Should Kirsten Gillibrand Retire From Politics? We've Had Enough Of Opportunists And Careerists

I’ve been writing a lot about what an opportunist jerk Kirsten Gillibrand is. I’ve known her for over a decade but many people asked if what I’m saying about her, why is no one else backing up any of the stuff I’m throwing her way. I never heard of Ciro Scotti before but he seems to have come to many of the same conclusions I’ve been talking about in a new post he did for the Daily Beast, The Trouble With Kirsten Gillibrand. He wrote that “some Democratic senators have expressed remorse that they jumped on the push-Al-Franken-off-the-cliff-without-a-hearing train. But its conductor is full steam ahead,” which is exactly what I’ve been hearing from my Capitol Hill contacts as well. He reports that “on 30dB, a social media opinion site that gauges the sentiments of the crowd… @SenGillibrand + @SenFranken” is pulling 79 percent negatives.”

Back when she had an A rating from the NRA, Kirsten Gillibrand used to brag that she and her family shot their own turkeys for Thanksgiving.

But in her relentless positioning for a possible presidential run in 2020, was she too quick on the trigger when she hit fellow Democrat Al Franken with a blast of buckshot and drove him to resign his Senate seat?

That is a question that could dog the junior senator from New York if she runs, especially after Patrick Leahy of Vermont-- one of the most popular Democrats in the Senate-- on Dec. 18 expressed remorse that he had not waited for the findings of a Senate Ethics Committee probe before joining Gillibrand’s call for Franken to step down.

…The larger question about Gillibrand, though, is whether she is too transparently opportunistic to be a viable candidate after the rejection of another New York politician criticized for basing her positions on supposedly canny calculations rather than on from-the-gut convictions.

In short, Gillibrand could be running not just against Donald Trump or whoever the GOP candidate might be in 2020-- she could be running against the political zeitgeist, too.

If there is one thing to be learned from the excitement and engagement that Trump and Bernie Sanders sparked in some sectors of the electorate last year, it is that the public is done with the tortured political gymnastics of a Mitt Romney or a John Kerry-- or a Hillary Clinton.

The word that defines the zeitgeist is “genuine,” and one big reason Trump retains a core of support is that whatever you think of him, what you see is what you get.

For Gillibrand, nearly every move seems to be a self-serving playing of the angles. While it’s not surprising to see a politician behave this way, Gillibrand seems to be an especially egregious practitioner of the finger-in-the-wind politics that so many voters can no longer abide.

In 2009, when she was appointed by Gov. David Paterson to fill the Senate seat left empty after Clinton became secretary of state, Gillibrand was a congresswoman from hunter-heavy upstate New York whose gun votes were 100 percent in line with the positions of the National Rifle Association.

One year later she was a senator with an F rating after a swift gun-vote pivot that put her more in line with the sentiments of downstate Democrats.

As a 2013 profile in the New Yorker pointed out, in the House, Gillibrand was a Blue Dog Democrat who “voted to make English the national language, and vowed to oppose driver’s licenses for ‘illegal aliens.’”

“In the Senate,” the New Yorker piece said, “Gillibrand quickly moved left. She hired the Mirram Group-- a consulting firm run by power brokers in the Hispanic political world-- to introduce her to editors and activists, and soon she was saying that she favored ‘comprehensive reform that treats immigrants fairly and gives them a path to earned citizenship.’”

More recently, Gillibrand was the lone senator to vote against the appointment of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, a dedicated professional who is arguably the most independent member of the Trump Cabinet.

Did she really think Mattis, a former four-star Marine general known as a strategic thinker as well as a warrior, was unqualified to be the secretary of defense? Or was that part of her strategy of opposing almost every Trump Cabinet nominee, thus positioning herself to be able to go for a cheap applause line at some Democratic debate in the future?

There is no disputing that as a senator, Gillibrand has been out front in the movement against sexual harassment and assault, trying unsuccessfully in 2014 to change the way the military handles such cases by taking them out of the hands of commanders and shifting the authority to prosecutors. That took guts, and she deserves tremendous credit for her effort.

Now she is an energetic voice for the #MeToo movement, which seems like a logical step.

But was taking the first swing at Franken, an occasional opponent on the squash court, driven by outrage? Or was it a political calculation?

The senator denies that by pushing out Franken over allegations of groping and forcible kissing, she and other Democrats are making sure they are on the moral high ground as sexual harassment accusations against Trump resurface.

Gillibrand, who has said Trump should resign because of those charges, told the AP that the ouster of Franken “has nothing to do with politics. This whole debate is, ‘Do we care about women.’”

Tougher for Gillibrand to brush off are questions about why she only recently opined that Bill Clinton should have resigned after the Lewinsky affair came to light. She sure never mentioned that when the former president was campaigning for her.

On Morning Joe last month, Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough went after Gillibrand for turning on Bill Clinton. “[Gillibrand] has to address the cameras and answer the question as to what was the motivation behind her change of opinion about the Clintons,” Brzezinski said. “…I don’t know how your position could change on this. And I’d like to know about that process.”

Former Gov. Paterson may be the least surprised person in America that Gillibrand has tossed Franken and Bill Clinton under her express bus to the White House.

Not long after Paterson plucked her out of obscurity and handed her Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat, Gillibrand began to distance herself from the governor and his troubled tenure.

Then in early 2010, the New York Times reported that Paterson, who had replaced disgraced Gov. Eliot Spitzer, had intervened in a domestic-abuse case involving one of his longtime aides, and he ended his week-old campaign for a full term as governor.

Four days later, with a potential primary challenge safely behind her-- as Maggie Haberman, then at the New York Post, wrote at the time-- Gillibrand was one of the first to say that Paterson, whose political career was effectively over, should resign immediately and not serve out his term if the reports were true.

Maybe Gillibrand was right that Paterson should have resigned. Maybe she is right that Clinton should have stepped aside. Maybe she was right to give Franken a shove. Maybe she is right that Trump should exit the Oval Office and slink back to his tower.

But one thing seems clear: Those denunciations and their timing were all designed to be right for Kirsten Gillibrand.

In Minnesota, there are only two blocs of voters who agree with what she did to Franken: Republicans and Trump supporters.

The Worst Democraps Who Want To Be President-- Part II, Kirsten Gillibrand

It's been two weeks since we kicked off the series with Tulsi Gabbard, an obscure congresswoman from Hawaii who wants to be president (of the United States). Gillibrand, the junior senator from New York, is slightly better-known. Unfortunately for her, outside of her own state, she is only known as the hateful, manipulative fanatic who got Al Franken's scalp for the #MeTooMovement. But long before people who have now labeled her a "man hater" ever heard of Kirsten Gillibrand, she had proven herself unqualified for any kind of leadership role. In other words, her disgraceful and now widely-recognized, shenanigans around the Franken episode have a context, which, alas, few voters are yet aware of.

When she first got swept into Congress in the 2006 anti-red wave-- she defeated rising GOP star John Sweeney-- who Gillibrand successfully portrayed as a drunken wife-beater, possibly the issue that led her to victory in an R+3 district with a huge GOP registration advantage. The district no longer exists as it did back then but it stretched along the eastern New York border with Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont from the Dutchess County suburbs of NYC up through Rensaeler County east of Albany to as far north as Lake Champlain in Essex County. Sweeney had never had a serious reelection challenge until Gillibrand, with the focused help of the Clintons, destroyed his career. She wound up beating him 125,168 (50.0%) to 110,554 (44.2%).

