin a post if he was starving to lick more ass: "Joe Biden's decisive drubbing of Bernie Sanders in the presidential primary squelched the socialist stirrings that had been percolating within the Democratic Party. It’s probably no coincidence, then, that three of Congress’s most far-left members, all aligned with Sanders, are facing credible challenges of their own in upcoming House primaries. Three of the four freshmen members of the left-wing "Squad" that President Trump calls “AOC+3”-- Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota-- have drawn opponents who have made the case that they’re too extreme for the districts they represent. Tlaib is at risk at losing her seat to an experienced [and utterly corrupt and incompetent] African-American official in her Detroit-area district. And while Ocasio-Cortez and Omar are favored to prevail, they will face their first serious test over the popularity of their progressive messages in deep-blue districts." Oh gee, he forgot to mention that the Democratic establishment recruited a Republican pretending to be a Democrat to run against AOC. The hopes of the corrupt party establishment channelled through their boy Josh:

The unusual and unpredictable turnout patterns for upcoming summer primaries taking place during a pandemic will also add some uncertainty to these races. New York Democratic officials have been working to cancel the presidential primary for their June 23 elections, a decision overruled by a federal judge and currently under appeal. Without a presidential race driving turnout and with the coronavirus keeping many voters home, tiny turnout for state and local primaries raises the likelihood of unpredictable outcomes. Indeed, the low turnout in the 2018 New York primary was a major factor in Ocasio-Cortez’s upset of longtime Rep. Joseph Crowley.

Ocasio-Cortez’s primary against former CNBC anchor Michelle Caruso-Cabrera hasn’t drawn a lot of attention, but it’s worth watching closely. The congresswoman’s district, which spans Queens and the Bronx, has been one of the hardest-hit areas in the country from the pandemic. But Ocasio-Cortez was the only House Democrat to vote against the coronavirus-relief bill, a lonely and unpopular position on Capitol Hill. She told the New York Times that, after the vote, she felt more alienated in Congress than ever before and was facing a personal existential crisis.

Those personal feelings are undoubtedly authentic, but by making the crisis about herself, it offers a tempting opportunity for Caruso-Cabrera to portray her as someone driven more by ego than the needs of her constituents. Caruso-Cabrera is no novice: The granddaughter of Cuban and Italian immigrants, she served as the chief international correspondent for CNBC for nearly a decade. More notably, she raised over $1 million in the first three months of the year, an impressive amount for a seemingly long-shot challenger. Her strong fundraising gives her enough cash to run a professional campaign. Ocasio-Cortez, one of the best-funded members of Congress in the country, raised $2.7 million during the same period and has $3.5 million in the bank.

Ocasio-Cortez’s supporters appear to be taking notice of her upstart challenger. The Intercept, an antiestablishment publication that promotes left-wing candidates like Ocasio-Cortez, published a hit piece against Caruso-Cabrera this month for serving on the board of directors for a life-insurance company that “profits from death.” For a campaign that hasn’t drawn much attention, especially during the pandemic, the piece looked like a sign that they were taking Caruso Cabrera’s insurgent campaign seriously.

There has been no recent public polling of the race. When I reached out to Ocasio-Cortez pollster Celinda Lake to get her perspective on the race, she declined comment. An April 2019 Siena poll found her support in the district surprisingly lukewarm, with 52 percent of district voters viewing her favorably and 33 percent viewing her unfavorably. This, in a district that Hillary Clinton carried by a 57-point margin (77-20 percent).

With turnout expected to be very low-- and without a presidential campaign to drive Sanders supporters to the polls-- this is a race that’s worth watching. Even a weaker-than-expected showing by Ocasio-Cortez might tempt the congresswoman to run for president in 2024 instead of remaining as a lonely voice in a party that’s rediscovered the merits of political pragmatism.

While Ocasio-Cortez is the biggest name of the three renegades, Tlaib is the congresswoman facing the toughest challenge. She’s facing a rematch against Detroit City Council president Brenda Jones, whom Tlaib defeated by fewer than 1,000 votes in the 2018 primary. The congresswoman benefited from numerous African-American candidates splitting up the black vote on the primary ballot, allowing her to win with a 31 percent plurality. Tlaib won over the white voters in the Detroit district, but struggled to win support among African-Americans. Jones is hoping to consolidate the black vote behind her this time around.

Tlaib holds a fundraising advantage, with $1.4 million in the bank at the end of March. Jones, who announced her candidacy in March, is starting her fundraising from scratch in the middle of a pandemic.

