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.

Republican Congressmen Worry That Trump Is Flushing Their Reelections Down The Toilet With His Own

Fred Upton wants to be seen as a moderate rather than the Trump enabler he is

Republican senators are afraid to do it because they worry Trump will notice and tweet something horrible about them, but some House Republicans are quietly trying to edge away from Trump to save their own skins. "Quietly" has been the key word there but Katie Edmondson and Rebecca Ruiz blew the whistle with a NY Times piece yesterday. They tried making the point that moderate Republicans-- whatever the hell that's supposed to be-- in competitive districts "are navigating a careful balance in addressing the coronavirus crisis," eager to not be associated with a president whose pandemic policies are widely recognized as the causes of death and destruction in our country. One congressman not mentioned in the piece was crooked Trump enabler Roger Williams in central Texas. "Congressman Williams is an extremist who is way out of step with the reality of what most Texans believe, as well as the everyday reality for people who have to work for a living," said Julie Oliver, the popular progressive Democrat who won her primary with 70% of the vote and is taking him on in November. "His response to the pandemic has been to funnel money to his own businesses while small business owners from Johnson county to Travis county get shut out of federal relief. He's fighting for the banks and predatory lenders, not mom and pop businesses in Texas. We deserve much better.

A great California progressive, Audrey Denney, is taking on far right northern California crackpot-- Doug LaMalfa, also unmentioned in the Times piece, unmentioned because he doesn't even pretend to be even remotely moderate. LaMalfa is a far right tea party backbencher in an R+11 district where he routinely assumes the safest approach is to mimic Trump. Yesterday, Audrey told us that LaMalfa's overt Trumpism, "calling our stay-at-home orders 'ridiculous measures' and arguing that our state leadership has 'taken it too far,' is not just bad advice and bad science. It’s an affront to the selfless and protective culture of our communities, who consistently band together to protect themselves and their neighbors during crises. There’s no question that the economic hardships of these stay-at-home orders are real and put people in potentially devastating economic circumstances, but protecting the lives of our loved ones and neighbors requires difficult choices. Rather than fighting the mitigation efforts because the symptoms are painful, we need to do what we do during a wildfire: follow the advice of public safety experts, focus our community energy on saving lives, identifying and protecting the most vulnerable, and working together to restore our nation to physical and economic health."

Edmondson and Ruiz mistakenly fell for Upton's carefully crafted bullshit about how "moderate" he is. He isn't. A much better description of Upton would point out that he's a Trump enabler and bootlicker who is uncomfortable being seen that way in a swing district. Edmondson and Ruiz think it's somehow courageous for his nightly Facebook update on the pandemic don't mention Trump. They're wrong. It would be courageous for Upton to mention Trump and explain how his public undercutting of Michigan's governor are making folks in MI-06 less safe, not more safe. They are, however, correct to point out that Trump's inadequate "response to the pandemic has raised questions that threaten to drag down Republicans’ electoral prospects this fall, or of the president’s provocative news briefings, which have become a forum for partisan attacks on Democrats and dubious claims about the virus."

Upton is a cleaver and deceitful opportunist. "You have to sort of thread the needle," he told Edmondson, explaining how he's desperately trying to navigate Trump’s psychotic performance during the crisis-- afraid if he mentions it Trump-Republicans will abandon him and afraid that if he goes along, independents and moderate Republicans will join forces to oust him for state Rep. Jon Hoadley in November. "I’ve been careful. I said, 'Let’s look to the future,' versus 'Why didn’t we do this a few months ago?’ I’m not interested in pointing the finger of blame. I want to correct the issues," Upton told her. Obama won the district in 2008-- with an 8 point margin, 53-45%. Hillary was a terrible candidate for this district and Trump beat her by the same 8 points. Two years later Upton was reelected but by outspending Democrat Matt Longjohn $3,553,344 to $1,443,958 and only by 4 points. Upton lost badly in the district's biggest county, Kalamazoo, and did poorly in Berrien and Van Buren counties, basically saved by the right-wingers in Allegan, St Joseph and Cass counties.

Upton has a far more formidable challenger this cycle in Hoadley. "We need bold leadership," he told me yesterday. "Representative Upton has failed time and again to hold the Trump administration accountable, and continues to do so. The fact is that people are dying as a result of this pandemic every day. Equivocating on life-saving measures, like making testing accessible, will only lead to more lives lost. We need to act fiercely to address this crisis, yet Mr. Upton continues to support the sentiments of the protesters in Lansing by calling for Governor Whitmer to ignore expert advice on the matter. I support the medical professionals who are working tirelessly to address this issue, and the guidance they are providing to overcome this pandemic. This isn't about political games-- this is about safeguarding the health of our communities. Representative Upton is simply not acting with the urgency and tenacity that the situation requires."

It is a tricky task for lawmakers like Mr. Upton in centrist districts throughout the country, who understand that their re-election prospects-- and any hope their party might have of taking back the House of Representatives-- could rise or fall based on how they address the pandemic. Already considered a politically endangered species before the novel coronavirus began ravaging the United States, these moderates [again Edmondson fell for Upton's spin; true, he isn't a Nazi but neither is he a moderate; he's a hard core, down the line conservative ideologue] are now working to counter the risk that their electoral fates could become tied to Mr. Trump’s response at a time when the independent voters whose support they need are increasingly unhappy with his performance.

The president’s combative news conferences, which his own political advisers have counseled him to curtail, have made the challenge all the steeper.

...And calling in to a radio show in Michigan, Mr. Upton hedged when asked if he agreed with the president’s optimism about reopening the economy. “As much as the president wants to open things up-- and we all do-- I think you’re going to have to let the virus really determine where things are at the end of the day,” he said. “We know that we are not there yet.”

And yet Upton has been too scared to speak out for Gov. Whitmer when she says exactly the same thing while being vilified by heavily armed right-wing terrorists grade don by Trump. That's what Fred Upton has become even if he was once maybe not quite as bad, decades ago.

And Upton isn't the only one. The other fake moderate-- this one is a blue (D+3) district-- they decided to profile was John Katko in Syracuse, New York. Obama won the district both times, in 2008 by 14 points and in 2012 by 16 points, Even a candidate entirely unsuited for a district like this-- Hillary-- managed to beat Trump, 48.9% to 45.3% in a hold-you-nose/lesser of two evils contest.

Last cycle, progressive Democrat Dana Balter was barely supported by the DCCC and was outspent by Katko $2,998,196 to $2,687,232. The NRCC put $885,085 into defending Katko while the vehemently anti-progressive DCCC grudgingly spent a measly $84,309 on Balter. She still managed to hold him to a 5 point margin and beat him in Onondaga County, the biggest county in the district. This cycle-- with much bigger name recognition-- she's challenging him again and pointing to his lockstep backing on the unpopular Trump.