In 2009, the American Conservative painted a very different picture of Gillibrand than the one I had come to know during the 2006 campaign. She persuaded me-- despite having been the lead defense attorney for Philip Morris in both civil and criminal lawsuits-- that she was a heartfelt progressive. (She claimed she only helped Phillip Morris sell cancer and death so she could have enough money to defend abused women and their children for free. Using abused women and children to advance her career is her #1 trademark; it's what she's known for and what will be on her political tombstone one day.) I admit that I was taken in by her lawyerly guile. "Gillibrand," wrote Michael Dougherty for the American Conservative, "won her upstate New York district by running to the right: she campaigned against amnesty for illegal immigrants, promised to restore fiscal responsibility to Washington, and pledged to protect gun rights. After winning by six points, she joined the conservative-leaning Blue Dog Coalition... In her first term, she voted against McCain-hatched immigration reform, assailed Bush’s bailouts, and received a perfect 100 percent rating from the NRA. She crushed her Republican challenger by 24 points in 2008 and bragged that her voting record was 'one of the most conservative in the state.'" For Blue America she was a lesson learned and we began to reassess our policies of recruitment and candidate support. We had been all in on Gillibrand, even cutting this ad with Rickie Lee Jones and the Squirrel Nut Zippers for her:



In the House, she was a poster child for two things: the NRA and their toxic, murderous agenda, and a really vicious, racist xenophobic campaign against Hispanic-- and, to some extent, Asian-- immigrants. She made her bones among fellow conservatives by breaking theirs-- a real piece of work. An opportunist (they used to call her "Tracy Flick" on Capitol Hill) to her very core-- her goal was to build up her right-wing bona fides by denying drivers licenses to immigrants, by voting to withhold federal funds from sanctuary cities and by voting to make English the official language of the U.S.

When Obama appointed Hillary Clinton Secretary of State, Gillibrand was the choice of the corrupt conservative Democratic establishment-- especially the Clintons-- as the replacement. She immediately went back to pretending to be a progressive since she would soon have to win election statewide. Like I said, no moral core whatsoever. No one doubts she could flip back to her conservative self in an instant if it meant advancing her shameful career. Right now-- aside from trying to claw her way onto a national ticket-- she is a sudden big proponent of eschewing corporate PAC money. This from a bribe-taking machine who has sucked down $9,779,939 from the finance sector, more than any sitting senator who hasn't run for president other than Wall Street bagmen Rob Portman (R-OH) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY).

But what's made her a national figure has been her scurrilous role in the destruction of Al Franken, somewhat reminiscent of the way she utterly destroyed Sweeney-- with a possibly bogus wife-beating charge-- a decade earlier. For her, revving up a war against men has been a calculated stepping stone towards a White House bid. She maneuvered behind the scenes to force Al Franken to resign, something which now seems to have backfired on her.

This morning, reporting for Politico, Natasha Korecki and Laura Nahmias, wrote that the Franken scandal is haunting Gillibrand's (non-existent) 2020 chances. "Today," they wrote, "nearly a year after Gillibrand led the charge in calling for Franken’s resignation, the anger is fresh on the minds of major donors across the country. More than a dozen prominent West Coast, New York and national donors and bundlers-- many of them women-- said they would never again donate to or fundraise for Gillibrand or would only do so if she ended up as the Democratic presidential nominee. Gillibrand has defended her approach by insisting she placed deeply held personal values over party loyalty. But the still-burning resentment among the donor class now confronts Gillibrand as she explores a presidential bid, cutting her off from influential and deep-pocketed contributors and their networks at a time when an expansive 2020 field will compete for their dollars."

[A] major Manhattan-based donor said the episode raised suspicions that it was a craven political move by Gillibrand.

“I thought she was duplicitous,” the donor said. “Once the whole thing happened with Al Franken, it was confirmed 1 billion percent that she’s not to be trusted. I think that she hurt the Democratic Party. I think that she hurt the Senate. I think that what she did for women in politics was dreadful.”

The Franken accusations came in the weeks after a parade of powerful men were toppled by the movement; among them Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, Louis C.K. and Garrison Keillor. The wounds over Franken’s ouster were reopened, some Democrats say, during confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, who faced sex misconduct allegations but still took a seat on the Supreme Court.

...Gillibrand has stood her ground, never publicly backing down from the criticism, even when it came from the Democratic Party’s most prolific donor, George Soros. In June, he told the Washington Post he blamed Gillibrand for cornering Franken into resigning, accusing her of doing so “in order to improve her chances,” in 2020.

In August, Gillibrand responded specifically to Soros, telling the Huffington Post in a statement: “If standing up for women who have been wronged makes George Soros mad, that’s on him.”

Gillibrand’s campaign pushed back against the criticism, asserting that the senator did the right thing by speaking up.

I suspect that Bernie wasn't thinking about Gillibrand when he told New York Magazine that he's "not one of those sons of multimillionaires whose parents told them they were going to become president of the United States. I don’t wake up in the morning with any burning desire that I have to be president. If there’s somebody else who appears who can, for whatever reason, do a better job than me, I’ll work my ass off to elect him or her. If it turns out that I am the best candidate to beat Donald Trump, then I will probably run."

Trump and the GOP will be spending hundreds of millions of dollars eviscerating anyone the Democrats run in 2020. But Gillibrand would be their easiest target to destroy, since she's laid so much of the groundwork herself. She is the ultimate opportunistic flip-flopper who, even as a VP nominee, would destroy any chance of making Trump a one-term president. This series is about the worst Democratic prospective candidates. I can't imagine one worse than Tracy Flick.

Worst Senate Democrat of 2017-- It Was Not Joe Manchin

Kirsten Gillibrand is a real piece of crap-- the worst Democratic senator of the year-- worse than Joe Manchin, worse than Claire McCaskill, worse than Heidi Heitkamp, worse than Mark Warner, Joe Donnelly, Tom Carper, DiFi or Michael Bennet. All those senators score “F” from ProgressivePunch. Gillibrand was given an “A.” So why is she the worst Democrat in the Senate?

When Gillibrand first ran for Congress in 2006, Blue America endorsed her and I got to know her pretty well. She flat out lied to me for the whole campaign, pretending to be a progressive. As soon as she won, she revealed her true colors, joining the Blue Dogs, running up a reactionary voting record, being the poster child for the NRA (which graded her votes in Congress “A”) and, worst of all, leading an ugly, xenophobic, anti-Latino jihad in New York that sought to deny Hispanic immigrants drivers licenses. I realized immediately that she didn’t have any values at all and was strictly an opportunist with no core, just a craving for advancement. What a monster! I should have paid more attention when people warned me away from her because of her work as the lead attorney defending Phillip Morris when they were lying about tobacco’s relationship to cancer and other diseases. (She claimed she only helped Phillip Morris sell death so she could have enough money to defend abused women and their children for free. Using abused women and children to advance her career has always been one of her most overarching traits.)

Gillibrand was lucky enough to be swept into office in an anti-Republican wave, although it didn’t hurt her when a 9-11 call was released that had her opponent’s wife calling the police to report he was beating her up. The opponent, John Sweeney, claimed the 9-11 tape was fake and his wife backed him up. But he never recovered from the terrible press. Once Gillibrand started voting, people wondered what difference it made to have her or a Republican. She became infamous for her vote to-- wait for it-- withhold federal funds from sanctuary cities. She actively campaign against undocumented immigrants getting drivers licenses and voted to make English the official language.

When Obama appointed Hillary Clinton Secretary of State, Gillibrand was the choice of the corrupt conservative Democratic establishment-- especially the Clintons-- as the replacement. She immediately went back to pretending to be a progressive since she would soon have to win election statewide. Like I said, no moral core whatsoever. She has accepted more Wall Street bribes ($9,151,324) than anyone currently serving in the Senate other than former presidential candidates John McCain and Marco Rubio, and the notoriously corrupt bankster allies Chuck Schumer ($26,727,695), Rob Portman ($10,753,434) and Pat Toomey ($9,178,850). Everyone in Washington knows she’s for sale.