Tlaib has faced criticism from her fellow Democrats over her anti-Israel activism and support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. But pro-Israel Democratic voters and donors are wary of Jones as well, given her past praise of anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

Between Tlaib’s underwhelming electoral history and the racial dynamic in the district, it’s clear that she’s vulnerable. A March survey conducted by longtime Michigan pollster Ed Sarpolus found Tlaib only leading Jones 43 to 34 percent. Her 9-point lead was down 28 points since the survey’s last poll in June. Being well under 50 percent as a high-profile incumbent is a glaring warning sign. Another reason why Tlaib should be worried: Joe Biden comfortably defeated Sanders in her district despite her high-profile surrogacy for Sanders.

The other Sanders-supporting member of the squad, Ilhan Omar, looked like she didn’t have too much to worry about. While she’s drawn plenty of criticism for her use of bigoted tropes to attack Jewish supporters of Israel-- and faced the risk of censure from her own party-- she’s been insulated by support from both white progressives and a Somali-American base in her heavily Democratic Twin Cities district.

But she’s facing a spirited challenge from Antone Melton-Meaux, an attorney and mediator who has criticized the congresswoman for her divisive record and has courted support in the district’s Jewish community. “Omar has made statements that have been reckless and harmful to the Jewish community," Melton-Meaux told Jewish Insider last month. "There’s a deep sense of betrayal by her actions and displeasure with the way that she has handled herself in the process with regard to the residents in this district.”

Melton-Meaux raised $210,000 in the last fundraising quarter, a respectable amount that will allow him to get his message across. Omar ended March with $1.3 million in cash on hand, giving her a significant advantage.

But in a sign that Omar may be sensing a backlash, she quietly signed onto a letter urging the Trump administration to extend a United Nations arms embargo against Iran. While it was signed by over 380 members of Congress, the document backed by The American Israel Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC] was a departure from her previous positioning on the Middle East. Indeed, she drew backlash from her anti-Israel supporters for supporting the policy.

It’s still hard to see Omar losing in a primary after emerging as a progressive star in her first term. But it’s very possible that her sudden repositioning is a result of her looking to shore up political vulnerabilities.

These three competitive races are a reminder that even among liberal primary voters, many Democratic voters aren’t fans of the in-your-face brand of socialism that these three freshman members have promoted in their first terms in office. And with an establishment figure like Biden comfortably leading the presidential race, they’re at risk of being marginalized in a way they’ve never experienced-- even if they win their contested campaigns.

Please help defeat Kraushaar (and his ilk) by clicking on the Blue America 2020 incumbents thermometer above and contributing what you can. Kraushaar certainly makes a very convincing case to always beware of any candidate he endorses, whether implicitly or explicitly.

How Wrong Is Andrew Cuomo? Let's Count the Ways

More on Cuomo's corruption problem — or one of them — here.

 by Thomas Neuburger

Andrew Cuomo takes money from rich people, sneers at principled rivals, says taxes on rich people aren’t politically possible, and then implements left policies only if he can get rich people to approve them first.
—Lyta Gold's partial summing-up of Andrew Cuomo (see below for more)

Andrew is vindictive. He wants to punish people. And he gets joy out of that.
—A Democratic strategist, quoted in New York Magazine

…a hands-on manager who prefers vise-grip control…
—Anna Gronewold, Politico
 
Last week I scratched the surface of what's wrong with nominating New York's Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo as a substitute for Joe Biden in the November race for president (see, "Political Retaliation: Cuomo Proposes Kicking Third Parties Off the NY Ballot").

But there's so much more that's wrong with Cuomo. Yes, he's a mean-spirited man who loves to retaliate against his enemies, but he also stands for nothing more than the interests of the rich and his own aggrandizement. And as his stint as governor shows, he's so hates progressive policies that he empowered New York's Republican Party in order to neuter Democrats who were to his left. And he's corrupt.

That's a terrible combination. Imagine what Andrew Cuomo would be like as president — stabbing progressives in the back while smiling on MSNBC and CNN, gratefully accepting their loving praise and the generosity of the wealthy he serves. Worse, he'd be much more effective at causing damage than even the barely competent Trump, because whatever else Cuomo is, he's also competent.

The best go-to piece on all that Cuomo has going against him was written by Lyta Gold and published in Current Affairs under the title "Stop Trying to Make Andrew Cuomo Happen."  It's well worth the fifteen minutes or so it will take to read it. The writing is sparkly and the research is solid and complete.