“It does make it difficult at times,” Representative John Katko, Republican of New York, said in an interview. He said he hoped his constituents would evaluate him not based on Mr. Trump’s record, but on his own.

“I’m hanging on-- not hanging on, flourishing-- in a district I should probably not have as a Republican,” said Mr. Katko, one of only two House Republicans running for re-election in a district Hillary Clinton won in 2016. Voters “are going to judge me on what I did or did not do, and that’s all I can ask.”

In an attempt to ensure their contests become referendums on their own responses to the virus, rather than the president’s, vulnerable House Republicans are instead brandishing their own independent streaks, playing up their work with Democrats, doubling down on constituent service and hosting town-hall-style events-- avoiding mention of Mr. Trump whenever possible.

It is an approach that looks familiar to former Representative Carlos Curbelo, Republican of Florida, who tried to distance himself from Mr. Trump on immigration and other issues in 2018 as he fought to hang onto his seat in a diverse South Florida district, but was swept out in a midterm debacle that handed Democrats control of the House.

“The president continues to be reckless in the context of the Covid-19 crisis,” Mr. Curbelo said in an interview. “You could see a similar dynamic where a lot of Republicans in competitive districts will just break with him in an effort to protect their own candidacies.”

Many of his former colleagues in competitive districts had hoped the severity of the crisis would give them a platform to highlight their own responses, Mr. Curbelo said. But as Mr. Trump’s nightly briefings “became more about the president and his personality” than about the disease, he added, “Republicans have perceived a peril in that development, and certainly some of the recent polling validates that.”

Moderate Republicans [their aren't any and I would love to debate Edmondson on that] are doing what they can to shift the dynamic. In virtual town-hall-style meetings conducted by telephone from his central New York district, Mr. Katko has stressed the importance of bipartisanship, saying his constituents are “sick of the nastiness” in Washington.

Mr. Katko teamed up recently with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat, for one such call, in which he broke with one of his own party’s leaders, rejecting a proposal by the top Senate Republican to allow states to go bankrupt rather than provide a federal lifeline.

“I’m going to continue to work across the aisle,” Mr. Katko told voters, pointing to his relationship with Ms. Gillibrand. “I totally disagree with what Mitch McConnell said-- that’s a great example.”

...“People are going to make a judgment here: Who do they want to give the responsibility of governing to, given what has just occurred?” said David Winston, a Republican pollster who works with the House Republican Conference. “Did you try to do the right thing? People want to know how their elected representatives are trying to solve this.”

...From his porch in St. Joseph, Mich., Mr. Upton unveiled a plan that aims to modernize the nation’s health care system to prepare for future pandemics. His nightly Facebook dispatches have drawn responses that offer a glimpse of the political balance he is struggling to strike.

“Not giving the President Trump administration any credit are you Fred,” Jerry Litke commented on a recent post that omitted any mention of Mr. Trump.

But Patricia Resetar had a complaint of her own about the same dispatch, demanding that Mr. Upton answer for the administration’s failure to deploy broad testing throughout the country.

“Where is all the testing?” she wrote. “Where is it, and why aren’t you holding this administration accountable?”

Mr. Upton said in an interview that he was “not afraid to give the president credit on a variety of issues” or to “be against him when I think he’s wrong.”

That would be never. Upton, like Katko, talks a good game but when push comes to shove, both are Trump bootlickers, pretending to be otherwise. Donald Bacon in Omaha doesn't even pretend to be moderate even though he's in a swing district that Obama won in 2008 and that Trump look by just 2 points in 2016. The progressive candidate running for the seat, Kara Eastman noted that where other Republicans are savvy enough to at least recognize the dilemma they're in, Bacon doesn't seem to even recognize Trump's failures in responding to the pandemic. "Bacon," she told me, "has doubled-down on his support for President Trump by echoing his policies and fully embracing even his most extreme ideas, while at the same time failing to support relief funding for the largest city in his own district."

Trumpist Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the eastern Washington incumbent, is going to have to face grassroots progressive Chris Armitage in November. As he said, "Cathy McMorris Rodgers votes with Trump 95% of the time; I don't even know married couples that agree that often. Cathy's greatest strength has always been her ability to quietly yet shamelessly act against the interest of American's while maintaining a low profile."

Mike Siegel, another central Texas progressive, read the Times piece and said that "It's too late for McCaul-- he’s hitched himself to Trump for better or worse. Backing the Family Separation policy when he was Homeland Security Chair; running interference on impeachment; leading the xenophobia playbook on COVID-19, and blaming the Chinese people instead of his President. Maybe McCaul wishes he could present a reasonable, independent image, but he’s already made his bed. This November, unless Trump has a surge in popularity in the moderate Houston suburbs, McCaul will be backing his bags, returning to his Austin mansion instead of Washington, DC. He will have no one but himself to blame."

McCaul can't even pretend he's anything BUT a Trump puppet

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Ah, the continuing and continuing Washington profiles in cowardice (and worse), the essence of Washington! It's not that forked tongue Susan Collins is the only $enator who cares more about her cushy job as a graft magnet than she does for the United States, but Collins is hell bent on making herself stand out when it comes to such things, no surprise there. She has a "talent" for it. She even feels entitled to your respect because she's honest enough to flaunt her contemptuous duplicity in your face. While the media whores call her a "moderate" or "centrist" Republican, she regards herself as some kind of master of speaking out of both sides or her mouth with only corrupt intent. Perhaps someday the media sycophants will explain just what a "moderate" or "centrist" Nazi is but I have no such expectations.

Yes, Susan Collins has once again, after cynically declaring that she would approach the impeachment hearings with at least a somewhat "open mind," voted right along with Moscow Mitch and their mutual master Donald Trump. The whys are simple: One, she's always been an obvious fan of fascism. Two, she wants her cut of Moscow Mitch's ruble-filled election slush fund that came direct from Russia with love. She feels she needs her cut of that red cash in order to get re-elected. Don't worry Susan. If you lose your re-election, I'm sure you can move to Russia (1-way ticket only) and live out your days under the care of Putin and the Russian mob. Enjoy the caviar Susan!

Democratic Congressional Leadership Is Almost As Out Of Touch With America As Republican Leadership

Yesterday, New York Magazine published an excellent essay by Eric Levitz, Here Are 7 ‘Left Wing’ Ideas (Almost) All Americans Can Get Behind. It reminded me, once again, of the MLK/Bernie meme above-- and of the argument about how words like "moderate," "mainstream," "centrist" and "fringe" and "radical" are used by always-compromised political writers. Towards the very end of his essay, Levitz suggests that the Democratic leadership-- Pelosi, Schumer, Biden, Steny Hoyer, Cheri Bustos, Tom Perez...-- "comport themselves as cowardly, poll-driven opportunists." They never actually lead; they follow. For a democracy to function effectively it is absolutely essential that party leaders be changed very regularly. Our leaders aren't and our democracy doesn't.