But that’s all old news— and not the reason we’re naming her the worst Senate Dem of 2017. She won that distinction by revving up a war against men in the hope that it will serve as a stepping stone towards a presidential bid. She maneuvered behind the scenes to force Al Franken to resign, something which has, fortunately, backfired against her. A new poll from PPP, released Thursday, in fact, shows that most Minnesotans are pissed off how it all went down and do not want to see Franken forced out of office. And you know who’s the most pissed off? Democratic women. Key findings:

• 50% of voters think he should not resign, to only 42% who think he should go through with his planned resignation. There is little appetite from Democratic voters at the state level for Franken to go, with 71% opposing his departure. A majority of independents- 52%- as well think he should not resign, with just 41% favoring his exit.
• Franken remains well above average in popularity for a Senator, with 53% of voters approving of the job he’s doing to 42% who disapprove. PPP rarely finds Senators with majority approval in their home states. Franken’s continued popularity is being driven especially by women. 57% of them like the job he’s doing to 37% who don’t. By contrast Donald Trump stands at 40/58 with women in the state.
• Minnesotans don’t like how the process with Franken’s resignation has played out. 60% think the Senate Ethics Committee should have completed its investigation (including 79% of Democrats and 61% of independents) before any decision was made about Franken’s future, while only 35% think he should resign immediately. Beyond that 76% of Minnesota voters think their voices should have been more important in determining whether Franken stayed in the Senate or not, to only 12% who think that should have been determined more by his fellow Senators in Washington.

Side from Gillibrand and the senators she bamboozled into supporting her decision to force Franken out, the only group that supports him resigning at self-described Republicans and admitted Trump voters.

Since Gillibrand thought it so important for her little lynch mob to go back and dig up dirt on Franken from before he was in the Senate, wouldn’t it be fair to litigate Gillibrand’s own anti-Hispanic activities from when she was already in Congress. Why should anyone tolerate a racist and bigot like her among Democrats, especially coupled with all the blatant hypocrisy and corruption? I'm afraid Kirsten Gillibrand should resign.

I'm Sure Kirsten Gillibrand Doesn't Want To Lead A War Against Men

Yesterday I was all excited that Kirsten Gillibrand had boldly endorsed progressive reformer Marie Newman against Blue Dog Dan Lipinski. It was probably the first time I've praised Gillibrand since 2006 when she was first elected to Congress-- with a little help from Blue America. (Watch that Rickie Lee Jones/Squirrel Nut Zippers video we produced and promoted on upstate New York radio for her above.)

But then I looked a little closer at Gillibrand's Off the Sidelines PAC, largely funded by the same Wall Street crooks and corporate monstrosities that have made her the #1 recipient of tainted Financial Sector money in the Senate so far this cycle ($1,368,153). Since 2006 she has accepted $9,093,866 from the Financial Sector, more than any other current members of the Senate other than a couple who ran for president (John McCain and Marco Rubio) plus Schumer, McConnell, Rob Portman and Pat Toomey.

I looked at the contributions Gillibrand's PAC had handed out last cycle-- $172,000-- and couldn't find any pattern to the giving in terms of ideology. She gave to some of the most rotgut conservative Democrats like Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ), Cheri Bustos (Blue Dog-AZ), Gwen Graham (Blue Dog-FL), Stephanie Murphy (Blue Dog-FL), "ex"-Republican Monica Vernon, Blue Dog Gretchen Driskell (MI), Chris Matthews' conservative wife Kathleen (MD), and lots and lots of New Dems from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, like Terri Sewell (AL), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL), Katherine Rice (NY), Emily Cain (ME), gun fanatic Ann Kirkpatrick(AZ), Ann Kuster (NH), and Suzan DelBene (WA), but also to a few very strong progressives like Zephyr Teachout (NY), Carol Shea-Porter (NH), Pramila Jayapal, Joseline Pena-Melnyk (MD), Mary Ellen Balchunis (PA), Donna Edwards (MD) and Lucy Flores (NV). All over the map, right? Yeah... except for one thing. No men. Gillibrand only gives to women. Not even one man was good enough? And then I realized she was also  giving to really terrible women candidates in primaries against really excellent male candidates. OK, that's how she plays... nothing to do with how bad Lipinski was at all yesterday after all.

Same pattern of giving this cycle as well... all women-- awesome ones like Haley Stevens (MI), Tammy Baldwin (WI), Katie Porter (CA) and Elizabeth Warren (MA)... and really dreadful crap candidates like Sinema, Kirkpatrick and Dianne Feinstein. Does Kirsten Gillibrand think some kind of a war on men is what's needed now? Is that going to further her transparent goal for the presidency?

Let me acknowledge-- with great vigor and greater enthusiasm-- the entirely justifiable rage women have now, not only at patterns of abuse that permeate a reactionary patriarchal society, but at Trump stealing the election from Hillary and that, in order to actually change things for the better, there may have to be a rational proportionate series of responses-- even a little EMILY's List type affirmative action. I know for me personally, if the woman candidate is better, I support her. If the man candidate is better I support him... but if the two candidates are equally qualified, I'll always back the woman candidate. Why? There aren't enough women in elected office-- and that is primarily because the patriarchal power structure has disadvantaged women as a class. That needs to be made up for.

Friday night, Politico went up with a post by Gabriel Debenedetti, Gillibrand remark on Clinton sends shockwaves through Democratic Party. "Going," reported Debenedetti, "where no other prominent Democrat had before on Thursday evening by declaring that Bill Clinton should have resigned the presidency during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the New York senator and potential 2020 presidential contender yet again found herself the face of a national conversation with the potential to dominate headlines and divide her party. At a time Democrats are desperate to keep the focus on accusations against President Donald Trump and Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, Gillibrand’s stand shocked even some of her close allies. They had no inkling that she was planning to make news-- let alone news that would invite questions about her own ties to a political power family that has dominated her party’s consciousness for nearly three decades."

The comment also put new, awkward distance between two women whose careers have been politically intertwined since Gillibrand-- then a second-term House member-- took over Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat upon her ascension to the State Department in 2009.

Yet it allowed Gillibrand to act as the tip of the spear on a position that many Democrats suspect will slowly become more popular in the party.

The longtime Clinton ally’s answer to the New York Times' question neatly encapsulated how Gillibrand has placed herself front and center on the dominant issue of the day, even if it forces a debate her own party is uncomfortable confronting. And it highlighted the political dexterity that her critics and rivals often deride as opportunism: A former conservative Blue Dog House member, Gillibrand has reinvented herself as a leading progressive [ROTFLMAO-- sure she is, Gabe] and face of the Trump resistance ahead of a potential presidential run.

"I admire her for speaking out and for being really honest and blunt and brutal about it, even when it comes to Democrats and even when it comes to President Clinton," said longtime Democratic strategist Maria Cardona, a former Hillary Clinton aide.

But, Cardona said, Gillibrand's fight is far from a straightforward one even within the party: "President Clinton is beloved."

So was Al Franken... but no longer. And perhaps he doesn't deserve to be. Perhaps Gillibrand can have a party free on men altogether. That seems brilliant... but unfair. She only wants a party without men who have oogled women or who have jerked off while talking to one on the phone once or committed some other sin against women. This is so touchy but, apparently, we're going to have to deal with it. Many men-- most men?-- are pigs and they're going to not do the kind of crap Bill Clinton and Al Franken did. Is what Franken did a political death sentence? It shouldn't be-- unless the voters of Minnesota think it should. I know one thing for sure... if I had to pick between Al Franken or Kirsten Gillibrand (or Kyrsten Sinema), I'd pick Franken any day of the week. I was never a big Bill Clinton fan but when Gillibrand was asked by the NY Times if he should have stepped down, after the consensual sex he had with another adult, she said, "Yes, I think that is the appropriate response."

A handful of aides to both Clintons declined to comment for this story, citing the political danger of weighing in on such a delicate matter between influential figures in the party. But Philippe Reines-- a longtime aide to the former secretary of state-- lashed out at Gillibrand on Twitter.

“Ken Starr spent $70 million on a consensual blowjob,” he wrote, referring to the investigation into Bill Clinton. “Senate voted to keep [President Clinton]. But not enough for you @SenGillibrand? Over 20 yrs you took the Clintons’ endorsements, money, and seat. Hypocrite. Interesting strategy for 2020 primaries. Best of luck.”