Here's a taste. Under the subhead "Andrew Cuomo is a garbage person," Gold offers this list (I've shortened it in the interest of your time and added some bolded emphasis):

Andrew Cuomo is a liar and effectively a Republican. When Cuomo was first inaugurated in 2011, he was supposedly stymied by a difficult, intractable Republican state Senate. Technically, the New York Senate was majority Democratic, but a group of conservative Democrats known as the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC) broke away to caucus with the Republicans, essentially becoming Republicans in all but name. (So basically, they acted like conservative Democrats everywhere, only this time they were super obvious about it.) You may be familiar with one of the IDC’s chief strategists: Lis Smith, top advisor for the failed Buttigieg campaign. For his part, Cuomo claims he had nothing to do with the IDC. This is a lie. According to sources cited in a Politico report, “[Cuomo] and his staff were active in ‘nudging’ [the IDC] along behind the scenes.” The sources also claimed that Cuomo wanted to “ensur[e] that Republicans had control over the agenda in the Senate, so that he wouldn’t be handing over power to New York City Democrats.” ... When asked about the IDC, Cuomo still pretends he had nothing to do with them. He defines himself as a progressive, and specifically as “an effective progressive. A competent progressive, an accomplished progressive. Progressive not just in words, progressive in actions.” Now, “progressive” is a slippery term with many meanings, but I don’t think “letting Republicans do whatever they want while pretending you WOULD pass legislation that would save people’s lives, if only you COULD” is any kind of progress.

Andrew Cuomo doesn’t give a shit about gay people. In one of his often-touted accomplishments, Andrew Cuomo legalized gay marriage in New York State in 2011. As per the Atlantic profile, the bill had long been sponsored by openly gay congressman Danny O’Donnell, but Cuomo wanted it to be sponsored by “his team” instead. According to O’Donnell, Cuomo’s chief of staff threatened him over O’Donnell’s unwillingness to give up the bill. “You’ll never work again,” the chief of staff is reported to have said. “I’ll make it my mission in life to destroy you.” In the end, O’Donnell surrendered the marriage equality bill he’d been fighting to pass for over a decade, while Cuomo signed it and was acclaimed an LGBTQ rights champion. O’Donnell told Dovere: “It’s only about getting [Cuomo] credit. He only cares about credit.” The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), among other LGBTQ organizations, endorsed Cuomo’s gubernatorial re-election campaigns, and the HRC made him a speaker at their 2019 New York gala. (The organization has a talent for supporting powerful people over the interests of actual LGBTQ people: see here and here.) Pramila Jayapal, a left-leaning congresswoman from Washington and the sponsor of the Medicare for All bill in the House, says that “most of Cuomo’s progressive accomplishments, such as gay marriage, are what [New York’s] big donors want anyway.” It’s pretty obvious that you’re not “progressive” if you’re bullying gay politicians into letting you take credit for their work, and only doing the work in the first place because the local rich people said you could.

Andrew Cuomo doesn’t give a shit about women or reproductive justice. With the help of the IDC, the Republican-controlled state Senate shot down critical reproductive health initiatives for years. ... This, by the way, didn’t stop the IDC from stealing reproductive justice valor in 2017, when they issued mailers claiming that Planned Parenthood endorsed several IDC candidates. This was a lie, and Planned Parenthood had to tell them to stop. Shortly after the IDC’s defeat in the 2018 midterms, Cuomo signed both reproductive health bills into law and—you guessed it—proudly took credit, while simultaneously reassuring conservatives that the RHA “does little more than codify Roe v. Wade into state law.” At the signing ceremony for the RHA, Cuomo wore a pink tie and gave an award to Sarah Weddington, the lawyer who argued the Roe case before the Supreme Court. Politico quotes her as saying, with irony, “The governor’s tie indicates the depth of his sincerity.”

Andrew Cuomo really, really does not give a fuck about women. Cuomo was supported in his gubernatorial re-election campaigns—the first against attorney and activist Zephyr Teachout in 2014, the second against actress and activist Cynthia Nixon in 2018—by the Women’s Equality Party. “Wow!” you might think. “The Women’s Equality Party supported Andrew Cuomo against two women candidates? He must be great on women’s issues.” You would be wrong. The Women’s Equality Party (W.E.P.) supports Cuomo because he founded them in 2014 when he was running against Zephyr Teachout. As Ginia Bellafante reports in a blistering New York Times article, the Women’s Equality Party is something like “a political shell company,” that has a history of endorsing more conservative male candidates over left-leaning female candidates. ...