"The Democrats’ 2020 primary fight," wrote Levitz, "has featured many pitched battles over policy questions. But every debate over Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, tuition-free college, or any other intraparty wedge issue has been colored by a meta-argument over the meaning of 'political pragmatism.' There are a wide variety of nuanced positions in the latter dispute. But one prominent line of argument among putative moderates is that Democrats mustn’t stray too far left ideologically, lest they alienate the great unwoke masses of middle America. After all, both chambers of Congress systematically overrepresent conservative areas (the Senate gives every state equal representation, and the average state is roughly 6 percent more Republican than the nation as a whole). Progress is possible, but only if Democrats pursue it on tip-toe and in baby steps." How sick is that? Levitz doesn't believe a word of it. If he did, I wouldn't be even reading his stuff, let alone re-publishing it.

He continued: "A prominent leftist counter to this is that public opinion is both more progressive-- and more malleable-- than the centrists like to pretend. Ambitious, easy-to-understand policies like Medicare for All are actually more broadly popular than Obamacare-esque technocratic tinkering. In this view, the true constraint on radical reform isn’t the inveterate conservatism of the American hinterland, but the outsize influence of concentrated capital; “moderates” just use deference to public opinion as a false alibi for craven capitulation to their corporate paymasters. As a bought-and-paid-for mouthpiece of the bleeding-heart bourgeois press, I’m professionally obligated to inform you that the truth is somewhere in the middle. America’s electoral institutions really are biased against the left. Both polling data and historical experience suggest public opinion is a genuine obstacle to the realization of many progressive goals. Medicare for All polls better than the Republican approach to health care-- and, under certain framing, enjoys majority support. But when surveys spotlight the policy’s implications for the tax code and the availability of private insurance, that support tends to decline precipitously. And the experience of single-payer campaigns in Colorado and Vermont lend some credence to those poll results. There is some reason to believe that most Americans would support single-payer if the totality of the policy’s consequences were made absolutely clear to them (i.e., that they would likely see an overall decline in their cost of living and enjoy stable access to their preferred providers). But there’s also reason to question whether reformers could succeed in giving voters such clarity, especially given how well-resourced their opposition’s messaging campaign is certain to be. Separately, many of the Democratic left’s ideas for redressing injustices that primarily afflict a minority of the population appear to be unambiguously unpopular-- abolishing ICE, enfranchising current prisoners, and paying reparations for slavery (and/or other forms of anti-black discrimination and expropriation) all poll terribly. None of this necessarily means that Democrats shouldn’t support single-payer or other controversial policies. Obamacare had a negative approval rating when it was passed, and likely cost many congressional Democrats their jobs. But it also appears to have saved more than 19,000 lives. The point is simply that, on many issues, the left’s adversaries aren’t merely special interests but also mass opinion. On other issues, however, progressives are right to think that the people aren’t their problem. Most voters aren’t rigorously ideological. The median American does not judge a policy by how it comports with her abstract theory of the role of government, but rather, by how well it lines up with her personal intuitions about fairness and which social groups the policy seems to benefit. For this reason, many ostensibly “left wing” or even “radical” policy ideas are actually popular with voters in both parties. On occasion, a red-state electorate will spotlight this fact by voting to expand Medicaid, strengthen unions, or raise the minimum wage. More often, though, the breadth of latent support for ambitious progressive reforms is obscured by the outsize influence that well-heeled interest groups and partisan elites have in determining which ideas are taken seriously enough to poll or debate. Happily, Data for Progress (DFP) is working to change that. In recent years, the progressive think tank has conducted large-sample, neutrally worded national polls of various left-wing policies, including many that had yet to register in mainstream discourse. DFP then applies state-of-the-art demographic modeling techniques to estimate the likely level of support for said policies in every state and district in the country. This week, in a collaboration with Democratic data firm Civis Analytics, DFP released new poll numbers on 15 different progressive policies-- including seven that are both very “left wing” by the standards of Beltway discourse and popular in all, or nearly all, 50 U.S. states. Here’s a quick rundown of the seven things all Democrats should be comfortable saying on television:

First a personal note: I smoked my first joint in 1963, when I was 15. Eventually it became a kind iff sacrament in my teenage religion of "Otherness and Independence." An even more important sacrament came later: LSD. It's not addictive, except spiritually. When I noticed rednecks were smoking pot and dropping acid, I decided to to stop. I didn't want to be in a club with them. I'm all in for it being legal though.

1) Weed should be legal.

Although legalizing marijuana is (something close to) a consensus position among 2020 Democratic candidates, Democratic legislators in many blue states are still dragging their feet. And on this front, ideology (and/or interest-group organizing)-- not public opinion-- is the obstacle to change. DFP’s poll is far from the first to find that ending weed prohibition is popular. But its survey nevertheless suggests that mainstream discourse hasn’t absorbed just how high the American public is on legal ganja: According to the think tank’s findings, legalizing marijuana isn’t just a majoritarian position in all 50 states, it’s a majoritarian position with Trump voters in 49. Which is to say: In every U.S. state but Mississippi, a majority of voters who support Donald Trump also support bringing weed off the black market (and even in the Magnolia State, 48 percent of Trump voters are 420-friendly).

What makes these findings especially impressive is that the wording of the DFP/Civis survey explicitly frames marijuana legalization as a Democratic policy, and provides Republican counterarguments to it:

Some Democrats in Congress are proposing a policy where marijuana possession would be legal for those at least 21 years old. Additionally the sale of marijuana would be legalized, taxed, and regulated. Funds from the marijuana taxes would go towards education and healthcare. Democrats say this would save taxpayers money in marijuana enforcement, keep people out of jail for simply possessing marijuana, and provide much needed tax dollars for education and healthcare. Republicans say marijuana is dangerous and its legalization will foster a culture of dependency and addiction. Additionally, Republicans suggest this would prove a public safety hazard leading to thousands of deaths as more people would use marijuana while driving. Do you support or oppose this policy?

2) Workers should have representation on corporate boards.