I'm sure Gillibrand is aware that Bill Clinton was impeached for his crime. But that's not enough for her? Nope. This is a topic Democrats are going to have come to some consensus on-- and fast. I can't imagine a Democratic senator having a PAC that only gave money to men. Can you? Of course not; it's a ridiculous concept. There's probably a difference that needs to be recognized between what predators like Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump, Mark Foley and Roy Moore do and what Al Franken and even Bill Clinton are guilty of. But I would say that if Gillibrand and her single-minded friends keep this up, it will play right into Steve Bannon's hands and crash the anti-Trump wave real fast and do what otherwise looks impossible: keep the Republicans and Donald Trump in power.

And by the way, Gillibrand was once the poster child for the NRA in New York State and the voice of ugly, vicious xenophobia and racism against Hispanics. Should we dredge that up to and drum her out of the party? I don't think so. Is it as bad-- or worse-- than what Franken did? Make up your own mind.

Worst Democraps Who Want To Be President Update: Gillibrand Cozies Up To The Banksters

Yesterday, we posted Chapter V of The Worst Democraps Who Want To Be President: Terry McAuliffe. You can take a look at the entire series here. Chapter II was New York's crooked, opportunistic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and I'm afraid we need a little addendum today, based on some reporting by Brian Schwartz from CNBC. First, consider this. Since first being elected to Congress in 2006, Gillibrand has taken $9,788,569 from the Finance Sector, $1,958,256 last year alone.

Let's narrow that down to just the investment industry-- Wall Street. And let's look at the men and women still in the Senate. Who got the most from Wall Street, in other words, the half dozen most corrupt members of the Senate?

• Utah Republican Senator Mitt Romney (includes presidential run)- $31,663,118
• New York Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer- $13,051,252
• Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio (includes presidential run)- $5,075,974
• New York Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand- $4,828,111
• Kentucky Republican Senator Mitch McConnell- $4,547,348
• Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman- $4,136,809

And last year, Gillibrand took $893,683 from Wall Street. What about Hedge Funds? Gillibrand took $731,220 since first being elected and the 4th most of any senator running for reelection last year ($156,297), beaten only by 3 desperate Democrats in 3 states Trump won: Jon Tester of Montana ($254,072), Claire McCaskill of Missouri ($231,180) and Bill Nelson of Florida ($161,773). Mind you, she has publicly sworn off Wall Street bribes, another of her lies. That makes Schwartz's reporting all the more interesting. She's been "reaching out to Wall Street" to see if they'd help pay for a presidential campaign. And she's not calling tellers; she's calling banksters and plutocrats-- the enemies of American working families... like when she used to be the chief attorney defending the tobacco companies who were consciously giving Americans cancer. Down deep, this one never changes.

Gillibrand has personally been working the phones and calling senior executives at Wall Street firms in recent weeks to see whether they would back her campaign if she jumps into the race, according to two senior business leaders who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Donors in the financial community helped back Gillibrand's successful re-election bid last year. Her effort to connect with business leaders this time comes as she contemplates entering what will likely be an expensive and protracted Democratic primary.

Gillibrand has gotten a mixed response from the executives, however. Some have enthusiastically kept the door open to helping her finance her possible 2020 operation while others are hesitant to return her calls.

A few business leaders and other Democratic Party donors have been privately critical of Gillibrand's early efforts to force the resignation of former Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota, according to one of the sources familiar with the discussions. Gillibrand was the first Democratic senator to publicly call for Franken, a fellow Democrat, to resign after he was accused of sexual harassment by multiple women in 2017.

"While Senator Franken is entitled to have the Ethics Committee conclude its review, I believe it would be better for our country if he sent a clear message that any kind of mistreatment of women in our society isn't acceptable by stepping aside to let someone else serve," she said at the time through a Facebook post. Gillibrand's comments led to several other women in the Senate demanding Franken to step down, including at least one other prospective 2020 presidential candidate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA).

Franken supporters in the business community argue Gillibrand should have allowed the eventual Senate Ethics Committee investigation to conclude before rushing to demand the resignation of the Minnesota lawmaker. They also believe he was a champion for women during his time in the senate.

...Glen Caplin, a spokesman for Gillibrand, insisted that if the lawmaker from New York ran for president she would build her operation off of grassroots fundraising and would not confirm or the deny her efforts to reach out to Wall Street leaders.

"If Senator Gillibrand decides to run, she will run a campaign that takes no corporate PAC money and is powered by grassroots donations, and based on her values of standing up to those in power and returning our democracy to the people where it belongs," Caplin said in a statement to CNBC.

...[T]urning to Wall Street investors and business titans could be a risky tactic in the next election, particularly after Sen. Elizabeth Warren called on 2020 hopefuls to stay away from political action committees, say "no to the billionaires" and to focus their efforts on fundraising through the grassroots community. Warren, a frequent Wall Street critic who announced an exploratory committee for president last week, has been following her own advice and recently started shuttering her own joint fundraising committee, which allows megadonors to write six figure checks in support of candidates for public office.

...Nationally, Gillibrand is not faring well in early polls. According to a recent CNN poll, she garnered 1 percent of the vote after participants were asked who they preferred to carry the party mantle in 2020. She is not doing much better in the early caucus state of Iowa. A CNN/ Des Moines Register/ Mediacom poll shows she only picked up 1 percent of the vote from likely Democratic caucus voters in the state. Iowa's caucuses will kick off the presidential contest season in January 2020.

She's made herself into one of the most unlikeable politicians in America, even for people who don't yet know her truly disgusting record as a politician. But if she ultimately does decide to run, they will.

Put Bernie Sanders' Face on those Joe Biden Photos, Then Imagine What Party Leaders Would Be Saying

Jon Stewart as Biden: "Hey girl, you seem tense. Is it the stress of me groping you for 28 straight seconds?"

by Thomas Neuburger

An interesting thing is happening around Joe Biden's #MeToo moment. Even though Al Franken was almost immediately rousted from the Senate by now-presidential candidate Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and others for unwanted touching and kissing, handsy kissy Joe Biden is being held to a very different standard. Why?

The Democratic Party Reaction to Joe Biden

Let's start with Kirsten Gillibrand's reaction. Recently I asked, "Does Kirsten Gillibrand Consider Joe Biden's Behavior 'Disqualifying'?" We now have an answer. Here's Gillibrand on Hardball speaking with Chris Matthews (link; skip to 4:38 to listen to the entire Biden conversation). When Matthews asks "What should he do?" Gillibrand responds (my emphasis):

Gillibrand: Well you know, Chris, [sexual assault] is something I've taken very seriously over the last seven or eight years, fighting against sexual assault in the military, sexual assault on college campuses, and actually changing the rules in the House and Senate on harassment, so I think with these allegations specifically, I think it's something if Vice President Biden intends to run, he's just going to have to address directly with the American people.

And there you have it: Even though I've made it my brand to care about sexual assault, Biden can stay in the presidential race, so long as he explains himself. She continues with this: 

Matthews: What should he say?

Gillibrand: There's a conversation about do we value women. And when you allow the space for women to tell their truth and what they experienced, you have to not only receive and believe them, you have to investigate. 

Think back to Franken, who was forced out "without any real vetting of the allegations facing him," as Politico put it. Apparently, the "you have to investigate" rule applies only to Biden. Quite the inconsistency.

So Matthews asks about Gillibrand's position on Al Franken relative to her position on Biden. Gillibrand says the cases were very different because "there were eight credible allegations corroborated in real time" against Franken (whatever "real time" means). Then she repeats what she's said many times, that she needed to not "stay silent" about the Franken accusations because she had a duty to make sure her sons knew that "it's not OK to grope a woman anywhere on her body without her consent" (emphasis added).

This is a good time to watch the clip above. Not the Sam Bee part; the uncomfortable-to-watch Biden-groping-women part. Clearly some of those people do not consent.