Andrew Cuomo doesn’t care about the people of Queens. When Amazon flirted with headquartering itself in Queens, Cuomo bowed and scraped in order to get their business. He even jokingly offered to change his name to “Amazon Cuomo” in exchange for the new headquarters. While Amazon promised the creation of 25,000 new jobs, they would pretty much all have been white-collar jobs, offered mainly to educated out-of-staters and not the immigrant, working-class residents of most of Queens. The mega-corporation would also have been granted an obscene $3 billion in tax breaks just for deigning to destroy the borough. Thankfully, local activists in alliance with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other New York Democrats tanked the Amazon deal and saved Queens. In typical Cuomo fashion, he loudly blamed the “small group [of] politicians [who] put their own narrow political interests above their community,” and then got sneaky, contacting Jeff Bezos directly to beg Amazon to reconsider. When it comes to kinks, to each their own, but personally I can’t imagine anything less sexually appealing than a public official who once begged the richest man on earth for table scraps. A few months ago, Amazon decided it would move into Manhattan’s ritzy Hudson Yards neighborhood anyway without needing to be bribed by tax breaks first, just as AOC predicted would happen. Queens is safe, and the most annoying neighborhood in Manhattan is getting another corporate headquarters, all despite Andrew Cuomo’s best efforts.

Andrew Cuomo doesn’t take leftist ideas seriously, and he doesn’t like to do things that might be hard. If you’re looking for Cuomo’s other accomplishments, they might seem somewhat impressive…on the surface. He worked with Bernie Sanders to help bring a $15 minimum wage and paid family leave to New York, along with (means-tested) free public college. ... The problem is that Cuomo’s progressive commitments are minimal at best. He favors policies that he believes are doable, but not the ones he’s already decided can’t be done. ... Cuomo received a “hero’s welcome” for the $15 minimum wage bill, but he isn’t willing to stick his neck out on anything difficult or really meaningful, especially not if it scares off rich people. He blames his blinkered imagination and lack of political courage on voters themselves. ...[Yet] Polls show that a majority of voters actually favor bold policy proposals such as Medicare for All and a Green New Deal, and public opinion may shift even further given the twin realities of the pandemic and subsequent economic collapse. But in praising Joe Biden, who opposes both Medicare for All and a Green New Deal, Cuomo mocks leftist ideas: “[Biden] knows what he’s talking about, he’s experienced, he is relatable, he knows how to get things done, he wants to get things done, he’s not blowing smoke, he’s not a blue-sky puffer…He’s not, ‘Health care for all, Social Security for all! Everything for all!’” Ah yes, that impossible pie-in-the-sky ambition of everyone having Social Security.

Andrew Cuomo is a constant thief of progressive valor. In fact, Cuomo is only willing to undertake bold policy as long as someone else does the difficult work of popularizing it first. Jayapal describes Cuomo as “a politician’s politician. He is not a movement politician; he’s not the person who comes up with the bold ideas first and does the work to push it forward…You can be a politician’s politician and tough to move on an issue until you see a public out there that’s clamoring. You still deserve credit for getting it done, but where were you when an issue was not popular?” We can see the proof of this in Cuomo’s reaction to Cynthia Nixon, his 2018 leftist primary challenger. During the primary, Cuomo moved left to fend off Nixon’s candidacy. Once he won, many of her policies made their way into his new “Justice Agenda,” including legalizing marijuana, the above mentioned Reproductive Health Act, a Green New Deal for New York State, a middle-class tax cut, and banning corporate campaign contributions. When Cuomo released the proposals in December 2018, he “compared himself to FDR, and said ‘Now is the time to lead.’” Nixon has noted with amusement that she successfully pushed Cuomo left, but he’s failed to acknowledge her influence on his agenda. In fact, in a recent press conference, he took an unnecessary shot at her, laughing at the very idea of her—a former actress who starred in a show about S-E-X!!!—as governor of New York during the coronavirus crisis. Andrew Cuomo is a cynic who stole a woman candidate’s work and took the credit for it.

Andrew Cuomo believes in nothing except his own legacy and making sure rich people keep their money. If you ask Cuomo, however, he’ll insist on his progressive credentials. When his record is criticized, he blames “the professional left” whom he describes as members of “‘the greatest scam in history. What does it mean, ‘professional left’? Basically, a sham set of groups that are fronts for labor unions…They were all with Cynthia Nixon, the professional left.’” ... [P]ollster and Albany insider Steve Greenberg described Cuomo’s appeal to Politico as “a progressive who gets things done.” But what does it really mean to “get things done?” Are progressive policies, as Cuomo has claimed on multiple occasions, really at risk of driving a significant number of rich people out of the state? There is some evidence that rich people are leaving New York, but even Forbes admits that the problem is as much “costly living expenses [and] crumbling infrastructure” as the tax rate. The real obstacle to progressive policies in New York, according to Bill Lipton, executive director of the Working Families Party, is Andrew Cuomo. “I tried to work with the guy for eight years, because we’re the WFP—we’re not the Green Party. We’re trying to actually get stuff done…The truth is Cuomo has no policy or values base at all. What he cares about is keeping taxes low on his donors.” ...