Over the past two years, the Democratic Party’s most progressive senators have backed the idea of requiring large corporations to set aside a share of seats on their boards (proposals range from 33 to 40 percent) for their employees’ elected representatives. In other words, they’ve proposed forcing companies to give their workers some say in how profits are allocated. This arrangement, widely known as “worker co-determination,” is prevalent in Western Europe and a pillar of Germany’s economic model. Historical evidence suggests that, had workers’ representatives been in every corporate boardroom in January 2018, the Trump tax cuts might have actually trickled down to workers’ paychecks (instead of pooling in wealthy shareholders’ bank accounts). As a policy that both challenges managerial supremacy within the firm and would likely redistribute significant sums from capital to labor, worker co-determination is arguably a “far left” policy by American standards. It is also has a net-positive approval rating in every single congressional district in the United States.

3) The credit-card interest rates are too damn high.

Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have introduced legislation that would cap interest rates on credit-card debt at 15 percent per year. Data for Progress did not mention the names of the proposal’s co-sponsors in its poll of the policy. But it did inform respondents that “Republicans say this will hurt the economy … [W]ithout the ability to charge large interest rates, financial institutions will be unwilling to lend, and consumers will lose the ability to use credit cards when they most need it.”

Despite this partisan framing, capping credit-card interest rates attracted not just majority but supermajority support in all 50 states. The policy is most unpopular in Wyoming, where only 68 percent of voters support AOC’s vision for financial reform.

4) Government officials shouldn’t be allowed to own stocks or become lobbyists right after leaving office.

Elizabeth Warren has proposed barring members of Congress from owning individual stocks or becoming lobbyists for years after leaving office. Given that even Trump has pretended to disapprove of the “revolving door” between Capitol Hill and K Street, it is perhaps unsurprising that this proposal is popular in every state.

5) The government should directly finance the development of new drugs, and then allow the breakthrough pharmaceuticals to be sold cheaply without a patent.

The high cost of prescription drugs in the U.S. has prompted complaints from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. And yet, only the most left-wing members of Congress have called for tackling the underlying problem: the way America chooses to finance pharmaceutical research and innovation. At present, the United States incentivizes drug companies to develop new cures by awarding innovation with patent monopolies; which is to say, by letting pharmaceutical firms price gouge for years before their new wares hit the free market. This is less than ideal for multiple reasons. For one, these patent protections tend to be needlessly generous, awarding Big Pharma longer periods of exclusivity than necessary to stimulate research. For another, since innovation is rewarded with a monopoly rather than a direct reward, this system does little to incentivize research into drugs that aren’t hugely profitable, either because they treat rare conditions or because they cure users with a single dose.

A better way to incentivize pharmaceutical innovation and drastically reduce the cost of new prescription drugs would be for the federal government to maintain a prize fund that awards developers of therapeutically valuable new medicines with a giant, onetime payment, on the condition that their science immediately enters the public domain, making the novel treatment available at generic rates. This proposal, championed by Bernie Sanders, has majority support in 48 states.

6) All workers should be able to take up to 12 weeks of paid time off following a serious medical injury or childbirth.

Providing U.S. workers with the kinds of paid-leave benefits that are standard in Western Europe is a longtime goal of American progressives. But some Democrats have balked at the challenges of financing such a policy. New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s FAMILY Act would fund 12 weeks of leave for new parents or the infirm with a modest increase in payroll taxes. Since this would constitute a tax increase on the middle class, Hillary Clinton declined to endorse Gillibrand’s legislation in 2016. But when DFP ran the policy by the American people in a survey question that mentioned the 0.2 percent payroll-tax hike and Republican arguments against the idea, the response was net positive in every state but Wyoming.

7) There should be a Green New Deal (of some sort).

Some previous polling has found broad support for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s signature framework for climate policy, which combines ambitious goals for emissions reductions with a commitment to giant expansion in public employment and various other social democratic reforms. That said, in some of these surveys, a “Green New Deal” has not been clearly defined, while others have shown support for the policy withering under Fox News’ “scrutiny.” The Data for Progress poll, however, describes the concept of a Green New Deal in significant detail:

Some Democrats in Congress are proposing a Green New Deal bill which would phase out the use of fossil fuels, with the government providing clean energy jobs for people who can’t find employment in the private sector. All jobs would pay at least $15 an hour, include healthcare benefits and collective bargaining rights. This would be paid for by raising taxes on incomes over $200,000 dollars a year by 15 percentage points. Democrats say this would improve the economy by giving people jobs, fight climate change and reduce pollution in the air and water. Republicans say this would cost many jobs in the energy sector, hurt the economy by raising taxes, and wouldn’t make much of a difference because of carbon emissions from China. Do you support or oppose this policy?

A 15-point increase in the top marginal tax rate, combined with the state-mandated suppression of a major industry-- and the establishment of guaranteed federal employment for every American out of work-- is borderline Leninist by the standards of D.C. discourse. And yet, DFP found net-positive support for the policy in 44 states (albeit with relatively high percentages of voters opting for “I don’t know”).

Data for Progress found other ambitious progressive policies above water overall (such as lead removal), and other center-left ideas that command support in every corner of the country (such as extending the New START treaty). But the seven findings above struck me as most notable.

Taken together, DFP’s past year of polling on the “new progressive agenda” suggests the popularity of any given policy has little to do with its ideological “extremity,” as measured by conventional definitions of left and right. But it also indicates that the American public is most broadly receptive to a specific category of left-wing ideas-- namely, ones that do not require major middle-class tax increases or touch on hot-button “culture war” issues. Thus, reflexively deferring to majoritarian opinion would pose significant constraints on progressive policy-making. Of the 15 proposals in DFP’s latest survey, six called for raising taxes on households earning over $200,000, and you can only go to that well so many times. Although there is reason to think the U.S. has excess fiscal space, it’s still almost certainly the case that progressives cannot fund a Nordic-style welfare state with taxes on the affluent alone. Meanwhile, there is no way of redressing racial injustice in the U.S. without advancing policies that offend red America’s sensibilities.

That said, even if Democrats were to comport themselves as cowardly, poll-driven opportunists, there’s still an awful lot that they could accomplish. For decades now, American liberalism has shied away from restructuring inter-firm relations between labor and capital, favoring an emphasis on taxes and transfers over policies that would redraw lines of ownership and authority within corporations. And yet, DFP’s survey on worker codetermination-- and recent polling from YouGov and the Democracy Collaborative on worker wealth funds-- indicates that there is broad, bipartisan support for helping American workers seize (a bit more control over) the means of production. A comprehensive agenda for rebalancing power within firms would arguably do more to reduce inequality than many more controversial posttax redistribution schemes. To the extent that moderate Democrats’ ambitions are tempered by fear of alienating conservative voters-- as opposed to terror of offending high-dollar donors-- they should consider expanding worker ownership and control of corporations to be the height of pragmatic “problem solving.”

