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| Cheri Bustos-- Worst DCCC Chair since her mentor Rahm by Nancy Ohanian |
Blue Dog/New Dem Cheri Bustos, DCCC chair, who represents a northwest Illinois congressional district gerrymandered by the Democratic Party-controlled state legislature to elect Democrats, finally eked out a victory on Friday morning. She beat little-known Republican Esther Joy King 153, 947 (51.9%) to 142,621 (48.1%). Bustos spent $4,573,839 to King's $1,634,304. Pelosi's House Majority SuperPAC just in $1,044,002 to save Bustos in the last days of her meaningless campaign. It's tragic for the Democratic Party that she didn't lose; it would have taught them a lesson they badly need.
George HW Bush tried hard but failed to pass Reagan's NAFTA for their wealthy Republican donors. There were just too many Democrats in Congress standing up for the working class back then. When Bill Clinton defeated Bush in 1992 one of the very first things he did was to assign one of his campaign thugs, Rahm Emanuel, to force reluctant Democrats in Congress to join the Republicans to pass the bill. Members were bribed, threatened and blackmailed and it finally passed November 17, 1993, 234–200, 102 Democrats joining 132 Republicans in the House and, 3 days later, 27 Democrats (including Biden-- though certainly not Wellstone) joining 34 Republicans in the Senate in favor of ratification. What cluster fuck-- but most of the Democrats depending on working class votes and union support voted no despite Clinton and Emanuel. (And, yes, of course Pelosi and Hoyer voted for the bill.) It would be a lot easier for the Democrats to pass something like that now, although it would be more difficult to get enough Republicans behind it.
Yeah, there's been a reversal of support since then-- starting then-- for the working class, as Clinton made a play for Wall Street and corporate donors and acceded to the strings attached-- with the cooperation of congressional Democratic leadership. Don't expect any reversal of that trend with Biden in the White House. The Democrats who lost their seats on Tuesday-- or who are struggling to hang on-- were all Blue Dogs and New Dems from the Republican wing of the party, none of whom could be called a friend of the working class-- anti-progressive chumps like Joe Cunningham (Blue Dog-SC), Max Rose (Blue Dog-NY), Xochitl Torres Small (Blue Dog-NM), Kendra Horn (Blue Dog-OK), Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (New Dem-FL), Abby Finkenauer (IA), Susan Wild (New Dem-PA), Gil Cisneros (New Dem-CA), Anthony Brindisi (Blue Dog-NY), Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN), Angie Craig (New Dem-MN), Abigail Spanberger (Blue Dog-VA), Harley Rouda (New Dem-CA)... That's a big glaring problem-- an existential one, no less-- that neither Nancy Pelosi nor Chuck Schumer understands, let alone addresses.
Yesterday Matt Taibbi asked which party is the real working class party now? What an about-face that a question like that could even be taken seriously, which, of course, it must be. "Trump lost the election," he wrote, "because of his handling of the pandemic, the top issue for 41% of voters, who chose Biden by a nearly 3-1 margin. But among people whose top concern was the economy-- 28% of the electorate-- Trump won an incredible 80% of the vote... Democrats’ conspicuous refusal to address economic inequality and other class issues in a meaningful way created an opening."
George HW Bush tried hard but failed to pass Reagan's NAFTA for their wealthy Republican donors. There were just too many Democrats in Congress standing up for the working class back then. When Bill Clinton defeated Bush in 1992 one of the very first things he did was to assign one of his campaign thugs, Rahm Emanuel, to force reluctant Democrats in Congress to join the Republicans to pass the bill. Members were bribed, threatened and blackmailed and it finally passed November 17, 1993, 234–200, 102 Democrats joining 132 Republicans in the House and, 3 days later, 27 Democrats (including Biden-- though certainly not Wellstone) joining 34 Republicans in the Senate in favor of ratification. What cluster fuck-- but most of the Democrats depending on working class votes and union support voted no despite Clinton and Emanuel. (And, yes, of course Pelosi and Hoyer voted for the bill.) It would be a lot easier for the Democrats to pass something like that now, although it would be more difficult to get enough Republicans behind it.