Andrew Cuomo is beholden to rich people. The source of Cuomo’s petty feud with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is not, as most people think, the New York City subway. The badly-needed subway upgrades were definitely a source of tension: “Cuomo argued that the city owned the subway and that Mayor Bill de Blasio needed to pay for half of the repairs. De Blasio pinned the blame on the Metropolitan Transit Authority, a state agency controlled, for all practical purposes, by Cuomo.” But the battle may also have been over de Blasio’s universal pre-kindergarten plan, which is paid for by a “millionaire’s tax” on the richest residents in the state. Cuomo, according to a former adviser quoted in New York Magazine, was furious about the tax. “He told the mayor, ‘We’re going to give you pre-K. It may take a while. We may have to bang you around a little bit. But you’re getting pre-K. Now, understand my politics, Bill. I just fought off this millionaire’s tax. I need the business community right now because I’ve got to get an on-time budget.’” De Blasio partly agrees with that interpretation of events, saying, “I was struck by [Cuomo’s] unwillingness to tax the wealthy, and I felt he was not willing to challenge some powerful interests in this state.” However, de Blasio added that the deeper issue was Cuomo’s support for the IDC and the Republicans, saying Cuomo broke “the promise he made to help us win a Democratic State Senate and over the years, he aided and abetted the IDC and the Republicans, and that to me was a real breaking point.” ...

In fact Andrew Cuomo isn’t just beholden to rich people; he’s outright been bought. The matter of LLCs came up a lot during the primary against Nixon—in New York State, LLCs are a method that corporate entities use to launder their campaign contributions, somewhat like Super PACs. New York Magazine states that “Cuomo rakes in money from corporate, hedge fund, and real estate interests,” and quotes a “Cuomo insider,” who said, “‘… The governor is acutely aware that it’s not just about the dollars to spend. It’s the perception. ‘You want to run against me? You better be prepared.’ And it says to the world, ‘I have access to really deep pockets.’’” During the primary, Cynthia Nixon refused to raise money from LLCs, and lost the election to her better-funded opponent. Andrew Cuomo takes money from rich people, sneers at principled rivals, says taxes on rich people aren’t politically possible, and then implements left policies only if he can get rich people to approve them first. What a progressive hero. ...

The list ends with this cheery set of quotes:

Andrew Cuomo is an asshole. Here is a list of things people have said about Andrew Cuomo in profile pieces ranging from the sympathetic to the fawning to the respectfully critical at worst:

• “What comes up most in talking about Cuomo is how people hate him.” The Atlantic
• “The differences between the Cuomos are huge: Mario would blow up in a rage, while Andrew tends to bide his time for revenge…” The Atlantic
• “Even when there is good news, Cuomo’s scheming breeds suspicion from reporters, activists, and other politicians.” The Atlantic
• “‘Is he a son of a bitch at times? Yeah.’” New York Magazine (2014 profile)
• “And when he’s criticized, his first reaction—often deployed through surrogates or staffers—is to belittle or intimidate.” New York Magazine
• “‘Andrew is vindictive,’ a Democratic strategist says. ‘He wants to punish people. And he gets joy out of that.’” New York Magazine
• “…a hands-on manager who prefers vise-grip control…” Politico
• “One Northeast-based political consultant, a longtime fixture at the National Governors Association event, says he remembers meetings in previous years when Cuomo entered and exited sessions without a word to anyone. When Cuomo does publicly interact with other governors, the events are often carefully timed and monitored on his own home turf.” Politico
• “…a governor who finds it distasteful to interact with the unpredictable masses and his fellow politicians…” Politico
• “It’s sometimes said of certain politicians that they love humanity but hate people; Andrew Cuomo does not appear especially fond of either. He is the uncommon elected official with a streak of misanthropy. Cuomo rarely sees ordinary people, and they rarely see him, except in television commercials. ‘Andrew doesn’t like meeting with voters,’ someone who is familiar with his campaigns told me. ‘He’ll do parades, but that’s about it.’” The New Yorker

And he's also corrupt. (See here and here as well.)

Andrew Cuomo — Collecting the Worst of What Democratic Leaders Could Offer into One Media-Made Candidate

There you have it, or some part of it — there's actually a whole lot more.

If you're looking for a Biden replacement who isn't Sanders, hasn't received a single vote in the primary, is as vindictive as Trump and twice as controlling (and effective), Andrew Cuomo is happy to have your support.

And if the DNC, God forbid, actually does swap out Biden for Cuomo, God help us all, whether he wins or loses.
 