Only 94 of 235 Democrats in the House-- 40%-- have signed on as co-sponsors to AOC's H.Res. 109-- the framework for a Green New Deal. Except for the candidates completely controlled by the DCCC-- to the point where the DCCC writes their positions-- virtually all the candidates running for Congress this cycle are behind the Green New Deal. It points to exactly why geriatric leaders need to be switched out-- in general, more frequently, and more immediately, right now... before it's too late for the planet. Pelosi wanted her legacy to be that she was the first woman speaker and that she passed Obamacare. Instead it will be that she funded Trump's concentration camps and helped destroy the planet. She's done enough damage. Sorry, but anyone in San Francisco who votes for her is complicit.

Stop Calling Conservatives "Moderates." They're Not

Unless you're new here, you know the misuse of the word "moderate" to describe conservatives is a pet peeve of this blog's. I was happy to see someone else tackle the topic this week-- Norman Solomon for Common Dreams: There’s Nothing Moderate About "Moderates." A Primary Example Is Joe Biden. "Biden’s record of words and deeds is 'moderate,'" wrote Solomon, "only if we ignore the extreme harm that he has done on matters ranging from civil rights and mass incarceration to student debt and the credit card industry to militarism and war." I was delighted-- am delighted--to see someone as pissed off as I am by the media cabal's expropriation, some consciously, others unconsciously, of a positive-sounding word like "moderate" to use as a weapon against progressives.

As a practical matter, in the routine lexicon of U.S. mass media, "moderate" actually means pro-corporate and reliably unwilling to disrupt the dominant power structures. "Moderate" is a term of endearment in elite circles, a label conferred on politicians who won't rock establishment boats.

"Moderate" sounds so much nicer than, say, "enmeshed with Wall Street" or "supportive of the military-industrial complex."

In the corporate media environment, we're accustomed to pretty euphemisms that fog up unpretty realities-- and the haze of familiarity brings the opposite of clarity. As George Orwell wrote, language "becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts."

If Joe Biden is a "moderate," the soothing adjective obscures grim realities. The framing was routine hours after the debate Wednesday night when the front page of the New York Times began its lead story by reporting that Biden "delivered a steadfast defense of his moderate policies in the Democratic primary debate."

But, how are policies really "moderate" when they perpetuate and increase extreme suffering due to vast income inequality? Or when they support U.S. wars causing so much death and incalculable anguish? Or when they refuse to challenge the fossil-fuel industry and only sign onto woefully inadequate measures in response to catastrophic climate change?

Biden's record of words and deeds is "moderate" only if we ignore the extreme harm that he has done on matters ranging from civil rights and mass incarceration to student debt and the credit card industry to militarism and war.

Although Biden again tangled with Kamala Harris during the latest debate, she is ill-positioned to provide a clear critique of his so-called "moderate" policies. Harris has scarcely done more than he has to challenge the systemic injustice of corporate domination. So, she can't get far in trying to provide a sharp contrast to Biden's corporate happy talk on the crucial issue of healthcare.

Harris began this week by releasing what she called "My Plan for Medicare for All." It was promptly eviscerated by single-payer activist Tim Higginbotham, who wrote for Jacobin that her proposal would "further privatize Medicare. . . keep the waste and inefficiency of our current multi-payer system. . . cost families more than Medicare for All. . . continue to deny patients necessary care" and "fall apart before it's implemented."

In keeping with timeworn rhetoric from corporate Democrats, Harris repeatedly said during the debate that she wants to guarantee "access" to healthcare-- using a standard corporate-friendly buzzword that detours around truly guaranteeing healthcare as a human right.

No matter whether journalists call Harris "moderate" or "progressive" (a term elastic enough to be the name of a huge insurance company), her unwillingness to confront the dominance of huge corporations over the economic and political life of the USA is a giveaway.

Whatever their discreet virtues, 18 of the 20 candidates who debated this week have offered no consistent, thoroughgoing challenge to corporate power. Among the contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, only Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are providing a coherent analysis and actual challenge to the realities of corporate power and oligarchy that are crushing democracy in the United States.

And let's not leave out the other faux-moderate in the race, Mayo Pete. Wall Street certainly isn't. The guiding hand of Big Money has opened the coffers to the 3 conservative candidates in the primary they judge as possible nominees: Status Quo Joe, Mnuchin's pal Kamala Harris and Mayo, formerly known as McKinsey Pete, McKinsey as in the elitist cult he used to work for and was completely molded by, molded so he knows exactly how to legitimize mass layoffs with an innocent, sympathetic smile on his face. Like Status Quo Joe and Kamala, Mayo will never challenge the status quo. Biden was the only one stupid enough to admit it out loud, but all 3 candidacies are a backup against any kind of fundamental change.

After graduating Oxford, any career path in the world was open to him, and Buttigieg chose McKinsey & Company, the cult-like management consulting firm. Buttigieg writes in his memoir, Shortest Way Home, that he became a consultant because he “wanted to get an education in the real world.” The real world exists in many places on this planet; McKinsey & Company is not one of them. People seek to join the world’s number one consulting behemoth to secure a place in the ranks of the American elite.

In 1993, Fortune magazine put it this way: “These fellows from McKinsey sincerely do believe they are better than everybody else. Like several less purposeful organizations-- Mensa, Bohemian Grove, Skull and Bones, the Banquet of the Golden Plate-- McKinsey is elitist by design.”

The firm has produced at least 70 Fortune 500 CEOs. Buttigieg’s three-year stint is par for the course at an organization that takes pride in “counseling out” 4 in 5 hires before they become partner. They then proudly join what McKinsey calls its “alumni network,” and what Duff McDonald, author of The Firm: The Story of McKinsey and Its Secret Influence on American Business, calls “the McKinsey Mafia.” As they fan out among the world’s C-suites and B-suites, they remain McKinsey loyalists. “There is no McKinsey boneyard, in other words; you’re still McKinsey after you’ve left,” McDonald writes. “Perhaps the only alumni network with more reach and life.

McKinsey’s internal churn fits perfectly with the company’s consulting philosophy. McKinsey, which in 2003 advised 100 of the world’s top 150 firms, “may be the single greatest legitimizer of mass layoffs,” writes McDonald. “Its advice: Identify your bottom 10 percent or 25 percent or 33 percent, and get rid of them as soon as possible.”

McKinsey is also an infamous mercenary for the world’s most unethical corporations and authoritarian governments, from China to Saudi Arabia. McKinsey allegedly advised Purdue Pharma, the progenitor of today’s opioid crisis, on how to “turbocharge” OxyContin sales and keep users hooked.

“We are now living with the consequences of the world McKinsey created,” writes a former McKinsey consultant in an exposé for Current Affairs. “Market fundamentalism is the default mode for businesses and governments the world over.”