Matthews then closes:

Matthews: Should he quit?

Gillibrand: It's something he's going to have to talk about and understand what's happening....

Matthews: Do you call on him to leave the race?

Gillibrand: No, I do not, and what I’m saying now is that it’s something he’s going to have to address. And the truth is, we as a country have to decide if we value women at all.

Read the two sentences immediately above. This is beyond shameful, and way beyond stupid. Does she think no one has ears?

Gillibrand is not the only Democrat to come to Biden's rescue. Nancy Pelosi: "I don't think it's disqualifying." Sen. Tammy Baldwin: "There’s a failure to understand how one’s actions impact others." Sen. Jeanne Shaheen: "I was surprised by the allegation.... All of us, including the vice president, need to continue to work on changing our culture."

From all of this, the path to forgiveness for Biden is clear: Say you "understand" and move on. The voters may not forgive him for his misdeeds, but the leaders of the Democratic Party already have.

Why Is Biden Defended? Explanation 1, It's Generational

Which leads us to ask, why is Biden so well defended by Party leaders and insiders? The reason most often offered is "it's generational." Let's call this Explanation 1.

Here's how EJ Dickson put it in Rolling Stone:

To an extent, this line of debate ["I don't think it's disqualifying"] is to be expected from old-school, establishment Dems like Feinstein and Pelosi, who have clear-cut reasons for standing behind a peer like Biden. But their refusal to outright condemn his alleged behavior is also representative of a generational gap in the #MeToo movement, between those who take quote-unquote “less egregious” violations seriously, and those who do not. Although the allegations against Biden are not of a criminal or even overtly sexual nature, they still involve the issue of consent, and whether or not a man invading a woman’s personal space qualifies as a career-ending transgression.

This generational gap is not specific to the political realm; indeed, there is substantial data to suggest that a chasm exists between the views of older and younger women across the board. A BuzzFeed survey in partnership with Ipsos, for instance, found that while 42% of people between the ages of 18 and 34 said that the #MeToo movement changed the way they thought about consent, only 29% of people over the age of 55 agreed. Similarly, while 64% of people between the ages of 18 and 34 said that women who accuse men of sexual assault and harassment should always be believed, 38% of people over the age of 55 said the same. An NPR poll found a significant gap between older and younger respondents who agreed with the statement that the #MeToo movement had gone too far, while nearly half of older Americans said they didn’t understand what crossed the line in terms of sexual harassment.

While these survey results didn’t differentiate between older and younger women specifically, anecdotally, many younger women report a stark contrast between their own views and the views their mothers and grandmothers share on the movement. In a Time piece on the so-called #MeToo generational divide, a 25-year-old woman says that “the women in my generation have been drawing a much harsher line for anything they consider even slightly inappropriate,” while her mother is quoted as saying that she believes Gen Y and Gen Z feminists like her daughter “are losing the high ground and allies through their absolutism.” Similarly, when discussing the allegations against Biden with her mother, a friend told me that her mother had responded “exactly the way I thought she would”: by saying, “’I think men of that age just do that and don’t mean it to be weird or sexual'” (essentially, the Feinstein/Pelosi school of thought toward inappropriate workplace conduct).

Shorter Rolling Stone: "The rules have changed for younger women." (Note the element of criticism of this view in the article: "Gen Y and Gen Z feminists like her daughter 'are losing the high ground and allies through their absolutism.'" In other words, holding men to this standard is a mistake.)

Explanation 2, He's Our Only Hope

The "it's generational" may explain some voters' responses to Biden, but I don't think it explains the defense of Biden we're reading about. Note that most of his defenders inhabit the same corner of the world — they are people with power and influence in the Democratic Party plus their strongest supporters within the media.

Reaction from those who are less Party-aligned has been more mixed. The Atlantic: "Don't Defend Him as a Flirt." Gawker: "Joe Biden, We Need to Talk About the Way You Touch Women." Even the New York Times: "He is a product of his time, but that time is up."

So why the defense coming from Party officials? The Gawker piece linked above provides a hint: "Try this," Sam Biddle writes, "look at all of those photos and imagine, say, Paul Ryan's face instead of Biden's."

Or Bernie Sanders' face.

So let's be plain. We're coming into the 2020 election season and on the Democratic side there's a lot at stake — in effect, control of the Democratic Party itself from its very top.

As he did in 2016, Bernie Sanders is threatening a palace coup, a takeover of the Party that bypasses all the layers below the presidency — the Speaker's chair, Senate caucus leadership, chair of the DNC, all of it. As the Party's presidential candidate, he will have nominal control of the levers of Party power. As president he will have as much control of the country as he wishes to exercise, even if the leaders of both parties try to block him.

In the past, progressives — and by that I mean real reformers in the Bernie Sanders mold — have been remarkably ineffective in their own #resistance to Party leadership. At every turn, in every local election through 2016 and into 2018, every contest that threatened to put an actual progressive in power was fought bitterly by Party leadership via their control of the donor network, the DCCC, the DSCC, and their allies in other institutions of mainstream Party power, including the media. Some of these resistance candidates succeeded, a great many did not.

The single strongest breakthrough occurred in 2018, when a small group of aggressive progressives, reformers like Occasio-Cortez and others, defeated Party-approved candidates then showed themselves capable as a group of challenging its leaders on their own turf — from inside the halls of power.

Thanks to those victories and their continued opposition to leaders, progressive office-holders have gained some momentum, but not nearly enough. The Green New Deal is now a "thing" being discussed by voters, as is Medicare For All. But the pushback by Nancy Pelosi and other entrenched Party leaders has been fierce, corrupt and underhanded. Even Barack Obama is getting into the act. So even with a Democratic Senate, neither of these proposals is likely to be enacted soon.

The message in all this to progressives is simple: Don't threaten the status quo. The reason: The status quo enriches and empowers us. We're inside and you're not. We mean to stay in charge. Go away.

Seen this way, a Sanders or Warren presidency threatens forty years of entrenched, neoliberal, insider-led and inbred Party power, the very power a great many voters want freedom from, if only they could manage it.

So where is Joe Biden in all this? If you examine all of the viable Democratic presidential candidates (including Biden himself, who hasn't declared yet), they fall neatly into two groups — those opposed to the Obama-era status quo, rebels or "change" candidates; and those whose future depends on returning to that status quo, "faux-change" or "no-change" candidates. If you're a "change" voter this time around, none of the non-rebels is even close to a choice, at least in the primary.

Beto O'Rourke? He wanted to cut Social Security. Kamala Harris? She sent poor mothers to prison because their kids skipped school. Pete Buttigieg? He's an "all lives matter" kind of guy. Also this. Joe Biden? There's too much wrong with him to begin to list.

It's a very neat grouping — Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren on the one hand, all the rest on the other — and the 2020 Democratic primary will be, as it already is, an epic battle between the forces behind these two groups. The forces behind the change candidates are mainly outside the Party — voters and a handful of rebellious elected officials. The forces behind all the others are inside the Party and close to its center — mainstream Democratic leaders and those who keep them in power.

It should therefore be obvious that mainstream Party forces badly need a "Sanders (or Warren) stopper" — or, to borrow their own language, a kind of "Sanders killer": As Axios writes, "One prominent [Biden] backer thinks Biden will run, and 'is ready to kill Bernie.'"

If you accept all this, now consider the polling:

Results of a March 5, 2019 Morning Consult poll (source)

One can almost hear their cries: "Who will save us from these meddlesome candidates?" The choices, at least so far, aren't promising. To date the only person positioned to knock off Sanders, or Warren should she surge, is Joe Biden. Kamala Harris, the nearest to either, is polling a quarter of what Sanders is polling, with the rest of the field well behind her.

Joe Biden, it would seem, is their strongest hope, perhaps their only one.

Are mainstream Democrats protecting him for that reason? From their lockstep defense of him, and the genuinely existential threat they face in the next election, I'd bet on it.

