The Home Stretch In Massachusetts Brings Out The Worst In EMILY's List-- As Usual

Of course Elizabeth Warren refused to endorse conservative shill Katherine Clark, but that didn't keep EMILY's List from printing up these fliers

Last April, Digby exposed the EMILY's List strategy for beating progressive L.A. mayoral contender-- and now progressive L.A. Mayor-- Eric Garcetti on behalf of their Republican-"turned"-Democrat conservative candidate with a sleazy campaign mailer you can see here. The obvious intention was to portray Garcetti, a happily married man and a naval officer, as a sleaze bag. L.A. voters know him too well, and the EMILY's List slimy tactics failed miserably and their pathetic candidate lost badly. EMILY's List sent out the shady mailer under another of the many names they use to mislead people: "California Women's Vote." Keep that in the back of your mind for a second.

A few years before that, EMILY's List financed a very corrupt conservative-- the Harold Ford Machine candidate-- against progressive Congressman Steve Cohen. EMILY's List didn't just finance a race-baiting sociopath against Tennessee's only good congressman, they financed a virulently anti-Semitic campaign against him-- so virulently anti-Semitic that when wealthy Jewish EMILY's List donors had a mass conniption, EMILY's List was forced to withdraw their endorsement… the day of the election! The EMILY's List executive who made the decision to go with Nikki Tinker was soon eased out. But EMILY's List disgusting and sleazy tactics-- like the ones used against Eric Garcetti-- are still the heart and soul of what they do when they take over a candidate's campaign. Five years ago, the day before the pressure got too intense on EMILY's List to keep backing Tinker, their anti-Semitic and homophobic candidate, I wrote this:

Tennessee holds its primary tomorrow and all eyes are on Memphis, where progressive freshman Steve Cohen, who is white and Jewish, is being challenged by a vicious anti-Semitic, racist pawn of ex-Congressman Harold Ford. It's been a very ugly race-- and the ugliness is all on one side, Nikki Tinker's. Steve Cohen was first elected in 2006 with the help of Blue America and we have enthusiastically endorsed him again. If you know anyone in Memphis, please call them and talk to them about this race. Cohen has been a real leader for working families and he is the only progressive congressman from Tennessee. Tinker is a complete corporate shill and far more conservative across a wide array of issues. Rahm Emanuel, a longtime ally of Ford's, has encouraged institutional support for Tinker and has prevented his DCCC pawn, Chris Van Hollen, from coming to the aid of Cohen, the way the DCCC and Nancy Pelosi backed other challenged incumbents like Kilpatrick yesterday and Al Wynn a few months ago. One of the most corrupt members of the Democratic Party, Gregory Meeks (NY) has been supporting Tinker, as has Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Ohio). More progressive and respectable members of the Congressional Black Caucus like John Conyers and Jesse Jackson, Jr. have been campaigning for Cohen.

So why rehash all that EMILY's List crap again now? Well, of course, they're up to it again-- this time in the crucial Massachusetts House race next Tuesday. They're raising campaign money for the worst of the 5 contenders, state Senator Kathleen Clark, the very wealthy wiretapping enthusiast. And that ad up top-- that was a flat-out misleading attempt to get voters to think that Elizabeth Warren endorsed Clark. Of course, she hasn't. Progressive members of Congress like Alan Grayson, Raul Grijalva, Keith Ellison, Mark Takano and Jared Polis have loudly and unambiguously endorsed Carl Sciortino. Elizabeth, whose views are in sync with Sciortino's, has insisted on staying neutral in the primary battle in her own state. EMILY's List tried to get her to endorse their horrible candidate and she turned them down. So they printed up thousands of those fliers and send them out all over the district to mislead voters. That's EMILY's List-- and that's Katherine Clark.

A brand new PPP survey shows that 57% of voters are less likely to vote for Clark once they learn that she sponsored a bill, S. 654, to give police more power to listen in on private conversations of people not suspected of breaking the law. Randy Borntrager of People for the American Way explains that the "polling shows once again that Massachusetts voters want a real progressive in the United States House. Carl Sciortino is the only reliable progressive in this race. He has a strong record of standing up for civil rights and civil liberties in Massachusetts, and will bring those values to Washington.”

EMILY's List has morphed into an anti-progressive operation whose sole function is helping to enrich themselves through campaigns backing wealthy women. They take over the campaigns and funnel as much money into their own operations as they can get away with. So they don't care about that. In fact, none of Clark's anti-progressive positions worries them at all, especially since she has a marked tendency to tell whomever she's talking to whatever it is she thinks they want to hear. At the PCCC-sponsored online forum on April 10, where she assumed she was talking to progressives, she said, “I just want to be crystal clear-- that I am taking a pledge never to cut benefits to our seniors through Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid... I will not be part of a ‘grand bargain’ that leaves our seniors behind and breaks our promises to them.” She was trying her best to sound like Carl Sciortino.

But when she talked to the far more conservative editors of the Boston Globe she told them about "her willingness to support a 'grand bargain' to trim the long-term federal deficit, even if it includes some provisions that are disappointing to liberals, is a sign of maturity." If Katherine Clark is elected Tuesday, she'll be Massachusetts' worst Member of Congress… by far. Hopefully the 5th district will opt to elect Massachusetts' best instead.

Carl Sciortino commented on the discrepancy this morning. “It’s appalling to me that Katherine Clark would be open to cutting Social Security and Medicare. We’re Democrats. We’re the ones that stand up for seniors-- not cave to the Tea Party on the most important social safetynet in the last century. I’m proud to stand with Ed Markey in my pledge never to cut these vital American programs. I call on Katherine Clark to clarify her position on Social Security today. The voters of the 5th District deserve to know whether she stands with Ed Markey against cuts in Social Security, or if she would cave to the Tea Party and vote for cuts in a ‘grand bargain’ as she told the Boston Globe.”