So what kind of presidency would the McKinsey mindset produce? Former McKinsey consultant Anand Giridharadas observes, in Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, business consultants ignore how political and economic power actually works. “These elites believe and promote the idea that social change should be pursued principally through the free market and voluntary action,” Giridharadas writes. “And that the biggest beneficiaries of the status quo should play a leading role in the status quo’s reform.”

As McKinsey comes under heavier scrutiny for its role in the crimes of governments and powerful corporations, any “progressive” who worked there and wants to be taken seriously should have a rather critical perspective. Buttigieg has shown no such reflection. Instead, he calls his time at McKinsey his most “intellectually informing experience”; he left only because it “could not furnish that deep level of purpose that I craved.” Buttigieg has said he didn’t follow the story of McKinsey’s OxyContin push. On McKinsey’s Saudi and South African government ties, he said: “I think you have a lot of smart, well-intentioned people who sometimes view the world in a very innocent way. I wrote my thesis on Graham Greene, who said that innocence is like a dumb leper that has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.”

This excuse is remarkable. Buttigieg suggests that the savvy Harvard grads who populate McKinsey are childlike innocents who simply don’t notice they’re working for Mohammed bin Salman.

It is not terribly surprising that Wall Street has embraced Buttigieg, a product of their world. But anyone who hopes to be president should have a better-tuned moral sense. They should have no doubt where they stand on that old labor question, “Which side are you on?” Buttigieg’s roots in elite consulting suggest, at best, he doesn’t know; at worst, that he’s chosen poorly.

What Conservative Dems-- The Republican Wing Of The Democratic Party-- Don't Want

The Green New Deal is complicated and partially abstract and certainly not easy to understand for an idiot. It's aspirational too. Medicare-For-All isn't as complicated, but it's complicated too. You know what's not complicated? Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, a semi-livable wage. That;'s pretty straight forward. But it's something that infuriates conservatives almost as much as the Green New Deal and Medicare For All do. Conservatives have always opposed the minimum wage and always opposed raising the minimum wage.

In the late 1800s anti sweatshop activism began gaining strength in Australian, the U.K. and the U.S., leading to calls for minimum wages. Massachusetts passed the first minimum wage legislation in the U.S. in 1912. A decade later there were 15 states with minimum wage laws. The very conservative Supreme Court kept striking them down, declaring them unconstitutional, because they interfered with the ability of employers to freely negotiate wage contracts with employees. And then came the bane of every conservative heart: the New Deal. The Supreme Court struck down the first national minimum wage in the '30s. After FDR was reelected in the biggest landslide in history in 1936 and started discussing putting more justices on the court, the conservatives on the court finally saw the light and ruled a minimum wage law constitutional. The federal minimum wage started at 25 cents an hour and by 1990 it had grown to $3.80. Today the federal minimum wage is $7.25, although only $2.13 for "tipped labor."

Most of the states in the Old Confederacy-- particularly where Republicans have complete control-- don't have any minimum wage at all, of course-- Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisiana, Tennessee. Georgia's is $5.15. California, Washington and Massachusetts have the highest minimum wages among states-- $12.00 that will gradually rise, along with New York's and New Jersey's, to $15.00.

Every passage in every jurisdiction and every increase has been fought by conservatives. That has usually broken down to meaning that nearly all Republicans oppose it and nearly all Democrats support it. But something's changing. Not in the Republican party; they're as opposed to workers' having the ability to live with any sense of dignity as they ever were. Unfortunately, the change comes among Democrats. Starting with Bill Clinton, the Democratic Party began catering more to corporate and financial interests and less to unions and workers. That ugly neoliberal trend has accelerated since Clinton's presidency and now we have immense power resting in the hands of the Blue Dogs and New Dems in Congress, perhaps enough to kill the super-popular calls for a $15 national minimum wage. Let me start by making sure you know who, very specifically, the New Dems are. Almost every Blue Dog is also a New Dem; the only 6 who aren't are Jeff Van Drew (NJ), Filemon Vela (TX), Sanford Bishop (GA), Mike Thompson (CA), Collin Peterson (MN) and Dan Lipinski (IL). This is, at least in the House, the Republican wing of the Democratic Party:

• Pete Aguilar (CA)
• Colin Allred (TX)
• Cindy Axne (IA)
• Ami Bera (CA)
• Don Beyer (VA)
• Lisa Blunt Rochester (DE)
• Brendan Boyle (PA)
• Anthony Brindisi (NY)
• Anthony Brown (MD)
• Julia Brownley (CA)
• Cheri Bustos (IL)
• Salud Carbajal (CA)
• Tony Cárdenas (CA)
• André Carson (IN)
• Ed Case (HI)
• Sean Casten (IL)
• Joaquin Castro (TX)
• Gil Cisneros (CA)
• Gerry Connolly (VA)
• Jim Cooper (TN)
• Lou Correa (CA)
• Jim Costa (CA)
• Angie Craig (MN)
• Charlie Crist (FL)
• Jason Crow (CO)
• Henry Cuellar (TX)
• Joe Cunningham (SC)
• Sharice Davids (KS)
• Susan Davis (CA)
• Madeleine Dean (PA)
• Suzan DelBene (WA), vice-chair
• Val Demings (FL)
• Eliot Engels (NY)
• Veronica Escobar (TX)
• Lizzie Fletcher (TX)
• Bill Foster (IL)
• Vicente Gonzalez (TX)
• Josh Gottheimer (NJ)
• Josh Harder (CA)
• Denny Heck (WA)
• Katie Hill (CA)
• Jim Himes (CT)
• Kendra Horn (OK)
• Steven Horsford (NV)
• Chrissy Houlahan (PA)
• Bill Keating (MA)
• Derek Kilmer (WA), chairman
• Ron Kind (WI)
• Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ)
• Raja Krishnamoorthi (IL)
• Ann Kuster (NH), vice-chair
• Rick Larsen (WA)
• Brenda Lawrence (MI)
• Al Lawson (FL)
• Susie Lee (NV)
• Elaine Luria (VA)
• Tom Malinowski (NJ)
• Sean Patrick Maloney (NY)
• Ben McAdams (UT)
• Lucy McBath (GA)
• Donald McEachin (VA)
• Gregory Meeks (NY)
• Seth Moulton (MA)
• Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (FL)
• Stephanie Murphy (FL)
• Donald Norcross (NJ)
• Tom O'Halleran (AZ)
• Chris Pappas (NH)
• Ed Perlmutter (CO)
• Scott Peters (CA), vice-chair
• Dean Phillips (MN)
• Mike Quigley (IL)
• Kathleen Rice (NY)
• Cedric Richmond (LA)
• Max Rose (NY)
• Harley Rouda (CA)
• Raul Ruiz (CA)
• Adam Schiff (CA)
• Brad Schneider (IL)
• Kurt Schrader (OR)
• Kim Schrier (WA)
• David Scott (GA)
• Terri Sewell (AL), vice-chair
• Mike Sherrill (NJ)
• Elissa Slotkin (MI)
• Adam Smith (WA)
• Darren Soto (FL)
• Abigail Spanberger (VA)
• Greg Stanton (AZ)
• Haley Stevens (MI)
• Tom Suozzi (NY)
• Norma Torres (CA)
• Xochitl Torres-Small (NM)
• Lori Trahan (MA)
• David Trone (MD)
• Juan Vargas (CA)
• Marc Veasey (TX)
• Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL)
• Jennifer Wexton (VA)
• Susan Wild (PA)