Dems Seek $70 Million Corporate Cash to Fund 2020 Convention

Every word a true one

by Thomas Neuburger

Almost the very definition of corruption is trading money for favors while serving the public interest in public office. Almost, but not quite. There are other definitions, and Zephyr Teachout's "self-serving use of public power for private ends" is still the best. But money-for-gifts-and-services is the easiest to identify and despise.

For those not permanently married to the Democratic or Republican parties as tribal identities, what's to choose between the legalized corruption of Joe Biden and his family and the international-mob–infested corruption of Donald Trump and his? Not much, except perhaps in degree.

Do we really need evidence of a quid pro quo, a smoking gun, to see a body on the floor, its money in someone else's hands, and a room where two walked in but only one walked out, to know a bribe occurred? If you can convict a person of murder on strong circumstantial evidence — and you can — you can convict (in your mind) for bribery the same way.

The DNC Responds to the Sanders No-Corporate-Money DNC Pledge

With that in mind — and remembering Bernie Sanders' recent pledge to forbid corporate funding of the DNC and Democratic Party convention — let's look at what the pre-Sanders DNC is up to:

Dems seek lobbyist cash to fund Milwaukee convention

Party representatives are meeting with lobbyists about funding the $70 million event as candidates swear off corporate-connected dollars.

Two top operatives planning the Democratic Party’s 2020 convention in Milwaukee went to K Street last week to pitch lobbyists on their plans for the $70 million event.

Against the backdrop of the Democratic primary, it was an awkward pairing — representatives for special interests meeting with top Democrats while the party’s leading presidential candidates reject corporate PAC and lobbyist cash. But Democratic National Committee officials explained during the meeting how corporations can help foot the bill for the convention, regardless of who the nominee is, addressing some lobbyists’ worries that a crusading left-wing nominee like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren could try to reject corporate money, embarrassing convention sponsors.

Two things to note about that passage: First, "representatives for special interests" is fog-talk for corporate bribe-givers. Amnesty International is also a "special interest," but no one considers them a nest of money-laundering bribery agents.

Second, did you see the inclusion of Elizabeth Warren along with Bernie Sanders in the last sentence? To my knowledge, the anti-corruption Warren hasn't yet followed Sanders lead in forbidding corporate gifts to the DNC, its convention and her inauguration if she's the nominee.

Here's just part of what Sanders' Issue page promises regarding corporate funding of his party if he's the nominee and president:

As the Democratic nominee, Bernie will:

• Ban corporate contributions to the Democratic Party Convention and all related committees.

As president, Bernie will:

• Ban all corporate donations for inaugural events and cap individual donations to $500.

• End the influence of corporations at the DNC.

• Ban donations from federal lobbyists and corporations.
• Institute a lifetime lobbying ban for National Party Chairs and Co-Chairs
• Ban Chairs and Co-Chairs from working for entities:
  • With federal contracts.
  • That are seeking government approval for projects or mergers.
  • Can reasonably be expected to have business before Congress in the future.

• Ban advertising during presidential primary debates.

• Institute a lifetime lobbying ban for former members of Congress and senior staffers.

Again, this is just some of what he's promised on this issue. (He's also going to overturn Buckley v. Valeo, the Supreme Court's original sin when defining money as speech, but that's a subject for another day.)

Will Elizabeth Warren Support Sanders' No-Corporate-Money DNC Pledge?

Has anyone seen a response to this from Warren? I hope we get one, and I hope it's as strong — I also hope she's asked if she agrees with Sanders' position during one of the debates — but given her "play nice with the Party" stances, I'm not overly optimistic. Here's how the New York Times described her message to Party leaders: "While her liberal agenda may be further left than some in the Democratic establishment would prefer, she is a team player who is seeking to lead the party — not stage a hostile takeover of it."

Either that's inaccurate — a real possibility, since the Times has a horse in this race — or Warren is unlikely to be as full-throated about strangling the Party-wants-corporate-money monster in its bed, if she speaks about it at all.

Will the DNC Return Corporate Money If Sanders Is the Nominee? No.

So the Party is going full bore into K Street offices, selling what they can offer and hoping K Street will offer what they want — $70 million, for now.

And, at least according to Politico in the article cited above, the DNC won't give back any what they manage to harvest from corporate sources if Sanders is the nominee: "The DNC doesn’t plan to return any corporate money that is donated to the convention regardless of the nominee, convention CEO Joe Solmonese told POLITICO."

So that's that.

We knew going in he'd be like that

There's an interesting little war setting up between Sanders and the Party. No wonder no one but us "small people" want Sanders to win. It's definitely a club, the DNC is in it, and we're not even invited to hold their coats.
 

