Third Way And The Republican Wing Of The Democratic Party Gears Up For War-- Against Bernie

A few days ago I went to a fundraiser for a congressional candidate here in L.A. One of the artists you see frequently here at DWT, Nancy Ohanian, donated a huge aluminum rendition of the Bernie Sanders characature you see above. It's spectacular and comes up to my chest. I offered to auction it with the proceeds going to the candidate, a super-duper progressive who, in fact, had endorsed Bernie in 2016. I got to the event early so I could set up. While the host was helping me find a suitable place to display the art, a craggy old man-- let's say 80, but I'm not certain-- ambled over and started growling and barking at either me or the art. His point was one that young people who admire Bernie never make but this nasty old codger was spitting mad and demanded that Bernie retire. To be fair, I should also mention that he also screeched that Pelosi also retire. Anyway, his whole argument seemed to be about age. Later during the event he was snarling again, this time how the Democrats would lose if they nominate a progressive in 2020.

I don't often meet people ignorant enough to spout off like that in celebration of the Blue Dogs and New Dems who make up the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. But ole shit-for-brains was all in for it. I didn't want to upset myself by arguing with him about corruption or policy so I wandered over to another part of the gigantic backyard and thankfully never saw him again. Yesterday, however, Buzzfeed ran a report about the conference the Republican wing of the Democratic Party was holding in Columbus, Ohio. They're desperate to find someone to unite behind who will defeat the Bernie/Elizabeth Warren ticket in 2020. Trump wasn't invited but he's hoping they pick Biden, who, he claimed Obama took out of the garbage heap. asked by Jeff Glor on the CBS Evening News who he thinks his Democratic opponent will be, he said:

Well, I dream, I dream about Biden. That's a dream. Look, Joe Biden ran three times. He never got more than 1 percent and President Obama took him out of the garbage heap, and everybody was shocked that he did. I'd love to have it be Biden. I think I'd like to have any one of those people that we're talking about… You know, there's probably-- the group of seven or eight right now. I'd really like to-- I'd like to run against any one of them, but Biden never by himself could never do anything. President Obama took him, made him vice president and he was fine. But you go back and look at how he succeeded in running, when he ran two or three times, I don't think he ever break-- broke one. He was at the one or less level, 1 percent or less level.

Biden is popular among centrist Democrats, not so much among progressives-- he had a long career as a corporate whore and Wall Street kiss-ass-- and not so much among Independents. Molly Hensley-Clancy wrote that at the centrist conference "the burning question was how to create an economic message that could beat two people in 2020 who have crystal clear economic messages: Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders... Centrist Democrats are eager to take on the party’s ideological left. But nearly 30 years after Bill Clinton won with an explicitly moderate brand of Democratic politics, they are smaller in number, and in a sign of just how much the Democratic Party has changed in the last five years, they're explicitly defining themselves in response to a democratic socialist from Vermont. They’re still searching for their message-- and their messengers. At the presidential election-- focused “Opportunity 2020” conference, hosted by the center-left think tank Third Way, there wasn’t much in the way of presidential candidates. The featured speakers were currently much lower key players in the increasingly serious field of prospective Democratic contenders-- Jason Kander, who just announced his run for mayor of Kansas City, Missouri; Virginia Sen. Mark Warner; Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan."

Third Way is not "center left"-- unless you're comparing the group to neo-fascists like Jim Jordan and Steven Miller. This are the people who use big corporate money and GOP billionaires to defeat progressives in primaries. They're the worst of the worst. You'll notice how how an idiot fake journalist like Hensley-Clancy refers to the furthest right segment of the Democratic Party benignly as "center left" while smearing the people who go to the grassroots Netroots Nation convention as "ultra-progressives," including in her empty-headed smear Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Idiots like Hensley-Clancy make the error of conflating crooked politicians, like Jim Himes, for example, who are whores for Wall Street, with "moderates." Himes, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, has taken $2,869,907 in bribes from Wall Street, more than any Democrat currently serving in the House. So, of course Hensley-Clancy goes right to him for some wisdom.

When it comes to moderate voices in the 2020 election, “I think there is a risk that they get drowned out,” said Rep. Jim Himes, of Connecticut, who chairs the House’s moderate Democrat caucus, the New Dems. “There’s a lot of volume and emotion and energy around the more activist wing of our party.”

Former Delaware Governor Jack Markell is basically a moderate Republican pretending to be a Democrat, like many attendees at the Third Way conference. He was delighted at the opportunity to smear mainstream Democrats like Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, not to mention Benie. "Right now the only narrative we’re getting is from the far left," growled Markell.

The Opportunity Democrats’ big ideas-- carefully constructed, polled on, and laid out by Third Way in Columbus-- are not nearly as big as the far left’s, though that’s partly by design. There’s a venture-capital-like bank that will lend on a massive scale to underserved areas, an apprentice program modeled in part after land-grant colleges, a universal private retirement fund. Also, an Americorps-like program for retirees, called “Boomer Corps.”