It's Wall Street financed, pro-corporate, anti-labor organization, but not every member is anti-worker-- or at least not every member can manifest anti-worker tendencies given the constituencies they represent. And these are the people, for the most part, who went whining to Pelosi and Bustos about being protected against primaries. Some aren't even members because of the ideology but because of the corruption, since the New Dems are the nexus of bribery in the House.

Now, with all that in mind, let's consider how the New Dems are leading the opposition to the progressive plan to pass a $15 minimum wage bill, which the Democrats can certainly do and which Democratic and independent (and even Republican) voters very much want. The big campaign contributors who pay for the cushy careers of the New Dems don't want it. Take a look at this polling of registered voters. The majority of Americans want that raise of $15, which Bernie has already proposed in the Senate and has integrated into his presidential platform and campaign.

According to these pollsters 70% of Republican voters want a higher federal wage floor, with 36% supporting $15 per hour. Thirty percent of GOP respondents said they wanted to keep the amount the same, reduce it or eliminate it. A majority of both Democratic (73%) and independent voters (53%) support a $15 rate. Minimum wage increases are broadly popular across all demographic groups. The $15 proposal was supported by a majority of all age groups in the Hill-HarrisX poll. Now read this carefully, because it's going to help you understand what the New Dems are all about and who they really are and why it's foolish to help get them elected:

Support for a higher minimum wage also is strong across the ideological spectrum. Seventy-seven percent of self-described "strong liberals" supported an increase to $15, as did 66 percent of respondents who said they lean liberal. Sixty percent of moderates backed the proposal as well.

Among those who described themselves as strongly conservative or leaning conservative, support for increasing the wage to $15 did not reach majority levels; however, a majority wanted an increase to an amount above $7.25.

Seventy-two percent of respondents who said they leaned conservative indicated they wanted an increase of some amount, as did 67 percent of strongly conservative respondents.

Eva Putzova, who is running for Congress against an "ex"-Republican Blue Dog/New Dem, Tom O'Halleran, is the chair of the Flagstaff Living Wage Coalition. She reminded us that "Not a single ballot measure raising the minimum wage has ever failed-- not in a blue state or a red state. In Flagstaff, we raised the minimum wage to $15 per hour through a local initiative that was on the same ballot in 2016 as the increase of the Arizona's state minimum wage to $12 per hour. Raising the minimum wage is simply what people want. When the Raise the Wage Act passes (and I hope it will), it will be the first time in the history of this country that at least one chamber of Congress legislates the full minimum wage for tipped workers, most of whom are women and many are people of color and immigrants. The federal subminimum tipped wage has been frozen at an exploitative $2.13 since 1991 thanks to the power, money and influence of the "other NRA." Living mostly off tips forces tipped workers to tolerate sexual harassment and leads to economic instability for millions of families across the country. If Congress cares more about working families and women than short-term corporate interests, $15 per hour will be the new minimum wage floor. In the long run, even corporations benefit from stronger consumer purchasing power that comes with higher wages and more economic security."

Writing for Politico yesterday, Sarah Ferris reported on the New Dem/Blue Dog push to kill the $15 minimum wage legislation, calling it a broadening rift between the party’s progressive and moderate members, insisting on calling the conservatives from the Republican wing of the party, "moderates," the most admired political term among American voters and an implication that progressives are something other than moderate-- like extreme or radical. That's ALWAYS the Beltway media. Watch how Ferris subtly frames the news against progressives, even knowing that a majority of Americans want to $15 minimum wage.

Progressive leaders in the House are attempting to stamp out a push by some red state Democrats to soften the party’s $15-an-hour minimum wage proposal, which they see as a betrayal of last fall’s campaign promises.

Leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus are now lobbying fellow Democrats to help extinguish a competing plan backed by more than a dozen moderates that would permit lower hourly wages in more rural areas. And they’re prepared to wield the power of the 96-member caucus to ensure their full $15-an-hour proposal reaches the floor.

“We want to pass a full $15 minimum wage bill. Not a regional bill. We’re very clear about that,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) said in an interview. “Being in Congress means leading, and we need to lead on minimum wage.”

Democratic leaders have publicly and privately committed to passing a universal $15-an-hour wage, a priority that they say helped deliver the House majority. But the idea is running into some resistance from moderates in red states like Georgia, Iowa and Alabama, who have balked at doubling the federal minimum wage over a five-year stretch because they fear it will cost jobs, and votes, back home.

And with the $15-an-hour proposal still short on votes, some progressives fear that Democratic leaders will be forced to soften their signature bill to win over moderates, even though it will still go nowhere in the Senate.

A group of Democrats, led by Rep. Terri Sewell of Alabama, plan to introduce their own bill Thursday morning that would create a “regional” minimum wage-- based on local cost of living-- instead. Thirteen Democrats have signed on as co-sponsors as of Wednesday afternoon, but that number could grow, according to Sewell’s office.

Sewell is a corrupt conservative who represents the 431st (out of 435) poorest district, in terms of median income. 64% of her constituents are African-Americans and the PVI is R+20. Do you think Blue America should tell her constituents with radio and TV ads that she's leading the fight against increasing the minimum wage to $15 on behalf of her corporate campaign donors? I suspect they wouldn't be all that pleased. A vice-chair of the New Dems, she's more loyal to them than to her own constituents. Just outrageous!

Supporters include freshmen Democrats like Rep. Lucy McBath of Georgia and Dean Phillips of Minnesota-- who is a small business owner who pays his own workers $15-an-hour but has said it is not a “one-size-fits-all wage.”

Sewell’s bill would dramatically slow the wage hikes in hundreds of smaller cities from Cincinnati to St. Louis compared to metropolis areas like San Francisco and New York.

But many other Democrats-- including House Education and Labor Committee Chairman Bobby Scott, the chief author of the $15-an-hour minimum wage bill-- detest the idea.

“Low income areas would be locked in to lower wages. We don’t have differentiated payments for Social Security,” the Virginia Democrat said in an interview.