It's Long Past Time For Congress-- And Queens-- To Be Rid Of Serial Corruptionist Gregory Meeks

In June, Blue America endorsed a bartender, rugby player, former legislative aide and Democratic Socialist, Shaniyat Chowdhury, for Congress. He's running in the deep blue (PVI is D+37) southeast Queens district (NY-05) that includes Jamaica, the Rockaways, Cambra Heights, Laurelton, Rosedale, Ozone Park, St Albans, Kew Gardens (+ a sliver of western Nassau County including Valley Stream and Elmont). Ethnically, it's a very diverse district, about 48% African-America, 20% Hispanic, 13% Asian, and 11% white. The incumbent is one of the most corrupt members of Congress, New Dem Gregory Meeks, more than just garden variety corrupt-- a real criminal.

The meme up top was produced by the highly respected nonpartisan Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) in 2011 when they named Meeks one of the most-corrupt members of Congress, just after the FBI had opened an investigation into fishy loans Meeks had gotten from a friend. Before that he had been fined $63,000 by the FEC for using campaign funds for personal expenses, basically the same charges that are likely to send Duncan Hunter to prison. Meeks always seems to use the race card when he gets into any trouble and manages to slip away with minimal damage to himself.

He's always claiming poverty but has a lifestyle of the rich and famous-- or at least always did til the NY Times and NY Post began writing his spending habits up as news, especially after it became obvious he was using taxpayer funds for fancy vacations and excessive luxuries. For over a decade the papers have been writing about his shady spending. In 2015, for example, Post reporters Isabel Vincent and Melissa Klein noted that he "raked in thousands of travel miles last year, crisscrossing the globe in luxury trips to at least 16 countries-- including some funded by taxpayers, including trips to Morocco, Russia, Austria, Hungary, Panama, Israel, Kazakhstan, Cuba, Colombia...

“Congressman Meeks racks up more travel than most other members of Congress,” said Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, a government watchdog group. “Not only is he one of the most frequent foreign travelers, but he also has been at political fund-raisers from Las Vegas to the Virgin Islands. It’s a wonder he has any time to do work in his Queens district or Washington.”

Meeks has logged more travel since 2001 than any other Congress member from New York, according to a tally on the Web site LegiStorm.

...Meeks came under fire for shady travel in 2013 when he and nine other federal lawmakers and 32 staff members accepted an all-expenses-paid trip to Azerbaijan. The sponsor was the Council of Turkic-American Associations, but the junket to Baku, where participants received rugs and other expensive gifts, was secretly funded by the country’s oil company, according to a classified report by the Office of Congressional Ethics recently obtained by the Washington Post.

But he wasn't spending all his time globe-trotting. After whining how he lives "paycheck to paycheck" like so many of his constituents, he bought a mansion for $830,000 which seemed excessive for someone on a salary of $174,000; his wife's salary was $79,000. In his official congressional financial disclosures he claimed to have no checking or savings account worth more than $5,000, or any investment account worth more than $1,000."

Last week, the NY Daily News' Chris Sommerfeldt and Dave Goldiner dug around a little into the feud Meeks has been stoking with AOC, The Squad and the Justice Democrats, basically because he's freaking out about the primary challenge from Chowdhury, who hasn't been-- at least not yet-- been endorsed by AOC, The Squad, the Justice Dems or anyone else aside from locals and Blue America. "Queens Democratic boss and 11-term congressman Greg Meeks took a thinly-veiled jab at fellow Big Apple Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Friday," wrote Sommerfeldt and Goldiner, "urging her to back off her racially-tinged feud with party leaders or face a fight for her political life."

"Racially tinged?" Like every other Black Democrat in Congress, Meeks is a member of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) which, like every other groups has some good members-- like Barbara Lee (AC), Joe Neguse (CO), John Lewis (GA), Alma Adams (NC), Karen Bass (CA), Ayanna Pressley (MA), Gwen Moore (WI) and Ilhan Omar (MN)-- and some bad members-- Meeks coming right to mind, but also David Scott (Blue Dog-GA), Terri Sewell (New Dem-AL) and Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA). The CBC has been having an institutional meltdown at the prospect of primaries and blaming it on The Squad. Meeks has been leading the charge, causing Ayanna Pressley to address Netroots Nation with a statement including "we don't need any more brown faces that don't want to be a brown voice. We don’t need black faces that don't want to be a black voice." Meeks seems to have taken it personally, probably because he's still feeling guilty for endorsing Hillary Clinton against Obama in 2008. More recently Meeks has been backing a series of white conservative candidates against progressive people of color, Tiffany Cabán, opposing for example, in favor of Melinda Katz in a still too-close-to-call race for Queens DA. In 2018 he loudly backed Michael Capuano, a white man, against Ayanna Pressley, a black woman. Meeks: "At a time when Donald Trump continues to spew hateful rhetoric and policies, we need a leader like Rep. Capuano in Congress. Civil rights are under attack, and we need to fight back. Rep. Capuano has built his career on standing up for those who have been left behind, from healthcare, to transportation, to housing. We in the Congressional Black Caucus Political Action Committee have a strong, committed partner in Mike and unanimously support his campaign for Congress." With Meeks it's part of a pattern.