Sanders loomed over much of the conference in Columbus-- as an adversary, a comparison point, and, in some ways, as an inspiration.

“To his credit, Bernie has offered something that is coherent, and big, and is very well-known,” said Matt Bennett, Third Way’s vice president of public affairs. “If you walked out on the street of Columbus, 6 of 10 people could tell you what Bernie’s economic vision is.”

There is a pervasive narrative that the energy in the Democratic Party is mostly among progressives. That’s true particularly when it comes to the looming 2020 presidential election, where most of the party’s buzzed-about contenders, from Harris to Warren to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, have spent their time in the Senate outdoing each other to come out in support of what are traditionally considered very liberal policies on economics.

“It’s accurate to say most of the energy on Twitter is on the far left, and a lot of the energy in Washington is on the far left,” Bennett said. But he believes many are inaccurately conflating the energized Democratic base with Bernie Sanders supporters.

“If you go talk to the resistance, the likelihood is that they voted for Hillary, and they hate Trump to the bottom of their soul," he said. "That doesn’t mean they want a [$15] national minimum wage.”

These right-wing Democrats hate the idea of a living wage almost as much as Republicans do. That's because they are Republicans but with a less right-wing social agenda. They tend to be less racist, less sexist, less homophobic, etc. These right-of-center Democraps attracted to Third Way are furious that progressives like Kara Eastman, Dana Balter and Alexandria Ocasio beat their crap candidates in recent primaries-- and have persuaded the DCCC to undermine them-- but they are basking in the glory of having watched progressive voters march in unity-- a word the right does not realize is a two-way street-- to win seats for Conor Lamb (PA) and Doug Jones (AL). Since winning, by the way, both have scored "F" on their voting records. Jones votes more often with the GOP than any other Senate Democrat, including even Manchin, Heitkamp, Donnelly and McCaskill, who at least have the excuse that they're voting with Republicans because they're afraid of the midterms. Jones has no reelection battle to worry about. Lamb is running in a redrawn district that is way less red than the one he won, but he still votes with a Republicans as frequently as he can.

Kara Eastman isn't one of them. She's one of us. The Republican wing of the party has no use for her. She vanquished one of their worthless Blue Dog standard bearers. "In our primary race," she explained, "my team knocked on more than 60,000 doors. We know that direct contact with people at their doors is the best way to win votes, but more importantly, this personal touch shows voters in my district that I am sincere when I tell them that I want to work for them, and with them, to create tangible solutions for the concerns they have. I am the kind of Congresswoman who is accessible, compassionate and dedicated to serving people in my district-- not just donors. I believe this sincere effort to connect with voters made a difference in our race, and we will continue spending as much time as possible in the field in the general election."

One name that Democrats in Columbus did, occasionally, offer: former vice president Joe Biden, who has been publicly mulling a presidential run. Jeff Danielson, a state senator from Iowa, said at first that there was “no one” he was excited about when it came to 2020. But Biden, if he would agree to run, was an exception, Danielson said.

“Elderly white men are not necessarily what’s popular in our party right now,” Danielson conceded. “But I think that there will be a shift in the moment. Voters are going to look for stability, and I think he embodies that.”

Others said they were excited by state-level politicians: mayors like Mitch Landrieu of New Orleans, and Los Angeles’ Eric Garcetti, and governors like Deval Patrick, Steve Bullock, and John Hickenlooper. (Bullock, considered to be more moderate, is nonetheless speaking at the progressive Netroots in August.)

Rep. Cheri Bustos, an Illinois moderate who carried a district Donald Trump won handily, said she’d heard a marked shift in the most important issue people brought up to her in the supermarket aisles of her district. For years, she said, it was jobs and the economy; then, for a year, it was health care.

Now, she said, the refrain is simply: “Just get something done. I’m tired of all the fighting.”

Governors and mayors like Bullock and Garcetti are a remedy to that frustration: working in smaller confines and freed from the snarl of Washington, they have a long and detailed record of accomplishments to point to.

But even as they crafted their message in Columbus through polling, strategy sessions, and debate, attendees were aware that, especially against Trump, there’s a necessary piece they’re still searching for.

“How do we compete with ‘we’re bringing the coal mines back’?” said Himes, the Connecticut congress member. “We’re not suited to lying to the American people, and we’re not naturally arbiters of emotion and anger, and so how we tell our story in a way that makes people want to mount the barricades is, I think, one of the biggest challenges that we have. And I’m not sure, sitting here today, that I have the answer to that.”

These  self-proclaimed centrists and "moderates" think they know everything, so they didn't invite any modern economists like Stephanie Kelton or play this Stephanie Kelton interview Derrick Crowe did with her at the conference; but they don't know everything--or much of anything worthwhile-- so they should have. Watch; it'll help you understand what a bad joke the Republican wing of the Democratic Party is.