The introduction of Sewell's bill on Thursday will intensify a brewing clash between progressives and some moderates that has taken mostly behind the scenes.

Tension erupted last month at a meeting of New Democrats Coalition, as Scott dismissed the idea of a regional bill-- in a roomful of moderates [not moderates-- conservatives], many of whom supported Sewell's bill-- as he sought to sell his own.

Supporters of Scott's bill-- including virtually all CPC members, who got a private briefing from Scott on the bill in January-- have argued that the competing proposal is costing votes and stalling the party’s hallmark $15-an-hour policy from reaching the floor.

“The regional minimum wage proposal is a clear attempt to water down the Raise the Wage Act,” an aide to one progressive member said. “Poverty wages shouldn’t be acceptable anywhere in America.”

Progressive leaders are now stepping up the pressure on Democratic leaders to fend off changes to the $15-an-hour bill, possibly hinting at the first time the CPC decides to go to the mat to defend a progressive priority.

So far in the majority, the CPC has mostly refrained from aggressive tactics to ensure their top agenda items make it to the floor. But some members and aides are eying the battle over the minimum wage bill as the first real test for Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her lieutenants to prove their commitment to a progressive agenda, even if it means cornering moderates on a difficult issue in their districts.

"We're getting to get a vote on the $15-an-hour. I think there's just too much pressure that's going to build up on our caucus to do that. That was the commitment," Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) said in an interview. "We need to follow through on that."

They argue that Sewell's bill would also raise wages, only more slowly. Cities like El Paso, Texas, and Topeka, Kansas would need to raise their wages to $8.10 next year, while wages would jump to at least $10.60 in sprawling cities like San Francisco, Washington and New York City.

“More than doubling the wage over five years is going to result in lost jobs,” an aide to a member in favor of a regional wage bill said. “A lot of people would prefer to have a $10 wage than no job.”

Scott and other critics of the idea are quick to point out the flaws of the bill, as well, such as a congressional district in New Hampshire that would have three different minimum wages. Critics have also pointed out that Sewell's bill would result in sharp spikes in the minimum wage in certain areas, like a $3 increase in Virginia next year alone.

Some moderates have argued that Sewell's bill has interest from Republicans, unlike the Democrats' dream proposal, but long-time Democrats argue they need to send the message to their base.

“I think if it's not gonna go anywhere, I think we’ve got to make a statement. We’re for living wage everywhere,” said Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY), who is a cosponsor of Scott's bill.

Marie Newman, a champion of a $15 minimum wage is working on a rematch with reactionary Blue Dog Dan Lipinski in a solid blue Chicagoland seat. She nearly beat him last time and his fellow Blue Dogs fear she will easily do so this cycle. This morning, she told us that "One of the things I am most proud of about my 2018 primary challenge to Dan Lipinski, is that we forced him to change his stance on $15/hr. He went from contending '$12 is enough', to signing on to the current $15/hr legislation in the last 6 weeks of the campaign. The district and I pushed him hard. It was worth it. I cannot stress how important this legislation is to our country. In an environment where 80% of the country is living paycheck to paycheck and we have an ever-escalating patchwork of jobs phenomenon (the situation where people must cobble 2-4 jobs together to make ends meet on a consistent basis), we need hardworking folks to be paid for their efforts. The dignity of work is our bedrock in the U.S. We must give hard work dignity. We must."

Tom Guild lives in a red district based around Oklahoma City. His freshman Rep, Kendra Horn, is a big disappointment to Democrats nd many have been urging Tom to primary her. I suspect that her posture on the minimum wage legislation is going to be a key determinant for him. Early this morning, he told us that "It’s easy for members of the U.S. Congress to pontificate on a $15 minimum wage. After all, each member of the U.S. House or Senate is guaranteed $285,000 in salary and benefits each year. They are guaranteed the same lofty compensation shortly after joining Congress, even if they are involuntarily retired from the House or Senate by voters who think they did a lousy job of representing them. For folks with a golden spoon in their mouths and a lucrative retirement to die for, it’s apparently easy to be hard. Phasing in a $15 minimum wage is the right thing to do. The longer we wait, we may need to phase in a much higher dollar amount. In Oklahoma, a relatively low cost of living state, $15 an hour would allow an individual to survive and to take an annual three day vacation-- to Tulsa! $7.25 an hour is a starvation wage. A person can’t survive anywhere in the country on $7.25 without roommates, second or third jobs, or a patron saint helping them along the way. It’s easy to be hard. It’s apparently easy to be hard-- especially if you have a guaranteed $285,000 job at taxpayer expense. It sounds suspiciously like “socialism” to me. It is way beyond time to bring hard working Americans, many of them single parents with hungry mouths to feed, up to a level where they are not living in poverty while working full time. If not now, when? If not us, who will do the right thing to help our beloved neighbors?"

If you know who Randy Bryce, you know that when it comes to working people, he knows what he;'s talking about. Last night, he told me that "Republicans view average citizens as 'money farms' instead of people. They all believe that they are destined to win the lottery and when they do-- you’d best be ready to help them maintain their lavish lifestyle. We have a few Democrats who also don’t seem to see things as the rest of us do. They view the .01% as benefactors who donate to their campaigns which allows them not to need a job that may require them getting their hands dirty. The same party that rails against socialism for people is fully complicit allowing corporations-- who they see as people-- to receive handouts. That doesn’t make any sense to me especially considering that we have an existing tax code that allows for loopholes that don’t require people to pay into the pot that their hands are continually taking things out of. When it comes to fair pay for a day’s work it shouldn’t be too much to ask for one full time job to be enough to pay one’s bills. A livable wage will keep people from needing government assistance but it won’t keep corporations from grabbing every penny that they can. What will it take to start seeing the companies that get tax breaks but refuse to pay their employees a fair wage as a freeloader instead of the woman or man trying to feed their child? Raising the minimum wage isn’t about getting wealthy. It’s about dignity. Every time I hear a rich CEO state that 'hard work has gotten me where I am,' I follow with the question" 'who’s hard work'?"

Is this part of why Hillary Clinton lost Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, North Carolina...? Sewell and the New Dems are taking a position identical to the one that just about mandated that Hillary Clinton lose the 2016 election to... Trump.

UPDATE: From Texas

Mike Siegel: "I support a $15 minimum wage, period. We need a living wage for American workers, and $15 will be a strong step in the right direction. We need to address the massive wealth inequality in this country, and a $15 wage will help. We need to address homelessness, access to transportation, and mental health-- and $15 an hour make an impact. No one should be forced to work two and three jobs just to survive. Raising the minimum wage is one of the most important things we can do to guarantee the economic security of our workers."