If you doubt me, put Bernie Sanders' face on those Biden photos — and imagine what Nancy Pelosi would be saying then.
  

Why Did Gillibrand Really Chase Al Franken Out Of The Senate?

The other day a friend of mine in Congress told me I missed an important part in my Gillibrand vs Franken coverage. "You're not following the money, Howie," he told me. "Franken was leading the charge on Comcast, right? Check out the Comcast money flowing into Gillibrand's campaign." So I did. Comcast spends an immense amount of money bribing corrupt politicians from both parties-- both in lobbying (last year alone: $15,310,000) and in campaign contributions (last year: $2,627,152). The 2012 cycle was huge for them-- over $34 million in lobbying and $5,431,065 directly to politicians. And guess who the two top Senate recipients were: Bob Casey (D-PA, where Comcast is based) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY). They gave her $48,850. That's a lot-- and way more than any Senate leaders. So far Comcast has given Gillibrand a hefty $83,254. Why?

The only senator really leading the charge against the Comcast's number one legislative priority, their merge with Time-Warner was Al Franken. Roll Call: "In attacking the proposal, no lawmaker was a bigger player than Franken, the Minnesota Democrat who sent three letters to regulators and caught a Comcast executive in embarrassing obfuscation at a Judiciary Committee hearing... He argues that media consolidation, and in particular combinations of content providers and content creators, disserve consumers by raising prices and diminishing the quality of the content."

Franken says he’s an advocate of net neutrality for a similar reason. It prevents Internet providers from favoring some content over others.

When the merger was announced in February 2014, conventional wisdom had it that Comcast’s lobbying, along with its generosity to members of Congress, would ease the path to completion. Comcast’s nearly $5 million in contributions to candidates in the last election cycle placed it among the top corporate donors. Its political action committee was more generous than those of all but five other firms. Its $17 million in lobbying expenditures in 2014 were No. 1 among corporations.

...He also argued that regulators should scrutinize Comcast’s compliance with the conditions it accepted when it was allowed to merge with NBC Universal in 2011.

Franken said he was confident that regulators would find that “Comcast has a history of breaching its legal obligations to consumers.”

According to reports this week, the proposed merger fell apart after the Justice Department raised questions about Comcast’s merger with NBC, and over concerns that it would control too big a piece of the Internet service market-- as much as 40 percent.

...Comcast couldn't find support in Congress. A coalition of groups opposed to the deal ginned up grassroots support. Franken said last year that he had heard from 100,000 people who opposed the deal.

The Stop Mega Comcast coalition, which included groups like Common Cause and Consumers Union but also rival businesses such as the Dish Network, hired its own lobbyists at the Glover Park Group, a well-connected Washington firm, and cultivated support for its position among members of Congress. Congressional letters opposing the deal outstripped those in favor.

Franken said the grassroots opposition made the difference. Comcast “hired an army of more than 100 lobbyists and spent millions of dollars on advertising to sell the deal,” he said in a statement Friday. “But more and more people came to see it the way I did and joined the fight."

I don't doubt Gillibrand had plenty of other things in mind when she went after Franken and forced him to resign from the Senate. The 2024 presidential nomination, for example, or sincere #MeToo issues. But Comcast is what my friend in the House said is what I missed. And here I thought it was just Wall Street that owned her!

How Will Kirsten Gillibrand Feel About The Al Franken Scalp On Her Belt If Michele Bachmann Wins His Senate Seat?

You remember Michele Bachmann, right? She founded the congressional Tea Party caucus and is married to a bizarre closet case who used to advertise in gay magazines and in 2012 became-- along with Michele-- citizens of Switzerland. She was a crackpot Minnesota congresswoman from 2007 until she was forced to retire in 2014 rather than face trials for numerous campaign finance violations, for bribing Iowa State Senator Kent Sorenson to support her in the presidential caucuses and for stealing a homeschool e-mail list. When she was finally driven from office, she was under investigation by the House Ethics Committee, the FEC, the Iowa Senate Ethics Committee, the Urbandale Police Department and the FBI. She was told if she didn’t retire from Congress, she could be spending years behind bars.

Last week during an interview with disgraced televangelist far right and really, really crazier than ever Jim Bakker, she announced that she is considering running for the U.S. Senate seat Gillibrand forced Franken to resign from... but offered one caveat-- she’s waiting for God to tell her what to do before making a final decision. Currently she serves on the Trumpanzee evangelical advisory board and has publicly avowed that Señor T is now a “committed believer” of Jesus Christ and a “man of faith” who has “asked God for help and wisdom.” Just watch that video up top. And thank Kirsten Gillibrand that this monstrosity is back in the public sphere.

The Republican favored to run at this point isn't Bachmann but former senator and current lobbyist Norm Coleman, who Al Franken narrowly defeated in 2008. Coleman was a conservative Democrat (anti-Choice, anti-union... the same kind of turgid garbage the DCCC always loves) but joined the GOP in 1996. I wonder which one Gillibrand would prefer, a former Brooklynite (Coleman-- he went to the same elementary and high school as Bernie, Schumer and I did) or the woman in the race, Bachmann. Here's one of my favorite of many Bachmann memes. It's real... and, needless to say, Fox News was proud to run it:

UPDATE: Many Folks Are Pissed Off At Gillibrand And Her Opportunism

If Gillibrand thinks she can ride her maneuvers against Al Franken to the Democratic nomination, she and her consultants better think again. No one likes her hypocritical move and today Democratic super-donor Susie Tompkins Buell, a huge donor to Democratic women candidates, is reconsidering future contributions to politicians like Gillibrand.

Buell said she is weighing whether to continue her financial support after the calls for Franken's exit last month. The charge for his resignation— led by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and followed almost immediately by a string of statements from other prominent female Democratic senators— came on Dec. 6, before the conclusion of an official Senate Ethics Committee inquiry.

…In two interviews this week, Buell described the push for Franken’s departure as "unfair," "cavalier," and somewhat politically motivated — "a stampede," "like a rampage," she said, speaking in stark terms about senators she has backed for years, naming Gillibrand in particular.

"They need to know that some of their biggest supporters are questioning why they did that," Buell said. "We have to do things conscientiously and fairly. He didn't have the chance to defend himself."

The critique marks a somewhat significant departure for Buell, who is a mainstay in Democratic donor circles and has cultivated a reputation over the years as a fierce and vocal supporter of Democratic women.

…Since 1991, Buell has contributed to nearly every one of the 17 Democratic women currently serving in the Capitol's upper chamber, according to campaign filings. She has given the most to Gillibrand and her PAC, Off the Sidelines, a group dedicated to supporting other female candidates.

…"These are senators that almost unanimously said he should have his opportunity to explain himself with the Ethics Committee," she said. "Then, within hours of each other, they said he should resign. It was clearly, clearly highly organized.”

UPDATE: A Sign From God

Bachmann said she wanted a sign from God before making up her mind about whether or not to run for the Minnesota Senate seat. This week she got one:

Gillibrand Is Better Off Polling Less Than 1%

Had someone asked me which presidential candidate has a political father who's in a crazy religionist cult, I would have said "Tulsi Gabbard," and I would have been correct... but not complete. Did you know that another candidate-- also who isn't going anywhere in this race-- has a father connected to a insane cult, an insane cult her step-mother is involved with too? Kirsten Gillibrand has mostly managed to avoid any public discussion of NXIVM (pronounced "nexium"). Unlike Tulsi, who was basically raised inside her father's crazy cult, Gillibrand seems to have succeeded in keeping away from her father's. Don't worry; neither is getting anywhere near the presidency or vice-presidency. Nationally, Tulsi is polling at 1.0% and Gillibrand is polling at 0.5%.

Presumably, if Gillibrand ever got beyond 1% the story of her father's cult-problem would make its way into the media. Investigative reporter Wayne Madsen wrote about the cult in terms of Gillibrand's anti-Franken rampage because... well, it's, among other things, a sex slave cult... and the sex slaves are all women.