And now he's whining, dishonestly, that Justice Democrats, AOC and the Squad are targeting members of the CBC, never mentioning that their candidates are also black. He also never mentions that he's being challenged by Shaniyat, although that has a lot to do with why he's melting down over primaries.

In an interview with Sommerfeldt and Goldiner, he was flipping out over the Justice Democrats "openly backing insurgent candidates trying to unseat members of the Congressional Black Caucus."

He also said the CBC can play the same game.

“Primaries go two ways," Meeks said when asked whether his wing of the party would consider challenging progressive members next year, including Ocasio-Cortez. “If someone picks a fight with somebody else, you fight back. That’s what my parents told me.”

Meeks stressed there weren’t any current plans to challenge Ocasio-Cortez, but left the door open: "If you get in the ring, expect that people are going to start throwing punches.”

The Justice Democrats, a progressive political action committee that is closely aligned with Ocasio-Cortez and propelled her to victory in 2018, has already backed primary challenges against CBC members, including 10-term Rep. Lacy Clay (D-MO).

The group, which is pushing to get corporate cash out of politics, has also made noise about possibly challenging Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries (D-Brooklyn) and Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-Brooklyn), both CBC members. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-Bronx) is another New York lawmaker who’s being targeted by the group.

Engel is white and his opponent, school principal Jamaal Bowman, happens to be black and, at one time, might have expected a helping hand, instead of slings and arrows, from the CBC. Lacy Clay's opponent, Cori Bush, is black (and Clay is nearly as notoriously corrupt as Meeks). Jeffries has no primary opponent and Clarke has three, all of whom are black and none of whom have been endorsed by Justice Dems, AOC or The Squad. This is all Meeks playing his game.

Meeks said the Justice Democrats and left-leaning lawmakers may be shooting the party in the foot.

“I would hope that these individuals would realize who the opposition is here,” Meeks said, referring to Republicans. “The focus should be to keep the majority, grow the majority and win the presidency.”

The escalating tensions come amid increasingly nasty clashes between party progressives and centrists, boiling over this week with Ocasio-Cortez accusing Pelosi in an interview of being “outright disrespectful” for privately scolding her and other “newly elected women of color" for picking Twitter fights with fellow Dems.

Meeks called Ocasio-Cortez’s Pelosi comments “intolerable."

“We’re all on the same team,” Meeks said. “You don’t go after the speaker like that.”

A Democratic leadership source, who only spoke on condition of anonymity, was harsher.

“Justice Democrats in general are trust fund kids who are funding this with their parents’ money,” the source said, blasting the progressive group as “elitist” for criticizing black lawmakers from poor districts who take corporate donations. “It’s offensive for CBC members when these elites are looking down on them when they don’t have the financial ability to say, ‘I don’t want that money.’”

Asked for an example, the source pointed to Ocasio-Cortez chief of staff and Justice Democrats co-founder Saikat Chakrabarti, a millionaire Harvard graduate who worked on Wall Street before turning to left-wing politics.

A spokesman for Ocasio-Cortez declined to comment Friday, but the Justice Democrats took aim at the party establishment on her behalf.

“Senior members of the Democratic Party can make whatever false claims they want, but it’s clear that their bottom line is: no primary challenges," Justice Democrats board members Alexandra Rojas, Demond Drummer and Nasim Thompson said in a joint statement.

“Let’s make one thing clear," the trio added. "No incumbent is entitled to their seat. That’s why we have elections...Primaries are good for our party.”

The leadership source said the Justice Democrats and Ocasio-Cortez are getting some of their own medicine.

“They have attacked, attacked, attacked and attacked. For the first time, they were attacked back and now they claim to be the victim,” the source said, referencing the pushback from Meeks and Pelosi. “Ocasio-Cortez kind of operates like Trump. She’s hellbent on sowing discord and spreading chaos, but if you look at it, it always traces back to one person: her.”

Trump, of course, has weighed in on Pelosi's side against the reformers. Big surprise! If you'd like to help Shaniyat Chowdhury replace Meeks... see that thermometer above? Just click on that and contribute what you can in the box next to his name.