Yeah, there's been a reversal of support since then-- starting then-- for the working class, as Clinton made a play for Wall Street and corporate donors and acceded to the strings attached-- with the cooperation of congressional Democratic leadership. Don't expect any reversal of that trend with Biden in the White House. The Democrats who lost their seats on Tuesday-- or who are struggling to hang on-- were all Blue Dogs and New Dems from the Republican wing of the party, none of whom could be called a friend of the working class-- anti-progressive chumps like Joe Cunningham (Blue Dog-SC), Max Rose (Blue Dog-NY), Xochitl Torres Small (Blue Dog-NM), Kendra Horn (Blue Dog-OK), Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (New Dem-FL), Abby Finkenauer (IA), Susan Wild (New Dem-PA), Gil Cisneros (New Dem-CA), Anthony Brindisi (Blue Dog-NY), Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN), Angie Craig (New Dem-MN), Abigail Spanberger (Blue Dog-VA), Harley Rouda (New Dem-CA)... That's a big glaring problem-- an existential one, no less-- that neither Nancy Pelosi nor Chuck Schumer understands, let alone addresses.
Yesterday Matt Taibbi asked which party is the real working class party now? What an about-face that a question like that could even be taken seriously, which, of course, it must be. "Trump lost the election," he wrote, "because of his handling of the pandemic, the top issue for 41% of voters, who chose Biden by a nearly 3-1 margin. But among people whose top concern was the economy-- 28% of the electorate-- Trump won an incredible 80% of the vote... Democrats’ conspicuous refusal to address economic inequality and other class issues in a meaningful way created an opening."
Now, Trump is likely to leave the White House, but he created a coalition that some Republicans already understand would deliver massively in a non-pandemic situation. As Missouri Republican Josh Hawley put it the night of the election, “We are a working-class party now. That’s the future.”
What happens from here is a race to see which political party can make the obvious dumb move faster. Will the Democrats, emboldened by the false high of a Biden victory, blow off the clear need to revamp their economic messaging before 2022, when they risk losing both houses of Congress?
Or will the Republican opposition give away the Trump coalition just as fast, by choosing Mitch McConnell’s donor list over Hawley’s insight?
"among voters whose top concern was the economy" - in other words, Covid denier Trump supporters. It's shocking he only got 80% of the votes. Why do you continue to quote the libertarian clown Matt Taibbi?
ReplyDelete"It would be a lot easier for the Democrats to pass something like (NAFTA) now, although it would be more difficult to get enough Republicans behind it.
ReplyDeleteYeah, there's been a reversal of support since then-- starting then-- for the working class"
This is misleading sheepdoggery. The only reason the nazis would refuse to serve the money is to prevent any kind of 'win' by a democrap admin. However, as that party still evangelically supports the money, it is not likely they would get in the way.
If there is a realignment, it is solely due to the colossal stupidity of the working-class voters who cannot or refuses to see that BOTH parties are responsible for that ache in their sphincters.
It's true that most of the active service to the money has occurred because of democraps LATELY (with the exception of tax cuts for the rich) and the nazis do have enough to convince the colossally stupid that the democraps are the ones responsible for that ache in their keisters. And it's also true that the democraps don't seem to care about optics when they pass all those xxFTAs and refuse to do jack shit about wall street's $21 Trillion in fraud. I suppose as long as their opponents are nazis, they don't think their voters have anywhere else to go, so why bother to pretend any more.
Taibbi's dissection of exit polling and so on pretty much supports one and only one fact: american voters are dumber than shit.
To quote one of the nut cases of the Democratic Party "It's the economy, stupid!". The 2020 vote is like the 2016 vote. They that have no place else to go keep going to the guy that is a disruption to those that like money from their corporate donors more than trying to represent and help the People.
ReplyDelete2020, to me, is more like 2008 when the democraps refused to do anything about cheney/W/gonzalea's crimes, kept them in power so they could run against them.
ReplyDeleteIt only worked because of the perfectly-timed demise of Lehman and the mortgage-based bond crash.
This time it was all trump. But same idea -- keep the cluster fuck of a shit show there long enough to run against it, and even someone as loathesome as biden can win, barely.
Yes, the democraps have one and only one campaign leverage -- they are NOT the nazis. And 70+ million still only care to vote against the nazis.
And then those few who are sentient... and the DWTs of the left all wonder why nothing ever gets better and most things continue to get worse.
And they diagnose the FLDP as if there was something there worth salvaging.
Well, at least we now have proof that not 135 million (2016) but over 140 million americans are all dumber than shit. Our 'dumber' flux is still there.