Gillibrand is the daughter of longtime Albany lobbyist and political fixer Doug Rutnik... Rutnik, who divorced Gillibrand's mother, also served as the attorney for the NXIVM sex slave cult, which maintains its headquarters in Clifton Park, 20 miles north of Albany, and branded female sex slaves with cult leader [Keith] Raniere's initials. Raniere also required his female members to submit to photographs of their vaginas, "collateral" he would then make public in the event they failed to obey his orders.

For Gillibrand to have called for Franken's resignation over a few innocuous hand gestures and comments, which Gillibrand believed constituted serious sexual harassment unworthy of a senator, makes the junior senator from New York a paragon of hypocrisy.

Rutnik received $25,000 a month from NXIVM for his legal services... NXIVM also had Trump's close friend and adviser Roger Stone, a notorious Republican dirty tricks operative, on its payroll... It is not just Rutnik who has had a relationship with NXIVM. It turns out that his wife, Gwen Bellcourt, Gillibrand's stepmother, was deeply involved with NXIVM through its president, Nancy Salzman, a neuro-linguistic programming "nurse."

Big League Politics ran a piece about the scandal 3 months ago. (Since then, Raniere and Salzman were found guilty, about a month ago, on a wide array of charges, some horrific.)

Kirsten Gillibrand’s lobbyist father Doug Rutnik was employed by the NXIVM sex cult, according to court documents.

An eyewitness describes how Gillibrand sat at the NXIVM table at a Hillary Clinton fundraiser.

“The very first time I ever met Gillibrand she was at an event for Hillary Clinton in the Hall of Springs in the State Park. This was in 2006. I was at a table with a Russian friend and Mike Roohan and his wife. I was on the Democratic committee at the time and was given two comp tickets. Gillibrand came up to me introduced herself and said she was running against John Sweeney. This was before all the stories of his drunken behavior came out. He was still congressman kickass at that time. I promised my support and wished her well. i than commented to Mike that with her baby voice and demeanor that she was a lightweight. Boy was I wrong. But the kicker was when the mixing was over and Clinton went to speak. Gillibrand sat with one of the front tables. Yeah the three front VIP tables were all brought by NXIVM and she was sitting with Nancy Salzman. You can quote me on that,” said witness John Tighe.

Nancy Salzman has pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy while her daughter Lauren Salzman admitted to enslaving a woman, stating in court, “I knowingly and intentionally harbored Jane Doe 4, a woman whose identity is known to me, in a room in the home in the Northern District of New York” and “threatened to deport Jane Doe 4 back to Mexico if she did not complete labor requested by myself and others.”

Former NXIVM employee Frank Parlato provided Big League Politics with copies of the court documents in NXIM’s suit against Rutnik, which prove Rutnik’s employment by the group... “Her father Doug Rutnik came to work as a consultant for NXIVM…he was fired, they sued him, and he had to pay them $100,000,” Parlato said, referring Gillibrand’s father.

Parlato is the NXIVM whistleblower who blew the lid off the case, including the revelation that NXIVM leader Keith Raniere’s cult was branding women with his initials.

“Her father’s wife, her stepmother, was also a member of NXIVM... Doug got her into the cult, Gillibrand’s father got Gillibrand’s future stepmother into the cult. Doug left the cult because he was sued. Clare Bronfman after her father was sued donated money to Gillibrand. Gillibrand accepted it.”

“One is inclined to call her a liar,” Parlato says of Gillibrand.

I've Thought About It A Lot And I've Concluded Gillibrand Would Be A Better President Than Trump. Will Fox Viewers Agree Tonight?

One of the reasons Kirsten Gillibrand almost never gets beyond 1% in any national or early-state polling is because Democratic primary voters know her mostly as an opportunist who stabbed Al Franken in the bank to advance her own mediocre career. That factor isn't likely to matter much to TV viewers tonight who tune in to see her Dubuque Iowa town fall on Fox. Fox viewers were never Franken fans. And, in fact, many years ago-- when she was still a right-wing anti-immigrant/pro-NRA congresswoman from upstate New York-- Gillibrand was a frequent and popular Fox News guest, always willing to be the Democrat going on air to oppose Democratic initiatives and back conservative ones. But then she did a 180 in return for a Senate appointment she would never have won, and is now far more likely to be on with Rachel Maddow than with Sean Hannity. Chris Wallace hosts her town hall tonight. Will theFox fans like her-- or be turned off by her views on abortion? Unlike any of the other women in the race, she tends to come off as a bitter man hater. Even progressive men pick up on it and get turned off to her. Imagine if Fox viewers detect that in her tonight!

"I think it's a great opportunity for me," the me-me-me-me-me candidate told Fox. "I want to talk to voters where they are. I want to be able to go into every living room and make sure voters know who I am, why I feel the call to run, and why I believe I'm the best candidate to run this country and to bring this country back together again." It drives her crazy to see McKensey Pete, Marianne Williamson and Andrew Yang-- let alone a gaggle of mere congressmen-- pull ahead of her in the polls. On Friday, Tim Alberta did a Politico Magazine cover story on her: Kirsten Gillibrand's Failure To Launch. Insiders all thought she would have been a top tier candidate and are scratching their heads today about why she hasn't made any headway among Democratic primary voters. Many people Fox News viewers will like her more. Alberta reported that she raised less money than any of the 6 senators running for the comination-- even less than a conservative nothing-burger like Michael Bennet. "Given her anemic polling since entering the race," he wrote, "Gillibrand’s feeble fundraising performance fanned skepticism about her viability to earn a nomination that Democrats believe will require close to $100 million in hard money raised. But at this point, Gillibrand isn’t focused on winning the primary. She’s worried about surviving the next few months." She's near the bottom of the national averages. There are only half a dozen candidates who are averaging less than half a percent according to Real Clear Politics:

• Gillibrand- 0.3%
• Bill de Blasio- 0.3%
• Frackenlooper- 0.3%
• Seth Moulton- 0.2%
• Steve Bullock- 0.2%
• Mike Bennet- 0.2%

Everyone else running is polling better than Gillibrand, including John Delaney, Andrew Yang, Julián Castro, Amy Klobuchar, Marianne Williamson, Tim Ryan and Tulsi Gabbard. In the newest Monmouth poll of New Hampshire primary voters, she's polling less than 1%. She's spent more time in New Hampshire than in New York-- and she's wasted millions of dollars on TV advertising in the state. "Gillibrand," wrote Alberta, has failed to achieve liftoff as a presidential prospect. She has not broken 2 percent in a single national poll since officially declaring her candidacy in mid-March, and her 0.4 percent average in the RealClearPolitics aggregate of surveys places her behind the likes of Julián Castro, Tulsi Gabbard and even geeky long shot Andrew Yang."

In a conversation for Politico’s Off Message podcast, the New York senator vacillated between insinuating that she is being treated differently because of her gender and arguing that Americans are ready for a female president.

“Hillary won the election. She won the popular vote by 3 million votes, and you have to remember, she was definitely the most qualified candidate we’d ever had running for president,” Gillibrand says. “And, but for Russia, but for Comey, but for misogyny, but for a lot of things, she would have won. So, I believe that of course this country is ready to elect a woman president, but they need to know what we’re running on and what we’re for, and why we’re running and why we think we’re the best candidate.”

Yet Gillibrand has struggled to communicate this to voters. Things have gotten so grim for her that recently, a high-ranking campaign aide to Cory Booker-- Gillibrand’s opponent for the Democratic nomination-- tweeted that she had donated to the New York senator’s campaign and encouraged others to follow suit. This was done, the aide noted, to ensure that Gillibrand’s “important perspective is on the debate stage.” To other Democrats, this looked less like an act of short-term benevolence than one of long-term strategy: The historically large field will soon begin to be winnowed, and when it does, some of the surprising early exits will make for valuable endorsements. No name has surfaced in those conversations of late more frequently than Gillibrand.

How did it come to this? How did one of America’s best-financed senators come to rely on charity and presidential pan-handling, begging for a dollar at a time just to stay alive? How did one of Washington’s most recognizable women find herself buried in the polls beneath a number of less prominent men? And how does she breathe life into her campaign before it’s too late?

...Gillibrand claims, like all candidates do, that she’s having the time of her life campaigning for the highest office in the land. And yet her cheerful demeanor cannot mask the annoyance she is feeling-- with the media, with the gender dynamics central to the race, and with the Democratic Party itself.

Gillibrand clearly doesn’t think much of the DNC’s rules governing the debates. Even before the national party announced the stricter criteria candidates would need to meet to qualify for the third and fourth debates this fall-- effectively putting an expiration date on more than half of the Democratic candidacies-- Gillibrand took issue with the emphasis on early polling to shape a process that has commenced far earlier that it once did.

“The last couple of presidential candidates who were Democrats who won, or even are nominees, you had to look at where they were at this early stage. I think somebody looked up where Bill Clinton was at this stage. He had 1 percent in the polls and had 30 percent name recognition in Iowa. So, like, it takes time,” Gillibrand said. “And with 20 candidates, it might actually take longer … because for each one of us to have a chance to be heard it’s going to take time. I mean, even the debates alone, if we get more than five minutes each on that stage, that’ll be surprising. So, you’re really even not even going to have more than a few minutes to talk about what you’re for and why you’re running and what your views are for the country.”

Gillibrand argues that both of the debate thresholds, polling and unique contributions, “are related to name recognition.” But she certainly is better known than the likes of Yang, or Williamson, or Gabbard, or Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, the latest 2020 candidate to “double qualify” by reaching both qualification milestones. Working the referees this early isn’t a sign of strategic savvy; it’s a sign of desperation.

Asked about the pressure she’s feeling, Gillibrand said it’s “created because of the DNC’s framework that they’ve put the candidates under,” which she suggests isn’t the “natural” or “normal” role for a national party. Asked whether she disagrees with the DNC’s rules, she replied, “I’m not sure. I don’t know that they’re serving the public well.”

Meanwhile, compounding Gillibrand’s frustration is her fraught relationship with the political issue that has defined her ascent: gender.

When I asked whether it was problematic to have so many white men-- Beto O’Rourke, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg-- soaking up the media spotlight, she replied, “Yeah, I think it’s problematic. …. We have amazing women candidates, amazing candidates of color, and hopefully through this process we will lift our voices up and be heard.”

The look on her face when I mentioned O’Rourke’s appearance on the cover of Vanity Fair was beyond description. “Unusual,” she finally mustered, biting her lip and her tongue at once, a litany of curse words no doubt suppressed underneath her smirk. “Never seen it before.”

And when I asked Gillibrand to name the worst part of running for president, she replied, “I don’t want to tell you.” She added that “it’s not an appropriate thing for me to say,” then promised to tell me later, off the record.

After hearing the off-the-record answer, I pressed for a sanitized version, which she offered in the most measured of tones. “The one thing that’s annoying to me is how many times reporters ask you about our male colleagues. Who cares? I’m running for president. I want to tell you what my vision is, why I’m running, and why I’m going to win,” she said. “I think reporters like yourself, who are super smart and super careful, will always ask me what I think about the male colleagues. Are you asking the male colleagues what they think about us? Probably not.”

This is the hang-up of Gillibrand’s campaign. Never has the Democratic electorate been more exercised by issues of identity, and never has gender been more central to the national conversation-- politically, culturally, socioeconomically and otherwise. And yet Gillibrand, despite having very little to lose at this point, remains cautious in interviews and on the stump-- aiming for broad appeal instead of a niche brand, trying to draw in support from every cell of the party rather than cultivating a base and building out.

At every stop in New Hampshire, the senator was careful to modulate her answers and her tone in ways that would render her universally acceptable. She talks of how she dominated the blue boroughs of New York City-- but also how she carried the state’s red, rural counties. She believes Trump is a “coward”-- but she wants to calm the vitriolic nature of our politics. Gillibrand didn’t shy away from a single proposal-- whether it was expanding the Supreme Court, increasing funding for indigenous groups or signing a breast cancer-related pledge-- that voters asked her about.

Yet when it came to addressing the gender bias she believes is inherent to politics-- a belief shared by many younger progressive women, a sizable chunk of the Democratic coalition-- Gillibrand held back. Had her off-the-record answer been published, it would have gone viral overnight, racking up hundreds of thousands of clicks and instantly erasing any concerns about her small-donor disparity. But Gillibrand chose to be careful. Having won in a red district, having persuaded older, whiter, Republican audiences to support her in the past, she believes she can do so again.

The problem for Gillibrand is, the polls and the fundraising numbers show that this cautious approach isn't getting her anywhere. The over-50 male demographic in Iowa and New Hampshire is likely to lean toward candidates such as Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, or perhaps even Elizabeth Warren, whose paeans to economic populism resonate with the dwindling remnant of blue-collar Democrats. The market Gillibrand was poised to corner-- after becoming Washington’s leading voice on women’s rights issues and embracing the risk of calling for Al Franken’s resignation from the Senate-- was that of the young, female voters who have mobilized the backlash to Donald Trump’s presidency.

Instead, in an overflowing field with more than 20 candidates slicing and dicing the electorate every which way, Gillibrand seems to believe that she can’t afford to alienate any one bloc of voters.

If the recent controversies surrounding new state-based abortion laws are any indication, it’s a tactical misreading of the race. Gillibrand’s forceful denunciations, on social media and cable news programs, earned her more free media coverage than anything else since the launch of her campaign. It was a reminder that she is more comfortable than any of the other Democrats in speaking to women’s issues, having not only mastered the messaging but worked extensively on the policies regarding everything from pay equality to workplace discrimination.

In that instance, Gillibrand seized the opportunity to gain headlines and eyeballs-- and most likely, campaign donations-- by owning an issue of visceral importance to what should be her core base of supporters.

Still, she seems conscious of doing so infrequently, wary of being typecast as a single-issue candidate. In a vacuum, for a generic Democratic woman candidate hoping to defeat Trump in a November election, it’s not necessarily a bad idea to downplay the talk of glass ceilings. And yet, for a female Democratic candidate like Gillibrand, whose image is heavily colored by her fights for gender equality, winning the party’s nomination—and the right to challenge Trump-- might require a greater reliance on her identity.

This is the paradox of Gillibrand’s candidacy. She believes, as do many of her Democratic rivals, that voters want “electability” in a nominee-- someone who above all else will defeat Trump in 2020. And she does have a case to make in that regard: As a former upstate congresswoman, she does have a feel for the nonideological challenges facing rural and poor America. And at her core, layers beneath the questions about her political evolution, she is inherently relatable, someone who quotes Scripture as easily as she sips a beer or rocks a baby.

But Gillibrand’s emphasis on long-term electability may be coming at the expense of her short-term viability. She has chosen not to pursue with reckless abandon the demographic that should be her core constituency in the primary-- women-- believing it would limit her appeal to other portions of the electorate. And she has ignored suggestions that she change course and act with more urgency in this regard, telling me, “I need to be patient, and know that it’s going to take time and hard work… Your poll numbers are irrelevant today. What matters is where you are a year from now.”

The problem facing Gillibrand is, poll numbers at this stage of a presidential primary have never been more relevant to the outcome-- and if she doesn’t do something drastic to improve hers, she won’t be around a year from now.

It's tough on a Uriah Heep-type personality like Gillibrand to be so resoundingly rejected when she isn't really offering anything except herself. It isn't her ideas that are being rejected-- she has none-- it's Kirsten Gillibrand herself that is being rejected-- her record, her integrity, her vibe, her essence... She should drop out and spent the time she's spending in New Hampshire and Iowa seeing a top psychoanalyst. Other than Trump, there's never been a politician who needed one more.